Jesus--Fact or Fiction??

[Mike Cl]

Newton, for your fun and edification--Josephus and his Testimonium:

Passage 1: the "Testimonium Flavianum"
In Book 18, Chapter 3, Paragraph 3 of the Antiquities of the Jews (written ca. 93-94 CE), Josephus writes (Whiston’s translation):[2][3]

Now, there was about this time, Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man, for he was a doer of wonderful works â€" a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over him both many of the Jews, and many of the Gentiles. He was [the] Christ; and when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal man amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him, for he appeared to them alive again the third day, as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him; and the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct to this day.

Is the Testimonium Flavianum authentic? There are several reasons to think not some of which have been pointed out since the 1600s:[4]

Scholarly consensus: Most scholars admit that at least some parts, if not all, of this paragraph, cannot be authentic,[5][6] and some are convinced that the entire paragraph is an interpolation inserted by Christians at a later time.[7][8][9][10] Duke University Professor E.P. Sanders, a New Testament scholar, argues that the uninterpolated Josephus said that Jesus died by crucifixion[11]. Even Christian scholars consider the paragraph to be an overenthusiastic forgery,[12][13][14] and even the Catholic Encyclopedia concurs.[15] Finally, everyone who is saying some part of "Testimonium Flavianum" is genuine is ignoring examinations younger than 10 years old and in some cases using data from 50 years ago.[16]
Context: This paragraph breaks the flow of the chapter. Book 18 (“Containing the interval of 32 years from the banishment of Archelus to the departure from Babylon”) starts with the Roman taxation under Cyrenius in 6 CE and discusses various Jewish sects at the time, including the Essenes and a sect of Judas the Galilean, to which he devotes three times more space than to Jesus; Herod’s building of various cities, the succession of priests and procurators, and so on. Chapter 3 starts with sedition against Pilate, who planned to slaughter all the Jews but changed his mind. Pilate then used sacred money to supply water to Jerusalem. The Jews protested; Pilate sent spies into Jewish ranks with concealed weapons, and there was a great massacre. Then in the middle of all these troubles comes the curiously quiet paragraph about Jesus, followed immediately by: “And about the same time another terrible misfortune confounded the Jews ...” Josephus would not have thought the Christian story to be “another terrible misfortune.” It is only a Christian (someone like Eusebius) who might have considered Jesus to be a Jewish tragedy. Paragraph three can be lifted out of the text with no damage to the chapter; in fact, it flows better without it.[17]
Lack of citation: Then there is the issue of how many people do not mention it even when it would have been in their best interests to do so: Justin Martyr (ca. 100 â€" ca. 165), Theophilus (d. 180), Irenaeus (ca. 120 â€" ca. 203), Clement of Alexandria (ca. 150 â€" ca. 215), Origen (ca. 185 â€" ca. 254), Hippolytus (ca. 170 â€" ca. 235), Minucius Felix (d. c250), Anatolius (230 â€" 280), Chrysostom (ca. 347 â€" 407), Methodius (9th century), and Photius (ca. 820 â€" 891). There are many places in Origen's Against Celsus where he should have mentioned such a passage but didn't.[18]
Structure: Structurally there is much wrong with the passage.[19][20] Josephus doesn't explain things as he does in passages of other would be messiahs.(see Jona Lendering's Messiah (overview) for examples of the amount of detail Josephus gives… even to Athronges, the shepherd of 4 BCE who Josephus says "had been a mere shepherd, not known by anybody." and yet had enough to give us far more details then is seen in the Jesus passage. Things such as what deeds Jesus did and to what Jesus won over people are missing.[21]
Similarity to the Bible: There is a 19 point unique correspondence between this passage and Luke's Emmaus account.[22][23]
"Christ": The term "Christ" only appears in the Testimonium Flavianum and in a later passage regarding James “brother of Jesus” (see below). But the purpose of the work was to promote Vespasian as the Jewish Messiah (i.e., 'Christ'), so why would Josephus, a messianic Jew, use the term only here? Moreover, the Greek word used here is the same as in the Old Testament, but to Josephus' Roman audience it would mean 'the ointment' rather than 'anointed one', resulting in many a Roman scratching their head in befuddlement.[24]
Location: Josephus was in Rome from 64 to 66 CE to petition emperor Nero for the release of some Jewish priest that Gessius Florus sent there in chains.[25] Josephus makes no mention of the further misfortune of Jesus' followers that Tacitus and Suetonius record. If the Testimonium Flavianum was genuine in any way, Josephus certainly would have mentioned the further misfortune of Jesus followers under Nero, since he was right there in Rome for two years when it was supposedly going on. So either the Testimonium Flavianum is a forgery, or the Tacitus and Suetonius accounts are urban myth â€" both sets of accounts cannot be true.

