Existence of Jesus?

[Blacksword]

E]

I was kinda thinking this and smiling to myself a little. Not that I was smiling because Tess_marie is in a state of dispair but that this might be right where she needs to be, right where God wants her.

Sometimes we have to go to that dark place before we can come out into the light on the other side. Sometimes we have to enter the tomb with Jesus before we can rise with him in the ressurection, know what I mean? Its a rough place to be but sometimes we have to go there.

In my journey, it wasn’t doubt about Jesus’ existence but doubt about God’s ability to free me from sin. When he did, after many years of struggle, it left absolutely no doubt in my mind that Christ is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. I hope the same is true for Tess_marie, that she comes out on the other side with a rock solid, unshakable faith in not only the existence of Jesus, but of exactly who he is and what that means to her personally.

And for that I will pray.

-Tim-

Well spoken!

 

[TimothyH]

E]

Well spoken!

It wasn’t till I spent some time at a monastery that I learned about the spiritual side of our faith, something I was at the time not prepared to acknowledge, let alone embrace.

I asked a monk about some aspect of doctrine or dogma and he looked at me like I had three heads. Doctrine and dogma were givens and discussing them was like discussing the need to breathe or that gravity exists. It’s so difficult to let go of the books, to put aside what our brains and eyes and ears and waht so much learning and study tells us, and actually step out the front door into the world and trust in that which you don’t understand, and that which in really you can never hope to fully understand.

I mean, the Eucharist. A man rising from the dead. Seriously? Who can understand these things? I know some things about them, but I don’t fully understand them. But I trust that they are real and I hope and pray that God doesn’t test that trust like he did with Abraham. When I have doubt, I remember that even Peter didn’t understand. Yet he said, “To whom else shall we go?” And he followed. The Apostle Thomas is my hero…

So the other disciples said to him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands and put my finger into the nailmarks and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.” (John 20:25)

And Jesus is so loving. He is so compassionate. He comes back a week later, and I think he came back just for Thomas, showing him the nail marks and inviting him to put his hand into the wound in his side.

They brought the boy to him. And when he saw him, the spirit immediately threw the boy into convulsions. As he fell to the ground, he began to roll around and foam at the mouth. Then he questioned his father, “How long has this been happening to him?” He replied, “Since childhood. It has often thrown him into fire and into water to kill him. But if you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us.” Jesus said to him, " ‘If you can!’ Everything is possible to one who has faith." Then the boy’s father cried out, “I do believe, help my unbelief!” (Mark 9:20-24)

The boy’s father is my hero. I wish I knew his name as I would have like to take it as my confirmation name if I though they would have let me. Like the boy’s father, it’s not about our belief, but our trust in the face of our lack of belief. The father made a concious decision to step out in trust and then cried out to God to make up for his lack of understaning. And Jesus, ever compassionate, cured the boy, and I think he did it not so much for the boy as for the father!

This topic is close to my heart. I actually have those words, “I do believe, help my unbelief!” in a small frame on the wall where I see it every morning as I leave my bedroom.

Here I’ll paraphrase what St. Therese of Availia said several times in “The Way to Perfection”… I don’t really remember what I started to write about so I’ll stop now.

-Tim-

 

[Ignatius]

I’m starting to even doubt the existence of Jesus at all. .

There are orders of magnitude more historical evidence for Jesus than for other historical individuals. No one doubts the existence of Hannibal of Carthage, Gaius Verres, Pythagoras even though the only records of them consist of fragments written hundreds of years after they died. There are many witnesses to Jesus, Jewish, pagan and Christian from his own time as well as within living memory of His time on Earth.

No serious scholar doubts the existence of Jesus.

 

[wiggbuggie]

Some of the theology in there is inaccurate, actually. But thanks for sharing! That’s very interesting.

whats inaccurate about it?

 

[Gift_from_God]

The thing to remember is that there is no evidence that anyone from history existed. Do you believe Julius Caesar existed? Do you believe Alexander the Great existed? If so, why would one be so willing to believe they existed but question whether or not Jesus existed?

 

[Tess_marie]

I’m also wondering-apparently there isn’t any documentation outside of the bible that King Herod had babies slaughtered? How could someone not have documented such a thing?

