According to a Christian friend of mine there is more evidence

>>2671701
Do we have any first hand sources of Jesus. Do have an account written by Jesus himself. Do we have a death mask. Do we have many monuments from their own time. Do we have records talking about Jesus. Was Jesus at the center of one of the most famous civil wars in history.

No that's retarded, we have writings by Julius Caesar.

If he were to say that we have chronologically closer evidence that Jesus existed than we do for the likes of Hannibal or Boudicca or Alexander then he'd be right. I think that's probably what your friend was going for but got their ancient characters mixed up.

Of course the whole thing is retarded because contemporary evidence for historical figures doesn't start to become common until the 13th century, but that doesn't mean there's a case you can make for them being made up.

No serious historian doubts the existence of any of these people, so it's a bit of a moot point.

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>>2671710
That was my reply. Apparently the answer to those questions are: yes. When I asked for a source this was provided as evidence.

No. All we have is second-hand accounts written long after Jesus died. Someone on here will point to relics like the Shroud of Turin as evidence, but IMO that isn't concrete enough.

We do however have a fucking book written by the man himself, accounts of him from his contemporaries, busts, etc.

>>2671713
>contemporary evidence for historical figures doesn't start to become common until the 13th century
Nigga what? Are you implying that court historians and minted coin are only unreliable before the 13th century?

>>2671718
>long after Jesus died
The Gospel of Mark was written 30 years after Jesus died

>>2671701
No, it is not.

On Jesus's side, we have the Gospels and other New Testament books, written by anonymous authors, decades after he supposedly died, and none of whom even claim to be firsthand accounts. We also have a couple of passages in Josephus which might or might not be genuine, and a statement by Tacitus about 70 years after the fact, which also contains some other errors in the same paragraph, making it pretty clear he's working from hearsay.

On Caesar's side, we have his own writings, we have contemporaries like Sallust and Cicero also writing about him during his lifetime, in addition to numerous secondary biographers well after his lifetime.

The only thing Jesus has going for him in this debate is number of manuscripts; pretty much all history about contemporary Caesar stuff comes from 12 manuscripts. But that, in and of itself is not related to the question of historicity, only for the very limited purpose of making sure the "real" version of this or that text is in fact correct. The fact that we can have a high degree of certainty as to what the Gospel of Matthew said doesn't necessarily mean it's accurate or that it's proof positive that Jesus in fact existed.

>Guy writes books HIMSELF is somehow less evidence than the people who wrote about a gay 70-100 years after the fact

really makes you update your journal

>>2671723
>We also have a couple of passages in Josephus which might or might not be genuine
This is a pretty outdated view. Josephus mentions Jesus 3 times, one of which has an interpolation by a later Christian writer. It's all genuine, just one of them has been added to.

>>2671715
If that is just the bible it has none of those. I'm actually in interested in that period of history and there is no first hand accounts. Which isn't strange, you would not expect there to be for someone like him. So I wouldn't say the lack of first hand sources means Jesus didn't exist.

>>2671701
Your friend is wrong but he's trying to make a valid point. Large amounts of contemporary evidence for the existence of people is the exception in the ancient world, not the norm.

My history professor told me you can usually consider a work reliable if it's written within two generations of the subject's life. We do have work like that for Jesus, but we don't for many other famous antique figures, so people who launch into tirades about "muh contemporary evidence" for Jesus are kind of missing the point.

>>2671721
That's a fairly long time to write the first thing about one of the most important people in history.

>>2671736
He wasn't one of the most important people in history at the time. Consider that the most comprehensive biography of Alexander wasn't written until 200 years after he died.

>>2671746
good point

>>2671736
>30 years later
>long after
You are not a serious historian

>>2671701
Christians will always use the "there's plenty of evidence..." argument without ever providing any. Disregard and move on.

>>2671732
It's literally a companion book filled with "archaeological evidence."

Let's put it like this: Caesar not existing basically means that all roman imperial history is fake, because there's just THAT much stuff that goes back to him and people (like Augustus) who knew him.

