The Jesus of History Probably Existed - D

Introduction: My opponent says: "My opponent opens his 2nd round with an unsubstantiated and wholly incorrect assertion. First he claims that the only two "shreds" of evidence are Tacitus and Josephus." I have been quoted somewhat out context. What I actually said was that the Tacitus and Josephus extracts are "the only two shreds of potential evidence for historical accounts of Jesus OVER WHICH THERE IS ANY DEBATE at all, all others having been proved as either false beyond any doubt or entirely irrelevant as historical evidence." The gospels can not be regarded as historical in the same way as other non-religious documents simply because of their religious nature. The most powerful organisation in human history, the Roman catholic church has been shown to have controlled and edited their contents. People have never been executed or burned alive for criticising conventional historical texts. Reliable historical works do not contain descriptions of supernatural events. There seems to be a great deal of reliable historical and archaeological evidence for the existence of Alexander the Great. http://en.wikipedia.org... As Alexander has not been worshipped as a god or had religions started in his name there have been less people over history with an interest in distorting information about him than about Jesus. Tacitus: So Tacitus' work contains errors (like all history), omissions and corrections by third-parties (eg. Chrestianos). Richard Carrier's opinion that, despite evidence to the contrary, the reference to Pilate's role is in fact correct,(as well as being a rather witty insult) is indeed irrelevant. There are indeed "many Christian scholars [that] completely disregard Tacitus as evidence" of the existence of Jesus. Already in this debate I have referenced John P. Meier in round 1 and both Robert Van Voorst and R.T. France in round 2. Others include E.P. Sanders and the same William Lane Craig earlier cited by my opponent, as quoted on this page: http://www.rationalresponders.com... Josephus: My opponent says I did not respond to some of his points here. Looking back all I can find is "it is actually quite significant that Josephus devotes any attention to Jesus at all." As my argument has been that both Josephus extracts (rather than just one as acknowledged by Pro) are later additions and that Josephus DIDN'T mention Jesus, there is no real response I can give. Meanwhile my opponent has ignored my points about the late date and shifted the argument of grammar on to style. A good source that examines the grammatical inconsistency and the stylistic aberration of James' introduction as well as the historical flaws with Christian interpretations of this extract is: http://vridar.wordpress.com... The Bible: As stated above, sacred texts are not generally considered to be impartial historical observation. It would be interesting to know what archaeological facts they confirm or provide as I am aware of none. There is no reason to think writers like Philo would have ignored what was claimed of Jesus if he did exist, nor that they would have been inclined to suppress information about him.http://en.wikipedia.org... Philo lived and wrote in the alleged period and location of Jesus and his writings are paraphrased in the opening of the gospel of John. http://en.wikipedia.org... He never mentioned Jesus. Regarding the source my opponent supplied http://bible.org... I have indeed read it all and it completely supports interdependence and Markan priority while playing down the significance of the possibly verbal 'Q document'. It categorically denies the concept of independence which my opponent cited it for. To quote from it again: "It is popular today among laymen to think in terms of independence....This explanation falls short on several fronts." When (two) of the gospels are apparently first mentioned by Justin Martyr in the mid 2nd century they do not have these titles and are referred to as "memoirs of the apostles". http://www.churchofreality.org... Many other "gospels" with conflicting information but some of the same events were rejected by the church as they sought to dictate religious orthodoxy. Obviously copies of the approved gospels with conflicting authorship would not have been allowed to circulate. On Parsimony: My opponent says: "any theory with the least amount of assumptions and the same explanatory power is to be preferred, per Occam". Clearly it requires less assumption to presume the gospels are fiction than to believe they are true. Insufficient Time: My opponent says: "the time between the events themselves and the authorship of the gospels is too short for the MEMORY OF WHAT ORIGINALLY HAPPENED (or had not happened) to be erased." This makes very little sense to me. How can a memory of what has not happened be erased? My opponent has ignored my points about Luke, Mark, John and Paul not being eyewitnesses. Paul: There are many dates suggested for the composition of Mark, finding one source (with no weblink) that says AD 50 and calling it reliable does not make it so. As mentioned above, there is a great deal of consensus placing it after AD 70 and some claims of a 2nd century date. AD 50 is a very early date to be suggesting. Bible.org says AD 64-69 http://bible.org... and the Catholic Encyclopedia concedes it may have been written as late as AD 67 http://www.newadvent.org... My opponent's reasonablefaith.org source mentions that the same Richard Carrier my opponent calls a historical "expert" agrees that Paul never refers to a physical Jesus and the semantic arguments on this page are somewhat tiresome. I have already responded to several of the supposed references cited in the Bede.org article (that was my intention in providing it) but I don't tend to use up my character allowance arguing against each and everyone of them, especially when my opponent has not responded to any of my citations from Paul. Briefly, numbers 1 and 5 make perfect sense as a metaphorical description of a heavenly sacrifice ritual based on the Passover. The reference to James as the brother of Christ could well refer to brotherhood in the sense of 'knowing' or being at one with rather than a familial relationship. The other two are a little harder to explain away but as we have seen, many insertions and alterations have been made to these letters and these two sole hints of a human Jesus could well be further examples. ________ 1) Paul speaks often of Christ COMING to Earth, not RETURNING to Earth. 2) The 'story' of the crucifixion is an allegory of the sacrificial lamb at Passover. 3) Romans 10:14-17 "how are they to believe in one of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone to proclaim him?....faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes through the word about Christ." 4) Ephesians 3:3-5 "the mystery was made known to me by revelation....as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit" 5) Galatians 3:1 "Before your very eyes Jesus Christ was clearly PORTRAYED as crucified" All these facts about Paul's concept of Christ and these statements and many others from his letters clearly contradict the literal story presented in the gospels and only make sense if Paul believes that Christ's crucifixion took place at the hands of the "the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places" (Eph 3:10) and his appearance in Earth is yet to occur ( "our commonwealth is in heaven, and it is from there that we are expecting a Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ." Phi 3:20, "Out of Zion will come the Deliverer; he will banish ungodliness from Jacob." Rom 11:26"). Thanks. Con.