Cito di Pense wrote:...What do they cite as the evidence for their deep convictions? Why, nothing but the writings about which they have deep convictions as to their veracity and value as independent biographical sources. Why don't we have better data? The guy was obscure! Oh, why didn't I think of that one?! I'll tell you why: It's an utterly ad hoc excuse. Everyone who's not famous is obscure. The guy became famous because people wouldn't stop telling the story. Now that sequence of events is being played out in the present day. Same tune, different lyrics. This time, instead of a religious icon, it's a humble human preacher. Why's that? What's not to like about a humble human preacher?

You have exposed the farce, the "chameleon" called Obscure HJ.

HJers claim their Jesus was obscure but they forget that they also argue that Jesus was the Christ in Tacitus Annals whom the Romans executed to STOP the spread of a new mischievous religion in Judea.

Tacitus Annals 15.44 contradicts the Obscure HJ argument.

If Tacitus' Annals 15.44 is not a forgery then the character called Christus must have been well-known to the Romans and Jews BEFORE his execution.

....Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace.

Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judæa, the first source of the evil...

Tacitus' Annals 15.44 does NOT support an Obscure HJ.

Obscure HJ is undocumented fiction.

dejuror wrote:

Cito di Pense wrote:...What do they cite as the evidence for their deep convictions? Why, nothing but the writings about which they have deep convictions as to their veracity and value as independent biographical sources. Why don't we have better data? The guy was obscure! Oh, why didn't I think of that one?! I'll tell you why: It's an utterly ad hoc excuse. Everyone who's not famous is obscure. The guy became famous because people wouldn't stop telling the story. Now that sequence of events is being played out in the present day. Same tune, different lyrics. This time, instead of a religious icon, it's a humble human preacher. Why's that? What's not to like about a humble human preacher?

You have exposed the farce, the "chameleon" called Obscure HJ.

HJers claim their Jesus was obscure but they forget that they also argue that Jesus was the Christ in Tacitus Annals whom the Romans executed to STOP the spread of a new mischievous religion in Judea.

Tacitus Annals 15.44 contradicts the Obscure HJ argument.

If Tacitus' Annals 15.44 is not a forgery then the character called Christus must have been well-known to the Romans and Jews BEFORE his execution.

....Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace.

Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judæa, the first source of the evil...

Tacitus' Annals 15.44 does NOT support an Obscure HJ.

Obscure HJ is undocumented fiction.

It's the Goldilocks Criterion: a Jesus just obscure enough for no one to notice, yet famous enough to cause High Priests, Governors, and Emperors to tremble.

proudfootz wrote:It's the Goldilocks Criterion: a Jesus just obscure enough for no one to notice, yet famous enough to cause High Priests, Governors, and Emperors to tremble.

And how embarrassing is that! We must remember, however, that if it's embarrassing and it's about Jesus, it's automatically historically factual. Any HJer will tell you that. I think we may wish to add that it also be part of the canonical record.

dejuror wrote:The HJ argument is going nowhwere.

Stein uses the Christian Bible to argue the Heresy that Jesus was a mere man with a human father which is PRECISELY what the Christian Bible DENIES.

I think that's called having your cake and eating it too.

True, Jesus is mentioned outside liturgical writings but only as here say.

And as for those liturgical records, they read like drama. They have all the elements of literary writing, not history, because literature is what they are. They're meant to be performed and recited for members of the choir. That's why people still perform them today.

The Jesus story resembles an urban legend. I've lived in different states and heard this story about how a guy had a very expensive boat that he kept parked on his property but that he had chained to a large loblolly pine. He came home one day and to his great astonishment and disbelief found the boat chained to another loblolly pine with a note that said, "Just so you know, if we wanted the boat we could have taken it." Of course the listener is supposed to go OOOOOooo, AAahhh and gasp with relief and a kind of fearful respect for the honorable, powerful, would-be perpetrators.

And when you hear the same story five states away but this time about a car, not a boat, you realize you're experiencing an urban legend with variations. That's how the Jesus story is, and is why Constatine and the bishops wanted to clean things up.

I'm certain there's some truth behind the urban legend I heard about the boat, car, etc. There has to be or else people would never tell and retell the story. Right?

