Non-Christian documents about the existence of Jesus Christ

[Eise]

Don't be to glad, Robittybob1. Let's take the event that Jesus woke up Lazarus (numbers refer to the criteria):

 

1. 50% it is not mentioned in Marc, nor by Paul

2. 40% It is only mentioned in Luke and John

3. 0% it fits too well in the Christian agenda

4. 0% stories about miracle cures might fit every time, but we know by now there are no miracles, and that is true for all times.

 

Must I do the multiplication? Pity for you that can't take the positive point away... But you can give me a negative one here

Edited November 29, 2014 by Eise

[Robittybob1]

Don't be to glad, Robittybob1. Let's take the event that Jesus woke up Lazarus (numbers refer to the criteria):

 

1. 50% it is not mentioned in Marc, nor by Paul

2. 40% It is only mentioned in Luke and John

3. 0% it fits too well in the Christian agenda

4. 0% stories about miracle cures might fit every time, but we know by now there are no miracles, and that is true for all times.

 

Must I do the multiplication? Pity for you that can't take the positive point away... But you can give me a negative one here

This is based on the supposed non-documentation of Lazarus. I haven't actually looked into Lazarus, are there other documents supporting him?

[Eise]

This is based on the supposed non-documentation of Lazarus. I haven't actually looked into Lazarus, are there other documents supporting him?

 

You ask me? But don't forget, I gave a few points on documentation. If you find more, you will still multiply with 0 two times. That is still 0.

[Robittybob1]

 

You ask me? But don't forget, I gave a few points on documentation. If you find more, you will still multiply with 0 two times. That is still 0.

You are jumping the gun until you know to what extent Lazarus is documented in history.

[Eise]

You are jumping the gun until you know to what extent Lazarus is documented in history.

 

Yes, I must confess that I did not read all, found and unfound antique documents.

 

I also must confess another error. I just searched for 'Lazarus' at Biblegateway, and saw verses in Luke and John. But, now you challenged me, I looked a bit better into them. The story of 'Lazarus' in Luke is not about the awakening of the dead Lazarus as described in John: he is a beggar in a parable (Luke 16:19). So we have only one documentation, and that only in the latest gospel of the NT.

 

So here my corrected estimations:

 

1. 10% it is only in the latest gospel of the NT, written 70 years after Jesus death

2. 10% It is only mentioned in John

3. 0% it fits too well in the Christian agenda

4. 0% stories about miracle cures might fit every time, but we know by now there are no miracles, and that is true for all times.

 

 

[Robittybob1]

 

Yes, I must confess that I did not read all, found and unfound antique documents.

 

I also must confess another error. I just searched for 'Lazarus' at Biblegateway, and saw verses in Luke and John. But, now you challenged me, I looked a bit better into them. The story of 'Lazarus' in Luke is not about the awakening of the dead Lazarus as described in John: he is a beggar in a parable (Luke 16:19). So we have only one documentation, and that only in the latest gospel of the NT.

 

So here my corrected estimations:

 

1. 10% it is only in the latest gospel of the NT, written 70 years after Jesus death

2. 10% It is only mentioned in John

3. 0% it fits too well in the Christian agenda

4. 0% stories about miracle cures might fit every time, but we know by now there are no miracles, and that is true for all times.

 

 

I had a feeling a town was named after him as well. Is Lazarus not mentioned in any Jewish records? How can we trust a criteria that measures "how well it fits the Christian agenda".

And as we examined above there is inconclusive evidence whether miracles don't occur. If I hadn't met a person who raised people from the dead I probably would be sceptical too.

Edited November 29, 2014 by Robittybob1

[Eise]

I had a feeling a town was named after him as well. Is Lazarus not mentioned in any Jewish records? How can we trust a criteria that measures "how well it fits the Christian agenda".

And as we examined above there is inconclusive evidence whether miracles don't occur. If I hadn't met a person who raised people from the dead I probably would be sceptical too.

 

It's a criterion.

 

As I said, give me the references to Jewish documents. I don't have any. There are nearly no references to Jesus in religious Jewish sources, except of course negative. No mentioning of an awakening from the dead.

 

And you did not meet a person who raised people from the dead: you met somebody who said so. You have no absolute evidence of people that were really dead (4 days and rotting) and then got alive again.

 

John 11:

³⁸ Jesus, once more deeply moved, came to the tomb. It was a cave with a stone laid across the entrance. ³⁹ “Take away the stone,” he said.

“But, Lord,” said Martha, the sister of the dead man, “by this time there is a bad odor, for he has been there four days.”

⁴⁰ Then Jesus said, “Did I not tell you that if you believe, you will see the glory of God?”

