The historicity of Jesus Christ

I'll dive straight in with the criticisms and then hopefully move onto my arguments for scientific history in a moment. Tacitus 1) Insult Did Tacitus aim to insult? I believe this comes down to simply reading the section. It is obvious through use of language that Tacitus was trying to attack Christians. Look at the language: "the deadly superstition", "this evil", "horrendous and shameful practices", "hated for their abominable crimes". Is my opponent really going to contend this is the language of a neutral source? For many sources looking to try and see this as authentic end up conceding this. "Due to the common acceptance of Tacitus as the greatest of the Roman historians, there isa tendency to explicitly believe everything that he writes as factual. In actuality much of it ...is merely invective and rhetoric. This was prevalent in Roman history"[1]. Others point out "Tacitus obviously had a partisan, senatorial bias...so strong that he deliberately misinterpreted the facts"[2]. The truth of the matter is Tacitus was clearly not nonpartisan: he was not interested in claiming facts, but rather criticising Caesars. 2) Reliability of scholar A historian becomes less reliable each time they get evidence wrong. Tacitus unfortunately got basic facts wrong repeatedly which we'd expect him to know, due to his bias against the emporers. "Indeed, he distrusted emperors so much that he may have been too credulous of negative sources about them."[3] For example, Tacitus cared not for producing speeches accurately. "Tacitus exercised the privelege claimed by Greek and Roman writers to rewrite speeches rather than reproduce the original." This is nicely illustrated by Claudius' speech on the introduction of the Gauls into the Roman Senate, where we can compare Tacitus' version[4] with the record of the actual speech which Tacitus would certainly have access. It's hard to conclude he did not read the original speech, since every point is in common. "That said, his version is barely even a loose paraphrase of the original. Clearly, the historian saw as his role to capture the spirit of the occasion rather than to present a documentary record of it".[5] His reliability of getting his sources right is compromised, and this in turn creates good reason to reject Tacitus as a good source when his findings cannot be cross-verified. 3) Reliability of Tacitus' sources Further, scholars agree that Tacitus used secondary sources to justify his history. My opponent criticises my translation, saying it is "populace" instead of "the common people". The solution, of course, is to look at the translation. In Annals, the term is vulgus. Vulgus translates best as "common people/general public/multitiude/common herd/rabble/crowd/ mob"Populus or poplus means populace, yet this is not the term that appears in the Latin[7]. This mistranslation is common, but not negligible. My opponent states that Tacitus only referred to the naming as Christians by the people, not the rest of the information. However, Tacitus is well documented as justifying swathes of evidence on rumour and second sources: "Tacitus rarely mentioned his sources by name. He will more often refer vaguely to writers...or even more vaguely to..."certain people"" Moreover, he participated "in a one-upmanship of his predecessor" because "when he does on the rare occasion mention a source by name it is often on issues that are, surprisingly, not of great importance"[5]. This section is a great moment to name a scholar to justify his claim, yet instead refers to "common people". This highlights further that he could not find a scholar to promote his findings. With all these things in account, the culmination is that it is the ineducated masses who evidently heard their information from another ineducated mass. Tacitus then unreliably presented the information. The reliability, then, is next to nothing. The Talmud 1) Contradictions My opponent seems to agree that there are contradictions, but did not pick them up. To restate it: It claims Yeshu "had five disciples, Matthai, Nakai, Nezer, Buni and Todah", as well as turning to paganism and being a terrible preacher. Evidently this is just an attempt to criticise Christianity. 2) Many Yeshu My opponent cites Firezne, Karlsruhe and Herzog as evidence. These are just different editions of the Talmud from the 13th century, edited by Roman Catholics. This is not evidence. Also, I want to reiterate that the Talmud was written later, in the 5th century AD. Josephus The first section is justargumentum ad verecundiam from wikipedia, so I'll ignore it and get to the heart of the matter. The reason why the interpolations are found in every surviving manuscript is because the oldest is of the 13th to 14th century - it is not an argument in favour of its authenticity. Moreover, the mention of other Christians does not confirm the existence of Christ. Finally, the claim that "Wells' arguments [were] shattered by J.P.Holding" is a case of ad hominem, arguing at Wells instead of the argument. Finally, the first quotation gives us no knowledge of Jesus: the quotation simply implies the knowledge of Jesus having the title Christ. This is like knowing Arthur had the title King. It's nothing impressive or proof of existence. Lucian This comes nowhere near to affirming the existence of Jesus Christ, but simply describes Christian belief. Moreover, Lucian telling us how we should commit history impartially is comical and satirical, seeing as he is a satirist. He tells us, for example, Jesus is "that crucified sophist" (of the relativist school of thought known for denying the existence of Gods). However, the long and short of it is that Lucian is just telling us what Christians believe. Finally, the Passing of Peregrinus is a satirical piece, not a scholarly piece of history. Reading the article yourself makes it obvious[8]. Now, I finally have enough characters to make my case, so let's get started. Scientific History Historians through the ages have held widely differing views on the purpose of history. In the medieval ages, historians saw their purpose as chronicling God"s plan in action; the rationalist historians of the Enlightenment said instead history is the registration of human forces, and history was "philosophy by example". However, these views are all full of bias interpretation to create personal truths and models to promote ideology. The example of medieval and enlightenment history may seem outdated, but even as recent as the 1930s regarding World War One is evident. Evans comments "Many historians who had studied in Germany now rushed to denounce German scholarship as pedantic and anti-democratic". The importance of this is that German school was that of scientific history. Scientific history was abandoned, and it led "events such as the Russian Revolution, the Treaty of Versailles, and the triumph of modernism in art, music and literature [to] increase the sense of disorientation among historians".[9] This was because historians let their bias lead themselves to terrible interpretations of the past. A call to a return to scientific history is needed. Scientific History is a dismissal of secondary sources of being good sources of information. Looking at the mistakes of historians in the past, we abandon them as founts of knowledge and instead go to where they took their knowledge from. That is not to say secondary sources are wrong, but instead to say they are of little importance. They point us to primary sources, and confirm our findings, but secondary sources independent of corroborating evidence is not a good source. Thus, either a primary source needs to be given, or reason why secondary sources are as valuable. Moreover, If an incredibly large event without primary source, the chance of it occurring is even less. There is unlikely to be a record of what Jesus ate 2 Thursdays before his death, but events like Herod"s infanticide would have been very well recorded. Yet they are not. Essential parts of Jesus' life are missing to such an extent that the individual is no longer the 'Jesus' of the Bible anymore. With that in mind, I turn the debate over to my opponent.