historical evidence

[Eishiba]

Is there any historical evidence of Jesus Christ? Certainly there would be something or someone that mentions him when he was alive, if he was alive.

 

[Joshua260]

Is there any historical evidence of Jesus Christ? Certainly there would be something or someone that mentions him when he was alive, if he was alive.

Yes. There are multiple historical attestations to the existence of Jesus of Nazareth.
The info is readily available on several sites. I didn't read through this one, but this site generally gives good info:
Did Jesus really exist? Is there any historical evidence of Jesus Christ?

 

[Eishiba]

I have read that site. Most people try to use people such as Pliny the younger, Celsus, and Josephus. The problem is none of them existed when Jesus did. Jesus was born in about 4bc and died around 40ad. Josephus was born in 37ad. He would have been 3 years old when Jesus died. A 3 year old can't document a person or write anything. Historical evidence can't exist if people didn't exist during the time Jesus did. Otherwise, people such as Celsus and Pliny the younger, would have had to rely on someone elses writings.

 

[GoingByzantine]

I have read that site. Most people try to use people such as Pliny the younger, Celsus, and Josephus. The problem is none of them existed when Jesus did. Jesus was born in about 4bc and died around 40ad. Josephus was born in 37ad. He would have been 3 years old when Jesus died. A 3 year old can't document a person or write anything. Historical evidence can't exist if people didn't exist during the time Jesus did. Otherwise, people such as Celsus and Pliny the younger, would have had to rely on someone elses writings.

The historical evidence is found in the New Testament, it's easy to forget that the Bible did not always exist. Before there was the Bible, there were the individual gospels, and each one of these is a historical source.

 

[Joshua260]

I have read that site. Most people try to use people such as Pliny the younger, Celsus, and Josephus. The problem is none of them existed when Jesus did. Jesus was born in about 4bc and died around 40ad. Josephus was born in 37ad. He would have been 3 years old when Jesus died. A 3 year old can't document a person or write anything. Historical evidence can't exist if people didn't exist during the time Jesus did. Otherwise, people such as Celsus and Pliny the younger, would have had to rely on someone elses writings.

Other historical figures that we accept as people who actually existed are attested to by historians who were not contemporary with their subjects. Why would you treat Jesus any differently?

 

[ebia]

Is there any historical evidence of Jesus Christ? Certainly there would be something or someone that mentions him when he was alive, if he was alive.

Ur, no there wouldn't.
Jesus gets a whole mass of texts written about him within a few decades of his death by a variety of authors, many of which came to be collected in the New Testament. So many, in fact, that it comes to more and better documentary evidence than survives for Tiberius Caesar, emperor of the known world at the time.

There really isn't that much documentary evidence on most seriously important people of that time period, let alone people who lived their whole life around palestine.

No serious historian - one with an academic post in real university - doubts that Jesus of Narareth existed and went around saying and doing at least some of the sorts of things attributed to him, nor that he was executed. When Dawkins wants to pretend that Jesus might never have existed in The God Delusion he is reduced to citing G A Wells. He doesn't mention that Prof Wells is emeritus professor of German, not an historian, nor that Wells had changed his mind by the time the citation was made. If dawkins couldn't find an historian to cite it is for one simple reason - they don't exist.

 

[Joshua260]

Well, I believe that some accept at least some of the gospels to be written by the traditional authors and Paul, who I think no one doubts wrote the Pauline letters, claimed to have met the resurrected Jesus on the road to Damascus.

Also, Dawkins DID admit that Jesus probably DID exist in a debate with John Lennox.

 

[ebia]

Well, I believe that some accept at least some of the gospels to be written by the traditional authors and Paul, who I think no one doubts wrote the Pauline letters, claimed to have met the resurrected Jesus on the road to Damascus.

Also, Dawkins DID admit that Jesus probably DID exist in a debate with John Lennox.

You seem to have completely missed what my post is saying.

 

[Datak]

Is there any historical evidence of Jesus Christ? Certainly there would be something or someone that mentions him when he was alive, if he was alive.

Have you heard of Paul, who wrote the epistles? OK so Jesus wasn't alive at the time he wrote them. But Paul knew Jesus' brother. I think that ought to count for something. You can't have a brother if you never existed.

 

[Eishiba]

If one is to have any way of knowing if Jesus from the Bible existed, then there has to be some kind of resources or documents outside of the Bible. You can't use the Bible to prove the Bible right. If Jesus went around, preaching all the time, preforming miracles, and suffered a terrible death, wouldn't any writer or author that saw him, not write about him? You mean that no one wrote a piece about the miracles Jesus performed? No one wrote about him making the blind man see? How many people did he do that in front of? This would have been supernatural. Certainly there are sources outside of the Bible that have written about things he did, or anything about him.

 

[GoingByzantine]

If one is to have any way of knowing if Jesus from the Bible existed, then there has to be some kind of resources or documents outside of the Bible. You can't use the Bible to prove the Bible right. If Jesus went around, preaching all the time, preforming miracles, and suffered a terrible death, wouldn't any writer or author that saw him, not write about him? You mean that no one wrote a piece about the miracles Jesus performed? No one wrote about him making the blind man see? How many people did he do that in front of? This would have been supernatural. Certainly there are sources outside of the Bible that have written about things he did, or anything about him.

