The human being? Or the miracle working half-god?

the veracity of Josephus' account of his existence is there. it's later went through some alterations ("and he was the Messiah"-part) which kind of sticks out, but it's there in The Antiquities of the Jews. Josephus is pretty much the guy when it comes to Judean sources from those times anyways, so idk why we should just disregard his accounts here.
i know less about Tacitus' or Pliny's talk about Jesus, but neither of them had any reason to see Jesus or the Christians in a very positive light.
that's actually quite much evidence for a person of antiquity, especially for it to be about some non-Greek/Roman fellow from some backwater province.
and y'know, Judea was basically sprawling with messiahs, prophets and whatnot during those times. eventually the whole thing culminated in the Bar Kochba-revolts.

more importantly we should ask "why the hell didn't early opponents of Christianity, possibly those who lived when Jesus was alive ever claim that he never actually existed". i mean, that'd be some pretty god damn damning evidence against this new Jewish cult. funny that their numerous enemies rather claimed that Jesus wasn't divine rather than that he didn't exist.



yes, the eternal question. whether to choose some loonie New Atheists' shitinterpretations or to go with the general academic consensus. choices, choices...


full God according to the Christian view.

This post was edited by Gastly on Nov 28 2014 05:21am

It seems to work fine for denying global warming, why not apply it to jesus?

I believe that there existed a human being who caused a controversial religious uprising in the Roman province of Judaea somewhere around the year of 26-36 AD. Since that culture didn't use our English alphabet, he couldn't actually have been named "Jesus of Nazareth". But however you wanna translate the name, it's inconsequential to the question of whether or not he actually existed.

This post was edited by kayeto on Nov 28 2014 05:45am

Depends on the Christian in question.

Well put

and brings up what my question was going to be ; it's easy to believe that there was a rabble rousing Jew named Jesus or Yeshua .

But do you believe that he was God incarnate?

The question is not "Was Josephus a forgery?", it is "To what extent has it been forged?". When somebody references Josephus they're referencing Antiquities of the Jews..... Tacitus is 100 years removed and simply says they're called Christians, named after Christus. The significance of this isn't really something a layman can assess the relavence of. I can't find anything on Pliny except to refer to Christians and not Jesus himself.

There are plenty of opponents of Christianity who didn't even mention Jesus. The ones who actually did are only like 3 people who are several generations separated from the events, which is actually what would be expected.

Yes, let's ignore the evidence if an atheist says it and just go with the consensus built and maintained by Christians. Choices choices...

Like I said before, the consensus is built by Christians at the edge of a sword, and is now maintained by "evidence" gathered when denying Jesus could get you killed, which is why I suggested we aren't in a position to sniff it out.

some 70-80 years after Jesus' death there's a cult going around worshiping Jesus, which Pliny the Younger makes clear in his report. Tacitus, Pliny and Josephus all lived well within the lifespans of Jesus' contemporaries.
true, we can't agree that he existed if we agree that the set of evidence required for us to reasonably conclude that he existed is to be made arbitrarily high - doubly so if we are to remember the age and the location we're talking about. i wonder what this'll mean for, say, Socrates...
... or the whole god damn fucking ancient world and most of its' people.


while i agree that atheists should be kept out of the academia and all public offices if possible, the fact is and remains that the that if your fringe view hasn't caught wind with, say, historians it's more likely that the fringe view isn't just well founded rather than that there's some kind of a great academic conspiracy going on.
and no, modern scholarship is not dominated by sword-waving Christians, i definitely think that'd be an interesting experiment though.

why the hell would the Christians have to invent a random preacher when there's dozens upon god damn dozens to already choose from?
i think that this strange Jesus-denialism might have to do with the impact that him and Christianity has made upon the Western world. it might be very hard to understand that to the peoples of olden times his impact just wasn't that big.




a surprising turn of events.

This post was edited by Gastly on Nov 28 2014 11:11am

No, I believe in 72 virgins awating for me in heaven

Muslims believe in Jesus...