Ducktown wrote:The Jesus story resembles an urban legend. I've lived in different states and heard this story about how a guy had a very expensive boat that he kept parked on his property but that he had chained to a large loblolly pine. He came home one day and to his great astonishment and disbelief found the boat chained to another loblolly pine with a note that said, "Just so you know, if we wanted the boat we could have taken it." Of course the listener is supposed to go OOOOOooo, AAahhh and gasp with relief and a kind of fearful respect for the honorable, powerful, would-be perpetrators.

And when you hear the same story five states away but this time about a car, not a boat, you realize you're experiencing an urban legend with variations. That's how the Jesus story is, and is why Constatine and the bishops wanted to clean things up.

I'm certain there's some truth behind the urban legend I heard about the boat, car, etc. There has to be or else people would never tell and retell the story. Right?

I am extremely happy that you are "certain there's some truth behind" the boat/car/etc... urban legend.

Which part of which version of the urban legend is certain to be truth?

You are not certain, right!!!

Now, this is certain.

I am certain that Jesus of the NT was described as a an Ascending, Resurrecting, Transfiguring Sea Water walker born of a Ghost and God Creator from the beginning in manuscripts and Codices of antiquity.

The description of Jesus certainly supports Mythology and Fiction.

I cannot argue that Jesus of Nazareth was a man when Christians of antiquity certainly stated he was indeed born of a Ghost.

All stories of Jesus are dated to the 2nd century or later.

Jesus was a Myth/ Fiction character until contemporary historical data can be found.

No historical data has been found for NT Jesus of Nazareth for at least 1800 years.

It is certain that the Roman Government did concede that Jesus of Nazareth was Born of a Ghost.

I argue that Jesus was a Myth/Fiction as certainly described.

He is certainly described as a normal convict in all the non-apologetic literature, and that's a lot more trustworthy. That's why it's more likely that the guy is both historic and an entirely normal human. I certainly view the apologetics as more likely to reflect woo than the non-apologetics. That's why the non-apologetics model of a normal historical human is the more likely to reflect real history. Last I heard it's not yet a crime to conclude that a normal historical human executed by the Romans is the more likely scenario, based on the less woo-driven non-apologetic material.

Stein

Stein wrote:He is certainly described as a normal convict in all the non-apologetic literature, and that's a lot more trustworthy. That's why it's more likely that the guy is both historic and an entirely normal human. I certainly view the apologetics as more likely to reflect woo than the non-apologetics. That's why the non-apologetics model of a normal historical human is the more likely to reflect real history. Last I heard it's not yet a crime to conclude that a normal historical human executed by the Romans is the more likely scenario, based on the less woo-driven non-apologetic material.

Stein

It's not a "crime"; you can believe whatever you want. Some people believe in flying saucers and alien abduction; it's not a crime, they can believe whatever they want.

But the authors of your non-biblical sources like Tacitus and Josephus never knew anyone called Jesus. So it's impossible for them to be giving any personal evidence of their own for a human Jesus. They could only have been reporting what other earlier people had said about Jesus beliefs. But that is hearsay. I.e. it's not the authors own evidence, it's merely the author writing to say that someone else once claimed to know things about Jesus.

But worse than that, the hearsay comes from entirely unknown unnamed sources. So it's anonymous hearsay. That is - all that authors like Tacitus and Josephus are actually saying is that they pass on to their readers things they believe were once said by unknown religious worshippers about their earlier beliefs in Jesus. There's no actual evidence of Jesus there. All there is, is evidence of anonymous hearsay beliefs passed on by later writers who never knew any such person.

And worse still - we don't actually know if Josephus or Tacitus ever wrote anything at all about Jesus. Because we haven't got a single thing they ever wrote in their lifetime. All we have are Christian copies written 1000 years later! And Christian copyists were apparently known to have often altered any passages they did not like about Jesus. So any very, verrrrry, late self-interested Christian copying like that (which made virtually no mention at all of Jesus anyway) is absolutely worthless as any kind of reliable evidence of a Jesus figure completely unknown to people like Tacitus and Josephus.

