Thread: Disputing the historical veracity of Jesus (very long)

This was hijacking the dinosaur thread (before the debate on the worlds most beautiful women), so here we are. I'll be using hyperlinks instead of mountains of quotes to try and keep this looking a little more pretty than the standard quote tree of giant posts.

The guts of it:

Dreamworld and I were discussing whether or not it is important that Jesus existed at all, if his philosophy was pure. I believe it is important, for if Jesus did not exist then the entire idea of salvation through the Son goes flying out the window. Furthermore, without the idea of eternal life through accepting Jesus, modern Christianity is reduced to a how-to on moral behaviour, something you can have without the need for the religion in the first place.

The only literary connection that the modern world has with the man known as Jesus of Nazareth are the canonical Gospels of the Bible. Due to the numerous contradictions between these 4 documents, and the uncertainty as to their original authors, it is a reasonable conclusion to draw that Jesus may not have actually existed, or was a compilation of several minor historical figures of the time. If he did indeed exist, his divinity was embellished dramatically to drum up support for a new theology, Christianity. Jews of old (all the original members of founding Christianity were Jews), just like today, were eager for the prophecies of the Messiah to come true. Is it inconceivable to put forth that some may have become tired of waiting and were subject to the worlds most dangerous game of Chinese whispers?

Originally Posted by Dreamworld

There is really no way to know, alot of history is based on historical documents between cities, and countries, and there are some concerning the crucificion of Christ. The main primary source was the Gospels, as well as the link I posted above.

How can crucifixion not be one of those parts?..
Go and research primary sources of the NT instead of rambling on.

I now feel sufficiently versed to continue rambling on. Do join me.

I'm not doubting that the practice of crucifixion never happened. The Romans were very fond of it. But it was usually done with rope, not nails. Interesting to note, most depictions of Jesus on the cross show the nails through the palms of his hands. This is incorrect, as the bone and tissue structure of the palm does not have the muscle density or strength to hold the dead-weight of a human male without tearing right through. The nails would have to be have been inserted through the center of the wrists, which is rarely depicted.

I doubt that the character known as Jesus ever actually existed, therefore I call his supposed crucifixion into question.

Let's examine the Gospels and their origins:

The Gospel of Matthew was originally anonymously penned, and as of the 2nd century is traditionally credited (by the Church) to Matthew the Evangelist (1BCE - 34AD), who was a tax collector that became one of Jesus' apostles. There is no conclusive evidence that Matthew was the author of this document. It is traditionally considered (by the Church) to be the first Gospel written, but modern analysis of the language used and frequency of similar (or identical) phrases in the Gospels Mark and Luke point to the Gospel being written in the late first century, around 80-85AD.

The Gospel of Mark was also anonymously penned, and is traditionally credited (by the Church) and named for Mark the Evangelist (unknown AD - 68 AD), who was a companion of Saul/Paul of Tarsis. The Church has traditionally interpreted this Gospel as an appendix (or an elaboration) to the Gospel of Matthew, and place it in the Bible accordingly. However modern analysis (the Synoptic Problem) has produced evidence that the Gospel of Mark was the first written Gospel, and was then plagiarised (and added to) by Matthew and Luke. Mark's only connection to Jesus was through Paul of Tarsis, who never actually met Jesus but claimed to have received the gospel story through a vision of Jesus himself. Mark's story is at best, a detailed conclusion to Matthews' gospel (which would be fictitious since he wasn't there), or at worst, heresay from a man who saw a vision.
The Gospel of Mark also mentions the destruction of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem, which occurred in 70 AD. Since the other three Gospels are derived from Mark, they must have all come after that point. We now have a roughly 40 year gap between the reported crucifixion of Jesus, and the writing of the first Gospel.

The Gospel of Luke is again, anonymously penned around and traditionally given authorship by the Church to Luke, the companion of Paul (unknown AD - 84 AD). An early 3rd century account of the New Testament written in Greek on papyrus (Papyrus 75) is the earliest known text to give authorship of this Gospel to Luke with the phrase "the gospel according to Luke", with no corroborating evidence to back up the claim. The gospel would have been over 100+ years old by this point in history. The first recorded reference to the writings within the Gospel of Luke was in 144 AD by Marcion of Sinope, an excommunicated Christian theologian who believed the entire Old Testament to be false, and believed that Paul was the only person who rightly understood the message of salvation from Jesus. However, Marcion referred to this as the Gospel of the Lord. Luke was not mentioned nor credited.
According to the Two-Source Hypothesis, 'Mark's account' and a lost document are the originators of the story of the Gospels, based on analysis of the language, structure, and phraseology content of each. It appears that Matthew and Luke were based largely on Mark.
It is almost unanimously agreed upon that the author of 'Luke' and the 'Acts' chapter of the Bible are one and the same, written in approximately 80-90 AD. The Gospel begins by being addressed to 'Theophilus' ('Theo', god; 'philus', lover of - Friend of God, Lover of God, or Loved by God), which may be addressing new Christians or just gentiles (non-Jews) in general. The author was trying to portray Christianity as a respectable and law-abiding religion that was open to people of all creeds, not just the Jews.