[Newtonian]

Mike - appreciate you posts - I will respond another time (likely tomorrow) - please be patient.

trdf- On to the 3rd creative day - Genesis 1:9 (NW) -

Then God said: “Let the waters under the heavens be collected together into one place, and let the dry land appear.”

So when dry land first appeared there was only one ocean.   Some scientists think at this time (whenever that was) most or all of earth's land were in one continent which later separated according to continental drift models.

The account then says land plants are created.   Note that the star we call Sun is a part of the heavens created initially in Genesis 1:1 but that earth was initially dark (Genesis 1:2) and then the terminator (a circular line - which means earth must be a sphere) was formed (likely first fuzzy).   

Some who read snippets from Genesis 1 without studying it Biblically and scientifically [remember my user name] think the sun was created after this - however, clearly the sun was created in the beginning.   (Note: the Hebrew definite article is not present in Genesis 1:1 - it can also be translated "in a beginning."

We do not know how the early earth's waters were being accreted for those milleniums or much longer.   But it may be that the 'belts' did not cover the entire earth but may have been somewhere between Venus and Saturn - i.e. belts but more massive than Saturn's rings.   At any rate, these belts either became more transparent or separated so that a clear disc of the sun began to appear - enough solar radiation for some plants.

[note this is abbreviated]

The 4th creative day - Genesis 1:14-19

Genesis 1:16,17 -

(NW) And God went on to make the two great luminaries, the greater luminary for dominating the day+ and the lesser luminary for dominating the night, and also the stars.+ 17 Thus God put them in the expanse of the heavens to shine upon the earth

Note the preceding context refers to earth's atmosphere as 'heaven."   Simply, the sun, moon and stars appeared (gradually) in the sky - they had been created billions of years earlier.    Also note that the Hebrew imperfect verb state is being used = action in progress, not yet complete.

1984 NW reference edition for Gen.1:16 -

And God proceeded to make* the two great luminaries, the greater luminary for dominating the day and the lesser luminary for dominating the night, and also the stars.

"proceeded to make" is in the Hebrew imperfect verb state.   Also the Hebrew word for "make" is different than the Hebrew word for "created" in Genesis 1:1 - see our NW ref. footnote here:

https://wol.jw.org/en/wol/fn/r1/lp-e/1001060004/6

"Footnote
“And . . . proceeded to make.” Heb., wai·yaʹʽas (from ʽa·sahʹ). Different from “create” (ba·raʼʹ) found in vss 1, 21, 27; 2:3. Progressive action indicated by the imperfect state. See App 3C."

OK, there is MUCH more, but I am tired (congestive heart failure = fatigue).   Please be patient, I will respond to your other 'cherries" later!

[trdsf]

And all of which was beside the point anyway.  A historical Jeshua bar-Joseph is only that.  It proves nothing about his alleged divinity.  Roman, Chinese and Japanese emperors, Inca rulers, and Egyptian pharaohs were all worshiped as gods -- and there's a lot more historical evidence for most of them than there is for Jesus.  For that matter, Prince Philip of England is worshiped as a god by a cargo cult in Vanuatu and Mother Theresa is worshiped as a Hindu goddess by some people in Kolkata -- and I know she exists, I shook hands with her.

Mere existence is not proof of divinity.

[trdsf]

Wow, what epic nonsense.  Genesis 1:16 clearly states that's when the sun and moon were supposedly created; Genesis 1:10-12 clearly talks about the creation of the earth and plants.

You are not a literalist, you are engaged in interpretation.

[Mike Cl]

Another aspect to this bibical interpretation and trying to divine the first author's intent or words.  Is that not a strange way for a Creator of the Universe to be acting?  I mean, he creates the universe and then this world and it's people.  Since he knows all and can see all, surely he knows the languages of his creation.  Why, it would be such an easy thing for him to create his 'word' in all the languages that are and will be and to then sprinkle them around the areas those people would be.  And to word his 'word' in such a way as to be obvious his intent.  Yet that did not happen.  If, for example, a bible was found in say, Brazil written in the native language and another in China written in their native language and another in Germany written in their native language all dating to roughly the same time frame, I would believe there was/is a god and would follow that 'word' to the letter. 

But what do we have now?  If one were to assign a different color to each and every religion of the world and then reflect that on a globe, we would have a globe of patches of different colors.  So, the geographical place of birth is the greatest determiner of one's religion--not the content or message of the religions of the world.  It is easy to see that religion is a product of ones geography and not any particular message.  It is clearly man made. 

[Gregory]

If Jesus was a real person, what of it?  He's dead now.

[Mike Cl]

If Jesus was a real person, what of it?  He's dead now.

No he's not--he's alive in heaven. 

[Baruch]

No he's not--he's alive in heaven.

Scottsdale AZ ... damn!