Also, afaik - there were scores of non-biblical historians writing in those first few centuries AD. But afaik virtually none of them ever said a single word about anyone named Jesus.

Iirc, in his 2013 book, even Bart Ehrman, who thinks Jesus was a "certainty", admits that Josephus and Tacitus are not a credible source of reliable evidence for a human Jesus ever known to anyone.

The problem with the HJ case is that it simply has zero evidence of a human Jesus ever known to anyone. The only evidence it has is evidence of religious belief in Jesus.

Your evidence is only evidence of belief (i.e. evidence of 1st century religious faith).

And when you profess your 21st century belief in Jesus, you are really just relying entirely upon that same 1st century religious faith from people who believed in belief ... they never knew any human Jesus, they were all just operating upon religious belief in Jesus ... and you are just repeating that same belief today.

IanS wrote:

Stein wrote:He is certainly described as a normal convict in all the non-apologetic literature, and that's a lot more trustworthy. That's why it's more likely that the guy is both historic and an entirely normal human. I certainly view the apologetics as more likely to reflect woo than the non-apologetics. That's why the non-apologetics model of a normal historical human is the more likely to reflect real history. Last I heard it's not yet a crime to conclude that a normal historical human executed by the Romans is the more likely scenario, based on the less woo-driven non-apologetic material.

Stein

It's not a "crime"; you can believe whatever you want. Some people believe in flying saucers and alien abduction; it's not a crime, they can believe whatever they want.

But the authors of your non-biblical sources like Tacitus and Josephus never knew anyone called Jesus. So it's impossible for them to be giving any personal evidence of their own for a human Jesus. They could only have been reporting what other earlier people had said about Jesus beliefs. But that is hearsay. I.e. it's not the authors own evidence, it's merely the author writing to say that someone else once claimed to know things about Jesus.

But worse than that, the hearsay comes from entirely unknown unnamed sources. So it's anonymous hearsay. That is - all that authors like Tacitus and Josephus are actually saying is that they pass on to their readers things they believe were once said by unknown religious worshippers about their earlier beliefs in Jesus. There's no actual evidence of Jesus there. All there is, is evidence of anonymous hearsay beliefs passed on by later writers who never knew any such person.

And worse still - we don't actually know if Josephus or Tacitus ever wrote anything at all about Jesus. Because we haven't got a single thing they ever wrote in their lifetime. All we have are Christian copies written 1000 years later! And Christian copyists were apparently known to have often altered any passages they did not like about Jesus. So any very, verrrrry, late self-interested Christian copying like that (which made virtually no mention at all of Jesus anyway) is absolutely worthless as any kind of reliable evidence of a Jesus figure completely unknown to people like Tacitus and Josephus.

Also, afaik - there were scores of non-biblical historians writing in those first few centuries AD. But afaik virtually none of them ever said a single word about anyone named Jesus.

Iirc, in his 2013 book, even Bart Ehrman, who thinks Jesus was a "certainty", admits that Josephus and Tacitus are not a credible source of reliable evidence for a human Jesus ever known to anyone.

The problem with the HJ case is that it simply has zero evidence of a human Jesus ever known to anyone. The only evidence it has is evidence of religious belief in Jesus.

Your evidence is only evidence of belief (i.e. evidence of 1st century religious faith).

And when you profess your 21st century belief in Jesus, you are really just relying entirely upon that same 1st century religious faith from people who believed in belief ... they never knew any human Jesus, they were all just operating upon religious belief in Jesus ... and you are just repeating that same belief today.

You forgot to add that there is some evidence of Tacitus being diligent with checking records & you also forgot to include any evidence as to why any one, Christian or not, would "want" to forge these texts or alter them. Simply saying they could have, doesn't cut the mustard.

Owdhat wrote:
You forgot to add that there is some evidence of Tacitus being diligent with checking records & you also forgot to include any evidence as to why any one, Christian or not, would "want" to forge these texts or alter them. Simply saying they could have, doesn't cut the mustard.

Free once posted

in AD 88 Tacitus attained a praetorship - which is an official position with legal jurisdiction - and he became a member of the priestly college that kept the Sibylline Books of prophecy, but also supervised the activities of foreign-cult practices, of which Judaism and Christianity were included.

