Historicity of Christ...

Gauracandra · February 12, 2001

“The existence of Jesus of Nazareth is available thru multiple sources [excluding the NT].”

I’m sorry Shvu this is simply not true. There is no historical evidence for the existence of Jesus outside of the New Testament.

“The Jews have a record written soon after his death, where they have written unfavorable things about Jesus.”

What do you mean by “soon” after his death. Even the New Testament (written by those who would like to document the life of Jesus) wasn’t written for 50-75 years after the events that were to have taken place. Do you know how the Bible came to be? I was watching a program on T.V. called “From Jesus to Christ” which explained the entire process. Basically, most of the books of the New Testament were scattered over hundreds of miles in the middle east. There were small clusters of Christians each with their own “version”. One group might have had “Mark” another “Luke” etc… These books were all written atleast 50-75 years after the events in question. There was the Gospel of Mary Magdelene (excluded from the final Bible), Gospel of Mark etc…. Well over 100 years after the events in question, the existing church started to gather all of these different stories from around the area spanning hundreds and hundreds of miles. They brought the stories together and decided which ones were “authentic” and which were not and put them into The Bible. The excluded ones became part of the apocrypha or simply vanished over time.

The fact is the Jews did not write about Jesus in any unfavorable way until Christianity became a force to be reckoned with. There were many Jewish people claiming to be the Messiah at the time of Jesus. But the Jews never mentioned Jesus. Some people even claim that Jesus might have been an amalgamation of various charismatic figures of the time. I don’t believe this. I accept Christ as a divine historical person.

“The Romans have an entry in their history about the prosecution of Christus, the creator of the name by Pilot.”

No they don’t. That’s the point. Scholars have searched and searched but have come up empty handed. The Romans recorded everything. They have records of every crucifixion and there is NO mention of a man named Jesus. None. Again the early Christian church was nothing amazing. It was comprised of a few people. The Romans really could have cared less about them since they were no threat to the empire. I believe Jesus Christ was crucified based on the testimony of his disciples, but they were a small group, not even worth mentioning by the Roman authorities.

“And for those who doubt the existence of jesus, there is proof, if they are willing to investigate.”

Sorry there is none. Jesus Christ never personally wrote anything. Jesus Christ never left anything behind. Again, the church was nothing when it started. Who would have recorded anything on it. No one did. Not even those who wrote their stories did for 50-75 years. It wasn’t like today where we can just hop over to the store and pick up a pad of paper and pen and write their experiences. Very few people had the access to writing materials or the talent to write down the stories.

“Yet you can not offer any more proof that Christ existed than you expect others to provide with regard to Krsna.

Sorry again...There is proof for the existence of Jesus while there is absolutely none for Krishna.”

Sorry, but there is no proof of Jesus Christ outside of the New Testament. We only have the scriptures written about him and the testimony of saints. Anything else was written long after the events in question.

“Yes, but there is a limit to how much of manipulation that the winner can introduce. If things were that way, probably the British would have ended up claiming that the Vedas were written after the Christ.”

You’re not far off the mark with that statement. As I’ll post later, the British were trying to claim that Christ was the inspiration for Krsna, and that Indians stole the idea of Avatars from the descent of Christ. I’ll post it shortly.

Gauracandra

PS Let me state that I do accept Christ as a divine historical person. And the above posting is in no way meant to offend Christians. However, it should be noted that the only evidence we have for Christ is the existence of Christians. I accept the testimony of the saints as proof of Christ’s existence. For me that’s all I need. The fact that many were willing to die and undergo persecution for their beliefs in the early church is a testimony to the power that Jesus Christ had on their lives.