Did Jesus exist, Part II

This passage from Tacitus was quoted in briefer form in the earlier thread: Message 18--Percy

This has been touched on a couple times, but not really engaged for discussion. The few early historical references all come long after Jesus's life and can't be construed as direct evidence that Jesus was a real person. Direct evidence simply doesn't exist. While it seems very unlikely that there would be followers of someone who never existed, it's still possible.It is the absence of historical mention of any of the momentous events of the Gospels that lead to doubts about Jesus's existence. There seems only one conclusion: the Jesus of the Gospels never existed. That doesn't mean he wasn't a real person, but it does mean that the Gospel accounts came later and developed in mythic fashion.I'm usually thinking of the Jesus of the Gospels when I say I doubt that Jesus ever existed. I think Paul's evangelizing was about a very real person whose ministry could have happened at any point across a wide swathe of time. Jesus could even be the Teacher of Righteousness of the Dead Sea Scrolls.--Percy

Yes, of course they're historical evidence. But the Gospels contain both internal and external contradictions. The question is what this evidence in combination with all other available evidence allows us to conclude with any degree of certainty. I still think a discussion about Gospel dating would be pretty interesting.Using your date of 62 AD for Mark means he was writing about events from 30 years before. Even today establishing the details of little noted events from 30 years ago is very difficult. Well, that's not so clear. There were many "gospels" floating around during the 2nd century, and the reliability with which each was considered at the time cannot be clear to us from this distance. The canon wasn't established until much later.--Percy

But they *were* "little noted," by everyone. No follower of Jesus recorded these events. No contempory historian, incuding the Roman record keepers, noted any of the events of Jesus's ministry. Not even Paul noted them. These events were only noted many years after the fact by people who couldn't have been there since they weren't alive at the time. Acts was written even later than Mark. I know you place Mark around 62 AD, but other scholars have good reason to place Mark after the fall of Jerusalem, which means later than 70 AD. This same group dates Acts to sometime after 90 AD, around 60 years after events. That the events in the NT took place as described cannot be reliably established, and the internal and external contradictions I alluded to earlier cast doubt on their accuracy.You paint a picture of very early Christian history, say up to AD 70, which while possible is not documented outside the NT, and is very poorly documented even within the NT. Most of the work of founding and expanding Christianity came through Paul's efforts, not Jesus's or Peter's, and the stories about what happened concerning Jesus and his followers in Jerusalem around AD 30 and shortly after were written when the city no longer existed.Conservative scholars prefer early dates, which minimizes the possibility that what was written down wasn't what really happened. Liberal scholars have less of a stake in dating, since they're comfortable with conclusions that conflict with the NT accounts. There's no necessity to research dating, especially if it's more work than interest, but it does begin the introduction of additional facts into the discussion.--Percy

Yes, of course the followers of Jesus believed. But what is it that they believed to have happened? This wasn't actually written down until generations after the events themselves. Mark wasn't "an immediate discple of Jesus". Biblical tradition says that Mark was a disciple of Peter who recorded Peter's story while he was in prision in Rome. And while tradition holds that the apostles Matthew and John wrote the Gospels that bear their names, there is no historical evidence supporting this view, and there is internal and external evidence that we could discuss that makes it unlikely. Very possibly. But that recalls a point introduced earlier. This thread is about historical support for Jesus. Just because evidence doesn't exist or has been lost doesn't mean Jesus didn't exist. The premise of the thread is not that if we can't find sufficient historical evidence for Jesus that therefore he did not exist. The thread's purpose, I thought, was simply to identify the historical evidence for Jesus.In other words, this thread isn't a debate about whether Jesus existed. It's a debate about how much historical evidence exists. My aim is to examine the issue from a historical perspective. In other words, I plan to address the topic. If it helps you, the thought that lies or evil were involved had not crossed my mind until you mentioned them, and as I read on they have now passed out of my mind and I won't consider them again. And more modern estimates place it around 80 AD at the earliest. Well, yes, I'm sure it does. But the contradictions are still apparent to many others. Maybe they're off-topic for this thread, though. Well, yes, of course, we know that. Perhaps we can get into the details behind the scholars opinions as the discussion develops. Okay, if you say so, but maybe we should leave our preconceptions about motives out of the discussion. I won't mention again that evangelical scholars prefer early dates because it provides greater support for their beliefs. We'll just examine the evidence.--Percy