So here we have Tacitus in office, and in charge of all the official Roman records regarding Christianity and Judaism.

Yet all we have is a dubious passage that, if true, (i) is hearsay; or (ii) is interpolation or forgery -

Tacitus's Annales 15 derive from one copy of it - a copy found in the 14th century in a monastery in Monte Cassino.

Zanobi da Strada (who died in 1361) had likely earlier discovered Annals 11-16 at Monte Cassino where he lived for some time.[5][11] The copies of Annals at Monte Cassino were likely moved to Florence by Giovanni Boccaccio (1313 – 1375), a friend of da Strada, who is also credited with their discovery at Monte Cassino.[11][12][13]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annals_(Tacitus)#Provenance_and_authenticity


5 Latin Literature: A History by Gian Biagio Conte, Don P. Fowler, Glen W. Most, and Joseph Solodow (Nov 1999)

ISBN 0-8018-6253-1 Johns Hopkins University Press. p.543

11 Medieval Italy: An Encyclopedia by Christopher Kleinhenz (Nov 2003) ISBN 0-415-93931-3. p.1174

12 The Scriptorium and Library at Monte Cassino, 1058–1105 by Francis Newton (Apr 1999)

ISBN 0-521-58395-0 Cambridge University Press. p.327

13 The Fortunes of Apuleius by Julia Haig Gaisser (Jan 2008) ISBN 0-691-13136-8 Princeton University Press. pp.93–94
.

Notice reference 12 - "The Scriptorium and Library at Monte Cassino, 1058–1105"


eta - also see later post #39851 http://www.rationalskepticism.org/chris ... l#p2243219
.

And Owdat, I looked back through this thread and see your (and others') "Tacitus being diligent with checking records" assertion has been addressed and refuted before.

What Tacitus did or didn't actually do is beside the point. In an honest appraisal of the situation such as Ian attempted it should mention that there is also some evidence of Tacitus having the means and motivation to check his sources.

what evidence, Owdat?

RealityRules wrote:And Owdat, I looked back through this thread and see your (and others') "Tacitus being diligent with checking records" assertion has been addressed and refuted before.

With the notion that preachers were thick on the ground, and the notion that the Romans routinely crucified them (this is how we 'know' the gospel narratives are plausible, right?) how could Tacitus have been able to identify the one of thousands crucified by Pilate that supposedly was the 'source' of this cult?

Apparently Pilate didn't even know the name of the guy, but simply called him 'The Messiah'. Were there monthly reports?

"To the Roman Senate and the Emperor Tiberius Caesar,

Crucified 17 Messiahs this month, making a round 80 for the fiscal quarter and projecting 250 for the year - which is a slight downturn from last year.

Sincerely, Pontius Pilate"

RealityRules wrote:what evidence, Owdat?

Well you quoted some of it a few posts up.

And let's not forget before dismissing Tacitus that he is used far more by honest to goodness historians studying plain old roman history than just the corrupted evil biblical ones.

Owdhat wrote:

IanS wrote:

Stein wrote:He is certainly described as a normal convict in all the non-apologetic literature, and that's a lot more trustworthy. That's why it's more likely that the guy is both historic and an entirely normal human. I certainly view the apologetics as more likely to reflect woo than the non-apologetics. That's why the non-apologetics model of a normal historical human is the more likely to reflect real history. Last I heard it's not yet a crime to conclude that a normal historical human executed by the Romans is the more likely scenario, based on the less woo-driven non-apologetic material.

Stein

It's not a "crime"; you can believe whatever you want. Some people believe in flying saucers and alien abduction; it's not a crime, they can believe whatever they want.

But the authors of your non-biblical sources like Tacitus and Josephus never knew anyone called Jesus. So it's impossible for them to be giving any personal evidence of their own for a human Jesus. They could only have been reporting what other earlier people had said about Jesus beliefs. But that is hearsay. I.e. it's not the authors own evidence, it's merely the author writing to say that someone else once claimed to know things about Jesus.

