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Post 31 Dec 2013, 3:18 am

I don't see how my faith, or lack thereof, or whether I have had a 'religious'/'spiritual' experience or not makes any difference to the questions or the answers.

I can quite understand that it takes faith to believe the claims of the New Testament, and to a large extent that is indeed the point. But that does not take away from the issue that there is little evidenxe for Christ's existence outside the NT, or that there is no scientific basis for ressurection (unless Christ did not actually die or something else has been misreported), or some of the other miracles.
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Post 05 Jan 2014, 1:20 pm

Danivon wrote:

There is very little outside the Bible to give historical grounding for even the existence of Christ, let alone the miracles or the events surrounding the Passion. What there is, however, is a fair amount of evidence for the existence of the disciples and early Christians, which gives us a second-hand view that he probably did exist. The strongest physical evidence that he did exist is the 'James ossuary',


and again:

I can quite understand that it takes faith to believe the claims of the New Testament, and to a large extent that is indeed the point. But that does not take away from the issue that there is little evidenxe for Christ's existence outside the NT,


I would like to start by making some kind of effort here to see to it that we're all on the same page in regard to the question of whether or not Jesus existed. I do so since I find that there are some here who cavalierly dismiss his existence as fancy. I hold that there is enough evidence for his existence, that his existence is reasonable and that the evidence comes from at least 5 sources that are non-Christian.

I would like to take a look at 3 Romans, 1 Jew and the Talmud


PLINY THE YOUNGER

“Carmen Christo quasi deo se invicem cantant.”


“They sings hymns to Christ as if her were a god.”

Pliny was governor of Bithynia on the coast of the Black Sea writing to Emporer Trajan in roughly 110 a.d. In his letter to Trajan, Pliny asks what he should do about a group of Christians whose influence was so strong that the many Roman temples to the gods were being abandoned.

Pliny's quote tells us nothing about the life of Jesus but it does point to a growing number of believers. More importantly for me, the existence of someone called Christ is presumed.

SUETONIUS

“The Jews were constantly making disturbances at the instigation of Chrestus.”


Suetonius in his Lives of the Twelve Caesars describes the expulsion of the Jews from Rome under Claudius sometime around 41-54 a.d. because of the troublesome discussions concerning Chrestus. The mentioning of “Chrestus” is a reference to “Christ” using the Latin form of the Greek Christos.

Again we have another indication of that there were Christians living in Rome by as early as say 50 a.d. More importantly for me though, the existence of Jesus is not contested.

TACITUS

“Nothing could dispel the belief that the fire had taken place by order of Nero. Therefore, to scotch the rumor, Nero substituted as culprits and punished with the utmost refinements of cruelty, a class of men, loathed for their vices, whom the crowd styled Christians. Christus, the founder of the name, had undergone the death penalty in the reign of Tiberius, by sentence of the procurator Pontius Pilate.”


Tacitus, as well as Suetonius, presumably had access to Roman documents, they were historians. Tacitus mentions that Christ was executed under Tiberius when Pilate was procurator of Judaea around 29 a.d. Both Pliny and Suetonius' accounts indirectly attest to Jesus existence. Tacitus, however, directly states that Christ or Jesus lived and gives the time of his execution. Strict proof? No, but these documents rest on a solid presumtion. And for me, that's reasonable.

These non-Christian writers as well as the audiences they wrote to believed that Jesus existed.

FLAVIUS JOSEPHUS

The longer quote...

“Now about this time (Josephus is speaking about Pilate, so 26-36 a.d.) there lived Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one ought to call him a man. For he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of people who accept the truth gladly. He won over to himself many Jews and many of the Greeks. He was the Messiah. When Pilate, upon hearing him accused by men of the highest standing among us, had condemned him to be crucified, those who had come to love him did not give up their affection for him. On the third day he appeared to them restored to life, as the holy prophets of God had foretold these and ten thousand other marvelous things about him. And the group of Christians, so called after him, has still to this day not disappeared.”


