Historical Jesus

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I have heard that the majority of Biblical scholars attest to Jesus of Nazareth being a historical person, whether or not He was the Son of God. I have been having trouble, however, finding actual articles or writings from reputable and unbiased, secular historians on the subject. If anyone can help out, it would be appreciated.
Thanks.
 
ccmnxc said:
I have heard that the majority of Biblical scholars attest to Jesus of Nazareth being a historical person, whether or not He was the Son of God. I have been having trouble, however, finding actual articles or writings from reputable and unbiased, secular historians on the subject. If anyone can help out, it would be appreciated.
Thanks.
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Note: the Bible is still accepted as one of the most historically accurate documents by most legitimate historians.

any ways…
  • Tallus was a secular historian who (circa AD52) wrote a history of the Eastern Mediterranean from the Trojan War to his own time. The document no longer exists but it was quoted by other writers like the Christian, Julius Africanus, who wrote around AD221. He quotes Tallus’ comments about the darkness that enveloped the land during the late afaternoon hours when Jesus died on the cross. Julius wrote: Tallus, in the third book of his histories, explains away this darkness as an eclipse of the sun’unreasonably, as it seems to me (unreasonably of course, because a solar eclipse could not take place at the time of the full moon, and it was at the season of the Paschal full moon that Christ died." Julius Africanus, Chronography, 18.1 The importance of Tallus’ comments is that the reference shows that the Gospel account of the darkness that fell across the earth during Christ’s crucifixion was well known and required a naturalistic explanation from non-Christians.
  • Mara Bar-Serapion: Syrian stoic philosopher who wrote a letter from prison to his son circa 70AD. He compares Jesus to the philosophers Socrates and Pythagoras.
  • Tacitus (a.d. 55-120), the greatest early Roman historian, wrote that Christus (Greek for Christ) had lived during the reign of Tiberius and “suffered under Pontius Pilate, that Jesus’ teachings had already spread to Rome; and that Christians were considered criminals and tortured in a variety of ways, including crucifixion.”
Suetonius (a.d. 69-130) wrote of “Chrestus” as an instigator. Most scholars believe this is a reference to Christ. Suetonius also wrote of Christians having been persecuted by Nero in a.d. 64
more sources at bottom of link

tektonics.org/jesusexisthub.html
this is just a few sources but there are many more for The Existence of The Historical Jesus than for the existence of a historical Caesar or Alexander.

Hope this helps
Shalom
God Bless
 
Just check out the Christ’s Wikipedia page, you can find various historical theories about his existence, which is pretty undisputed by any serious historians at this point.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus
 
ccmnxc said:
I have heard that the majority of Biblical scholars attest to Jesus of Nazareth being a historical person, whether or not He was the Son of God. I have been having trouble, however, finding actual articles or writings from reputable and unbiased, secular historians on the subject. If anyone can help out, it would be appreciated.
Thanks.
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where does one find “article or writings from reputable and unbiased, secular historians”?

are these on amazon.com?
 
FWIW, Richard Carrier’s peer-reviewed book on the historicity of Jesus is expected to be released in the first half of the coming year.

When people cite the putative consensus of historians ***** they are invariably addressing the opinions of those historians who have cared to offer an opinion on the issue. Included in that group are historians with no particular expertise on the subject matter and who simply defer to the opinions of those who do. What’s missing, of course, is the opinion of those historians who hold that there simply isn’t enough information available to conclude either way. It wouldn’t surprise me that – if push came to shove – many secular historians would fall into that latter group.

***** I read about this supposed consensus a lot, but I’ve yet to actually see a comprehensive, detailed formal poll or survey. Even then, a simple majority vote on the issue isn’t a consensus in that a consensus is a singular opinion that is arrived at through debate from all the participants.
 
_Abyssinia said:
Most of these modern historians are atheists = Scholarly opinions on the Jesus Myth
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Genetic/ad hominem fallacy, i.e. these people are atheists, therefore their arguments are wrong. Variations of this theme exist as: these people aren’t Biblical historians, therefore…; these people represent a minority opinion, therefore…; these people aren’t employed by a major university, therefore… What’s missing, of course, including within the article you cited, is an actual argument against the mythicist position. (I’m not sure why you would employ this line since many, if not most, atheists do not question Jesus’s historicity and that would seem to be much more useful tack.)