But worse than that, the hearsay comes from entirely unknown unnamed sources. So it's anonymous hearsay. That is - all that authors like Tacitus and Josephus are actually saying is that they pass on to their readers things they believe were once said by unknown religious worshippers about their earlier beliefs in Jesus. There's no actual evidence of Jesus there. All there is, is evidence of anonymous hearsay beliefs passed on by later writers who never knew any such person.

And worse still - we don't actually know if Josephus or Tacitus ever wrote anything at all about Jesus. Because we haven't got a single thing they ever wrote in their lifetime. All we have are Christian copies written 1000 years later! And Christian copyists were apparently known to have often altered any passages they did not like about Jesus. So any very, verrrrry, late self-interested Christian copying like that (which made virtually no mention at all of Jesus anyway) is absolutely worthless as any kind of reliable evidence of a Jesus figure completely unknown to people like Tacitus and Josephus.

Also, afaik - there were scores of non-biblical historians writing in those first few centuries AD. But afaik virtually none of them ever said a single word about anyone named Jesus.

Iirc, in his 2013 book, even Bart Ehrman, who thinks Jesus was a "certainty", admits that Josephus and Tacitus are not a credible source of reliable evidence for a human Jesus ever known to anyone.

The problem with the HJ case is that it simply has zero evidence of a human Jesus ever known to anyone. The only evidence it has is evidence of religious belief in Jesus.

Your evidence is only evidence of belief (i.e. evidence of 1st century religious faith).

And when you profess your 21st century belief in Jesus, you are really just relying entirely upon that same 1st century religious faith from people who believed in belief ... they never knew any human Jesus, they were all just operating upon religious belief in Jesus ... and you are just repeating that same belief today.

You forgot to add that there is some evidence of Tacitus being diligent with checking records & you also forgot to include any evidence as to why any one, Christian or not, would "want" to forge these texts or alter them. Simply saying they could have, doesn't cut the mustard.

No. I did not "forget" any such thing. And in fact we must have been over those sort of objections many hundreds of times here already!

When authors like Tacitus claimed to be "diligent" checking their sources in the 1st/2nd century, that was almost certainly by no means the same thing as academic historians and other university researchers publishing papers today in the 21st century showing all their references and saying they have tried to check & verify all their sources.

Also, Tacitus and Josephus wrote very long historical works covering all sorts of accounts, beliefs, stories and reports of the time. But what they said about Jesus was minimal in the extreme. So it's not as if it was ever a chapter that might have prompted extensive research. Afaik, it was barely more than a passing mention of Jesus.

On top of which afaik, neither author makes any mention of checking any written records for what they said about Jesus, except perhaps checking what the gospels and letters of the bible said. Or much more likely (imho), checking no further than to report what Christian believers of the time were saying about their own Jesus beliefs. In which respect - afaik, there are no other earlier sources which Josephus and Tacitus could ever have checked except for the earlier written copies of the gospels and letters and/or whatever Christian preachers of the time were claiming about their Jesus beliefs. That's the only known source from which authors like Josephus & Tacitus could have got their own minimal mentions of Jesus ...

... unless of course you want to speculate that perhaps Tacitus and Josephus used some other unknown source which those authors never mentioned at all !!?

And then you said "you also forgot to include any evidence as to why any one, Christian or not, would "want" to forge these texts or alter them". Well I did not forget to do any such thing. I don't have to keep explaining such things to you hundreds & hundreds of times! The fact of the matter is that even Christian Bible scholars and the most devout theologians all agree (apparently) that Christian copyists were in the frequent habit of making all sorts of alterations in the biblical and non-biblical writing whenever they came across things that they no longer wished to believe about what had originally been written of Jesus. That, according even to bible scholars, is an undeniable fact.

For example - of 12 or 13 letters all once claimed by the church to have been written by Paul himself circa 50-60AD, even the most devout Christian bible scholars and theologians today admit that at least 5 or 6 of them are complete "fakes" written by someone else posing as Paul ... they do not merely contain some "interpolations" or alterations, the entire letters are faked from end to end!

And as you know there are all sorts of suspicions about alterations made in the letters of Tacitus and Josephus in the 1000+ years of Christian copying that had passed before our only known extant copies appeared after the 11th century.

