stealth44 Posted February 15, 2012 Share Posted February 15, 2012 Hello, I grew up Catholic and was basically agnostic the last few years, got sick of the guilt and general weirdness of religion. I met a nice girl on youtube who is a bit of a fundie. lol I've heard some of her stories and have seen spiritual/supernatural yt videos that almost have me believing again. Basically I'm curious what is the historical evidence for Jesus/the gospels outside the bible. I think he existed but not sure about the stories (I've looked into it and got mixed reviews) I know its been covered here before. I don't want to go down that rabbit hole again. You guys have a great website. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stealth44 Posted February 15, 2012 Author Share Posted February 15, 2012 ps Not sure if this is the right section. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Luv2knit Posted February 15, 2012 Share Posted February 15, 2012 Read Bart Erhman. You can catch some debates with him on YouTube. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Super Moderator florduh Posted February 15, 2012 Super Moderator Share Posted February 15, 2012 Basically I'm curious what is the historical evidence for Jesus/the gospels outside the bible. There is none. There are no contemporary accounts, no official government records, only stories written well after they supposedly occurred. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mwc Posted February 15, 2012 Share Posted February 15, 2012 Hello, I grew up Catholic and was basically agnostic the last few years, got sick of the guilt and general weirdness of religion. I met a nice girl on youtube who is a bit of a fundie. lol I've heard some of her stories and have seen spiritual/supernatural yt videos that almost have me believing again. Basically I'm curious what is the historical evidence for Jesus/the gospels outside the bible. I think he existed but not sure about the stories (I've looked into it and got mixed reviews) I know its been covered here before. I don't want to go down that rabbit hole again. You guys have a great website. The short answer is what florduh said. There really is none. The slightly longer answer is if there were actually some damning evidence of this "Jesus of Nazareth" it would be used...by everyone. It would pretty much have stopped debates since day one. "Who is this Jesus?" "I'm glad you asked. THIS is Jesus." And *smack* right in the face with *Jesus*. This never happened in history. All we're told about "jesus" is myth. That's it. And all anyone who claims a historical "jesus" has is variant views of "some guy." There are a myriad of "historical" Jews running around the ancient world that all qualify as a "jesus" depending on who you listen to. "Some guy" did this and "some guy" did that. Maybe people augmented these stories. Let's call him, or even them, "jesus." mwc 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mymistake Posted February 15, 2012 Share Posted February 15, 2012 Hello, I grew up Catholic and was basically agnostic the last few years, got sick of the guilt and general weirdness of religion. I met a nice girl on youtube who is a bit of a fundie. lol I've heard some of her stories and have seen spiritual/supernatural yt videos that almost have me believing again. Basically I'm curious what is the historical evidence for Jesus/the gospels outside the bible. I think he existed but not sure about the stories (I've looked into it and got mixed reviews) I know its been covered here before. I don't want to go down that rabbit hole again. You guys have a great website. The evidence is practically nothing. At best you can look at some gospel accounts and guess that if they were completely making it up they might have made better choices. That implies that there were a few limitations imposed by real world events on an otherwise fictional story. Of course when you ask for evidence of Jesus you need to clear something up. Do you mean a divine person who raised the dead, heals the sick and multiplies food? Or perhaps do you mean a human who was a first century Aramaic rabbi, had a name that was some variation of "Yeshua" and might have been executed by Rome? Christians like to bait and switch on this issue. They will point to some kind of evidence that hints that a man named Yeshua was a rabbi and then go "Ah ha! See! God the Son is real!!!" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zephie Posted February 15, 2012 Share Posted February 15, 2012 I'm not sure that there is any outside of the bible but I could be wrong...either way the bible contradicts itself so much that one has to ask if it should be taken seriously or not... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
