1. Why are you accusing Matthew and Luke of plagiarization? There was no concept of intellectual property 2000 years ago, so you shouldn't be using value-laden words like "plagiary" to describe the Gospels. Assuming that direct copying was even at work and they did not simply have access to different versions of the same oral traditions.
2. The scholarly consensus is not that the passage in Josephus was forged, but rather that it was altered. Origen quoted a version of that passage about a century earlier in which he specifically admits that Josephus did not regard Jesus as divine, so unless we think that the Christians would have initially forged a passage denying the divinity of Christ, that is very likely an authentic--if embellished--historical note.
Awesome points!!
I have looked into it very much over the years. There's no contemporary evidence at all, whereas if the stories are true we should see some. It's unthinkable that if the biblical events are correct historians such as Philo of Alexandria wouldn't have written about them at all, even from a critical perspective.
We have anonymous works in the bible, Matthew and Luke are largely plagiarized off of Mark and written decades after the fact. John is mainly an independent work, but was written even later than the other three gospels. The first appearance in secular history appears in Josephus, however that passage was almost certainly forged by Bishop Eusebius of Caeserea in the 4th century, along with another passage which is likely an accidentally inserted margin note by a scribe.
Tacitus mentions the existence of Christians in the early 2nd century, but doesn't say much about Jesus himself.
In short, the actual evidence to support the Jesus story is amazingly thin.
So you are saying that you would like to prove Christianity OUTSIDE of the Bible? That statement unfortunately is a historical mistake. Notice how the data that we have from Tacitus, Pliny the Younger, Josephus, etc, are all later, and are all secondary confirmations? They can confirm basic Jesus facts but they are simply secondary. Your request is something like this analogy...suppose that Bigfoot was claimed to have been spotted in a small town called Barberry. News reporters showed up the next day and there were all kinds of huge claw marks all over town, and other odd pieces of evidence. Many people from the town came forward with their stories. 20 years go by and a someone writes a book called 'Barberry's Bigfoot.' 10 years after that book a cult following is in full swing called Barberrianism, and original witnesses are referred to as Barberrians.
Now an investigator from far away reads the book and decides to come investigate the town...BUT, she says to herself "I have no interest in the BIASED accounts of Barberrians, I am only interested in the unbiased accounts of non-Barberrians!!" Do you see the flaw? Her judgement is clouded by terminology. Yes today a Christian can be biased because they are far removed, but in the first century 'Christians' were literally the primary witnesses. 'Christian' had almost a double meaning back then because a lot of them were eye witnesses. 'Christians' were literally 1st century orthodox Jews who came to believe that Jesus proved himself to be the promised Messiah of the Old Testament prophets. Anyway, forget about the Old Testament, forget about the church, forget about the Canon, forget everything religious. Just think like a historian when thinking in terms of historical Jesus study.
You might say "But they are still biased because they are pro-Christ, I want some 1st century anti-Christian accounts." I found that nobody answered this objection better than John Warwick Montgomery (who was an atheist lawyer turned Christian). He answered this way;
"It doesn't really make any difference whether a writer about Jesus, or a writer about anyone, is a friend of the person that he writes about if he produces his writings in an environment where there are hostile witnesses. The fact is that the early apostles went out and presented what we have in the New Testament in primarily a Jewish audience particularly in the synagogues, and the religious leaders have been the primary opponents of Jesus' message. It is inconceivable that the disciples, friends of Jesus or not, could have gotten away with incorrect information about Jesus in the presence of hostile witnesses who had themselves had contact with Jesus' life, and who had what lawyers call 'Means, motive, and opportunity' to destroy the picture set forth by those dissciples."
Think about a current example, very soon after Ronald Reagan was elected president there was assassination attempt on his life. What if tomorrow somebody wrote and published an article that claimed "What really happened is that Reagan caught the bullet with his bare hand, then he turned and laughed at the assassin, and then calmly went into his limo." Now, would anybody who read the article care if the person who wrote the article was a Republican, a Democrat, an independent, a Christian, an atheist, etc?? Would the writer's beliefs effect in anyway shape or form whether or not we all considered the Reagan story to be totally bogus or legit? Of course it wouldn't, the article would be a lie and everyone would know it.
