Freethinker (General)

by Balance_Maintained , U.S.A., Thursday, December 09, 2010, 04:51 (4908 days ago) @ George Jelliss

You mean no evidence like:-Tacitus (56-117AD) a senator and Roman historian wrote in his Annals rather deogatively about the Christians and specifically about Jesus as the Christ ('Christus'):
>"Nero fastened the guilt of starting the blaze and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians [Chrestians] by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular."-or-Josephus (37-100AD) was a Jewish historian (not a Roman), but, like Paul, had Roman Citizenship. There has been some controversy regarding Josephus' inclusion of this passage, mostly by sceptics and atheists wanting to 'disprove' the existence of Christ, as some sceptics claimed it was 'added' later. However, these claims have been categorically discredited by Roman scholars, as so many ancient copies of Josephus' works exist and textual criticism and the style of Latin used corrroborates Josephus' writing of this passage. In his Antiquities he wrote:
>"About this time came Jesus, a wise man, if indeed it is appropriate to call him a man. For he was a performer of paradoxical feats, a teacher of people who accept the unusual with pleasure, and he won over many of the Jews and also many Greeks. He was the Christ. When Pilate, upon the accusation of the first men amongst us, condemned him to be crucified, those who had formerly loved him did not cease to follow him, for he appeared to them on the third day, living again, as the divine prophets foretold, along with a myriad of other marvellous things concerning him. And the tribe of the Christians, so named after him, has not disappeared to this day."-or-Suetonius (69-140AD) wrote of riots that broke out as a result of Romans attacking Christians, who were then expelled from Rome by the Emperor Claudius:
>"As the Jews were making constant disturbances at the instigation of Chrestus (Christ), he (Claudius) expelled them from Rome".-or-Thallus wrote a history of the Trojan War and wrote of the earthquake that hit the area of Judaea as Jesus died - exactly as recorded in the gospels at the same time:
>"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."-or-Celsus (Greek: Κέλσος) was a 2nd century Greek philosopher and opponent of Early Christianity. He is known for his literary work, The True Word (Account, Doctrine or Discourse) (Λόγος Ἀληθής), preserved by Origen. This work is the earliest known comprehensive attack on Christianity.
Celsus explained that Jesus came from a Jewish village in the Holy Land. Jesus' mother was a poor Jewish girl. This girl's husband, who was a carpenter by trade, drove her away because of her adultery with a Roman soldier named Panthera (i.32)]. She gave birth to the bastard Jesus. In Egypt, Jesus became learned in sorcery and upon his return made himself out to be a god. Celsus confirmed the Historicity of Jesus but not the Virgin birth. Celsus also confirmed what the Talmud said about Jesus.[1]-There are many such references, including a recently discovered one that concerns James, the disciple, and is being translated by Robert Eisenman. By his books if you want a good, detailed criticism of historical Christ. All of this has no bearing on questions of his divinity or any other such, but there is quite a bit of evidence that the man actually existed.