Sure I can, because I didn't say nobody believed. That's why I'm able to agree with you that of course the followers of Jesus believed. I never said they didn't.What I said was that nobody wrote it down, including the eye witnesses. The term I used was "little noted", explaining that that meant no eye witnesses or contemporaries had written it down.In this discussion you can usually just assume I'm talking about historical evidence. This would be writings, temple carvings, seals, archeological artifacts, etc. An NT Gospel written at least a couple generations after the fact *is* definitely historical evidence, but it isn't contemporaneous, and it isn't inerrant. As far as is known, there is no contemporaneous historical evidence of Jesus's ministry, and there is probably little or no historical evidence anywhere concerning anything that is inerrant or that isn't open to interpretation. Possibly. It is also possible, since the increasing detail over time is consistent with the mythic process, that the stories developed the details over the course of retellings.--Percy

Well, that's a new one to me. The Biblical tradition I quoted has been advanced by other evangelicals here in support of the authenticity of Mark. I won't try to sort out these differing traditions. Suffice to say that modern scholarship doesn't find much support for either of them. Yes, that's true in this case, I have said as much. Yes, that's also true, I agree. I think I said as much in my previous post. There are several avenues by which we could approach this. We could examine why it is believed the Gospel accounts were later than you think. Or we could look at why they are thought to be compilations and recombinings of earlier accounts not now extant. Or we could examine some of the contradictions, though this has probably been done to death here (e.g., the differing accounts in Matthew and Luke of Jesus's ancestry).Perhaps looking at the 2nd one, why they're thought to derive from earlier sources, would be a good place to start.--Percy

Tacitus is an excellent historical source, but he's not much help in establishing the historicity of Jesus. His work verifies that Christian followers of Jesus lived in his region around 100 AD (going from memory on the date, sorry if it's off). It is reasonable to assume they believed Jesus was a real person.But most Christians were converts of Paul, who never met Jesus. In fact, much of Acts relates how Paul brought the story of Jesus's ministry to the gentiles, and in many cases he was able to convince them that Jesus was the Christ, and they became believers. But they became believers via Paul's accounts, not because they were eyewitnesses. And again, Paul was not an eyewitness, either.In other words, the Tacitus account, and the others, too, are not evidence supporting any of the particulars from the Gospels. All they support is that there were followers of Christ. I don't think these historical accounts are meaningless. I don't think anyone else does, either. We just don't believe they provide the support you think they do for Jesus being a real person. They also don't provide much support for Jesus not being a real person. They're inconclusive.Given the importance of Jesus today in both religion and culture, most Christians find surprising the lack of historical evidence for Jesus the real person.--Percy

Hi Faith,I don't think the reason for doubting the passage's authenticity is motivated by a simple rejection of the historicity of Jesus, but I don't off the top of my head know what the reasons might be. I'll see what I can turn up.--Percy

I would even suggest not using anything from that site that you can't confirm from other sources.--Percy

Hi Faith,Things got busy and I couldn't keep up with this thread, but I noticed Crossan in the subtitle of this message and peeked in and saw this: Maybe I'm getting the Jesus Seminar confused with another group, but if it's the one I'm thinking of then they embarked upon a project to assign probabilities to words of Jesus from the Gospels according to the likelihood that they were actually said by him. This was maybe 10 years ago that I first heard about it. Evangelicals naturally detested the Jesus Seminar. Unless I've got the name mixed up with another group.--Percy

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--PercyThis message has been edited by Percy, 01-12-2006 01:59 PM