A round-table discussion on Jesus of Nazareth featuring Gabriele Boccaccini, Saeed Ahmed Khan, Charles Mabee and Robert M. Price. Moderated by Scott DeGregorio.
This event was a farce. Price is was the worst. This was NOT a Historical discussion of Christ. It has been proven that Christ was crucified and resurrected. Christianity began.
Dion Sanchez Not always. It depends on where the burden of proof lies. His books make a good case against the claims of the Gospels in his books. I don’t agree with a lot of his claims, but he makes very good points. He’s worth reading.
Indeed it was just an outright rejection of any viewpoint not her own. It is something I see all the time. I am usually told afterwards I am going to hell.
Also, there are 27 books in the New Testament not, "26 books in the bible". Lack of knowledge is one thing, to not seek additional knowledge out of stubbornness is another.
The first three speakers ignored the topic: historical Jesus. The third Christian speaker claimed it was a good thing for verifiability that Matthew differs so much from other gospels. Matthew claims an army of zombie saints marched on the city. He claimed a 3 hour solar eclipse covered the world. No other gospel recorded this. None of the 121 historians recorded them. None of the Chinese astronomers recorded the eclipse. To me, that is extremely strong evidence Matthew is a tall tale. That means the bible is not inerrant. That means the creator of the universe did not write it. That means it is just hearsay five levels deep. That means it is not authoritative. The Christian speaker also claimed you should cling to both the historical objective truth and to faith, which is defined as believing what you know is not so. What possible advantage is there to believing lies?
You are wrong on multiple counts here. Matthew did NOT claim "an army of zombie saints marched on the city." He claimed that dead saints were seen by people in the city. We do not know for how long they were seen, nor do we know how many there were. Presumably, it was a limited number of saints, and only for a short period of time - perhaps only one instance. Matthew interpreted this event as meaning that the tombs must have been opened and the saints rose from the dead. But Matthew was not an eyewitness to this happening, nor did he claim to be! "An army of zombie saints marched on the city" is your interpretation; it is not something that Matthew recorded. There are plenty of other explanations for what Matthew ACTUALLY recorded. The individuals in the city who believed they had seen saints could have seen them in a vision or religious experience, for example. This would explain the record that Matthew actually wrote down. It is also not surprising that other historians did not record this event, given its extremely limited scope - it occurred only in one city, to a limited number of people, presumably only on one day. Considering how few sources we have surviving from antiquity, it is entirely unsurprising that the record of such a limited event would come down to us in only one extant source. Matthew did NOT claim that "a 3 hour solar eclipse covered the world". That would be entirely anachronistic, as ancient peoples knew nothing of "solar eclipses". What Matthew did record, is that darkness covered "the land" NOT "the world." The word Matthew used here is γῆ (Strong's 1093). Translated "country" or "region" in Matthew 9:31, this word is used in the Septuagint to translate the Hebrew אֶרֶץ (eretz) which in Jewish literature usually refers to the land of Israel. Matthew never claimed that the darkness "covered the world." 9 times in his gospel he uses the word kosmoß to refer to the whole world, but here he intentionally chooses a word of much more limited scope. The phenomenon Matthew recorded could be described as a local meteorological event; it is not necessrily a solar eclipse. "A 3 hour solar eclipse covered the world" is your interpretation. It is NOT what Matthew wrote. A local meteorological event affecting only Jerusalem for an extremely limited period of time would not have enough significance to gain the attention of other historians, thus it is entirely unsurprising that we have only one extant source for it. It was significant to Matthew because of the timing of when it occurred in relation to Jesus' death. But this correlation would have been unknown to historians outside Jerusalem.
Michael Lawrence writes that the "Mythological Jesus" was placed in a historical time setting with Pontius Pilate, John the Baptist etc to accommodate a "prophecy" justification in Daniel. Jesus was born into the world 70 years prior to the Temple destruction. It represented a solution to the change from Temple focus to the personal Savior sin forgiver.
Why do people need to ascribe conflict to things like this? This sort of thinking is what holds us back from understanding. I happen to lean towards Dr. Price's way of thinking on this subject, but this is in no way some sort of contest. Its a sharing of thoughts, theories and learning. Please stop the "winner" nonsense.
Your denial of a Creator is what’s stunning. Everything in creation when thought simple ends up being infinitely more complex. Complexity is evidence of a Creator.
There is not one written eyewitness account of Jesus during his lifetime. Strange since he was famous at birth, because wise men expected to see the future king of Jews who was born from a virgin married mother. Every leading Christian scholar since Erasmus, five hundred years ago, has maintained that the gospels were originally written in Greek from 70 to 140 CE (Mark after the year 70, Luke about 110, Matthew about 130, and John no earlier than 140 CE). This proves that they were not written by Christ's apostles, disciples or by any of the early Christians. Others say: “There is no proof of the Gospels existing before 130 CE” Jesus is depicted as hugely popular in the gospels. Yet he is unrecorded by non-Biblical historians. Paul was the first one to write about Jesus around 60CE; but he, like everyone else, never saw Jesus. He experienced a vision of the resurrected Jesus. John Gresham Machen wrote: The establishment of Christianity as a world religion, to almost as great an extent as any great historical movement can be ascribed to one man, was the work of Paul. I also read that the history of the first three popes was invented because they never existed. All myth! Seek the truth!
Dr. Price has answered on many occasions the question ,"James the brother of the lord." please read his books, and another great book to read is Earl Doherty's" The jesus puzzle."
It appears to me that there is a tremendous pro bias in favor of fundamentalist Christian academics scholars, and against Jewish and/or Muslim academic scholars when discussing the historical Jesus. However the reality is that primary Jewish, secondary Muslim and tertiary Christian scholars are for a variety of reasons the proper order when discussing the historical Jesus in my opinion. Whether we like it or not Jesus constructed or real was a Jew rooted in what is Israel today.
So. Much time is taken up with introductions. Please start the debates more promptly and please speakers prepare your material so that it is concise and simple so that it can be understood.
The young man during questions with the necklace of the gold cross is a true believer:) HA! The difference between faith and science is summed up because of his question.
24:00 The fact that Quran speaks about The Holy Book stories in a way that the public knows the stories, tells us that the public are not the Pagans in Mecca or Medina, but rather from the Levant (Iraq, Syria, Jordan). Those people were already Christians.
Religion intimidates those who fall for it, with that talk of eternal suffering in a hereafter. Having been raised in a Christian culture, I finally had enough of the stories and felt comfortable entertaining thoughts such as the following ... Had Jesus existed, he would not have been a great man, as (within theology) he would have supported his father-god's will to reject unrepentant sinners to suffer for eternity. If my father had such a law put in place, I would reject my invisible father, and say, "Who are you to judge souls that you created, knowing ahead of time that you were going to reject and punish for eternity? Are you insane?"
What Saeed failed to say is that Muslims believe that Mary, Maryam, the daughter of Amram was the very same as the sister of Moses who lived 1200 before Jesus. Balderdash, the Koran is full of Balderdash. However, there is one idea uniquely pointed out by the Koran that is likely to be true; Jesus did not die on the cross.
LOL. Arguments from silence show a bias toward the NT. Who wrote about Ceasar fighting the Gallic Wars besides a single author and that is accepted by historians.
Nonsense. Gabriele (the guy on the left) isn't an apologist. He's not a Christian. He's an expert on 2nd Temple Judaism. He just sees the evidence pointing more in favor of there being a historical character at the core of the story. You can't just label anyone who's not a mythicst an "apologist using sleight of hand" just because they disagree with you.
scottbignell He never used any evidence other than the bible. That is not evidence. If you can use that I can use the Book of the Dead. So Horus and Osiris is real?
I don't see how you can read the works of Paul and think he believed in anything other than a celestial Jesus. Being that his works are the first we have and he blatantly says the other apostles got their "teachings" the same way he did, through revelation. He outright says that he didn't get his teachings from man. Meaning everything he learned he learned from a celestial Jesus. If the other apostles got theirs the same way then the whole cult was built on these visions. Given the obvious fiction that is in the gospels (and acts) I don't see how anyone can argue for any truth in those works. It's baffling to me.
Krishna is certified in the book of Esther as One of the Princes in the Empire that ranged from India to Ethiopia Erythreen antiquity wasn't born and they were. 🕉☸♾☯⚕☮☪✝☦🀄💠
Poseidon was named Jeshua two thousand years ago. The difference between the depictions of Jesus and Poseidon is that Poseidon has blond hair and blue eyes. Pose-idon also never whipped any money changers out of the temple because he is a money changer. He is also not the one who is being scapegoated for the world's sins either.
It seemed like Bob Price was the only one that provided any information. The first guy argued that Jesus was a Jew, I don't see how that could have ever been in question. The Muslim guy talked about the Muslims having a different view of Jesus. So what? What does that have to do with the historical Jesus? The other two guys didn't really say anything IMO other than the fact that they were happy to be there. I can't even remember one fact that they presented related to a historical Jesus.
3. "𝐽𝑒𝑠𝑢𝑠 𝑏𝑒𝑔𝑎𝑛 𝑎𝑠 𝑎𝑛 𝑎𝑙𝑙𝑒𝑔𝑜𝑟𝑖𝑐𝑎𝑙, 𝑠𝑦𝑚𝑏𝑜𝑙𝑖𝑐 𝑓𝑖𝑔𝑢𝑟𝑒 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑀𝑒𝑠𝑠𝑖𝑎ℎ 𝑤ℎ𝑜 𝑔𝑜𝑡 'ℎ𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑜𝑟𝑖𝑐𝑖𝑠𝑒𝑑' 𝑖𝑛𝑡𝑜 𝑎𝑛 𝑎𝑐𝑡𝑢𝑎𝑙 𝑝𝑒𝑟𝑠𝑜𝑛 𝑑𝑒𝑠𝑝𝑖𝑡𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑓𝑎𝑐𝑡 ℎ𝑒 𝑛𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑟 𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑙𝑙𝑦 𝑒𝑥𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑒𝑑" This idea has been presented in most detail by another amateur theorist in yet another self-published book: R.G. Price's Jesus - A Very Jewish Myth(2007). Unlike "Acharya S" and, to a lesser extent Doherty, Price at least takes account of the fact that the Jesus stories and the first members of the Jesus sect are completely and fundamentally Jewish, so fantasies about Egyptian myths or Greek Middle Platonic philosophy are not going to work as points of origin for them. According to this version of Jesus Mythicism, Jesus was an idealisation of what the Messiah was to be like who got turned into a historical figure largely by mistake and misunderstanding. Several of the same objections to Doherty's thesis can be made about this one - if this was the case, why are there no remnants of debates with or condemnations of those who believed the earlier version and maintained there was no historical Jesus at all? And why don't any of Christianity's enemies use the fact that the original Jesus sect didn't believe in a historical Jesus as an argument against the new version of the sect? Did everyone just forget? More tellingly, if the Jesus stories arose out of ideas about and expectations of the Messiah, it is very odd that Jesus doesn't fit those expectations better. Despite Christian claims to the contrary, the first Christians had to work very hard to convince fellow Jews that Jesus was the Messiah precisely because he didn't conform to these expectations. Most importantly, there was absolutely no tradition or Messianic expectation that told of the Messiah being executed and then rising from the dead - this first appears with Christianity and has no Jewish precedent at all. Far from evolving from established Messianic prophecies and known elements in the scripture, the first Christians had to scramble to find anything at all which looked vaguely like a "prophecy" of this unexpected and highly unMessianic event. That the centre and climax of the story of Jesus would be based on his shameful execution and death makes no sense if it evolved out of Jewish expectations about the Messiah, since they contained nothing about any such idea. This climax to the story only makes sense if it actually happened, and then his followers had to find totally new and largely strained and contrived "scriptures" which they then claimed "predicted" this outcome, against all previous expectation. Price's thesis fails because Jesus' story doesn't conform to Jewish myths enough. 4. "𝐽𝑒𝑠𝑢𝑠 𝑤𝑎𝑠 𝑛𝑜𝑡 𝑎 𝐽𝑒𝑤𝑖𝑠ℎ 𝑝𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑐ℎ𝑒𝑟 𝑎𝑡 𝑎𝑙𝑙 𝑏𝑢𝑡 𝑤𝑎𝑠 𝑠𝑜𝑚𝑒𝑜𝑛𝑒 𝑒𝑙𝑠𝑒 𝑜𝑟 𝑎𝑛 𝑎𝑚𝑎𝑙𝑔𝑎𝑚 𝑜𝑓 𝑝𝑒𝑜𝑝𝑙𝑒 𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑏𝑖𝑛𝑒𝑑 𝑖𝑛𝑡𝑜 𝑜𝑛𝑒 𝑓𝑖𝑔𝑢𝑟𝑒 𝑖𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝐶ℎ𝑟𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑖𝑎𝑛 𝑡𝑟𝑎𝑑𝑖𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛" This is the least popular of the Jesus Myth hypotheses, but versions of it are argued by Italian amateur theorist Francesco Carotta (𝐽𝑒𝑠𝑢𝑠 𝑤𝑎𝑠 𝐶𝑎𝑒𝑠𝑎𝑟: 𝑂𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝐽𝑢𝑙𝑖𝑎𝑛 𝑂𝑟𝑖𝑔𝑖𝑛 𝑜𝑓 𝐶ℎ𝑟𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑖𝑎𝑛𝑖𝑡𝑦. 𝐴𝑛 𝐼𝑛𝑣𝑒𝑠𝑡𝑖𝑔𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑣𝑒 𝑅𝑒𝑝𝑜𝑟𝑡 - 2005)), computer programmer Joseph Atwill (𝐶𝑎𝑒𝑠𝑎𝑟'𝑠 𝑀𝑒𝑠𝑠𝑖𝑎ℎ: 𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝑅𝑜𝑚𝑎𝑛 𝐶𝑜𝑛𝑠𝑝𝑖𝑟𝑎𝑐𝑦 𝑡𝑜 𝐼𝑛𝑣𝑒𝑛𝑡 𝐽𝑒𝑠𝑢𝑠 - 2005) and accountant Daniel Unterbrink (𝐽𝑢𝑑𝑎𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝐺𝑎𝑙𝑖𝑙𝑒𝑎𝑛: 𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝐹𝑙𝑒𝑠ℎ 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝐵𝑙𝑜𝑜𝑑 𝐽𝑒𝑠𝑢𝑠 - 2004). Carotta claims Jesus was actually Julius Caesar and imposed on Jewish tradition as part of the cult of the 𝐷𝑖𝑣𝑖𝑢𝑠 𝐽𝑢𝑙𝑖𝑢𝑠. Atwill claims Jesus was actually the deliberate creation of the Emperor Titus, imposed on Judaism in the same way. Neither do a very good job of substantiating these claims or of explaining why the Romans then turned around, as early as 64 AD (fifteen years before Titus became emperor) and began persecuting the cult they supposedly created. No scholar takes these theories or that of Unterbrink seriously. No scholar also argues that Jesus was an amalgam of various Jewish preachers or other figures of the time. That is because there is nothing in the evidence to indicate this. This ideas has never been argued in any detailed form by anyone at all, scholar or Jesus myth amateur theorist, but it is something some who don't want to subscribe to the idea that "Jesus Christ" was based on a real person resorts to so that they can put some sceptical distance between the Christian claims and anything or anyone historical. It seems to be a purely rhetorically-based idea, with no substance and no argument behind it.
Also, I have been visited by Jesus 3 times and on one occasion, he said to me in a sad voice, "I didn't come here to create religion". He was a Great Messenger and interestingly enough, his beautiful sayings are so close to what Buddha said. Well, after all, in his missing years, hevwent to study in India, Persia, Kashmir and I believe Tibet..He began his studies with the Essenes of whom the jewish people would go to for healing.
Some seem to argue against there being an historical Jesus by pointing out contradictions in what is attributed to Jesus. But could not these contradictions be taken as evidence that there were multiple "Jesus"s? That there was a plurality of personages whose stories came to be combined into a single figure in the popular account? Perhaps if you believed more in Him you would be less worried about what people said about Him or what people said that He said or did.
