Who was the real Jesus?

  • Thread starter Thread starter FightingFat
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
Paul, for instance, was supposedly Jesus’ contemporary, yet he never claimed to have met him in the flesh or to have met anyone else who had done so;
Click to expand...
That is blatenlty false. It is apparent the person has not read the NT. Paul, alsomt immediatly, searches out the apostles, after his blindness is healed and the early Christians get over their fear that his conversion was a rouse.
 
The wild claims about alternate “jesuses” are all predicated on the NT claims having been fabricated in the second century, and there being no historical record of Christians or the Christian Jesus until that time. Both claims are false.
Christians have always acknowledged that Jesus is the Only Begotten Son of God.

[54 AD] [Christ Jesus], though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God something to be grasped. (*Phil *2:6)

[90 AD] In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. . . . And the Word became flesh, and made his dwelling among us. (*Jn *1:1, 14)

[A.D. 110] For the Son of God, who was begotten before time began, and established all things according to the will of the Father, He was conceived in the womb of Mary, according to the appointment of God, of the seed of David, and by the Holy Ghost. (Ignatius of Antioch, Letter to the Ephesians 18:2).

[A.D. 189] The Church, though dispersed through our the whole world, even to the ends of the earth, has received from the apostles and their disciples this faith: [She believes] in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven, and earth, and the sea, and all things that are in them; and in one Christ Jesus, the Son of God, who became incarnate for our salvation; and in the Holy Spirit . . . . (Irenaeus, Against Heresies 1:10:1 ).

For a more complete list of early Christian testimonies of Christ’s divinity, see the Catholic Answers web site.

Even ancient pagan sources attest that at the end of the first century AD Christians were known to acknowledge Jesus Christ as God. Pliny the Younger (62-113 AD), Governor of Bithynia, reports to the Emperor Trajan the testimony of former Christians that “they met on a stated day before it was light, and addressed a form of prayer to Christ, as to a divinity (emphasis added). . .” and that he, Pliny, judged that Christians professed “an absurd and extravagant superstition.” Even the Romans acknowledge that the first Christians did not regard Jesus as a mere man.

Tacitus (109 AD), mentions the execution of Christ explaining that the Emperor Nero persecuted Christians on whom he blamed the famous fire of Rome.

At least by the middle of the first century Christians were known to be acknowledging Christ as Divine and were dying for this witness.
 
All these objections are nicely handled in The Case for Christ by Lee Strobel. He is writing form a Protestant view point so he relies a lot on the Bible but his arguments are very good nevertheless. It’s available in almost all Public Libraries.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top