Some other people would object and say "But life teaches us that tons of stories start off small but then get exaggerated throughout time, like the game of telephone." True but this too misses an important distinction, there are 2 separate types of situations...one is where the event(s) happened away from the public eye, out of the limelight. The other is a PUBLIC event, translation, with too many witnesses to later inject false facts that would succeed in replacing the true facts. The gospels were written within decades of Jesus' public ministry, the witnesses (or those close to the witnesses) were still alive when the gospels became written in stone. That time frame is about equivalent to the Reagan example. Thinking that you could fool a society full of contemporary witnesses is one tough task.
Public event vs private event is the key. Think of an example from high school. There is a fight in the boys locker room on Monday, the one guy threw the other guy into a locker but then his 2 friends broke it up. By the time Friday rolls around (as we've probably all witnessed) the story is exaggerated and totally inflated to the point where he threw the guy 15 feet across the room and also beat up his 2 friends as well, a teacher tried to break it up and he beat up the teacher too lol. BUT, now let's contrast that with a public event (same high school), the township watched the local Friday night high school football game and there was a record broken that night by the running back, he rushed for 240 yards! By next Friday the story would NOT be exaggerated to the point where he rushed for 400 yards. Why?? It was public. If someone tried to later claim that he had a 400 yard game, even 20 years later, it would not work. Even 20 years later there would be a self correcting atmosphere of public witnesses who would prevent numbers from being exaggerated. Try to tell a conflated 'Popular' story from your youth from 30 years ago, and scramble the facts around...see what happens.
Now, how about Philo? Or other authors? Perhaps you can begin to gain a proper perspective about the HUMBLE nature of written accounts in the ancient world by the fact that more 'Authors' wrote about Jesus than Tiberius Cesar (who was the Emperor at the time of Jesus). Think about that! This isn't the age of Amazon.com. However, even in the age of Amazon.com ask yourself this question...how many people do you personally know who considered 911 to be a major life changing event for them? Now ask yourself the follow up question (in the Amazon.com age!)...how many of those people wrote a book about it?? This whole 'Why didn't others write about Jesus?' is a deceptively an unfair rebuttal!!
OK let's go further with why this is a deceptively unfair rebuttal...why was there not more secular accounts of this magic man named Jesus?? I will yield to what I think was a great reply by Josh McDowell...
Would it be unfair to begin by asking another question? In which contemporary writers (who flourished say within 50 years after the death of Christ) would you expect to find the collateral evidence you are looking for? For it is surprising how few writings, comparatively speaking, have survived from those years of a kind which might be even remotely expected to mention Christ. One prolific contemporary writer was Philo, born 15 BC and lived in Alexandria Egypt, until his death sometime after 40 AD.
His work consists primarily of philosophy and commentary on Jewish Scripture and religion as they relate to Greek culture and philosophy. His family was one of the wealthiest in Alexandria. A reading of the 15th edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica's article on Philo:
"It is not unduly surprising that such a person should not pay much attention to an agitator sprung from the humblest of the people, whose doctrine, if he had one, had no connection with philosophy."