Ibelieve Jesus existed as ahuman being just compare mythical religions we are told about Jesus as ahuman being with flesh and blood with parents just compare to mythical stories of mithra Vishnu etc its not the same Jesus existed
Why would stories about a mythical character contradict? why are there contradictions in the stories about superman? 1. they are written by people who never talked to each other. 2. there was no actual life to anchor the stories. Everyone is making everything up. Compare the contradictions in two biographies of the same person and two fantasy stories about a the same fictitious character. What he is doing is the cheapest, most dishonest apologetics.
What a con job and false advertising! The first two speakers clearly talk about the Christ of the scriptures; not the remotest attempt to look at Jesus by the approaches contemporary historiography. I did not stay on to listen to the subsequent ones, so I can only guess that they went along the same lines.
Would have been interesting to know how Price would have responded to what in my view is the best evidence for the existence of Jesus,that Paul mentiones James,the broother of the lord.But instead Boccaccini goes down another path which Robert elegantly answers.
Lars Skogn Every christian was called brother of the lord. Receiving baptism made you a brother of the lord. He discusses this topic with Carrier in other videos you can find on youtube. Paul is the worst possible source for historicity because he never never mentions anything historical about Jesus but he describes him as a mystical figure.
no he says he got a vision and the met with the disciples of the Jesus we just think he might have learnt more about the life of Jesus if he didn't already know
My take is that Jesus could easily have been made up with the imagination since my experience with Christianity is that it is flooded with delusional thinking. Not necessarily lies, per say, but rather absurdities extraordinair.
Please don't tell me these people are for real. I have been on this earth for 55 years and never did I think I would run into so many fouls in such a small room
I enjoyed this. I agree mostly with Gabriele, in that I think some sort of historical Jesus existed - that is, as a Jewish cult leader who preached about the incoming "Kingdom of God" who was crucified under Pilate for being perceived as a political threat, and whose story became the stuff of legend. Price goes to great lengths to shut down any opposing piece of evidence or argument, but ultimately I think he bites off more than he can chew.
Most of the evidence that compells me to think there was a historical figure is perhaps best described in Bart Ehrman's "Did Jesus Exist?". I couldn't be bothered going through each and every point. Read the book. And if you don't think what is presented is evidence, let me know.
Yeah. Shame. He should have read it first ;-) OK, that was a cheap shot. Like I said somewhere else on this page: I like Carrier and Bob Price. I think they do a great job exposing some of the potential weaknesses in the mainstream historical understanding of the birth of Christianity. They keep people like Ehrman on their toes. I just don't find their alternative explanations of how Christianity arose without a historical figure any more compelling. Indeed I find them even more stretched. They make great negative criticisms, but I don't find their positive arguments very persuasive. If you've got a particular issue you want to address, let me know and I'll tell you my thoughts.
scottbignell I have read it, however I have also read the early christian writings as well. There is NO historical evidence outside of the bible. With this we could assume all religious figures are real since a religious texts states they are.
Third speaker (a Jesus Seminar alumnus, one takes it) hints at ideas in passing. He juggles balls, but drops them. Best take-away, the use of a colleague's "fifth gospel" term, but the term goes nowhere. Like his rugged term "faith." "Wrong turn at Albuquerque." Next!
The problem with Mr. Price is he kept apologising for his opinion and just kept repeating "There is no historical Jesus". He would have done much better to enumerate more reasons for his position.
Fourth speaker, well, ... presents ideas and happens to displace orthodoxy with heresy. The historical Jesus is a hypothesis with weak support. Myth Theory fits the facts. Bayes probability, nicely and edibly phrased as "which is more likely.." is convincing. Believe in Santa if you like, but Robert M Price has delivered the presents.
Robert Price presented an utterly implausible & unsubstantiated hypothesis about the origins of Christianity that was properly refuted by Gabriele Boccaccini. He got spanked & rightfully so.
To uncomplicate things a Jew is a bloodline and heritage. A christian is a religious creed and ideology. Somebody can definitely be a Jewish Christian if they are not a bigot. I believe they are called messianic jews nowadays 🤔
Jesus is a historical figure but there are many that have claimed to be Jesus thru out history and that manipulating Jesus is who famous ppl call johnny
The second gentleman talking about the area looking cheeses and Hitler making Jesus odd to be what their regime wanted him to be look like it's completely irrelevant to seeing it Jesus was real or if Jesus was alive and crucified is it two different topics and you guys are jumping all around it not saying on one specific
Dr Price says that those who tend to believe the historical Jesus existed are fooling themselves, suggesting all the miracles and other such stories can be found in the Old Testament. Well, not really. His personality is entirely different from any OT prophet, as was his message in many respects. He also says that any believers are unable to come logically to a conclusion because they are prejudiced towards belief. But his argument is likewise circular - since he disbelieves from the start. (Many scholars of the Bible tend to think it most likely that a historical figure existed, even if they are personally atheistic).
I didn't know that the Muslim point of view included several civilizational timelines. That's cool. I wish more scolars outside the field of physics would apply some of the well agreed upon concepts of quantum mechanics and quantum field theory. Basically, I'm disappointed that nearly everyone still seems to believe in a binary, right or wrong timeline of history. The fact is, that the past doesn't exist and we just make up stories of a present that once was. There is no "objective" past. It's all just constructs of our imaginations.
Non-Christian References to Jesus as Historical Figure Many Christian apologists vastly overstate the number of ancient non-Christian writers who attest to the existence of Jesus. This is partly because they are not simply showing that a mere Jewish preacher existed, but are arguing for the existence of the "Jesus Christ" of Christian doctrine: a supposedly supernatural figure who allegedly performed amazing public miracles in front of audiences of thousands of witnesses. It could certainly be argued that such a wondrous figure would have been noticed outside of Galilee and Judea and so should have been widely noted as well. So Christian apologists often cite a long list of writers who mention Jesus, usually including Josephus, Pliny the Younger, Tacitus, Suetonius, Lucian, Thallus and several others. But of these only Tacitus and Josephus actually mention Jesus as a historical person - the others are all simply references to early Christianity, some of which mention the "Christ" that was the focus of its worship.If we are simply noting the existence of Jesus as a human Jewish preacher, we are not required to produce more mentions of him than we would expect of comparable figures. And what we find is that we have about as much evidence for his existence (outside any Christian writings) as we have for other Jewish preachers, prophets and Messianic claimants of the time. The two non-Christian writers who mention him as a historical person are Josephus and Tacitus.
Tacitus, the Roman historian's birth year at 64 C.E., puts him well after the alleged life of Jesus. He gives a brief mention of a "Christus" in his Annals (Book XV, Sec. 44), which he wrote around 109 C.E. He gives no source for his material. Although many have disputed the authenticity of Tacitus' mention of Jesus, the very fact that his birth happened after the alleged Jesus and wrote the Annals during the formation of Christianity, shows that his writing can only provide us with hearsay accounts. Josephus Flavius, the Jewish historian, lived as the earliest non-Christian who mentions a Jesus. Although many scholars think that Josephus' short accounts of Jesus (in Antiquities) came from interpolations perpetrated by a later Church father (most likely, Eusebius), Josephus' birth in 37 C.E. (well after the alleged crucifixion of Jesus), puts him out of range of an eyewitness account. Moreover, he wrote Antiquities in 93 C.E., after the first gospels got written! Therefore, even if his accounts about Jesus came from his hand, his information could only serve as hearsay. "...the vast majority of scholars since the early 1800s have said that this quotation is not by Josephus, but rather is a later Christian insertion in his works. In other words, it is a forgery, rejected by scholars."
"I believe in science" no. I practice science, logical thought, and understand facts The very use of the word belief, means and admits that you dont know and you are wrong
Meh...By this standard, Caesar,Hannibal, Khan, Aristotle, none of these guys existed either.. “scholars”like these need to be sharply critiqued/criticism...they just seek to develop a new paradigm in the study of Christian origins, ..scholars who have claim that Jesus was a mythical, not historical, figure, and that the traditional, Jesus-centered paradigm for studying the origins of Christianity must be replaced by an actual science of Christian origins. If you haven’t folks actually read New Testament textual scholarship you really shouldn’t overuse" Ehrman mainly because you might fail to note certain cautions he makes, and his specific caution against thinking that your conspiracy exists... Jesus..
There are independent sources that verify the existence of the personages you reference. For example, we can look to Chinese, Islamic, or Byzantine sources to verify the existence of Chinggis/Genghis Khan. Furthermore, there is genetic and archaeological evidence.
Jesus was actually King Izas-Manu(el) of Edessa, who started the Jewish Revolt against Rome in AD 68, and who wore a ceremonial Crown of Thorns. But King Izas-Manu lost this war and was crucified (but may have survived). This is all taken from real history. The secular account of this war (Jewish War) and fictional account of this war (gospels) were both written by Saul-Josephus (yes, Saul was Josephus). They were created as Roman propaganda - to tame the rebellious East. See "Cleopatra to Christ" or "Jesus, King of Edessa" for an explanation.
Good idea for a round table discussion. First speaker.... sounds sooo intense, angry, and shrill that he seems to disqualify himself, since one cannot hear the ideas behind the raw emotion. Second speaker... let's see how he/she does.
𝗨𝗻𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘃𝗶𝗻𝗰𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗔𝗿𝗴𝘂𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘀 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗮 𝗠𝘆𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗰 𝗢𝗿𝗶𝗴𝗶𝗻 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗝𝗲𝘀𝘂𝘀 Many of the arguments for a Mythic Jesus that some laypeople think sound highly convincing are exactly the same ones that scholars consider laughably weak, even though they sound plausible to those without a sound background in the study of the First Century. For example: 1. "𝑇ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒 𝑎𝑟𝑒 𝑛𝑜 𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑚𝑝𝑜𝑟𝑎𝑟𝑦 𝑎𝑐𝑐𝑜𝑢𝑛𝑡𝑠 𝑜𝑟 𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛𝑠 𝑜𝑓 𝐽𝑒𝑠𝑢𝑠. 𝑇ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒 𝑠ℎ𝑜𝑢𝑙𝑑 𝑏𝑒, 𝑠𝑜 𝑐𝑙𝑒𝑎𝑟𝑙𝑦 𝑛𝑜 𝐽𝑒𝑠𝑢𝑠 𝑒𝑥𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑒𝑑." This seems a good argument to many, since modern people tend to leave behind them a lot of evidence they existed (birth certificates, financial documents, school records) and prominent modern people have their lives documented by the media almost daily. So it sounds suspicious to people that there are no contemporary records at all detailing or even mentioning Jesus. But our sources for anyone in the ancient world are scarce and rarely are they contemporaneous - they are usually written decades or even centuries after the fact. Worse still, the more obscure and humble in origin the person is, the less likely that there will be any documentation about them or even a fleeting reference to them at all. For example, few people in the ancient world were as prominent, influential, significant and famous as the Carthaginian general Hannibal. He came close to crushing the Roman Republic, was one of the greatest generals of all time and was famed throughout the ancient world for centuries after his death down to today. Yet how many contemporary mentions of Hannibal do we have? Zero. We have none. So if someone as famous and significant as Hannibal has no surviving contemporary references to him in our sources, does it really make sense to base an argument about the existence or non-existence of a Galilean peasant preacher on the lack of contemporary references to him? Clearly it does not. So while this seems like a good argument, a better knowledge of the ancient world and the nature of our evidence and sources shows that it's actually extremely weak. 2. "𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝑎𝑛𝑐𝑖𝑒𝑛𝑡 𝑤𝑟𝑖𝑡𝑒𝑟 𝑋 𝑠ℎ𝑜𝑢𝑙𝑑 ℎ𝑎𝑣𝑒 𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛𝑒𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝐽𝑒𝑠𝑢𝑠, 𝑦𝑒𝑡 ℎ𝑒 𝑑𝑜𝑒𝑠𝑛'𝑡 𝑑𝑜 𝑠𝑜. 𝑇ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑠𝑖𝑙𝑒𝑛𝑐𝑒 𝑠ℎ𝑜𝑤𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑛𝑜 𝐽𝑒𝑠𝑢𝑠 𝑒𝑥𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑒𝑑." An "argument from silence" is a tricky thing to use effectively. To do so, it's not enough to show that a writer, account or source is silent on a given point - you also have to show that it shouldn't be before this silence can be given any significance. So if someone claims their grandfather met Winston Churchill yet a thorough search of the grandfather's letters and diaries of the time show no mention of this meeting, an argument from silence could be presented to say that the meeting never happened. This is because we could expect such a meeting to be mentioned in those documents. Some "Jesus Mythicists" have tried to argue that certain ancient writers "should" have mentioned Jesus and did not and so tried to make an argument from silence on this basis. In 1909 the American "freethinker" John Remsberg came up with a list of 42 ancient writers that he claimed "should" have mentioned Jesus and concluded their silence showed no Jesus ever existed. But the list has been widely criticised for being contrived and fanciful. Why exactly, for example, Lucanus - a writer whose works consist of a single poem and a history of the civil war between Caesar and Pompey (in the century before Jesus' time) "should" have mentioned Jesus is hard to see. And the same can be said for most of the other writers on Remsberg's list. Some others, however, are more reasonable at first glance. Philo Judaeus was a Jew in Alexandria who wrote philosophy and theology and who was a contemporary of Jesus who also mentions events in Judea and makes reference to other figures we know from the gospel accounts, such as Pontius Pilate. So it makes far more sense that he "should" mention Jesus than some poets in far off Rome. But it is hard to see why even Philo would be interested in mentioning someone like Jesus, given that he also makes no mentions of any of the other Jewish preachers, prophets, faith healers and Messianic claimants of the time, of which there were many. If Philo had mentioned Anthronges and Theudas, or Hillel and Honi or John the Baptist and the "Samaritan Prophet" but didn't mention Jesus, then a solid argument from silence could be made. But given that Philo seems to have had no interest at all in any of the various people like Jesus, the fact that he doesn't mention Jesus either carries little or no weight. In fact, there is only one writer of the time who had any interest in such figures, who also had little interest for Roman and Greek writers. He was the Jewish historian Josephus, who is our sole source for virtually all of the Jewish preachers, prophets, faith healers and Messianic claimants of this time. If there is any writer who should mention Jesus, it's Josephus. The problem for the "Jesus Mythicists" is ... he 𝙙𝙤𝙚𝙨. Twice, in fact. He does do so in Antiquities XVIII.3.4 and again in Antiquities XX.9.1. Mythicists take comfort in the fact that the first of these references has been added to by later Christian scribes, so they dismiss it as a wholesale interpolation. But the majority of modern scholars disagree, arguing there is solid evidence to believe that Josephus did make a mention of Jesus here and that it was added to by Christians to help bolster their arguments against Jewish opponents. That debate aside, the Antiquities XX.9.1 mention of Jesus is universally considered genuine and that alone sinks the Mythicist case (see below for more details). 3. "𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝑒𝑎𝑟𝑙𝑖𝑒𝑠𝑡 𝐶ℎ𝑟𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑖𝑎𝑛 𝑡𝑟𝑎𝑑𝑖𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛𝑠 𝑚𝑎𝑘𝑒 𝑛𝑜 𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑜𝑓 𝑎 ℎ𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑜𝑟𝑖𝑐𝑎𝑙 𝐽𝑒𝑠𝑢𝑠 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑐𝑙𝑒𝑎𝑟𝑙𝑦 𝑤𝑜𝑟𝑠ℎ𝑖𝑝𝑝𝑒𝑑 𝑎 𝑝𝑢𝑟𝑒𝑙𝑦 ℎ𝑒𝑎𝑣𝑒𝑛𝑙𝑦, 𝑚𝑦𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑐-𝑠𝑡𝑦𝑙𝑒 𝑏𝑒𝑖𝑛𝑔. 𝑇ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒 𝑎𝑟𝑒 𝑛𝑜 𝑟𝑒𝑓𝑒𝑟𝑒𝑛𝑐𝑒𝑠 𝑡𝑜 𝑎𝑛 𝑒𝑎𝑟𝑡ℎ𝑙𝑦 𝐽𝑒𝑠𝑢𝑠 𝑖𝑛 𝑎𝑛𝑦 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑒𝑎𝑟𝑙𝑖𝑒𝑠𝑡 𝑁𝑒𝑤 𝑇𝑒𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑡 𝑡𝑒𝑥𝑡𝑠, 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑙𝑒𝑡𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑠 𝑜𝑓 𝑃𝑎𝑢𝑙." Since many people who read Mythicist arguments have never actually read the letters of Paul, this one sounds convincing as well. Except it simply isn't true. While Paul was writing letters about matters of doctrine and disputes and so wasn't giving a basic lesson in who Jesus was in any of this letters, he does make references to Jesus' earthly life in many places. He says Jesus was born as a human, of a human mother and born a Jew (Galatians 4:4). He repeats that he had a "human nature" and that he was a human descendant of King David (Romans 1:3) of of Abraham (Gal 3:16), of Israelites (Romans 9:4-5) and of Jesse (Romans 15:12). He refers to teachings Jesus made during his earthly ministry on divorce (1Cor. 7:10), on preachers (1Cor. 9:14) and on the coming apocalypse (1Thess. 4:15). He mentions how he was executed by earthly rulers (1Cor. 2:8) that he was crucified (1 Cor 1:23, 2:2, 2:8, 2 Cor 13:4) and that he died and was buried (1Cor 15:3-4).And he says he had an earthly, physical brother called James who Paul himself had met (Galatians1:19). So Mythicist theorists then have to tie themselves in knots to "explain" how, in fact, a clear reference to Jesus being "born of a woman" actually means he wasn't born of a woman and how when Paul says Jesus was "according to the flesh, a descendant of King David" this doesn't mean he was a human and the human descendant of a human king. These contrived arguments are so weak they tend to only convince the already convinced. It's this kind of contrivance that consigns this thesis to the fringe.
