The point is that, as far as historical documents go, you will find none that are contemporary to JC, but many dated 100 years later. The fact that Rabbis don't doubt his existence is not a proof. They don't doubt Methuselah's age either....

check this out! http://www.gopfrettir.net/GiancarloGianazza/torg.htm

I (or anyone else for that matter) can't prove a negative: I can't prove something /doesn't/ exist. Since you're the one claiming a positive point (that Jesus did exist) the onus is on you. Believe me, better minds than yours have sought some proof of the actual existence of Jesus over the years, but we still have nothing.



For that matter, I'm sure you can get an imam to say he was real, too. It doesn't count for much; religious authority is not per se a matter of historical knowledge.

I'm not sure what you're getting at, really. I once read a story where Benjamin Franklin was elected president; that doesn't mean he was.

--Jaylemurph

Of the important people of that period, we have ample evidences of their existence. We have statues of the emperors, documents referring to Pontius Pilate, writings mentioning some of the prime temple priests . . . and yet . . . . the personality that split time in two remains historically anonymous.

The "triumphant entry into Jerusalem," for example, wherein " . . . the multitudes that went before, and that followed, cried, saying, Hosanna to the son of David: Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord; Hosanna in the highest," is noted only in the gospels and unrecorded elsewhere.

There were ample historians in that time . . . and in Israel . . . to have written about such dramatic events and yet we have historic silence.

Why is there a need to "disprove" Jesus? History does a good enough job.

The only thing I'm aware of which indisputably testifies to the existence of Pontius Pilate is one solitary cornerstone/paving block with his inscription discovered not quite 50 years ago.

As late as 1960 Skeptics regarded Pilate as mythical!

At least I no longer get that one thrown up at me, as I did in my youth.

In 2001 a team of Italian scholars led by a "life-long" Atheist established to a 95.5 percent certainty that the "bones of St. Luke" long housed in Padua are exactly what they have for centuries been assumed to be. (St. Luke died in Thebes, Greece, and the Church there held the bones until they were "liberated" by Western Catholics during the Crusades and shipped to Padua.)

Now while Luke never met Christ he did associate closely with people who HAD known him.

Maybe the ark of the covernent wasnt an ark, maybe it was a person?

Hmmm.

Though you paint a 'plausible' tale, it just seems sadly to lack any evidence at all, particularly where one might have expected to find some.

For instance, our Beloved Physician begins his Gospel by talking about eyewitness accounts - but doesn't state that Mary is a source, rather that they have been 'handed down':


The author of Luke also of course wrote Acts, intended as a sequel, to 'catch up' on what those Jesus left behind had been up to. He name-drops Paul, and implies that he and Paul collaborated together in their ministry (the 'we' section), yet again there is no mention of the role of Mary after the disciples' meeting following Jesus' ascension.

As someone who was clearly motivated by the consideration of the importance of historicity and eyewitness accounts, if he was drawing material straight from the horse's mouth, as it were, wouldn't he have mentioned something?

I never met a Rabbi that considered Jesus an historical person.

Methuselah's age is known factually? Another thing I have not heard from Rabbis....

He is mentioned by Josephus and later Tacitus. Combined with the stone block recently discovered, I am personally confident that he was, indeed, a historic character.

Church sponsored archaeologists have discovered so many bones and attributed them to the apostles that such news is no longer of interest. The "bones of St. Peter" once officially recognized by the pope turned out to be the bones of a woman.

You will find that if a character is mentioned in the bible, you will need more evidence to prove their existence than if they were other historical characters.

I fail to see your point about The Passion Plot. An author sees a vast market for a religiously themed book does not indicate that the prime character was real. There are also books about Thor, the gods of Olympus and the infamous treatments of the so-called gods of the presumed Annunaki. That does not bring these personalities to any historic life.

And I have never met a rabbi who was not extremely respectful of an other person's beliefs.

So? Both of them were writing in Rome decades after the fact.

Just because it convinces you doesn't mean it's proof for everyone.

--Jaylemueph

Quite true.

That is why I said that I am PERSONALLY convinced.