E.M. Blaiklock has catalogues the non-Christian writings of the Roman Empire (other than Philo) which have survived the 1st century and do not mention Jesus. There is very little. From the decade of the 30s practically nothing has survived. Velleius Paterculus, a retired army officer of Tiberius, published what was considered an amateurish history of Rome in 30 AD, only part of it has survived. Considering the segregation between Jewish & Roman towns in Galilee, it is unlikely that Paterculus ever even heard of Jesus. The gospel writers give no evidence that Jesus ever set foot in Tiberius, or any other Roman towns in Galilee. Also surviving in the 30s is an inscription of Caesarea bearing two thirds of Pilate's name. All that's left from the 40s are the fables written by Phaedrus, a Macedonian freedman. Of the 50s & 60s Blaiklock says:
"Bookends set a foot apart on this desk where I write would enclose the works from those significant years. Curiously much of it comes from Spanish emigrants in Rome, a foretaste of what the Iberian Peninsula was to give to her conqueror-senators, writers, and 2 important emperors, Trajan & Hadrian. "
The works of this period include the philosophical treatise and letters of Roman statesman, writers, and tutor of Nero, Seneca, the long poem of his nephew Lucan on the civil war between Julius Caesar & Pompey; a book on agriculture by the retired soldier Columella; and large fragments of the novel Satyricon by the voluptuary Gaius Petronius. Also surviving are a few hundred lines of Roman satirist, Persius; the Elder Pliny's Historia Naturalis (a collection of odd facts about the world of nature); some fragments of Asconius Pedianus' commentary on Cicero; and the history of Alexander the Great by Quintus Certius. Tacitus, published a minor work on oratory in 81 AD. Several hundred witty poems or epigrams written by Martial in Rome survive but do not clearly mention Christians. Two of Josephus' works, for good reason don't mention Jesus: Against Apion, and apologetic work contrasting the Jewish faith with Greek thought, and Wars of the Jews, a general history of Jewish wars from the time of Maccabees to 70 AD. A reading of both works is enough to show that any reference to Jesus in either one would have been out of place.
In the 90s the poet Statius published Silvae; Quintilian published 12 books on oratory; Tacitus published 2 small books, one a monograph of his father-in-law, Agricola, and the other a monograph about what is now Germany. Juvenal began his writings of satire just prior to the turn of the century. He doesn't mention Christians. This is not surprising. They were outlawed in Rome and therefore had to keep out of sight. A writer always increases his popularity by poking fun at those in the limelight rather than at those whom nobody knows.
There were some writings in Qumran in the 1st century, but that community withdrew as far as possible from public life and lived in it's wilderness retreat; Jesus carried on his ministry in places where people lived and worked, mixing with all sorts of conditions, and by preference (it appears) with men & women whose society pious men like those of Qumran would rather avoid. Plus practically all the Qumran texts deal with pre-Christian decades.
What about reports from Pilate? People frequently ask if any record has been preserved of the report which, it is presumed, Pontius Pilate, Prefect of Judea, sent to Rome concerning the trial & execution of Jesus of Nazareth. The answer is none. But let it be added at once that NO official record has been preserved of ANY report which Pontius Pilate, or any other Roman governor of Judea, sent to Rome about ANYTHING. And only rarely has an official report from any governor of any Roman province survived. They may have sent in their reports regularly, but for the most part these reports were ephemeral documents, and in due course they disappeared.
Galilee and Judea were at the time 2 minor administrative areas under the large Roman province of Syria, itself on the far eastern frontier of the empire. From the point of view of Roman history of the 1st century, Jesus was a nobody. A man of no social standing, who achieved brief local notice in a remote & little loved province as a preacher & miracle worker, and who was duly executed by order of a minor provincial governor, could hardly be expected to achieve mention in the Roman headlines.
The journalists of the 1st century indicate that they were concerned about such things as the major political events of the day. Read through the works of Tacitus, Suetonius, even Josephus and others of that time period, and you'll notice very quickly that they concern themselves almost completely with the major political and international events of the day. When it comes to religious events, only those that had bearing on important national and international affairs are mentioned.
There's another factor which pushes Christianity further down the list of priorities. More conflicts are recorded in the gospels between Jesus and the Pharisees then between Jesus and any other group. And an increasing number of writers have begun to discover that Jesus' teachings were closer in content to at least one of the schools of the Pharisees than to any other group in Israel at that time. It's therefore reasonable to conclude that a major confrontation between Jesus and the Pharisees probably was only a meaningless religious quibble to any 1st century historian - including Josephus.
I had to fully paint that picture to fully be able to say, #1 it's not exactly looking like an Amazon.com era is it as far as writings that have come down to us?? And #2, it actually completely boggles the mind how rich the textual evidence is surrounding this man called Jesus after we just examined how pathetically scarce the textual evidence of the era is!
