Ok christians, you keep claiming that there were "eyewitnesses" to jesus's life. If so, WHERE are they?

Question

Here was an answer from someone earlier on;
"
the 500 recorded accounts of people who saw him after his crucifiction that were recorded not only in the bible but in other works or written material "

This person is either lying through their teeth or have information that has eluded historians and scholars for centuries.
The FACT is that NO historian that lived in the time that christ is supposed to have existed in mention him at all. Not one. Further the ONLY passage who does mention him (Josephus)
has been found to be a 12th century forgery.

So if this person has credible evidence to support their comment about "500 eyewitnesses" then they should produce them. Think of the fame! You'd be able to do what NO other scholar or historian has been able to do in history; produce ONE single credible shred of evidence supporting the existence of someone called jesus (of bible fame) living in or around the 1st century.
I for one await this "evidence" eagerly.

Start with this link;
http://rationalrevolution.net/articles/jesus_myth_history.htm
And go on from there.

So, tibarbie,
your defense is that "they all died and did'nt write anything down.
Well, that's convincing evidence... *rolls eyes*

Answer 1

To "BERT" --

I couldn't e-mail you, so this is just a head's up to let you know that I've responded to your long answer to my question, "RRR Cult's Leaders are Dropping Like Flies."
Thanks.

= = = = = = = =

To the Questioner, in THIS question:

You may be AMAZED at the following information:

http://www.centuryone.com/25dssfacts.html

The Dead Sea Scrolls were written between 200 BC - 68 AD. Thus, most of them already had been written BEFORE Christ was born. Radiocarbon dating and other mthods have confirmed the age of the scrolls. Obviously, they are all of OLD Testament books... and record many things NOT in the Bible, including some prophecies.

Point #6 in that website is both fascinating and haunting! I'd LOVE to know what those prophecies predict!

Prophecy is the KEY to believing the Bible, for anyone whose faith alone may not be strong enough. Because SO MANY prophecies were made hundreds and thousands of years prior to Jesus' birth could not have been self-fulfilling. And they ALL came to pass, with NO exceptions. Bible scholars have calculated the odds against even **15 or so** of the more than 300 of them coming to pass by chance would outnumber the quantity of grains of sand on all the beaches of the whole world. By comparison, odds of winning a Powerball Jackpot would be a CINCH.

Jesus was real, all right, and He was just as the Bible portrayed him. THINK about what I presented to you in this response, and you'll realize that for yourself. Those who are truly willing to LEARN, will find the seeking of Jesus to be a very compelling process indeed.

Answer 2

There will always be people who use the word "Christian" in a generic sense. It may be an attitude about life or the way others should be treated and usually refers to leading a "good" life. Their belief has nothing to do with underlying principles of God's plan of salvation through Jesus. They may have heard the plan but have rejected it as truth. It may actually sound good to some non-Christians because they can continue to believe in the notion that their good works will outweigh their shortcomings in the end. It satisfies their need to trust only in themselves rather than coming to the understanding that faith goes beyond self and saving faith is found only in Jesus Christ.

Answer 3

While the information provided by BrotherMichael is very interesting to read, I think everyone here has missed the point - anything written 100+ years after Jesus' alleged death and ressurection is hardly an EYEWITNESS account.

I dont doubt that some guy named Jesus walked the earth, and maybe even preached this message. I do doubt his divinity.

Answer 4

Be very, very careful with the standard you are setting for someone's extant state.

For if we insist that only a contemporaneous historian can validate a person's existence, then you must, I repeat MUST strike from history several notables - including most of the Emperors of Rome including Julius Caesar, Aristotle, Plato (who knows, the Republic could be pseudepigraphic?), Cicero, and Alexander the Great.

Many of these are known ONLY - and I do mean ONLY - from Tacitus, centuries later (who incidentally, also mentions Jesus.)

You must acknowledge the non-existence of these people - or you must admit to applying a stronger test for the existence of Jesus.

By the way - this? "Further the ONLY passage who does mention him (Josephus) has been found to be a 12th century forgery."

Um, not quite. The first Flavian testimony is thought to be interpolated (i.e. a Christian-replaced edit of a still about-Jesus remark that Josephus made), but the second Flavian testimony is NOT an interpolation - Book XX of "Antiquities" is a complex tale of a priest at the temple who lost his job, shortly after having Jesus' brother James put to death. Jesus is only mentioned in passing, and it is in the midst of a tale too complex and about something too unrelated to be a forgery.

No - there is a reason that dispute of Jesus' existence only happens in pop-religion books by atheists, and is not an actual topic among actual professional historians (virtually all of whom assume there to have been some sort of historical Yeshua Bar Yusef.)

That reason is that the case for Jesus non-existence is itself non-existent.

Answer 5

Well, if you or I make facts up, we're called liars and con artists and discredited.

But if a Christian makes up facts (like this), then it's the Holy Word of God at work and only the demon devil worshippers would dare to impugn God's Own Word!

Or something like that. Whatever. It's just another mythology and like all others will eventually be relegated to the dusty shelves of history.

