Jesus Christ Existed As A Historical Figure

Now, to the issues. 1. Strawman is a logical fallacy which consists of attacking a point that your opponent has never made; first by distorting a point that he did make ("building a man of straw") and then by destroying that distorted version ("destroying the man of straw"). How reliable does a source have to be to claim that a man was crucified? The answer is that it has to be as reliable as any historical claim. Claims based on legend are not reliable claims. Claims based on unknown sources are not reliable claims. The better known the sources, the more reliable the claim. I think that should be obvious. I will not enter into a debate about Buudha or Muhammad, simply due to time and character limits. The existence of Alexander the Great is well documented and it comes from first-hand sources. These sources are identified by the writers as coming from men who served under Alexander the Great. However, fragments of first-hand accounts by those who served under Alexander the Great, also survive: . http://en.wikipedia.org... In relation to Abraham Lincoln, with respect, my opponent is now stepping into the realm of the ridiculous. There are SCORES of accounts about Lincoln written by his contemporaries and there are scores of things written by Lincoln himself. 2. Josephus Here, my opponent is again making claims about Josephus' style without citing any expert evidence. He provides no evidence and no argument to support his claim that Josephus' mention of the crucifixion is consistent with Josephus' style. As for "Christ Jesus", I will concede that early Christians (but not those predating Josephus) did on occasion refer to Jesus as "Christ Jesus". If you do a phrase search on www. biblegateway. com, you will find that the phrases "Christ Jesus" and "Jesus Christ" were used precisely 219 times (mostly in the letters and in Acts). By contrast, however, the word "Jesus" appears in the New Testament as many as 1,310 times! The terms "Christ Jesus" or "Jesus Christ" are therefore in a definite minority. Note that the majority of the New Testament was written around the same time and after the writings of Josephus and therefore should be expected to reflect the common usage amongst contemporary Christians. Now, since the writers of the New Testament used the phrase "Jesus Christ" and "Christ Jesus" so rarely, why is it surprising that Josephus (even if basing his writing on the same legendary accounts of members of the cult) did not use the phrase? And why WOULD he use the phrase? "Christ" means "the anointed one" (. http://en.wikipedia.org...). It's a phrase of respect and one that would give credit to supernatural claims about Jesus. Josephus was not a Christian! "If in the English translation of Josephus, a certain word is mentioned twice, it's probably the same word in the original Hebrew translation mentioned twice. " No, it just means that the translator used the same word twice. "I have every single thing Josephus wrote on my bookshelf, I'm not "trusting" scholars, I've checked everything they've said about the linguistic style of Josephus, and I've quoted the passages to boot. " Well, does this qualify my opponent as an expert in linguistic analysis? Of course not. And my opponent has not cited any scholars in support of his claims about style consistencies. "…please tell me the last time a debate between scholars occurred on the writings of Josephus, and what parts of Josephus are in question…" Here comes: "A third passage, the famous Testimonium Flavianum found in the Antiquities of the Jews 18.63-64, in its current form summarises the ministry and death of Jesus; but the authenticity of this passage *remains contested by many scholars*, and has been the topic of *ongoing debate since the 17th century*. " . http://en.wikipedia.org... ("*" emphasis is mine) Here's another quote: "In those parts of the Testimonium that are commonly regarded as authentic, Josephus describes Jesus as a teacher and miracle worker, attracting a large following who revered him after his death" . http://en.wikipedia.org.... This quote for example shows that most scholars agree that the part that of Josephus' works that describes miracles and resurrection are authentic. But we know that Josephus did not believe in Christ's deity. Where then is he getting this information from? He's surely basing it on the claims of members of the Christian cult. "Please cite me where Tacitus says that Annals are based on unreliable information. " Here again my opponent commits a strawman. I never said that Tacitus said that Annals were based on inaccurate information. "I listed where Tacitus gets his sources from, Tacitus hated Christianity, do you really think he got his information from Christians? Tacitus doesn't list where he gets information for every specific event he mentions, I seriously doubt you question every event Tacitus mentions that he doesn't cite specifically? " My opponent had NOT told us where Tacitus claims to have gotten his information from. He listed a generic TYPE of source. For example, personal testimonials. Well what does that mean? Personal testimonials of whom? Again, let's keep in mind that the legend, although spread by Christians, was not known solely to Christians. Would I question every event Tacitus mentions if he doesn't cite it specifically? I'm not an expert. But given that the experts distrust The Annals (and my opponent showed no experts who do trust them), I have absolutely no reason to do otherwise. "No, Josephus does not claim the resurrection of Jesus as a fact, the earliest manuscripts of the Testimonium don't contain the part mentioning the resurrection but do mention Jesus and his death. " Well, this is what my opponent says now, in the final round. He never mentioned early manuscripts. And he never cited any scholar who held this opinion. But we have seen that according to Whiston (as cited in wiki) Josephus' account of resurrection is commonly believed to be authentic (ie, coming from Josephus). And this DOES place it in the realm of legend. But even if that were not the case, the entire account is based on legend because there's no reason to believe that Josephus based his accounts on anything other than Christian (or derived from Christians) claims in the first place. "You listed one event in history that Tacitus got wrong, and it was a confusion of 2 people. If you're going to throw out hundreds of pages of history because of 1 error, you might as well re-write every argument you've made so far, afterall there were errors in your arguments…. " Sure, I get things wrong. I do that often. And when I do, I get corrected. I'm using an open forum where I am subject to scrutiny. You don't have to rely on what I say without an ability to check it. It wouldn't be reasonable. And that's where we are with Tacitus. I can only conclude that, apart from bad temper, my opponent has not demonstrated anything in this debate. He relies on two sources. One is partially unauthentic (with scholars still debating which parts are authentic) and partially sourced on unknown sources, quite possibly early Christians. The other one is The Annals, largely distrusted by scholars insofar as historical accuracy goes. There's no reliable evidence here that Jesus was a historical figure. Vote Con. Thank you for the debte.