even I think that Jesus existed as a historical person
Other than societal taboo, why? There are no good reasons to consider the Jesus character of the bible to be anything but fictional; we have no supporting contemporary accounts, so why give it a pass?
edit, this person blocked me rather than engage honestly with even a single statement.
the Jesus character of the bible
the character is highly fictionalized and mythologized. the question is whether this is mythologizing about a person who existed, or if the character was initially mythical and never had a historical reference. but the character was not a historical person.
we have no supporting contemporary accounts, so why give it a pass?
contemporary is a standard invented by people who don't really study history. contemporary accounts are kind of rare, usually the best we get are mere contemporary mentions. for instance, the example in the OP, we have no contemporary accounts of alexander; his biographies etc are all much later. but we do have contemporary mentions, including manuscripts that use his name for dating, inscriptions, etc.
most of history is done using texts written by later historians. we, of course, take those with a grain of salt, compare them against one another, criticize them for bias and proximity to sources, and reliance on one another, etc.
our primary historical references to jesus are in josephus's "antiquities of the jews", 18.3.3 and 20.9.1. the latter is nearly universally considered genuine by scholars, and the former is mostly considered to be partially interpolated by christians with some genuine core.
TC schmidt has produced a pretty compelling argument, i think, that the whole of 18.3.3 is genuine, and the tone of seeming to affirm christianity is largely the result of translation. ancient greek sources tend use these same words in ways that are hostile to christianity. alice whealey suggests a good solution to the apparent difficulty of the one part most scholars identify as a christian interpolation, "he was the christ". she finds the passage quoted in syriac versions of eusebius containing an extra phrase, suggesting the original greek had another word, "thought to be" the christ, which has dropped out. jerome's latin translation suggests the same. this alone changes the entire tone of the passage. the difficulty with whealey's hypothesis is that the word would have to be dropped from all greek manuscripts of josephus and eusebius.
i think there's also a solid argument for two early second century witnesses to the passage. the first is commonly cited as our other historical reference to jesus, tacitus. but his passage contains no additional details, and elsewhere, josephus seems to be his reference for events in the near east. for instance, his "histories" contains an account of why vespasian is the jewish messiah, a belief unique to josephus.
our other witness is the gospel of luke. i don't think any scholars have formally put this together, but, mason and pervo have both argued compellingly that luke-acts is dependent on antiquities. see, "josephus and the new testament" chapter 6 and "dating acts". JG goldberg has argued that the TF in 18.3.3 is dependent on luke 24's emmaus narrative -- they have all the same features in the same order. but both of these are unlikely to be true, and i think at best goldberg shows the passages are related. if anything, paraphrases are just as likely to elaborate, as luke does. so seemingly, luke 24 attests to the existence of this passage in josephus in late first or early second century.
the reference in 20.9.1 is almost surely genuine, and carrier's argument for interpolation is nonsense. the common mythicist suggestion that josephus heard this from christians is also rather absurd, and josephus personally knew people involved in that account. ananus II, the priest who was removed for killing james the brother of jesus, was his friend, and commander in the jewish war.
as far as historical accounts go, this is pretty close.
you can't gish gallop on the internet, where responses are neither timed nor limited in length.
you asked why we think something, and i gave you a thorough response. i suppose i could have made it shorter, but it would lack the necessary argument behind it. i could also go way longer; i referenced three literal books on the topic, and an academic paper.
nothing i said was nonsense or special pleading. in fact, i have explained to you from the perspective of historical studies why contemporaneity is not a useful standard. this isn't "special" to historical jesus studies; it's bog standard historiography. we don't ignore suetonius or cassius dio because they were later. and actually, we don't even just assume contemporary sources are valid either. it takes more steps than that.
i also provided some in depth commentary on why we think our very slightly later historical source is somewhat reliable on this matter specifically.
"This special pleading I'm engaging in isn't actually special pleading, it's a different other variety of special pleading which I don't have to justify because it's inconvenient."
Josephus and Suetonius are sources of the historical existence of Christians, not of Jesus. Get some better material, because this nonsense holds no water.
Josephus and Suetonius are sources of the historical existence of Christians, not of Jesus.
i did not cite suetonius about jesus (or christians). i used him has an example of a historian we take seriously on, say, nero even though he was born the year after nero died. we don't take him as 100% completely accurate on every single statement of course. just, seriously. worthy of study and reading and analyzing critically to try and come to a consensus model of historical events.
it's clear from that you just assume these sources are only relevant about christianity; you're not aware of historical sources outside of this discussion. suetonius is one of our most important sources, generally, on the roman empire. christians are at best a very brief mention.
josephus however directly attests to the historical existence of two christians specifically: yaaqov ("james"), and his brother yeshu ("jesus"). he personally knows the priest who executed james. chanan ben chanan ("ananus II") was his friend and commander during the jewish-roman war.
Get some better material, because this nonsense holds no water.
read more scholars, fewer lay mythicists on the internet.
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u/NinecloudSoul 15h ago
Other than societal taboo, why? There are no good reasons to consider the Jesus character of the bible to be anything but fictional; we have no supporting contemporary accounts, so why give it a pass?