The three academic presenters seemingly presented tepidly warmed-over canned speeches. Prof. Boccaccini seemed to mainly reassert the same one or two points grounded only in his own authority as an academic specialist. He never direvtly engaged with Dr. Price. Prof. Ahmed Khan seemingly was extremely careful not to say anything offensive (contradictory) to believers. Prof. Mabee spoke primarily as a believer. All three were paralyzed by Dr. Price's well-grounded but unorthodox assertions. Price was the only one who spoke on the given subject of historical Jesus. And he was the only one who grounded his assertions in specifics. The poor students in the audience who were religious believers and who spoke out obviously were not prepared to hear independent scholarship from Dr. Price. They should have been given a stronger trigger warning at the outset.
Jesus was the first Christian. This dialogue is over 100 years old. They should all get other careers. Also, Check out Adam Green's No More News Channel!
"Alexamenos worships his god" - A Roman graffito mocks the idea of a crucified god en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexamenos_graffito But probably the best example of an element in the story which was so awkward for the early Christians that it simply has to be historical is the crucifixion. The idea of a Messiah who dies was totally unheard of and utterly alien to any Jewish tradition prior to the beginning of Christianity, but the idea of a Messiah who was crucified was not only bizarre, it was absurd. According to Jewish tradition, anyone who was "hanged on a tree" was to be considered accursed by Yahweh and this was one of the reasons crucifixion was considered particularly abhorrent to Jews. The concept of a crucified Messiah, therefore, was totally bizarre and absurd.It was equally weird to non-Jews. Crucifixion was considered the most shameful and abhorrent of deaths, so much so that one of the privileges of Roman citizenship is that citizens could never be crucified. The idea of a crucified god, therefore, was absurd and bizarre. This was so much the case that the early Christians avoided any depictions of Jesus on the cross - the first depictions of the Crucifixion appear in the Fourth Century, after Christian emperors banned crucifixion and it began to lose its stigma. It's significant that the earliest depiction of the crucifixion of Jesus that we have is a graffito from Rome showing a man worshipping a crucified figure with the head of a donkey with the mocking caption "Alexamenos worships his god". The idea of a crucified god was, quite literally, ridiculous. Paul acknowledges how absurd the idea of a crucified Messiah was in 1Cor 1:23, where he says it "is a stumbling block to the Jews and an absurdity to the gentiles". The accounts of Jesus' crucifixion in the gospels also show how awkward the nature of their Messiah's death was for the earliest Christians. They are all full of references to texts in the Old Testament as ways of demonstrating that, far from being an absurdity, this was what was supposed to happen to the Messiah. But none of the texts used were considered prophecies of the Messiah before Christianity came along and some of them are highly forced. The "suffering servant" passages in Isaiah 53 are pressed into service as "prophecies" of the crucifixion, since they depict a figure being falsely accused, rejected and given up to be "pierced .... as a guilt offering". But the gospels don't reference other parts of the same passage which don't fit their story at all, such as where it is said this figure will "prolong his days and look upon his offspring".Clearly the gospel writers were going to some effort to find some kind of scriptural basis for this rather awkward death for their group's leader, one that let them maintain their belief that he was the Messiah. Again, this makes most sense if there was a historical Jesus and he was crucified, leaving his followers with this awkward problem. If there was no historical Jesus at all, it becomes very difficult to explain where this bizarre, unprecedented and awkwardly inconvenient element in the story comes from. It's hard to see why anyone would invent the idea of a crucified Messiah and create these problems. And given that there was no precedent for a crucified Messiah, it's almost impossible to see this idea evolving out of earlier Jewish traditions. The most logical explanation is that it's in the story, despite its vast awkwardness, because it 𝗵𝗮𝗽𝗽𝗲𝗻𝗲𝗱.
Sacrificed and resurrected or revived demigods were a staple of Hellenistic mystery cults, and the various Christian cults of the first through third century fit that mold very well.
Execution of false messiahs was a common place. Tacitus, Sueton and Flavius Josephus considered the Roman emperor Vespasian to be the messiah the Jews waited for.
How is it important whether jesus real or fake. How a individual lived two thousands years ago is relevant in todays world. We are all children of god, jesus was not alone.
It is important whether Jesus was real or fake because his message, death, Miracles,Resurrection all validate him being the Messiah mentioned in the Old Testament which help all Gods children understand their Father better.
Well there were real people who generated the ideas about god, heaven and hell at some point so does it matter if it was from a historical Jesus ? How would you work out if the theories were true? Even if Jesus walked on water or was seen alive after apparently dying how would that prove there was a heaven or hell or that Jesus had any say in an afterlife ? Where is the evidence that those weren't just made up fantasy ? I like the line by Robert M. Price that it was something from his Christian up bringing that gave him a sense of it being important to follow the truth where ever it leads no matter the cost. Well I can agree there are a few decent ideas in Christianity, depending on your interpretation of those ideas. I can even agree that there could be things in Christianity to love and revere but I think Price should have quickly followed on by adding that there are things he hates & despises about Christianity. Well i have very mixed feelings toward Christianity, both love, indifference, amusement & hate but mostly negative. That would depend on your focus though. Don't knock the village atheist. Not everyone can be as articulate & well versed as Robert Price. How many can remember all those details ?
Religious nonsense! All myth! There is not one written eyewitness account of Jesus during his lifetime. Strange since he was famous at birth, because wise men expected to see the future king of Jews who was born from a virgin married mother. Every leading Christian scholar since Erasmus, five hundred years ago, has maintained that the gospels were originally written in Greek from 70 to 140 CE (Mark after the year 70, Luke about 110, Matthew about 130, and John no earlier than 140 CE). This proves that they were not written by Christ's apostles, disciples or by any of the early Christians. Others say: “There is no proof of the Gospels existing before 130 CE” Jesus is depicted as hugely popular in the gospels. Yet he is unrecorded by non-Biblical historians. Paul was the first one to write about Jesus around 60CE; but he, like everyone else, never saw Jesus. He experienced a vision of the resurrected Jesus. All myth! Seek the truth!
1:30:21 "there's 26 books in the bible" ummm no. in the Hebrew Bible there are 39 books and in the New Testament there are 27 books. and combined there are 66 books so anyway you look at it she's wrong. and the rest of her comments were just vastly uninformed interpretations and rantings about nothing
Concerning Christ and Messiah: John 1: 41 ~ "He first findeth his own brother Simon, and saith unto him, We have found the Messias, which is being interpreted, the Christ." The following from 1 Corinthians 1: 17 - 31 ~ "For Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the gospel; not with wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ should be of none effect. For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God. For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent. Where is the wise? Where is the Scribe? Where is the disputer of this world? Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe. For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom: But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumbling block, and unto the Greeks foolishness; But unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God. Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. For ye see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble are called. But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God has chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty; And base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to naught things that are: That no flesh should glory in His presence. But of Him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption. That according as it is written, he that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord.
There is not one written eyewitness account of Jesus during his lifetime. Strange since he was famous at birth, because wise men expected to see the future king of Jews who was born from a virgin married mother. Every leading Christian scholar since Erasmus, five hundred years ago, has maintained that the gospels were originally written in Greek from 70 to 140 CE (Mark after the year 70, Luke about 110, Matthew about 130, and John no earlier than 140 CE). This proves that they were not written by Christ's apostles, disciples or by any of the early Christians. Others say: “There is no proof of the Gospels existing before 130 CE” Jesus is depicted as hugely popular in the gospels. Yet he is unrecorded by non-Biblical historians. Paul was the first one to write about Jesus around 60CE; but he, like everyone else, never saw Jesus. He experienced a vision of the resurrected Jesus. All myth! Seek the truth!
To Robert, if there was no histrical Christ then who was the true prophet which abolished sacrifices? If there was not this Essene master, then Paul would not have had anyone to argue against, yet it is recorded in the history erased by the Gentiles that Paul was an enemy and liar to the church, and we can see he did make his own doctrine
+Consider This I am primary based it off of the amount of literature that has survived the annals of time of 2,000 years. Paul could not of just mustered up another Godhead over the numerous pagan gods of the day without having this basis. People say that the historian Josephus does not talk about Jesus, well this is a very organized puzzle, see, Paul created Jesus Christ as a Godhead, yes like a pagan religion, but not only is there ample evidence to show that he stole the intentions of the Christ as one that will ensue through the generations, Josephus hides the historical Jesus who he calls Judas the Galilean, into many fictional characters in stories that secretly relate to real events in history. That is why some people believe that Josephus could have master minded the whole New Testament. The New Testament says James, Simon Peter, and John to be brothers of Jesus. Josephus states that they were sons of Jesus. Paul states that they were the pillars of the church, which is an Essene and Nazarene heritage, which would mean they were royal brothers. The New Testament also says they were disciples of Jesus. And everyone agrees they were apostles of Jesus. We have surviving Aramaic testimony of Jesus, we have surviving Hebrew testimony of Jesus, all of the lost and found Greek and Coptic Gnostic and Apocrypha manuscript is a testimony to enormous Gentile corruption starting from Paul, people do not know that it was all created from the secret hostility of a Gentile Godhead truly being a pious Jew who told them not to call him a Godhead, and how much they wanted to change his historical culture and background into whatever suited themselves, but that he did say such a strong and intense teaching one cannot simple make up a doctrine of many generations of truth. But we have a line of early church fathers, who generation after generation, were all looking back fascinated with the history of the church, almost all of them discredited the actual apostles and followers of Christ because they were building the church. Lost inside of all this numerous text, we have a beautiful testimony of Simon Peter, although it is still corrupt the actual words of Simon Peter have survived down to this day. Scholars do not know that there is much more surviving words from Peter than James the brother of Jesus.
+Consider This I see how you are making humor out of my thesis, which may be waking me up a little more out of my conspiratorial stupor. But however, you cannot deny such literature that has survived. We can trace a group of pious Jews who separated themselves from the Temple and went out into the wilderness to prepare the "Way" for the holy Lord and redemption of Israel. This same group deserted Temple practices, claiming to bring their own true tabernacle out into the wilderness. With their founding doctrine, and jumping a century fast forward, we can see that John the Baptist was the leader of this sect called Essenes. They were an opposition force to the family who were running the Temple, called Sadducees. Now right away, we have to stop, and we have to gather that the New Testament was written with the same language and idioms of the Dead Sea Scrolls, which were reputed to be written by this wilderness sect. In the Dead Sea Scrolls we can see how this sect evolved out in the desert for 200 years. We can also see that by this 200 years, they had witnessed the coming of the Zadok line of priests, the heavenly Prince Melchizedek, who came to save the sins of the world through faith in his Assembly of the Law. These scrolls are written by a Righteous Teacher, Interpreter of the Law, who in Aramaic words, is the exact same person as Jesus in the New Testament. It is through all this history that we can see this progression, by the time this long awaited Master had come, the Community Rule of the wilderness sect had in it's doctrine, the Lord God desires for a delectable offering of free-will, a righteous prayer of thanksgiving, as a free-will offering to the Temple which replaces the burnt offering sacrifice. If you read the early Aramaic translation of John, you will see that Judas Iscariot was a fictional character that was brought in to create a myth, and many scholars believe that, but in the Aramaic it says it right there, and that Judas handed Jesus over specifically because Jesus denied slaughtering the Passover Lamb as a sacrifice - that is the real reason why the Sadducee family encouraged the Romans that Jesus was leading a rebellion (this part I am still not sure what went on). So not only are these correlations written by centuries of history in the Dead Sea Scrolls, we have surviving doctrine from the apostles that affirm it - but the catch is that the Gentiles wanted to keep it a secret, so the literature as mostly been wiped out and the remaining is hidden - which honestly makes it more likely to be true. Now Josephus was born around 30 AD, so when he wrote his first work in AD 75 he was well aware that this movement was turning into a worldwide change, 15 years prior it has been noted historically that there was already a population of Christians in Rome. It was in Josephus's best interests, especially if he was indeed the same person as Paul as some scholars believe, be even if he wasn't -m we have to remember that Josephus was of the royal descent of the opposition Essenes, so those pious Jews that went out into the wilderness were his direct enemies - that is why he mocks them. You have to understand the hatred that Josephus had towards Judas the Galilean, surely if you read his works and understand the background I have provided - you can clearly see that it is a real puzzle, and that his words are idioms, mind you this was very very common in that day to write in idioms and secret code.
+Kevin Paul Nobody abolished sacrifices. Jewish sacrifice stopped only because the Temple was destroyed and according to the Torah, Jewish sacrifices cannot be offered anywhere else but the Temple
+Ken Scaletta Sir, you cannot just state claims without a cast support of evidence. I am already far too advanced in my historical studies. First, you have to figure out by all the evidence that nearly all the early church fathers were Greek speaking Gentile heretics, who hated Jews. You have to come by research that Paul was an enemy to the council of the community. You have to put together all the evidence that the community were the Essenes, and they were wiped out from history purposefully. I have read so much on this and I have put together these evidences to prove that what I am saying is correct. All of my evidences align perfectly with the historical truth and the Dead Sea Scrolls. The historical truth being the rare remaining Jewish Christian literature (if you admit Christ was a Jew you have to admit the first followers of Him were also Jewish, so why do you not observe the Jewish Christian doctrine?) All of the doctrine blatantly spells it out for us, it is just your choice to turn your eye from it. I can give you so much evidence, let me know if you want it, but again it is your choice to not listen to these words that come directly from the Jewish Christian source, before it was corrupted by Gentile followers of Paul. "But when the time began to draw near that what was wanting in the Mosaic institutions should be supplied, as we have said, and that the Prophet should appear, of whom he had foretold that He should warn them by the mercy of God to cease from sacrificing; lest haply they might suppose that on the cessation of sacrifice there was no remission of sins for them, He instituted baptism by water amongst them, in which they might be absolved from all their sins on the invocation of His name, and for the future, following a perfect life, might abide in immortality, being purified not by the blood of beasts, but by the purification of the Wisdom of God." The truth is that I just listen to Simon Peter and his disciple Clement of Rome, and you don't. "He also said, I am come to end the sacrifices and feasts of blood, and if ye cease not offering and eating of flesh and blood, the wrath of God shall not cease from you, even as it came to your fathers in the wilderness, who lusted for flesh, and they eat to their content, and were filled with rottenness." Again, I can supply endless real evidences to support my words, and you can supply nothing but an ideas. But, I am sorry to you that millions and millions of people chose to hide the truth from you, so I do have pity on you and everyone for that matter, however, God will still ask you, why did you not try harder to find the truth? Why did you not listen to my words?
