The Existence of Jesus Christ

Wow, the long list of dozens of people who referred to Jesus Christ from ancient times, if the skeptic who listed them were to apply the same criteria to the Caesars you'd wonder if there were any.Imagine that, in 64 Anno Domini Nero blames the burning of Rome on a "cult" that's only 31 years old, powered totally on the resurrection of one "man" from the dead in the area of Jerusalem, and gospels based on facts that were at the time easily falsified but were not.Just a teacher, just a rabbi, blah blah, there were dozens of them in Israel/Palestine at the time, and only one fired up his followers enough to believe in his resurrection enough to go all the way to martyrdom for the belief.The long list left out the writings of Polycarp, won as a disciple by John, and who wrote about walking on the isle of Patmos with John and hearing first-hand accounts about the Savior.I followed the evidence right out from atheism into the truth. Come on up! The air's cleaner!-- Alan

The subject related to whether Jesus Christ existed as a person.My first reference pointed to the list of people who had made reference to Jesus, a list offerred by a skeptic. This was offerred as evidence, which was refuted by my point.My second mention was to Nero's recognition of them at 64, a scant 30 years following the historically agreed year that would be Jesus' crucifixion (and resurrection), which year helps aid or debunk the existance of same.The third reference was to the fact that all the historical followers believed in the fact of the resurrection enough (not just Messiahship) to go to martyrdom.And I listed the writings of Polycarp as well, a contemporary of John, meaning the one who wrote the gospel of John.So then the last paragraph, approximately 5 to 7 percent of my post, gave the evidence of my own transition based on this and the other evidence to belief, which I think counts as evidence. Granting the last six words as "evangelizing", how can you make such a generalization about that post. After all, empirical evidence is what brought me to my present beliefs.Also, I would submit that the whole idea of a "debate" forum is to offer the case for your beliefs on that idea.- Alan

You preached several faithful claims, all wrong, not backed by evidence--IasionFaithful to the facts.Iasion: "The Heaven's Gate cult believed in the facts of the space-ship enough to go to martyrdom. Suicide bombers believe in their faith enough to go to martyrdom.Me: => That is exactly the point. The apostles and the Christians contemporary with the times believed in the resurrection of Jesus Christ so strongly that they happily went to their martyrdom. These were people who knew for a fact with their own eyes.Nobody dies to support what they know is a myth.- Alan

Randman: I am not denying that unbelievers can be good scholars. I just think it works both ways. ____I do think that faith more than often arises through some direct interaction with God, and not just reviewing the evidence. That is not to say the evidence does not lend credence to belief in Jesus and the gospels, but just that approaching something of that importance in one's life usually entails a larger process.Me ==> There are those who will believe snippets from the "Gnostic gospels" contrary to all historical evidence, simply because they cannot separate themselves from their dogmatic faith that the real Gospels were not true. After all, they think in this darkness of clouded logic, how could it be true, since they cannot beileve that such things would be true?And like swallowing anything else from Tacitus or whoever reporting on whatever in history, unless it contradicts their beloved ideas. Was Nero's burning of Rome a "rumor"? Polycarp's writings and the others that were contemporary with Jesus' day, or at least the apostles', were they "rumors"? Along with the rest of the writings of those days.They have evidently done exactly that: believed the "Jesus-never-existed" lie, historically absolutely untenable, and when something comes around that makes them doubt their dogmatic faith in the myth, they redouble their efforts at repeating the mantras and convincing themselves and others.- Alan

