Jesus of Nazareth is a historical figure

First, I would like to say that I do not accept the classic Christ Myth Theories, I simply acknowledge the Null Hypothesis and see the lack of evidence for Jesus of Nazareth. I also would like to point out that the Burden of Proof lies on Pro in this debate. ___________________________________ I do not have enough characters to fully address all the documents listed in this round, but I will address them in the next one. I hope you find the analysis of the documents to be accurate. We have to not only address if the documents are historically accurate, but also if they refer to Jesus or not. To simplify that I have combined the three questions of higher criticism with if it refers to Jesus in certain documents. First, let"s look at what is in the New Testament. The New Testament is made up of 27 different books: Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts of the Apostles, James, 1 Peter, 2 Peter, 1 John, 2 John, 3 John, Jude, and Revelation are the books that have various authors. We also have 14 Pauline Epistles, but they are not all written by Paul: Romans*, 1 Corinthians*, 2 Corinthians*, Galatians*, Philippians*, 1 Thessalonians*, Philemon*; 1 Timothy**, 2 Timothy**, Titus** (pastoral/pseudopigraphic); Ephesians***, Colossians***, 2 Thessalonians***, Hebrews (internally anonymous) Pauline Epistles Key: *=Undisputed, written by Paul **=Modern Scholars agree are Forged ***=Scholars about evenly divided on if they are forged or not Hebrews is thought by an overwhelming majority to be a forgery We see 27 books in the New Testament, four are to be forged, and three are disputed on whether they are forged or not. Because of that, these books cannot be used as evidence. That leaves 20 books left in the New Testament to address. Now, scholars agree that Romans, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians, and Philemon are written by Paul. That is seven books from the New Testament. These cannot be used as evidence either. The reason is that Paul never met Jesus while Jesus supposedly lived, instead he met Jesus" spirit. If Paul is to be considered a witness of the life of Jesus then Jesus must have been the son of God in order to appear to Paul as a spirit. This leaves us with 13 books out of 27 to address. Now, not only did Paul never meet Jesus, but Luke even says so as well. If Luke did not meet Jesus, then that takes another book out as eye-witness testimony. Only 12 books left. Now, we must address another part of the Gospels. How did they get their names? Pastors and Bishops will say that they are named after the authors, yet that is not accurate. The authors of the Gospels were anonymous, and the names attached were voted on centuries later. We do not know who wrote them, but we can find out things about them. The apostles were Arabic speaking, not Greek like the books were written in. They were uneducated peasants and fisherman. They could not even write, and very few people knew how to write. The ones that knew how to read and write were all sons of the rich, rabbis would teach people how to read, but they would not teach people how to write. Peter and John are even said to be illiterate in Acts. The authors of the Gospels were educated and Greek speakers, and they knew how to read and write. The alleged authors of the Gospels and the real authors are different people. Not a single author of any book of the New Testament was an eyewitness to Jesus' birth, life, ministry, trial, or death. None of the New Testament authors claim to be a witness, and the books were written in 3rd person view not 1st. This means we have taken out 3 more (since we already eliminated Luke) books. Only 9 of 27 are left. Acts of the Apostles, James, 1 Peter, 2 Peter, 1 John, 2 John, 3 John, Jude, and Revelation are all that are left. Acts was anonymous, but thought to have been written by the author of Luke, which means that is not written by an eye-witness of Jesus either. Revelation is written by a man named John, but we do not know if it is the apostle John or not, but scholars do not think it was. John did not write 1, 2, or 3 John. These books were written by John"s followers, meaning they aren"t eye witnesses. James is just referred to as James, which was a common name during the time. James, being as common of a name as it was, cannot be used as evidence as no one knows who wrote it. Although the text identifies Peter as its author the language, dating, style, and structure of this letter has led many scholars to conclude that this letter is pseudonymous. Many scholars are convinced that Peter was not the author of this letter because the author had to have a formal education in rhetoric/philosophy and an advanced knowledge of the Greek language. Jude is also currently in dispute on who the author was. Some say it was the apostle Jude, others say that it isn"t because the author of that letter does not identified himself as an apostle and refers to