is there proof of jesus

[jimbo]

i have been looking through the internet and i was really amazed at just how much recorded info there is about the existance of jesus , do you guys have any historical data you would be kind enough to share with us


http://www.gotquestions.org/did-Jesus-exist.html

[Bryn Mawr]

Originally Posted by jimbo

i have been looking through the internet and i was really amazed at just how much recorded info there is about the existance of jesus , do you guys have any historical data you would be kind enough to share with us


http://www.gotquestions.org/did-Jesus-exist.html

Obviously, if you're trying to prove the accuracy of the Bible you cannot use the Bible as a source but many of the other sources quoted are impressive indeed.

I'm not sure, however, how many people question whether Jesus existed - even most of the Atheists I know admit to that. What they do question is who or what He was.

[Carolly]

Originally Posted by Bryn Mawr

Obviously, if you're trying to prove the accuracy of the Bible you cannot use the Bible as a source but many of the other sources quoted are impressive indeed.

I'm not sure, however, how many people question whether Jesus existed - even most of the Atheists I know admit to that. What they do question is who or what He was.

Bryn that is a subject that causes so many rows in so many places and everyone thinks their answer and belief is the right one.I know what I believe and I have tried to think otherwise but always come back to the same conclusion and nobody will ever make me see otherwise.

[spot]

That's a bit of a biased site, Jimbo.

Tacitus wrote about 100AD by which time there were Christians in Rome, they told him what they believed. He's evidence of what the Christians in Rome believed, not of what happened. He wasn't even alive during the time the Gospels are set in.

Suetonius wrote about twenty years later than Tacitus and the same applies to him.

Josephus was earlier, but even he wasn't even alive during the time the Gospels are set in. The main passage about Jesus in his History of the Jews is considered a late fake add-on by Christians trying to build Jewish evidence for the Gospel story. Either way he's still reporting on what the Christians told him.

Here's an example of how the site exaggerates... it says: "Mara Bar-Serapion confirms that Jesus was thought to be a wise and virtuous man, was considered by many to be the king of Israel, was put to death by the Jews, and lived on in the teachings of his followers."

What Mara Bar-Serapion actually wrote, some time after 70AD, is "What advantage did the Athenians gain from putting Socrates to death? Famine and plague came upon them as a judgment for their crime. What advantage did the men of Samos gain from burning Pythagoras? In a moment their land was covered with sand. What advantage did the Jews gain from executing their wise king? It was just after that that their kingdom was abolished. God justly avenged these three wise men: the Athenians died of hunger; the Samians were overwhelmed by the sea; the Jews, ruined and driven from their land, live in complete dispersion. But Socrates did not die for good; he lived on in the teaching of Plato. Pythagoras did not die for good; he lived on in the statue of Hera. Nor did the wise king die for good; he lived on in the teaching which he had given".

It doesn't mention Jesus by name at all, it implies there was a Wise King of the Jews not long before they had a catastrophe. I suspect it is a reference to Jesus put in language that echoes the original exile in Babylon, but what the site claims is an extreme interpretation and the entire article is stretched that thinly. Mara Bar-Serapion is certainly, like Tacitus, doing no more than writing down what he's heard others say about a man who died forty years earlier. It's good evidence that people in 75AD compared the proverbial wisdom of Jesus with that of Socrates (another person I actually think never existed) and Pythagoras.

No, there's absolutely no evidence at all of the physical existence of Jesus that would distinguish what you'd see if he were a fictional character in a set of morality stories. Not so much as a whisper of one. Nobody outside of Christianity who claimed to have met him and, to be honest, nobody inside Christianity either except for Paul who said he'd seen him on the Road to Damascus years after the crucifixion. Everyone else in the bible says they were told about him and nothing more.

[Bryn Mawr]

Originally Posted by Carolly

Bryn that is a subject that causes so many rows in so many places and everyone thinks their answer and belief is the right one.I know what I believe and I have tried to think otherwise but always come back to the same conclusion and nobody will ever make me see otherwise.

A person's beliefs are their own responsibility - you form you beliefs as you go through life and then have to live with them.

[Ted]

jimbo

Some of the world's top scholars in this field hold there is as much proof for the historical existence of Jesus as there is for other obscure characters considered to have existed. Most scholars in this field do not doubt the historicity of Jesus.

History is a very imperfect science and subject to much interpretation.

If you want a list of scholars I can give them to you.

Shalom
Ted

[spot]

On the other hand I don't see why it would upset anyone's faith, deciding that the historical record involves transmission through so many steps. It's still the message that counts and what we each choose to learn from it.

[Ted]

spot

Personally I have no problem with that. However, many do.

I have no problem accepting the historicity of Jesus.

Shalom
Ted

[Clodhopper]

Having accepted the reality of a person called Jesus - though I haven't studied the issue myself, someone I trust with decent academic credentials has and I accept her conclusion - the matter then becomes whether a God exists who refines his word, as expressed in the Bible, through its various evolutions?

[Ted]

Any discussion of the existence of God is totally futile and leads to circular reasoning. The same holds true for the non-existence of God. The whole issue is beyond logic.

Shalom
Ted