Relax. This longer quote was tampered with by Christian copyists so they say. Unless he was narrating the views of Christians he would never have refered to Jesus in such fashion. However, even the longer quote in no way denies Jesus' existence. On the contrary, it confirms it.

The shorter quote...also from Josephus' Antiquities of the Jews

“...so he assembled the Sanhedrin of the Judges and brought before them the brother of Jesus who was called Christ, whose name was James...”


It's agreed that this particular passage was NOT tampered with by Christian copyists. Here Josephus mentions a relationship between James, a highly respected member of society in Jerusalem, and Jesus. The attempt is one to identify James but via the presumably well known Jesus. Apparently Josephus had no further need for clarification in his attempt to identify James. For me this is more reasonable evidence of Jesus' existence. Josephus certainly left his readers with the impression that both Jesus and James existed.

THE TALMUD

Here I'm referring to the 3rd century version of the Babylonian Talmud. The following quote from Joseph Klausner's Jesus of Nazareth is a synopsis worth looking at,

“There are reliable statements to the effect that his name was Yeshu'a of Nazareth;...he 'practiced socery' (i.e. performed miracles) and beguiled and led Israel astray;...he mocked at the words of the Wise (the officially sanctioned interpreters of the Law);...he had five disciples;...he was hanged (crucified) as a false teacher and beguiler on the eve of the Passover which happened on a sabbath...”


Other sections of the Talmud state that Jesus was the illegitimate son of an adulteress, a hairdresser named Miriam whose father was a Roman soldier named Panthera, probably a play on the Greek word for virgin (parthenos).

Never does the Talmud deny the existence of Jesus. On the contrary it supports it. And supports other aspects of his life, ministry of preaching, healing and execution. Though polemical in nature, the support is there.

For me this question is a very simple one. Had the Gospels never been written, the existence of Jesus would remain reasonable based on reasonable evidence.

Now, a more important question is what can be known about Jesus? For that we have to look to the Gospels, which by the way are far from mythical as suggested by some in these forums.

The Gospels are portraits of Jesus. They are both historical and historic, that is, comprised of events that actually occurred and teachings that speak to the significance of who Jesus was. More on that later.
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Post 05 Jan 2014, 1:54 pm

Danivon replied to an earlier question from me...

I don't see how my faith, or lack thereof, or whether I have had a 'religious'/'spiritual' experience or not makes any difference to the questions or the answers.


It has everything to do with it as far as my responses are concerned. It's easy to question matters of faith but not so easy to enter into a risk that might involve an incentive to examine's one's own ultimate concern.
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Post 06 Jan 2014, 2:08 am

dag hammarsjkold wrote:Danivon replied to an earlier question from me...

I don't see how my faith, or lack thereof, or whether I have had a 'religious'/'spiritual' experience or not makes any difference to the questions or the answers.


It has everything to do with it as far as my responses are concerned. It's easy to question matters of faith but not so easy to enter into a risk that might involve an incentive to examine's one's own ultimate concern.
I fail to see how this question is a blocker to you expanding on the various evidence for the Resurrection as fact rather than myth.

You made a claim that logic, historicity and science could be used to explain it. That has nothing to do with faith, and even less to do with whether I've had what you call a spiritual experience.

But on your five pieces of evidence for Jesus having existed:

All of them are clear evidence for Christians, and Christianity existing in the 1st century (Suetonius is a little hazier due to the spelling of 'Chrestus', conflation with the Jews and the tense used). I see you use presumption based on descriptions of what Christians believe that this is what the writers also believed. Which seems a stretch. Also an assumption that Roman historians had full access to extant documentation (history was not quite practised in the same way then as it is now, and the absence of cited sources does not mean they must have existed anyway).

Furthermore, I did not say he did not exist (and even if he did, it no more proves Christianity or the stories of the New Testament that the existence of L Ron Hubbard proves Scientology or the stories of Thetans).