owen652 Posted February 15, 2012 Share Posted February 15, 2012 The only extra-biblical evidence of Jesus that i've heard of was a fleeting comment by Josephus, mentioning something about a guy called Jesus who had a small following, and that was it. Even if he was talking about "the" Jesus, you would think he would have said a lot more about someone who supposedly did such incredible things and had such an impact. And other historians of the time are completely silent about him. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zephie Posted February 15, 2012 Share Posted February 15, 2012 The only extra-biblical evidence of Jesus that i've heard of was a fleeting comment by Josephus, mentioning something about a guy called Jesus who had a small following, and that was it. Even if he was talking about "the" Jesus, you would think he would have said a lot more about someone who supposedly did such incredible things and had such an impact. And other historians of the time are completely silent about him. I've heard that even that comment was a forgery but I'm not 100% on that... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
owen652 Posted February 15, 2012 Share Posted February 15, 2012 The only extra-biblical evidence of Jesus that i've heard of was a fleeting comment by Josephus, mentioning something about a guy called Jesus who had a small following, and that was it. Even if he was talking about "the" Jesus, you would think he would have said a lot more about someone who supposedly did such incredible things and had such an impact. And other historians of the time are completely silent about him. a quick bit of research reveals that Josephus actually mentions jesus twice, the first time in glowing terms, calling him the Christ and seemingly verifying his resurrection, but the second mention of Jesus is only a few words. THe first mention actually contradicts his other writings, which indicate that he didn't believe that Jesus was Messiah at all, so it is generally considered corrupt. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hereticzero Posted February 15, 2012 Share Posted February 15, 2012 Moses does not even appear outside of the Old Testament, yet I get Xtians who swear he is an historical figure. St. Nicholas has a better chance proven real. There are no evidence to substantiate Jesus or his apostles. We only have church tradition and authority's word they existed at all. In the earlier text, mythological animals were found scattered throughout the NT and OT text. Now the names have been replaced to give credibility to Christian stories. The church has done and is doing everything it can to cover up its own mythological stories and characters. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Akheia Posted February 15, 2012 Share Posted February 15, 2012 Once I was willing to entertain the idea that Jesus might have existed. Fundies are fond of saying that we have "original sources" closer to the event than Homer's poetry was to their event, but that doesn't make the writings true--and the discrepancy in time is much greater than I had been led to believe (also Homer doesn't make extraordinary demands, so his burden of proof is considerably smaller than that of the gospels). Even so, I searched very hard for evidence of his existence. There was none. Nobody contemporaneous wrote about him; he never wrote anything down himself that's survived; the Romans who put him to death in a corrupted Jewish human sacrifice didn't write a word about him in their many recordbooks. The one mention that's kind of close is almost certainly a forgery, given that Josephus, a Jew, was unlikely to have talked glowingly about someone like Jesus (and I've read a few scholars who can spot some major differences in the word choice and phrasing of that praise than in Josephus' more established writings). If Christians had proof of Jesus' existence, it'd be everywhere, as mwc said. Instead of proof, we have dark-ages-era tombs and fake artifacts. If he were real, nobody would need to lie and prevaricate, or to grasp at straws. There'd be no need for sophisticated or for that matter crude arguments and philosophical ruminations to show his reality; we'd have his hotel-room slip, his birth certificate, his or even his parents' presence on that census that was supposedly the first danger in his young life. It's not like we can't establish ancient people with a great degree of accuracy, especially very famous people, but it's hard to give credence to the idea of a fantastically powerful miracle-worker who left not a shred of documentation behind. Then, too, we must consider how very similar his story is to the other son-of-god miracle-workers running around Judea around this same time; Josephus mentions a few of them, incidentally. The idea of a virgin-born god-made-flesh who was killed and rose on the third day wasn't all that uncommon in the mythology of the time and region. When I really looked into the evidence, I was left with the completely inescapable truth that Jesus' entire mythology would have vanished--just like those of his fellow miracle-workers did--had an emperor not decided to adopt it. No, Jesus didn't exist any more than Spiderman does. If this was an all-powerful God's last-ditch effort to save humanity before the endtimes, he chose a piss-poor way to get his points across. I'm not even a god and I can think of a bunch of ways I could have preserved my words for a couple lousy millennia. Seems kind of strange to me that God couldn't have worked something out. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ConureDelSol Posted February 16, 2012 Share Posted February 16, 2012 The only extra-biblical evidence of Jesus that i've heard of was a fleeting comment by Josephus, mentioning something about a guy called Jesus who had a small following, and that was it. Even if he was talking about "the" Jesus, you would think he would have said a lot more about someone who supposedly did such incredible things and had such an impact. And other historians of the time are completely silent about him. I've heard that even that comment was a forgery but I'm not 100% on that... I believe he didn't even refer to him as Jesus, but rather "Christus" or something of that nature. Regardless, there are plenty of notable figures of the time that should've been able to account for Jesus had he actually existed and done all these things. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mymistake Posted February 16, 2012 Share Posted February 16, 2012 The only extra-biblical evidence of Jesus that i've heard of was a fleeting comment by Josephus, mentioning something about a guy called Jesus who had a small following, and that was it. Even if he was talking about "the" Jesus, you would think he would have said a lot more about someone who supposedly did such incredible things and had such an impact. And other historians of the time are completely silent about him. a quick bit of research reveals that Josephus actually mentions jesus twice, the first time in glowing terms, calling him the Christ and seemingly verifying his resurrection, but the second mention of Jesus is only a few words. THe first mention actually contradicts his other writings, which indicate that he didn't believe that Jesus was Messiah at all, so it is generally considered corrupt. Josephus is actually evidence against the gospels. The section of Josephus that paints Christians favorably is likely a forgery and Josephus recounts a historical event that casts serious doubt on the gospel accounts of the Crucifixion. During the Roman-Jewish war (a good 35 years after the alleged time of Christ but perhaps before the synoptic gospels were written) Josephus sees three of his friends being crucified and uses his position to get them taken down. A Roman surgeon saves one of them but the other two die. And we all know what Christians do when a medical team does their best on a problematic casualty and saves his life - they give God the glory! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Foxy Methoxy Posted February 16, 2012 Share Posted February 16, 2012 Basically I'm curious what is the historical evidence for Jesus/the gospels outside the bible. There is none. There are no contemporary accounts, no official government records, only stories written well after they supposedly occurred. Yes. In fact, there are even two Bethlehems in the area and some scholars believe the gospels tell the story of the nativity in different cities with the same name because the writers themselves had no idea which one he was born in. Some of the locations in Matthew point to the wrong Bethlehem! Jesus may very well be a composite sketch of multiple cult leaders from the early 1st century. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest wester Posted February 16, 2012 Share Posted February 16, 2012 Yeah - that Josephus guy, Jewish historian, is about all there is. 2 lines in a non-biblical text. Nothing from the Romans. Nothing else from the Jews. Nothing, Nada, Zipo, Zilch. That is an awfully thin reed to hang your hat on for your entire Epistimology. Futhermore, there is almost jack all about Paul or St. Peter, nothing to zero about "King David", nothing about Noah's flood....and on and on....It is like the entire Western religious tradition is based on a bunch of delusional fever dreams or LSD trips filled with wishful thnking. You would think that more people would catch on, or start saying WTF... 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LivingLife Posted February 16, 2012 Share Posted February 16, 2012 The only reason jesus has survived, he is coming soon Super sperm will then replace him... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
♦ ficino ♦ Posted February 16, 2012 Share Posted February 16, 2012 Hello Stealth, welcome. There is a lot of evidence about the (non-)historical Jesus provided by Richard Carrier here: http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/richard_carrier/ If you Google Richard Carrier you'll also get his current blog. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hereticzero Posted February 16, 2012 Share Posted February 16, 2012 It was likely that Catholic Church historian Eusebius forged the works of Josephus to in the fourth century to include the passage referring to Jesus. "Now, there was about this time, Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man, for he was a doer of wonderful works,--a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews, and many of the Gentiles. He was [the] Christ; and when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him, for he appeared to them alive again the third day, as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him; and the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day." (Whitson, 379) The big glaring problem is that Josephus was not a Christian or a believer but a Jew and would not have written up a PR article to support the myth of Jesus. Bible scholars do not often quote from Josephus because the text is untrustworthy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
