Historical Proofs for the Existence of Jesus

[Linusthe2nd]

Peter Plato:

As I have the annual Secular Humanist Orgy/Seminar on the Destruction of Civilization to attend, it will be a day or two before I respond to your latest.

It has a sense of humor.

Linus2nd

 

[cornbread_r2]

Do you always show opposing positions in the worst possible light in the hopes that readers will find your presentation emotionally appealing? Are you interested in the truth or merely to compel others to share your view?

I categorically deny that I intentionally presented your argument in the worst possible light to make it emotionally appealing to anyone (whatever that means and however that’s possible). While it may have not have been the best presentation, my intention was to simplify your argument to demonstrate that it was, IMO, a circular argument. My point-by-point reply to your subsequent formal presentation of it (see here) basically demonstrates the same thing: if you start by assuming that the gospels are historical documents written by credible authors, it’s no wonder that you would arrive at the conclusion that they’re historically reliable.

It would be, in the least, more candid of you to just come right out and admit that your atheistic and materialistic world view does not allow you to believe in miraculous or supernatural events so, whatever else you find compelling about the Gospels, you cannot accept that such events are actually possible, which is the real reason you dismiss the accounts as unhistorical or mythical.

There’s a lot wrong with this sentence, but I’m just going to focus on a few things.

1. It implies that I’ve been less than honest about my reasons for not accepting the historicity of the gospel stories.
2. It applies undefined and loaded labels to me.
3. It immediately employs one of those undefined labels to gratuitously misrepresent my actual position on the subject of supernatural events.
4. It implies that it’s only the gospel miracle stories that are historically problematic and that it’s only the godless who have a problem with those.

Not true. Ehrman is a scholar of New Testament texts. Why would he waste his time on what he considers to be historically unreliable?

…]

I’ll leave it to you to enter the search string – Ehrman reliability gospels – into your favorite engine. I guess we’d have to ask him, but I’m guessing it has something to do with the fact that he makes a lot of money from it.

That is precisely the point in contention. If it were true that many of the elements of bible scholarship point in the direction of the mythicists claims being true, then what you (and Fuller, I suppose) are saying is that all bible scholars, except those very few who are mythicists, are either dishonest or incompetent scholars since their scholarship points invariably towards mythicism, which demonstrates they are either dishonest or incompetent in their very denial. Yet, the fact that almost universally Biblical scholars disagree with Doherty’s claims makes Fuller’s attempt to discredit Ehrman virtually without merit.

Who is Fuller?

It wouldn’t surprise me if many bible scholars don’t even realize that their scholarship could be used in support of a mythicist hypothesis.

How long do think bible scholars affiliated with religious schools would last in their teaching positions if they came out in support of mythicism?

This is Ehrman’s point:

If that’s Ehrman’s point, then it’s apparent that he still hasn’t read the preface to Doherty’s book.

…]

Explain, again, why someone like Ehrman, who is not Christian, should NOT be used to support the historicity and reliability of Scripture!

…]

How is that search coming along?

 

[Linusthe2nd]

We do not hesitate to preach the Word of God. For Faith comes by hearing ( reading in this case )

II. Ways of Coming to Know God ( From the Catechism of the Catholic Church )

31 Created in God’s image and called to know and love him, the person who seeks God discovers certain ways of coming to know him. These are also called proofs for the existence of God, not in the sense of proofs in the natural sciences, but rather in the sense of “converging and convincing arguments”, which allow us to attain certainty about the truth. These “ways” of approaching God from creation have a twofold point of departure: the physical world, and the human person.

32 The world: starting from movement, becoming, contingency, and the world’s order and beauty, one can come to a knowledge of God as the origin and the end of the universe.

As St. Paul says of the Gentiles: For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. Ever since the creation of the world his invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made.7

And St. Augustine issues this challenge: Question the beauty of the earth, question the beauty of the sea, question the beauty of the air distending and diffusing itself, question the beauty of the sky. . . question all these realities. All respond: “See, we are beautiful.” Their beauty is a profession [confessio]. These beauties are subject to change. Who made them if not the Beautiful One [Pulcher] who is not subject to change?8

33 The human person: with his openness to truth and beauty, his sense of moral goodness, his freedom and the voice of his conscience, with his longings for the infinite and for happiness, man questions himself about God’s existence. In all this he discerns signs of his spiritual soul. the soul, the “seed of eternity we bear in ourselves, irreducible to the merely material”,9 can have its origin only in God.

34 The world, and man, attest that they contain within themselves neither their first principle nor their final end, but rather that they participate in Being itself, which alone is without origin or end. Thus, in different ways, man can come to know that there exists a reality which is the first cause and final end of all things, a reality “that everyone calls God”.10

35 Man’s faculties make him capable of coming to a knowledge of the existence of a personal God. But for man to be able to enter into real intimacy with him, God willed both to reveal himself to man, and to give him the grace of being able to welcome this revelation in faith.(so) the proofs of God’s existence, however, can predispose one to faith and help one to see that faith is not opposed to reason.​

7 ⇒ Rom 1:19-20; cf., ⇒ Acts 14:15, ⇒ 17; ⇒ 17:27-28; ⇒ Wis 13:1-9.

III. The Knowledge of God According to the Church

36 "Our holy mother, the Church, holds and teaches that God, the first principle and last end of all things, can be known with certainty from the created world by the natural light of human reason."11 Without this capacity, man would not be able to welcome God’s revelation. Man has this capacity because he is created “in the image of God”.12

37 In the historical conditions in which he finds himself, however, man experiences many difficulties in coming to know God by the light of reason alone:

Though human reason is, strictly speaking, truly capable by its own natural power and light of attaining to a true and certain knowledge of the one personal God, who watches over and controls the world by his providence, and of the natural law written in our hearts by the Creator; yet there are many obstacles which prevent reason from the effective and fruitful use of this inborn faculty. For the truths that concern the relations between God and man wholly transcend the visible order of things, and, if they are translated into human action and influence it, they call for self-surrender and abnegation. the human mind, in its turn, is hampered in the attaining of such truths, not only by the impact of the senses and the imagination, but also by disordered appetites which are the consequences of original sin. So it happens that men in such matters easily persuade themselves that what they would not like to be true is false or at least doubtful.13

38 This is why man stands in need of being enlightened by God’s revelation, not only about those things that exceed his understanding, but also “about those religious and moral truths which of themselves are not beyond the grasp of human reason, so that even in the present condition of the human race, they can be known by all men with ease, with firm certainty and with no admixture of error”.14​

11 Vatican Council I, Dei Filius 2: DS 3004 cf. 3026; Vatican Council
II, Dei Verbum 6.

Linus2nd

 

[Linusthe2nd]

One of our posters said that Jesus could be compared to the Angel Maroni since there were apparent witnesses to both. That cannot hold. Not only was the comming of a Messiah foretold in Jewish Scripture and History, Jesus fit perfectly with that prophecy. He reinforced that prophecy and his own claim as Redeemer by countless miracles witnessed not by just a handful of immediate faithful but by groups ranging from a few to thousands and over a period of three years.His death was witnessed by hundreds and after his Resurrection he appeard to hundreds over a period of forty days. His Ascension was witnessed only by his immediate followers and certainly by his Mother.

And returning to the upper room, ten days later, the Holy Spirit descended upon them and they went out preaching the Good News in power and in many tongues converting thousands at a time and working miracles wherever they went.

Jesus was real and he is who he said he was. He proved it. I have no idea what, if anything, Maroni was, but he definitely was not an angel of God. Neither was whoever or whatever, if anything, that appeared to Muhammed. Period.

Linus2nd

 

[Ben_Quincy]

THREAD WARNING

Discuss the topic, NOT each other.