Scholars who specialise in the origins of Christianity agree on very little, but they do generally agree that it is most likely that a historical preacher, on whom the Christian figure "Jesus Christ" is based, did exist. The numbers of professional scholars, out of the many thousands in this and related fields, who don't accept this consensus, can be counted on the fingers of one hand. Many may be more cautious about using the term "historical fact" about this idea, since as with many things in ancient history it is not quite as certain as that. But it is generally regarded as the best and most parsimonious explanation of the evidence and therefore the most likely conclusion that can be drawn. The opposite idea - that there was no historical Jesus at all and that "Jesus Christ" developed out of some purely mythic ideas about a non-historical, non-existent figure - has had a chequered history over the last 200 years, but has usually been a marginal idea at best. Its heyday was in the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Century, when it seemed to fit with some early anthropological ideas about religions evolving along parallel patterns and being based on shared archetypes, as characterised by Sir James Frazer's influential comparative religion study 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘎𝘰𝘭𝘥𝘦𝘯 𝘉𝘰𝘶𝘨𝘩(1890). But it fell out of favour as the Twentieth Century progressed and was barely held by any scholars at all by the 1960s. More recently the "Jesus Myth" hypothesis has experienced something of a revival, largely via the internet, blogging and "print on demand" self-publishing services. But its proponents are almost never scholars, many of them have a very poor grasp of the evidence and almost all have clear ideological objectives. Broadly speaking, they fall into two main categories: (i) New Agers claiming Christianity is actually paganism rebadged and (ii) anti-Christian atheist activists seeking to use their "exposure" of historical Jesus scholarship to undermine Christianity. Both claim that the consensus on the existence of a historical Jesus is purely due to some kind of iron-grip that Christianity still has on the subject, which has suppressed and/or ignored the idea that there was no historical Jesus at all. In fact, there are some very good reasons there is a broad scholarly consensus on the matter and that it is held by scholars across a wide range of beliefs and backgrounds, including those who are atheists and agnostics (e.g. Bart Ehrman, Maurice Casey, Paula Fredriksen) and Jews (e.g. Geza Vermes, Hyam Maccoby).
𝙅𝙤𝙨𝙚𝙥𝙝𝙪𝙨 The Jewish priestly aristocrat Joseph ben Matityahu, who took the Roman name Flavius Josephus, is our main source of information about Jewish affairs in this period and is usually the only writer of the time who makes any mention of Jewish preachers, prophets and Messianic claimants of the First Century. Not surprisingly, he mentions Jesus twice: firstly in some detail in Antiquities of the Jews XVIII.3.4 and again more briefly when mentioning the execution of Jesus' brother James in Antiquities XX.9.1. The first reference is problematic, however, as it contains elements which Josephus cannot have written and which seem to have been added later by a Christian interpolator. Here is the text, with the likely interpolations in bold: "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 𝑝𝑎𝑟𝑎𝑑𝑜𝑥𝑖𝑐𝑎𝑙 𝑑𝑒𝑒𝑑𝑠, 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." There has been a long debate about what parts of this reference to Jesus are authentic to Josephus or even if the whole passage is a wholesale interpolation. Proponents of the Jesus Myth hypothesis, naturally, opt for the idea that it is not authentic in any way, but there are strong indications that, apart from the obvious additions shown in bold above, Josephus did mention Jesus at this point in his text. To begin with, several elements in the passage are distinctively Josephean in their style and phrasing. "Now (there was) about this time ..." is used by Josephus as a way of introducing a new topic hundreds of times in his work. There are no early Christian parallels that refer to Jesus merely as "a wise man", but this is a term used by Josephus several times, eg about Solomon and Daniel. Christian writers placed a lot of emphasis on Jesus' miracles, but here the passage uses a fairly neutral term παραδόξων ἔργων - "paradoxa erga" or "paradoxical deeds". Josephus does use this phrase elsewhere about the miracles of Elisha, but the term can also mean "deeds that are difficult to interpret" and even has overtones of cautious scepticism. Finally, the use of the word φῦλον ("phylon" - "race, tribe") is not used by Christians about themselves in any works of the time, but is used by Josephus elsewhere about sects, nations or other distinct groups. Additionally, with the sole exception of Χριστιανῶν ("Christianon" - "Christians") every single word in the passage can be found elsewhere in Josephus' writings. The weight of the evidence of the vocabulary and style of the passage is heavily towards its partial authenticity. Not only does it contain distinctive phrases of Josephus that he used in similar contexts elsewhere, but these are also phrases not found in early Christian texts. And it is significantly free of terms and phrases from the gospels, which we'd expect to find if it was created wholesale by a Christian writer. So either a very clever Christian interpolator somehow managed to immerse himself in Josephus' phrasing and language, without modern concordances and dictionaries and create a passage containing distinctively Josephean phraseology, or what we have here is a genuinely Josephean passage that has simply been added to rather clumsily. As a result of this and other evidence (eg the Arabic and Syriac paraphrases of this passage which seem to come from a version before the clumsy additions by the interpolator) the consensus amongst scholars of all backgrounds is that the passage is partially genuine, simply added in a few obvious places. Louis H. Feldman's Josephus and Modern Scholarship(1984) surveys scholarship on the question from 1937 to 1980 and finds of 52 scholars on the subject, 39 considered the passage to be partially authentic. Peter Kirby has done a survey of the literature since and found that this trend has increased in recent years. He concludes "In my own reading of thirteen books since 1980 that touch upon the passage, ten out of thirteen argue the ( Antiquities of the Jews XVIII.3.4 passage) to be partly genuine, while the other three maintain it to be entirely spurious. Coincidentally, the same three books also argue that Jesus did not exist." The other mention of Jesus in Josephus, Antiquities XX.9.1, is much more straightforward, but much more of a problem for Jesus Mythicists. In it Josephus recounts a major political event that happened when he was a young man. This would have been a significant and memorable event for him, since he was only 25 at the time and it caused upheaval in his own social and political class, the priestly families of Jerusalem that included his own. In 62 AD the Roman procurator of Judea, Porcius Festus, died while in office and his replacement, Lucceius Albinus, was still on his way to Judea from Rome. This left the High Priest, Hanan ben Hanan (usually called Ananus), with a freer reign than usual. Ananus executed some Jews without Roman permission and, when this was brought to the attention of the Romans, Ananus was deposed. This deposition would have been memorable for the young Josephus, who had just returned from an embassy to Rome on the behalf of the Jerusalem priests. But what makes this passage relevant is what Josephus mentions, in passing, as the cause of the political upheaval: 𝐹𝑒𝑠𝑡𝑢𝑠 𝑤𝑎𝑠 𝑛𝑜𝑤 𝑑𝑒𝑎𝑑, 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝐴𝑙𝑏𝑖𝑛𝑢𝑠 𝑤𝑎𝑠 𝑏𝑢𝑡 𝑢𝑝𝑜𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑟𝑜𝑎𝑑; 𝑠𝑜 (𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝐻𝑖𝑔ℎ 𝑃𝑟𝑖𝑒𝑠𝑡) 𝑎𝑠𝑠𝑒𝑚𝑏𝑙𝑒𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑆𝑎𝑛ℎ𝑒𝑑𝑟𝑖𝑛 𝑜𝑓 𝑗𝑢𝑑𝑔𝑒𝑠, 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑏𝑟𝑜𝑢𝑔ℎ𝑡 𝑏𝑒𝑓𝑜𝑟𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑚 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒃𝒓𝒐𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒓 𝒐𝒇 𝑱𝒆𝒔𝒖𝒔❟ 𝒘𝒉𝒐 𝒘𝒂𝒔 𝒄𝒂𝒍𝒍𝒆𝒅 𝑴𝒆𝒔𝒔𝒊𝒂𝒉❟ 𝒘𝒉𝒐𝒔𝒆 𝒏𝒂𝒎𝒆 𝒘𝒂𝒔 𝑱𝒂𝒎𝒆𝒔, 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑠𝑜𝑚𝑒 𝑜𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑠; 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑤ℎ𝑒𝑛 ℎ𝑒 ℎ𝑎𝑑 𝑓𝑜𝑟𝑚𝑒𝑑 𝑎𝑛 𝑎𝑐𝑐𝑢𝑠𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑎𝑔𝑎𝑖𝑛𝑠𝑡 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑚 𝑎𝑠 𝑏𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑘𝑒𝑟𝑠 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑙𝑎𝑤, ℎ𝑒 𝑑𝑒𝑙𝑖𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑒𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑚 𝑡𝑜 𝑏𝑒 𝑠𝑡𝑜𝑛𝑒𝑑. This mention is peripheral to the story Josephus is telling, but since we know from Christian sources that Jesus' brother James led the Jesus sect in Jerusalem in this period and we have a separate, non-dependent, Christian account of James' execution by the Jerusalem priesthood, it is fairly clear which "Jesus who was called Messiah" Josephus is referring to here. Almost without exception, modern scholars consider this passage genuine and an undisputed reference to Jesus as a historical figure by someone who was a contemporary of his brother and who knew of the execution of that brother first hand.
This rather unequivocal reference to a historical Jesus leaves Jesus Mythicists with a thorny problem, which they generally try to solve one of two ways: (i) "The words "who was called Messiah" are a later Christian interpolation" -Since it is wholly unlikely that a Christian interpolator invented the whole story of the deposition of the High Priest just to slip in this passing reference to Jesus, Mythicists try to argue that the key words which identify which Jesus is being spoken of are interpolated. Unfortunately this argument does not work. This is because the passage is discussed no less than three times in mid-Third Century works by the Christian apologist Origen and he directly quotes the relevant section with the words "Jesus who was called the Messiah" all three times: inContra Celsum I.4, in Celsum II:13 and in Commentarium in evangelium Matthaei X.17. Each time he uses precisely the phrase we find in Josephus: αδελφος Ιησου του λεγομενου Χριστου ("the brother of that Jesus who was called Messiah"). This is significant because Origen was writing a whole generation before Christianity was in any kind of position to be tampering with texts of Josephus. If this phrase was in the passage in Origen's time, then it was clearly original to Josephus. (ii) "The Jesus being referred to here was not the Jesus of Christianity, but the 'Jesus, son of Dameus' mentioned later in the same passage."After detailing the deposition of the High Priest Ananus, Josephus mentions that he was succeeded as High Priest by a certain "Jesus, son of Damneus".
Josephus Flavius, the Jewish historian, lived as the earliest non-Christian who mentions a Jesus. Although many scholars think that Josephus' short accounts of Jesus (in Antiquities) came from interpolations perpetrated by a later Church father (most likely, Eusebius), Josephus' birth in 37 C.E. (well after the alleged crucifixion of Jesus), puts him out of range of an eyewitness account. Moreover, he wrote Antiquities in 93 C.E., after the first gospels got written! Therefore, even if his accounts about Jesus came from his hand, his information could only serve as hearsay. "...the vast majority of scholars since the early 1800s have said that this quotation is not by Josephus, but rather is a later Christian insertion in his works. In other words, it is a forgery, rejected by scholars."
@@JohnSmith-yw9nk Josephus considered the Roman emperor to be the messiah the Jews waited for. Sueto and Tacitus wrote similar claims that the Roman emperor was the messiah the jews waited for.
There is nothing historical about the Jesus of Islam. The Qur'an is simply 600 years too late to be regarded as anything other than a theological source.
+dragonchase. Muslims believe Jesus is the Jewish Messiah who was born of the Virgin Mary and was called the word of God by the Angel Gabriel. So it is not possible to say that Islam is true if you believe Jesus did not exist.
Islam and The Bible both are not historical books, they are Religious ones, therefore Islam is not stressing the historical facts of Jesus, but its main purpose is to make the word of God more simple.
Don't be absurd. The New Testament contains actual letters written to early Christian communities and the Gospels are properly classified as ancient biographies. Both are historical genres that are recognized by modern scholars - letters in particular are classified as primary sources. The book of Revelation is the only nonhistorical text in the NT as it is written in the genre of apocalyptic writing. The Qur'an is written in the genre of direct or prophetic speech. It contains hardly any clear historical references & is often utterly incomprehensible. It is not very useful as a historical text & the stories about Muhammed that seek to explain its more confusing passages were recorded 200 years after his death. Don't make a false equivalence between texts you clearly know little about.
Please share whatever it is that you are smoking if you truly believe that after all the contradictions and fudging in the 'gospels' actually are some sort of historical story. Pleases.
It's impossible that Jesus didn't exist, too many Gospels existed for it to be made up. Too many people were prepared to suffer and die for him. Great men like Augustine and Aquinas, the church and desert fathers were not all fooled by a comic story. As he says, he doesn't know. (the last speaker)
Brilliant event! Thank you for organising and creating the video.
This event was a farce. Price is was the worst. This was NOT a Historical discussion of Christ. It has been proven that Christ was crucified and resurrected. Christianity began.
Dr. Price is brilliant and eloquent. I think his skepticism of historicity is very well-founded.
Bob's work is excellent, in my opinion. That's why we have him as guru at nuskeptix.org.
Arguments based on silence are fallacious.
Nope, not necessarily.
Funny, too.
Dion Sanchez Not always. It depends on where the burden of proof lies. His books make a good case against the claims of the Gospels in his books. I don’t agree with a lot of his claims, but he makes very good points. He’s worth reading.
Oh dear. That poor lady @ 1:29:35. Feel sorry for her. I can only hope that this conversation planted some kind of critical seed for her.
Indeed it was just an outright rejection of any viewpoint not her own. It is something I see all the time. I am usually told afterwards I am going to hell.
"I don't even know who Barnabas is" hahaha
Also, there are 27 books in the New Testament not, "26 books in the bible". Lack of knowledge is one thing, to not seek additional knowledge out of stubbornness is another.
just like many atheists do
scottbignell - Unfortunately hers is the majority view in most cultures and through out history.
Great debate thanks. Robert M. Price lists 100 non canonical sayings of Jesus p47-p62 of " The pre-Nicene new testament "
It was good to see Imran Aijaz in the audience. I enjoyed listening to the panel of speakers. Greetings from New Zealand.
If not for Constantine christianity would have passed into history without a splash, just like every other myth religion.
Robert M. Price ROCKS! Great Event. Fascinating discussion. Thank you for posting!
I agree .
robert mahaney entertaining, yes; believable, no. I got the feeling that his opinion of himself is more than that of yours of him.
Dr. Robert M. Price 💥👍
Dr. Price killed it in his element. What an encyclopedia!
In this group Bart Ehrman is missing :)
That one guy has such a strong foreign accent that I can't understand a word he says.
The first three speakers ignored the topic: historical Jesus. The third Christian speaker claimed it was a good thing for verifiability that Matthew differs so much from other gospels. Matthew claims an army of zombie saints marched on the city. He claimed a 3 hour solar eclipse covered the world. No other gospel recorded this. None of the 121 historians recorded them. None of the Chinese astronomers recorded the eclipse. To me, that is extremely strong evidence Matthew is a tall tale.
That means the bible is not inerrant. That means the creator of the universe did not write it. That means it is just hearsay five levels deep. That means it is not authoritative.
The Christian speaker also claimed you should cling to both the historical objective truth and to faith, which is defined as believing what you know is not so. What possible advantage is there to believing lies?
You are wrong on multiple counts here. Matthew did NOT claim "an army of zombie saints marched on the city." He claimed that dead saints were seen by people in the city. We do not know for how long they were seen, nor do we know how many there were. Presumably, it was a limited number of saints, and only for a short period of time - perhaps only one instance. Matthew interpreted this event as meaning that the tombs must have been opened and the saints rose from the dead. But Matthew was not an eyewitness to this happening, nor did he claim to be! "An army of zombie saints marched on the city" is your interpretation; it is not something that Matthew recorded. There are plenty of other explanations for what Matthew ACTUALLY recorded. The individuals in the city who believed they had seen saints could have seen them in a vision or religious experience, for example. This would explain the record that Matthew actually wrote down. It is also not surprising that other historians did not record this event, given its extremely limited scope - it occurred only in one city, to a limited number of people, presumably only on one day. Considering how few sources we have surviving from antiquity, it is entirely unsurprising that the record of such a limited event would come down to us in only one extant source.
