Quote:
Originally Posted by jojajn
The rest are all loaded questions of which there is no proof concerning the assertions within them. Kind of like asking someone if they are still beating their wife. The bible cannot prove the bible. No historical account of Jesus outside of the bible whatsoever. No historical account of the Exodus, dead walking after Jesus died (which would be kind of a big deal), etc...........
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Wait, are you saying there is no historical evidence for Jesus' existence outside of the Bible? If so, PLEASE read this...
Historicity of Jesus - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"Virtually all modern scholars of antiquity agree that Jesus existed, and biblical scholars and classical historians regard theories of his non-existence as effectively refuted."
Even without referring to 'friendly sources' for the historicity of Jesus, such as the biblical biographies in the gospels, the writings of the apostle Paul and the writing of the early 'church fathers' I will give you some 'hostile' historical sources. Others could be sited.
“Hostile†sources are writers who mentioned Jesus in a negative light or derogatory fashion. They were not attempting to further the cause of Christ or otherwise to add credence to His existence. In fact, quite the opposite is true. They rejected His teachings and often reviled Him as well. Thus, one can appeal to them without the charge of built-in bias.
Most of the first-century literature that survives was written by members of the very small elite class of the Roman Empire. To them, Jesus (if they heard of him at all) was merely a trouble-maker and magician in a small, backward part of the worldâ€.
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First, Tacitus (c. A.D. 56-117) was a member of the Roman provincial upper class with a formal education who held several high positions under different emperors such as Nerva and Trajan. His famous work, Annals, was a history of Rome written in approximately A.D. 115. In the Annals he told of the Great Fire of Rome, which occurred in A.D. 64. Nero, the Roman emperor in office at the time, was suspected by many of having ordered the city set on fire. Tacitus wrote:
"Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty (i.e. crucifixion) during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular. Accordingly, an arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty; then, upon their information, an immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the crime of firing the city, as of hatred against mankind. Mockery of every sort was added to their deaths. Covered with the skins of beasts, they were torn by dogs and perished, or were nailed to crosses, or were doomed to the flames and burnt, to serve as a nightly illumination, when daylight had expired. Nero offered his gardens for the spectacle, and was exhibiting a show in the circus, while he mingled with the people in the dress of a charioteer or stood aloft on a car. Hence, even for criminals who deserved extreme and exemplary punishment, there arose a feeling of compassion; for it was not, as it seemed, for the public good, but to glut one man's cruelty, that they were being destroyed." Tacitus Annals 15.44
His testimony illustrates that the Christian religion not only was relevant historically, but that Christ, as its originator, was a verifiable historical figure that He attracted the attention of the Roman emperor himself!
How can one explain the spread of a religion ('an immense multitude') based on the worship of a man who had suffered the most disgraceful /shameful death possible? It seems very reasonable to conclude he had resurrected, alternative theories are less persuasive.
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And then there is Pliny the Younger. He was governor of Bithynia in northwest Turkey. His correspondence is with his friend Emperor Trajan in Rome.
He writes:
"Meanwhile, in the case of those who were denounced to me as Christians, I have observed the following procedure: I interrogated these as to whether they were Christians; those who confessed I interrogated a second and a third time, threatening them with punishment; those who persevered I ordered executed. For I had no doubt that, whatever the nature of their creed, stubbornness and inflexible obstinacy surely deserve to be punished....
They asserted, however, that the sum and substance of their fault or error had been that they were accustomed to meet on a fixed day before dawn and sing responsively a hymn to Christ as to a god, and to bind themselves by oath, not to some crime, but not to commit fraud, theft, or adultery....
Accordingly, I judged it all the more necessary to find out what the truth was by torturing two female slaves who were called deaconesses. But I discovered nothing else but a perverse and extravagant superstition."
Pliny to the Emperor Trajan (Letters 10.96; written A.D. 111 or 112)
This reference attests to the rapid spread of Christianity amongst all classes. It mentions the worship of Jesus as God, their ethical standards, and their faith in the face of death.
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Another is Suetonius (c. 69 – c. 122), who was a Roman historian. His most important surviving work is a set of biographies of the twelve successive Roman rulers, best known in English as The Twelve Caesars. Suetonius was a close friend of senator and letter-writer Pliny the Younger.
Suetonius had access to the Imperial and Senatorial archives and to a great body of contemporary memoirs and public documents. He himself lived nearly thirty years under the Caesars. Much of his information about Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, and Nero comes from eye-witnesses of the events described.
