Historical JESUS
I have recently seen an increase in those
who refer to “The Christ Myth”. That is, those who deny JESUS
came in the flesh. To this, I reply: HA!
It is unlikely that the Romans have ever
made much of a list of the thousands of Jews, and others, they
crucified. It is equally unlikely that the Sanhedrin, those who
convened an illegal assembly, hired false witnesses, and had JESUS
killed illegally, would have had their deeds recorded for history.
However, that having been said, I have
been in a number of these conversations over the years and in one
such conversation the following information was given. I do not know
the name of the contributor, but I am certain he wouldn't mind my
using this information.
ENJOY THE READ:
Josephus, Antiquities Book 18, Chapt. 3,
part 3:
"Now there arose at this time a source of further trouble in one Jesus, a wise man who performed surprising works, a teacher of men who gladly welcome strange things. He led away many Jews, and also many of the Gentiles. He was the so-called Christ. When Pilate, acting on information supplied by the chief men around us, condemned him to the cross, those who had attached themselves to him at first did not cease to cause trouble, and the tribe of Christians, which has taken this name from him is not extinct even today."
Josephus: Testimonium Flavianum, Book 20, Chapt 9, part 1:
"...so he assembled the sanhedrin of judges, and brought before them the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James, and some others, [or, some of his companions]; and when he had formed an accusation against them as breakers of the law, he delivered them to be stoned... "
Tacitus Annals, book XV:
"Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular."
Pliny, Letters, transl. by William Melmoth, rev. by W.M.L. Hutchinson (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1935), II, X:96:
"They (the Christians) were in the habit of meeting on a certain fixed day before it was light, when they sang in alternate verses a hymn to Christ, as to a god, and bound themselves by a solemn oath, not to any wicked deeds, but never to commit any fraud, theft or adultery, never to falsify their word, nor deny a trust when they should be called upon to deliver it up; after which it was their custom to separate, and then reassemble to partake of food but food of an ordinary and innocent kind."
Suetonius, Lives of the Caesars - Claudius, sec. 25:
"He banished from Rome all the Jews, who were continually making disturbances at the instigation of one Chrestus."
The Talmud, Babylonian Talmud, transl. by I. Epstein (London: Soncino, 1935), vol. III, Sanhedrin 43a, p. 281:
A."On the eve of the Passover Yeshu was hanged. For forty days before the execution took place, a herald went forth and cried, "He is going forth to be stoned because he has practiced sorcery and enticed Israel to apostasy. Any one who can say anything in his favor, let him come forward and plead on his behalf." But since nothing was brought forward in his favor he was hanged on the eve of the Passover!"
As well, William Foxwell Albright, one of the worlds foremost known Biblical Archeologists used the Bible as a Guide. As well Nelson Gluek of Harvard, who used the Bible as a guide to find some of the mines of Solomon, stated:
"It may be stated categorically that no archaeological discovery has ever controverted a Biblical reference. Scores of archaeological findings have been made which confirm in clear outline or exact detail historical statements in the Bible. And, by the same token, proper evaluation of Biblical descriptions has often led to amazing discoveries.” Dr. Nelson Glueck, Rivers in the Desert, (New York: Farrar, Strous and Cudahy, 1959),
Hundreds to list? There are the Gospels, there is Acts, there is the apostolic epistles, particularly Paul who is admitted by all scholars to be a very objective witness to the things he describes. There are the disciples of the apostles such as Ignatius of Antioch and his epistles, Clement of Rome, Polycarp, Quadratus of Athens. There is Aristides. There is Josephus, since almost all scholars consider it to have partial genuineness to talking about Jesus being crucified by Pilate, doing great deeds, and the sect of Christians coming from him.
There is Celsus who used ancient Jewish traditions that mention how Jesus could do miracles of what they called them to be things he learned in Egypt, which would then point to the flight of Egypt in Matthew. They mention many other things about him in the Gospels, such as the bird descending from heaven announcing hm to be the Son of God in the river with John the Baptist.