 

[Tess_marie]

Also, sorry for the double post but I can’t edit my previous one. Someone told me this:
“Romans never required people to return to their city of origin for the census, nor did they require the entire family to be present.
Roman censuses were conducted in the city of RESIDENCE and only the head of household was counted. The biblical accounts place “Joseph” and his family in Bethlehem because it was necessary to try and make the stories match up to the prophecy in Daniel.
The only census conducted over the time period specified also conflicts with the birth years for Jesus listed in the Gospels”
Can anyone shed some light on that for me?

I know I sound horrible for questioning so much, and being so doubtful, but I can’t help it. I’d give anything to just believe.

 

[Khalid]

That sounds like a footnote out of the NAB. If you’re reading a Bible, and you’re not at the level where you want the Navarre Commentary, get an Ignatius Study Bible - RSV-2CE.

There is no evidence for most historical events. It is accepted that Hannibal attacked Rome; there is less evidence for this than for Herod’s slaughter. It is accepted that Charles Martel defeated a Mahometan host - in the 1100s. And there is still hardly any evidence.

I ask you then, why do you automatically believe all of the authors included in the Bible to be unreliable, as vastly different and spaced in geography and time as we have established them to be, when you automatically believe other sources to be reliable? That is to say, if the Bible says one thing, and Josephus contradicts it, why would you automatically assume Josephus to be correct and St Luke the Physician to be wrong?

Why do small errors that have nothing to do with salvation in the Bible automatically make you disbelieve it in its entirety, when modern history-books, printing press, computer memory and all, printed in the third millennium, and never copied by hand, still contain errors? Is it not possible that one or more of the human beings involved had a faulty memory? St Paul himself admits this: “I am glad I only baptised two of you… and the family of Stephanus. I do not remember if I baptised any more of you, but I do not think so”, in, what I believe is Second Corinthians.

If one refuses to believe without “God coming out of the sky and presenting Himself to me”, you will never believe. That’s why it’s called the Christian Faith. There’s a large difference between faith and blind faith, as well. Faith is based on a set of reasonable assumptions and experiences: a doctor has given one of your children an antibiotic for an infection. You assume this will do good, based on the authority of the doctor, and what little you know about antibiotics. This is faith. Now, if you suddenly decided (this also goes well with a side-dish of a refutation of materialism and determinism) in a random process that jumping on your right foot while holding your left until you reached the nearest window, and then jumped out of it, would cure your father of cancer, this would be blind faith. The first, God requires of us as Christians, for the hope of eternal life. The second is for fools, idiots, and Solipsists (is there really any difference?).
**
CS Lewis can do a better job of this than any of us here. Please buy a copy of Mere Christianity - it can probably be had for a penny plus shipping on Amazon - and read it. It’s short, and enjoyable. If you still don’t believe, you are dead-set against belief, and nothing will convince you.**

In any discourse (or rational thought-process, for that matter) there must be a willingness to be convinced, if not a desire to be convinced, of something, whether you already believe it or not. To be otherwise is called “to be close-minded”.

I refer you to Pascal’s Pensees, and Pascal’s Wager contained therein, for a dense and erudite account, St Thomas Aquinas Summa Theologiae for an even more dense and hyper-erudite account, and CS Lewis’s book Mere Christianity for a much more readable and less dense account. If, after openly reading and understanding the contents of any one of these writings, you do not believe, it is not because of an error or failing or shortcoming of religion, or its respective truth-value: it is because of a shortcoming in you, a complete unwillingness to believe, which is much distinct from mere disbelief, or what many Biblical authors refer to as a hardened heart.

 

[JJ59]

I’m also wondering-apparently there isn’t any documentation outside of the bible that King Herod had babies slaughtered? How could someone not have documented such a thing?

Good question! Here’s a quote that explains it really well:

*Although much has been made of the Slaughter of the Innocents - and indeed, any such event would be tragic - there is no reason to assume that it could be considered high on the list of Herod’s atrocities in terms of scope or magnitude.

How many boys aged two and under could there have been in and around the tiny city of Bethlehem? Five? Ten? Matthew does not give a number.