Re: Jesus was real
(Alan That is exactly the point. The apostles and the Christians contemporary with the times believed in the resurrection of Jesus Christ so strongly that they happily went to their martyrdom. These were people who knew for a fact with their own eyes.(Shadow Um...are you saying that people don't blow themselves up, and heaven's gate cult didn't kill themselves? Let me rephrase what you're saying, and you correct me so I can understand. ___"Although Heaven's Gate and suicide bombers kill themselves for their belief, nobody dies for what they know is a myth." ___Is that what you're saying? If that's the case do we measure the most correct religion by the number of people who have died for it?--BradAlan: ==> Those folks died, and people still die, for myths that they believe to be real. Those who had witnessed Jesus with their own eyes in his resurrected body were not shaken by threats of death, as they had seen it conqered. If it were a myth, then they would have known a myth, and would not have continued on for it. All twelve apostles kept the same story and signed their "affidavits" with their own blood, with the exception of John who suffered the boiling pot.For each of the dozens of extra-Biblical historical references to Christ, and the hundreds that followed closely in years following, you can try to attack each one individually, as in Tacitus this, one reference that, interpolation here and there, blah blah blah, and it continues as a one-themed story that gets its force from the single centralizing fact: The resurrection of Jesus Christ, and the Gospels written by the apostles signed in blood. Hundreds of false Messiahs rose and fell, even contemporaries with Josephus, and imagine that, while their existance is treated as believable, one of the Messiahs gets the Orwellian "non-person" treatment by historian revisionists. Go figure. The evidence being that the reports are not believable (by the skeptics). Go figure.-AlanThis message has been edited by CodeTrainer, 06-02-2005 05:57 PM

Brad wrote: C'mon, now you're just being silly! You're trying to tell me that the apostles deaths prove their faith legitimate, but when someone else dies for what they believe in this proves it false? Do you not see the contradiction?!?Why don't you step back, take a deep breath, and read the post again.The apostles would know whether Jesus actually lived, died, and was resurrected. With their own eyes. They would know. They knew. They signed their affidavits in their own blood, as witnesses that Jesus had done these things, including his last few days on Earth.The others died for things they had no way of knowing was false, or died for things they knew of. The apostles did too.

Iaision, it is you who totally fails to grasp the point.You say that The Heaven's gate cult killed themselves because they BELIEVED, Suicide bombers die for what they BELIEVE, Christian martyrs (allegedly) died because they BELIEVED. ___You claim this BELIEF proves its true. ___Therefore, your argument claims the Heaven's Gate cult's beliefs were TRUE.==> You keep repeating the same mistakes in comprehension, and I'll keep repeating until you get the point you keep missing.=> Heaven's gate cult, Suicide bombers, these had/have no way of *directly* knowing the falsity of their beliefs. My original text referred not to Christian martyrs in general, but to the apostles. The apostles, to the point of death, insisted they had seen Jesus Christ in his new body, and resurrected from the dead. This was based on eyewitness testimony. If it were not true, they would know it, and would not die to prove something they knew was untrue.There were five hundred of them, and provided eyewitness testimony to many thousands upon thousands across the entire breadth of the Roman Empire and beyond, and those many more thousands became witnesses of the power given them from having been with Jesus. This gave the Christian movement the explosive growth it saw in the beginning.

