Who claimed to have met a historical Jesus ?, page 5

Originally posted by Kapyong
Like I said - we DO have many books from that period describing many people.

Yeah, and the vast majority of written records from that era are works which were comissioned by significant persons: rulers, conquerers, and otherwise rich and influential people who patronised scribes to relate their "great deeds", or make a record of significant histoical events, or for book-keeping/accounting/taking stock.

Like I said, people who could write and who had money to burn on vellum and parchment were few when compared to the masses of illiterate and poor of that era.

Originally posted by Kapyong
And,
we DO have quite a few books from Christians.

So why do NONE of them claim to have met Jesus?
Nor Mary, nor Joseph etc.

I don't know the answer to this. It's been 2000 years. Looking at it rationally, it is far more likely that any such written testament would be lost, rather than survive to the 21st century. The fact that the many original manuscripts we DO have concerning Jesus have survived (including parts of the Dead Sea scrolls of Qumran) is quite mindboggling.

Ask yourself this: Why do we not have any accounts of people who met Genghis Khan? He was far more significant in his time than Jesus. In the first century AD, Jesus was little more than a cult leader and a criminal in the eyes of the majority of his contemporaries. Genghis Khan was, in his own lifetime, the greatest conquerer that the world had ever known. The lack of eyewitness testimony of Genghis Khan is FAR more bizarre than the lack of one relating to Jesus.

And why would anyone write about Mary and Joseph at the time, and why would you reasonably expect those writings to be passed on generation through generation for 2000 years? That doesn't make sense at all.

Originally posted by Kapyong
This was the founder of the religion, and no-one met him ?!

You'd think accounts of meeting Jesus (or Mary) would make a Christian highly influential (we DO see forged claims like this,) but all we have is STORIES from unknown hands, and CLAIMS and BELIEFS of people who met Jesus.

Again, you are looking at this through 21st century eyes. The significance of Christianity as a world-changing phenomenon was certainly not known in the early years of the first century. The cult was unsanctioned, underground, and at times downright illegal. Having met Jesus actually made life very dangerous for people, rather than lift them in the social order. So it is actually the reverse of what you said, in my opinion.

Remember, Jesus himself was only really significant to those who regarded him as the Messiah and Son of God, and as I have already said, most of those were common folk. Tacitus and Pliny (two ancient secular historicans) only make note of him as the leader of a criminal cult, not the Son of God, obviously.

Originally posted by Kapyong
Jude, James, 1&2 Peter, 1,2,3 John - all forged by unknown people who never met Jesus.

Forged? Huh? Just because an author's lineage, context and historicity are not verified doesn't necessarily make a document "forged". Unless you know something I don't, of course.

Enthusiastic Christians over the years have tried to attribute various books to various Biblical personalities, but modern scholarship has debunked a lot of it.

Originally posted by Kapyong
But not one single Christian ever met Jesus - how do you explain that ?

Not one single authentic claim to have met Jesus even by Christians !

Not one single Christian that we know and whose written testimony has survived 2000 years. Correct.

Again, I refer you to the Genghis Khan example for context. HE had access to plenty of money for scribes (as opposed to Jesus' fishermen) and accounts related to Genghis would have only had to survive for 800 years - much less time. It is far more unlikely a situation that we have no eyewitness accounts of him as a historical person.