Twice in his history, Suetonius specifically mentioned Christ or His followers. He wrote: “Because the Jews at Rome caused continuous disturbance at the instigation of Chrestus, he [Claudius] expelled them from the city†(Claudius, 25:4; note that in Acts 18:2 Luke mentioned this expulsion by Claudius). Scholars believe Chrestus is a misspelling of Christos, the Greek word that translates the Hebrew ‘Messiah’.
Suetonius further commented: “Punishments were also inflicted on the Christians, a sect professing a new and mischievous religious belief†(Nero, 16:2).
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Other 'hostile witnesses' to the historicity of Jesus would include the Jewish writings.
Jewish historical accounts include the Mishnah and the Talmud. The Mishnah was a book of Jewish law traditions codified by Rabbi Judah around the year A.D. 200 and known to the Jews as the “whole code of religious jurisprudenceâ€. Jewish rabbis studied the Mishnah and even wrote a body of commentary based upon it known as the Gemares. The Mishnah and Gemares are known collectively as the Talmud. The complete Talmud surfaced around A.D. 300.
There are a few passages in the Talmud that mention Jesus. According to the earlier Rabbis whose opinions are recorded in these writings, Jesus of Nazareth was a transgressor in Israel, who practiced magic, scorned the words of the wise, led the people astray, and said that he had not come to destroy the law but to add to it. He was hanged on Passover Eve for heresy and misleading the people. His disciples, of whom five are named, healed the sick in his name (1953, p. 102).
First-century Judaism, in large part, refused to accept Jesus Christ as the Messiah. Yet it did not refuse to accept Him as a historical man from a literal city known as Nazareth or to record for posterity crucial facts about His life and death.
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And then there is Josephus. He was born into a Jewish upper class priestly family around A.D. 37. His education in biblical law and history stood among the best of his day. When Jerusalem rebelled against the Roman authorities, he was given command of the Jewish forces in Galilee. After losing most of his men, he surrendered to the Romans. He found favor in the man who commanded the Roman army, Vespasian, by predicting that Vespasian soon would be elevated to the position of emperor. Josephus’ prediction came true in A.D. 69 at Vespasian’s inauguration. After the fall of Jerusalem, Josephus assumed the family name of the emperor (Flavius) and settled down to live a life as a government pensioner. It was during these latter years that he wrote Antiquities of the Jews between September AD 93 and September 94. His contemporaries viewed his career indignantly as one of traitorous rebellion to the Jewish nation.
Josephus wrote:
Josephus' Antiquities 20:9:1 relates that Ananus brought before the Sanhedrin “a man named James, the brother of Jesus who was called the Christ, and certain others. He accused them of having transgressed the law, and condemned them to be stoned to death.†Undisputed.
Antiquities 18:3:3 "And there arose about this time Jesus, a wise man, {if indeed we should call him a *****; for he was a doer of marvelous deeds, a teacher of men who receive the truth with pleasure. He led away many Jews, and also Greeks. {This man was the Christ}. And when Pilate had condemned him to the cross on his impeachment by the chief men among us, those who had loved him at first did not cease; {for he appeared to them on the third day alive again, the divine prophets having spoken these and thousands of other wonderful things about him}: and even now the tribe of Christians, so named after him, has not yet died out."
Most historians dispute the three parts above in the brackets while accepting the rest of the the statement. Others insists those phrases are authentic. Even if we grant these three elements as interpolations added at a later date look what's left. Josephus corroborates important information about Jesus.; that he was the martyred leader of the church in Jerusalem and that he was a wise teacher who had established a wide and lasting following despite the fact that he had been crucified under Pilate at the instigation of some of the Jewish leaders.
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Even if we did not have the New Testament or Christian writings, we would be able to conclude from such non-Christian writings as Josephus, the Talmud, Tacitus, Pliny the Younger, and Suetonius that: (1) Jesus was a Jewish teacher; (2) many people believed that he performed healings and exorcisms; (3) some people believed he was the Messiah; (4) he was rejected by the Jewish leaders; (5) he was crucified under Pontius Pilate in the reign of Tiberius; (6) despite this shameful death, his followers, who believed that he was still alive, spread beyond Palestine so that there were multitudes of them in Rome by 64 A.D.; (7) all kinds of people from the cities and countryside—men and women, slave and free—worshiped him as God by the beginning of the second century.
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