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| Do The Romans have documents on Jesus?
Posted: 5/20/2006 5:38:21 PM |
To dispute the historicity of Jesus, you must necessarily dispute the word of the Apostles.
What word of the Apostles? Mark, Luke, and Paul weren't Apostles. It's widely agreed that the author of the Gospel of John was not written by an Apostle, but by an early church father named John. Matthew borrowed heavily from Mark (who never even met Jesus) which is an odd thing to do if you were an eyewitness to the events. The only reason to believe that Matthew wrote the Gospel attributed to him is because Papias says so. Yet his description of this gospel doesn't match what we currently possess. The Epistle of James was considered a forgery even by Martin Luther. Both Epistle of Peter are considered forgeries by Biblical scholars. The Epistles of John are considered of such late date that the Apostle John couldn't have written them. Similar remarks hold for the Epistle of Jude. Finally the Book of Revelation is also considered to young to be a work of the Apostle John (and was also considered a forgery by Luther). | |
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| Do The Romans have documents on Jesus?
Posted: 5/20/2006 5:46:11 PM |
I have evidence or documents certifying Jesus was a real figure -its called the New Testament. Why ever would you reject it as primary source evidence????
Because they were all either anonymous, written too late to have been written by eyewitnesses, forgeries, and/or written by Paul who never met Jesus. Even if we accept traditonal assignments of authors to various books (like the gospels) we run into the fact that most of the stories weren't witnessed by the people who allegedly wrote the books. And it doesn't help that the Bible abounds with late interpolations. Add to that false prophecies, internal contradictions, and historical errors and it doesn't look so good for the NT.
I think the question should be why anyone would accept the Bible as evidence for Jesus. | |
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| Do The Romans have documents on Jesus?
Posted: 5/31/2006 3:36:44 PM | These are the usual roman sources that are quoted:
1) Tacitus
The first Roman historian to mention Christ is Tacitus, who wrote his last significant work, the Annals, around A.D. 115. In this treatise, Tacitus describes the great fire of Rome during the reign of Nero and the emperor's subsequent persecution of the Christians there. He states:
"Nero created scapegoats and subjected to the most refined tortures those whom the common people called 'Christians'....Their name comes from Christ, who, during the reign of Tiberius, had been executed by the procurator Pontius Pilate" (Annals 15:44).
At first glance, this is an impressive passage for the Christian apologist. But let's dig a little deeper. Where did Tacitus get his information about Jesus' execution? It is doubtful that he was quoting an official Roman document from the period because, as scholars are quick to point out, he mistakenly calls Pilate a procurator when he was actually a prefect.
Perhaps Tacitus received it from his close friend Pliny the Younger, who may well have shared the knowledge he had acquired from contact with Christians in Asia Minor. But even if this is the case, the most we can say is that Tacitus is simply repeating what Christians of his day were saying about their origins. There is not much basis here for concluding that he was presenting independent testimony about the historical figure of Jesus.
2) Suetonius
In his biography of the emperor Claudius, written around A.D. 120, Suetonius writes about the expulsion of the Jews from Rome in A.D. 49. He states: "Since the Jews were constantly causing disturbances at the instigation of Chrestus, he [Claudius] expelled them from Rome" (Claudius 25:4).
Chrestus was a popular misspelling of the Greek Christos (Christ). Some scholars believe that Suetonius may have used a source that understood "Chrestus" to be Jesus. But he obviously misunderstood the police records, thinking that "Chrestus" was the name of some Jewish slave who became a ringleader during the riots of A.D. 49. Suetonius' account makes for interesting reading. But, again, it is far from being an independent witness to the historical Jesus.
3) Pliny the Younger
Pliny the Younger was proconsul of Bythinia, in Asia Minor, between A.D. 111 and 113. Pliny wrote a letter to the Emperor Trajan asking for advice on how to deal with the rapid growth of the Christian community in his area. Among other things, he describes the Christian custom of holding weekly meetings to sing praises "to Christ as to a god" (Letter 10. 96).
This passage is significant, because it is the only non-Christian source that tells us that Christians treated Christ as a "god." But Pliny is merely describing an element of Christian worship. His comments say nothing about the historicity of Jesus.
4) Lucian
The Roman satirist Lucian of Samosata lived from A.D. 115-200. In The Passing of Perigrinus, Lucian mocks the Christian life, describing Christians as those who worship "that crucified sophist [Jesus] himself," and live "under his laws." Again, we learn only what some educated people from the second century may have heard about Jesus. Lucian is definitely not an independent source of historical knowledge concerning Jesus of Nazareth. | |
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