The Gospel of John has had its authorship disputed since as early as the 2nd century AD. The Gospel itself does not identify its own author, but makes reference to 'the beloved disciple' several times in lieu of the authors name. Mainstream Christianity insists on John the Apostle as the author, but biblical scholars are fairly divided on who the author may have been, from John the Presbyter to John the Evangelist, and may have been a completely unknown non-eyewitness. Not to be confused with John of Patmos, who wrote Revelations. Some Christians argue that all 3 'Johns' are one and the same man, though there is little evidence to support the claim. Dates for its inception have been suggested as early as 61 AD and as late as 144 AD, but the most widely accepted date bracket is 90-100 AD. One theory claims that the first edition of John was written around 51-60 AD, revised at some point later, then edited by a different individual entirely upon the death of the author around 90-100 AD. If this theory is true, we have grounds for at least 3 rounds of Chinese Whispers before this Gospel even made it out of the first century.
This Gospel differs widely from the others in writing style and content, and as such is not a part of the Synoptic Problem. It is also the gospel that contains the most omissions , contradictions and chronological inconsistencies with the other three (which is to be expected if Luke and Mark were embellishments of Matthew). John is considered to hold the least amount of historical evidence, if any at all.


So that's the Gospels out of the way. Do bare in mind what went into their creation - at least 40 years of oral tradition (a decidedly imperfect transmission of knowledge/consistency) and they have had almost 1,600 years of translations into three other languages before arriving finally in English as the King James Version of the 17th century.

Aside from them, Saul of Tarsis is the other 'link' to Jesus, having seen (and spoken with) a vision of Jesus on the Road to Damascus in 36 AD (3 years after the crucifixion). This vision is said to have blinded Saul, who was then miraculously cured upon reaching Damascus. Here he was baptised and took the name Paul before beginning to spread Christianity through the surrounding lands. Paul wrote approximately 80,000 words about Christianity, Jesus and the salvation he offered. These texts make up over a quarter of the modern day Bible. But in all this text, Paul only ever talks about the crucifixion, the resurrection, and the ascension into Heaven. He never quotes anything that Jesus is reported to have said (according to the Gospels), and mentions nothing about his parents, birth, the three kings and the shining star, his early life, his ministry, Pilat, or his miracles.

If Paul is the only verifiable link (not one of the four Gospels has a 100% definite author) between the time of Jesus (mid-30's first century), and the time that the Gospels were written (post-70 AD first century), where do the details of Jesus' life pre-crucifixion come from?

Next up we have the Testimonium Flavianum, an account by Josephus (Jewish historian, 37 AD - died sometime after 100 AD) from his manuscript the 'Antiquities of the Jews' written in 94 AD, mentions that Pontius Pilate (the Roman governor of Jerusalem from 26 AD to 36 AD) ordered the crucifixion of a man named Jesus. The authenticity of this passage has been debated heavily over the last 200 years, with most considering it to be a forgery. The oldest known surviving source of this text is from the 11th century. However it is referenced by name, by a Christian author and founding church father from the 3rd century named Origen in the year 240 AD. More interesting still, is that Origen, who is obviously familiar with the 'Antiquities of the Jews', writes about Josephus having no belief in Christ as the Son of God, which is in direct contradiction with the 'Jesus' paragraph from 'Antiquities' in which he writes:

Originally Posted by Josephus, 'Antiquities of the Jews' (supposedly)

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 wonderful works, 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 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.

This lack of acknowledgment, with simultaneous acknowledgment of another passage in 'Antiquities' that refers to James, the brother of Jesus, is the main point of evidence for this Testimonium Flavianum as being a later addition to Josephus' works, sometime before the year 324 AD when it was first cited by Eusebius almost verbatim. It is believed by some that Eusebius may have been the author of this passage himself. Early Christian figures such as Justin Martyr (100 AD - 165 AD) and Tertullian (160 AD - 225 AD) would have had access to 'Antiquities of the Jews', yet they never fired this verse back at their Jewish opponents as evidence for their side.


I was going to go into how the story of Jesus' birth, life and death parallel an untold number of previous gods and allegorical figures since the beginning of recorded history, but I've already spent about 3-4 hours reading about and writing this post. So I'm going to wrap this up now with a few other sources of intrigue for those who are not yet asleep at their keyboard from my wall of text, or are just interested in the subject:

- The God Who Wasn't There - By Brian Flemming
- The Jesus Myth hypothesis
- Jesus and comparative mythology
- The Two-Source Hypothesis for the Gospels of Mark, Matthew and Luke
- Zeitgeist Part 1 - Jesus as a 1st century representation of a Sun god, not a Son of God and a very interesting tie-in with astrology and the Old Testament symbolism.

Discuss.