Josephus says that Herod murdered a vast number of people, and was so cruel to those he didn’t kill that the living considered the dead to be fortunate. Thus, indirectly, Josephus tells us that there were many atrocities that Herod committed that he does not mention in his histories - and it is probable that authorizing the killing of the presumably few male infants in the vicinity of Bethlehem was a minuscule blot of the blackness that was the reign of Herod.*

More here: tektonics.org/qt/slaughtinn.html

 

[JJ59]

Also, sorry for the double post but I can’t edit my previous one. Someone told me this:
“Romans never required people to return to their city of origin for the census, nor did they require the entire family to be present.
Roman censuses were conducted in the city of RESIDENCE and only the head of household was counted. The biblical accounts place “Joseph” and his family in Bethlehem because it was necessary to try and make the stories match up to the prophecy in Daniel.
The only census conducted over the time period specified also conflicts with the birth years for Jesus listed in the Gospels”
Can anyone shed some light on that for me?

I know I sound horrible for questioning so much, and being so doubtful, but I can’t help it. I’d give anything to just believe.

You don’t sound horrible. It’s good to ask questions, you’ll come away from them with a stronger faith and more assurance in the Lord

Here, the burden of proof is on this person. First they have to prove this with evidence before it can be disproven. It isn’t true simply because they say it is.

In fact, the prophecy of Jesus being born in Bethlehem is from the book of Micah, not Daniel. Looks like they’re not a very reliable source

May God bless you on your journey!

 

[Michael_Francis]

Off topic posts have been split into their own thread at SPLIT: Is the Bible the only reference evidence of Jesus?

 

[tulliusatellus]

Thank you to all who have answered so far. I’m feeling a bit better. On Saturday, I plan on going to Confession and talking with a priest there. Is it normal for a person to go to Conression, more for advice then to confess sins? That’s what I plan on doing. I’ll still confess sins though. But, is that okay to do?

Yes, it is perfectly normal to seek advise during confession. Confession is a beautiful sacrament in which one cleanses one’s “slate,” but also to build up defenses against future sins by means of prayer, advice, counsel, etc. I highly encourage you to seek counsel from your confessor, it’s one of the best places to seek it. All I ask is that you confess your sins, so that you experience the whole and complete joy of the sacrament.

 

[Insight]

And that site indicates that “scholars agree in assigning it to the Fourth Century”. Look, if you wish to accept it as accurate, fine, but serious scholars do not, not even Catholic or Protestant ones. If this work was even moderately accepted as a matter of veracity, then there would be absolutely no scholars doubting the existence of Jesus, or of even much of the actual text of his miracles and ministry in the gospels. It is simply too good to be true, and also not necessary, as there are the other MUCH better attested sources of evidence as to Jesus’ existence than this. That’s why NO apologist that I have ever heard, whether an evangelical like William Lane Craig, or a Catholic like Jimmy Akin, ever appeals to the Acts of Pilate or this letter as viable evidence. If it was accepted as probative and good evidence, they would use it in their arguments.

I have read on this subject ALOT, and have actually never even heard of this writing being brought up in discussion by any writers.

How about the The Archko Volume?

thenazareneway.com/likeness_of_our_saviour.htm

God Bless

 

[wiggbuggie]

this is an interesting letter citing Jesus from a non jewish or christian source:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mara_Bar-Serapion

as for herod and killing the children bethelem was a tiny town and like a previous poster said there probably wasn’t that many babies, and herod killed his own wife and 2 sons so he was a ruthless person.

 

[Ignatius]

I’m also wondering-apparently there isn’t any documentation outside of the bible that King Herod had babies slaughtered? How could someone not have documented such a thing?

You haven’t responed to the posts about your original question. It is more productive to complete one discussion at a time… Let’s stay on topic for a little bit and get that question resolved before jumping to another topic. Please respond to the answers given first, then we can address another issue.

God bless.

 

[Arizona_Mike]

For the original poster, it’s good that you are asking questions to shore up your faith. However,there is a common behavior that is seen on religious message boards where an atheist poses as a believer and asks questions that would indicate a disbelief in religion, often in the guise of someone who honestly wants to get answers to questions that are bothering them. When a response is given, the poster then continues to demand further answers on other questions, often showing a far greater knowledge of atheist debating tropes than would be expected from an honest questioner. This “false flag” type of engagement is known as “trolling” and is usually against the Terms of Service, and more importantly is intellectually dishonest.

I doubt that is what you are doing here, and don’t doubt that you are a young woman who is honestly seeking answers. As the poster above suggested, you may wish to consider asking further questions in another thread so they may receive attention from those who wish to respond to specific issues.

Re the question about Herod, as has been noted above it is likely that there would have been a comparatively small number of children executed given the size of Bethlehem.