Otherwise thread will be closed.

 

[cornbread_r2]

One of our posters said that Jesus could be compared to the Angel Maroni since there were apparent witnesses to both. That cannot hold. Not only was the comming of a Messiah foretold in Jewish Scripture and History, Jesus fit perfectly with that prophecy. He reinforced that prophecy and his own claim as Redeemer by countless miracles witnessed not by just a handful of immediate faithful but by groups ranging from a few to thousands and over a period of three years.His death was witnessed by hundreds and after his Resurrection he appeard to hundreds over a period of forty days. His Ascension was witnessed only by his immediate followers and certainly by his Mother.

And returning to the upper room, ten days later, the Holy Spirit descended upon them and they went out preaching the Good News in power and in many tongues converting thousands at a time and working miracles wherever they went.

Jesus was real and he is who he said he was. He proved it. I have no idea what, if anything, Maroni was, but he definitely was not an angel of God. Neither was whoever or whatever, if anything, that appeared to Muhammed. Period.

Linus2nd

Is your quote function busted or something? Here’s what I actually wrote in post #8.

*The only point I was attempting to make was that even if the conditions Akin cites can be used to prove that a religious movement had a founding figure, they can’t be used to prove that that founding figure was necessarily a figure who walked the Earth. To support that contention, I note that all of the conditions Akin cites for the Christian movement (leaders, organization, evangelism, geographical spread, mention by historians, etc.) also apply to Mormonism. In the case of Mormonism however, that founding figure, the angel Moroni, was a spiritual figure and didn’t walk the Earth (at least not at Mormonism’s inception). Consequently, that argument apparently won’t work against some of the modern hypotheses of Jesus mythicism since they posit a spiritual founding figure who, like Moroni, was known to his followers through the scriptures, visions and revelation. *

As you can see, I didn’t reference witnesses at all in respect to Akin’s criteria. But, if you want to go down that road, it can be argued that we actually have much better evidence for the existence of Joseph Smith, the man who claimed to see the angel Moroni, than we have for any of the alleged witnesses for Jesus.

 

[Linusthe2nd]

Is your quote function busted or something? Here’s what I actually wrote in post #8.

*The only point I was attempting to make was that even if the conditions Akin cites can be used to prove that a religious movement had a founding figure, they can’t be used to prove that that founding figure was necessarily a figure who walked the Earth. To support that contention, I note that all of the conditions Akin cites for the Christian movement (leaders, organization, evangelism, geographical spread, mention by historians, etc.) also apply to Mormonism. In the case of Mormonism however, that founding figure, the angel Moroni, was a spiritual figure and didn’t walk the Earth (at least not at Mormonism’s inception). Consequently, that argument apparently won’t work against some of the modern hypotheses of Jesus mythicism since they posit a spiritual founding figure who, like Moroni, was known to his followers through the scriptures, visions and revelation. *

As you can see, I didn’t reference witnesses at all in respect to Akin’s criteria. But, if you want to go down that road, it can be argued that we actually have much better evidence for the existence of Joseph Smith, the man who claimed to see the angel Moroni, than we have for any of the alleged witnesses for Jesus.

I guess I was reading about Mormon witnesses on another site. However that was not my main point. My point is that Jesus Himself proved Who He was while He lived. And continues to prove it to this very day. There should be no question that the Scriptures, including the Old Testament, are genuine in that they are derived from original copies no longer extant.

But more important is the message they contain and the Theology they contain. Both are unique in the hisory of the world. So unique and so wonderful in fact, that they could only have been written under Divine Inspiration. These alone bear witness to the validity of Christ’s claim to be Divine.

What was Ben referring to? Jimminy, I didn’t see anything that bad.

Linus2nd

 

[BOSS10L]

FWIW, it’s MY understanding based on the LIMITED research that I’ve done that the people who write about Christ’s existence did so at least a few decades after the fact. And in most of them, they refer to the man as “Christus” or “Christ” which means ‘anointed one’ and not Jesus. Jesus’ name in the area at the time was almost as common as Joe is now.