Matthew did NOT claim that "a 3 hour solar eclipse covered the world". That would be entirely anachronistic, as ancient peoples knew nothing of "solar eclipses". What Matthew did record, is that darkness covered "the land" NOT "the world." The word Matthew used here is γῆ (Strong's 1093). Translated "country" or "region" in Matthew 9:31, this word is used in the Septuagint to translate the Hebrew אֶרֶץ (eretz) which in Jewish literature usually refers to the land of Israel. Matthew never claimed that the darkness "covered the world." 9 times in his gospel he uses the word kosmoß to refer to the whole world, but here he intentionally chooses a word of much more limited scope. The phenomenon Matthew recorded could be described as a local meteorological event; it is not necessrily a solar eclipse. "A 3 hour solar eclipse covered the world" is your interpretation. It is NOT what Matthew wrote. A local meteorological event affecting only Jerusalem for an extremely limited period of time would not have enough significance to gain the attention of other historians, thus it is entirely unsurprising that we have only one extant source for it. It was significant to Matthew because of the timing of when it occurred in relation to Jesus' death. But this correlation would have been unknown to historians outside Jerusalem.
For every fragment of a manuscript, there was a generation that had the whole document and most probably more copies.
Michael Lawrence writes that the "Mythological Jesus" was placed in a historical time setting with Pontius Pilate, John the Baptist etc to accommodate a "prophecy" justification in Daniel. Jesus was born into the world 70 years prior to the Temple destruction. It represented a solution to the change from Temple focus to the personal Savior sin forgiver.
.........and the winner is..............Dr. Price.......no contest....
Was this a contest? I don't think.
Why do people need to ascribe conflict to things like this? This sort of thinking is what holds us back from understanding. I happen to lean towards Dr. Price's way of thinking on this subject, but this is in no way some sort of contest. Its a sharing of thoughts, theories and learning. Please stop the "winner" nonsense.
First thought before watching: Wow, what a small room.
I'm hear to hear what Dr Price has to say, the first guy was alright as well he made some interesting points
I take that back about the Italian guy he sounds like an idiot at the end
The impossibility of God’s existence is absolutely immeasurable.
Your denial of a Creator is what’s stunning. Everything in creation when thought simple ends up being infinitely more complex. Complexity is evidence of a Creator.
I think Jesus did exist but as Bart Erhman said he is a normal human being but was made into god.
There is not one written eyewitness account of Jesus during his lifetime. Strange since he was famous at birth, because wise men expected to see the future king of Jews who was born from a virgin married mother. Every leading Christian scholar since Erasmus, five hundred years ago, has maintained that the gospels were originally written in Greek from 70 to 140 CE (Mark after the year 70, Luke about 110, Matthew about 130, and John no earlier than 140 CE). This proves that they were not written by Christ's apostles, disciples or by any of the early Christians.
Others say: “There is no proof of the Gospels existing before 130 CE”
Jesus is depicted as hugely popular in the gospels. Yet he is unrecorded by non-Biblical historians.
Paul was the first one to write about Jesus around 60CE; but he, like everyone else, never saw Jesus. He experienced a vision of the resurrected Jesus.
John Gresham Machen wrote: The establishment of Christianity as a world religion, to almost as great an extent as any great historical movement can be ascribed to one man, was the work of Paul.
I also read that the history of the first three popes was invented because they never existed.
All myth! Seek the truth!
I don't know why it's so hard for you guys to believe that Jesus exist
That's not true at all.
Dr. Price has answered on many occasions the question ,"James the brother of the lord." please read his books, and another great book to read is Earl Doherty's" The jesus puzzle."
what did he say
Although I don't agree with Bob price but he is the most brilliant guy out there.
It appears to me that there is a tremendous pro bias in favor of fundamentalist Christian academics scholars, and against Jewish and/or Muslim academic scholars when discussing the historical Jesus. However the reality is that primary Jewish, secondary Muslim and tertiary Christian scholars are for a variety of reasons the proper order when discussing the historical Jesus in my opinion. Whether we like it or not Jesus constructed or real was a Jew rooted in what is Israel today.
?
1:29:38 is where it gets interesting
She was so annoying. Clearly brainwashed and didn’t have a clue what she was talking about.
This was an exceptional and exemplary exchange.
"The guy who looks like Santa Claus" 🎅😄😆😆😆
Thank you for great all information,you are great guys, bless all of you.
So. Much time is taken up with introductions. Please start the debates more promptly and please speakers prepare your material so that it is concise and simple so that it can be understood.
The young man during questions with the necklace of the gold cross is a true believer:) HA! The difference between faith and science is summed up because of his question.
... Jesus is so important to the religion.
But he never existed.
Any clever person realizes Jesus never existed when he looks at the "evidence" or lack of.
Most historians believe that it's quite likely that he did live in Israel during that time though.
Giovanni Santostasi that s absolutely true ! 👍🏻👏
Giovanni, that's because you are crazy to believe people would follow and die for a man who did not exist. Please, stop speaking nonsense.
24:00 The fact that Quran speaks about The Holy Book stories in a way that the public knows the stories, tells us that the public are not the Pagans in Mecca or
Medina, but rather from the Levant (Iraq, Syria, Jordan). Those people were already Christians.
Religion intimidates those who fall for it, with that talk of eternal suffering in a hereafter. Having been raised in a Christian culture, I finally had enough of the stories and felt comfortable entertaining thoughts such as the following ... Had Jesus existed, he would not have been a great man, as (within theology) he would have supported his father-god's will to reject unrepentant sinners to suffer for eternity. If my father had such a law put in place, I would reject my invisible father, and say, "Who are you to judge souls that you created, knowing ahead of time that you were going to reject and punish for eternity? Are you insane?"
What Saeed failed to say is that Muslims believe that Mary, Maryam, the daughter of Amram was the very same as the sister of Moses who lived 1200 before Jesus. Balderdash, the Koran is full of Balderdash. However, there is one idea uniquely pointed out by the Koran that is likely to be true; Jesus did not die on the cross.
If Bart Erhman was on this panel, it would have been very interesting to hear his opinion..
+Zara bees in October 2016 Price and Ehrman will debate. Two of my heros. Will be v interesting
LOL. Arguments from silence show a bias toward the NT. Who wrote about Ceasar fighting the Gallic Wars besides a single author and that is accepted by historians.
Robert Price was outstanding in this discussion.
I agree!
Dr. Price was the only one with the most sane argument aka the mythicist position. The rest are just bumbling apologists that rely on sleight of hand.
Nonsense. Gabriele (the guy on the left) isn't an apologist. He's not a Christian. He's an expert on 2nd Temple Judaism. He just sees the evidence pointing more in favor of there being a historical character at the core of the story. You can't just label anyone who's not a mythicst an "apologist using sleight of hand" just because they disagree with you.
scottbignell
He never used any evidence other than the bible. That is not evidence. If you can use that I can use the Book of the Dead. So Horus and Osiris is real?
I don't see how you can read the works of Paul and think he believed in anything other than a celestial Jesus. Being that his works are the first we have and he blatantly says the other apostles got their "teachings" the same way he did, through revelation. He outright says that he didn't get his teachings from man. Meaning everything he learned he learned from a celestial Jesus. If the other apostles got theirs the same way then the whole cult was built on these visions. Given the obvious fiction that is in the gospels (and acts) I don't see how anyone can argue for any truth in those works. It's baffling to me.
pail says a lot of things that agree with the gospels and show Jesus was historical
bible has a lot of historical value the book of the dead has very little
Krishna is certified in the book of Esther as One of the Princes in the Empire that ranged from India to Ethiopia Erythreen antiquity wasn't born and they were. 🕉☸♾☯⚕☮☪✝☦🀄💠
Poseidon was named Jeshua two thousand years ago. The difference between the depictions of Jesus and Poseidon is that Poseidon has blond hair and blue eyes. Pose-idon also never whipped any money changers out of the temple because he is a money changer. He is also not the one who is being scapegoated for the world's sins either.
Next time for a discussion so closely related to Judaism, invite Rabbi Tovia Singer as well.
Before i saw your comment ,i suggested that. 🙏🌿
he’s an apologist, that’s like inviting James white or William craig.
Interesting debate so far (45 min in). But the "radical ecumenism" of Mr. Khan was a bit irritating.
It seemed like Bob Price was the only one that provided any information. The first guy argued that Jesus was a Jew, I don't see how that could have ever been in question. The Muslim guy talked about the Muslims having a different view of Jesus. So what? What does that have to do with the historical Jesus? The other two guys didn't really say anything IMO other than the fact that they were happy to be there. I can't even remember one fact that they presented related to a historical Jesus.
Viva l'Italia! [and the only time I have seen the word super correctly used [about 1;08]
Dr Price, you swept the floor with your opponents. Congratulations 👏
Careful about sound, a disturbing sounds killed happiness.
3. "𝐽𝑒𝑠𝑢𝑠 𝑏𝑒𝑔𝑎𝑛 𝑎𝑠 𝑎𝑛 𝑎𝑙𝑙𝑒𝑔𝑜𝑟𝑖𝑐𝑎𝑙, 𝑠𝑦𝑚𝑏𝑜𝑙𝑖𝑐 𝑓𝑖𝑔𝑢𝑟𝑒 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑀𝑒𝑠𝑠𝑖𝑎ℎ 𝑤ℎ𝑜 𝑔𝑜𝑡 'ℎ𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑜𝑟𝑖𝑐𝑖𝑠𝑒𝑑' 𝑖𝑛𝑡𝑜 𝑎𝑛 𝑎𝑐𝑡𝑢𝑎𝑙 𝑝𝑒𝑟𝑠𝑜𝑛 𝑑𝑒𝑠𝑝𝑖𝑡𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑓𝑎𝑐𝑡 ℎ𝑒 𝑛𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑟 𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑙𝑙𝑦 𝑒𝑥𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑒𝑑"
This idea has been presented in most detail by another amateur theorist in yet another self-published book: R.G. Price's Jesus - A Very Jewish Myth(2007). Unlike "Acharya S" and, to a lesser extent Doherty, Price at least takes account of the fact that the Jesus stories and the first members of the Jesus sect are completely and fundamentally Jewish, so fantasies about Egyptian myths or Greek Middle Platonic philosophy are not going to work as points of origin for them. According to this version of Jesus Mythicism, Jesus was an idealisation of what the Messiah was to be like who got turned into a historical figure largely by mistake and misunderstanding.
Several of the same objections to Doherty's thesis can be made about this one - if this was the case, why are there no remnants of debates with or condemnations of those who believed the earlier version and maintained there was no historical Jesus at all? And why don't any of Christianity's enemies use the fact that the original Jesus sect didn't believe in a historical Jesus as an argument against the new version of the sect? Did everyone just forget?
More tellingly, if the Jesus stories arose out of ideas about and expectations of the Messiah, it is very odd that Jesus doesn't fit those expectations better. Despite Christian claims to the contrary, the first Christians had to work very hard to convince fellow Jews that Jesus was the Messiah precisely because he didn't conform to these expectations. Most importantly, there was absolutely no tradition or Messianic expectation that told of the Messiah being executed and then rising from the dead - this first appears with Christianity and has no Jewish precedent at all. Far from evolving from established Messianic prophecies and known elements in the scripture, the first Christians had to scramble to find anything at all which looked vaguely like a "prophecy" of this unexpected and highly unMessianic event.
That the centre and climax of the story of Jesus would be based on his shameful execution and death makes no sense if it evolved out of Jewish expectations about the Messiah, since they contained nothing about any such idea. This climax to the story only makes sense if it actually happened, and then his followers had to find totally new and largely strained and contrived "scriptures" which they then claimed "predicted" this outcome, against all previous expectation. Price's thesis fails because Jesus' story doesn't conform to Jewish myths enough.
4. "𝐽𝑒𝑠𝑢𝑠 𝑤𝑎𝑠 𝑛𝑜𝑡 𝑎 𝐽𝑒𝑤𝑖𝑠ℎ 𝑝𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑐ℎ𝑒𝑟 𝑎𝑡 𝑎𝑙𝑙 𝑏𝑢𝑡 𝑤𝑎𝑠 𝑠𝑜𝑚𝑒𝑜𝑛𝑒 𝑒𝑙𝑠𝑒 𝑜𝑟 𝑎𝑛 𝑎𝑚𝑎𝑙𝑔𝑎𝑚 𝑜𝑓 𝑝𝑒𝑜𝑝𝑙𝑒 𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑏𝑖𝑛𝑒𝑑 𝑖𝑛𝑡𝑜 𝑜𝑛𝑒 𝑓𝑖𝑔𝑢𝑟𝑒 𝑖𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝐶ℎ𝑟𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑖𝑎𝑛 𝑡𝑟𝑎𝑑𝑖𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛"
This is the least popular of the Jesus Myth hypotheses, but versions of it are argued by Italian amateur theorist Francesco Carotta (𝐽𝑒𝑠𝑢𝑠 𝑤𝑎𝑠 𝐶𝑎𝑒𝑠𝑎𝑟: 𝑂𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝐽𝑢𝑙𝑖𝑎𝑛 𝑂𝑟𝑖𝑔𝑖𝑛 𝑜𝑓 𝐶ℎ𝑟𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑖𝑎𝑛𝑖𝑡𝑦. 𝐴𝑛 𝐼𝑛𝑣𝑒𝑠𝑡𝑖𝑔𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑣𝑒 𝑅𝑒𝑝𝑜𝑟𝑡 - 2005)), computer programmer Joseph Atwill (𝐶𝑎𝑒𝑠𝑎𝑟'𝑠 𝑀𝑒𝑠𝑠𝑖𝑎ℎ: 𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝑅𝑜𝑚𝑎𝑛 𝐶𝑜𝑛𝑠𝑝𝑖𝑟𝑎𝑐𝑦 𝑡𝑜 𝐼𝑛𝑣𝑒𝑛𝑡 𝐽𝑒𝑠𝑢𝑠 - 2005) and accountant Daniel Unterbrink (𝐽𝑢𝑑𝑎𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝐺𝑎𝑙𝑖𝑙𝑒𝑎𝑛: 𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝐹𝑙𝑒𝑠ℎ 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝐵𝑙𝑜𝑜𝑑 𝐽𝑒𝑠𝑢𝑠 - 2004). Carotta claims Jesus was actually Julius Caesar and imposed on Jewish tradition as part of the cult of the 𝐷𝑖𝑣𝑖𝑢𝑠 𝐽𝑢𝑙𝑖𝑢𝑠. Atwill claims Jesus was actually the deliberate creation of the Emperor Titus, imposed on Judaism in the same way. Neither do a very good job of substantiating these claims or of explaining why the Romans then turned around, as early as 64 AD (fifteen years before Titus became emperor) and began persecuting the cult they supposedly created. No scholar takes these theories or that of Unterbrink seriously.
No scholar also argues that Jesus was an amalgam of various Jewish preachers or other figures of the time. That is because there is nothing in the evidence to indicate this. This ideas has never been argued in any detailed form by anyone at all, scholar or Jesus myth amateur theorist, but it is something some who don't want to subscribe to the idea that "Jesus Christ" was based on a real person resorts to so that they can put some sceptical distance between the Christian claims and anything or anyone historical. It seems to be a purely rhetorically-based idea, with no substance and no argument behind it.
Also, I have been visited by Jesus 3 times and on one occasion, he said to me in a sad voice, "I didn't come here to create religion". He was a Great Messenger and interestingly enough, his beautiful sayings are so close to what Buddha said. Well, after all, in his missing years, hevwent to study in India, Persia, Kashmir and I believe Tibet..He began his studies with the Essenes of whom the jewish people would go to for healing.
So well written @John Smith..Thank you for your time..
