Those accounts aren’t contemporaneous, as far as I am aware, and were reports on what the new religion of Christianity believed.
Contemporaneous accounts by disinterested writers would certainly be strong evidence. To use another example, I fully accept that Joseph Smith was a real person but that doesn’t mean I accept all of the supernatural claims he made.
To Jew in the first century, both the Sermon and the miracle point to the same thing. The authority of Jesus Christ as the one and only arbitrator of the covenant with God.
If you look at John 6, you will find Jesus starting from the miracle of multiplying bread and showing how He is the One theough whom the people would enter the New covenant.
I’m sensing a consistent theme here…written history is not valid if written more than our lifetime ago, because the writers could have been deceived or could have sought to deceive. Personal revelation is not valid because the people could have been deceived or have sought to deceive. Conspiracy theory seems to abound. So, all you are left with is your own experience, with your own senses and if it cannot be substantiated with science, it is not valid…am I close?
The question was whether there was any documentation of Jesus outside the bible, which there is, not whether the accounts are valid or not…A Roman historian, a Jew and a Greek (I should write a new joke…) that all wrote historical accounts of the area in Jesus time (within a lifetime) and were opposed to His teaching verified His existence, and that He did miracles and was crucified by the Jews…they didn’t have to write anything, why would they if it were not true? They did not live at the same time, and walk with Jesus, but the gospel writers did. That their accounts are negated because they believe in Him and therefore have an agenda is to me another conspiracy theory mentality that makes nothing worth believing.
And does not appear to contain any details about events that could not have derived from Christian beliefs (based in turn upon New Testament claims). If these accounts were based upon, for example, contemporaneous Roman reports (as some I think have claimed), I would expect the difference in perspective from the NT to yield at least some additional details that would be of more interest to the Roman authorities than to Christians.
Writing about what Christians believed is not documentation of Jesus.
It was true that Christians believed those things.
Its a very common practice to judge the accuracy of an account against the motives of the writer.
I am curious then about people’s alternate theories. How do you think Christianity came about, after you studied it?
Again, I agree.
Are you able to explain why you believe Jesus was resurrected?
Can’t speak for Neil but Faizal made the point about Joseph Smith being a real person but that doesn’t validate the wild claims made by him and for him. By the same token, establishing Jesus’ existence by some historical evidence would not validate any miracles claimed for him. And the fact there is no historical trace of Jesus other than in the gospels, I guess doesn’t affect the claim that miracles happen.
ETA Josephus is an interpolation, in my view.
Not really. Certainly not to any unbeliever’s satisfaction. I was an atheist even as an adult. I changed virtually overnight. I was not seeking God. One day I simply realized that I believed that God existed and the bible was his word. Once I believed that, belief in the resurrection followed given it is unambiguously spelled out in scripture. It was completely irrational. Which is why I agree so much with Luther about the role of reason. Namely, to paraphrase,
Reason has no role in the acquiring of faith and conversion. (If another believer says it did for them, I wouldn’t dispute it, but in my mind I would consider how cause and effect are often confused.)
After one believes in God (and the bible) then reason can (and should) be brought to bear on exegesis. Of course, it will always be (for me) with the presupposition that the bible is true.
That is basically the story. There is more nuance of course. I believe some (most) are converted before they know it, and they are amenable, even if they don’t acknowledge belief yet, to reason based discussions. This would be how God gives some the context for what has happened to them. This is not so for atheists, although some atheists (it is fun and valuable when this happens) will arguendo take scripture as true, and then try to argue that it is not even self consistent.
OK, I can’t really argue against that as you accept it is irrational, so we are again in agreement. I can just say that way of thinking is completely alien to me.
I was a Christian for some period. I doubt that my view of how Christianity came about is anything strange.
I do assume that Jesus existed, and developed a small following. And I take it that Paul was something of a salesman in spreading the religion.
Me, I rather suspect that Paul was preaching a rather more metaphysical than physical Christ, and that the Gospels were a later elaboration/fleshing-out of his story. It is perfectly possible that some preacher named Yeshua/Joshua (Iesus/Jesus is just a Greek rendering of that) existed, it is after all a common name – and that could have fed into the story at either the Paul or the Gospel stage.
This makes me something of a Mythicist, but not a necessarily truly minimalist one.
I don’t believe we can prove his non-existence but, given the late date, and/or evidence of interpolations, in the non-Christian sources, I don’t think we can say anything with any surety about a historical Jesus.
I was referring to the non-christians…Romans, jews and greeks.
Romans sought to kill Christians, Jews crucified Jesus, Greeks had their own philosophy. None of those writers were Christian, but rather anti-Christian.
I have the same story, and also believe none of it makes sense, so we are all in agreement on the aspect that it is irrational (and I would add that by design, biblical truth is counter to what men reason to be true).
Yes, and those non-christians were reporting on what the Christians believed.
Not from what I read…the simply stated similar facts about Jesus that appear in the gospels. Here is a summary:
1. He existed as a man. The historian Josephus grew up in a priestly family in first-century Palestine and wrote only decades after Jesus’ death. Jesus’ known associates, such as Jesus’ brother James, were his contemporaries. The historical and cultural context was second nature to Josephus. “If any Jewish writer were ever in a position to know about the non-existence of Jesus, it would have been Josephus. His implicit affirmation of the existence of Jesus has been, and still is, the most significant obstacle for those who argue that the extra-Biblical evidence is not probative on this point,” Robert Van Voorst observes.32 And Tacitus was careful enough not to report real executions of nonexistent people.
2. His personal name was Jesus, as Josephus informs us.
3. He was called Christos in Greek, which is a translation of the Hebrew word Messiah , both of which mean “anointed” or “(the) anointed one,” as Josephus states and Tacitus implies, unaware, by reporting, as Romans thought, that his name was Christus .
4. He had a brother named James (Jacob), as Josephus reports.
5. He won over both Jews and “Greeks” (i.e., Gentiles of Hellenistic culture), according to Josephus, although it is anachronistic to say that they were “many” at the end of his life. Large growth in the number of Jesus’ actual followers came only after his death.
6. Jewish leaders of the day expressed unfavorable opinions about him, at least according to some versions of the Testimonium Flavianum .
7. Pilate rendered the decision that he should be executed, as both Tacitus and Josephus state.
8. His execution was specifically by crucifixion, according to Josephus.
9. He was executed during Pontius Pilate’s governorship over Judea (26–36 C.E.), as Josephus implies and Tacitus states, adding that it was during Tiberius’s reign.
Josephus was born after Jesus was said to be crucified. He didn’t have any firsthand knowledge of any of this. He is repeating what has been reported to him.
Tacitus was also born after Jesus was crucified. Again, he repeated what was reported to him.
I don’t know of any person who would have been a contemporary of Jesus reporting about him using firsthand knowledge. What we get is people born decades after the facts reporting what people believed.
I already told him that he could get Cold Case Christianity and decide if he agrees with Wallace how to go through historical evidence and yet he’s still making excuses. Like how do we know Alexander the Great existed? Anything existed? There are still things called historical facts based on the amount and quality of evidence.
Historians may laugh at you if you said that.
Also explain why they would die separately then for someone that died for claiming He was God. How exactly are you going to preach that? And if you decided to do so, why if you’re not getting fame, money, or power all at the same time and in different places?
I think that if we have to believe all of the religions for which anyone has died, we’re going to have a rather long list to work from. Wouldn’t it be better to produce actual evidence of the existence of the gods that underly the claims, rather than to make bad arguments from dubious history? Surely nobody really thinks historical evidence is or can be of any value in examining claims of the supernatural.