G'day Truthspoon.
The evidence for the existence of Jesus is the existence of Christianity and its effect on the world.
Leaving aside the fact that you are engaged in a logical fallacy of circular reasoning, by the same justification then you would believe in the existence of all other religious figures because of the existence of the religion in their name and the effect it has had on the world.
Is this the case?
Do you believe in the existence of Krishna?
If not, why not?
The evidence for the existence of Jesus are the numerous canonical gospels biographies of Jesus, the letters from Paul, Peter and countless Christian writers who transmitted the message of Jesus throughout the ages. Also we have references to Jesus by Roman writers Pliny and Tacitus and the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus
Using the bible to prove the characters are historical is circular reasoning, a logical fallacy that you have used twice in the first two sentences of your post.
As you have not provided the information from Pliny, Tacitus or Flavius Josephus, let alone any links to source material, I will respond to the common usage cited by christian apologists making such claims.
I will use the following link ...
https://elpidiovaldes.wordpress.com...the-bible-part-3-pliny-tacitus-and-suetonius/ ... in rebuttal, which cites the original text, though as there is a limit on the amount of characters for each post I will leave out the original text and simply post the rebuttals.
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First things first, “Christ” is a title, not Jesus’s last name. If Pliny’s letter is genuine it would serve only to demonstrate that there were people termed “Christians” who were singing hymns to a god with the title of “Christos” around the beginning of the second century. Neither Pliny’s letter nor the response by Trajan mention anything about this god having a life on Earth; nor do they even call him “Jesus”.
In reality, the epithet “Christos” is used 40 times in the Septuagint version of the Old Testament, centuries before the Christian era, as applied to a variety of characters, including in several references to “the Lord’s anointed”. [2]
Indeed, in 1 and 2 Samuel the first King of Israel, Saul, is repeatedly referred to as “Christos” at least a couple of hundred years before Jesus was given the same title. By the end of 2 Samuel (23:1), it was David who was called “Christ”. In 2 Chronicles 6:42, David’s son Solomon becomes God’s Christ, and at 2 Chronicles 22:7 it is Jehu who is the Lord’s anointed. As can be seen, there have been many Christs! [3]
From the foregoing facts, it can be asserted that Pliny provides no useful information either as to who Jesus was or even whether or not he existed.
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The Tacitean passage next states that these fire-setting agitators were followers of “Christus” (Christos), who, in the reign of Tiberius, “was put to death as a criminal by the procurator Pontius Pilate.” The passage also recounts that the Christians, who constituted a “vast multitude at Rome,” were then sought after and executed in ghastly manners, including by crucifixion. However, the date that a “vast multitude” of Christians was discovered and executed would be around 64 CE, and it is evident that there was no “vast multitude” of Christians at Rome by this time, as there were not even a multitude of them in Judea.
Oddly, this brief mention of Christians is all there is in the voluminous works of Tacitus regarding this extraordinary movement, which allegedly possessed such power as to be able to burn Rome. In his well-known
Histories, for example, Tacitus never refers to Christ, Christianity or Christians. The Neronian persecution of Christians is unrecorded by any other historian of the day and supposedly took place at the very time when Paul was purportedly freely preaching at Rome (Acts 28:30-31). Early Christian writers such as Tertullian, Lactantius, Sulpicius Severus, Eusebius and Augustine of Hippo do not refer to Tacitus when discussing the subject of the Christian persecution by Nero.
Also, this passage constitutes the
only Pagan reference that specifically associates Pontius Pilate with Christ. Moreover, even though it was the passion and duty of Church historian Eusebius to compile all non-Christian references to Jesus in his
History of the Church, he failed to mention the Annals passage.
All in all, the passage smacks of being a late Christian interpolation or at the least a redaction. Tacitus Annals does not appear in the literary record until the 14th century, while the earliest extant manuscript possessing book 15 dates only to the 11th century. Hence, the authenticity and value of the Annals remain dubious.