Some seem to argue against there being an historical Jesus by pointing out contradictions in what is attributed to Jesus. But could not these contradictions be taken as evidence that there were multiple "Jesus"s? That there was a plurality of personages whose stories came to be combined into a single figure in the popular account? Perhaps if you believed more in Him you would be less worried about what people said about Him or what people said that He said or did.
Most scholars want us lay people to view the bible as fairy tales
Ibelieve Jesus existed as ahuman being just compare mythical religions we are told about Jesus as ahuman being with flesh and blood with parents just compare to mythical stories of mithra Vishnu etc its not the same Jesus existed
Why would stories about a mythical character contradict? why are there contradictions in the stories about superman?
1. they are written by people who never talked to each other.
2. there was no actual life to anchor the stories. Everyone is making everything up.
Compare the contradictions in two biographies of the same person and two fantasy stories about a the same fictitious character.
What he is doing is the cheapest, most dishonest apologetics.
You´ll find Iesu in Wales.
Rise&shine, no one can tell what he looked like because he was in everyone's mind. 🍁🦉🏹⚜
What a con job and false advertising! The first two speakers clearly talk about the Christ of the scriptures; not the remotest attempt to look at Jesus by the approaches contemporary historiography. I did not stay on to listen to the subsequent ones, so I can only guess that they went along the same lines.
Would have been interesting to know how Price would have responded to what in my view is the best evidence for the existence of Jesus,that Paul mentiones James,the broother of the lord.But instead Boccaccini goes down another path which Robert elegantly answers.
Lars Skogn Every christian was called brother of the lord. Receiving baptism made you a brother of the lord. He discusses this topic with Carrier in other videos you can find on youtube. Paul is the worst possible source for historicity because he never never mentions anything historical about Jesus but he describes him as a mystical figure.
+Giovanni Santostasi the only thing paul admits is that he had a vision and he had to go to the disciples to learn about a historical jesus
he mentions many historical things about Jesus and where does it say baptism makes you brother of the lord?
no he says he got a vision and the met with the disciples of the Jesus we just think he might have learnt more about the life of Jesus if he didn't already know
My take is that Jesus could easily have been made up with the imagination since my experience with Christianity is that it is flooded with delusional thinking. Not necessarily lies, per say, but rather absurdities extraordinair.
Please don't tell me these people are for real. I have been on this earth for 55 years and never did I think I would run into so many fouls in such a small room
Without Bart Ehrman the panel is strikingly incomplete.
Nonsense
My dying wish would be to see Bart Ehrman, Robert Price and Richard Carrier. Not debating, but to exchange ideas!!
I enjoyed this. I agree mostly with Gabriele, in that I think some sort of historical Jesus existed - that is, as a Jewish cult leader who preached about the incoming "Kingdom of God" who was crucified under Pilate for being perceived as a political threat, and whose story became the stuff of legend. Price goes to great lengths to shut down any opposing piece of evidence or argument, but ultimately I think he bites off more than he can chew.
Yes there is.
scottbignell
which would be?
Most of the evidence that compells me to think there was a historical figure is perhaps best described in Bart Ehrman's "Did Jesus Exist?". I couldn't be bothered going through each and every point. Read the book. And if you don't think what is presented is evidence, let me know.
Yeah. Shame. He should have read it first ;-) OK, that was a cheap shot. Like I said somewhere else on this page: I like Carrier and Bob Price. I think they do a great job exposing some of the potential weaknesses in the mainstream historical understanding of the birth of Christianity. They keep people like Ehrman on their toes. I just don't find their alternative explanations of how Christianity arose without a historical figure any more compelling. Indeed I find them even more stretched. They make great negative criticisms, but I don't find their positive arguments very persuasive. If you've got a particular issue you want to address, let me know and I'll tell you my thoughts.
scottbignell
I have read it, however I have also read the early christian writings as well. There is NO historical evidence outside of the bible. With this we could assume all religious figures are real since a religious texts states they are.
The dude on the far right sounds like a young Tom Green
Third speaker (a Jesus Seminar alumnus, one takes it) hints at ideas in passing. He juggles balls, but drops them. Best take-away, the use of a colleague's "fifth gospel" term, but the term goes nowhere. Like his rugged term "faith." "Wrong turn at Albuquerque." Next!
The problem with Mr. Price is he kept apologising for his opinion and just kept repeating "There is no historical Jesus". He would have done much better to enumerate more reasons for his position.
Fourth speaker, well, ... presents ideas and happens to displace orthodoxy with heresy. The historical Jesus is a hypothesis with weak support. Myth Theory fits the facts. Bayes probability, nicely and edibly phrased as "which is more likely.." is convincing. Believe in Santa if you like, but Robert M Price has delivered the presents.
And the term 'brother' had a fraternal meaning as well.
Robert Price presented an utterly implausible & unsubstantiated hypothesis about the origins of Christianity that was properly refuted by Gabriele Boccaccini. He got spanked & rightfully so.
Great response!!! Your point about James is one that even Bart Ehrman finds to be absolutely convincing.
"Myth theory fits the facts" Oh, I can only hope this was a joke. If not... you might take a serious look at history and scholarship
Manne what is the scholarship that looked at the question wether Jesus was historical or not you would like to point towards?
Amram was Miriam's father (Miriam sister of Moses). He was not Mary's father.
To uncomplicate things a Jew is a bloodline and heritage. A christian is a religious creed and ideology. Somebody can definitely be a Jewish Christian if they are not a bigot. I believe they are called messianic jews nowadays 🤔
Jesus is a historical figure but there are many that have claimed to be Jesus thru out history and that manipulating Jesus is who famous ppl call johnny
Interesting video but isn't this more religious views of Jesus not historical views of him?
No one mentions the book of Q or better said the gospel of Q. Mark and Luke has a lot of information that was copied from the book of Q.
You do know that Q only exists in the minds of men, don't you?
Actually starts about 8:55
th-cam.com/video/p5xXIm1-D5Y/w-d-xo.html
The members of the panel were all excellent. The audience, not so much.
Except the first speaker
I don't understand the purpose of this conference.
The second gentleman talking about the area looking cheeses and Hitler making Jesus odd to be what their regime wanted him to be look like it's completely irrelevant to seeing it Jesus was real or if Jesus was alive and crucified is it two different topics and you guys are jumping all around it not saying on one specific
There is no historical Jesus. There is only the New Testament written by unknown writers who copied from each other.
I could only catch half of what the Italian professor was saying, when he speeded up, a great shame.
Dr Price says that those who tend to believe the historical Jesus existed are fooling themselves, suggesting all the miracles and other such stories can be found in the Old Testament. Well, not really. His personality is entirely different from any OT prophet, as was his message in many respects. He also says that any believers are unable to come logically to a conclusion because they are prejudiced towards belief. But his argument is likewise circular - since he disbelieves from the start. (Many scholars of the Bible tend to think it most likely that a historical figure existed, even if they are personally atheistic).
I didn't know that the Muslim point of view included several civilizational timelines. That's cool. I wish more scolars outside the field of physics would apply some of the well agreed upon concepts of quantum mechanics and quantum field theory. Basically, I'm disappointed that nearly everyone still seems to believe in a binary, right or wrong timeline of history. The fact is, that the past doesn't exist and we just make up stories of a present that once was. There is no "objective" past. It's all just constructs of our imaginations.
Non-Christian References to Jesus as Historical Figure
Many Christian apologists vastly overstate the number of ancient non-Christian writers who attest to the existence of Jesus. This is partly because they are not simply showing that a mere Jewish preacher existed, but are arguing for the existence of the "Jesus Christ" of Christian doctrine: a supposedly supernatural figure who allegedly performed amazing public miracles in front of audiences of thousands of witnesses. It could certainly be argued that such a wondrous figure would have been noticed outside of Galilee and Judea and so should have been widely noted as well. So Christian apologists often cite a long list of writers who mention Jesus, usually including Josephus, Pliny the Younger, Tacitus, Suetonius, Lucian, Thallus and several others. But of these only Tacitus and Josephus actually mention Jesus as a historical person - the others are all simply references to early Christianity, some of which mention the "Christ" that was the focus of its worship.If we are simply noting the existence of Jesus as a human Jewish preacher, we are not required to produce more mentions of him than we would expect of comparable figures. And what we find is that we have about as much evidence for his existence (outside any Christian writings) as we have for other Jewish preachers, prophets and Messianic claimants of the time. The two non-Christian writers who mention him as a historical person are Josephus and Tacitus.
Tacitus, the Roman historian's birth year at 64 C.E., puts him well after the alleged life of Jesus. He gives a brief mention of a "Christus" in his Annals (Book XV, Sec. 44), which he wrote around 109 C.E. He gives no source for his material. Although many have disputed the authenticity of Tacitus' mention of Jesus, the very fact that his birth happened after the alleged Jesus and wrote the Annals during the formation of Christianity, shows that his writing can only provide us with hearsay accounts.
Josephus Flavius, the Jewish historian, lived as the earliest non-Christian who mentions a Jesus. Although many scholars think that Josephus' short accounts of Jesus (in Antiquities) came from interpolations perpetrated by a later Church father (most likely, Eusebius), Josephus' birth in 37 C.E. (well after the alleged crucifixion of Jesus), puts him out of range of an eyewitness account. Moreover, he wrote Antiquities in 93 C.E., after the first gospels got written! Therefore, even if his accounts about Jesus came from his hand, his information could only serve as hearsay. "...the vast majority of scholars since the early 1800s have said that this quotation is not by Josephus, but rather is a later Christian insertion in his works. In other words, it is a forgery, rejected by scholars."
It is probably possible to transform Perry the Platypus into a savior son of god.
Dr. Price makes the most sense..
"I believe in science" no. I practice science, logical thought, and understand facts
The very use of the word belief, means and admits that you dont know and you are wrong
Why so ?
The Italian scholar is super, and put Price down. Price was fully exposed of his folly.
Meh...By this standard, Caesar,Hannibal, Khan, Aristotle, none of these guys existed either.. “scholars”like these need to be sharply critiqued/criticism...they just seek to develop a new paradigm in the study of Christian origins, ..scholars who have claim that Jesus was a mythical, not historical, figure, and that the traditional, Jesus-centered paradigm for studying the origins of Christianity must be replaced by an actual science of Christian origins.
If you haven’t folks actually read New Testament textual scholarship you really shouldn’t overuse" Ehrman mainly because you might fail to note certain cautions he makes, and his specific caution against thinking that your conspiracy exists...
Jesus..
There are independent sources that verify the existence of the personages you reference. For example, we can look to Chinese, Islamic, or Byzantine sources to verify the existence of Chinggis/Genghis Khan. Furthermore, there is genetic and archaeological evidence.
around 1:48 the Islam 'scholar' shows his absolute ignorance of any kind of science, let alone archaeology. Wow. Stunning
Jesus was actually King Izas-Manu(el) of Edessa, who started the Jewish Revolt against Rome in AD 68, and who wore a ceremonial Crown of Thorns. But King Izas-Manu lost this war and was crucified (but may have survived). This is all taken from real history.
The secular account of this war (Jewish War) and fictional account of this war (gospels) were both written by Saul-Josephus (yes, Saul was Josephus). They were created as Roman propaganda - to tame the rebellious East. See "Cleopatra to Christ" or "Jesus, King of Edessa" for an explanation.
Jesus was apparently educated in India by B uddhist monks
Good idea for a round table discussion. First speaker.... sounds sooo intense, angry, and shrill that he seems to disqualify himself, since one cannot hear the ideas behind the raw emotion. Second speaker... let's see how he/she does.
𝗨𝗻𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘃𝗶𝗻𝗰𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗔𝗿𝗴𝘂𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘀 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗮 𝗠𝘆𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗰 𝗢𝗿𝗶𝗴𝗶𝗻 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗝𝗲𝘀𝘂𝘀
Many of the arguments for a Mythic Jesus that some laypeople think sound highly convincing are exactly the same ones that scholars consider laughably weak, even though they sound plausible to those without a sound background in the study of the First Century. For example:
1. "𝑇ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒 𝑎𝑟𝑒 𝑛𝑜 𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑚𝑝𝑜𝑟𝑎𝑟𝑦 𝑎𝑐𝑐𝑜𝑢𝑛𝑡𝑠 𝑜𝑟 𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛𝑠 𝑜𝑓 𝐽𝑒𝑠𝑢𝑠. 𝑇ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒 𝑠ℎ𝑜𝑢𝑙𝑑 𝑏𝑒, 𝑠𝑜 𝑐𝑙𝑒𝑎𝑟𝑙𝑦 𝑛𝑜 𝐽𝑒𝑠𝑢𝑠 𝑒𝑥𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑒𝑑."
This seems a good argument to many, since modern people tend to leave behind them a lot of evidence they existed (birth certificates, financial documents, school records) and prominent modern people have their lives documented by the media almost daily. So it sounds suspicious to people that there are no contemporary records at all detailing or even mentioning Jesus.
But our sources for anyone in the ancient world are scarce and rarely are they contemporaneous - they are usually written decades or even centuries after the fact. Worse still, the more obscure and humble in origin the person is, the less likely that there will be any documentation about them or even a fleeting reference to them at all.
For example, few people in the ancient world were as prominent, influential, significant and famous as the Carthaginian general Hannibal. He came close to crushing the Roman Republic, was one of the greatest generals of all time and was famed throughout the ancient world for centuries after his death down to today. Yet how many contemporary mentions of Hannibal do we have? Zero. We have none. So if someone as famous and significant as Hannibal has no surviving contemporary references to him in our sources, does it really make sense to base an argument about the existence or non-existence of a Galilean peasant preacher on the lack of contemporary references to him? Clearly it does not.
So while this seems like a good argument, a better knowledge of the ancient world and the nature of our evidence and sources shows that it's actually extremely weak.
2. "𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝑎𝑛𝑐𝑖𝑒𝑛𝑡 𝑤𝑟𝑖𝑡𝑒𝑟 𝑋 𝑠ℎ𝑜𝑢𝑙𝑑 ℎ𝑎𝑣𝑒 𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛𝑒𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝐽𝑒𝑠𝑢𝑠, 𝑦𝑒𝑡 ℎ𝑒 𝑑𝑜𝑒𝑠𝑛'𝑡 𝑑𝑜 𝑠𝑜. 𝑇ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑠𝑖𝑙𝑒𝑛𝑐𝑒 𝑠ℎ𝑜𝑤𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑛𝑜 𝐽𝑒𝑠𝑢𝑠 𝑒𝑥𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑒𝑑."
An "argument from silence" is a tricky thing to use effectively. To do so, it's not enough to show that a writer, account or source is silent on a given point - you also have to show that it shouldn't be before this silence can be given any significance. So if someone claims their grandfather met Winston Churchill yet a thorough search of the grandfather's letters and diaries of the time show no mention of this meeting, an argument from silence could be presented to say that the meeting never happened. This is because we could expect such a meeting to be mentioned in those documents.
Some "Jesus Mythicists" have tried to argue that certain ancient writers "should" have mentioned Jesus and did not and so tried to make an argument from silence on this basis. In 1909 the American "freethinker" John Remsberg came up with a list of 42 ancient writers that he claimed "should" have mentioned Jesus and concluded their silence showed no Jesus ever existed. But the list has been widely criticised for being contrived and fanciful. Why exactly, for example, Lucanus - a writer whose works consist of a single poem and a history of the civil war between Caesar and Pompey (in the century before Jesus' time) "should" have mentioned Jesus is hard to see. And the same can be said for most of the other writers on Remsberg's list.
Some others, however, are more reasonable at first glance. Philo Judaeus was a Jew in Alexandria who wrote philosophy and theology and who was a contemporary of Jesus who also mentions events in Judea and makes reference to other figures we know from the gospel accounts, such as Pontius Pilate. So it makes far more sense that he "should" mention Jesus than some poets in far off Rome. But it is hard to see why even Philo would be interested in mentioning someone like Jesus, given that he also makes no mentions of any of the other Jewish preachers, prophets, faith healers and Messianic claimants of the time, of which there were many. If Philo had mentioned Anthronges and Theudas, or Hillel and Honi or John the Baptist and the "Samaritan Prophet" but didn't mention Jesus, then a solid argument from silence could be made. But given that Philo seems to have had no interest at all in any of the various people like Jesus, the fact that he doesn't mention Jesus either carries little or no weight.