centauri Posted February 16, 2012 Share Posted February 16, 2012 Basically I'm curious what is the historical evidence for Jesus/the gospels outside the bible. I think he existed but not sure about the stories (I've looked into it and got mixed reviews) I know its been covered here before. There is no contemporary extra-biblical confirmation for Jesus of Nazareth outside the cult writings. Contemporary is a key word here because according to the New Testament, Jesus was quite famous during his lifetime, with news about him spreading throughout the region. Josephus was not a contemporary and I suspect that forgery was involved in his brief passage about "Jesus". Contemporary historians would include Philo of Alexandria (who studied religions) and Pliny the Elder. Neither one of these prolific writers ever said anything about Jesus. Nobody at all mentions the amazing resurrection of the saints (Matt 27), who walked into Jerusalem and appeared to the public. That in itself tells you how embellished the New Testament probably is. It simply can't be trusted. No Jesus of Nazareth outside the Bible. http://www.jesusneverexisted.com/surfeit.htm Multiple problems with using Josephus as proof of Jesus. http://www.jesusneverexisted.com/josephus-etal.html While a character called "Jesus" could very well have existed and served as a template for the New Testament, there is nothing but cult writings to confirm "Jesus of Nazareth" and his exploits. Since the cult writings were written to sell the product, they are flimsy evidence. Also of note: the New Testament states that the resurrected Jesus only appeared to cult members, which is convenient to say the least. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Foxy Methoxy Posted February 16, 2012 Share Posted February 16, 2012 Also of note: the New Testament states that the resurrected Jesus only appeared to cult members, which is convenient to say the least. That is an excellent point. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zephie Posted February 16, 2012 Share Posted February 16, 2012 Also of note: the New Testament states that the resurrected Jesus only appeared to cult members, which is convenient to say the least. That is an excellent point. There's this series of books(fiction) that talk about that. It's funny to see how the lies spread through fiction. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rachel13 Posted February 16, 2012 Share Posted February 16, 2012 Yeshua is the Aramaic name for Jesus (his actual name). Most biblical scholars believe he existed but have varying opinions about what he was about. Some think he was an apocalyptic preacher, others think he was more into teaching the kingdom of heaven on earth meaning he encouraged people to live in a certain way. These scholars don't think that he ever claimed to be the Messiah or God. The Gospel of Thomas and source Q (a hypothetical book of the sayings of Yeshua, its believed that Mark was written independently of Q then Matthew and Luke drew from Mark and Q as sources) apparently don't claim Jesus to be the messiah neither do they mention the resurrection. Of course this could be because Q is just a saying book and Thomas is a gnostic gospel but they are believed to be the earliest scriptures its not very promising that there is no mention of either. Take a look at the Jesus seminar. Its a meeting of biblical scholars where they look at the evidence and vote as to whether they think certain events attributed to Jesus actually happened. Its worth a look. I'm of the opinion that he existed and was probably a nice guy who didn't deserve what he got. I don't think he intended to start a religion at all and would be pretty surprised to find out he accidently started the worlds biggest religion. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Foxy Methoxy Posted February 16, 2012 Share Posted February 16, 2012 I haven't seen anything in the Bible suggesting he was nice. He cursed fig trees, argued with clergy, beat up money changers, and acted like a brat in every story he's mentioned. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stealth44 Posted February 16, 2012 Author Share Posted February 16, 2012 Thanks for the reponses and links. There's so much contradictions in the bible anyway, its hard to believe any of it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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