⁴¹ So they took away the stone. Then Jesus looked up and said, “Father, I thank you that you have heard me. ⁴² I knew that you always hear me, but I said this for the benefit of the people standing here, that they may believe that you sent me.”

⁴³ When he had said this, Jesus called in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” ⁴⁴ The dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped with strips of linen, and a cloth around his face.

Jesus said to them, “Take off the grave clothes and let him go.”

 

Edited November 29, 2014 by Eise

[Robittybob1]

 

It's a criterion.

 

As I said, give me the references to Jewish documents. I don't have any. There are nearly no references to Jesus in religious Jewish sources, except of course negative. No mentioning of an awakening from the dead.

 

And you did not meet a person who raised people from the dead: you met somebody who said so. You have no absolute evidence of people that were really dead (4 days and rotting) and then got alive again.

 

John 11:

What I said was still correct, whether or not I was present at the resurrections described by Mel Tari. I know it is hard to believe, I struggle with it.

Who says the criterion are set correctly?

Lazarus' Tomb

The place of Lazarus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Eizariya

Edited November 29, 2014 by Robittybob1

[Ten oz]

Sorry, Ten oz, you apply the math wrong. Let's just take one example:

 

Did Jesus have a brother, James?

1. [*]Source shortly after the event: Paul, only at most 5 years after the event: 95% (contemporary would be 100%)

 

Your first example and already I read a high probability based entirely on assumptions.

 

Paul and the Pauline Epistles, like much of the New Testment, has an unknown history of authorship. So you are using a source that in itself has a less than 95% probability of being entirely accurate to justify a 95% probability for something else. That is not logical. Only 7 of the 13 letters are widely viewed as genuine.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pauline_epistles

 

"at most 5yrs after the event" ?? What evidence do you have to support that claim to the strength of 95% or greater?

 

"There is no consensus regarding the exact date of the crucifixion of Jesus, although it is generally agreed by biblical scholars that it was on a Friday on or near Passover (Nisan 15), during the governorship of Pontius Pilate (who ruled AD 2636).[85] Scholars have provided estimates for the year of crucifixion in the range 3033 AD,with the majority of modern scholars favouring the date April 7, 30 AD.[89][90] Another popular date is Friday, April 3, 33 AD."

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crucifixion_of_Jesus#Chronology

 

"The First Epistle to the Thessalonians, usually referred to simply as First Thessalonians and often written 1 Thessalonians, is a book from the New Testament of the Christian Bible. The first letter to the Thessalonians was probably the first of Paul's letters, probably written by the end of AD 52,[1] making it the first written book in the New Testament."

 

So Jesus, assuming he was real, is believed to "probably" have been crucified between 30-33 AD or between 26-36 AD while the first of Paul's letters was "probably" written in 52 AD. Not only is that not provably 5yrs but it is an awful lot of rough estimates. So alone based on the questionable authorship and the unknown dates of events it is intellectually dishonest to give Documentation a 95% based on Paul's letters.

Separately I disagree that even if Paul's letters didn't have those question marks it supports Documentation to 95 percent. Best possible would be first person. Had Jesus written anything himself we would not be having this discussion. Second best would be contemporary writings of detractors or historians. People with no motive to lie or exaggerate. After that the 3rd best would contemporary writings by those close the Jesus. In lieu of nothing contemporary the Next best thing would be first hand accounts in the form of some writing about seeing Jesus' grave or his remains years after his death. Somewhere down stream from that is Paul's letters. In Paul we are getting second accounts. Paul doesn't claim to have known a human man Jesus or to have traveled to his grave.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conversion_of_Paul_the_Apostle

 

So Paul is a post event second hand account of debated origin and date. Your 95% is built on top of a house of cards. You can't use information that itself only has a marginally better than 50% probability to support a 95% conclusion.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited November 29, 2014 by Ten oz

[Eise]

Ten oz, you are mixing up the criteria. Criterion 1 is about how close to contemporary a testimony is, nothing more.

 

Also, you are mixing up the time of the witnessing, and the writing down of it. If I now tell you that I saw the meteor of Neuschwanstein, then am I a contemporary witness or not, even that the event happened 12 years ago?

 

So, here are the facts:

 

This is the citation of Paul in Galatians 2:

 

¹⁸ Then after three years, I went up to Jerusalem to get acquainted with Cephas and stayed with him fifteen days. ¹⁹ I saw none of the other apostles—only James, the Lord’s brother.

 

Paul refers to his conversion (3 years after). Cephas is the Aramaic name for Peter (the apostle).