Jesus not existing changes nothing, because the sources about him are hearsay and he personally did nothing of historical relevance in his lifetime. His influence, like Socrates', comes from his disciples writing about him, which could be faked.

There's also the fact that faking Caesar serves no real purpose to anyone, whereas faking Jesus...

The position of Jesus is difficult, he was a simple lumberjack, who would write a book on the life of a lumberjack? Even the smallest source or text that prove his existence would be believable as he wasn't important, if he was even cited somewhere even for his low status it would prove his existence.
Compare it to Mohamed, Mohamed was the fucking lord of the Arabians, there's plenty of sources about him, Jesus was a lumberjack, so a simple source can prove his existence

>>2671780
or maybe you give your prophesied messiah a humble origin to highlight his role as both man and god. basically no contemporary sources have anything to do whatsoever with his origins. it's 100% about him being a literal god king.

your reasoning is basically the same thing as asking "well why would anyone make up a story of their savior being humiliated and executed on the cross?" the answer is that it's incredibly important to the spirit and message of the church: humility and offering up one's life to god.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacitus_on_Christ

>>2671755

>no evidence of existence

see >>2671835

>>2671835
>>2671844

Obvious later forgeries =/= evidence. And you can try to claim that there was a genuine reference to Jesus in that passage before the Christians edited it out of recognition, but unfortunately for you the fact that the passage is so obviously tampered with means we have choice but to throw it out entirely.

>>2671869
>Obvious later forgeries
Can you find me an accredited historian who thinks that Tacitus' mention of Christ is a forgery?

>>2671701
Please anon, tell your friend to repeat his compulsory education years in school and to avoid nouns/priests' institutes.

>>2671710
>most famous civil war
No that's the American """""""""""""Revolution"""""""""""""

>>2671701
>Christians just insert these references to Jesus whilst copying these books
>no way people could have just inserted this idea of a man into speeches whilst copying them
He's dumb in saying Caesar, it would be more accurate to say Diogenes, who wasn't that big in his day but an Internet cult formed around him 3000 years later
Eg
>did he really masturbate in public
>did he tell Alexander the FUCKING GREAT to duck off

>>2671873
David Irving

>>2671713
>we have writings by Julius Caesar
prove it's not fake

>>2671925
Also some philosopher has been added to over the years, which we think because of how different the writing style is
Might be Plato can't remember exactly but some philosopher

>>2671904

That's barely considered a major historical event outside the USA.

Yep, why anyone would believe in J.C? so we're supposed to believe he was a "King among men" who was supposedly betrayed by his close friend? yeah yeah that's an old one, plenty of stories like that in ancient Egypt, Assyria, etc. etc. I stopped believing in "Caesar" when I was 14.

>>2671925
>Diogenes
>*unsheaths phallus* "behold, the rod with which the good teacher (Plato) punishes his students"

he was a fucking madman

>>2671728
It's really riling my rutabagas.

>>2671733
It really sucks that pretty much everything we have for the Crisis of the Third Century is the Historia Augusta.

>>2671701
Sure any farfetched thought can be possible with the constant shenanigans of the contemporary media.

>>2671948
nigga are you being serious?


We have the letters and books of tonnes of people from that time, such as Cicero. They were politicians, publicizing themselves.

were they all written by the devil to trick us?

>>2671780
>lumberjack
I thought he and his father were carpenters!
Was I bamboozled at Sunday School?

>>2672703
You cant ever prove those books were written by him though.

OPs point isn't that Caesar didn't exist, it's that the arguments people bring forth to say Jesus or Muhammad never existed, can just as easily be used on any historical figure past a certain age.

>>2672793
I know what his point is, and it's still fucking ridiculous.

The same logic cannot still be applied, since the likelihood of a Roman politician existing, and the likelihood of a fucking demigod existing, cannot be equated.

What is said to have had happened in the Gospels, is supernatural and unverifiable, whereas what is written in Caesar's account of his conquest of Gaul is verifiable, but taken with a pinch of salt. Most importantly, it was written before he crossed the rubicon back into italy. The New Testament, we know, was written long after Jesus's death.

