What would the World be like if JESUS had never been Born?

Unless you have anything further to add to any of the questions that have been asked here, then I think this Forum topic has come to an end.

If it is the end of this topic, then I would like to thank all those members who contributed.

THANK YOU

I've just went back through this Topic and observed that there were 29 different members who participated - thank you all.

Read my other two posts on this subject, they spell it out very clearly. You continue to respond as though i were offering something suspect or extraordinary. What i have posited as standards are at the heart of historiography. You are quibbling and i've grown very tired of your nonsense.

Setanta: I've looked over your earlier posts and noted the following one you made on Dec 18:

"When examining historical accounts, one must ask if the witness has an interest in how posterity will view both "the historical record" and him/herself; one must ask what was the proximity of the witness was to the persons/events in question; one must ask what the ability of the witness in question was to comprehend the persons/events in question; finally, one must also take care to make as dispassionate a decision as possible about the source of the witness's information--did s/he physically witness the person/events, or obtain the information at second hand, or read contemporary accounts? These questions often become "nested" on the basis of this last criterion, unless the individual concerned claims to have been an eye-witness, in which case, one is usually only concerned with the first criterion."

Is this your criterion for determining a literary object as being an "historical fact?"

Bibliophile, Setanta wrote the following regarding his "criterion for determining a literary object as being an historical fact" much more recently than what you quoted:


Spelling out which exact dating standards are "internationally accepted" or any other such side issues, in my opinion, should not be nearly as important as just coming up with a text which gives you an actual argument against Setanta's claim that there is no historical proof Jesus existed.

If he's wrong, just show us all the proof.

On the 18 December, Setanta said, "In short, Josephus would be a reliable canditate for a witness on this topic..."

Here's a quote from Josephus about Jesus:

"About this time there lived Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one ought to call him a man. For he was one who performed surprising deeds and was a teacher of such people as accept the truth gladly. He won over many Jews and many of the Greeks. He was the Messiah. And when, upon the accusation of the principal men among us, Pilate had condemned him to a cross, those who had first come to love him did not cease. He appeared to them spending a third day restored to life, for the prophets of God had foretold these things and a thousand other marvels about him. And the tribe of the Christians, so called after him, has still to this day not disappeared. " - Jewish Antiquities, 18.3.3 §63

Is this "proof" that Jesus Christ, as mentioned in the Bible, was an historical fact?

O.K., Bib, let's play your game: where did you get your "quote" from Josephus, got a URL which will tell us what hitherto unknown fragment of Josephus contains this passage?

Game? This is no game!

If you want to play games then please proceed to the Trivia and Word Games Forum - I've initiated plenty of games over there if you wish to participate.

By the way, don't come back with a group of christian web sites that claim the authenticity of this text, because by the criteria i've already listed, their testimony is automatically suspect. A good university web site, which is NOT a "chrisitian" university, and which is NOT sponsored by a religious studies program, would be a good source, whose veracity might be acceptable. Non-christian sites would be good sources, as well, such as this, from a Jewish site:

Yet this account has been embroiled in controversy since the 17th century. It could not have been written by a Jewish man, say the critics, because it sounds too Christian: it even claims that Jesus was the Messiah (ho christos, the Christ)!
The critics say: this paragraph is not authentic. It was inserted into Josephus' book by a later Christian copyist, probably in the Third or Fourth Century.

The opinion was controversial. A vast literature was produced over the centuries debating the authenticity of the "Testimonium Flavianum", the Testimony of Flavius Josephus.

A view that has been prominent among American scholars was summarized in John Meier's 1991 book, A Marginal Jew.

This opinion held that the paragraph was formed by a mixture of writers. It parsed the text into two categories: nything that seemed too Christian was added by a later Christian writer, while anything else was originally written by Josephus.

By this view, the paragraph was taken as essentially authentic, and so supported the objective historicity of Jesus.

Unfortunately, the evidence for this was meager and self-contradictory. But it was an attractive hypothesis.

This was taken from: http://members.aol.com/FLJOSEPHUS/testimonium.htm, which is a site maintained by Jewish history scholars. It is important to keep in mind what i wrote earlier, about there being no existant fragments of Josephus containing any mention of Jesus. The very idea, in fact, is perposterous, for the simple reason that Jesus is the Greek for Joshuah, and there is no reason for a Jew to refer to someone named Joshuah as Jesus. But you have your fun, Bib, and be very careful about the provenance of your quotes. If it is a quote from what someone else claimed to have read in Josephus, as opposed to what is written in any existing fragment, then you've got a loser on your hands.

this thread has degenerated into silliness

Don't get your back up, you're the one who began playhing games--each time i commented on the reliability of someone's assertions about historical fact, you came back demanding that i list for you the criteria i have applied, as if i were playing some game--this depsite my having already provided those criteria. And you needn't take that tone with me, i'm not your child, nor am i in any otherwise under your tutelage.

Setanta: be careful, that in your haste to sound like some sort of oracle, or fount of knowledge, that your own lack of knowledge, especially with respect to the writings of Josephus, doesn't become your undoing.

