Eyewitness To Jesus? The Gospel Authors

buzsaw writes:

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Do we have any more evidence the Buddah Shakyamuni, Mohammed, Plato, Confucius, Cicero, or even Julius Caesar?

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Yes, for at least some. For example, Plato and Julius Caesar have documents written by people that aren't directly connected to them and are contemporary to their existence.We don't have such for Jesus. None of the documents we have contemporaneous to Jesus seem to mention him. The oldest documents we have that do mention him were written decades after his death.Compare this to Homer. While we have many poems that are ascribed to him, we don't have any that could actually give us an indication that he was a single person who existed.

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Btw, what's your response to the following?

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The ossuary of James? It's a hoax. Haven't you been paying attention? That was publicized six months ago: 'Jesus box' exposed as fakeToo, the stone of which the ossuary is made is more consistent with that found in Cyprus or northern Syria rather than Israel.There's another problem...the transcription isn't quite definitive. That is, the inscription reads:Ya'aqob bar Yosep ahuy YesuaBut Ya'aqob could just as easily be translated as "Jacob" rather than "James" and "Yesua" could just as easily be "Joshua" (and even in the Bible, this is how it is often translated).------------------
Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

judge writes:

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1 John chapter 1.

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this sounds like an eyewitness account

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But 1 John wasn't written until decades after the fact. It certainly wasn't an eyewitness account. The passage you cite is more a declaration of evangelism rather than a claim of actually having seen, say, the crucifixion of Jesus.------------------
Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

buzsaw writes:

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1. Christianity was a new religion considered to be a cult by the elite religionists of the time.

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So was Akhenaten. And yet, we know of his existence directly.

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2. The pagan central government was opposed to the sect and burnt all they could get their hands on, according to Biblical history.

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Right...every last scrap of paper was collected by the Powers That Be , and destroyed...and yet the actual authors of those texts managed to escape.You don't get to have it both ways.Akhenaten is another good example of how this is ridiculous. When his reign was over, the priests tried to do exactly what you claim with regard to Jesus: Destroy all evidence of his existence.And yet we still have proof.

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3. Considering the above, the only written history to be preserved and the only ones to do the writing would be Christians,

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Why? Surely the Jews would have taken notice of this amazing Jewish boy, who understood the Law as deeply as a learned scholar while merely a boy, who was performing miracles left and right, etc., etc. Why is it nobody seemed to notice his existence?

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4. As was the case with many notables, much of what we know about them has been handed down by others than eye witnesses,

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Which automatically makes them suspect. I've already mentioned Homer in another post.

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I would say the evidence for Jesus surpasses many for this reason, there having been preserved very early manuscripts about him.

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No, there haven't.The closest we can get to Jesus are documents written decades after his death. All contemporaneous documents seem to have taken absolutely no notice of the person who was capable of raising people from the dead.------------------
Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

judge responds to me:

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But 1 John wasn't written until decades after the fact. It certainly wasn't an eyewitness account.

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I'd have to disagree here.

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Do you have any evidence that 1 John is contemporaneous with Jesus?

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I don't know how much plainer it could be written..."we saw Him...we touched him "

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But it doesn't say that. Instead, it says they saw the blessings of god, touched the blessings of god.That is a very different statement from saying you saw and touched Jesus in the flesh while he was still alive.------------------
Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

buzsaw responds to me:

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Why? Surely the Jews would have taken notice of this amazing Jewish boy, who understood the Law as deeply as a learned scholar while merely a boy, who was performing miracles left and right, etc., etc. Why is it nobody seemed to notice his existence?

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Yah sure, just like they took soooo much care to undermine his miracles and cover up his resurrection

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But notice that they're acknowledging his existence! Even if they hate him, they still recognize that he exists.We can't find any indication that he even existed at the time. Nobody seemed to notice his passing. We can't even find any records in the Roman tabulation, despite the evidence of the existence of Pilate.Again, look back to Akhenaten. He was despised by the priests who carried out a systematic attempt to destroy every single vestige of his reign, completely obliterating him from history.They failed.Do you honestly believe that if word came round about a man who was capable of raising people from the dead, it wouldn't get documented everywhere and spread so far and wide that it would be impossible to cover it up?And yet, nobody contemporaneous to Jesus seems to have noticed.It's kinda like the flood...the Egyptians and the Chinese where alive and writing for centuries before the flood didn't seem to notice that they were all dead.

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and just like modern Jews and you secularists have enough bias against him today to reject by spin, the remarkable archeological find concerning his step dad and brother, James.

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Right...if somebody somewhere says that it's god and Jesus, then it has to be. Nobody would ever lie about Jesus.------------------
Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

judge responds to me:

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what exactly do you think the writer touched with his hands?

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I told you already. Didn't you read my post?The fruits of worship to god.Not Jesus, but the blessings of god.If you pray for, say, enough money to make the rent so that you and your children don't get thrown out into the street, and it shows up in an unmarked envelope under your door, you can handily believe that Jesus made it happen. You've touched the money with your own hands.But did you touch Jesus?No.There is a difference between touching Jesus and touching the blessings of Jesus.------------------
Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!