I can drop the vitriol because it really is not important at all to me to make some point about it besides what I've already said. It's just a performative kind of thing like in comedy, whatever
I personally don't give a fuck how autistic/spastic you're being. I swear like a sailor. Shit piss cunt, fuck nigger, etc. And I'll trust that you're being good faith and genuine in your arguing, even if it's harsh criticism. Cool? Cool.
Christianity is absolutely obsessed with what it considers anti-Christianity.
I think that can be true with certain Christians and Christian trends, especially more charismatic ones, at least in my experience. I think this is more of an online thing too, tbh. Tribalism/sports team mindset is rampant online not just politically but everywhere, and Christians are as susceptible to that as anyone is.
It is absolutely its foundation to constantly compare itself to atheists.
This is being a bit pedantic, but I mean these are
your words. I could be wrong as I've stated in this thread before I don't consider myself a Christian, but as I understand it the fundamental foundation is following Jesus's teachings in the framework of a faith community, usually some kind of local church that connects to the broader Big C Church community. As a wise man once said, comparison is the thief of joy.
Christian identity is the driving force, and when the actual substance of anything in your faith is being discussed you will cling to your identity in ways that are plain to see.
Arguing via identity online is always annoying as shit, but again, I wouldn't say atheists/Christians are the only ones that do this, and to my earlier point, this is a broader problem with online discussion in general. Nobody wants their mind changed, they just want to dunk on someone that disagrees with them and vice versa.
There is not even any evidence that he existed. Like, none. Your muh scholarly consensus cuckery is not the safeguard you think it is, but first you would have to actually care to examine what it incorrectly deems to be evidence, not just accept the claim itself because muh consensus. Have you actually ever done that? Have any Christians but a handful?
This is more the point you made that I wanted to get at. So let's lay a foundation we can agree on when we say the "historical Jesus"
We're not arguing the religious aspects. Not that he was the son of God, that he was born to a virgin, etc. When we say "historical Jesus" we're referring to a man known as Jesus of Nazareth that lived in 1st century AD Palestine, and died somewhere around 35-37AD. He was baptized by John the Baptist, gathered disciples, and was sentenced to death via crucifixion under Pontius Pilate. That's it, that's all we're trying to establish.
So what evidence do we have that this guy existed? Well first we need to establish what is considered evidence in ancient history. Obviously, photographs don't exist so what's the standard for ancient historical evidence?
>a few Romans very vaguely conveying a story from decades prior with nothing further to corroborate it
Alright, and? What am I to do with that?
I don't know, possibly. I haven't examined the historiography regarding those three.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but these posts lead me to believe you do not understand what the method/standard for historical evidence in the ancient world is. Totally fine, this is an autistic niche subject, one I happened to be interested, and I can understand it being SNCA to some. But if your claim is "the historical Jesus never existed, and current scholarly consensus is wrong because...?" I don't wanna put words in your mouth so I won't speculate why you think current scholarly consensus is a bad thing. I know that peer review has its limitations, and scholarly fields can be dogmatic, but I would argue that these are the best tools we have, when we're working with a limited toolbox when it comes to the ancient world. A lot of context about the ancient world in general is missing. We either don't know where it is, it's been destroyed, or it's buried in the fucking desert somewhere like the Nag Hammadi library and Dead Sea Scrolls were.
Here's an example I like to give: Say, World War III happens. How would historians two hundred, three hundred years in the future know what the fuck was going with anything in 2026 if computers and servers were all destroyed/offline? That's a huge chunk of evidence, completely lost to them. Okay, so they have to rely on what's been written down. Let's say a future historian finds a sports magazine, like Sports Illustrated. On the cover, it has Patrick Mahomes holding up the Lombardi trophy after winning the Super Bowl. A future historian would say "cool, this sportsguy must've been really important!" But that chunk of magazine in and of itself is missing a ton of context. Sports magazines don't include all the rules, all the various intricacies given to every sport that's covered in them, they'd simply get bogged down. So unless they find a manual on the rules of American football, they're trying to reverse engineer how this incredibly complex game was to an outsider with zero context for it.
That's kinda like what we're doing with the ancient world, only in some ways it's even worse since we're working backwards 2000 years+. A ton of context is missing.