IanS wrote:

Iirc, in his 2013 book, even Bart Ehrman, who thinks Jesus was a "certainty", admits that Josephus and Tacitus are not a credible source of reliable evidence for a human Jesus ever known to anyone.

The problem with the HJ case is that it simply has zero evidence of a human Jesus ever known to anyone. The only evidence it has is evidence of religious belief in Jesus.

Your evidence is only evidence of belief (i.e. evidence of 1st century religious faith).

For all the breast beating about how we should put our trust in the findings of bible scholars, it's rather odd that Ehrman's dismissal of both the Josephus and Tacitus passages is thrown under the bus.

Any port in a storm...

Stein wrote:He is certainly described as a normal convict in all the non-apologetic literature, and that's a lot more trustworthy. That's why it's more likely that the guy is both historic and an entirely normal human. I certainly view the apologetics as more likely to reflect woo than the non-apologetics. That's why the non-apologetics model of a normal historical human is the more likely to reflect real history. Last I heard it's not yet a crime to conclude that a normal historical human executed by the Romans is the more likely scenario, based on the less woo-driven non-apologetic material.

Stein

If you read Wreck of the Titan it is obvious everything in the book is inspired by actual events, and then embellished, though never to the degree the Jesus Tales have been. And of course this is exactly what happened to the Titanic some few years later, not to mention that the same techniques have been used in millions of bits of literature across cultures and over the ages. What you need to ask yourself is whether you think the Titan is historical.

And we can opine that someone knew White Star Lines had conceived and decided to build Titanic. To capitalize on this event the person decided to write a novel about the same ship although wholly fictional in the account, all happening before Titanic ever sailed and before the first rivet was ever set. Does that make Titanic the historical Titan?

The point is that when you say Jesus was just a normal historical human, there are millions of fictional constructs that fit this description, including Titan and dragons. The overwhelmingly more likely scenario is that the Jesus Tale is a fictional construct that got talked about throughout history owing to it's religious affiliation and continues to do so.

IanS wrote:

Owdhat wrote:

IanS wrote:

Stein wrote:He is certainly described as a normal convict in all the non-apologetic literature, and that's a lot more trustworthy. That's why it's more likely that the guy is both historic and an entirely normal human. I certainly view the apologetics as more likely to reflect woo than the non-apologetics. That's why the non-apologetics model of a normal historical human is the more likely to reflect real history. Last I heard it's not yet a crime to conclude that a normal historical human executed by the Romans is the more likely scenario, based on the less woo-driven non-apologetic material.

Stein

It's not a "crime"; you can believe whatever you want. Some people believe in flying saucers and alien abduction; it's not a crime, they can believe whatever they want.

But the authors of your non-biblical sources like Tacitus and Josephus never knew anyone called Jesus. So it's impossible for them to be giving any personal evidence of their own for a human Jesus. They could only have been reporting what other earlier people had said about Jesus beliefs. But that is hearsay. I.e. it's not the authors own evidence, it's merely the author writing to say that someone else once claimed to know things about Jesus.

But worse than that, the hearsay comes from entirely unknown unnamed sources. So it's anonymous hearsay. That is - all that authors like Tacitus and Josephus are actually saying is that they pass on to their readers things they believe were once said by unknown religious worshippers about their earlier beliefs in Jesus. There's no actual evidence of Jesus there. All there is, is evidence of anonymous hearsay beliefs passed on by later writers who never knew any such person.

And worse still - we don't actually know if Josephus or Tacitus ever wrote anything at all about Jesus. Because we haven't got a single thing they ever wrote in their lifetime. All we have are Christian copies written 1000 years later! And Christian copyists were apparently known to have often altered any passages they did not like about Jesus. So any very, verrrrry, late self-interested Christian copying like that (which made virtually no mention at all of Jesus anyway) is absolutely worthless as any kind of reliable evidence of a Jesus figure completely unknown to people like Tacitus and Josephus.

Also, afaik - there were scores of non-biblical historians writing in those first few centuries AD. But afaik virtually none of them ever said a single word about anyone named Jesus.

Iirc, in his 2013 book, even Bart Ehrman, who thinks Jesus was a "certainty", admits that Josephus and Tacitus are not a credible source of reliable evidence for a human Jesus ever known to anyone.

