The Barrier

...and Stile's arguments don't hold up. I have gone to another thread as suggested by Stile.

Don't be silly; we have various amounts of evidence from zero to lots depending on the subject. As far as this Jesus guy is concerned there is almost nothing. Not evidence. (And, just for interest, so was the book of Mormon) Hearsay. He may have met people who say they met Jesus. Paul never met the man he wrote about. Terrible evidence. Not evidence. (And certainly nothing whatsoever to do with resurrection and all the rest of that stuff.) That's just desperate and you know it. Irrelevant (and wrong). False choice. What's wrong with creating heaven on earth? Or heaven in heaven? Why torture your entire creation? You just can't answer why this all loving, all powerful god has to create death and suffering can you? (It's an unfair question of course, no believer ever could.) Your god is no better than a bad programmer releasing faulty software that takes thousands of upgrades to get almost ok? You're kidding?Edited by Tangle, : No reason given.

Oh please! By what standard can you exclude the gospels, Acts, and Paul's letters as not being historical?They were independent accounts of events that occurred in the first century and were extensively publicized. If there was any credible denial of the events, they would have been brought up immediately and been effective. But that didnt happen. Even enemies of Christianity of the time (your independent sources) did not deny many of the events that were reported.As for just an example of prophecy, both destructions of Jerusalem we're written about in some detail well before the events occurred. How did that come about?

LOL! So, let's ignore all the Christian writings of the first century. Why again? Oh, cause you don't like them. Great reason. Despite the accounts becoming pretty common knowledge by the second century and nobody writing to dispute that he was a historical figure.Fine, don't like Christian writings? Then contemporaries Josephus, Tacitus, and Pliny all attest to him being a real person.Edited by WookieeB, : No reason given.

You cannot use the bible to corroborate itself. Show me some independent sources. There are none. Why do no writers or historians of the day make no mention of this character? The gospels and acts are not historical documents. We have no idea who wrote them. We have no idea what their provenance is.
You mention Paul. Why does he not mention anything about the life of Jesus. He does not refer to any biographical details and does not use any of the gospel teachings to support his own teachings.Palestine was a back water. Jesus was not presented as a historical figure until at least 40 years after the supposed execution. It was a minor cult for the first couple hundred years. You might want to try more than PRATTs

As I said before you cannot use the bible to corroborate itself. All of the 1st century Christian writings are anonymous except for 7 of the Pauline epistles. Paul makes no mention of the Jesus as a historical entity. But then again you have no evidence to support this do you? They were not contemporaries and they do not attest to him being a real person.Remember, that which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. Care to support your assertions with evidence?

It is fiction. More fiction. And still more fiction.

From 1 Corinthians 15

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3 For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance : that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, 5 and that he appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve. 6 After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. 7 Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, 8 and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born. 9 For I am the least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.

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They can be ignored as evidence because they're simply anononymous stories of fictional events that have nor independent corroboration. I like many of them, they contain some good ideas. Though none of them are original. But whether you or I like them or not is irrelevant to whether they are discussing real events that actually happened. See above. Did you think I didn't know about these people? To save you time, here's the full list with the reasons why they provide insifficient evidence

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Writers mentioning Jesus
The following is a list of common evidence provided by apologists[70] in an attempt to provide historical evidence for Jesus. It is generally evidence for the existence of early Christianity, and none is evidence for Jesus per se. All of the writers were born after the Crucifixion and could not have been eyewitnesses to Jesus. Moreover in many cases our oldest copies of their works are centuries after they were supposedly written, allowing ample time for copyists to "improve" them. It should be noted that Pliny the Younger was good friends and regularly corresponded with Tacitus and Suetonius so any thing one reports that the other two don't know about is suspect.

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Josephus (ca. 37 - 100 CE; oldest Greek copy is 11th century though there is a 5th century version in Latin): The Jewish historian Josephus is claimed to be the earliest non-Christian to mention Jesus, in his Antiquities of the Jews (ca. 93-94 CE) with the two references being referred to as the Testimonium Flavianum and the "Jamesian Reference". However, there is much debate regarding how much of the Testimonium Flavianum (if any of it) was written by Josephus[71] as there is no reference to it before the 4th century.[72][73] Moreover all of the experts who say some part of the Testimonium Flavianum is genuine are basing that conclusion on information way out of date (being 10, 20 or even 50 years old) despite discoveries that invalidate those sources.[74] [75][76] While Carrier uses Bayes’s Theorem to argue that both passages are not from the hand of Josephus the consensus is that some part of the Testimonium Flavianum and all of the "Jamesian Reference" are genuine,[77] but based on Carrier's examples of Ned Ludd and John Frum even if the entire passage as we have it was written by Josephus it still would not show Jesus existed as a human being simply because it is too brief and there is no consensus on exactly what parts of the Testimonium Flavianum are actually from Josephus. Moreover it has been shown that the passage as we have it has a 19-point unique correspondence between this passage and Luke's Emmaus account.[78]

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Tacitus (ca. 55 - 117 CE;oldest relevant copy is from 11th century): In his Annals (ca. 109 CE) Tacitus gives a brief mention of a "Chrstus" (generally read as "Christus" but in reality it could just as easily be read "Chrestus"), in a passage that shows evidence of tampering and contains no source.[79] Also, the entire section of the Annals covering 29-31 CE is missing: “That the cut is so precise and covers precisely those two years is too improbable to posit as a chance coincidence.”[65] His account is also at odds with the Christian accounts in The apocryphal Acts of Paul (c. 160 CE) and "The Acts of Peter" (150-200 CE) where the first has Nero reacting to claims of sedition by the group and the other saying thanks to a vision he left them alone.