So with that out of the way, what is considered ancient historical evidence?
- Do we have multiple independent sources?
- Do we have sources written close to the person's lifetime?
This part's key given you said
Not exactly contemporary if it's decades after except maybe for like a couple of these guys, but whatever. They relayed a story, that's it.
That would be true if the only writings about Jesus we had were from like, the 2nd or 3rd century. But the Gospel of Mark, the earliest written gospel, is believed to have been written somewhere around 70AD. Which is a roughly 40 year gap from the time Jesus. That's actually not that bad for ancient history, considering Peter was still alive by the time it was written.
- Does the material pass internal credibility tests? Meaning, are there details that would be embarrassing for the authors to admit to if they were 100% biased.
-Is the person embedded in a web of datable historical relationships? A historical figure who's connected to verifiable events, places, and people is more difficult to dismiss than someone of pure fiction/myth.
-What is the alternative explanation? Are the current scholars simply lying? Are they lazily following consensus? If that's what you believe, then to me that requires more evidence. But again, I'm speculating and I apologize if that's not what you believe.
So for Pythagoras, what's the evidence for him?
Well, no writings
from Pythagoras that we know of exist today. Everything about Pythagoras was written hundreds of years after his death. Not decades like with Jesus, hundreds of years. The earliest writings were about 150/200 years after his death, with Aristotle referencing him. And the earliest biographies written by Diogenes Laertius, Porphyry, Iamblichus, were all written like 750 years after his death. He probably existed, came from Samos, but there's a lot of mythology crap surrounding him too. Pythagorean cults, him having a golden thigh, him being able to be in two places at once because he was such a genius. Does the mythology surrounding Pythagoras make him any less of a historical figure given what we do think is true? No not really.
No one writes as specifically about Pythagoras as someone like Paul does about Jesus, but we still believe with a level of certainty that both exist.
So with him specifically, given the mentions by Aristotle and later Greek historians, the evidence is really,
why would someone make up Pythagoras? And there's no good evidence for him being purely mythological that we know of.
Okay, what about Confucius?
A bit stronger than Pythagoras, but still weaker than Jesus. The Analects are the primary source we have for Confucius's teachings. They were edited together after his death, probably 20-40 years after he died. So not a bad comparison to Jesus and the Gospels right? The Shiji by Sima Qian was written roughly 400 years after Confucius and gives the fullest biographical account and gives the most specifics we have about Confucius. Going by your logic, we should throw it out, and throw out Pythagoras altogether because they were written hundreds of years after so how can they possibly be reliable, but ancient world historians don't do that. Because the Chinese Bureaucracy is so autistic, and has been an autistic monolith for thousands of years, records on Confucius were a bit better preserved. But there's a big temporal gap between the Analects and the Shiji, but we don't write off Confucius as being purely mythological. The evidence just isn't that strong to the contrary.
Hmm,, okay... uhhh Sun Tzu?????
Way fucking weaker. Than Jesus, than Confucius, and even Pythagoras. As I understand it, and Chinese history is a bit of a blindspot for me I'll readily admit, there is a pretty good debate on whether or not Sun Tzu was a real figure.
The Art Of War exists, but not much else and it's unclear whether it was written by Sun Tzu. It's possible Sun Tzu was a name or title attributed to legendary military figures and them thrown in a blender and called "Sun Tzu", which does happen with history. Hermes Trismagestus is an amalgamation of the Greek god Hermes, and Egyptian god, Thoth, and we're pretty sure didn't exist. So does Sun Tzu exist? It's definitely up for debate, and I'm giving him as a mulligan that argument and counterevidence does happen in ancient history, and not everyone simply dogmatically follows consensus if there's evidence for it.
Now, what about the Big JC?
We'll, let's look at Josephus which someone brought up earlier, don't think it was you, I'm too lazy to check lol. So what did Josephus write about Jesus? It's called the Testimonium Flavanium, and admittedly, it does have holes in it. Josephus was a Hellenized Jew, yet in it, he makes the claim that Jesus was the messiah, so not a great start, also referencing the resurrection, both are in the realm of theology and not history. But Josephus also wrote in another passage about Jesus in the
Antiquities.