The problem with the HJ case is that it simply has zero evidence of a human Jesus ever known to anyone. The only evidence it has is evidence of religious belief in Jesus.

Your evidence is only evidence of belief (i.e. evidence of 1st century religious faith).

And when you profess your 21st century belief in Jesus, you are really just relying entirely upon that same 1st century religious faith from people who believed in belief ... they never knew any human Jesus, they were all just operating upon religious belief in Jesus ... and you are just repeating that same belief today.

You forgot to add that there is some evidence of Tacitus being diligent with checking records & you also forgot to include any evidence as to why any one, Christian or not, would "want" to forge these texts or alter them. Simply saying they could have, doesn't cut the mustard.

No. I did not "forget" any such thing. And in fact we must have been over those sort of objections many hundreds of times here already!

When authors like Tacitus claimed to be "diligent" checking their sources in the 1st/2nd century, that was almost certainly by no means the same thing as academic historians and other university researchers publishing papers today in the 21st century showing all their references and saying they have tried to check & verify all their sources.

Also, Tacitus and Josephus wrote very long historical works covering all sorts of accounts, beliefs, stories and reports of the time. But what they said about Jesus was minimal in the extreme. So it's not as if it was ever a chapter that might have prompted extensive research. Afaik, it was barely more than a passing mention of Jesus.

On top of which afaik, neither author makes any mention of checking any written records for what they said about Jesus, except perhaps checking what the gospels and letters of the bible said. Or much more likely (imho), checking no further than to report what Christian believers of the time were saying about their own Jesus beliefs. In which respect - afaik, there are no other earlier sources which Josephus and Tacitus could ever have checked except for the earlier written copies of the gospels and letters and/or whatever Christian preachers of the time were claiming about their Jesus beliefs. That's the only known source from which authors like Josephus & Tacitus could have got their own minimal mentions of Jesus ...

... unless of course you want to speculate that perhaps Tacitus and Josephus used some other unknown source which those authors never mentioned at all !!?

And then you said "you also forgot to include any evidence as to why any one, Christian or not, would "want" to forge these texts or alter them". Well I did not forget to do any such thing. I don't have to keep explaining such things to you hundreds & hundreds of times! The fact of the matter is that even Christian Bible scholars and the most devout theologians all agree (apparently) that Christian copyists were in the frequent habit of making all sorts of alterations in the biblical and non-biblical writing whenever they came across things that they no longer wished to believe about what had originally been written of Jesus. That, according even to bible scholars, is an undeniable fact.

For example - of 12 or 13 letters all once claimed by the church to have been written by Paul himself circa 50-60AD, even the most devout Christian bible scholars and theologians today admit that at least 5 or 6 of them are complete "fakes" written by someone else posing as Paul ... they do not merely contain some "interpolations" or alterations, the entire letters are faked from end to end!

And as you know there are all sorts of suspicions about alterations made in the letters of Tacitus and Josephus in the 1000+ years of Christian copying that had passed before our only known extant copies appeared after the 11th century.

You do understand the difference between a religious theological document and a mundane piece of history in Tacitus? Show us what they hope to gain by that particular piece by Tacitus .

Owdhat wrote:

IanS wrote:

Owdhat wrote:

IanS wrote:


It's not a "crime"; you can believe whatever you want. Some people believe in flying saucers and alien abduction; it's not a crime, they can believe whatever they want.

But the authors of your non-biblical sources like Tacitus and Josephus never knew anyone called Jesus. So it's impossible for them to be giving any personal evidence of their own for a human Jesus. They could only have been reporting what other earlier people had said about Jesus beliefs. But that is hearsay. I.e. it's not the authors own evidence, it's merely the author writing to say that someone else once claimed to know things about Jesus.

But worse than that, the hearsay comes from entirely unknown unnamed sources. So it's anonymous hearsay. That is - all that authors like Tacitus and Josephus are actually saying is that they pass on to their readers things they believe were once said by unknown religious worshippers about their earlier beliefs in Jesus. There's no actual evidence of Jesus there. All there is, is evidence of anonymous hearsay beliefs passed on by later writers who never knew any such person.