What I am saying is that the evidence is scant - mainly second or third hand. And also, that none of the evidence you have so far presented suggests anything about what happened after the Crucifixion / 'hanging'
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Post 06 Jan 2014, 10:10 am

It seems likely to me that there was some kind of Jewish holy man called Jesus (or a name sufficiently like it) around about that time period, and probable that he was the leader of a messianic cult of some form (which were numerous). Beyond that there really isn't anything that we could point to as convincing historical evidence. We can't even trust the Bible as a primary source because it's known to have been severely edited hundreds of years after the fact.
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Post 07 Jan 2014, 10:45 pm

It seems to me that a good starting point for this thread is whether or not Jesus even existed. That's why I started where I did and outlined more than reasonable evidence that he did exist. Downplaying the evidence or dismissing it seems dishonest to me.

Danivon:

You made a claim that logic, historicity and science could be used to explain it.


So long as you finish that sentence with "....explain it as reasonable" yes, that's closer to what I said. And I believe this was in reference to the Resurrection if I'm not mistaken?

Your critique of the five sources strikes me as a tortured response. Suetonius use of "Chrestus" is commonly held by scholars to be a reference to Christ.

To imply that the Roman writers or Josephus or the writers of the Talmud didn't believe they were writing about a man who actually existed strikes me as irresponsible on your part.

Furthermore, I did not say he did not exist (and even if he did, it no more proves Christianity or the stories of the New Testament that the existence of L Ron Hubbard proves Scientology or the stories of Thetans).


I never said you did. Others in this thread and in other threads on redscape have made that suggestion and so cavalierly that it deserved some samples of the most often cited and accepted evidence (by both Christians and non-Christians I should add)

...it no more proves Christianity.....


I have no idea what this means. Proves Christianity? My guess is you're referring to Christianity's truth claims? If so, agreed. If not, explain.

The fact that you've refrained from answering my question concerning "religious experience" and based on some of your responses to others on redscape my guess is that you are either an atheist or agnostic.

The reason I asked in the first place was to suggest that "religious experience" plays a fundamental part in examining matters of faith. Your experience is a factor that needs to be considered alongside other evidence. Now how you go about explaining that experience is another affair entirely but to sweep the experiences of billions of people the world over aside down through the centuries because you're unable to place elements of a religions' truth claims under a microscope is a premature mistake I don't think anyone should make.

The Resurrection is reasonable and there is evidence for it but before jumping into that morass it's helpful for me to know my audience. You see I was not necessarily surprised when I read your response....

I don't see how my faith, or lack thereof, or whether I have had a 'religious'/'spiritual' experience or not makes any difference to the questions or the answers.


Such a response can be fairly typical of someone who has never undergone a "spiritual experience," let alone an experience of the Resurrected Christ in a personal way. Not understanding why there would be a connection to the question and answers is sometimes indicative of that fact that such a person has never entered into a personal relationship with the resurrected Jesus. Such a person has heard the words to the old spiritual 'Amazing Grace' but doesn't "get" the words in a personal or life altering way.

I know.....at this point I can hear the laughter all the way from here but that kind of experience is important evidence that can not be dismissed outright or without some robust discussion on what exactly that phenomenon seems to be for billions of Christians the world over. Or, as applied to other particular faith traditions, the phenomenon of a life altering experience of something beyond the self. Mass hypnosis? Or as Sassenach I think suggested earlier, some biological need to explain existence? Whatever it is, there has been enough of the opiate over the past who knows how many thousands of years to suggest it be taken a little more seriously than a one sentence dismissal presupposing ironically, absolute certainty.

For as easy as it is for you to dismiss the experience of the risen Jesus as fairytale it's just as easy for me to dismiss “thinking” or “science” as moveable goalposts and do so alongside some of the world's most formidable modern philosophers, including but not limited to:

Jacques Derrida – Deconstruction Theory
Karl Popper – Falsification Theory
Thomas Kuhn – scientific research within historical frameworks
Paul Feyerabend – all science is theoretical
Theordore Adorno – Dialectic of Enlightenment

So to Geo's question...