Iasion says: "__you can't come up with any evidence for your beliefs__"because when he sees the evidence is ready to dismiss it no matter what.For example, the claim there are no writings from the apostles who met Jesus is facetiously based on agressive disbelief.Three books written by the hand of eyewitnesses--based on all objective criteria for research in ancient writings--and another by one who took lots of first-person testimony, which books are corroborated by other contemporary references to those times that followed almost immediately, relatve to historical time lines.The evidence against these four books is given by people who approach the subject with agressive disbelief, many times even cloaked in the color of deceipt by virtue of a *nominal* belief in deities or persons vaguely resembling those referred to in said Scriptures. But not even the professional disbelievers in the "Jesus Seminar" pretend that he didn't exist.HOMER'S "ILIAD": The earliest copies that we have in known existance today of Homer's "Iliad", dating to the thirteenth century. Iasion has possibly read the English translation of this book, and undoubtedly did not question his teacher as to whether this was an invention of some ninth-century fiction writer.JULIUS CAESAR, "GALLIC WARS": The earliest copy of "Gallic Wars", written by Julius Caesar, dates to one thousand years later than the original. The only corroborating historical reference to his authorship that I was only able to find was one, Suetonius.== COMPARE==> Until recently, the earliest known NT document is a fragment from the book of John, found in Egypt 1920, written on both sides, and dated to between AD 125 and AD 150, which would be 35 to 60 or 90 years after the original. Now come the Lukan papyrus, in a Paris library now, a fragment predating that one by 20-30 years, and now a fragment from the book of Mark found among the *Qumram scrolls* (7Q5), thus written sometime before 68 AD...This Suetonius, by the way, also refers to Nero's 64 AD persecution of Christians, as in, "Punishment by Nero was inflicted on the Christians, a class of men given to a new and mischievous superstition." (__Someone had said that Tacitus was the only such reference__) Also, Suetonius makes reference to Claudius expelling the Jews out of Rome after a time of some agitation, an event also mentioned in Acts.References to the four gospels abound also in the writings of the early church fathers from the second, third and fourth century, providing a massively better corroboration of the original authenticity of the actual NT manuscripts and codexes than for any other as to point to original authorship. These references include letters to the Roman rulers in letters pleading with them to check the official records from Palestine for corroboration. Known non-Biblical references date Christianity's spread to Nineveh to before the end of the first century, and the earliest known translation papyrus was found there recently, predating other NT copies.To question them is to question the authorship of Julius' "Gallic Wars", and of "Iliad", and countless other ancient writings.Of said other writings, by the way, many or maybe even most were saved from oblivion during the Visigoth and Vandals' sackings, et.al. by scribes and monks in Ireland, St. Patrick's legacy in Ireland, from the fourth and fifth centuries, furiously copying everything they could get ahold of.==> There are 643 known manuscript copies of the Iliad. There are ten ancient copies of Julius Caesar's "Gallic Wars". The NT has over 5,640 Greek manusrcipts of substantial parts or of all of the NT. There are ten thousand manuscripts of the Vulgate.The records of the martyrdoms of James in 62 AD, Paul in 64 with Nero, and Peter in 65 AD, and the other apostles, are only so easily dismissed if one has a very strong disbelief bias, for there is no other balanced way available to dispute them that does not also invalidate every other ancient record. For (1) there are manuscripts that date closer to the original dates than copies of other ancient documents *by centuries*, (2) these are more numerous and self-corroborating than any other ancient document copy set, and (3) there is more reference and corroboration to them from external documents than for any other, and (4) there are numerous historical references to Jesus Christ that date to his time, and this even allowing the exclusion of the entire New Testament and the testimony of the apostles, and their next-generation followers into the 2nd century AD, confirmed in the strongest possible terms, with their own lives, and that beginning under Nero's reign.- Alan

ramoss: You certainly are full of misinformatin. According to mainstream modern biblical scholarship, none of the gospels were written by eye witnesses.. and there is plenty of evidence for that point of view==> Misinformation is the rule of the day for the benefit of disbelief. Note that word "..mainstream.." in the phrase "mainstream biblical scholarship".==> And note also this "argument from authority". Rather than addressing the actual facts of the manuscript evidence in terms of numbers and age, as compared to other ancient documents with much less corroboration and much more "mainstream" acceptance; in spite of the evidence from other historical and cultural context of the times, one invokes authorities who justify bad theology with degrees.

I laid out a list of evidence that they were written by eyewitnesses, and the evidence is stronger than it is for hundreds and even thousands other ancient documents that you and these "mainstreamers" have no question about. And here again, an "argument from authority", which is the perennial false complaint always levied against believers. Note the reference to "believers" and how ramoss completely misses the point of the numbers. Real true historians who analyze ancient text for a living make a big deal about it all the time. It provides corroboration for what the original text was, and in their historical context provides evidence for the time-frames pointing to the originals, and so on.The thing does not rest on one fragment by the way, it's just another piece in the long volumes of evidence. Tell me something I don't know. Go read my reference to it again, where I made no such claim at all. The reference is just another in the long string of authenticating examples in context. There is a reference in Acts to this particular persecution, where it also refers to an expelling of "Jews", as opposed to Christians or believers. Actually as seen above, you added context to my quote that was not there.And, the reason I brought Seutonius back up was in the first part of the paragraph you did not address:

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..This Suetonius, by the way, also refers to Nero's 64 AD persecution of Christians, as in, "Punishment by Nero was inflicted on the Christians, a class of men given to a new and mischievous superstition." (__Someone had said that Tacitus was the only such reference__)

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=> As in more corroboration, and doubtless there are various others, to the *fact* that Nero persecuted the Christians in 64 AD, a fact accepted by all historians until recently when revisionist historians with a "militant disbelief" began accusing the ancient documents of being revisionist histories, as in the claim that this was only a report of "rumors", a laughably weak attempt at revisionism.-- Alan

This reaction is the best I've seen so far to my points, even though directed to only one point out of the many.I have read Lee Stroebel's book, and the quote from Blomberg, *in context* he is saying that an authorship reference is not "embedded" in the text as in some other books. However, their names date as far back as the texts. To call this "by tradition" is to try to get points with semantics rather than facts.-- Alan

Hi, Exactly. So it is not an insult when you refer to belief as being the only sustaining evidence that Jesus existed, but not for the other way around. You have that already and dismiss it based on the experts you prefer to invoke. From there it's he said-she said, but an observer looking for evidence can determine what he wants to believe.====Gotta cut and run, have a life here...But as a former militant atheist and communist, I followed the evidence to my present beliefs.- Alan

Argument from majority has merit in some venues, but in determining the truth of a matter, it is oftimes deceiving. Biblical scholars that bring their "militant skepticism" to the table will find interminable objections to anything. However, with equivalent evidence from other documents, there is a lack of such unbelief in the face of evidence, in a telling contrast with this subject. That's why I had already said that three of them were written by eyewitnesses, and another by one who took testimony from eyewitnesses. This latter assertion is indeed in the introduction to the book, where the authorship is indeed directly indicated. The bad theology and the bad history is in the naysayers' camp.Luke I have said was not written by an eyewitness, but was written based on eyewitness testimony, as indicated in the text itself. The other three were titled with their authors' names when they were copied.(1) For going back to the originals, you won't find another document from ancient times where the earliest extant copy is as close to the original dating,(2) you won't find nearly as many corroborating manuscripts and codexes, going back as far and as early,(3) where there is as much corroboration from indirect evidence from those who knew the apostles personally, such as Polycarp, who himself showed his confidence in the truth by witnessing with his own life,(4) other confident early fathers' references to the Roman records themselves,(5) from antagonists themselves nearly contemporary, like this exchange between Trajan the Emperor and Pliny the Younger,

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http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/jod/texts/pliny.html

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where Pliny asks for guidance on how to handle this fast-growing sect of Christians, while governor of Pontus/Bithynia in the years 111-113. A sect grown around a man crucified and according to his contemporary followers resurrected, in happenings only some seventy years prior. Many of the older ones alive at that very time would have also been around during any times when the Christian message could have been falsified. Not as early as the (so far) at least two historical and contemporary references to Nero's persecution in 64 AD, but closer than many other references taken for granted by the same disbelieving skeptics who balk at these.(6) Then you have the set of manuscripts that are consistent in content that also goes back as far as you can get to the original, and is also corroborated by the agreement among them. Besides this, you have the writings of the earliest church fathers from the second century, in spite of being hindered by waves of Roman persecutions, quoting profusely from the NT and the gospels.(7) the early second century, barely a scant two generations removed from the dates in question, you have references to those four gospels as inspired. It is even said that almost all the entire New Testament could be reconstructed from the early writings of these church fathers. There have been counted 36,289 distinct New Testament references from the writings of the earliest church fathers alone, from the first and second centuries, from disparate places and disparate times but overwhelmingly consistent with the separate line of actual copies of the New Testament books.- Alan