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What are the non-Biblical sources for the existence of Jesus of Nazareth?

this is kind of cool :

Photos of Bone Boxes from 'Jesus Family Tomb'

as for Jesus himself and who he was or wasn't, i don't like to get into that too much. i have no desire to shake anyone's faith. wouldn't do any good, anyway, because i don't know for sure any more than anyone else does. suffice it to say that i think he probably existed, and that his philosophy was and is pretty cool. it reminds me of Buddhism in places. he gets a lot of things right, in my opinion. his message about how we should treat each other is the part that i think is important, not what others since then have tried to make it into.
 
Logicman said:
He wasn't wrong about Jesus. If there's any ignorance it concerns the argument that the Biblical Jesus was a made-up story.
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It does seem to be your usual practice - not answering the questions asked or statements made but instead replying to what appears to be the questions you think you read but actually the ones present on the page.

Your response is to my specific comment in regards to the Habermas/Licona claim that there are 42 ancient mentions of Jesus but only 10 of the Emperor Tiberias. Licona admitted he was wrong about the number of available citations for each man. Now what does that have to do with your reference to the Resurrection?
 
Logicman said:
Your claim has already been shown in other threads to be a bad argument.
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WHY is the fact that there was no census at the time the Gospel of Luke said there was one, seen as a bad argument? I've read the apologists defense of the reality of the census and they fail.
 
RAMOSS said:
I will also point out that Josephus was tampered with , and the passages referencing Jesus are very likely to be total forgeries from later on. The Talmud was written in the late 2nd early 3rd century, over 150 years after the Crucifixion.
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Can you present this evidence that Josephus was tampered with?
 
I'll try again.

SERIOUS PROBLEMS WITH LUKE

" Heichelheim's thesis is highly speculative and open to the following general objections. Given the conflicting genealogies of Matthew and Luke (which cannot be gratuitously solved by giving one to Mary), the descent of Joseph from David is highly problematic. The idea of Joseph owning property in Bethlehem stands in stark contrast to his destitute status and Jesus' birth in a strange stable. (The property would at least had a few shacks on it.) Matthew does have Mary and Joseph living in a house in Bethlehem (2:11), and only after the flight to Egypt do they settle in Nazareth. It would not have been necessary for Mary, nine-months pregnant, to make the arduous three-day journey. Not all descendants of David would have owned property in Bethlehem, and yet Luke would still require them to return from distances far greater than from Galilee. E. W. Barnes states that "any such census under Herod is highly improbable, inasmuch as it would be made for purposes of taxation; and Herod managed, and showed great skill in managing, his own finances. Finally , even if there had been a Herodian census, Luke would still have been wrong about Augustus' universal census and wrong about Quirinius administering it."
 
countryboy said:
Can you present this evidence that Josephus was tampered with?
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Simplest problem - the paragraph before and the paragraph following are related, the Testimonium just pops up. Then there are the multiple failures by early church fathers to even mention the Testimonium.
 
Somerville said:
WHY is the fact that there was no census at the time the Gospel of Luke said there was one, seen as a bad argument? I've read the apologists defense of the reality of the census and they fail.
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That's your spin, and an example of your poor scholarship, and zyzgy's bad argument.

William Ramsey noted (NBD, s.v. "Quirinius"): Ramsay held that Quirinius was appointed an additional legate of Syria between 10 and 7 bc, for the purpose of conducting the Homanadensian war, while the civil administration of the province was in the hands of other governors, including Sentius Saturninus (8-6 bc), under whom, according to Tertullian (Adv. Marc. 4. 19), the census of Lk. 2:1ff. was held.

Quirinius could EASILY have been responsible for the census.

And curiously enough, even if that were NOT the case somehow, the linguistic data of the last few decades indicates that Luke 2.1 should be translated 'BEFORE the census of Quirinius' instead of the customary 'FIRST census of Quirinius'--see Nigel Turner, Grammatical Insights into the New Testament, T&T Clark: 1966, pp. 23,24 and Syntax, p. 32. This would 'solve the problem' without even requiring two terms of office for Q.

