Did any author in the New Testament actually know Jesus?

Hi Peg,

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Ok so basically you are against the idea that one can take any part of the biblical record on face value.

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I can't speak for PaulK, but that certainly sums up my view. But see below...

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its interesting that our understanding of the lives, cultures and histories of ancient nations are taken from their historical documents and historians, but its not acceptable to do this with the bible.

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No. No, no, no. You can't take any historical document at face value, whether it is the Bible, the Ipuwer document or the campaign journals of Julius Caesar. All ancient texts must be viewed critically, to avoid falling foul of their biases, misapprehensions and (sometimes) downright lies. This is especially true of documents that make supernatural claims. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.Would you view the tale of Muhammad's night flight to Mecca on a flying horse with uncritical eyes? Does the Quran get the same free pass that you seem give the Bible? Of course not.There is no double standard amongst historians, save for those who treat the Bible as fact, whilst dismissing other religious texts as fables. As it happens, such individuals are always extremely devout Christians.

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Both parents lines have been given in the gospels

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That isn't going to get any truer by your repeating it ad nauseum. You were asked a direct question and you have deliberately ignored it.How do you know that Mary was the daughter of Heli?Ignoring difficult questions does not make them go away.

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there are no records of any historian writing anything about these genealogies being challenged by opposes.

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A situation entirely compatible with the hypothesis that there was never any such person as Jesus.

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If Jesus family line could be challenged, the Jewish scribes and pharisees would have challenged them in a flash seeing they held the records

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Not if there was no such record to challenge in the first place. Anyway, what makes you think Jewish scholars haven't challenged the Jesus bloodline? I would expect them to have raised exactly the same objections as you are seeing here.Mutate and Survive

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"The Bible is like a person, and if you torture it long enough, you can get it to say almost anything you'd like it to say." -- Rev. Dr. Francis H. Wade

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But Josephus did! Have you even read what Josephus was supposed to have said about Jesus?

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He is supposed to have called Jesus the Christ, yet Josephus died a Pharasaic Jew. Josephus wrote chapter after chapter of information about fairly nondescript people, yet we are supposed to believe that his Messiah arrived and he writes a few short sentences about him? Use your common sense.

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This is a very good point and I really hope that Peg is paying attention.According to the disputed Josephus text, Jesus, called Christ, rose from the dead! Surely someone who can rise from the frickin' dead deserves more than a paragraph?If Josephus genuinely believed that Jesus rose from the dead, why did he not convert to the fledgling Christianity? How could he deny that Jesus was the Messiah under such circumstances?The most likely answer is simply that he did not believe any such thing. The passage has been tampered with at a later date.Mutate and Survive

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"The Bible is like a person, and if you torture it long enough, you can get it to say almost anything you'd like it to say." -- Rev. Dr. Francis H. Wade

Hi Peg,

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he didnt believe him, just as the majority of the jews did not believe in him. but it wasnt really the point.

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Once again, you have sailed on past the point, seemingly oblivious. Take another look at the passage; Look at those bolded sections. According to this version, Josephus believed that Jesus taught the truth, that his humanity was in doubt, that he was the Christ (not merely called himself Christ in this version), and that he rose from the frickin' dead! Does that sound like a man who did not believe in Jesus?There is a word for a Jew who believes all of those things. That word is "Christian". Josephus never became Christian, despite apparently holding these beliefs, beliefs which would have been considered heretical by any Jew.You just don't seem to be interested in critically examining the text, this or any other. How could a Jew of that era believe all this about Jesus, speak of him in such glowing terms, regard his miracles as fact and yet remain unconvinced by him? If I believed that lot, I'd worship him!There are many problems with the Josephus/Jesus reference, not least the existence of other works that quote The Antiquities of the Jews giving a very different and far less partisan account. The whole business creates more questions than it answers. Claiming that this text confirms Jesus' existence ignores these problems. That is no way to get to the truth.Mutate and Survive

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"The Bible is like a person, and if you torture it long enough, you can get it to say almost anything you'd like it to say." -- Rev. Dr. Francis H. Wade

Hi Peg,

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one problem with that is that myths go away after time

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Really? How much time? By this logic, Shiva must be real as well, since his worship is as least as old as Christ's.

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another problem is that people dont lay their life down for something they know to be a myth

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As has been pointed out, just because some people think something is real enough to die for, does not mean that they are correct. By this logic Islam is true, just because there are suicide bombers who think it is.

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nor do historians testify that a mythical person was a real person

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Do they not? Are they perfect? Why the faith in some historians when you reject others out of hand? Is it because they are saying what you want to hear?

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nor do we set our calanders by the supposed date of the birth of a myth

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Truly ridiculous. The Calendar we use is basically an updated form of the Julian calendar which pre-dates Jesus (the clue is in the name). Further, the practise of using Anno Domini dates back only to the sixth century when it was cooked up by committed Christians. What do you expect a Christian monk to base his system on? The Buddha?You are clutching at straws.Mutate and Survive

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"The Bible is like a person, and if you torture it long enough, you can get it to say almost anything you'd like it to say." -- Rev. Dr. Francis H. Wade

What I find astonishing is the widespread assumption amongst Christians that the Gospels were authored by Jesus' disciples (or for that matter that Moses wrote the Pentateuch, etc.) when in fact the matter is highly debatable at best.I haven't seen a shred of evidence presented here, or anywhere else, that the New Testament was written by contemporaries of Christ. The best that anyone has done is to provide the odd hint that certain texts might have been. That just isn't enough evidence to convince me, especially given the contradictions between different Gospels.Mutate and Survive

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"The Bible is like a person, and if you torture it long enough, you can get it to say almost anything you'd like it to say." -- Rev. Dr. Francis H. Wade