>Can you prove he wrote it
Some parts could be written by slaves, but we know Caesar was smart, a good orator and a good writer judging by his private letters.


There are numerous letters written by Caesar that weren't published, coins made of him, references made to him, etc, that were all made AT THE TIME.

Most scholars agree that Jesus probably existed, but (this is important) NOT AS HE IS SAID TO HAVE EXISTED. Claims made about his life in the Gospels are UNVERIFIABLE.

>>2671710
>Do have an account written by Jesus himself.
Allegedly.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abgar_V#The_Letter_of_King_Abgar_to_Jesus

>>2671701
Not really related that much to the OP's topic, but since he's mentioning history and Jesus I'm interested to know, what is /his/'s opinion on biblical history?

>>2672983
I want to believe

Do we have any non-textual evidence for Jesus?

>>2671718
And coins with dates.

>>2671701
>>2671721

Disputed, but for such a status that Jesus had in the 1st century, the amount of evidence we have is overwhelming. Caesar was going to go down in the history books whether he was good at his job or not. Jesus though was likely not according to social status. The written material that we have for Jesus includes:

- Pre-Pauline hymns of Jesus resurrection (1 Corinthians 15)
- Pre-Pauline hymns of Jesus as God (Philippians 2)
- Peter's speech in Acts 2
- Paul's conversation with James the brother of Jesus and Peter in Galatians
- Pre-Markan Narrative of the resurrection
- Mark's preservation of Jesus Aramaism
- Mark's preservation of Peter's embarrassments presupposes Jesus existence
- Mark's writing likely shows he knew Greek as his second language
- Multiple attestation of the sermon on the mount and of John the Baptist
- Tacitus records that Christus (Christ) died by Pontius Pilate
- Suetonius mentions Christ having instigated the Jews against the Romans
- Josephus, though the dispute over whether he talked about Jesus, mentions Jesus' brother James being stoned to death in Jerusalem
- Additionally all Gospels are written with the intention as historical biographies of the ancient world.

Additionally it's good to mention:

- Anonymous doesn't = untrue as one needs to assess the accuracy of how it was written and event of the time
- Oral tradition is considered reliable by ancient history standards as memory was important to all ancient people
- The gospel themselves are considered late by ancient history standards, many books and bios were only found to be written 200+ years after the events, with earliest copies sometimes being only written in medieval times
- Gospels are usually dated by secular and confessional scholars around 40 (Maurice Casey on Mark) to 110 (Some scholars for John)

>>2672983
Neat! I'm an atheist, but I love shit like this.

>>2671869
>Scholars generally consider Tacitus' reference to the execution of Jesus by Pontius Pilate to be both authentic, and of historical value as an independent Roman source.[5][6][7]
Read the wiki.

>>2672703
I think he is trying to say that if you apply the same burden of proof used in writings about Jesus you could never prove anything before the year 1000 existed.

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>>2671904
Pedantic. The Roman civil war is one of the most well studied conflicts in history simply because we have so many sources from that era which discuss it. Even people in Shakespeare's time were discussing Caesar, and Dante Alighieri puts Marcus Junius Brutus as one of the worst people in history, eternally chewed in the mouth of Satan himself in the lowest level of hell

Here's the real problem with all this historicity shit.

People like Julius Caesar and Socrates and the like weren't important because of who they were, it was what they said or did. If they said cool things, then neat. It doesn't matter if those actual people said them, what matters are the ideas conveyed. If they did interesting things, then neat. Maybe he did them, maybe he didn't. It doesn't really matter in any case as I don't base my life around whether or not there was a real Julius Caesar of Rome.

Jesus wasn't important because of what he said or did, it was who he was. Whether or not he was the Son of God is the only reason people care about him. A few historical people briefly mentioning him in missives do not lend credence to what Christians want him to be.

These threads completely fail to convince anyone of Jesus' importance other than that he was barely important enough to mention in anything more than a handful of documents until centuries after his death.