As far as the Ark is concerned, if it was ever found who would it belong to? Its mentioned in all the Holy books of the 3 main Religons.
Everyone would lay claim to it, and demand it "back" .... its probably best it reamins undiscovered.

To whomever discovered it, unless it is discovered in a country where all archaeological discoveries belong to the government by law.

Or unless when it's discovered it already belongs to someone - as I mentioned previously, there's a reasonable candidate in a museum in Harare.

Indiana Jones. It should belong to Indiana Jones. Or maybe Karen Allen.

--Jaylemurph

I vote for Lara Croft... to make it a little more virtual....

And I am waiting for the final proof that it is one of the famous Oded Golan forgeries.

The only information I have seen indicated that experts believed the stone to be genuine.

That's exceedingly odd. I've never met a single rabbi who hasn't! I've lived for 31 years within walking distance of one of the great Jewish universities and worked in bookstores frequented by faculty members from that institution.

Yep, so did they believe about the James Ossuary, and the Jehoash Inscription.

Until some documentary filmer came along and smelled a rat.

But regardless: For all, whose believe depends on on some historical trinkets: They should reconsider if they believe at all, or they are just imitating chimpanzee style. Those who don't believe will be hardly be convinced by them.

Well, it seems to be accepted by Christian, Jewish and purely secular archaeologists and has been so for over 40 years.

But since you are awaiting "final" proof that it is a modern forgery could you kindly supply us with your preliminary proof?

If the stone is genuine or not, the existence of Pontius Pilate would not give historic credentials to the rest of the Christian tale. Like you, I am not always on the archaeological bandwagon simply because some "experts" believe an item is truly an artifact. A Harvard professor publicly stated that the Piltdown Man was genuine. But I will reserve my personal opinion until the final findings are given.

My suspicion was always that there is a non-deteriorated writing on a crumbled stone... but maybe that is just me....

Gee, they're of interest to me. I guess I'm just strange.

The history of the Luke bones seems unbroken. Again, Luke died in Thebes, Greece. The bones were kept there and later in Constantinople until they were "ripped off" by the Western Church during the Crusades and whisked off to Padua.

And when DNA analyses were performed on the Luke bones they were definitely proven to be neither Greek no Italian nor otherwise European (as would be suspected in the case of a hoax) but having instead Syrian-area ancestry.

P. S. The guy who proved all this is STILL an Atheist!

I'm a Christian and I believe that without question it belongs to the Jews. They built it and cared for it for centuries - why wouldn't it be theirs? Christians and Muslims never had the slightest physical connection with it. And to Christians Jesus Christ is the Living Ark.

Pardon, but did they believe in the James Ossuary for FORTY-PLUS YEARS? As I recall red flags started rising within days.

So? People continued to write personal memoirs of their friendships with Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Delano Roosevelt "decades after" their deaths. That doesn't mean that they're all fictional or even that they can't be trusted.

And maybe this is just me, but all except the first line of the inscription seems to show quite a lot of deterioration.

That's a bit different. Are you suggesting Tacitus and Josephus had personal recollections of Jesus? If so, then you clearly haven't read their works.

I'd be careful about invoking Roman historians in any case. Suetonius reports Jesus was leading riots in Rome in 48 CE -- hardly the action of a peaceable saviour and not a little difficult for a dead man to do. Although with a few sticks and strings, why not?

--Jaylemurph

Who suggested that Josephus or Tacitus had personal recollections of Jesus? The reference was made to written comments about Pontius Pilate.

Eusebius mentions events in Pilate's life dating to the year 41, some four years after the birth of Josephus. It is entirely possible, therefore, that Josephus could have gained information from those who knew Pontius Pilate or, at least, remembered his term of office.

Suetonius was one of the least of the Roman historians. Without Livy and Tacitus, however, what would we really know about Roman life of those times?

I would like to find the tree of life.
Immortality anyone?

Look at the quoted post. The example given was that people who knew Lincoln and Roosevelt personally were writing things about them decades after their death. Unless OTR *is* suggesting that Tacitus or Josephus personally knew Jesus, then the analogy doesn't hold.

