Evidence for Jesus : NT Biblical and Other

What Evidence is There for Jesus Outside the Bible?
The Veritas Forum | 31.XII.2012
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JllnhlGyUw4

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Hans-Georg Lundahl

0:40 "any more than I regard the Odyssey or the Iliad or the epic of Gilgamesh as history"

I actually do count them as history. Somewhat garbled in detail, but history.

Also seen through the wrong theological lense.

Utnapishtim being immortal and Gilgamesh paying a visit, that is a lie. By the way, according to the epic, I think the one man who says this happened was Gilgamesh himself.

Just as the one man who says Hercules went to the Hesperides or the Netherworld was Hercules himself.

And for Ulysses blinding Polypheme, Ulysses himself.

But I think Ulysses was around Troy when it was destroyed, and came back after many years to Penelope. That's historic insofar as many people were around when it happened, even if it took some centuries before Homer made a poem of it.

I also think Gilgamesh mourning over Enkidu and having to get to terms with being mortal is historic.

Unlike Gilgamesh, Ulysses need not have lied about Polypheme. But Utnapishtim being immortal was a lie, why, because we have a more reliable version saying Noah died 350 years after the Flood.

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Hans-Georg Lundahl

1:25 I wonder what the historians of Nero's time thought of Christianity.

They are lost and are preserved only in fragments, where Tacitus and the rest quote them.

Considering how totalitarian Rome was, most probably, seeing its own preserved historians, ending with Velleius Paterculus in 16th year of Tiberius (and not daring to say much of Tiberius) and Tacitus taking up the thread in Agricola "remember Domitian? no one dared say anything back then" ... it could be, they were destroyed personally and in their writings for being too pro-Christian.

Andrew Trout

Good point! I don't think writings that simply mentioned the historical facts surrounding Jesus's life and ministry would've been considered 'pro-Christian' though. If anything, if the Romans believed there were easily debunkable facts about biblical authorship or Jesus's life, they would've probably written more about it!

Unfortunately, the lack of textual evidence makes it look like this wasn't the case :( It looks like the Romans weren't concerned with the scriptural claims of Christianity, simply with crushing it in the same way they'd crushed previous threats.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@Andrew Trout You are forgetting the black out of contemporary history from year 16 of Tiberius (in a sense even from year one of Tiberius, since that last passage in Velleius Paterculus can hardly classify as history, it is pep talk) to the death of Domitian.

The Roman writers left from this era who did narrative history of contemporary events are Matthew, Mark and Luke.

What Labienus may have written is not known.

What Marcus Cluvius Rufus may have written on this topic is not known.

Memnon of Heraclea is too early.

Livy wrote ancient history which was lots safer.

What Gaius Licinius Mucianus thought of Christianity is not known, unless he be identic to the Christian martyr Mucian.

What Seneca the Elder's history (up to almost his own death) wrote of Christians is not known.

Thallus recorded - in a now lost work - the noon darkness on Good Friday, and Christians have rightly observed he was wrong in believing it was an eclipse. Jewish Easter happened close to full moon. Eclipses happen at new moon. But mainly, the work of Thallus is lost.

Most of Thallus, like all what is preserved of Livy, like all of Plutarch is ancient history (Plutarch's closest were Caesar and perhaps Augustus).

Bruttedius Niger's work is not preserved.

Claudius has very little preserved:

• Claudius' Letter to the Alexandrians
• Lyons tablet
  • Extract from first half of the Lyons Tablet
  • Second half of the Lyons Tablet
  • Tacitus' version of the Lyons Tablet speech
• Edict confirming the rights of the people of Trent. Full Latin text here.

So, his preserved works are letters, speeches and edicts to Alexandria, Lyons and Trent.

Not his historical work.

What we do know of Roman history outside Palestine from sources who lived in parts of 1st C other than St Luke on Acts, we have basically from very late authors quoting these - after speaking of Christianity had already become highly imprudent.

Andrew Trout

@Hans-Georg Lundahl

Wow, that was a crazy good history lesson! Good stuff, you don't learn stuff this good from a textbook :D

Out of interest, are you referring to Matthew, Mark and Luke in terms of the names ascribed to them by later church sources, or is there genuine evidence it was the actual Matthew, Mark and Luke (the eyewitnesses, if you will) that wrote these texts?

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@Andrew Trout Luke wasn't an eyewitness, he interviewed such.

He was, though, an eyewitness to St Paul in latter part of Acts (including, probably starting at, when he could tell the boy who had fallen from window was dead, and then St Paul raised him).

I take the tradition of the Church as sufficient evidence.

Tradition about authorship is our main evidence about authorship and should be respected unless there is very good reason to doubt it.

"Wow, that was a crazy good history lesson! Good stuff, you don't learn stuff this good from a textbook :D"

That's where wikipedia and in general internet certainly helps.

Look up the category 1st C historians:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:1st-century_historians

Andrew Trout

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Fair enough, didn't the church attribute the authorship of said texts several centuries after they were written though? I thought (from basic reading on Wikipedia, which helped :P ) that the traditional authorship of the synoptic gospels was rejected by most modern scholars? Also, surely just assuming traditional authorship to be true is, at the very least, not the degree of evidence to which one might require for providing convincing proof of Christianity?

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@Andrew Trout " I thought (from basic reading on Wikipedia, which helped :P ) that the traditional authorship of the synoptic gospels was rejected by most modern scholars?"

All non-Christian ones.

"didn't the church attribute the authorship of said texts several centuries after they were written though?"

No such "attribution event" recorded, and earliest mention of authorship is within c. 1 century of Synoptics (traditional date) and within 50 years from Fourth Gospel.

It raises doubts on whether the John in question is the son of Zebedee, but none about his being the beloved disciple.

"Also, surely just assuming traditional authorship to be true is, at the very least, not the degree of evidence to which one might require for providing convincing proof of Christianity?"

Traditional authorships are assumed correct until proven wrong, in more or less every other case.

If you wanted to claim Lord of the Rings was written by a hack as adaptation of three success movies by Peter Jackson, you are up against the traditional authorship assignment they were written by John Ronald Reuel Tolkien.

If you want to claim we have contracts signed at dates, the kind of paranoia some modern non-Christian scholars show about traditional authorship of Gospels would be parallelled in saying the contracts between Tolkien and Unwin could be forgeries.

But preserving a piece of material evidence is standard routine in tradition, but loosing that piece of material evidence after centuries doesn't overturn it.

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Hans-Georg Lundahl

2:00 Looking up, yes, Josephus actually does name Jesus.

Wiki, as it stands now, has:

"Modern scholarship has largely acknowledged the authenticity of the reference in Book 20, Chapter 9, 1 of the Antiquities to 'the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James'"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josephus_on_Jesus

It is rather Celsus, I think, who only says Chrestos ...

Charlie Spider

Ah... wikipedia!

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@Charlie Spider Yes ...