I personally don’t care if he existed or didn’t. I find it hilarious though that people will build their moral compass around some Bronze Age idealism. They thought the Earth was flat and at the center of the universe. They knew nothing of germs, science, or a good Philly Cheese Steak!

Why can’t we all just live and let live, people. I can guarantee if the Jesus of the Bible existed and he came down to Earth today, he’d be epically face palming, telling a bunch of people that they really screwed up his messages.And I suppose God would be telling people to chill and not sweat the petty stuff. And that’s what it mostly is. Petty stuff.

Same sex marriage equality? Religion in schools? Really? These are the things people want to get all in a huff about? How about the homelessness? The poor children that go to bed hungry every night? How about the ultra rich 1% jerks that use stuff like racism/classism/religion to keep us all at each other’s throats and away from the real enemy? THEM. God or no God, there’s no reason why people should suffer in this life. It doesn’t matter if the greatest reward ever is awaiting them after the fact. It’s a 50-50 bet. Not great odds, IMHO. Live your life the best way you can and do right by your fellow human beings. Any God worth their salt would see that and not deny you at the appointed time. If they don’t, then they are a God I wouldn’t want to follow even if there was scientific proof of their existence.

 

[Peter_Plato]

I personally don’t care if he existed or didn’t. I find it hilarious though that people will build their moral compass around some Bronze Age idealism.

As opposed to Silicon Age Egoism? A fine foundation for a functional moral compass, if there ever was one.

They thought the Earth was flat and at the center of the universe. They knew nothing of germs, science, or a good Philly Cheese Steak!

If that is your impression of what “they” knew then clearly your expertise about “them” is en par with what you think they knew of germs, science or Olivieri brothers’ sandwiches.

 

[Linusthe2nd]

FWIW, it’s MY understanding based on the LIMITED research that I’ve done that the people who write about Christ’s existence did so at least a few decades after the fact. And in most of them, they refer to the man as “Christus” or “Christ” which means ‘anointed one’ and not Jesus. Jesus’ name in the area at the time was almost as common as Joe is now.

I personally don’t care if he existed or didn’t. I find it hilarious though that people will build their moral compass around some Bronze Age idealism. They thought the Earth was flat and at the center of the universe. They knew nothing of germs, science, or a good Philly Cheese Steak!

Why can’t we all just live and let live, people. I can guarantee if the Jesus of the Bible existed and he came down to Earth today, he’d be epically face palming, telling a bunch of people that they really screwed up his messages.And I suppose God would be telling people to chill and not sweat the petty stuff. And that’s what it mostly is. Petty stuff.

Same sex marriage equality? Religion in schools? Really? These are the things people want to get all in a huff about? How about the homelessness? The poor children that go to bed hungry every night? How about the ultra rich 1% jerks that use stuff like racism/classism/religion to keep us all at each other’s throats and away from the real enemy? THEM. God or no God, there’s no reason why people should suffer in this life. It doesn’t matter if the greatest reward ever is awaiting them after the fact. It’s a 50-50 bet. Not great odds, IMHO. Live your life the best way you can and do right by your fellow human beings. Any God worth their salt would see that and not deny you at the appointed time. If they don’t, then they are a God I wouldn’t want to follow even if there was scientific proof of their existence.

Linus2nd

 

[stewstew03]

…

Same sex marriage equality? Religion in schools? Really? These are the things people want to get all in a huff about? How about the homelessness? The poor children that go to bed hungry every night? How about the ultra rich 1% jerks that use stuff like racism/classism/religion to keep us all at each other’s throats and away from the real enemy? THEM.
…

Consider taking your own advice: (1) quit wasting your time; (2) go help the poor and homeless; and (3) don’t let “the real enemy” manipulate you into thinking you need to antagonize Christians.