In fact, there is only one writer of the time who had any interest in such figures, who also had little interest for Roman and Greek writers. He was the Jewish historian Josephus, who is our sole source for virtually all of the Jewish preachers, prophets, faith healers and Messianic claimants of this time. If there is any writer who should mention Jesus, it's Josephus. The problem for the "Jesus Mythicists" is ... he 𝙙𝙤𝙚𝙨. Twice, in fact. He does do so in Antiquities XVIII.3.4 and again in Antiquities XX.9.1. Mythicists take comfort in the fact that the first of these references has been added to by later Christian scribes, so they dismiss it as a wholesale interpolation. But the majority of modern scholars disagree, arguing there is solid evidence to believe that Josephus did make a mention of Jesus here and that it was added to by Christians to help bolster their arguments against Jewish opponents. That debate aside, the Antiquities XX.9.1 mention of Jesus is universally considered genuine and that alone sinks the Mythicist case (see below for more details).
3. "𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝑒𝑎𝑟𝑙𝑖𝑒𝑠𝑡 𝐶ℎ𝑟𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑖𝑎𝑛 𝑡𝑟𝑎𝑑𝑖𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛𝑠 𝑚𝑎𝑘𝑒 𝑛𝑜 𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑜𝑓 𝑎 ℎ𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑜𝑟𝑖𝑐𝑎𝑙 𝐽𝑒𝑠𝑢𝑠 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑐𝑙𝑒𝑎𝑟𝑙𝑦 𝑤𝑜𝑟𝑠ℎ𝑖𝑝𝑝𝑒𝑑 𝑎 𝑝𝑢𝑟𝑒𝑙𝑦 ℎ𝑒𝑎𝑣𝑒𝑛𝑙𝑦, 𝑚𝑦𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑐-𝑠𝑡𝑦𝑙𝑒 𝑏𝑒𝑖𝑛𝑔. 𝑇ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒 𝑎𝑟𝑒 𝑛𝑜 𝑟𝑒𝑓𝑒𝑟𝑒𝑛𝑐𝑒𝑠 𝑡𝑜 𝑎𝑛 𝑒𝑎𝑟𝑡ℎ𝑙𝑦 𝐽𝑒𝑠𝑢𝑠 𝑖𝑛 𝑎𝑛𝑦 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑒𝑎𝑟𝑙𝑖𝑒𝑠𝑡 𝑁𝑒𝑤 𝑇𝑒𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑡 𝑡𝑒𝑥𝑡𝑠, 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑙𝑒𝑡𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑠 𝑜𝑓 𝑃𝑎𝑢𝑙."
Since many people who read Mythicist arguments have never actually read the letters of Paul, this one sounds convincing as well. Except it simply isn't true. While Paul was writing letters about matters of doctrine and disputes and so wasn't giving a basic lesson in who Jesus was in any of this letters, he does make references to Jesus' earthly life in many places. He says Jesus was born as a human, of a human mother and born a Jew (Galatians 4:4). He repeats that he had a "human nature" and that he was a human descendant of King David (Romans 1:3) of of Abraham (Gal 3:16), of Israelites (Romans 9:4-5) and of Jesse (Romans 15:12). He refers to teachings Jesus made during his earthly ministry on divorce (1Cor. 7:10), on preachers (1Cor. 9:14) and on the coming apocalypse (1Thess. 4:15). He mentions how he was executed by earthly rulers (1Cor. 2:8) that he was crucified (1 Cor 1:23, 2:2, 2:8, 2 Cor 13:4) and that he died and was buried (1Cor 15:3-4).And he says he had an earthly, physical brother called James who Paul himself had met (Galatians1:19).
So Mythicist theorists then have to tie themselves in knots to "explain" how, in fact, a clear reference to Jesus being "born of a woman" actually means he wasn't born of a woman and how when Paul says Jesus was "according to the flesh, a descendant of King David" this doesn't mean he was a human and the human descendant of a human king. These contrived arguments are so weak they tend to only convince the already convinced. It's this kind of contrivance that consigns this thesis to the fringe.
I believe there was an orginal Jesus we know very little about and than you have manipulation from Roman Empire etc etc
Lady @ 1:30:00 hahahahahah, the guy @ 1:37:50 did his research
The three academic presenters seemingly presented tepidly warmed-over canned speeches. Prof. Boccaccini seemed to mainly reassert the same one or two points grounded only in his own authority as an academic specialist. He never direvtly engaged with Dr. Price. Prof. Ahmed Khan seemingly was extremely careful not to say anything offensive (contradictory) to believers. Prof. Mabee spoke primarily as a believer. All three were paralyzed by Dr. Price's well-grounded but unorthodox assertions. Price was the only one who spoke on the given subject of historical Jesus. And he was the only one who grounded his assertions in specifics. The poor students in the audience who were religious believers and who spoke out obviously were not prepared to hear independent scholarship from Dr. Price. They should have been given a stronger trigger warning at the outset.
I wish they could have got Barth Erhman there.
Jesus was the first Christian. This dialogue is over 100 years old. They should all get other careers. Also, Check out Adam Green's No More News Channel!
yawn
"Alexamenos worships his god" - A Roman graffito mocks the idea of a crucified god
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexamenos_graffito
But probably the best example of an element in the story which was so awkward for the early Christians that it simply has to be historical is the crucifixion. The idea of a Messiah who dies was totally unheard of and utterly alien to any Jewish tradition prior to the beginning of Christianity, but the idea of a Messiah who was
crucified was not only bizarre, it was absurd. According to Jewish tradition, anyone who was "hanged on a tree" was to be considered accursed by Yahweh and this was one of the reasons crucifixion was considered particularly abhorrent to Jews. The concept of a crucified Messiah, therefore, was totally bizarre and absurd.It was equally weird to non-Jews. Crucifixion was considered the most shameful and abhorrent of deaths, so much so that one of the privileges of Roman citizenship is that citizens could never be crucified. The idea of a crucified god, therefore, was absurd and bizarre. This was so much the case that the early Christians avoided any depictions of Jesus on the cross - the first depictions of the Crucifixion appear in the Fourth Century, after Christian emperors banned crucifixion and it began to lose its stigma. It's significant that the earliest depiction of the crucifixion of Jesus that we have is a graffito from Rome showing a man worshipping a crucified figure with the head of a donkey with the mocking caption "Alexamenos worships his god". The idea of a crucified god was, quite literally, ridiculous. Paul acknowledges how absurd the idea of a crucified Messiah was in 1Cor 1:23, where he says it "is a stumbling block to the Jews and an absurdity to the gentiles".
The accounts of Jesus' crucifixion in the gospels also show how awkward the nature of their Messiah's death was for the earliest Christians. They are all full of references to texts in the Old Testament as ways of demonstrating that, far from being an absurdity, this was what was supposed to happen to the Messiah. But none of the texts used were considered prophecies of the Messiah before Christianity came along and some of them are highly forced. The "suffering servant" passages in Isaiah 53 are pressed into service as "prophecies" of the crucifixion, since they depict a figure being falsely accused, rejected and given up to be "pierced .... as a guilt offering". But the gospels don't reference other parts of the same passage which don't fit their story at all, such as where it is said this figure will "prolong his days and look upon his offspring".Clearly the gospel writers were going to some effort to find some kind of scriptural basis for this rather awkward death for their group's leader, one that let them maintain their belief that he was the Messiah. Again, this makes most sense if there was a historical Jesus and he was crucified, leaving his followers with this awkward problem. If there was no historical Jesus at all, it becomes very difficult to explain where this bizarre, unprecedented and awkwardly inconvenient element in the story comes from. It's hard to see why anyone would invent the idea of a crucified Messiah and create these problems. And given that there was no precedent for a crucified Messiah, it's almost impossible to see this idea evolving out of earlier Jewish traditions. The most logical explanation is that it's in the story, despite its vast awkwardness, because it 𝗵𝗮𝗽𝗽𝗲𝗻𝗲𝗱.
Roman non-religious history does not mention Jesus, nor Pilate. All myth!
Sacrificed and resurrected or revived demigods were a staple of Hellenistic mystery cults, and the various Christian cults of the first through third century fit that mold very well.
Execution of false messiahs was a common place. Tacitus, Sueton and Flavius Josephus considered the Roman emperor Vespasian to be the messiah the Jews waited for.
How is it important whether jesus real or fake. How a individual lived two thousands years ago is relevant in todays world. We are all children of god, jesus was not alone.
It is important whether Jesus was real or fake because his message, death, Miracles,Resurrection all validate him being the Messiah mentioned in the Old Testament which help all Gods children understand their Father better.
Well there were real people who generated the ideas about god, heaven and hell at some point so does it matter if it was from a historical Jesus ? How would you work out if the theories were true? Even if Jesus walked on water or was seen alive after apparently dying how would that prove there was a heaven or hell or that Jesus had any say in an afterlife ? Where is the evidence that those weren't just made up fantasy ?
I like the line by Robert M. Price that it was something from his Christian up bringing that gave him a sense of it being important to follow the truth where ever it leads no matter the cost. Well I can agree there are a few decent ideas in Christianity, depending on your interpretation of those ideas. I can even agree that there could be things in Christianity to love and revere but I think Price should have quickly followed on by adding that there are things he hates & despises about Christianity. Well i have very mixed feelings toward Christianity, both love, indifference, amusement & hate but mostly negative. That would depend on your focus though.
Don't knock the village atheist. Not everyone can be as articulate & well versed as Robert Price. How many can remember all those details ?
Religious nonsense! All myth!
There is not one written eyewitness account of Jesus during his lifetime. Strange since he was famous at birth, because wise men expected to see the future king of Jews who was born from a virgin married mother. Every leading Christian scholar since Erasmus, five hundred years ago, has maintained that the gospels were originally written in Greek from 70 to 140 CE (Mark after the year 70, Luke about 110, Matthew about 130, and John no earlier than 140 CE). This proves that they were not written by Christ's apostles, disciples or by any of the early Christians.
Others say: “There is no proof of the Gospels existing before 130 CE”
Jesus is depicted as hugely popular in the gospels. Yet he is unrecorded by non-Biblical historians.
Paul was the first one to write about Jesus around 60CE; but he, like everyone else, never saw Jesus. He experienced a vision of the resurrected Jesus. All myth! Seek the truth!
1:30:21 "there's 26 books in the bible" ummm no. in the Hebrew Bible there are 39 books and in the New Testament there are 27 books. and combined there are 66 books so anyway you look at it she's wrong. and the rest of her comments were just vastly uninformed interpretations and rantings about nothing
"Historical" Jesus. It is impossible to separate the man from the mythologies and the hagiographic representations of him.
Concerning Christ and Messiah: John 1: 41 ~ "He first findeth his own brother Simon, and saith unto him, We have found the Messias, which is being interpreted, the Christ."
The following from 1 Corinthians 1: 17 - 31 ~
"For Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the gospel; not with wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ should be of none effect.
For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God.
For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent.
Where is the wise? Where is the Scribe? Where is the disputer of this world? Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?
For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.
For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom:
But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumbling block, and unto the Greeks foolishness;
But unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God.
Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.
For ye see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble are called.
But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God has chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty;
And base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to naught things that are:
That no flesh should glory in His presence.
But of Him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption.
That according as it is written, he that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord.
There is not one written eyewitness account of Jesus during his lifetime. Strange since he was famous at birth, because wise men expected to see the future king of Jews who was born from a virgin married mother. Every leading Christian scholar since Erasmus, five hundred years ago, has maintained that the gospels were originally written in Greek from 70 to 140 CE (Mark after the year 70, Luke about 110, Matthew about 130, and John no earlier than 140 CE). This proves that they were not written by Christ's apostles, disciples or by any of the early Christians.
Others say: “There is no proof of the Gospels existing before 130 CE”
Jesus is depicted as hugely popular in the gospels. Yet he is unrecorded by non-Biblical historians.
Paul was the first one to write about Jesus around 60CE; but he, like everyone else, never saw Jesus. He experienced a vision of the resurrected Jesus. All myth! Seek the truth!
To Robert, if there was no histrical Christ then who was the true prophet which abolished sacrifices? If there was not this Essene master, then Paul would not have had anyone to argue against, yet it is recorded in the history erased by the Gentiles that Paul was an enemy and liar to the church, and we can see he did make his own doctrine
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+Consider This I am primary based it off of the amount of literature that has survived the annals of time of 2,000 years. Paul could not of just mustered up another Godhead over the numerous pagan gods of the day without having this basis. People say that the historian Josephus does not talk about Jesus, well this is a very organized puzzle, see, Paul created Jesus Christ as a Godhead, yes like a pagan religion, but not only is there ample evidence to show that he stole the intentions of the Christ as one that will ensue through the generations, Josephus hides the historical Jesus who he calls Judas the Galilean, into many fictional characters in stories that secretly relate to real events in history. That is why some people believe that Josephus could have master minded the whole New Testament. The New Testament says James, Simon Peter, and John to be brothers of Jesus. Josephus states that they were sons of Jesus. Paul states that they were the pillars of the church, which is an Essene and Nazarene heritage, which would mean they were royal brothers. The New Testament also says they were disciples of Jesus. And everyone agrees they were apostles of Jesus. We have surviving Aramaic testimony of Jesus, we have surviving Hebrew testimony of Jesus, all of the lost and found Greek and Coptic Gnostic and Apocrypha manuscript is a testimony to enormous Gentile corruption starting from Paul, people do not know that it was all created from the secret hostility of a Gentile Godhead truly being a pious Jew who told them not to call him a Godhead, and how much they wanted to change his historical culture and background into whatever suited themselves, but that he did say such a strong and intense teaching one cannot simple make up a doctrine of many generations of truth. But we have a line of early church fathers, who generation after generation, were all looking back fascinated with the history of the church, almost all of them discredited the actual apostles and followers of Christ because they were building the church. Lost inside of all this numerous text, we have a beautiful testimony of Simon Peter, although it is still corrupt the actual words of Simon Peter have survived down to this day. Scholars do not know that there is much more surviving words from Peter than James the brother of Jesus.
+Consider This I see how you are making humor out of my thesis, which may be waking me up a little more out of my conspiratorial stupor. But however, you cannot deny such literature that has survived. We can trace a group of pious Jews who separated themselves from the Temple and went out into the wilderness to prepare the "Way" for the holy Lord and redemption of Israel. This same group deserted Temple practices, claiming to bring their own true tabernacle out into the wilderness. With their founding doctrine, and jumping a century fast forward, we can see that John the Baptist was the leader of this sect called Essenes. They were an opposition force to the family who were running the Temple, called Sadducees. Now right away, we have to stop, and we have to gather that the New Testament was written with the same language and idioms of the Dead Sea Scrolls, which were reputed to be written by this wilderness sect. In the Dead Sea Scrolls we can see how this sect evolved out in the desert for 200 years. We can also see that by this 200 years, they had witnessed the coming of the Zadok line of priests, the heavenly Prince Melchizedek, who came to save the sins of the world through faith in his Assembly of the Law. These scrolls are written by a Righteous Teacher, Interpreter of the Law, who in Aramaic words, is the exact same person as Jesus in the New Testament. It is through all this history that we can see this progression, by the time this long awaited Master had come, the Community Rule of the wilderness sect had in it's doctrine, the Lord God desires for a delectable offering of free-will, a righteous prayer of thanksgiving, as a free-will offering to the Temple which replaces the burnt offering sacrifice. If you read the early Aramaic translation of John, you will see that Judas Iscariot was a fictional character that was brought in to create a myth, and many scholars believe that, but in the Aramaic it says it right there, and that Judas handed Jesus over specifically because Jesus denied slaughtering the Passover Lamb as a sacrifice - that is the real reason why the Sadducee family encouraged the Romans that Jesus was leading a rebellion (this part I am still not sure what went on). So not only are these correlations written by centuries of history in the Dead Sea Scrolls, we have surviving doctrine from the apostles that affirm it - but the catch is that the Gentiles wanted to keep it a secret, so the literature as mostly been wiped out and the remaining is hidden - which honestly makes it more likely to be true. Now Josephus was born around 30 AD, so when he wrote his first work in AD 75 he was well aware that this movement was turning into a worldwide change, 15 years prior it has been noted historically that there was already a population of Christians in Rome. It was in Josephus's best interests, especially if he was indeed the same person as Paul as some scholars believe, be even if he wasn't -m we have to remember that Josephus was of the royal descent of the opposition Essenes, so those pious Jews that went out into the wilderness were his direct enemies - that is why he mocks them. You have to understand the hatred that Josephus had towards Judas the Galilean, surely if you read his works and understand the background I have provided - you can clearly see that it is a real puzzle, and that his words are idioms, mind you this was very very common in that day to write in idioms and secret code.