This is more valuable because it's not theologically loaded and is an actual interpolation. Josephus describes the James, Jesus's brother as being executed by Ananus around 60AD. Saying he's the brother of the one they called Christ.
Tacitus also mentions Jesus in the
Annals. Which was written in the second century, like 112AD or so, so still less than one hundred years after Jesus's death. He wrote about Jesus's execution under emperor Tiberius, mentions Pontius Pilate being the governor of the region Jesus lived in Judea. Tacitus was not a fan of Christians, he thought it was fucking evil and a scourge and threat to the Roman state. But even Tacitus, a pagan, didn't deny that Jesus lived, and was executed. He's even biased against Christianity, if it was just made up bullshit, wouldn't Tacitus say that? You also mentioned records, which we don't have. When the records did exist, Tacitus is someone that would've had access to administrative records in all the regions Rome governed because he was a seniored official and state sanctioned historian. He didn't get this info from Christians in the second century. He hated Christians and thought they were pussies.
Then we get to the Pauline letters, they're dated to the 40s/50s. This is the earliest source we have, and at worst, 20 years after Jesus died. That's pretty fucking good by ancient world history standards.
To give another non-Jesus example, you know Alexander the Great right? Conquered a bunch of the known world, all that good shit. The earliest biography for Alex is Arrian's Anabasis. Wanna know when that was written? About 400 years after he died. So I guess along with Jesus, Pythagoras, Confucius, Alex? You gotta go too bud. Bye-bye you no longer existed.
Going back to Paul's letters, although Paul didn't meet Jesus, he met with who we believe are eyewitnesses to him, including Peter, and James. Going back to the criterion of embarrassment, Paul had beef with Peter. He could've written him out, said nah I dunno that nigga, but he still included to write about him and not just James. Now, I'm sure you think the resurrection is bullshit, totally cool. But, something interesting about it in Paul's letters is that he talks about having received knowledge of Jesus's resurrection from his followers, and this is scholars like Bart Ehrman who's an atheist saying this not me, that he was given information about where the apostles were to meet with Jesus in Galilee within 5 years after jesus died.
So congrats, by your own logic, jesus does exist. Unfortunate to hear that Pythagoras, Confucius, and Alexander no longer do though, I really liked those guys...
I can keep going too, like about how Jesus's baptism by John the Baptist fits the criterion of embarrassment, by Jesus being baptized that's literally him admitting to having sinned and needing his sins cleansed via baptism. Or how Galilee was a backwater shithole, so Christ telling his followers to meet him there fits the Criteria. Or him being from Nazareth, another backwater shithole in Rome. John 1:46 even says "Can anything good come from Nazareth?"
The crucifixion? Also very fucking embarrassing. You all claim this guys the son of God and he's executed by the state? That's one of the biggest points of contentions Jews have with Jesus. Crucifixion was extremely embarrassing to Romans. You know who got crucified? Thieves and insurrectionists. People who tried to overthrow the Roman state. Why would Tacitus or anyone in the Roman pagan world need to lie about that? What's the evidence for them lying?
So my point in saying all this is: I don't care if you're an atheist, I truly don't. I'm taking your arguments in good faith, I'd appreciate that being reciprocated. Secondly, it's cool if you don't know what the standards are for who's considered to have existed in ancient history. Again, going back to my WW3 analogy, there's a lot of gaps and a lot of context we're missing, but we're working with the best tools we have and this is what we got. It's silly to throw out Alexander the Great. It's silly to throw out Confucius, and it's silly to throw out Jesus. I'm not saying you have to believe he's son on God, and I'm not trying to evangelize to you or use apologetics, I hate that shit and hated it when I was agnostic. But I believe you're working from an imperfect framework, and if we used your scope for ancient history, we'd have to throw out basically everything and just call it all myth. That's kinda retarded, and it's not fun. I had fun writing all this being a historysperg, and I hope you too had fun reading it.
And my reasoning for saying Tacitus hated Christianity is that was the general sentiment in Roman/Greek pagan intelligencia of the age. Looking at someone else like Celsus for example. When I bring up Tacitus I'm speaking of this bit specifically: