h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Muslims would dispute that - they don't believe Jesus was crucified.

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There is? Please elaborate! This is the first I have ever heard that particular assertion, in 30+ (yikes!) years of looking into such things and being a Christian. I thought I'd heard it all!

Interesting, is all I can say - but not very credible...

Vicky

If you're really interested, try googling "Jesus was not crucified". I can't claim to have read many of the 12,000 odd results, but there does seem to be some controversy...

One of the documents that was omitted from the standard NT - either one of the gospels or it could have been the omitted 3rd letter to the corinthians, mentioned him being stoned I think.

I also think that Jewish religious writings mention something about Jesus being hanged.

Length of service is no guarantee of breadth (or depth) of knowledge.

'credible'
Yes well, that's a whole other conversation if you want to get into which bits of the life story are credible

Hi Andrew

All this and yet you have still not turned over one objective source of evidence for the existence of Jesus. Saying there is a movement that erupts onto the scene by the late first, early second century AD is not evidence.

After all the myth of Santa Claus only really came into being in the last two centuries, he has his own festival, millions of believers, and a huge amount of literature/media about him - but there is no real evidence for his existence either.

Julius Caesar is not a like-for-like because we have the writings of those who didn't support him and who criticised him, as evidence for his existence. We also have the history of the Julian family and their successors. There is also contemporary archaeological for Julius - inscriptions, statues, images etc.

What you need to bring to the table is evidence that the whole Jesus myth was not cooked up by Paul and Peter. Perhaps they were early socialists, using the only successful social power model available to them at the time? The message they brought certainly didn't make them popular - but maybe that wasn't the point.

If you don't believe a mass spiritual movement can be created out of a cynical desire for power and worship by a tiny group of individuals take a close look at Scientology. An entire religion created to win a bet between L.Ron Hubbard and Robert Heinlein. The premise for this religion (human evolution was manipulated by refugee super-aliens) is absolutely laughable. Yet the Church has possibly millions of believers, including many very high profile celebrities.

So Andrew, where is your evidence? How about any contemporary literature or records from someone who didn't support Jesus (or Peter & Paul), or perhaps something from the archaeology. After all only Egypt has had more intensive archaeological work than Judaea and in particular - Jerusalem.

I look forward to your reply.

Blessings,
Matholwch .

Hi Ictoan

I have always doubted the Gospel descriptions of the Crucifixion. For ease of understanding I shall bullet point them:

1. Crucifixion is supposed to be a slow display death taking two to three days. A warning to others.
2. Jesus didn't last an afternoon.
3. The scourging doesn't explain this as Jesus carried a light wooden beam (not a bluudy big cross) the best part of 1.5 miles afterwards before tripping and getting help.
4. Crucifixion duty was despised by Legionnaries and the Auxilia. It was hot, dirty, unpleasant and tended to draw unruly crowds.
5. It was not unusual for the poorly paid Auxilia to accept bribes to:
5a. Declare an unconscious man as dead and let his family take him away for 'burial' (now there's an explanation for the infamous empty tomb huh?). One chap is in Roman records as having been crucified four times. When he was recaptured a fifth time they cut his throat before hanging him up.
5b. Ease the passing of a man who they could not let escape (as he was too important). They did this in one of two ways: break their legs so the victim's whole weight hung on their arms and they suffocated in under an hour, or make a small piercing wound in the ribs collapsing a lung. This latter one could kill a man in under ten minutes, but might leave a blood stain if careless.

If Jesus was crucified then it seems likely, given the descriptions in the Gospels, that he survived. Oh dear...

Blessings,
Matholwch .

1. Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist. No proof outside the Bible. Many people were baptized by John the Baptist so a man named Jesus could have been one of them but the name Jesus was not an uncommon name. One extra biblical source claims that Apollonius of Tyana was baptized by John.

2. He was a Galilean who preached and worked miracles. No proof outside the Bible. If he was a Galilean then he would have been
3. He limited his activity to Israel. No proof outside the Bible.
4. He called up those who would become his disciples. No proof outside the Bible.
5. He raised controversy over the role of the temple. No proof outside the Bible.
6. He was crucified outside Jerusalem by the Roman authorities. Many people were.
7. After the death of Jesus, his followers continued to form an identifiable group. As i said before there were many disparate Messianic groups.
8. Some Jews at least persecuted certain groups of the new movement. Paul for one!

Oops, I didn't finish 2.

2. He was a Galilean who preached and worked miracles. No proof outside the Bible. If he was a Galilean then he would have been born in Galilee and not in Bethlehem in Judea.

I will try to address all these points in just one post. Well, most of them. The others can be picked up later if you want. Of course I believe much more than the minimum position of E.P. Sanders.

On the life story of Jesus, the New Testament counts for quite a lot, and so do the writings that date from that era but are not in the New Testament. I have never heard of a standard text that refers to Jesus being stoned rather than crucified. And the relevant Jewish texts, such as the Talmud, appear to echo St Peter’s description of Jesus being hung on a tree (Acts, 5:30), i.e. crucified. Anyway, even apart from the writings of Christians mentioned earlier such as Clement, Ignatius of Antioch, and the course of those early years, say 30-100 AD, there are other early references.

Firstly, a comparison with Julius Caesar is comparing like with like, Math. All that you are saying when it comes to the crunch is that Julius Caesar had more statues made of him. One would expect the two to differ in the manner of the evidence. But for instance Caesar’s Gallic Wars is known to us from the survival of only ten copies through the dark ages, the earliest dating from around 900 AD. The same can be said of any contemporary accounts of him: they could be forgeries, although I think only an eccentric would go so far as to claim that not only might they be inaccurate in some details, but that Caesar didn’t even exist.

The life and death (and resurrection) of Jesus is known from *thousands* of copies of the New Testament of much greater antiquity, some from the second century. By that measure Jesus’s life is by far the best attested life story of antiquity.

To be continued shortly.

The earliest surviving references to Jesus in extra-Christian documents are from Greek and Roman historians who wrote towards the end of the first century or early in the second. The most ancient text dates to about the year 73, and was written by Mara bar Sarapion, a stoic philosopher from Samosata in Syria. He refers to Jesus not by name but as the “wise King” of the Jews, and writes that it was said he promulgated new laws, probably referring to the Sermon on the Mount (Matt 5:21-48). He observes that having him put to death was of no benefit to the Jews.

The oldest and best-known direct reference to Jesus comes from the historian Flavius Josephus (Antiquitates Iudaicae XVIII, 63-64). Written near the end of the first century, it is also known as the Testimonium Flavianum. This text survives in all Greek manuscripts of Josephus’ work, and goes as far as to suggest that Jesus could be the Messiah. This has caused many researchers, perhaps including Math, to believe that it was inserted by medieval copyists.

However, researchers now believe Josephus’ original words to have almost coincided with those retained in an Arab version of the same text, quoted by Agapius, a tenth-century bishop of Hierapolis. He says the following: “At that time, a wise man called Jesus, admirable in his conduct, was renowned for his virtue. Many Jews and other people were his disciples. Pilate condemned him to death by crucifixion. But those who had become his disciples did not renounce their discipleship and told of how he appeared to them alive three days after the crucifixion, and that because of this, he could be the Messiah of whom the prophets had said such marvellous things”.

One supposes of course that Josephus was not writing first-hand but was quoting a Christian source that he knew to be reliable, probably the same source used by Luke in his account of the disciples traveling to Emmaus (Luke 24,19-21). At that stage I presume Josephus could not go to Jewish sources because they had been destroyed in the sack of Jerusalem, but he would have known the basic facts as a former Pharisee born in Jerusalem just a few years after Jesus’ death. If he thought the thing was a fraud he would have said so, or at least not written it as history. The final text of the Testimonium as we have it is more Christian from the version of Agapius given above, and it is thought that it was edited to ‘improve’ it; but the version above is explicit enough: the text was revised, but not inserted.

Of course these extra-biblical texts survive only through a few late copies dating from many centuries later, after the fashion of nearly all texts of antiquity, but unlike the Gospels.

