How would you prove that Jesus existed?

[chakka35]

I was going to join naomi's thread about proving the existence of God, but the fact that there have been (at the time of writing) 124 answers, I'm sure that the obvious one � it's impossible � must be in there somewhere. So I'd like to ask a related question, the answering of which many Christians � and, indeed, others � will think is a doddle. (Tee, hee!)

How would you go about proving that Jesus once existed?

By 'Jesus' I mean, of course, the New Testament Jesus, not just anyone by that name, a very common one. And to save a lot of later clearing-up, you would be wise not to assume that the gospels of "Matthew" and "John" were written by the disciples of that name. Also, I don't mean any sort of deep philosophical 'proof': the sort of everyday proof that we accept for the existence of Caesar, Alexander the Great and Galileo will do.
Now for the fun�

[ludwig]

Can any of you prove that you're real and I'm not just imagining this whole thing?

[Octavius]

who said that??

[naomi24]

Spooky!

[keyplus90]

Ludwing people would not agree with you. Because these same people when dreaming would feel it 100% real. But after they are awake they would say - Oh that was only a dream. Other thing, that to convince people here you have to use difficult words and philosophical expressions.

May be that is the reason so far I have not seen anyone here being convinced, Otherwise to agree on certain things, you do not have to be a ROCKET SCIENTIST. I always say that you could be Phd, CA, MBBS, or so on, but for few things you do not need all this, you need common sense. And unfortunately you do not get a degree in common sense.

[naomi24]

How true.

[chakka35]

Octavius, you seem not to understand the question. I asked how you would prove Jesus' existence. You talk of irrefutable historical written and archeological proof. Point me to it, please.

Had I ever met any such material I would not hesitate to believe it. Why should I behave otherwise? But I haven't.
So I am asking you to supply it, please - or, at least, tell me where I can find it. Isn't that reasonable?

[chakka35]

Well, that question went down like a concrete sparrow, didn�t it? Not a single indication of how ABers would go about it , while Clanad spent a lot of energy showing how other people have tackled it.

But, Clanad, no amount of erudition by any author can add to what you and I know already. What there is to �know� about Jesus is contained in the New Testament with the addition of a couple of non-NT gospels which have no better provenance than the Big Four. Passing years and university degrees cannot add to this.

Then we get Octavius promising us �irrefutable historical, written and archaeological proof� and then, hardly surprisingly, failing to deliver.

Frankly, I�m not surprised at the paucity of the response. From long experience I know that most Christians know nothing about how their religion came about and are not interested in finding out. They hear the story at their mother�s knee and have it confirmed later by Sunday School teachers and priests. And that�s it. It rarely occurs to them to do a little probing to find out how likely the story is to be true.

Ah well, it was worth a try, I suppose�

(By the way, Octavius, I notice that you haven�t responded to my challenge at the end of my �agnostic� thread to show how God differs from those fairytale characters I often mention. Therefore I�m afraid that I shall continue to use that excellent parallel. Sorry.)

[Clanad]

In my opinion, chakka, you have your mind so made up that you are willing, as are some skeptics, to hold the evidence for Christianity to a totally different standard than the standards for reliability used for almost all other historical events.
You know, for example, that Josephus is generally assessed a credible historian. But, you are willing to denigrate only those portions relating to the Christ. You've expressed the same view of Pliny, Seutonius, et al. Your view is that the Gospels are not authored by those so named, but do give slight credence to Paul, who, ironically, names those individuals and, obviously knows them well (other than Matthew). Your consistency is as fluid as your reasoning, in my opinion.
Scholar after scholar, (skeptic and believer) use certain rules and guidelines in determining the validity of ancient documents. You certainly know that you can Google credible scholastic tomes authored by Phd.'s that hold the Gospels to the same standards as, say Tacitus (The Annals or The Histories). Yet, again you most certainly know, that the earliest copy of Tacitus' The Annals occurs 950 years after the date of the original. Even copies of Caesar's Gallic War", accepted by almost all historians as reasonably accurate, did not occur until nearly 1,000 years followng the autographs. Tacitus has two copies extant, while Caesar has only ten (10!).
In England, one of the earliest copies of the Gospels exists that is just 114 years after the original. There exists fragments that are only 25 years after the autographs, Now, with further study of the Dead Sea Scrolls, there's a good possibility that fragments of Mark and Matthew are included that date to just 5 years after the original..

contd.