There is Hierocles, there is Porphyry, there is Julian the Apostate, all secular men who hated Christians and still believed their founder lived and did miracles, Julian the Roman caesar even confirming the census in Luke's account being accurate. Julian was considered a very intelligent man historically and philosophically by his contemporary Roman historian Eutropius. Porphyry was considered the first INTELLIGENT debator against the Christian movement, yet not even he denounced Christ's existence nor miracles.
There are the many Christian sources who point to other secular sources or secular beliefs. Tertullian in his address to the Jews of his days talks about how not even they deny Jesus healed the blind, the leper, the deaf, and rose people from the dead among them. He also mentions (as a former Roman lawyer himself) that the archives of Rome preserve Jesus and his family names in them at the time of the census. He said that to the Roman officials as well, reminding them of that evidence they had.
He, Justin Martyr, and Eusebius, all indepenedently testify to Pontius Pilate's contemporary account right after Jesus was crucified, where he wrote to Caesar Tiberius, talking about Jesus of Nazareth healing the blind and sick and raising people from the dead in his province, how he just crucified him, and how the report of him rising from the dead and ascending into heaven was being noised everywhere in his province immediately after he crucified him.
There is Justin Martyr speaking to the Jews in his Dialogue with Trypho and tells Trypho (who was some time of leading Jew in his days) that he and his people were spreading the report ever since Jesus was crucified that his twelve apostles came and stole hs body from the tomb and reminds the Jews how they keep telling it today and how the story is wrong and based on progaganda.
And there are MANY more that I can keep mouthing off. That is why no scholar or professor that I am aware of, or EHrman, or any other apologetic scholar I have read denies Jesus existed, but not just his existence, his crucifixion by Pilate, and baptism by John, and probably a few things I am forgetting.
"Yet, once in a while, I run across someone like Russell who, in spite of the evidence insists on denying that Jesus ever existed at all. One of these occasions happened during a debate sponsored by the associate students of midwestern university. My opponent, a congressional candidate for the Progressive Labor Party (Marxist) in New York, said in her opening remarks: 'Historians today have fairly well dismissed Jesus as being historical.' I couldn't believe my ears. But I was glad she said it, because she gave me the opportunity to show twenty-five hundred students that she had not done her history homework."
(McDowell, NEDV, 119-20)
"Some writers may toy with the fancy of a 'Christ-myth,' but they do not do so on the grounds of historical evidence. The historicity of Christ is as axiomatic for an unbiased historian as the historicity of Julius Caesar. It is not historians who propagate the 'Christ-myth' theories."
(Bruce, NTDATR, 72, 119)
I removed the rest to shorten this blog.
"Now there arose at this time a source of further trouble in one Jesus, a wise man who performed surprising works, a teacher of men who gladly welcome strange things. He led away many Jews, and also many of the Gentiles. He was the so-called Christ. When Pilate, acting on information supplied by the chief men around us, condemned him to the cross, those who had attached themselves to him at first did not cease to cause trouble, and the tribe of Christians, which has taken this name from him is not extinct even today."
Josephus: Testimonium Flavianum, Book 20, Chapt 9, part 1:
"...so he assembled the sanhedrin of judges, and brought before them the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James, and some others, [or, some of his companions]; and when he had formed an accusation against them as breakers of the law, he delivered them to be stoned... "
Tacitus Annals, book XV:
"Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular."
Pliny, Letters, transl. by William Melmoth, rev. by W.M.L. Hutchinson (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1935), II, X:96:
"They (the Christians) were in the habit of meeting on a certain fixed day before it was light, when they sang in alternate verses a hymn to Christ, as to a god, and bound themselves by a solemn oath, not to any wicked deeds, but never to commit any fraud, theft or adultery, never to falsify their word, nor deny a trust when they should be called upon to deliver it up; after which it was their custom to separate, and then reassemble to partake of food but food of an ordinary and innocent kind."
Suetonius, Lives of the Caesars - Claudius, sec. 25:
"He banished from Rome all the Jews, who were continually making disturbances at the instigation of one Chrestus."
The Talmud, Babylonian Talmud, transl. by I. Epstein (London: Soncino, 1935), vol. III, Sanhedrin 43a, p. 281:
A."On the eve of the Passover Yeshu was hanged. For forty days before the execution took place, a herald went forth and cried, "He is going forth to be stoned because he has practiced sorcery and enticed Israel to apostasy. Any one who can say anything in his favor, let him come forward and plead on his behalf." But since nothing was brought forward in his favor he was hanged on the eve of the Passover!"
