Jesus Myth - The Case Against Historical Christ

[txag007]

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Josephus's work is generally valid. That quote is disputed by most scholars (the earliest copies are copies of copies that date back to 900 years after Jesus) as it's probably an alteration by Christians at a later date. There's certainly evidence of tampering.


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Certainly not! The textual evidence supports this quote. It appears in every copy of Antiquities in existence today.

If we're going to debate this, let's at least be honest.

[RJT]

The reason I asked you is that I thought a while back you had questioned the existence of Jesus. Perhaps, that was the old, grumpy Phil153. [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

[Phil153]

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Certainly not! The textual evidence supports this quote. It appears in every copy of Antiquities in existence today.

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Care to link to a non biased source to support your assertion? Did you notice that I did that to support mine?

Even the Catholics Encyclopedia believes there was tampering. I mean, cmon.

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The reason I asked you is that I thought a while back you had questioned the existence of Jesus. Perhaps, that was the old, grumpy Phil153.

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I did, and I still do. It's not a settled question. But I defer to the learned opinion of experts in the field, despite the scant evidence on which they draw their conclusions, and say that a man named Jesus probably existed, and may have had a traveling sideshow.

[Jernau]

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Virtually every detail of the life of Jesus comes from "Old Testament" scriptures

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While this is used by your link as evidence that Jesus never existed, it should also help eliminate the notion that Jesus did exist but was not God.


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I think that you may have misunderstood the main thrust of this part of his argument. Price shows how the Gospel authors plagiarized the Old Testament to 'fill out' the details of Jesus' life. He also shows how the authors weren't referencing the Old Testament in terms of fulfilled prophecy, but purely to "borrow" ideas for their story (including the mistranslations contained in their Greek version of the Old Testament).

[PairTheBoard]

I believe the writings of Paul are contemporaneous with the generation of people who knew Jesus personally. Paul communicated with the Church in Jeruselum prior to its probable extinction during the revolt in the 60's, and had contact with its leaders who had known Jesus personally (Peter and James?). I realize that in order to use the letters of Paul as an historical source they need to be looked at with a special filter. That's probably true of most documents dating from that time. True, an extraordinary special filter. But still, on that basis I think they have some historical value.

Mark, Mathew, and Luke probably got scripted at least 1 or 2 generations after the historical events. Still, I think it's reasonable to think they were based on oral tradition. And a couple of generations from the events should not produce that much oral drift. It did provide enough time for plenty of theological debate to have taken place though. And it seems likely that debate was infused in with the oral tradition of the historical events. Seen through that filter I think they still provide historical value.

John was probably written a 1 or 2 generations after that. It appears the theological debates infused in the story dominate by then.

Although there are other religions starring figures with mythological features, I don't think there are any where we have source documents for the origin of the religion dating back so close to the generation in which the figure was said to live.

My Sklansky probability meter estimates a high enough probabilty that Jesus actually lived that I'd be willing to bet on it.

PairTheBoard

[chezlaw]

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My Sklansky probability meter estimates a high enough probabilty that Jesus actually lived that I'd be willing to bet on it.

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Yes its a popular belief that jesus existed and has been for some time.

chez

[PairTheBoard]

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My Sklansky probability meter estimates a high enough probabilty that Jesus actually lived that I'd be willing to bet on it.

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Yes its a popular belief that jesus existed and has been for some time.

chez

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You take all my hard thought analysis and reduce it to, "its a popular belief and has been for some time"? Or are you saying that's how Sklansky would estimate the probability?

PairTheBoard

[godBoy]

C.S.Lewis believed in the historicity of Christ's account.
- it's almost good enough for me [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[chezlaw]

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My Sklansky probability meter estimates a high enough probabilty that Jesus actually lived that I'd be willing to bet on it.

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Yes its a popular belief that jesus existed and has been for some time.

chez

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You take all my hard thought analysis and reduce it to, "its a popular belief and has been for some time"? Or are you saying that's how Sklansky would estimate the probability?

PairTheBoard

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If it wasn't a popular belief then do you think DS would give it a high probability? Would you bet on it then?

chez

[txag007]

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Quote:
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Certainly not! The textual evidence supports this quote. It appears in every copy of Antiquities in existence today.


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Care to link to a non biased source to support your assertion? Did you notice that I did that to support mine?


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Since you quoted Wikipedia, I'll do the same. The very first sentence of the "Josephus on Jesus" article, the very same article from which you took your quote, says:

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In 93, the Jewish historian Josephus published his work Antiquities of the Jews. The extant copies of this work, which all derive from Christian sources, even the recently recovered Arabic version, contain two passages about Jesus.

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So there ya go.