And, while we are talking about Greek here...the term Luke uses for Quirinius' 'governorship' is the VERY general term hegemon, which in extra-biblical Greek was applied to prefects, provincial governors, and even Caesar himself. In the NT it is similarly used as a 'wide' term, applying to procurators--Pilate, Festus, Felix--and to general 'rulers' (Mt 2.6). [The New Intl. Dict. of New Test. Theology (ed. Brown) gives as the range of meaning: "leader, commander, chief" (vol 1.270)...this term would have applied to Quirinius at MANY times in his political career, and as a general term, Syria would have had several individuals that could be properly so addressed at the same time. Remember, Justin Martyr called him 'procurator' in Apology 1:34, which is also covered by this term.] My point is...nothing is really out of order here...

http://www.christian-thinktank.com/quirinius.html

And, of course, we have the historical account in the Gospel of Luke.
 
Somerville said:
Simplest problem - the paragraph before and the paragraph following are related, the Testimonium just pops up. Then there are the multiple failures by early church fathers to even mention the Testimonium.
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So basically, it is just opinion. Is there any tangible evidence, you know like forensic or archeological? The claim was made that this was a forgery. Is there evidence to support that claim?
 
The fantasy of the birth of Jesus has more holes in it than a Swiss cheese.
 
zyzygy said:
The fantasy of the birth of Jesus has more holes in it than a Swiss cheese.
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No more holes than other historical accounts of antiquity. You just rail against the story of Jesus because you don't want to believe.
 
Logicman said:
Define specifically what would constitute physical evidence for the resurrection?
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No idea, but you are the one making the claim about the resurrection., so you find it.
 
Nobody has ever been dead for three days and then magically been restored to life so no physical evidence could exist.
 
RAMOSS said:
No idea, but you are the one making the claim about the resurrection., so you find it.
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So, you have no clue what kind of specific evidence you're demanding but want it anyway? That's very disingenuous of you, Ramoss.
 
Logicman said:
So, you have no clue what kind of specific evidence you're demanding but want it anyway? That's very disingenuous of you, Ramoss.
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Ok. I'll tell you the first thing needed.... a very specific thing. I want you to show that resurrection is possible at all. Not merely a resuscitation, but an actual resurrection. That would be a good start. Show that the claim is possible.
 
RAMOSS said:
Ok. I'll tell you the first thing needed.... a very specific thing. I want you to show that resurrection is possible at all. Not merely a resuscitation, but an actual resurrection. That would be a good start. Show that the claim is possible.
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It would only be possible if magic was involved.
 
countryboy said:
So basically, it is just opinion. Is there any tangible evidence, you know like forensic or archeological? The claim was made that this was a forgery. Is there evidence to support that claim?
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Yes, it is 'opinion' because we don't have the original text of Josephus Antiquities nor do we have the first copy, the second, third and on to about the 10th Century. The 'opinions' are created by the questions raised when academics look at the entirety of Josephus' writings. Then there is also, as I noted earlier, the ever so small matter that none of the early christian writings mention the Testimonium during the days when the words of a non-Christian authority would have carried great weight in a community being attacked on various ideological grounds.

When Origen wrote in his Commentary on Matthew that Josephus "did not accept Jesus as Christ", it is normally viewed as confirmation Josephus did not believe Jesus to be the Messiah.

Several Christian authors refer to Josephus but it was only in 324 CE that Eusebius refers to the Testimonium. There no other known references to the passage until St Jerome wrote something toward the end of the 4th Century

A 5th or 6th Century table of contents for the Antiquities has no mention of the Testimonium. The next mention after Jerome was not until the 9th Century. There are records from a 15th Century historian who had a copy of Josephus which did not include the Testimonium
 
Logicman said:
That's your spin, and an example of your poor scholarship, and zyzgy's bad argument.

William Ramsey noted (NBD, s.v. "Quirinius"): Ramsay held that Quirinius was appointed an additional legate of Syria between 10 and 7 bc, for the purpose of conducting the Homanadensian war, while the civil administration of the province was in the hands of other governors, including Sentius Saturninus (8-6 bc), under whom, according to Tertullian (Adv. Marc. 4. 19), the census of Lk. 2:1ff. was held.

Quirinius could EASILY have been responsible for the census.

And curiously enough, even if that were NOT the case somehow, the linguistic data of the last few decades indicates that Luke 2.1 should be translated 'BEFORE the census of Quirinius' instead of the customary 'FIRST census of Quirinius'--see Nigel Turner, Grammatical Insights into the New Testament, T&T Clark: 1966, pp. 23,24 and Syntax, p. 32. This would 'solve the problem' without even requiring two terms of office for Q.