An interesting question is: Why would Tacitus – a Roman
senator – make such derogatory remarks about Rome, calling it the city “to which all that is horrible and shameful floods together and is celebrated”?
Professor R. T. France (New Testament scholar and Anglican cleric) concludes that the Tacitus passage is at best just Tacitus repeating what he has heard through Christians. [5]
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The following link also contains the original text in question and this is merely the rebuttal ...
https://elpidiovaldes.wordpress.com/2011/04/25/jesus-outside-the-bible-part-2-flavius-josephus/
This surprisingly brief and simplistic passage constitutes
the best proof of Jesus’s existence in the entire ancient non-Christian library comprising the works of dozens of historians, writers, philosophers, politicians and others who never mentioned the great sage and wonderworker Jesus Christ, even though they lived contemporaneously with or shortly after the Christian savior’s purported advent.
Despite the best wishes of sincere believers and the erroneous claims of truculent apologists, the TF has been demonstrated continually over the centuries to be a forgery, likely interpolated by Catholic Church historian Eusebius in the fourth century. So thorough and universal has been this debunking that very few scholars of repute continued to cite the passage after the turn of the 19th century. Indeed, the TF was rarely mentioned, except to note that it was a forgery. [2]
It is obvious to all that Josephus would never have said that Jesus “was the Messiah,” or that “he appeared alive to them again on the third day,” since this would mean he subscribed to Christian doctrine. And “if one ought to call him a man” is clearly a Christian reverential remark. Opinion is mixed about the ‘teacher of the truth’ reference. Some have suggested that instead of the blatant “he was the Messiah,” Josephus may have written that “he was believed to be the Messiah.”
When the evidence is scientifically examined, it becomes clear that the Josephus passage regarding Jesus was forged. Here is the famous passage again,
with the widely-regarded forgeries in bold, though there is some variation on this among scholars:
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Let’s take a look at some of the evidence:
- It [TF] was not quoted or referred to by any Christian apologists prior to Eusebius, c. 316 CE.
- Nowhere else in his voluminous works does Josephus use the word “Christ”, except in the passage which refers to James ‘the brother of Jesus who was called Christ’ (Antiquities of the Jews, Book 20, Chapter 9, Paragraph 1), which is also considered to be a forgery.
- Since Josephus was not a Christian but an orthodox Jew, it is impossible that he should have believed or written that Jesus was the Christ or used the words “if it be lawful to call him a man,” which imply the Christian belief in Jesus’ divinity.
- The extraordinary character of the things related in the passage–of a man who is apparently more than a man, and who rose from the grave after being dead for three days–demanded a more extensive treatment by Josephus, which would undoubtedly have been forthcoming if he had been its author.
- The passage interrupts the narrative, which would flow more naturally if the passage were left out entirely.
- It is not quoted by Chrysostom (c. 354-407 CE) even though he often refers to Josephus in his voluminous writings.
- It is not quoted by Photius, Patriarch of Constantinople (c. 858-886 CE) even though he wrote three articles concerning Josephus, which strongly implies that his copy of Josephus’ Antiquities did not contain the passage.
- Neither Justin Martyr (110-165 CE), nor Clement of Alexandria (153-217 CE), nor Origen (c.185-254 CE), who all made extensive reference to ancient authors in their defense of Christianity, has mentioned this supposed testimony of Josephus.
- Origen, in his treatise Against Celsus, Book 1, Chapter 47, states categorically that Josephus did NOT believe that Jesus was the Christ.
- This is the only reference to the Christians in the works of Josephus. If it were genuine, we would have expected him to have given us a fuller account of them somewhere.
In addition, Josephus goes into long detail about the lives of numerous personages of relatively little importance, including several Jesuses. It is inconceivable that he would devote only a few sentences to someone even remotely resembling the character found in the New Testament. If the gospel tale constituted “history,” Josephus’s elders would certainly be aware of Jesus’s purported assault on the temple, for example, and the historian, who was obviously interested in instances of messianic agitation, would surely have reported it, in detail. Moreover, the TF refers to Jesus as a “wise man”–this phrase is used by Josephus in regard to only two other people, out of hundreds, i.e., the patriarchs Joseph and Solomon. If Josephus had thought so highly of an historical Jesus, he surely would have written more extensively about him. Yet, he does not.
