Even liberal scholars now admit that the accounts of the life, death, and resurrection of Yahshua were written and distributed within thirty-five years of the events recorded in the Gospels. Tens of thousands of people who saw Yahshua were alive to read these widely distributed documents about His resurrection. These eyewitnesses did not dispute the facts of His resurrection. There is more historically verifiable evidence that Yahshua lived, died and rose from the dead, then exists to prove that Julius Caesar ever lived.
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would you care to provide this historically verifiable documentation for the existence of Jaysus?
And no, the Babble doesn't count.
The claim: Sometime around 37 CE a Jewish rabbi was killed by the Romans. At the moment of this man's death, there was a lengthy period of darkness that covered the Earth and the dead of Jerusalem rose out of their graves.
Interesting point: There is no record outside the bible that any of these events ever occurred. One would think that a three-hour eclipse would get noticed by someone, or that the streets were crawling with corpses might raise an eyebrow or two; but no, not one single solitary independent source outside the bible even takes notice of any of it. Could this be because these events never took place?
If eye witness accounts are evidence, let's see what else is proven true...
- UFOs
- ghosts
- telekinesis
- talking to the dead
Let us clarify what the scholars, religious or not, say. They say that the Gospels were written by people who never met Jesus like 35 years approximately after his death. You're right. However, since life expectancy then was much lower than now and, more importantly, Jesus was witnessed to be resurrected, ONLY BY HIS APOSTLES AND MARY MAGDALAINE, not thousands of people. Most of his contemporaries were probably dead.
These eyewitnesses did not dispute the facts of His resurrection.
If they had, do you think the church would have let those accounts survive? Of course not.
Witnesses would have been in Jerusalem. Christianity spread mostly through other parts of the Mediterranean and Asia Minor. There weren't that many Christians in Jerusalem.
Coincidence?
@Rockstar
Luke 23
44 It was now about the sixth hour, and darkness came over the whole land until the ninth hour,
45 for the sun stopped shining. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two.
Matthew 27
51 And, behold, the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom; and the earth did quake, and the rocks rent;
52 And the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept arose,
53 And came out of the graves after his resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many.
These eyewitnesses did not dispute the facts of His resurrection.
Because if they did, they'd thoughtful written down their opinions on ostraca that'd been found by archaeologists?
Actually, I do believe there is some evidence to the existence of Jesus in a historical sense, but I don't know where it is. That being said, while you may prove he was a real person, you can not prove his Resurrection.
This is a key component of faith, you can't prove it, you can only trust in it.
Josephus made one passing comment about someone who was called Yeshua that was favoured by a Jewish cult. That is the only extra-biblical evidence for his existence. Did someone called Yeshua live? Yes! I'm sure that one of the then most common names had a member who was claimed to be a prophet of the times (and there were many).
PS: If you squint your reading eyes just right and are drunk, you might find two other references (extrabiblical) to someone called Yeshua. You might also have to have a vested interest...
Well, actually, no.
I'd like to see citations, links, and scientific verification, please.
Hey, just because you and all your cronies say it, doesn't make it true.
You can talk until doomsday about eyewitnesses, but you still can't prove that your book is correct.
To summarize: Horseshit.
"Yahshua" is supposedly Jesus's Hebrew name (Joshua), but it was also the name of a popular faith healer who lived in Judea about 100 BCE. This poster is wrong about "liberal scholars" and wrong about everything else here, especially his Julius Caesar analogy (no one minted coins with "Yahshua's" face on them!), but is trying to sound like one by using the name "Yahshua" instead of the more common Jesus.
"Even liberal scholars now admit that the accounts of the life, death, and resurrection of Yahshua were written and distributed within thirty-five years of the events recorded in the Gospels."
I'm sorry, but even the most generous figures leave you with a 45+ year gap...
"Tens of thousands of people who saw Yahshua were alive to read these widely distributed documents about His resurrection." Given the average lifespan then was ~30 years, and that it was EXTREMELY rare that anyone lived past 50, I think it's quite clear that you're talking bollocks.
Oh, and Prager... since Jesus was born between 6 and 4 BCE, and since he died at (apparently) age 33, the claim is for 27-29 CE
Makes it even less believable...
The Romans and Jews were history nuts. Nothing escaped their attention. So we have this guy preaching religious non-conformism, drawing huge throngs, working miracles left and right, and rising from the dead. And not one, single, solitary person who lived at the time -- including the historians -- found any of this worthy of comment.
It isn't all that hard for me to believe that there was a real person Jesus; a traveling peasant philosopher/cult leader that went mainly unnoticed during his lifetime.
We can't completely discount the Bible as a historical document, sure it's inaccurate, porrly written at times, self-contradictory, and only partial, but the same can be said of many texts that we do accept.
Something like King Arthur; there may have been at some point a ruler that has since been mythologized, put on a pedestal, and given all kinds of attributes that are completely fanciful.
Plenty of people accept that Jesus lived. And among them, virtually all are pretty sure he died. The "rose from the dead" part is the question. For one thing, there's so much incentive to lie about such things.
Tens of thousands of people who saw Yahshua were alive to read these widely distributed documents about His resurrection. These eyewitnesses did not dispute the facts of His resurrection.
Too bad we don't have their chat logs to see what those thousands were saying
Tens of thousands of people who saw Yahshua were alive to read these widely distributed documents about His resurrection.
At a time when only a small percentage of adults knew how to read and all written records were produced by hand?
I don't think so.
Old Viking:
The Romans and Jews were history nuts. Nothing escaped their attention.
Wrong. There are large gaps in our knowledge of the early Roman empire precisely because Roman and Jewish (and Greek) historians paid no attention to a great many subjects that a modern scholar would consider essential to historiography.
Authors like Tacitus or Suetonius were primarily interested in war, politics, and the leading personalities at Rome. If they fail to mention Jesus that should surprise us no more than if a modern study of the American presidency in the nineteenth century should fail to mention Joseph Smith. As it happens, Tacitus does mention a sect of "Chrestians", but only because they were made scapegoats for the great fire in Rome in AD 64 - he has no interest in them for their own sake.
Where one might expect a mention is in Josephus, who, being a Jew himself, do care about the different strands of Judaicism. Is is well known, his "Jewish Antiquities" as they have come down to us do mention Jesus, and as is equally well known, the passage is problematic and probably tampered with by copyists. Without going into the scholarly debate surrounding this, what we certainly cannot do is to conclude that Josephus did not mention Jesus.
Okay, Sacred Name losers, it's pronounced "y?shuwah". With a schwa. An apostrophe is acceptable. "Yah" is an overcorrection for superstitious people with mystical hangups.
As for the rest of it... eh, that's been dealt with on another thread. I can't be bothered.
Confused?
So were we! You can find all of this, and more, on Fundies Say the Darndest Things!
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