+Kevin Paul Nobody abolished sacrifices. Jewish sacrifice stopped only because the Temple was destroyed and according to the Torah, Jewish sacrifices cannot be offered anywhere else but the Temple
+Ken Scaletta Sir, you cannot just state claims without a cast support of evidence. I am already far too advanced in my historical studies. First, you have to figure out by all the evidence that nearly all the early church fathers were Greek speaking Gentile heretics, who hated Jews. You have to come by research that Paul was an enemy to the council of the community. You have to put together all the evidence that the community were the Essenes, and they were wiped out from history purposefully. I have read so much on this and I have put together these evidences to prove that what I am saying is correct. All of my evidences align perfectly with the historical truth and the Dead Sea Scrolls. The historical truth being the rare remaining Jewish Christian literature (if you admit Christ was a Jew you have to admit the first followers of Him were also Jewish, so why do you not observe the Jewish Christian doctrine?) All of the doctrine blatantly spells it out for us, it is just your choice to turn your eye from it. I can give you so much evidence, let me know if you want it, but again it is your choice to not listen to these words that come directly from the Jewish Christian source, before it was corrupted by Gentile followers of Paul.
"But when the time began to draw near that what was wanting in the Mosaic institutions should be supplied, as we have said, and that the Prophet should appear, of whom he had foretold that He should warn them by the mercy of God to cease from sacrificing; lest haply they might suppose that on the cessation of sacrifice there was no remission of sins for them, He instituted baptism by water amongst them, in which they might be absolved from all their sins on the invocation of His name, and for the future, following a perfect life, might abide in immortality, being purified not by the blood of beasts, but by the purification of the Wisdom of God."
The truth is that I just listen to Simon Peter and his disciple Clement of Rome, and you don't.
"He also said, I am come to end the sacrifices and feasts of blood, and if ye cease not offering and eating of flesh and blood, the wrath of God shall not cease from you, even as it came to your fathers in the wilderness, who lusted for flesh, and they eat to their content, and were filled with rottenness."
Again, I can supply endless real evidences to support my words, and you can supply nothing but an ideas. But, I am sorry to you that millions and millions of people chose to hide the truth from you, so I do have pity on you and everyone for that matter, however, God will still ask you, why did you not try harder to find the truth? Why did you not listen to my words?
Scholars who specialise in the origins of Christianity agree on very little, but they do generally agree that it is most likely that a historical preacher, on whom the Christian figure "Jesus Christ" is based, did exist. The numbers of professional scholars, out of the many thousands in this and related fields, who don't accept this consensus, can be counted on the fingers of one hand. Many may be more cautious about using the term "historical fact" about this idea, since as with many things in ancient history it is not quite as certain as that. But it is generally regarded as the best and most parsimonious explanation of the evidence and therefore the most likely conclusion that can be drawn.
The opposite idea - that there was no historical Jesus at all and that "Jesus Christ" developed out of some purely mythic ideas about a non-historical, non-existent figure - has had a chequered history over the last 200 years, but has usually been a marginal idea at best. Its heyday was in the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Century, when it seemed to fit with some early anthropological ideas about religions evolving along parallel patterns and being based on shared archetypes, as characterised by Sir James Frazer's influential comparative religion study 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘎𝘰𝘭𝘥𝘦𝘯 𝘉𝘰𝘶𝘨𝘩(1890). But it fell out of favour as the Twentieth Century progressed and was barely held by any scholars at all by the 1960s.
More recently the "Jesus Myth" hypothesis has experienced something of a revival, largely via the internet, blogging and "print on demand" self-publishing services. But its proponents are almost never scholars, many of them have a very poor grasp of the evidence and almost all have clear ideological objectives. Broadly speaking, they fall into two main categories: (i) New Agers claiming Christianity is actually paganism rebadged and (ii) anti-Christian atheist activists seeking to use their "exposure" of historical Jesus scholarship to undermine Christianity. Both claim that the consensus on the existence of a historical Jesus is purely due to some kind of iron-grip that Christianity still has on the subject, which has suppressed and/or ignored the idea that there was no historical Jesus at all.
In fact, there are some very good reasons there is a broad scholarly consensus on the matter and that it is held by scholars across a wide range of beliefs and backgrounds, including those who are atheists and agnostics (e.g. Bart Ehrman, Maurice Casey, Paula Fredriksen) and Jews (e.g. Geza Vermes, Hyam Maccoby).
The Historical Unicorn: Four Views
𝙅𝙤𝙨𝙚𝙥𝙝𝙪𝙨
The Jewish priestly aristocrat Joseph ben Matityahu, who took the Roman name Flavius Josephus, is our main source of information about Jewish affairs in this period and is usually the only writer of the time who makes any mention of Jewish preachers, prophets and Messianic claimants of the First Century. Not surprisingly, he mentions Jesus twice: firstly in some detail in
Antiquities of the Jews XVIII.3.4 and again more briefly when mentioning the execution of Jesus' brother James in Antiquities XX.9.1. The first reference is problematic, however, as it contains elements which Josephus cannot have written and which seem to have been added later by a Christian interpolator. Here is the text, with the likely interpolations in bold:
"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 𝑝𝑎𝑟𝑎𝑑𝑜𝑥𝑖𝑐𝑎𝑙 𝑑𝑒𝑒𝑑𝑠, 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."
There has been a long debate about what parts of this reference to Jesus are authentic to Josephus or even if the whole passage is a wholesale interpolation. Proponents of the Jesus Myth hypothesis, naturally, opt for the idea that it is not authentic in any way, but there are strong indications that, apart from the obvious additions shown in bold above, Josephus did mention Jesus at this point in his text.
To begin with, several elements in the passage are distinctively Josephean in their style and phrasing. "Now (there was) about this time ..." is used by Josephus as a way of introducing a new topic hundreds of times in his work. There are no early Christian parallels that refer to Jesus merely as "a wise man", but this is a term used by Josephus several times, eg about Solomon and Daniel. Christian writers placed a lot of emphasis on Jesus' miracles, but here the passage uses a fairly neutral term παραδόξων ἔργων - "paradoxa erga" or "paradoxical deeds". Josephus does use this phrase elsewhere about the miracles of Elisha, but the term can also mean "deeds that are difficult to interpret" and even has overtones of cautious scepticism. Finally, the use of the word φῦλον ("phylon" - "race, tribe") is not used by Christians about themselves in any works of the time, but is used by Josephus elsewhere about sects, nations or other distinct groups. Additionally, with the sole exception of Χριστιανῶν ("Christianon" - "Christians") every single word in the passage can be found elsewhere in Josephus' writings.
The weight of the evidence of the vocabulary and style of the passage is heavily towards its partial authenticity. Not only does it contain distinctive phrases of Josephus that he used in similar contexts elsewhere, but these are also phrases not found in early Christian texts. And it is significantly free of terms and phrases from the gospels, which we'd expect to find if it was created wholesale by a Christian writer. So either a very clever Christian interpolator somehow managed to immerse himself in Josephus' phrasing and language, without modern concordances and dictionaries and create a passage containing distinctively Josephean phraseology, or what we have here is a genuinely Josephean passage that has simply been added to rather clumsily.
As a result of this and other evidence (eg the Arabic and Syriac paraphrases of this passage which seem to come from a version before the clumsy additions by the interpolator) the consensus amongst scholars of all backgrounds is that the passage is partially genuine, simply added in a few obvious places. Louis H. Feldman's Josephus and Modern Scholarship(1984) surveys scholarship on the question from 1937 to 1980 and finds of 52 scholars on the subject, 39 considered the passage to be partially authentic.
Peter Kirby has done a survey of the literature since and found that this trend has increased in recent years. He concludes "In my own reading of thirteen books since 1980 that touch upon the passage, ten out of thirteen argue the (
Antiquities of the Jews XVIII.3.4 passage) to be partly genuine, while the other three maintain it to be entirely spurious. Coincidentally, the same three books also argue that Jesus did not exist."
The other mention of Jesus in Josephus, Antiquities XX.9.1, is much more straightforward, but much more of a problem for Jesus Mythicists. In it Josephus recounts a major political event that happened when he was a young man. This would have been a significant and memorable event for him, since he was only 25 at the time and it caused upheaval in his own social and political class, the priestly families of Jerusalem that included his own.
In 62 AD the Roman procurator of Judea, Porcius Festus, died while in office and his replacement, Lucceius Albinus, was still on his way to Judea from Rome. This left the High Priest, Hanan ben Hanan (usually called Ananus), with a freer reign than usual. Ananus executed some Jews without Roman permission and, when this was brought to the attention of the Romans, Ananus was deposed. This deposition would have been memorable for the young Josephus, who had just returned from an embassy to Rome on the behalf of the Jerusalem priests. But what makes this passage relevant is what Josephus mentions, in passing, as the cause of the political upheaval:
𝐹𝑒𝑠𝑡𝑢𝑠 𝑤𝑎𝑠 𝑛𝑜𝑤 𝑑𝑒𝑎𝑑, 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝐴𝑙𝑏𝑖𝑛𝑢𝑠 𝑤𝑎𝑠 𝑏𝑢𝑡 𝑢𝑝𝑜𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑟𝑜𝑎𝑑; 𝑠𝑜 (𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝐻𝑖𝑔ℎ 𝑃𝑟𝑖𝑒𝑠𝑡) 𝑎𝑠𝑠𝑒𝑚𝑏𝑙𝑒𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑆𝑎𝑛ℎ𝑒𝑑𝑟𝑖𝑛 𝑜𝑓 𝑗𝑢𝑑𝑔𝑒𝑠, 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑏𝑟𝑜𝑢𝑔ℎ𝑡 𝑏𝑒𝑓𝑜𝑟𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑚
𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒃𝒓𝒐𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒓 𝒐𝒇 𝑱𝒆𝒔𝒖𝒔❟ 𝒘𝒉𝒐 𝒘𝒂𝒔 𝒄𝒂𝒍𝒍𝒆𝒅 𝑴𝒆𝒔𝒔𝒊𝒂𝒉❟ 𝒘𝒉𝒐𝒔𝒆 𝒏𝒂𝒎𝒆 𝒘𝒂𝒔 𝑱𝒂𝒎𝒆𝒔, 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑠𝑜𝑚𝑒 𝑜𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑠; 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑤ℎ𝑒𝑛 ℎ𝑒 ℎ𝑎𝑑 𝑓𝑜𝑟𝑚𝑒𝑑 𝑎𝑛 𝑎𝑐𝑐𝑢𝑠𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑎𝑔𝑎𝑖𝑛𝑠𝑡 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑚 𝑎𝑠 𝑏𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑘𝑒𝑟𝑠 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑙𝑎𝑤, ℎ𝑒 𝑑𝑒𝑙𝑖𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑒𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑚 𝑡𝑜 𝑏𝑒 𝑠𝑡𝑜𝑛𝑒𝑑.
This mention is peripheral to the story Josephus is telling, but since we know from Christian sources that Jesus' brother James led the Jesus sect in Jerusalem in this period and we have a separate, non-dependent, Christian account of James' execution by the Jerusalem priesthood, it is fairly clear which "Jesus who was called Messiah" Josephus is referring to here.
Almost without exception, modern scholars consider this passage genuine and an undisputed reference to Jesus as a historical figure by someone who was a contemporary of his brother and who knew of the execution of that brother first hand.
This rather unequivocal reference to a historical Jesus leaves Jesus Mythicists with a thorny problem, which they generally try to solve one of two ways:
(i) "The words "who was called Messiah" are a later Christian interpolation" -Since it is wholly unlikely that a Christian interpolator invented the whole story of the deposition of the High Priest just to slip in this passing reference to Jesus, Mythicists try to argue that the key words which identify which Jesus is being spoken of are interpolated. Unfortunately this argument does not work. This is because the passage is discussed no less than three times in mid-Third Century works by the Christian apologist Origen and he directly quotes the relevant section with the words "Jesus who was called the Messiah" all three times: inContra Celsum I.4, in Celsum II:13 and in Commentarium in evangelium Matthaei X.17. Each time he uses precisely the phrase we find in Josephus: αδελφος Ιησου του λεγομενου Χριστου ("the brother of that Jesus who was called Messiah"). This is significant because Origen was writing a whole generation before Christianity was in any kind of position to be tampering with texts of Josephus. If this phrase was in the passage in Origen's time, then it was clearly original to Josephus.
(ii) "The Jesus being referred to here was not the Jesus of Christianity, but the 'Jesus, son of Dameus' mentioned later in the same passage."After detailing the deposition of the High Priest Ananus, Josephus mentions that he was succeeded as High Priest by a certain "Jesus, son of Damneus".
Josephus Flavius, the Jewish historian, lived as the earliest non-Christian who mentions a Jesus. Although many scholars think that Josephus' short accounts of Jesus (in Antiquities) came from interpolations perpetrated by a later Church father (most likely, Eusebius), Josephus' birth in 37 C.E. (well after the alleged crucifixion of Jesus), puts him out of range of an eyewitness account. Moreover, he wrote Antiquities in 93 C.E., after the first gospels got written! Therefore, even if his accounts about Jesus came from his hand, his information could only serve as hearsay. "...the vast majority of scholars since the early 1800s have said that this quotation is not by Josephus, but rather is a later Christian insertion in his works. In other words, it is a forgery, rejected by scholars."
@@JohnSmith-yw9nk Josephus considered the Roman emperor to be the messiah the Jews waited for. Sueto and Tacitus wrote similar claims that the Roman emperor was the messiah the jews waited for.
There is nothing historical about the Jesus of Islam. The Qur'an is simply 600 years too late to be regarded as anything other than a theological source.
+dragonchase. Muslims believe Jesus is the Jewish Messiah who was born of the Virgin Mary and was called the word of God by the Angel Gabriel. So it is not possible to say that Islam is true if you believe Jesus did not exist.
Islam and The Bible both are not historical books, they are Religious ones, therefore Islam is not stressing the historical facts of Jesus, but its main purpose is to make the word of God more simple.
Don't be absurd. The New Testament contains actual letters written to early Christian communities and the Gospels are properly classified as ancient biographies. Both are historical genres that are recognized by modern scholars - letters in particular are classified as primary sources. The book of Revelation is the only nonhistorical text in the NT as it is written in the genre of apocalyptic writing. The Qur'an is written in the genre of direct or prophetic speech. It contains hardly any clear historical references & is often utterly incomprehensible. It is not very useful as a historical text & the stories about Muhammed that seek to explain its more confusing passages were recorded 200 years after his death. Don't make a false equivalence between texts you clearly know little about.
mcemmo. If you think the NT provides accurate historical account of Christian community, you are wrong. There are too many contradictions in them.
Please share whatever it is that you are smoking if you truly believe that after all the contradictions and fudging in the 'gospels' actually are some sort of historical story. Pleases.
jesus is not the prince or king of peace.
+Awe Awe "jesus is not the prince or king of peace." Based on what?
It's impossible that Jesus didn't exist, too many Gospels existed for it to be made up. Too many people were prepared to suffer and die for him. Great men like Augustine and Aquinas, the church and desert fathers were not all fooled by a comic story. As he says, he doesn't know. (the last speaker)