In a message dated 04/01/01 03:22:04 GMT Standard Time, ccogan@telepath.com
writes:
> AutismUK
> >93AD I think.
>
> Chris
> So, he wasn't around during Jesus's life, but only after Christianity had
> been established, and *well* after the date that Jesus was supposedly
> resurrected? This hardly sounds like independent evidence of the truth of
> New Testament claims.
Paul Robson:
It's as good as anything there is. Watch the desperate attempts of
fundamentalists (or as Jones would call them "scholars") to plonk
the Gospels at 40-50AD, and have them as "historical". There's
little else ; Suetonius refers to unrest caused by Christians during
Claudius' time, Pliny Yngr asks Trajan what he's supposed to do
with Christians round about 102AD, Tacitus reports Nero tried to
blame Christians for the Great Fire around 114AD. And that's it.
There's a few second century Jewish responses, and a few
things apologists desperately try to twist into evidence. Josephus
isn't great, but it's almost all they've got, apart from circular Bible
arguments.
> Chris
> When I talk about stories that others have told me, I will normally put
> them in my own words, as many people do with such stories, and as Josephus
> might well have done.
Possibly.
> Chris
> Assuming that he wrote those passages, and that his honesty was
> well-established, I would take it as sufficient to establish that
> *Josephus* believed in the reality of the existence of Jesus. But, there
> are way too many such reports of remarkable events and people coming from
> people who honestly believe them, but which turn out to be false, for me
to
> take this as evidence of the truth about *Jesus*.
Well, a lot of "scholars" of the type castigated as anti supernaturalistic
liberal not real Christians argue that there isn't much known for sure about
Jesus other than he probably existed in a certain place around a certain
time. The Tim's of this world will bang on about it being a historical event,
but they're just trying to bang it in by repetition (which is how they learnt
it).
That's the real reason believers like Jones and Giesler hate things like 'Q'
and the Jesus Seminar, and slag them off so unmercifully. They don't
support the "super simple magical Jesus" view. They work not from
anti supernaturalistic biases, but from the possibility that the Gospels
were rewritten for theological reasons.
This doesn't deny God, Jesus or the Resurrection. It just encourages
people to think about it in an intelligent fashion. It's much simpler
to "believe".
> Chris
> The existence of someone named Jesus who, perhaps, went around preaching,
> could be true without the fantastic claims about him being true.
> Establishing the bare existence of a human being requires much less
> evidence than establishing such fantastic claims about him, that's all.
Yep. There actually is no evidence for the "fantastic claims" Jesus outside
the Bible, except for the extreme minority view that the TF is *accurate*.
(In the sense of it's completely accurate !).
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Jan 04 2001 - 06:52:37 EST