You stated that Josephus would be a "reliable candidate" - I've given you a quotation from one of his writings, which you somehow seem to have overlooked!

I would suggest that you read Book XVIII: "From the Banishment of Archelaus to the Departure of the Jews from Babylon" - in particular, CHAPTER III: "Sedition of the Jews against Pontius Pilate; Concerning Christ, and what Befell Paulina and the Jews at Rome" - and then proceed to PARAGRAPH 3, where you will find the quotation that I have cited.

A URL? I don't need a URL - I have the complete works of Josephus in front of me!

Well to introduce a note of sanity:

Imagine there's no heaven, it's easy if you try,
No hell below us, above us only sky,
Imagine all the people, living for today.
Imagine there's no countries, it isn't hard to do,
Nothing to kill or die for, and no religion too,
Imagine all the people, living life in peace.
You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one,
I hope someday you'll join us, and the world will be as one.

Imagine no possessions, I wonder if you can,
No need for greed or hunger, a brotherhood of man,
Imagine all the people, sharing all the world.
You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one,
I hope someday you'll join us, and the world will live as one.

Asking you questions about your criteria for determining Historical Facts, was in no way intended by me "as a game" as you have stated. I merely wanted to establish what your benchmark or standards were for determining such important evidences for Historical Facts.

There was no trickery, gamesmanship or any other such negative suggestion that you have stated or implied, pertaining to my alleged motives. I was simply trying to understand your own personal definition of what an Historical Fact is.

Oh you do, and you can state categorically that no portion thereof has been altered, transcribed, or otherwise tampered with by a christian? I doubt that. I overlooked nothing, i knew of the passage to which you have referred, but you seem to be overlooking the quote i provided you about the unreliability of that passage. From Eusebius onward, christians have transcribed AND altered Josephus to produce their evidence--but no fragment of Josephus which has not been transcribed by someone else contains the passage to which you refer. In fact, in The Jewish War, Book II, Josephus provides a long passage on Pontius Pilate, an individual's whose existence i do not question, and that passage contains not the least reference to any Jesus. You still haven't explained why a Jew would use Jesus when referring to someone whose name was Joshuah.

These aren't my "personal definitions" of what the criteria are for establishing the reliability of historical writings--these are criteria which are universal in historiography. Claiming that i'm presenting my "personal definition" is an inferential claim on your part that i'm applying some exotic or non-standard test--which is certainly not the case. You remind me of people in the 60's who responded to someone's argument by claiming "it's all semantics." The criteria i presented are those of any reliable historiographic method.

Setanta: you asked for a citation, and I've given you a citation. Now you are claiming that this citation has been "tampered with by a christian!"

I think you've demonstrated your bias in this whole matter quite clearly, which is why I pressed you for a definition of what you meant by "proof" for historical facts.

I don't think there is ANY "proof" that would satisfy your unwillingness to accept that Jesus Christ was a real historical person. Your denial of your own criteria, which I have complied with, with respect to Josephus, is evidence of that.

Bib, Although I am an atheist, I find some of the standing history of Jesus quite fascinating. When I took my sister to Egypt and Jordan earlier this year, we visited Coptic Cairo with two other ladies from our tour group. We visited a church there that claims the Holy Family hid there during the massacre of infants. Although my sister, a christian, believes in the story, I am still a skeptic of all religious claims and teachings. c.i.

Bib, the earliest "christians" considered themselves a sect of Judaeism, and required anyone who wished to join them to convert to Judaeism before being accepted. They referred to their teacher as the Rabbi Yeshua. Any text which purports to be by Josephus and which refers to Jesus is therefore automatically suspect. I have no brief to harrass christians, and have no desire to see christians destroyed. I just don't like it when people play fast and loose with what they claim is historical truth. Anyone who claims that they have any text dating from the first century CE which refers to Jesus is flat out a liar--then name was not known, and was only introduced by Saul of Tarsus, who was rejected by the earliest adherents of the Rabbi Yeshua. He went back to Tarsus, the home of the Mithraic cult in the west, and interpolated this story of Yeshua into the most popular aspects of the Mithraic cult. Because he was working in a Greek world, he translated Yeshua into Jesus. It was only long after his death that the use of the name became common. I repeat, by all reliable standards of historiography, any text using the name Jesus is automatically suspect. That there likely was a Rabbi named Yeshua as advertised seems very plausible to me, that the Jesus who is worshipped as a god in his own right by modern christians ever existed seems to me to be laughably absurd. If you want to claim that you can prove such an individual existed, you help yourself--i've grown tired of your antipathy and your hectoring.

Thanks Steve, we all needed that . . .

Hello CI: nice to see you back again.

I respect, and in many ways, understand the reasons why certain persons are suspicious, skeptical, cynical, or even hostile towards the claims and/or teachings of certain "religions" or "religious" personalities or institutions.

Atheism and Humanism were the daily diet in my household as a child. My parents had a massive distrust of anything that sounded "preachy" or "miraculous" - if Religion was the South Pole, then they were the North Pole - neither the two would ever meet.

So, you see, I grew up in that environment, and in many ways, learned their arguments and gained insight into their distrust of "religion."