Actually there are plenty of books and historians who HAVE historically validated the existance of a man named Jesus for which the Bible speaks about.
No there aren't. There are plenty of books written by people passing themselves off as historians who desperately want the NT to be literally true, but the first non-gospel sources that mention Jesus are those of Tacitus and Pliny the Elder, both of whom existed after Jesus alleged life and wrote based on hearsay.
There is historical evidence for Paul, Peter, Matthew, Luke, Mark, John, etc who all wrote letters and books about Christ.
There is plenty written about these people, yes. However, the gospels again were written quite some time after Jesus death, in different countries and in Greek. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, if they were who they say they are, would most likely have been speakers of Aramaic and illiterate - literacy at that time in the population is estimated at around 10%, mostly occupying Roman forces and officials, Jewish clerics and a few other dignitaries. In a subsistence economy, your average itinerant worker isn't going to be able to write or speak Greek.
Paul is more interesting - it is thought that he studied under the well known Pharisee teacher Gamaliel in Jerusalem and would in all likelihood have been able to speak and write Greek as well as Aramaic and possibly Hebrew too. What is more interesting is his portrayal of Jesus according to his own take on how the evolving sects of proto-Christianity should be. The same can be said of the authors of the gospels, but Paul's writings, contradictory though they may be, are accepted as being legitimate as in being Paul's actual words, but as he never met Jesus and outright contradicted some of his teachings, it is difficult to even use these to get an accurate picture of what Jesus may have been like.
. Million dollar question is, why can't these letters be taken as historical documents that tell of a real man named Jesus?
see above
There are also Roman letters which collaberate Christ's execution.
Nope. See Tacitus and Pliny...
what I am saying is that I call foul when it comes to people taking the New Testament letters and dismissing them outright but accepting documents older than these as historically accurate. That is we will believe in documents that tell of an Emperor named Pontius Pilate but we won't believe in documents that tell of a man named Jesus Christ.
Age doesn't have any bearing on historicity.
Pontius Pilate was the governor of the Judea area, not the Emperor, although you could say he acted in the Emperor's name.
The main problem is the authorship of the gospels (and the non-canonical ones too), and the fact that the gospels and Paul all focus on contradictory aspects of the Jesus story, saying what the authors wanted their immediate sect-followers to believe rather than what may have been true. Thay may give us clues, but there's nothing that stands up as primary evidence re Jesus.
As far as I'm concerned, there may well have been a guy called Y'shua bin Youssef, who was later referred to as Jesus, but there isn't a great deal to back any of it up.
Christianity hinges solely on Christ's resurrection. If Jesus didn't rise from the dead he din't defeat death. If he didn't defeat death he didn't demosntrate his power above sin
yup
If Jesus is not more powerful than sin then what we believe is for nought.
Why?... Isn't the message of morality more relevant in the 21st century than some hocus-pocus about resurrection? Dead people don't come back.
This is why we believe in the historicity of the bible. It says Jesus defeated death and came back to life. Ergo he defeated death and came back to life. Let's get back to the topic people.
Nope. Jesus said that that he would return and bring the kingdom of heaven on Earth in the disciples own lifetime. He didn't, and it didn't happen.. hence the shift in theology in the gospel of John written around 90-100CE long after John snuffed it.
Topic: Biblical Historicity (Read 19347 times)