[quote]So does that mean you are prepared to give up being a Catholic or believer should the science and logic not work out to your satisfaction? Are you capable of chucking your long-held belief? ]/quote

Yes. Absolutely. And I continue to test my own understanding, my own beliefs, my own experience and I can tell you that so far, nothing has convinced me otherwise. I'm open to that changing in the future but as I've mentioned already, the truth claims that I adhere to as a Roman Catholic are reasonable. And that's all I require which is not to say I'm free of doubt incidentally.

By raising the question and entitling the thread Are the Gospels Mythical, Neal has entered into the realm of Christology which is an academic study, NOT faith in Jesus but an effort requiring that EVERYTHING about the study be scrutinized and with all of the tools afforded to us. For believers, Christology offers healthy questions about Jesus as the center of one's worldview. For non believers, Christology is hopefully an incentive to examine one's own life journey and ultimate meaning.

If my response has struck any of you as overly off the deep end (and I'm sure it has) I am happy to leave this thread be. It would save me a lot of time. But can we please stop with the “Jesus didn't exist business?” or that there is “no evidence” to suggest he existed? I'd appreciate that. This group is typically too clever to dismiss agreed upon scholarship.
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Post 11 Jan 2014, 12:40 am

I thought the following article, which argues that as part of cognition people believe things first and then must take the mental effort to disbelieve, was interesting and may help to explain the persistence of religious belief in spite of scientific evidence to the contrary.
http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~dtg/Gillber ... %20Believe).PDF
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Post 11 Jan 2014, 5:32 am

dag hammarsjkold wrote:It seems to me that a good starting point for this thread is whether or not Jesus even existed. That's why I started where I did and outlined more than reasonable evidence that he did exist. Downplaying the evidence or dismissing it seems dishonest to me.
In other words, if people disagree with you, they are liars. Thanks for entering into the spirit of discussion with good faith...

Danivon:

You made a claim that logic, historicity and science could be used to explain it.


So long as you finish that sentence with "....explain it as reasonable" yes, that's closer to what I said. And I believe this was in reference to the Resurrection if I'm not mistaken?[/quote]I can quote your exact words if you want. what you said was "historicity, science, logic and intellectual analysis are paramount to grounding Christianity's truth claims and not necessarily at odds with belief." Yes you added that belief must be reasonable.

So, what are the ways in which historicity, science, logic and intellectual analysis do ground Christianity's truth claims?

All you have demonstrated so far is that there is historical evidence that Jesus existed. Fine. I think the evidence is not as strong as it could be, as it's largely second hand once you go outside the Bible, but still, I agree that he probably did exist.

But Christianity's truth claims are far wider than the mere existence of a religious leader called Jesus, aren't they?

Your critique of the five sources strikes me as a tortured response. Suetonius use of "Chrestus" is commonly held by scholars to be a reference to Christ.
But not universally.

To imply that the Roman writers or Josephus or the writers of the Talmud didn't believe they were writing about a man who actually existed strikes me as irresponsible on your part.
Irresponsible? Why would, for example, Tacitus, need to have believed that Christ existed. All he needed to know is that the Christians who he was asking about the persecution of believed in him and that he existed as a person. Even then it's not clear - he describes how they worship a God called Christ.

...it no more proves Christianity.....


I have no idea what this means. Proves Christianity? My guess is you're referring to Christianity's truth claims? If so, agreed. If not, explain.
The truth claims you mentioned. The Resurrection. Divinity of Christ. Miracles. etc etc.

The fact that you've refrained from answering my question concerning "religious experience" and based on some of your responses to others on redscape my guess is that you are either an atheist or agnostic.
Technically I am both. I do not believe in any gods, and I don't think we can know whether gods exist or not.

The reason I asked in the first place was to suggest that "religious experience" plays a fundamental part in examining matters of faith. Your experience is a factor that needs to be considered alongside other evidence. Now how you go about explaining that experience is another affair entirely but to sweep the experiences of billions of people the world over aside down through the centuries because you're unable to place elements of a religions' truth claims under a microscope is a premature mistake I don't think anyone should make.
Just because millions of people believe something over hundreds of years does not make it true. For example, people used to believe various false things about the nature of Earth and its place in the universe such as:

The Earth is flat
The Earth is fixed in position and at the centre of the universe, the sun orbits the earth
The other planets do not have moons
The stars are fixed in place

all based on observation, traditional teachings, belief etc.