In any case, Josephus didn't starting writing until Jesus had (putatively) been dead almost fifty years, and not until he live in Rome. Those are big gaps to cover for personal recollections, and out of character. Josephus was a Jewish apologist; it's unlikely he'd chose to go to too much trouble over a rabble-rouser that both the Jews and the Romans didn't like. Personally, I don't think he did, but those oh-so-active christian forgers were happy to correct his oversight for him. (After all, *any* reference at all in the corpus of Josephus is contested, so I'm not sure naming him as a historical reference is wise.)

--Jaylemurph

I assumed that Old Time Radio was speaking of Josephus writing about Pontius Pilate. I basically agree with you in relation to him writing about Jesus. But his mentionings of Pontius Pilate are another thing.

Agreed. So let me try a more apt analogy. Let's say I sit down today and write out my memories of the Eisenhower Administration, from memory, these 50 years after the fact. That memoir will be largely accurate. And, more to the point, it would make a lousy argument for some future theorist attempting to prove that Dwight Eisenhower never existed.

Even if my memoir was the ONLY document surviving into the future it wouldn't prove that.

That is a far better analogy.

--Jaylemurph

Got a citation for that, Jay? Would that be his remark about "Chrestus" (in Claudius 25) you're thinking of?

Yep. De Vita Caesarum, Claudius XXV.4:


--Jaylemurph

As I remember it, "Chrestus" occurs in Tacitus rather than Suetonius.

You've got the citation and the relevant text directly in front of you if (for some odd reason) you doubt the Suetonius reference. "Chrestus" is the variant appearing in Suetonius. Tacitus uses (the correct) Christus in his reference:



Tacitus, Annales XV (XLIV)

--Jaylemurph

Thank you!

And Suetonius didn't say that "Chrestus" was Jesus. So, earlier, Jay, when you wrote


You made that up, because a gaffe would better serve your attack on Suetonius than what he really wrote.

Enough said.

But interestingly in that passage, Tacitus uses Chrestianos - 'followers of Chrestus' - for what is normally translated 'Christians', and then in the next sentence calls Jesus Christus. Very confusing.

Exactly right. The Ark was already gone when Hezakiah was humbled by the Assyrians a century earlier. As you may recall, they had surrounded the city, and to "buy them off", Hezakiah gave them every gold object in the temple. But did he strip the chest of its gold? No.

The Hebrews never wrote of the Ark again becasue they knew it could have only been Yahweh Himself that flew into the temple, devoured priests, and flew off with the ark and other treasure.

Shortly before the Assyrians came Hezakiah outraged Yahweh (formerly known as the dragon Yaw) by destroying his personal idol of a fiery flying serpent that Yahweh himself commanded to be built, and for all the glory days of the Hebrews had been worshipped just as the Bible states. When Hezakiah committed this grave blaspemy, He came to the temple, stole filled the ark with his favorite temple treasure (and the tablets, but there was plenty of room), and left the Hebrews to fend for themselves in a world of enemies. Yes, Hezakiah bought off the Assyrians with the rest of the temple gold, but it was gone when the Bablylonians came, so they became a conquered people.

Apologists rewrote the story to cover up Hezakiah's blasphemy, and true cause for the fall of the two Hebrew kingdoms, but the facts speak for themselves.

Where is the Ark today? Only Yahweh knows. Is is most likely buried in one of his favorit "lairs" with other treasures that so fascinate a dragon.

This stone was found by archaeologists so it is not a fake. It is amusing that biblical minimalists would have believed the ancient Christian writers would not even know the name of the Roman offical in Judea during the time of Jesus, just a decade before the gospels may have been written.

The stone does not appear to be erroded, but rather it has been deliberately reshaped to serve another purpose, as was commonly done after the Roman Empire fell.

Just to add my 2 cents worth to the Suetonius "Chrestus" thing...
He clearly refers to Jesus.....but....

He might also have said that Isis caused her followers to parade in the streets dressed in white....etc.
While he would have been entirely correct to say this, it does not mean that he thought isis was alive and kicking in Rome.

It does depend on how you read the sentence i suppose, and i wouldnt rule out the possibility that Suetonius got his facts mixed up on this point, it clearly didnt mean enough to him for him to elucidate further.