[Clanad]

Contd.

These copies, (and there are thousands) were found in widley divergent locations, authored over widley spaced times, precluding colusion. Even the most hard core skeptics are willing to accept the writings easily pass the "Bibliographical Test" which is applied to any historical document.

There's no evidence whatsoever, of development within the Gospels. The tendency (noted, by the way, in Caesar's writings) of the extant copies to correct the previous copies errors... improve the writing, so to speak.

As you astutely point out, I become long winded in presenting this position... but I really don't know how to make the point (repeatedly) without presenting at least a modicum of background.
None of this will change your position... so be it. But it's patently unfair and intelluctually dishonest to state that Christians cannot present an adequate defense and have your dogmatic position rely on statements that clearly fly in the face of good scholarship.

I'll be the first to grant that these evidences do not "prove" the existence of the Christ, but taken together with all other historical evidence it goes a long ways to establishing His existence in a given time and place, just as we do with other historical figures. Once that happens then one can either investigate further or not. That's up to the individual...
It'd be nice to have a calm, reasoned dialog with you, but your insistence on being the sole arbiter of the validity of all knowledge probably prevents that.
Have a really nice day! Hopefully, spring is just around the corner...

[chakka35]

First of all, Clanad, I have never lent credence to Paul. All I have ever said is that he is the only New Testament author who can be identified and whose background and life, therefore, can be researched independently. All other NT authors are phantoms about who we can learn nothing; giving them arbitrary names does not give them identities.

But in the context of this question it doesn�t matter what I think because the question is about what other people think. I am quite certain that I cannot prove the existence of Jesus or even supply half-convincing evidence of it. But Christians presumably are convinced not only that he existed but that he was also the son of God, performed miracles, rose from the dead and so on. I am interested to know how they have satisfied themselves that what they believe is true.

They are under no obligation, of course, to indulge me, but I hoped that one or two might have had a stab at it. (I�ll give it another day or so, Clanad, before shoving my oar in in answer to your contribution, which is not how you have worked from first principles but how you have followed others.)

But perhaps I�m wrong. I know that there are lots of Christians who care not a fig about evidence or the lack of it. Their attitude is �I jolly well believe the Jesus story and that�s that. It�s called faith.�

Perhaps that applies to you all.

[chakka35]

I think that�s it. A poor response, as I said.

Clanad, I have pointed out before that quoting historians who were not even born at the time of Jesus�s supposed existence, and who wrote only a few words about him that would have been available from the gospels by then, adds nothing to our knowledge. Neither do any of the thousands of books written since. If we were able to get any real information about Jesus it would have been early in the 1st century.

Now, considering the following�

We don�t know when Jesus lived, if he did.
There are no contemporaneous reports of him; nothing about him during his life from anyone he came across; no official records of him; no mention of him by any of the historians writing in the early 1st century about Israel and its religion.
There are no eye-witnesses writing either during his life or after his death.
The first mention of him is in Paul�s epistles in AD55, nothing before that. Paul did not know him.
The four gospels, two largely copied from an earlier one, are written by unknowns about which we therefore know nothing. They quote no eye- or ear-witnesses. They are written in the last third of the 1st century.
And that�s all we �know� about Jesus.

�you must surely agree, unless you are wilfully perverse, that the above facts are entirely consistent with the idea that Jesus was a fictional character.
In fact, they fiercely point that way. If Jesus were real, wouldn�t you expect just one of the above to be different?

I am not prejudiced, Clanad. I work from facts and draw rational conclusions from them. I�ll wish you a happy Easter and close.