An issue that has to be considered when evaluating the historicity of any Biblical event is the comparative lack of surviving primary sources when looking at a period that is 2000 years ago. That is because:

• Literacy was much less common, so there was less documentation
• Time and lack of interest in maintaining mundane records, often from a previous empire, meant most surviving documents would have been destroyed, used for other purposes (insulation, toilet paper, scratch paper, etc.), or simply disintegrated from the effects of oxidation, ultraviolet exposure, insect activity, etc. Unless a document was extremely important, and thus worthy of being copied and recopied, most don’t. There is one textual record of the slaughter of the innocents, and that is better attestation than exists for most historical events at the time.

Because of the sack of Rome and the destruction of the great libraries of the east and west, we don’t have access to anywhere near the number of texts from Biblical times that we’d like - so perhaps we should give due credence to the surviving texts we have, yes?

Sadly, there aren’t file cabinets full of papyri in a museum somewhere documenting all the actions of a Quisling king under the Roman conquerors, but there is a text preserving the history. Based on Josephus’s description of Herod, his actions were certainly congruent with his other cruelties.

 

[Arizona_Mike]

Double post - sorry

 

[Shylah]

I think something that will REALLY help is the following book:

Jesus and the Eyewitnesses.

When I was in grad school, this book was just coming out, and it is about how scholars who are experts in the Greek and Roman methods of recording oral history of Jesus’ time have found the same structure in the canonical Gospels as that of all the other scholarly works of the same time period. When you learn about the structure, then it is REALLY easy to distinguish between our four Gospels and the so-called “Gnostic Gospels”. The Gnostic Gospels just sound silly ONCE you know what to look for.

The more I have learned about Sacred Scripture in grad school, the more real it has become to me. There is no other way that our existence can be explained, and that includes the Trinity as it is described in the Catholic Church.

God is Love, and there can’t be love without family (thus the Trinity). It only makes sense that a God who truly loved us would provide us with Divine Revelation, because otherwise only the “smart” people would have access to spiritual truth. It only makes sense that God is loving, because how is it that an unloving god could create man who IS capable of loving? And God must exist because EVERYTHING has a cause…

Put it all together, and the Christian story is the ONLY one that makes sense. I say this as an astrophysicist with five degrees and international recognition so that I am asked to speak on my work all over the world. Faith and reason are supposed to work together, and the Protestants and Atheists have been the ones who have pitted these two against each other. Catholics must continue to keep them together.

Doubt is normal, so you SHOULD ask the questions, but you REALLY need to find a spiritual director. THAT is what we lack in the modern Catholic Church, and we really need to fix that.

Blessings,
Shy

 

[Shylah]

“Jesus” may not have existed as he is depicted in the bible, but it’s a commonly held belief that there was a great scholar (Yeshua or something like that, I’m sure it started with a Y) living around that time that taught similar beliefs to what the bible claims Jesus taught.

The other option being of course, that neither actually existed and its entirely made up. Personally, I find that hard to beleive, most traditions have their roots somewhere, and I think that “Jesus” is an idolized version of the scholar Yeshua.

Read Jesus and the Eyewitnesses.

 

[Shylah]

Jesus existed. Jews and Muslims both believe he existed.

Also, Tacitus, a pagan scholar of the time of Jesus mentions a person he calls “Christus”. Another like Tacitus mentions “Chrestus” causing problems for Emprorer Claudius around 50 AD.

Tacitus said " Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty 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"

Pliny the Younger, Governor of the Provice of Pontus wrote an letter to Emporor Trajan mentioning Christians who worshiped “Christus”, around 112AD.

Suetonius said this "“As the Jews were making constant disturbances at the instigation of Chrestus, he Claudius ] expelled them [the Jews] from Rome”.

Josephus, a jew wrote: “About this time came Jesus, a wise man, if indeed it is appropriate to call him a man. For he was a performer of paradoxical feats, a teacher of people who accept the unusual with pleasure, and he won over many of the Jews and also many Greeks. He was the Christ. When Pilate, upon the accusation of the first men amongst us, condemned him to be crucified, those who had formerly loved him did not cease to follow him, for he appeared to them on the third day, living again, as the divine prophets foretold, along with a myriad of other marvellous things concerning him. And the tribe of the Christians, so named after him, has not disappeared to this day.”

Absolutely right. People with agendas are ignoring this.