Quote:
|
Originally Posted by hannukah harry
josephus wasn't born until a few years after jesus's death. to my knowledge, there are <b>zero</b> contemporary references to jesus. during the time he supposidly lived there were others (with contemporary documentation of their lives) who claimed to be the messiah, rise from the dead, perform miracles, etc.
considering what the world was like back then, it doesn't surprise me that people would be able to be convinced that jesus was real and did what he did. i think to believe in him based on teh current references we have is a pretty thin argument. i see no reason to believe in him just as you see no reason to believe that hercules once lived on earth.
my current personal belief is that he may or may not have existed. if he did, he was a normal man, maybe preached a bit. but that what was written about him is about as true as the harry potter books are.
|
we are talking about antiquity here...we've got a much broader body of texts, evidence, etc... for Jesus than we do for a great many historical figures. i won't say the record isn't complicated. it is. but i think the major distortion of this argument is that it does not acknowledge context. the subtle hint to claiming Jesus did not exist is that his memory has been entirely conjured, and that conjuring may have been willful.
certainly, the process and politics of memory have been at work in this case. i would be a fool to deny that. but it staggers my imagination to try to concieve of a "he didn't exist" movement forming. so too does it defy my powers of creativity to think of another historical figure that would be subjected to the same level of doubt. the NT is a self-interested text. and?
So is Josephus. So is Seneca. So is Homer. So is Thucyidides. So is every other "history" that is written then. Hell, so is every history now. All evidence from that time period is difficult to analyze, and contains different assumptions about what truth, history, bias, and authorship means. This is not a good reason to throw it all out, or cast universal aspersions over the scholarship on that era.