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Pliny the Younger (61 - ca. 113 CE; oldest copy is 5th century and only 6 of its 218 leaves still exist; next oldest copy is from 9th century[80]): Pliny the Younger was a Roman official who wrote innumerable letters. In one (ca. 112 CE), he references "Christians" (but not Jesus), and his "Christ" could have referred to innumerable other "messiahs" that various Jews were following. Furthermore non-Christian Jews would also fail Pliny's test[81] so at best Pliny didn't know the difference between Judaism and Christianity and at worst the passage has become corrupted.

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Suetonius (ca. 69 - after 122 CE;earliest copy is 9th century): Suetonius, a Roman historian born in 69 CE, made two statements (ca. 112 CE) that are often presented as evidence of Jesus. The first falls into the Chrestus category; the second merely references Christians, not Jesus.

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Thallus (unknown lifespan, claimed to be active in 2nd century CE):Thallus supposedly references (date unknown) a solar eclipse at the time of Jesus' crucifixion. This reference is, at best, third-hand quotation of a summary, and is not recorded in other historic records.

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Phlegon (unknown lifespan, 2nd century CE; no works survive): Phlegon was a writer who recorded (date unknown) an earthquake, which apologists interpreted as referring to the horrors on the day of the crucifixion. Other apologists rightly trashed this interpretation.

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Christian apologists mostly use the above sources for their evidence of Jesus because they believe they represent the best outside sources. "Every other author is much too late to be relevant--Celsus, Lucian, and Mara bar Serapion, e.g. all wrote in the 150s or later, and no other non-Christian text mentioning Jesus predates them."[82]

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Evidence for the historical existence of Jesus Christ - RationalWikiThat's the sum of all the available 'independent' evidence for simply the existence of someone called Christ. It's entirely unpersuasive but tells us nothing at all about whether the things he's supposed to have done or said are true.

Yes. The passage I assumed you were referring to. This does not say that any of these people were eyewitnesses to the life of Jesus or his crucifixion. This states that these people had a vision of the Jesus character. Nothing more. Nothing about where the crucifixion was, who the 500 were or when. Remember Paul is the same guy that said that he has learned of Jesus from no person, just divine revelation. Galatians 1:16, Ephesians 3:4-5. In Romans 1:2 and Corinthians 15:3-4, Paul talks about how scripture is the source of his knowledge of Christ and Salvation. He was not talking about the Christian gospels. They were not written for decades after his death. He was talking about the Hebrew bible.
Setting that aside, why does it conflict so much with the gospels and acts?Why is it if Jesus was a historical figure does Paul not mention any of that history? Nothing about the miraculous birth of Jesus, or his famous career, astounding miracles, bold new teachings, circumstances of his death. Nothing about Bethlehem, Nazareth or even Jerusalem and its ties to Jesus.
There are no writings from the Jerusalem church or anyone that claimed to be a personal disciple of Jesus. Everything we know about the leaders of the Jerusalem church, Cephas/Peter, James and John comes from Paul. Paul says absolutely nothing about any of them or anyone else traveling around with Jesus.Edited by Theodoric, : Spelling, formatting

The same standard that we use to conclude that Ian Fleming's books are not historical. Ian Fleming's books were independent accounts of events that occurred in the twentieth century and were extensively publicized. There was no denial of Ian Fleming's books because nobody pretended they were historical. Even Pravda didn't deny many of the events in Fleming's books. See above - nobody pretended they were historical.So the standard is the same.

Here is what I quoted:

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4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, 5 and that he appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve. 6 After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. 7 Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, 8 and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.

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Certainly you can reject all this as a fabrication or whatever you like but arguing the way you have done here makes no sense. No where in the scriptures is there a mention of anything but a physical Jesus after the resurrection. Also visions aren't experienced by 500 people at the same time. No. Another shat in the dark that is wrong. From Acts 9:

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19 and after taking some food, he regained his strength. Saul spent several days with the disciples in Damascus. 20 At once he began to preach in the synagogues that Jesus is the Son of God. 21 All those who heard him were astonished and asked, “Isn’t he the man who raised havoc in Jerusalem among those who call on this name? And hasn’t he come here to take them as prisoners to the chief priests?” 22 Yet Saul grew more and more powerful and baffled the Jews living in Damascus by proving that Jesus is the Messiah.

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How does it conflict? Primarily Paul's letters are written to the early churches. They were already Christians and got that stuff. Paul is writing as a theologian and writing about things like unity in the church, what that should mean to their lives. Another shot in the dark and another blank. Try reading the book of Acts.

If you were following we were talking about Paul and his writings. You should know that since you are the one that quoted Paul. As we have no idea who wrote Acts or when it was written, it cannot be used as a historical source. You might want to rethink your post because I made it very clear I was talking about Paul and his writings.Since the writings af Acts are decades after Paul and they conflict with Pauls we can ignore them.Again. We are talking about the writings of Paul, not Acts.So. Wrong. Read what Paul wrote not what you want him to have written.

It is said you can not reason people out of a position they didn't reason themselves into.

That is all depends on how you define 'historical'. They are historical documents, in that they are ancient, but that does not mean they are an accurate relaying of information. You could call 'Gone with the wind' a historical book, but that does not mean Scarlett O'Hara actually lived.