What is the Bible but a compilation of independent sources? You obviously already know this, but the Bible did not fall from the sky. A bunch of Christians took independent sources and put them together in one binding.

 

[Joshua260]

You seem to have completely missed what my post is saying.

okay. my apologies then.

 

[Eishiba]

What is the Bible but a compilation of independent sources? You obviously already know this, but the Bible did not fall from the sky. A bunch of Christians took independent sources and put them together in one binding.

And your trusting that everything these people picked is legit? There is so much messed up stuff in the Bible its insane.

 

[GoingByzantine]

And your trusting that everything these people picked is legit? There is so much messed up stuff in the Bible its insane.

If they didn't pick the right things, you can still find the writings they did not pick out there on the market.

Take the Gospel of Thomas for instance:

Primary Sources - Gospel Of Thomas | From Jesus To Christ | FRONTLINE | PBS

 

[golgotha61]

And your trusting that everything these people picked is legit? There is so much messed up stuff in the Bible its insane.

What reason would there be to not believe the NT narratives? Can you prove that the NT accounts are falsified? Can you explain why the ancient Jews and Romans simply did not produce the dead body of Christ and thereby put an end to the Christian movement that was so distasteful to the Romans and so destructive to the Jews? Can you explain how and why the Christian church grew with such speed and geographic expansiveness if it was not for the factual resurrection of Christ? Can you demonstrate what the gain would have been to fabricate the NT narratives and the resurrection when the reward for the majority of the early Christians (the accused fabricators) was persecution and death?

 

[Datak]

If one is to have any way of knowing if Jesus from the Bible existed, then there has to be some kind of resources or documents outside of the Bible. You can't use the Bible to prove the Bible right. If Jesus went around, preaching all the time, preforming miracles, and suffered a terrible death, wouldn't any writer or author that saw him, not write about him? You mean that no one wrote a piece about the miracles Jesus performed? No one wrote about him making the blind man see? How many people did he do that in front of? This would have been supernatural. Certainly there are sources outside of the Bible that have written about things he did, or anything about him.

I have no interest in proving the Bible right. This is not using the Bible to prove the Bible right. I'm giving you historical evidence that a real live walking, talking, breathing historical Jesus did in fact exist. The evidence is that Paul knew Jesus' own brother. I hope you aren't ignoring this; you haven't responded to it. You just keep building up doubt based on arguments from ignorance.

 

[dcalling]

The survival of Christianity. It was heavily proscuted by the Romans, with no advantages of been a Christian, and a religion that teaches no violence. Only God can spread such thing around.

 

[ebia]

If one is to have any way of knowing if Jesus from the Bible existed, then there has to be some kind of resources or documents outside of the Bible. You can't use the Bible to prove the Bible right. If Jesus went around, preaching all the time, preforming miracles, and suffered a terrible death, wouldn't any writer or author that saw him, not write about him? You mean that no one wrote a piece about the miracles Jesus performed? No one wrote about him making the blind man see? How many people did he do that in front of? This would have been supernatural. Certainly there are sources outside of the Bible that have written about things he did, or anything about him.

How many authors do you think we're writing that kind of document in Judea in ad 30? (Clue: zero that we know of). And even if such a text were written it would not have survived unless it were in the possession of someone determined to preserve it.

The texts preserved in the bible are texts. They really exist. They were written, largely independently, for a reason. Their authors had agendas - all authors have agendas. Real historians work with what they have, not with unrealistic ideas of what they would like. The documents for jesus are way more extensive than one would expect, not less, compared with others of the time.

No historian doubts that jesus existed and made something like the kinds of claims in word and action that are attributed him, and was crucified for his trouble. Did he perform supernatural miracles - that's not a question the historical method is prepared to answer. Was he widely regarded at the time as having done so - historians would say yes.

 

[Eishiba]

I apologize to anyone who feels I'm not responding. I just check back here after a few hours. I don't really believe anything in the Bible in the first place. There is alot of stuff that is a complete abomination. My thoughts were, if I can find any kind of historical evidence on Jesus, it would prove that Jesus existed. I'm under the influence that the New Testament should never have been put with the Old Testament because the OT makes God look worse than Hitler. But if I can prove to myself that Jesus existed, then I can at least have the understanding that he existed. The Talmud actually mentions him and is said to have been using sorcery to perform is miracles, which seems to help me a little.

 

[GoingByzantine]

I apologize to anyone who feels I'm not responding. I just check back here after a few hours. I don't really believe anything in the Bible in the first place. There is alot of stuff that is a complete abomination. My thoughts were, if I can find any kind of historical evidence on Jesus, it would prove that Jesus existed. I'm under the influence that the New Testament should never have been put with the Old Testament because the OT makes God look worse than Hitler. But if I can prove to myself that Jesus existed, then I can at least have the understanding that he existed. The Talmud actually mentions him and is said to have been using sorcery to perform is miracles, which seems to help me a little.

Why don't you believe things in the NT?