If John and Jesus were relatives, the comparative analysis of both remains could bring us closer to the very genes of Christ. Perhaps this goal is unattainable: for the moment, the DNA extracted from the remains attributed to John the Baptist actually showed modern contamination.
Click Enter. Login Profile. Es En. Economy Humanities Science Technology. Multimedia OpenMind books Authors. Featured author. Reinhard H. Goethe University, Frankfurt, Germany. Latest book. Work in the Age of Data. Wright for making a challenge that brings this disparity so clearly to light. There is really only one area where evidence for Jesus is even claimed to be of a sort similar to that adduced for Tiberius — the area of biographies written by contemporaries or near contemporaries.
Note A It is sometimes claimed that the Christian Bible contains such evidence. Sometimes it is claimed that there is extrabiblical evidence as well. Let us then examine this would-be evidence. Let us consider the so-called biblical evidence first. Note B. Essentially, the NT is composed of two types of documents: letters and would-be biographies the so-called gospels. A third category of writing, apocalyptic, Note C of which the Book of Revelation is an example, also exists, but it gives no support for the historicity of Jesus.
In fact, it would appear to be an intellectual fossil of the thought-world from which Christianity sprang — a Jewish apocalypse that was reworked for Christian use.
Citation 9. The name Jesus occurs only seven times in the entire book, Christ only four times, and Jesus Christ only twice! While Revelation may very well derive from a very early period contrary to the views of most biblical scholars, who deal with the book only in its final form , the Jesus of which it whispers obviously is not a man.
He is a supernatural being. He has not yet acquired the physiological and metabolic properties of which we read in the gospels. The Jesus of Revelation is a god who would later be made into a man — not a man who would later become a god, as liberal religious scholars would have it. Thus, although Papias ca. At a minimum, this forces us to examine the gospels to see if their contents are even compatible with the notion that they were written by eye-witnesses.
We cannot even assume that each of the gospels had but one author or redactor. It is clear that the gospels of Matthew and Luke could not possibly have been written by an eye-witness of the tales they tell. Ignoring the fact that Matthew and Luke contradict each other in such critical details as the genealogy of Jesus — and thus cannot both be correct — we must ask why real eye-witnesses would have to plagiarize the entire ham-hocks-and-potatoes of the story, contenting themselves with adding merely a little gravy, salt, and pepper.
Both can be dismissed as unreliable without further cause. But what about the gospel of Mark, the oldest surviving gospel? Attaining essentially its final form probably as late as 90 CE but containing core material dating possibly as early as 70 CE, it omits, as we have seen, almost the entire traditional biography of Jesus, beginning the story with John the Baptist giving Jesus a bath, and ending — in the oldest manuscripts — with women running frightened from the empty tomb.
Stories do indeed grow with the retelling. I have claimed that the unknown author of Mark was a non-Palestinian non-disciple, which would make his story mere hearsay.
What evidence do we have for this assertion? First of all, Mark shows no first-hand understanding of the social situation in Palestine. He is clearly a foreigner, removed both in space and time from the events he alleges. For example, in Mark , he has Jesus say that if a woman divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery. Such an utterance would have been meaningless in Palestine, where only men could obtain divorce. One further evidence of the inauthenticity of Mark is the fact that in chapter 7, where Jesus is arguing with the Pharisees, Jesus is made to quote the Greek Septuagint version of Isaiah in order to score his debate point.
Unfortunately, the Hebrew version says something different from the Greek. Wells observes dryly [p. Another powerful argument against the idea that Mark could have been an eye-witness of the existence of Jesus is based upon the observation that the author of Mark displays a profound lack of familiarity with Palestinian geography.
If he had actually lived in Palestine, he would not have made the blunders to be found in his gospel. If he never lived in Palestine, he could not have been an eye-witness of Jesus. You get the point. If your only source of information is the King James Bible, you might not ever know.
The King James says this marvel occurred in the land of the Gadarenes, whereas the oldest Greek manuscripts say this miracle took place in the land of the Gerasenes. Luke, who also knew no Palestinian geography, also passes on this bit of absurdity.
