Preserved Topic: Paul Harvey Passion review (Page 2 of 2)

I got an email which mentions some evidence (I asked my dad and he mention tacitus too) although the second sentence can hardly be counted as evidence:

quote:

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Roman historians wrote concerning the historicity of Jesus, Tactitus and Suetonius. also, the Jewish historian Josephus (37ad-?) recorded historical accounts of Jesus and his followers. Moreover, the divide of time BC and AD are perhaps the biggest testimony to his historical existience.

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Emps

The Emperor dot org

If people are interested in the arguement that Jesus never existed there is a Google directory:
http://directory.google.com/Top/Society/Religion_and_Spirituality/Opposing_Views/Christianity/Jesus/Falsified_History/

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Emps

The Emperor dot org

Damn Emps thats one crazy link

Emps, here is a link that has the info I was trying to find. As far as I can tell, these are the known non-Christian references to Christ. I wonder if it is similar to the one your dad gave you.

http://www.probe.org/docs/ancient.html

[edit] oh yeah, the second sentence in your quote is cute

. . : slicePuzzle

[This message has been edited by Bugimus (edited 01-27-2004).]

This is a very pertinent excerpt from Lee Strobel's "The Case for Christ":

quote:

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"I wanted to pick up on that theme and summarize what we had gleaned about Jesus so far from nonbiblical sources. "Let's pretend we didn't have any of the New Testament or other Christian writings," I said. "Even without them, what would we be able to conclude about Jesus from ancient non-Christian sources, such as Josephus, the Tal­mud, Tacitus, Pliny the Younger, Lucian of Samosta, Suetonius, Thallus, Phegon, Mara Bar-Serapion?"
Yamauchi smiled. "We would still have a considerable amount of important historical evidence; in fact, it would provide a kind of out­line for the life of Jesus," he said.
Then he went on, raising a finger to emphasize each point. "We would know that first, Jesus was a Jewish teacher; second, many people believed that he performed healings and exorcisms; third, some people believed he was the Messiah; fourth, he was rejected by the Jewish leaders; fifth, he was crucified under Pontius Pilate in the reign of Tiberius; sixth, despite this shameful death, his followers, who believed that he was still alive, spread beyond Palestine so that there were multitudes of them in Rome by A.D. 64; and seventh, all kinds of people from the cities and countryside?men and women, slave and free?worshiped him as God."
This was indeed an impressive amount of independent corrobora-tion. And not only can the contours of Jesus' life be reconstructed apart from the Bible, but there's even more that can be gleaned about him from material so old that it actually predates the gospels themselves. (L. Strobell, The Case for Christ)

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. . : slicePuzzle

Very interesting article about the archaeological evidence supporting the NT:
http://www.probe.org/docs/arch-nt.html

I find the mention of the darkness that was reported in the gospels following the crucifixion to be of particular interest:

quote:

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Historian Thallus wrote in 52 A.D. Although none of his texts remain, his work is cited by Julius Africanus' work, Chronography. Quoting Thallus on the crucifixion of Christ, Africanus states, "On the whole world, there pressed a most fearful darkness, and the rocks were rent by an earthquake, and many places in Judea and other districts were thrown down."{4} Thallus calls this darkness, "as appears to me without reason, an eclipse of the sun."

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This historian actually tried to offer an explanation for the event. This corroborates the event itself as mentioned in the NT.

[This message has been edited by Bugimus (edited 01-27-2004).]

I have no doubt that Jesus existed. It is quite apparant from the perspective of the drastic change in outlook at that time, that he did exist, and had some radical ideas (of course, many of them being that people simply adhere to the spirit of their religion more closely...).

While I find the quote intersting, I have a hard time calling a quote from a historian whose works we can't read regarding something that happened 50 years prior to his writing - and I don't know how long before his writings were quoted by Julius Africanus - as any sort of corroboration....