As well, William Foxwell Albright, one of the worlds foremost known Biblical Archeologists used the Bible as a Guide. As well Nelson Gluek of Harvard, who used the Bible as a guide to find some of the mines of Solomon, stated:
"It may be stated categorically that no archaeological discovery has ever controverted a Biblical reference. Scores of archaeological findings have been made which confirm in clear outline or exact detail historical statements in the Bible. And, by the same token, proper evaluation of Biblical descriptions has often led to amazing discoveries.” Dr. Nelson Glueck, Rivers in the Desert, (New York: Farrar, Strous and Cudahy, 1959),
Hundreds to list? There are the Gospels, there is Acts, there is the apostolic epistles, particularly Paul who is admitted by all scholars to be a very objective witness to the things he describes. There are the disciples of the apostles such as Ignatius of Antioch and his epistles, Clement of Rome, Polycarp, Quadratus of Athens. There is Aristides. There is Josephus, since almost all scholars consider it to have partial genuineness to talking about Jesus being crucified by Pilate, doing great deeds, and the sect of Christians coming from him.
There is Celsus who used ancient Jewish traditions that mention how Jesus could do miracles of what they called them to be things he learned in Egypt, which would then point to the flight of Egypt in Matthew. They mention many other things about him in the Gospels, such as the bird descending from heaven announcing hm to be the Son of God in the river with John the Baptist.
There is Hierocles, there is Porphyry, there is Julian the Apostate, all secular men who hated Christians and still believed their founder lived and did miracles, Julian the Roman caesar even confirming the census in Luke's account being accurate. Julian was considered a very intelligent man historically and philosophically by his contemporary Roman historian Eutropius. Porphyry was considered the first INTELLIGENT debator against the Christian movement, yet not even he denounced Christ's existence nor miracles.
There are the many Christian sources who point to other secular sources or secular beliefs. Tertullian in his address to the Jews of his days talks about how not even they deny Jesus healed the blind, the leper, the deaf, and rose people from the dead among them. He also mentions (as a former Roman lawyer himself) that the archives of Rome preserve Jesus and his family names in them at the time of the census. He said that to the Roman officials as well, reminding them of that evidence they had.
He, Justin Martyr, and Eusebius, all indepenedently testify to Pontius Pilate's contemporary account right after Jesus was crucified, where he wrote to Caesar Tiberius, talking about Jesus of Nazareth healing the blind and sick and raising people from the dead in his province, how he just crucified him, and how the report of him rising from the dead and ascending into heaven was being noised everywhere in his province immediately after he crucified him.
There is Justin Martyr speaking to the Jews in his Dialogue with Trypho and tells Trypho (who was some time of leading Jew in his days) that he and his people were spreading the report ever since Jesus was crucified that his twelve apostles came and stole hs body from the tomb and reminds the Jews how they keep telling it today and how the story is wrong and based on progaganda.
And there are MANY more that I can keep mouthing off. That is why no scholar or professor that I am aware of, or EHrman, or any other apologetic scholar I have read denies Jesus existed, but not just his existence, his crucifixion by Pilate, and baptism by John, and probably a few things I am forgetting.
"Yet, once in a while, I run across someone like Russell who, in spite of the evidence insists on denying that Jesus ever existed at all. One of these occasions happened during a debate sponsored by the associate students of midwestern university. My opponent, a congressional candidate for the Progressive Labor Party (Marxist) in New York, said in her opening remarks: 'Historians today have fairly well dismissed Jesus as being historical.' I couldn't believe my ears. But I was glad she said it, because she gave me the opportunity to show twenty-five hundred students that she had not done her history homework."
(McDowell, NEDV, 119-20)
"Some writers may toy with the fancy of a 'Christ-myth,' but they do not do so on the grounds of historical evidence. The historicity of Christ is as axiomatic for an unbiased historian as the historicity of Julius Caesar. It is not historians who propagate the 'Christ-myth' theories."
(Bruce, NTDATR, 72, 119)
I removed the rest to shorten this blog.
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