After Josephus, references to Jesus and to the deeds of his followers appear in the work of second-century Roman writers such as Pliny the Younger (Epistolarum ad Traianum Imperatorem cum eiusdem Responsis liber X, 96), Tacitus (Anales XV, 44), Suetonius (The life of Claudius, 25.4). These are standard works, the same sources for the existence of many other historical figures, and are known from a few late copies.

To be continued again in a few minutes.

Hi Andrew

I expect we shall be simulposting, but I couldn't resist a couple of points in the first of your tryptych.

"Firstly, a comparison with Julius Caesar is comparing like with like, Math. All that you are saying when it comes to the crunch is that Julius Caesar had more statues made of him."

And coins... there are coins that show him as a prefect, as a consul and as consul for life. In other words literally thousands of independant sources of evidence. You don't mint coins for a mythical leader now do you? There are also hundreds of records of the doings of the Julian family of which he was a part, and tens of thousands regarding his descendants...

Tacitus and many other contemporary authors mention him by name, and most of the stories about him are very similar, unlike the four Gospels account of the Life of Jesus.

The most commonly cited 'independent' source is Josephus. In his only manuscript that seems to include Jesus the passage containing the messiah is such an obvious later forgery as to make that claim utterly false.

Hmmm... I'd better get reading your next bits

Matholwch .

Righto Gentlemen this is going to take a while. Anyone not interested in early Church history would be best retiring to the bar.

Before we get stuck in - Andrew are you Opus Dei? You certainly seem to be lifting your arguments almost wholesale from The Catechesis. I should warn you that I have one Numenary and two associates amongst my close friends...

"The most ancient text dates to about the year 73, and was written by Mara bar Sarapion, a stoic philosopher from Samosata in Syria."

When taken in context this seems to be more likely to have been a reference to Herod Antipas, the Roman Client King and Apologist. He actually did a lot to try and reconcile Jewish and Roman law.

"The oldest and best-known direct reference to Jesus comes from the historian Flavius Josephus (Antiquitates Iudaicae XVIII, 63-64). Written near the end of the first century, it is also known as the Testimonium Flavianum."

This one thin passage, three sentences long, is clearly at least partially forged. This leaves the possibility that a short reference to the historical Jesus, no more than a comment, is the principal support for the Holy Bible's assertion that Jesus even existed. It's possible, too, that the Testimonium was wholly forged.

Why should we suspect that this passage is a forgery? First because, although the church fathers were quite fond of quoting passages which supported Christianity, and though these early church fathers were quite familiar with the works of Josephus, not one of them quotes this passage in defense of Christianity until Eusebius does in the fourth century. We also know Eusebius to be the man who said that lying for the advancement of the church was quite acceptable. He was probably the one who inserted this suspect passage into Josephus' works. Origen, the famous early Christian apologist, even quotes from other parts of Josephus, but somehow neglects to quote our passage. Origen wrote his book Contra Celsus in about 220 A.D.

It should be noted that Flavius Josephus, by the way, was born in or around the year 37 — after any Jesus of Nazareth was dead, and his Antiquities were not written until at least seventy years after Jesus's supposed death. If Josephus did write this his primary reference would have been the Christians promoting their cult, for as you have correctly said the destruction of Jerusalem removed most contemporary manuscripts and it is very unlikely that the secret scroll repository of the Essenes would have been open to him, given his openly Roman connections. Is this the real foundation support of your independent evidence Andrew?

Let's break this down a bit... next we have Tacitus

If I may just cut in... and yes, I am taking most of the stuff from the website you mention: I am responsible for it in the UK.

Jewish sources, particularly the Talmud, also appear to allude to Jesus and to certain things that were said about him. This makes it possible to substantiate some historical details using sources which are not suspect in terms of Christian manipulation (looking at it from the historians’ point of view).