And worse still - we don't actually know if Josephus or Tacitus ever wrote anything at all about Jesus. Because we haven't got a single thing they ever wrote in their lifetime. All we have are Christian copies written 1000 years later! And Christian copyists were apparently known to have often altered any passages they did not like about Jesus. So any very, verrrrry, late self-interested Christian copying like that (which made virtually no mention at all of Jesus anyway) is absolutely worthless as any kind of reliable evidence of a Jesus figure completely unknown to people like Tacitus and Josephus.

Also, afaik - there were scores of non-biblical historians writing in those first few centuries AD. But afaik virtually none of them ever said a single word about anyone named Jesus.

Iirc, in his 2013 book, even Bart Ehrman, who thinks Jesus was a "certainty", admits that Josephus and Tacitus are not a credible source of reliable evidence for a human Jesus ever known to anyone.

The problem with the HJ case is that it simply has zero evidence of a human Jesus ever known to anyone. The only evidence it has is evidence of religious belief in Jesus.

Your evidence is only evidence of belief (i.e. evidence of 1st century religious faith).

And when you profess your 21st century belief in Jesus, you are really just relying entirely upon that same 1st century religious faith from people who believed in belief ... they never knew any human Jesus, they were all just operating upon religious belief in Jesus ... and you are just repeating that same belief today.

You forgot to add that there is some evidence of Tacitus being diligent with checking records & you also forgot to include any evidence as to why any one, Christian or not, would "want" to forge these texts or alter them. Simply saying they could have, doesn't cut the mustard.

No. I did not "forget" any such thing. And in fact we must have been over those sort of objections many hundreds of times here already!

When authors like Tacitus claimed to be "diligent" checking their sources in the 1st/2nd century, that was almost certainly by no means the same thing as academic historians and other university researchers publishing papers today in the 21st century showing all their references and saying they have tried to check & verify all their sources.

Also, Tacitus and Josephus wrote very long historical works covering all sorts of accounts, beliefs, stories and reports of the time. But what they said about Jesus was minimal in the extreme. So it's not as if it was ever a chapter that might have prompted extensive research. Afaik, it was barely more than a passing mention of Jesus.

On top of which afaik, neither author makes any mention of checking any written records for what they said about Jesus, except perhaps checking what the gospels and letters of the bible said. Or much more likely (imho), checking no further than to report what Christian believers of the time were saying about their own Jesus beliefs. In which respect - afaik, there are no other earlier sources which Josephus and Tacitus could ever have checked except for the earlier written copies of the gospels and letters and/or whatever Christian preachers of the time were claiming about their Jesus beliefs. That's the only known source from which authors like Josephus & Tacitus could have got their own minimal mentions of Jesus ...

... unless of course you want to speculate that perhaps Tacitus and Josephus used some other unknown source which those authors never mentioned at all !!?

And then you said "you also forgot to include any evidence as to why any one, Christian or not, would "want" to forge these texts or alter them". Well I did not forget to do any such thing. I don't have to keep explaining such things to you hundreds & hundreds of times! The fact of the matter is that even Christian Bible scholars and the most devout theologians all agree (apparently) that Christian copyists were in the frequent habit of making all sorts of alterations in the biblical and non-biblical writing whenever they came across things that they no longer wished to believe about what had originally been written of Jesus. That, according even to bible scholars, is an undeniable fact.

For example - of 12 or 13 letters all once claimed by the church to have been written by Paul himself circa 50-60AD, even the most devout Christian bible scholars and theologians today admit that at least 5 or 6 of them are complete "fakes" written by someone else posing as Paul ... they do not merely contain some "interpolations" or alterations, the entire letters are faked from end to end!

And as you know there are all sorts of suspicions about alterations made in the letters of Tacitus and Josephus in the 1000+ years of Christian copying that had passed before our only known extant copies appeared after the 11th century.

You do understand the difference between a religious theological document and a mundane piece of history in Tacitus? Show us what they hope to gain by that particular piece by Tacitus .

And whatever the level of confidence one reposes in Tacitus, to prioritize any theological document above a historical one like Tacitus, which is what Dejuror was doing when I chimed in, is ludicrous.

Stein