Originally Posted by ags_rule:
“Actually it isn't damning at all, because by the standards of ancient history, the Gospel recordings of Jesus' life are practically a newsflash.”
yep, i accept that, but to me it doesnt make much sense.
i keep coming back to the fact that according to the bible, jesus was the saviour. his job was to spread the word, to save us from our sins. as i see it, he would, he needed, to be a very prominent character - so would have been mentioned in writings by contemporaries
and by oral tradition by the thousands who witnessed him.
dw2 offered an explaination for this, but id suggest its weak.
Quote:
“Even in relatively hostile circles, the standard dating for the Gospels puts John at the latest, around AD90-110, with Mark, Matthew and Luke preceding it by some decades.
Conversely, the first biographies of Alexander the Great were written more than four hundred years after his death.
And we can take it one step further. The Book of Acts was written by Luke, but it ends apparently unfinished, with Paul under house arrest in Rome. That means it cannot be dated any later than AD62. We can move backwards from there - since Acts is the second-part of a two-part work, the first being the Gospel of Luke, then it must have been written even earlier than that. And since Luke is based on Mark, that means Mark was even earlier again. If Jesus was put to death in AD32-33, we're talking no more than around 30 years between his death and the Gospels being written.
And Paul's letters themselves pre-date all of the Gospels, yet contain very specific creeds that were used in the early Church.”
...... but it still doesnt explain the 30 year gap, the lack of corroborating evidences. its like saying that scientists have found a cure for cancer but wont publish the findings until 2047. now believers have rather woolly excuses for this, and indeed these excuses cannot be disproven.
on the other hand the lack of contemporary evidence might suggest that the whole religion is a work of fiction. that is an uncomfortable fact that believers ignore.
Quote:
“Moreover, if Jesus had never existed, Christianity simply would not have happened.”
oh c'mon! you can say that about
any religion... or myth... and is untrue anyway as lies can become accepted as the truth over time. its perfectly reasonable to suggest the religion was a man made construct. the ridiculous moon landing conspiracy theorists prove that any old nonsense can 'happen'.
Quote:
“ It was in the interests of the Jewish leaders to end what they saw as a dangerous breakaway sect as quickly as possible. They tried everything - they said the disciples stole the body, they said Jesus was a sorcerer who got his powers from Satan, they said he was a blasphemer. What's the one thing they never said? That he never existed. That, in itself, is damning. If you want to put an end to a movement, that's how you would do it. But they never did, because it was nonsense.”
if this is true, it makes jesus life, his purpose, an epic failure.
the jews were expecting a messiah, then he came (according to the bible) preached for 3 years, performed miracles to prove he was from god, all this and he failed to convince the people who were expecting him?
of course they didnt say he never existed, how could they say that someone who didnt exist, didnt exist?..
Quote:
“The evidence very clearly points towards the early Christian movement springing up almost immediately after Jesus' death and (if you believe) his resurrection.”
what evidence is this?... hearsay? supposition?
Quote:
“Even Josephus, a first-century historian, recorded him as an actual historical figure.”
..... and like all the other ancient chroniclers wrote about this figure long after his death. they were not contemporary, they were repeating what they had been told.
but
which jesus could all these references refer too?... the biblical son of god, or a shadowy figure the biblical story is based on?... there
might have been a figure the biblical person was based on. but he was
not the miracle working son of god.
so when you make references to scholars, historians, and biblical writers who suggest 'jesus existed', just which version was it?... because its totally reasonable to accept the biblical jesus was based upon a real person, but embelished, and not a miracle man.
but how many historians/scholars
who are neutral, unbiased, agnostic believe in the miracle man of the bible? id be shocked if there was any.
Quote:
“Actually this is very similar to the worn-out creationism/Evolution debates. The creationist will say "Ah but there are gaps in the fossil record - find me the examples!" and the Evolutionist will say "They're not important because the overwhelming body of evidence that we have backs up the fact that evolution is true."
You are making wild and unreasonable demands for evidence that doesn't exist for ANY ancient historical figure. As I have already stated, if you want to be consistent, then you have to apply the same rules to all sources. You are making unreasonable demands to see scrolls that have almost certainly been destroyed (and it wasn't even the accepted tradition to write things down that quickly since stories were passed along orally) yet are happy to accept five-hundred year old biographies of people like Alexander the Great, or Tacitus' Annals of Imperial Rome, which do not have anywhere near the same amount of manuscriptural evidence to back them up.”
but it doesnt matter if alexander the great existed or not. the existence of the biblical jesus, the messiah, the saviour, is the most important thing ever for mankind. if god could create the universe in all its intricacy , to create the very conditions on earth for life to co-exist and thrive in an infinitely complex and precise manner..... then surely god incarnate would get the job done in a totally unambiguous way.
but i DO accept that there could have been a character who might even have been called jesus, that the whole myth has grown up around. i DO place the existence for alexander on a par with a jesus character.
but accepting there was a jesus character is not the same as accepting he was a miracle worker. who would believe anyone who said alexander performed miracles? ...
the comparison between creationists / evolution and the actual existence of jesus is daft. we are 95% there with fossil records that prove evolution. there is 0% such hard evidence for the existence of jesus, of any description.