Did Jesus Exist -- The Probing Mind

The Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of John. If you're looking for secular sources, you're not going to find them. No one would write about a carpenter belonging to a poor family today, though there's about 98% literacy and any Tom, Dick and Harry can get a book published, much less 2000 years ago. Nor would anyone write about just another Jewish teacher whose ministry lasting an entire 3 and a half years before being put to death (as Jewish law dictated) for being a heretic and a false prophet. On top of that, even in the event that someone did decide to write about Him in the midst of a culture whose foundation was in an oral tradition (which means, if you look into it, that oral portrayals were scrutinized extensively and were generally accurate, especially when corroborated by over 500 eye witnesses (at least), as Christ was), the likelihood of said documents surviving to today is about as likely as you walking to work, finding a winning lottery ticket, going to claim it, and finding yet another winning lottery ticket. Manuscripts do not have a high shelf life, and most of what we know of history has come through second or third hand credible accounts.

What you ask for is ludicrous, and I suspect you know it. If you don't, but you accept any history as true, or beyond 50/50 from before 1600 AD, you are not seeking the truth, you are seeking justification for an opinion that has no basis in fact.

jj, matthew and john aren't contemporary to even the latest proposed life of "jesus"
unless you can prove otherwise

also, "jesus" wasn't supposedly just some poor carpenter
he was a poor carpenter that claimed to be the son of god, travelled around preaching a message that included that fact, and got enough people angry at him that he was killed for his message

but we're off topic

[edit on 2/18/07 by madnessinmysoul]

Originally posted by madnessinmysoul
but we're off topic

So you say...

jj, matthew and john aren't contemporary to even the latest proposed life of "jesus"
unless you can prove otherwise

Eye witness accounts aren't considered contemporary in your opinion? So what, it has to be something written in the year 32 AD, around 3:15 PM CST by Bruce Giglio using a blue felt tip pen on legal sized paper while the sun shone through a cloud at such an angle as to cause the shadow of a leaf on a tree 40 feet away to writhe on the word he was writing exactly 43 seconds after beginning?

I mean, seriously, be honest with yourself. You ask for evidence, and it is presented. You ask for a case to be made against the article you linked to, and it is presented. You state, rather than refuting the evidence presented, that it doesn't match your new criteria, and you narrow the scope. It is yet again presented, so you state it doesn't match your newest criteria, and you narrow the scope yet again.

You're not looking for truth, you're looking to pacify your ego in the same way junior high bullies try to build themselves up by tearing others down, all the while too insecure with themselves to be able to step back and take a long hard look at reality for fear of what they might discover.

Originally posted by junglejake

So you say...

oops, wrong thread for that one...

jj, matthew and john aren't contemporary to even the latest proposed life of "jesus"
unless you can prove otherwise

Eye witness accounts aren't considered contemporary in your opinion? So what, it has to be something written in the year 32 AD, around 3:15 PM CST by Bruce Giglio using a blue felt tip pen on legal sized paper while the sun shone through a cloud at such an angle as to cause the shadow of a leaf on a tree 40 feet away to writhe on the word he was writing exactly 43 seconds after beginning?

matthew and john the evangelists aren't eye witnesses
there's no evidence to show that they were

You're not looking for truth, you're looking to pacify your ego in the same way junior high bullies try to build themselves up by tearing others down, all the while too insecure with themselves to be able to step back and take a long hard look at reality for fear of what they might discover.

why are you resorting to name calling?

all i want is a source that is commonly accepted as contemporary
i've met multitudes of biblical scholars (yes, i actually seek out other viewpoints actively) that say that it is highly unlikely that any of the gospels were written by the eyewitnesses
they actually say that it would be more likely that they're secondary sources due to a few select inconsistencies

I was going to start a new thread on this, but I remembered I had created this ages ago.

So let's look at the burden of proof: find a few contemporary texts that cite the existence of one Jesus (Yesu, Yeshua, etc) in the area preaching what he is supposed to have preached according to the Bible.

It doesn't seem to have been met yet.