While this thread isn’t about the mythicist case, you may have inadvertently highlighted the conundrum that results from all of these quests for the historical Jesus. That is, the more we look for the historical Jesus, the less we seem to know about him. Somewhere along the continuum between the Jesus of Nazareth as portrayed in NT and the full on mythicist position, the Jesus of the NT gets fainter and fainter and, in effect, becomes, for true believers, a myth in all but name only anyway.
 
Genetic/ad hominem fallacy, i.e. these people are atheists, therefore their arguments are wrong. Variations of this theme exist as: these people aren’t Biblical historians, therefore…; these people represent a minority opinion, therefore…; these people aren’t employed by a major university, therefore… What’s missing, of course, including within the article you cited, is an actual argument against the mythicist position. (I’m not sure why you would employ this line since many, if not most, atheists do not question Jesus’s historicity and that would seem to be much more useful tack.)
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I’m pretty sure that Abyssinia’s statement about them being atheists was just showing that they’d be less likely to be biased in favor of the existance of Jesus of Nazareth. In my OP I was asking if there were any secular historians who had an opinion on this.
 
ccmnxc said:
I’m pretty sure that Abyssinia’s statement about them being atheists was just showing that they’d be less likely to be biased in favor of the existance of Jesus of Nazareth. In my OP I was asking if there were any secular historians who had an opinion on this.
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I considered that possibility, but gave up on it after I read the article she linked to which was full of the same type of ad hominems.

The most recently touted secular historian supporting the existence of Jesus is Bart Ehrman in his book Did Jesus Exist?. Opinions seem to be split as to whether he actually made a case.
 
Actually, it would probably be a mistake to classify Ehrman as a secular historian, per se, since he specializes in the Bible as literature, but his book is still probably the best recent defense of the notion of an historical Jesus – which is not to say that it is a particularly good defense.
 
ccmnxc said:
I’m pretty sure that Abyssinia’s statement about them being atheists was just showing that they’d be less likely to be biased in favor of the existance of Jesus of Nazareth. In my OP I was asking if there were any secular historians who had an opinion on this.
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Thank you
 
A consensus of historians?
Don’t waste your time.
You want to find an author who limits his research to the most contemporary of original sources.
You want to find an author who can use those sources to rebuild the Roman world of the first century A.D., and then write about the Jewish culture within that world, as the Jews were subjugated to Rome.
With that background, the author should fit in the narratives and letters in the NT, and maybe a FEW of the earliest of the Christian writings.
Then MAYBE some conclusions can be drawn that are worth anything.

Good luck!
 
cornbread
Actually, it would probably be a mistake to classify Ehrman as a secular historian, per se, since he specializes in the Bible as literature, but his book is still probably the best recent defense of the notion of an historical Jesus – which is not to say that it is a particularly good defense.
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Actually, Ehrman isn’t an historian, he’s a biblical scholar. I take it you don’t know the difference?

Ehrman so exhaustively gives his background in most of his books that many would call it bragging. He did manage to be somewhat polite (really, for Ehrman, a true achievement) in his latest that tries to explain to the dear, dim, vast numbers of porn addicted anti theists that, yes, Jesus actually existed. But of course that won’t stop the readers of Dan Brown and Tom Harpur and all the rest. No, they will continue to hunt for newer conspiracy theories. (My favorite is the Jesus as mushroom theory/)

I think that Miller is the only crank/ disbeliever in Jesus with any real credentials. But then, wow, is his scholarship ghastly.

May God flood you with divine mercy graces, Annem
 
annem said:
cornbread

Actually, Ehrman isn’t an historian, he’s a biblical scholar. I take it you don’t know the difference?
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The OP asked for names of secular historians defending the historicity of Jesus. The best recent defense – from anyone – I could come up with was Ehrman’s. Upon giving the OP that reference, I realized that even though Ehrman can be considered a secularist – in that he claims to be an agnostic on the question of the existence of God – and even though his book attempted to prove the historicity of Jesus – he isn’t a historian. Hence my self-correction.
…]
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Who would you recommend to the OP?
 
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