[aitm]

Then God said: “Let the waters under the heavens be collected together into one place, and let the dry land appear.”

and then states there was water above the firmament and water below.
Fact is the babble says the sky is water. No two ways about it.
Once the first bullshit is exposed the rest is ignored as the same. The babble is exactly that....babble.

[Baruch]

and then states there was water above the firmament and water below.
Fact is the babble says the sky is water. No two ways about it.
Once the first bullshit is exposed the rest is ignored as the same. The babble is exactly that....babble.

Humpty Dumpty was an English-Irish lord, not an egg.

[Newtonian]

Newton, for your fun and edification--Josephus and his Testimonium:

Passage 1: the "Testimonium Flavianum"
In Book 18, Chapter 3, Paragraph 3 of the Antiquities of the Jews (written ca. 93-94 CE), Josephus writes (Whiston’s translation):[2][3]

Now, there was about this time, Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man, for he was a doer of wonderful works â€" a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over him both many of the Jews, and many of the Gentiles. He was [the] Christ; and when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal man amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him, for he appeared to them alive again the third day, as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him; and the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct to this day.

Is the Testimonium Flavianum authentic? There are several reasons to think not some of which have been pointed out since the 1600s:[4]

Scholarly consensus: Most scholars admit that at least some parts, if not all, of this paragraph, cannot be authentic,[5][6] and some are convinced that the entire paragraph is an interpolation inserted by Christians at a later time.[7][8][9][10] Duke University Professor E.P. Sanders, a New Testament scholar, argues that the uninterpolated Josephus said that Jesus died by crucifixion[11]. Even Christian scholars consider the paragraph to be an overenthusiastic forgery,[12][13][14] and even the Catholic Encyclopedia concurs.[15] Finally, everyone who is saying some part of "Testimonium Flavianum" is genuine is ignoring examinations younger than 10 years old and in some cases using data from 50 years ago.[16]
Context: This paragraph breaks the flow of the chapter. Book 18 (“Containing the interval of 32 years from the banishment of Archelus to the departure from Babylon”) starts with the Roman taxation under Cyrenius in 6 CE and discusses various Jewish sects at the time, including the Essenes and a sect of Judas the Galilean, to which he devotes three times more space than to Jesus; Herod’s building of various cities, the succession of priests and procurators, and so on. Chapter 3 starts with sedition against Pilate, who planned to slaughter all the Jews but changed his mind. Pilate then used sacred money to supply water to Jerusalem. The Jews protested; Pilate sent spies into Jewish ranks with concealed weapons, and there was a great massacre. Then in the middle of all these troubles comes the curiously quiet paragraph about Jesus, followed immediately by: “And about the same time another terrible misfortune confounded the Jews ...” Josephus would not have thought the Christian story to be “another terrible misfortune.” It is only a Christian (someone like Eusebius) who might have considered Jesus to be a Jewish tragedy. Paragraph three can be lifted out of the text with no damage to the chapter; in fact, it flows better without it.[17]
Lack of citation: Then there is the issue of how many people do not mention it even when it would have been in their best interests to do so: Justin Martyr (ca. 100 â€" ca. 165), Theophilus (d. 180), Irenaeus (ca. 120 â€" ca. 203), Clement of Alexandria (ca. 150 â€" ca. 215), Origen (ca. 185 â€" ca. 254), Hippolytus (ca. 170 â€" ca. 235), Minucius Felix (d. c250), Anatolius (230 â€" 280), Chrysostom (ca. 347 â€" 407), Methodius (9th century), and Photius (ca. 820 â€" 891). There are many places in Origen's Against Celsus where he should have mentioned such a passage but didn't.[18]
Structure: Structurally there is much wrong with the passage.[19][20] Josephus doesn't explain things as he does in passages of other would be messiahs.(see Jona Lendering's Messiah (overview) for examples of the amount of detail Josephus gives… even to Athronges, the shepherd of 4 BCE who Josephus says "had been a mere shepherd, not known by anybody." and yet had enough to give us far more details then is seen in the Jesus passage. Things such as what deeds Jesus did and to what Jesus won over people are missing.[21]
Similarity to the Bible: There is a 19 point unique correspondence between this passage and Luke's Emmaus account.[22][23]
"Christ": The term "Christ" only appears in the Testimonium Flavianum and in a later passage regarding James “brother of Jesus” (see below). But the purpose of the work was to promote Vespasian as the Jewish Messiah (i.e., 'Christ'), so why would Josephus, a messianic Jew, use the term only here? Moreover, the Greek word used here is the same as in the Old Testament, but to Josephus' Roman audience it would mean 'the ointment' rather than 'anointed one', resulting in many a Roman scratching their head in befuddlement.[24]
Location: Josephus was in Rome from 64 to 66 CE to petition emperor Nero for the release of some Jewish priest that Gessius Florus sent there in chains.[25] Josephus makes no mention of the further misfortune of Jesus' followers that Tacitus and Suetonius record. If the Testimonium Flavianum was genuine in any way, Josephus certainly would have mentioned the further misfortune of Jesus followers under Nero, since he was right there in Rome for two years when it was supposedly going on. So either the Testimonium Flavianum is a forgery, or the Tacitus and Suetonius accounts are urban myth â€" both sets of accounts cannot be true.