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The demand for proof is nonsense because the proof is self evident, but you just refuse to accept it.
If it was so "self evident" then it would be easy for you to present it, yet it has taken 14 posts to present the tired old chestnuts that you have posted without the original texts / links / etc.
It's like asking to prove Julius Caesar...... the proof would be the same... it would be written records, letters and the obvious consequences of his existence.
Seriously?
Did you go looking on a christian apologists site for 'newbies'?
This has been one apologetic argument that has been shown to be completely nonsensical.
"Unlike the mythical Jesus Christ, we know what Caesar looked like and we have a complete history of his life. In turn, general, orator, historian, statesman and lawgiver. We have words written by Caesar himself and words written by both his friends and his enemies. Artifacts confirm his life and death, as do his successors. Caesar established a style of government – and a calendar – which endured for centuries.
Evidence that confirms the existence of Caesar is
legion – in stark contrast to the utter dearth of evidence for Jesus!
....."
Continued at ...
https://www.jesusneverexisted.com/exist.html
It is the same with Jesus, we have countless written records testifying his existence.... huge historical consequences of his existence....the whole activity of the Roman Empire dedicated to destroying those who ministered his message..... not to mention the whole machinery of the Jewish world diaspora dedicated to killing those who promulgated his message.
Already rebutted above.
If Jesus hadn't have existed it would not have been necessary for the Jews and Romans to have to dedicate so much time to killing Christians....it would have been very easy for them to simply point out that Jesus didn't exist...and everyone would have gone home and packed it in.
Particularly the Jews who were 'closest' to the phenomenon of Jesus. They have been fighting Christians and Christianity for 2,000 years and at no point in the past did they ever suggest that their bitterest enemy did not exist.... it is only a fairly recent Masonic idea which is being promulgated by people with very poor history skill and a hidden agenda.
No verifiable evidence for the claims you make.
I won't ask you to apply logic because I know you are incapable, but why would someone writing something 2,000 years after the fact, namely the hypothesis that Jesus didn't exist, be a more accurate analysis of the facts that texts written a couple of decades after the events?
Of course you do. That is why you are only stating it and not showing it, right?
There are no "texts written a couple of decades after the events", which is why you haven't quoted any, they do not exist.
The earliest claim for the writing of the first 'Gospel' is, from memory, around 80 A.D., which is at least five decades after the claimed events.
The incredible amount of material to emerge about Jesus in the first centuries after his death, including much commentary, Gnostic apocrypha and material written to try to subvert Jesus' message, simply would not have happened if there was no core reality to what they were all writing about.. In fact we probably only have about 5 percent of all the written material written about Jesus, if not less,....so much would have been burned or lost through the ages, through even the pagan Roman persecutions, the despotic Church or the Islamic conquest.
More claims without proof and speculation to boot, "we probably only have about 5 percent of all the written material written about Jesus".
In fact no man in history has a more definitive proof of existence than Jesus Christ.
And yet you fail to present any "definitive proof". Another false claim that you cannot support with verifiable evidence.
The millions of churches in the world, the fact that the world even operates on a year counting system based on his approximate year of birth.... the art, history and even the development of Western civilisation....all testify to the existence of Jesus Christ.
Again, the logical fallacy of circular reasoning.
By your standards, then all of the other 'Gods' exist, which includes, though is not limited to, Hercules, Zeus, Apollo, Odin, Thor, Osiris, Isis, Horus, Thoth, Ra, Krishna, Buddha, Prometheus, Dionysus, Zoroaster, Mithra, Perseus, Gilgamesh, Enki, Enlil, Nanna (Sin), etc., etc., for all thousands of 'Gods' that have been claimed to exist and have had followers.
Do you believe in any of them?