I have not read the Talmud, alas, so I have to refer to what Josef Klausner, a respected authority, writes about it. According to him, Jesus is probably the person referred to therein as Yeshu’a (Yeshu) of Nazareth; that it is said he practised sorcery (i.e. performed miracles) and led Israel astray; that he explained Scripture as the Pharisees did; that he had disciples (five of them); that he said he had not come to revoke the Law, nor to add anything to it; that he was hanged (crucified, explains Klausner) as a false teacher on the eve of the Passover, which happened to fall on a Saturday; and that his disciples cured disease in his name (source: J. Klausner, Jesus of Nazareth).

According to Klausner, the Talmud also says that he was the son of Pantera. This confirms an old story to do with Jesus. The Christian writer, Origen (185-254 AD), referred to the story that Jesus had a father called Pantheros, as apparently claimed c.180 AD by the anti-Christian philosopher Celsus, who argued against Christianity, saying that Jesus was therefore Ben Pandera. The book by Origen is lost, but it survived long enough to be quoted by Epiphanius (320-403 AD). By echoing the name of his father according to Celsus (which Christians do not believe), the Talmud appears to confirm the identification.

I think this essay (!) deals with extra-biblical corroboration. One would not expect all these sources to agree a hundred percent on everything, but they deal with the existence of Jesus. That done, there is no need to show that Christianity is *not* an invention of St Paul: the sandal is on the other foot, Math, and so is the burden of proof.

We can deal with some of the remaining issues separately if you want, e.g. Jesus’ baptism by John, and his raising controversy about the temple. At some stage, though, if you accept that Jesus existed, you have to consider whether to read the gospel and decide how much is true. Those two points are fairly central. Jesus’ credibility was in part because John the Baptist bore witness to him, and he was accused of speaking against the temple.

And on we go

Tacitus - someone I have already called as a source for that other JC - Julius Caesar. Let's turn to his Annals XV, Chapter 44 and the famous passage in which he claims:

"Nero looked around for a scapegoat, and inflicted the most fiendish tortures on a group of persons already hated by the people for their crimes. This was the sect known as Christians. Their founder, one Christus, had been put to death by the procurator Pontius Pilate in the reign of Tiberius. This checked the abominable superstition for a while, but it broke out again and spread, not merely through Judea, where it originated, but even to Rome itself, the great reservoir and collecting ground for every kind of depravity and filth. Those who confessed to being Christians were at once arrested, but on their testimony a great crowd of people were convicted, not so much on the charge of arson, but of hatred of the entire human race."

While we know from the way in which the above is written that Tacitus did not claim to have firsthand knowledge of the origins of Christianity, we can see that he is repeating a story which was then commonly believed, namely that the founder of Christianity, one Christus, had been put to death under Tiberius. There are a number of serious difficulties which must be answered before this passage can be accepted as genuine.

Unfortunately Andrew there is no other historical proof that Nero persecuted the Christians at all. There certainly were not multitudes of Christians in Rome at that date (circa 60 A.D.). In fact, the term "Christian" was not in common use in the first century. We know Nero was indifferent to various religions in his city, and, since he almost definitely did not start the fire in Rome, he did not need any group to be his scapegoat. Indeed he is the one that organised the defence of the city and saved tens of thousands of his citizens lives by his actions.

Tacitus does not use the name Jesus, and writes as if the reader would know the name Pontius Pilate, two things which show that Tacitus was not working from official records or writing for non-Christian audiences, both of which we would expect him to have done if the passage were genuine. It should also be noted that Pilate was a Prefect, the term Procurator not becoming current until well after Jesus' supposed death. A keen political historian like Tacitus would never have made that mistake...

It is amusing that the paragraph ties itself in knots. Nero tortures the christians (sic), but only after that and a period when they were held in check by these actions, do they spread to Rome from Judaea. Hmm... again Tacitus was a meticulous (if often politically biased) writer. This passage is obviously a later insertion.

Perhaps most damning to the authenticity of this passage is the fact that it is present almost word-for-word in the Chronicle of Sulpicius Severus (died in 403 A.D.), where it is mixed in with obviously false tales. At the same time, it is highly unlikely that Sulpicius could have copied this passage from Tacitus, as none of his contemporaries mention the passage. This means that it was probably not in the Tacitus manuscripts at that date. It is much more likely, then, that copyists working in the Dark Ages from the only existing manuscript of the Chronicle, simply copied the passage from Sulpicius into the manuscript of Tacitus which they were reproducing.