Answer 6

The writings of Josephus, The Talmud, Tacitus, Pliny The Younger, and other provide an entire lifeline of the life of Jesus. From their writings we can know that ...
Jesus was a Jewish teacher,
That many people believed that He performed healings and exorcisms,
That some thought He was the Messiah,
That He was rejected by the Jewish leaders.
That He was crucified under Pontius Pilate in the reighn of Tiberius.
Dispite this shameful death His followers who believed that He was still alive,
spread beyond Palistine so that there were multitudes of them in Rome by A.D.64,
All kinds of people from the cities and countryside - men and women, slave and free - worshipped Him as God.

Answer 7

most of them have been told about the josephus blurb on him and take that to mean "it's historically documented". Now that the passage in Josephus has been determined to be a forgery, you are absolutely correct...there is NOTHING that proves he ever existed outside of the bible fairy tale.

Answer 8

Some of the 500 witnesses were Jesus's Apostles,Mary His mother,Mary Magdalene. There are other early Christian writings that were and are available which existed before the bible

Answer 9

Concerning Josephus:

"Let me also just mention something about the Josephus issue. Every now an then I get an email about someone abjectly 'dismissing' the data from Josephus, without even interacting with the data and the positions of solid scholars. This is inappropriate. By far and away, the bulk of modern scholarship accepts that Josephus makes two independent references to Jesus--to argue otherwise requires the objector to dismantle the historical consensus, and this requires argumentation instead of simple assertion (and disallowance of Josephus as a witness!). One of the leading scholars, translators, and commentators on Josephus is Steve Mason. In his book on Josephus and the New Testament (Hendrickson:1992), he discusses the two references to Jesus in Josephus' writings, and concludes that "if it were needed", they would provide independent testimony to the existence of Jesus. He writes:


"Taking all of these problems into consideration, a few scholars have argued that the entire passage (the testimonium) as it stands in Josephus is a Christian forgery. The Christian scribes who copied the Jewish historian's writings thought it intolerable that he should have said nothing about Jesus and spliced the paragraph in where it might logically have stood, in Josephus' account of Pilate's tenure. Some scholars have suggested that Eusebius himself was the forger, since he was the first to produce the passage…Most critics, however, have been reluctant to go so far. They have noted that, in general, Christian copyists were quite conservative in transmitting texts. Nowhere else in all of Josephus' voluminous writings is there strong suspicion of scribal tampering. Christian copyists also transmitted the works of Philo, who said many things that might be elaborated in a Christian direction, but there is no evidence that in hundreds of years of transmission, the scribes inserted their own remarks into Philo's text. To be sure, many of the "pseudepigrapha" that exist now only in Christian form are thought to stem from Jewish originals, but in this instance it may reflect the thorough Christian rewriting of Jewish models, rather than scribal insertions. That discussion is ongoing among scholars. But in the cases of Philo and Josephus, whose writings are preserved in their original language and form, one is hard pressed to find a single example of serious scribal alteration. To have created the testimonium out of whole cloth would be an act of unparalleled scribal audacity." (p.170-171)



"Finally, the existence of alternative versions of the testimonium has encouraged many scholars to think that Josephus must have written something close to what we find in them, which was later edited by Christian hands. if the laudatory version in Eusebius and our text of Josephus were the free creation of Christian scribes, who then created the more restrained versions found in Jerome, Agapius, and Michael? The version of Agapius is especially noteworthy because it eliminates, though perhaps too neatly, all of the major difficulties in the standard text of Josephus. (a) It is not reluctant to call Jesus a man. (b) It contains no reference to Jesus' miracles. (c) It has Pilate execute Jesus at his own discretion. (d) It presents Jesus' appearance after death as merely reported by the disciples, not as fact. (e) It has Josephus wonder about Jesus' messiahship, without explicit affirmation. And (f) it claims only that the prophets spoke about "the Messiah," whoever he might be, not that they spoke about Jesus. That shift also explains sufficiently the otherwise puzzling term "Messiah" for Josephus' readers. In short, Agapius' version of the testimonium sounds like something that a Jewish observer of the late first century could have written about Jesus and his followers." (p.172)



"It would be unwise, therefore, to lean heavily on Josephus' statements about Jesus' healing and teaching activity, or the circumstances of his trial. Nevertheless, since most of those who know the evidence agree that he said something about Jesus, one is probably entitled to cite him as independent evidence that Jesus actually lived, if such evidence were needed. But that much is already given in Josephus' reference to James (Ant. 20.200) and most historians agree that Jesus' existence is the only adequate explanation of the many independent traditions among the NT writings." (p.174f)"

Other extra-Biblical references to Jesus:

* Letter from Pliny the Younger to Trajan (c. 110)
* Tacitus (Annals, c.115-120)
* A fragment of Tacitus, with implications for the existence of the "Nazarene"
* Suetonius (Lives of the Caesars, c. 125)
* Lucian (mid-2nd century)
* Galen (c.150; De pulsuum differentiis 2.4; 3.3)
* Celsus (True Discourse, c.170).
* Mara Bar Serapion (pre-200?)
* Talmudic References( written after 300 CE, but some refs probably go back to eyewitnesses)

There are other references to "Christians" in this period, but I am not concerned with those--although some would offer supporting evidence for someone named 'Christ'. For example, Marcus Aurelius (Meditations 11.3) calls the believers 'Christians', but Epictetus (Discourses 4.7.6) calls them "Galileans".

Answer 10

You will have to "await" for that evidence for eternity. Lol hehe