This is why I said one of the Josephus quotes is considered spurious by some - as our literature pointed out.   I posted other evidence on this.  What do you think of those points and why?

A good link summarizing some of the historical evidence is found in our article entitled "Did Jesus really exist?" - here:

https://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/102016164?q=Tacitus&p=par

This includes Tacitus; Suetonius, Pliny the younger, a different quote of Josephus (Jewish Antiquities, XX, 200.), and the Talmud.

I hope to post more research from the Jewish (anti-Jesus) toledot Yeshu.  Here is one link I will be studying:

https://judaic.princeton.edu/about-us/resources/toledot-yeshu

An excerpt:

"The Book of the Life of Jesus (in Hebrew Sefer Toledot Yeshu) presents a chronicle of Jesus from a negative and anti-Christian perspective. It ascribes to Jesus an illegitimate birth, a theft of the Ineffable Name, heretic activities, and finally, a disgraceful death. Perhaps for centuries, the Toledot Yeshu circulated orally until it coalesced into various literary forms. Although the dates of these written compositions remain obscure, some early hints of a Jewish counter history of Jesus can be found in the works of Christian authors of Late Antiquity, such as Justin, Celsus, and Tertullian. Around 600 CE, some fragments of Jesus’ biography made their way into the Babylonian Talmud; and in 827, the archbishop Agobard of Lyon attests to a sacrilegious story of Jesus that circulated among Jews."

One of the charges of Jesus' Jewish enemies was that Jesus uttered the "ineffable name."   This charge is true, as attested to in John 17:6,26.   The Divine Name is found nearly 7,000 times in the Hebrew Scriptures including the Psalms which were sacred songs sung by faithful Jews - clearly faithful Jews uttered the Divine Name - but apostate Jews considered this to be blasphemous!

[Baruch]

This is a Jewish thing, arguing over copies of old books, that are copies of copies, not originals.  The Christians and Muslims took it up from them.  But direct experience of G-d is the thing.  When you meet a poor person, a prisoner, the indigent .. do you react with courtesy and support?  Jesus clearly states this principle. Jesus didn't argue over texts.  When you treat those people well, people who don't deserve it (social stigma) then you are god-like to them.

[Newtonian]

and then states there was water above the firmament and water below.
Fact is the babble says the sky is water. No two ways about it.
Once the first bullshit is exposed the rest is ignored as the same. The babble is exactly that....babble.

The sky is water?   Who teaches that?  The visible sky involves earth's atmosphere which was between the waters above and below.

Not anymore, btw.   This was in earlier stages of the accretion of water by planet earth. 

[Newtonian]

This is a Jewish thing, arguing over copies of old books, that are copies of copies, not originals.  The Christians and Muslims took it up from them.  But direct experience of G-d is the thing.  When you meet a poor person, a prisoner, the indigent .. do you react with courtesy and support?  Jesus clearly states this principle. Jesus didn't argue over texts.  When you treat those people well, people who don't deserve it (social stigma) then you are god-like to them.

First of all, there are more ancient manuscripts of the Bible than for any other ancient book.

Secondly - have you researched manuscript family genealogy?   Or how careful the copyists were?   There are specific minor errors which carried down to copies of those copies.   By studying these we can trace the origin/original. 

When all of the thousands of manuscripts agree, we can be sure of the original.  it does help, btw, that Jesus and his followers quoted the Hebrew Scriptures in the Christian Greek Scriptures but usually from the Greek Septuagint translation which was made in the 2nd century BCE.

An example is the removal of the Divine name which is found in the original Hebrew nearly 7,000 times.   The Septuagint after the 3rd century CE have Greek kyrios/lord substituting for the Divine Name.   However, all manuscripts of the LXX (= Septuagint) from before and during Jesus' time have the Divine Name - usually written in Hebrew.

Note: many Bible names contain the Divine Name in either the prefix or suffix.   The long form prefix Jeho (e.g. Jehoshua) and the shorter forms Je (In Jesus, Jeshua) and Jo (in Joshua and John) are examples.   The last letters of Jehovah are in many Bible names ending in "ah" like Jeremiah and Isaiah.

[Baruch]

Bible is irrelevant for religion.  Same as the Quran and other scriptures.  If G-d is alive, here and now, well and good.  If G-d was alive in the past or will be alive in the future, then G-d is irrelevant.  Really religious people make this common mistake.  Scripture can inspire, particularly for the bibliolaters.  But giving water to a man with thirst ... that is G-d in person.  And anyone can do this, even the atheists.