The Resurrection is reasonable and there is evidence for it but before jumping into that morass it's helpful for me to know my audience. You see I was not necessarily surprised when I read your response....
So, now you have worked out where I stand... what is the evidence for the Resurrection? I'd be especially interested in examples from without the Bible.

Such a response can be fairly typical of someone who has never undergone a "spiritual experience," let alone an experience of the Resurrected Christ in a personal way. Not understanding why there would be a connection to the question and answers is sometimes indicative of that fact that such a person has never entered into a personal relationship with the resurrected Jesus. Such a person has heard the words to the old spiritual 'Amazing Grace' but doesn't "get" the words in a personal or life altering way.
Indeed. but I still don't understand how this stops you from presenting the scientific and logical/intellectual analyses. We may, due to our different perspectives, set different bars on the strength of those needed to give 'reasonable' grounds, but that does not seem to prevent you from starting to give us the skinny on the science.

I know.....at this point I can hear the laughter all the way from here but that kind of experience is important evidence that can not be dismissed outright or without some robust discussion on what exactly that phenomenon seems to be for billions of Christians the world over. Or, as applied to other particular faith traditions, the phenomenon of a life altering experience of something beyond the self. Mass hypnosis? Or as Sassenach I think suggested earlier, some biological need to explain existence? Whatever it is, there has been enough of the opiate over the past who knows how many thousands of years to suggest it be taken a little more seriously than a one sentence dismissal presupposing ironically, absolute certainty.
Buddhism and Hinduism are older. Does this mean that they are more, or less 'true' than Chiristianity? After all, both are also full of people who have had spiritual experiences and potentially have influenced more people over time.

For as easy as it is for you to dismiss the experience of the risen Jesus as fairytale it's just as easy for me to dismiss “thinking” or “science” as moveable goalposts and do so alongside some of the world's most formidable modern philosophers
If you want to dismiss 'thinking', let alone 'science', then we need

including but not limited to:

Jacques Derrida – Deconstruction Theory
Ah, so we are going Post Modern? Derrida is less a philosopher than a literary critic, to be honest.

Karl Popper – Falsification Theory
Do you understand what this means? It means that things that are not falsifiable cannot be dealt with scientifically. So if you cannot falsify, say, Ressurection, then there is no scientific method that can be used to 'ground' it. Accordingly, there is no way it can be made more or less 'reasonable'.

Thomas Kuhn – scientific research within historical frameworks
yes, he explained the idea of paradigm-shift. He also does indeed address subjective views, but more in the context of science, not in the context of introducing non-scientific ideas into theoru.

Paul Feyerabend – all science is theoretical
Feyerabend directly challenged and disavowed the falsification that Popper embraces, so putting the together as you have confuses me. See Karl Popper - theories are not the same as conjecture. "Theory" in science has a tighter definition than in normal usage.
Theordore Adorno – Dialectic of Enlightenment
Dialectics are dangerous things, intellectually. They quite easily run off into cul-de-sacs without the adherents realising (cf. Marxism). Adorno was a sociologist primarily, anyway.

If my response has struck any of you as overly off the deep end (and I'm sure it has) I am happy to leave this thread be. It would save me a lot of time. But can we please stop with the “Jesus didn't exist business?” or that there is “no evidence” to suggest he existed? I'd appreciate that. This group is typically too clever to dismiss agreed upon scholarship.
Not all scholarship is agreed on (especially if you actually do accept Derrida or Adorno or Feyerabend). Just saying it is 'agreed' does not make it so. My observations on the sources you presented were not plucked from thin air - I looked them up starting with Wikipedia.

Anyway, let's assume Jesus did exist. What further evidence is there, what logic and intellectual analysis and what historical evidence is there for the Resurrection?
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Post 29 Jan 2014, 7:12 am

I will respond and haven't forgotten this thread. It just takes me forever to get to it.