 

The experts agree that Galatians is one of the authentic sources (look it up in the link you provided).

 

About the time frame:

 

Since Paul sometimes provides a time frame (“three years later” or “after fifteen years”), it is possible to put together a rough chronology of Paul’s life. To give us a rock-solid start, we can say that Paul must have been converted sometime after the death of Jesus around 30 CE and sometime before 40 CE. The latter date is based on the fact that in 2 Corinthians 11:32 Paul indicates that King Aretas of the Nabateans was determined to prosecute Paul for being a Christian. Aretas died around the year 40. So Paul converted sometime in the 30s CE. When scholars crunch all the numbers that Paul mentions, it appears that he must have converted early in the 30s, say, the year 32 or 33, just two or three years after the death of Jesus.
This means that if Paul went to Jerusalem to visit Cephas and James three years after his conversion, he would have seen them, and received the traditions that he later gives in his letters, around the middle of the decade, say the year 35 or 36. The traditions he inherited, of course, were older than that and so must date to just a couple of years or so after Jesus’s death.

Ehrman, Did Jesus exist?

 

Also, don't forget that Paul did not met just some bystanders that have seen Jesus preaching. He met one of the apostles and Jesus' brother. I did a service to you not to give 100% for this point. But it is true: it is not exactly contemporary, so not the full 100.

What I said was still correct, whether or not I was present at the resurrections described by Mel Tari. I know it is hard to believe, I struggle with it.
Who says the criterion are set correctly?
Lazarus' Tomb
The place of Lazarus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Eizariya

Sorry, Robittybob1, you are a believer. Whatever argument I give, how good it is, you will still believe. The only real help I can offer to you is this:

 

It is:

• one criterion
• more criteria

[Robittybob1]

 

Sorry, Robittybob1, you are a believer. Whatever argument I give, how good it is, you will still believe. The only real help I can offer to you is this:

 

It is:

• one criterion
• more criteria

 

Would the logic of that reason fit the set of criterion? I find an argument like that truly prejudiced. I am quite offended really.

Edited November 30, 2014 by Robittybob1

[Eise]

It is not prejudiced. You showed again and that scientific arguments do not bother you. So I call you a believer. I hoped at least to help you a little with language, but that seems to be in vain too. (Of course, I am not a native speaker, so I am pretty sure I make a lot of errors too. 'Criterion - criteria' is just one of my favourite errors. Especially when I once read that somebody said there were 4 criterias...)

[Robittybob1]

It is not prejudiced. You showed again and that scientific arguments do not bother you. So I call you a believer. I hoped at least to help you a little with language, but that seems to be in vain too. (Of course, I am not a native speaker, so I am pretty sure I make a lot of errors too. 'Criterion - criteria' is just one of my favourite errors. Especially when I once read that somebody said there were 4 criterias...)

The point I made was that because brothers are in the same family if one has a 75% chance of being true the reverse relationship must be true. If you are my brother, I am your brother. Wouldn't they have the same potential?

You then brought up Lazarus on the basis that it was unlikely, but I tried to show you since there is a town and a tomb named after him, have you looked into the reasons for that? Surely there would be reasons for doing this.

The prejudice has nothing to do with the discussion. OK I have listened to Mel Tari describing his experience of raising the dead in the revival in the 60's in Timor, so whatever happened there it could have been similar for Jesus and Lazarus.

Now that is all on YouTube as well today so you all can hear about it.

Edited November 30, 2014 by Robittybob1

[Eise]

The point I made was that because brothers are in the same family if one has a 75% chance of being true the reverse relationship must be true. If you are my brother, I am your brother.

 

I do not exactly know where you got your numbers, but just look at the sources:

• Paul mentions he met "James, the Lord’s brother".
• Josephus mentions 'so he assembled the sanhedrin of judges, and brought before them the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James'.
• Mark 6:3 (and literally the same in Matthew 13:55): Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother of James and Joses, and of Judas and Simon? And are not his sisters here with us?

I see no reason why the relationship ' .. is brother of ..' would not be symmetrical.

[harshgoel1975]

to me religion is so called shop.. which try to sell the so-called GOD .. patent and owned by them.... when we human overcome this kind of mentality.....remember.. thousand of people across globe running business in the name of GOD... they just don't work but living life on the hardworking human earnings.... the worst part is that these shops divide humanity.... GOD is a personal thing.. faith is personal thing.. belief is personal thing.. lets not market it...stand and protect humanity ....there are thousands of living good people around lets start caring them first.. just care .. not for sake of GOD...

 

just one question... if other religion talk about your religion doesn't it make sense that those religion also have some substance in them....