But Matthew, who had some knowledge of Palestine, changed the name to Gadarene in his new, improved version; but this is further improved to Gergesenes in the King James version. By now the reader must be dizzy with all the distinctions between Gerasenes, Gadarenes, and Gergesenes.
What difference does it make? A lot of difference, as we shall see. Gerasa, the place mentioned in the oldest manuscripts of Mark, is located about 31 miles from the shore of the Sea of Galilee! Those poor pigs had to run a course five miles longer than a marathon in order to find a place to drown! Not even lemmings have to go that far. Since the only town in the vicinity of the Sea of Galilee that he knew of that started with G was Gadara, he changed Gerasa to Gadara.
But even Gadara was five miles from the shore — and in a different country. Later copyists of the Greek manuscripts of all three pig-drowning gospels Matthew, Mark, and Luke improved Gadara further to Gergesa, a region now thought to have actually formed part of the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee.
So much for the trustworthiness of the biblical tradition. According to Mark , Jesus and the boys went by way of Sidon, 20 miles north of Tyre on the Mediterranean coast! Since to Sidon and back would be 40 miles, this means that the wisest of all men walked 70 miles when he could have walked only At least they knew more than did the author of Mark!
The unreliability of the gospels is underscored when we learn that, with the possible exception of John, the first three gospels bear no internal indication of who wrote them. Can we glean anything of significance from the fourth and latest gospel, the gospel of John? Not likely! It is so unworldly, it can scarcely be cited for historical evidence. No Star of Bethlehem, no embarrassment of pregnant virgins, no hint that Jesus ever wore diapers: pure spirit from the beginning.
Moreover, in its present form, the gospel of John is the latest of all the official gospels. The gospel of John was compiled around the year CE. We also might wonder why an eye-witness of all the wonders claimed in a gospel would wait so long to write about them!
Some authors have even argued that Jesus of Nazareth was doubly non-existent, contending that both Jesus and Nazareth are Christian inventions. It is worth noting, though, that the two mainstream historians who have written most against these hypersceptical arguments are atheists: Maurice Casey formerly of Nottingham University and Bart Ehrman University of North Carolina.
Part of the popular confusion around the historicity of Jesus may be caused by peculiar archaeological arguments raised in relation to him. Recently there have been claims that Jesus was a great-grandson of Cleopatra, complete with ancient coins allegedly showing Jesus wearing his crown of thorns. It is hard to find historians who regard this material as serious archaeological data, however. The documents produced by Christian, Jewish and Roman writers form the most significant evidence.
These abundant historical references leave us with little reasonable doubt that Jesus lived and died. The more interesting question — which goes beyond history and objective fact — is whether Jesus died and lived.
What is the historical evidence that Jesus Christ lived and died? One of the most important archaeological finds that actually dates to the time of Jesus may or may not provide evidence of his existence, depending on who you ask. The Dead Sea Scrolls , a vast trove of parchment and papyrus documents found in a cave in Israel in the s, were written sometime between B.
Others argue that he could be anyone. Before Jesus was crucified, the Gospels say, Roman soldiers placed a crown of thorns on his head in a painful mockery of his sovereignty. Many Christians believe the thorny instrument of torture still exists today, albeit in pieces scattered across Europe. One near-complete crown is housed in Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. The documented history of Notre Dame's Crown of Thorns goes back at least 16 centuries — an impressive provenance — but it doesn't quite trace back to A.
Furthermore, as Nickell points out, Notre Dame's crown is a circlet of brush, and is completely devoid of thorns. The best argument in favor of Jesus as a once-living person is, of course, the Holy Bible itself.
The Synoptic Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are thought by scholars to have been written by four of Christ's disciples in the decades after his crucifixion.
There are still other Gospels, never canonized but written by near-contemporaries of Jesus all the same. Many details differ between the various accounts of his life and death, but there's also a great deal of overlap, and through centuries of careful analysis biblical scholars have arrived at a general profile of Jesus, the man.
The following description, surmised from the Gospels, would be affirmed by most history scholars, Borg told LiveScience:. Jesus was born sometime just before 4 B.
0コメント