And, while we are talking about Greek here...the term Luke uses for Quirinius' 'governorship' is the VERY general term hegemon, which in extra-biblical Greek was applied to prefects, provincial governors, and even Caesar himself. In the NT it is similarly used as a 'wide' term, applying to procurators--Pilate, Festus, Felix--and to general 'rulers' (Mt 2.6). [The New Intl. Dict. of New Test. Theology (ed. Brown) gives as the range of meaning: "leader, commander, chief" (vol 1.270)...this term would have applied to Quirinius at MANY times in his political career, and as a general term, Syria would have had several individuals that could be properly so addressed at the same time. Remember, Justin Martyr called him 'procurator' in Apology 1:34, which is also covered by this term.] My point is...nothing is really out of order here...

http://www.christian-thinktank.com/quirinius.html

And, of course, we have the historical account in the Gospel of Luke.
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NO, we do not have any "historical account in the Gospel of Luke"

William Ramsey (d. 1916) was a British chemist and a True Believer - an apologist, like many others who seem quite willing to create their own versions of history.

Whether a census for tax purposes or for determination of property ownership, there are no records of any empire-wide action during the time in question. There would have been no such action when Herod was king so that causes a problem with the dating of the supposed birth of Jesus. Why would a thousand year old ancestor be the one to determine where a man was to register his presence? If it was for property ownership, why did Joseph and Mary end up in the barn (manger)? They had no family in Bethlehem?

Quirinius could well have fulfilled the positions covered by the word "hegemon" but from 11 to 3 BCE, he was not in Syria but instead the province of Bithynia, so he doesn't fit into the Herod narrative.

Descriptions of Roman census taking does not fit with the idea of Joseph and Mary leaving their home in Nazareth.

and none of this from Logicman fits in with the "non-Biblical sources" for this thread
 
Somerville said:
NO, we do not have any "historical account in the Gospel of Luke"
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Yeah, we most certainly do.

Somerville said:
William Ramsey (d. 1916) was a British chemist and a True Believer - an apologist, like many others who seem quite willing to create their own versions of history.
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You've got the wrong one.

Sir William Mitchell Ramsay (15 March 1851, Glasgow –20 April 1939) was a Scottish archaeologist and New Testament scholar. By his death in 1939 he had become the foremost authority of his day on the history of Asia Minor and a leading scholar in the study of the New Testament.

William Mitchell Ramsay - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Somerville said:
Whether a census for tax purposes or for determination of property ownership, there are no records of any empire-wide action during the time in question. There would have been no such action when Herod was king so that causes a problem with the dating of the supposed birth of Jesus. Why would a thousand year old ancestor be the one to determine where a man was to register his presence? If it was for property ownership, why did Joseph and Mary end up in the barn (manger)? They had no family in Bethlehem?

Quirinius could well have fulfilled the positions covered by the word "hegemon" but from 11 to 3 BCE, he was not in Syria but instead the province of Bithynia, so he doesn't fit into the Herod narrative.

Descriptions of Roman census taking does not fit with the idea of Joseph and Mary leaving their home in Nazareth.

and none of this from Logicman fits in with the "non-Biblical sources" for this thread
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Well that's what you think. Here's what the scholar Ramsay Said:

Ramsay, a former atheist, devoted his whole life to archaeology and determined that he would disprove the Bible.

He set out for the Holy Land and decided to disprove the book of Acts. After 25 or more years (he had released book after book during this time), he was incredibly impressed by the accuracy of Luke in his writings finally declaring that ‘Luke is a historian of the first rank; not merely are his statements of fact trustworthy’ . . . ‘this author should be placed along with the very greatest of historians’ . . . ‘Luke’s history is unsurpassed in respect of its trustworthiness.’

Archaeology Verifies Bible Ch2
 
Somerville said:
What are the non-Biblical sources for the existence of Jesus of Nazareth?
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As a History related question, there are several sources available in the History section of your local library. Online searches are good enough too.
 
zyzygy said:
It would only be possible if magic was involved.
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Just because something is outside of current secular knowledge doesn't mean it must be magic. Growth, decay, transformation...it's science bitch.
 
laska said:
Just because something is outside of current secular knowledge doesn't mean it must be magic. Growth, decay, transformation...it's science bitch.
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Do you have proof of the resurrection? Forget the new age claptrap. What does it's science bitch mean?
 
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