[Ten oz]

@ Eise, you may believe Paul was no later than with five years but that is not an assumption shared even amongst theologians who strongly support the existence of Jesus. I already provided you links that clearly reflect the estimates for both Jesus supposed life and Paul's first letters. The estimates range from 16-26yrs apart. Insisting on other dates is wildly speculative and unsupported by accepted evidence. Also authorship of Paul's letters at not fully known. Only 7 of the 13 letters are believed to have been written by Paul. Your 95% certainty in estimated information reflects a choice to believe the information in the face of no true reason to believe.

 

Once an assumption is made you can't just treat it as 100% and use that information to support the your next assumption. This is the reason why I don't accept that there was or was not a Jesus. I see either of equally possible. There simply isn't enough information either way. Apply criteria such as the Criterion of Embarrassment is nice as a thought experiment but proves nothing affirmative as it like most Jesus evidence is built of assumptions. Assuming to know what the motives would've been. Assuming to know why someone would say what they are saying. Close enough isn't necessarily good enough if you are looking to meet a criteria. If I take my car to the shop and they advertise a 100 point safety inspection which ensures my vehicles safety by there criteria could I call my car safe if they just check 75 points? In the absences of 100 points (safe) surely 75 points is good right? Such is the curve you are lending to your 4 point criteria. You don't have to best information for any of your 4 points so you are calling what you do have the next best things in the absence of what would be preffered. It is intellectually dishonest.

 

Since I mentioned the Criterion of Embarrassment, have you ever seen a Preacher stand on stage as proclaim how sinful they once were? Alcohol, Drugs, sex addiction and etc mentioned to describe their terrible past. Then they say, " If Jesus could save a lowly soul like mine Jesus can save yours". When proclaiming their past sins are those preachers truly making statements against interest or are they just using it to dramatize the greatness of Jesus and the power of forgiveness. Do you automatically believe that the preacher use to gamble, drink, and etc based on the Criterion of Embarrassment or do you see it as an act? Based on basic probabilities do you consider it likely that all the various preachers with that same story would be telling the truth?

 

just one question... if other religion talk about your religion doesn't it make sense that those religion also have some substance in them....

Yup, is not a coincidence that experts on the history of any actively worshiped God/Religion tend to be the worshipers themselves. While it may be common place for people of a variety of backgrounds to take of Egyptology it is rare to see a Hindu study the Historicity of Muhamad or a Buddist study the Historicity of Jesus. So perhaps true unbiased historical work will be done on current religious histories when the religions themselves are history.

[Eise]

@ Eise, you may believe Paul was no later than with five years but that is not an assumption shared even amongst theologians who strongly support the existence of Jesus. I already provided you links that clearly reflect the estimates for both Jesus supposed life and Paul's first letters.

 

I said that Paul tells about an event in his life that happened about 5 years after Jesus' execution. And I provided the basis for that assumption.

 

Only 7 of the 13 letters are believed to have been written by Paul. Your 95% certainty in estimated information reflects a choice to believe the information in the face of no true reason to believe.

 

Yes, we already got that. Galatians is one that is authentic.

 

Once an assumption is made you can't just treat it as 100% and use that information to support the your next assumption.

 

I am not doing that. I give the other criteria independent percentages, and as you see, the end result is, as expected, less than the 95%.

 

Apply criteria such as the Criterion of Embarrassment is nice as a thought experiment but proves nothing affirmative as it like most Jesus evidence is built of assumptions. Assuming to know what the motives would've been. Assuming to know why someone would say what they are saying.

 

So what is your assumption that we have several sources, 2 Christian (Mark/Matthew, Galatians) and one none-Christian (Josephus). Why would both Mark, Matthew and Paul mention this, when it would not be true? Don't you think that any other hypothesis is way less probable?

 

Since I mentioned the Criterion of Embarrassment, have you ever seen a Preacher stand on stage as proclaim how sinful they once were? Alcohol, Drugs, sex addiction and etc mentioned to describe their terrible past. Then they say, " If Jesus could save a lowly soul like mine Jesus can save yours". When proclaiming their past sins are those preachers truly making statements against interest or are they just using it to dramatize the greatness of Jesus and the power of forgiveness. Do you automatically believe that the preacher use to gamble, drink, and etc based on the Criterion of Embarrassment or do you see it as an act? Based on basic probabilities do you consider it likely that all the various preachers with that same story would be telling the truth?

 

No. It fits perfectly in the agenda of the preacher, so zero points.

 

Yup, is not a coincidence that experts on the history of any actively worshiped God/Religion tend to be the worshipers themselves.

 

It is just not true. But you like to believe it.