Faith wrote:
What does when they were written down have to do with anything? You think the hundreds of thousands who had witnessed him had just disappeared by the time they were written?
OK, that doesn’t help your credibility. What evidence do you have that “hundreds of thousands” of people witnessed Jesus’ ministry and were available for interviewing decades later, in an age when the life expectancy was in the 20’s?
Excuse me, but you have to be making up this life expectancy bit, or allowing a mere statistic that averages out the deaths in frequent wars and infancy or something, and spreads it across all ancient cultures without regard to differences in situation. John lived into his nineties, and the other apostles were all martyred, well up in age by all accounts I'm familiar with -- and I'm quite ready to grant that you may have more knowledge about this than I do, but not that great numbers who witnessed Jesus did not live to tell and hear the many stories about Him for many decades. Certainly hundreds of thousands at least HEARD Jesus, and MANY of them would have lived long enough to correct any lies that were circulating. Even if only a few hundred survived a few decades there would have been plenty of witnesses to keep the stories straight.
Jesus made practically no impact on the world of his day as far as we can tell from the evidence.
If you ignore the Bible and the early Christian writings you could think that, since the heathen didn't pay much attention to Christianity until it had picked up numbers and influence over the first few centuries. But Jesus' impact was enormous if you look at the converts He gathered in one by one through the evangelism of His apostles, and the impact they eventually had on the world.
The only mention of Jesus by any non-Christian historian writing in the first century is Josephus, who wrote hundreds of pages of very detailed descriptions of that time period of Israel. In all that, he has only a brief mention of Jesus. We have all kinds of writings from people of the first century - Roman historians, emperors, military officials, tomb incriptions, and on and on. Nothing else, anywhere, even mentions Jesus.
I keep forgetting the two Roman historians who are always referenced as mentioning Him. I'll go and look them up and add them to this after I post it, but I know Tacitus is one. But perhaps you want a direct mention of Him personally rather than His influence through His witnesses? Why would that make a difference if so? Anyway, I'll see what I can dig up.
{EDIT: Perhaps Suetonius although that doesn't ring a bell in this respect at the moment. Here's a link on the subject I just found:
http://www.christian-thinktank.com/jesusref.html}
If his ministry had any significant impact during his day, that wouldn’t be the case. Can you produce any evidence, from within even as much as 20 years of Jesus’ death, that any more than a few dozen people heard him and even cared what he said?
The records of those who actually heard Jesus would be in the gospels, not "within 20 years of Jesus' death." A few hundred thousands hearing Him in the three years of His ministry hardly seems excessive to me, though I admit I haven't tried to make a count.
I did however make a count of those who were converted to faith in Him by His apostles after His death, from the Book of Acts, which might or might not be some clue to the numbers of those who would have been influenced by Him directly -- though again I don't see why this should matter if it is what you are asking. Many heard Jesus directly who did not believe, but how many is unknowable; it took the gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost after His death to bring about true faith. I counted thirty thousand converts from among the Jews alone from the mentions in Acts, using a pretty stringent standard. The Book of Acts only deals with the evangelism of a few of the apostles, principally Peter and Paul, and we can probably fairly assume it only records a portion of their converts too. Then, if you multiply their effect by all the other apostles, plus the converts themselves who continued to spread the word, you come up with a few hundred thousand in the first century in no time at all. And I believe this number would fit with what is known about the spread of the faith in that part of the world, whether the heathen powers had gotten around to noticing it or not.
{EDIT: Forgot to draw the conclusion about the reports of Jesus from this. The point is that with so many spreading the word and so many hearing it from many sources, there would have been plenty of opportunity for any false stories to get corrected before, during and after they were set in writing.}
I'm quite familiar with our ancient sources, so please don't make stuff up. Thank you-
I hope you don't classify inference from the Book of Acts to be "making stuff up." You're welcome.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.