Now Tacitus is the most reliable of the sources you have quoted. I can demolish Suetonius and Pliny too if you wish?

Methinks that as the Villa of the Scrolls is uncovered in Pompeii, and it priceless library recovered, we may begin to see many original Roman and Greek works, free of later christianisation.

Matholwch .

Hi Andrew,

I am afraid, as always the burden of proof always lies with a man who wishes to prove something exists, not the converse.

Now I do not deny the existence and growth of a 1st century Graeco-Judaic cult, it would be silly to do so. However, as so many cults have grown to greatness without any need for a historical or real figure to start them off, and many of them refer to the mortal or semi-divine origins we need better evidence than a bundle of obvious later forgeries and old Rabbis repeating the tales told by the early christians themselves.

As for the Rabbis...

If we look at the materials concerning Jesus which had been removed from the later copies of the Talmud for reasons of self-preservation in the fiercely anti-semitic climate of the middle ages, we can see that they say that he was a bastard and a magician who learned magic spells in Egypt or else stole the secret name of God from the temple and used it to work magic or miracles.

The father of Jesus is also claimed to be a Roman soldier named Pantera (at least they got that detail right in The Life of Brian ).

At any rate, most authorities are agreed that most of this Talmudic material derives from the period from 200 to 500 A.D., and represents Jewish attempts to deal with the growing strength of Christianity. It makes no attempt to be historically accurate and, in fact, is of no use in determining if Jesus was an historical person.

Many of the passages so often quoted by Christian apologists leave off the initial few words, namely "And it is tradition ...". This means that the Talmudic scribe was merely reporting what had been said by Christians (and this is in about 300 A.D.). The passage describes how Jesus was stoned and hanged for practicing magic. That doesn't quite sound like the New Testament account.

Let's not go into the Gospels shall we? After all there is no greater scholarly mire than trying to reconcile these four, often contradictory, accounts... And they do not address the central point - any evidence of a historical Jesus.

So the ball is back at your feet Andrew. Are you going to pick it up?

Blessings,
Matholwch

Great-nephew of a Catholic Canon (oops! Didn't I mention that before?)

Think I shall leave this argumentum ad googlum to you guys, not my forte!

But having read the above it doesn't change my reasoning that there very probably (as certain as we can be about many people in history) was a real person behind the Jesus tales. What we cannot tell, due to lots of different names and discrepancies and just the fact that many of the quotes mention only one or two small things about the person is whether a) they are all the same person and b) exactly what this person was like as a human.

Hence my statement that the existence of Jesus capital J (as in the religious figure portrayed by various religions) is an extrapolation.

oh, the stoning bit is apparently from the Babylonian Talmud and is also a reference to Yeshu (which I believe is the Hebrew for Jesus).

And it came to pass that I acquired a copy of the Book of Mormon.

And it came to pass that I read it.

Has anyone else here read it?

Because if they have,

1) Does anyone else think that if this is the divine inspiration of God, both in the original and in the translation, then God wouldn't have passed his O-level English Language exam...

2) There is at least as much evidence for this being the word of God as there is for the Bible (after all, there are lots of witnesses who put their names to the existence of the original plates, which is more than you can say for Jesus' existence...).

and 3) Has anyone else here heard the story of the Book being a novel originally given to Brigham Young in his capacity as a publisher, stolen, and used by him to found a religion simply because he could... (shades of L R Hubbard) and that this has been suppressed by the Mormon Church?

--
Jez

I'd heard 3), or that he read it as a joke, which then ran out of control. Not that I'd actually *read* it, of course.

Here's a true one:
I've just been to Assisi, perhaps like a drowning man grasping at the proverbial straw. And there I'm very sad to say I drowned in the rough sea of hypocrisy and cant. Even a visit to the tomb of the town's main saint couldn't save me.
Posters displayed around the town, earnest building works and much in the way of construction projects alerted me to the fact that the Pope is due to visit the place soon. I'm almost sure he'll have better luck than I did.