the apostles as a third party. So, who wrote the NT? Except for 7 of the 13 Pauline epistles, we really do not know. Saul/Paul wrote the [undisputed] epistles - earliest NT author, though he and "Luke" (in Acts) both say they never met Jesus. None of the canonical gospels were actually written by their "traditional" authors. Whoever was the author of Luke may have also written Acts. The author of Revelation was named John, but scholars agree that it is not the author of the Gospel of John. Did the NT authors offer historically accurate testimony? No, they contradict each other and extrabiblical history on some major points. There are ~400,000 variations of the New Testament. The New Testament only has ~181,400 words. Even when looking at the oldest versions of the New Testament we can find it is obvious that it has been changed over time. The oldest fragment of the New Testament is from the Gospel of John. It includes John 18:31-33 and 37-39 (about 3.5"x2.5"). It was dated to be 117-138 CE, 100 years after Jesus's death. It is a copy. The oldest complete New Testament is from the 4th century, ~300 years after Jesus' death. We do not have the original documents. When was the New Testament written? Paul wrote in the 50s C.E. (close to 51), but we only have copies of them. The earliest complete copy of any New Testament book comes from the 3rd century. The earliest complete New Testament dates to the 4th century. It is believed that the canonical gospels written between 70-95 CE (After the reliable years). Most scholars agree that all autographs of the canonical NT were written by ~110 CE. But, what about the three questions? Were the New Testament authors in a position to offer reliable, primary-source testimony? No Did they, in fact, offer a historically-reliable account? No Did their testimonies survive to the present substantially unaltered and intact? No It only needs to fail one of the questions to be considered historically unreliable. The New Testament fails all three. The New Testament is not historically reliable. The New Testament cannot be used to prove that Jesus existed. Now, onto Josephus. Josephus' writings about Jesus have been admitted, even by Christian Scholars, to have been tampered with. We also see that the one that most likely tampered with them, Eusebius, also forged letters of Jesus. Josephus was not born until after Jesus had supposedly died. He was upper class while Christians are usually portrayed as being the lower class. In this time the upper class did not usually communicate with the lower class. We cannot take Josephus' writings about Jesus as reliable because they conflict with his personal beliefs and have been tampered with, if not entirely added. In the court of law tampered evidence cannot be used, so why should we be able to use Josephus' "accounts" of Jesus? The three questions regarding the mentioning of Jesus by Josephus: Was Josephus in a position to offer reliable, primary-source testimony? Most likely not. Did he, in fact, offer a historically-reliable account? With the knowledge of the tampering, this question cannot be answered. Did their testimonies survive to the present substantially unaltered and intact? No. Josephus is not historically reliable. Josephus cannot be used as evidence for Jesus" existence. Tacitus is next. Tacitus was born 25 years after Jesus' death, meaning he could not have been an eye-witness. It"s also important to note that the original Tacitus Annals Books 11 " 16 are lost. We only have copies, written centuries later. It is doubtful that he was quoting an official Roman document from the period. Scholars are quick to point out that he mistakenly calls Pilate a procurator when he was actually a prefect. Tacitus used his friend Pliny for information before, and he most likely got information from him about Christians. What we can tell is that Tacitus is simply repeating what Christians of this period of time were saying about their origins. Tacitus most likely did not have access to official documents to get information, if official documents even existed, but we do have confirmation that the Christian religion was growing at this point in time. There is not much basis for concluding that he was presenting independent testimony about the historical figure of Jesus. The three questions regarding the mentioning of Jesus by Tacitus: Was he in a position to offer reliable, primary-source testimony? No Did he, in fact, offer a historically-reliable account? No Did their testimonies survive to the present substantially unaltered and intact? We do not know Conclusion is that two of the three questions have failed, Tacitus does not offer historically reliable evidence for the existence of Jesus, just the uprising of the Christian religion. Next round, since I am low on characters, I will address Pliny, Thallus, Serapion, and the Talmud. Sources: https://www.youtube.com...... http://ourrabbijesus.com...... http://jeromekahn123.tripod.com......