No, the comments of x were logically correct. Read them again. Your reference to Pilate is fairly weak. Only one writer that I know of makes any comment linking Pilate and Jesus (josephus). Pilate himself is an obscure figure and there is very minimal historical evidence of his existence (Josephus, plus a partial name on an archeological stone). Of course, Jesus is mentioned in the four gospels, but their credibility is considered almost negligible, due, in part, to the fact that the extraordinary events of the Gospels are not verified by any contemporaneous sources during the time when Jesus was alleged to have lived. The SILENCE of EVERYONE that might have been an eyewitness to ANYTHING purported to have been done by Jesus is simply too profound to ignore. Out of all the people that purportedly witnessed extraordinary acts of, and events around, Jesus--not one of them felt anything was significant enough to write down. Years later, 3 people extemporise from the writing of Mark, and its off to the races.
Many huge books have been written by christians and others, to explore the historicity of Jesus. It is a controversial question, indeed, and there is certainly no consensus as of yet. Certainly, though, it is almost unknown amongst scholars to assert that the Jesus of the Gospels, existed. Historical analysis of the Gospels does not support such a viewpoint.
(Note: if someone writes in a hundred years that average joe went moose hunting and killed 14 moose with his bare hands...should those people of the future believe the writer when they can find nothing written about the incident by any of those thousand people? What if there were many such incidences with no contemporaneous mention?)
Here is something that happened to Paul Bunyun many years ago:
One day Paul was walking in the woods when he came to a little town called Patcher. When Paul went into the town all the people ran away except for the baker. Paul was about to eat the baker
But the baker said, "Wait! If you don’t eat me I’ll bake you pancakes!"
"Well OK Everyday though."
"OK! Yes Sir," So the next day Paul woke up the baker to have some pancakes. She made him some pancakes the size of a school. He ate all of them and he wanted some more so she made him some more until she fainted. After, Paul went and cut trees with his big axe. Then he made a house for himself. After he made a bed and a whole bunch of things.
Here is a well researched article that examines the issue.
biology.indstate.edu
Following are two more articles somewhat lighter in make-up that conclude the Gospel Jesus did not exist:
The Historicity of Jesus
Did Robin Hood exist? Possibly, there was a person whose exploits were exaggerated over time until the legendary character known as Robin Hood emerged in English folklore, but few people would claim that the Robin Hood in these legends was an actual historical figure who possessed incredible archery skills and went about rescuing Maid Marian and robbing the rich to give to the poor. At best, then, Robin Hood was a quasi-historical person who became the legendary hero of Sherwood Forest through exaggeration and embellishment of his real life accomplishments.
The same is probably true of William Tell, King Arthur, and other famous legendary characters. Through exaggeration and embellishment over time, the lives of exceptional leaders were transformed into the legendary figures we read about in folkloric literature. In fairly recent times, we have seen the same process at work in our own country. Wyatt Earp, Wild Bill Hickok, Buffalo Bill, Jesse James, Billy the Kid--these were frontier marshals, heroes, and outlaws whose names are familiar to all of us, but their exploits were so exaggerated and embellished by word of mouth, by 19th-century dime novels, and then later by 20th-century movies that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to determine the real historical accomplishments of any of them. In this sense, it would be proper to say that the Wyatt Earp and Jesse James of the dime novels and movies were not real historical characters. Men by these names once lived, but they were not the men portrayed in the many fictionalized accounts of their lives. The real Wyatt Earp and Jesse James have probably been lost to us in a hopeless maze of legendary embellishments.
The same is true of Jesus of Nazareth. A few scholars seriously argue that no such person ever existed, and their arguments are certainly thought provoking and deserving of consideration. Other biblical scholars (many of them professing Christians) acknowledge the existence of a man named Jesus but quite frankly admit that the New Testament gospels greatly embellished his life and that the actual achievements of the real Jesus were nothing like those attributed to the Jesus of the gospels. The quasi-historical Jesus may have been born to a woman named Mary, but certainly she was not a virgin at the time.
This is the stuff that myths and legends are made of, and folklore of the times was filled with tales of great men who had been born to virgins. Even Christians consider those folk tales to be nothing but quaint legends, so by what rule of logic do they insist on making Jesus an exception to the general rule? They have no reasonable answer to this question.
Likewise, the quasi-historical Jesus may have attracted a following, but it isn't reasonable to believe that vast multitudes thronged to him in the manner claimed for the New Testament Jesus. Mark said that "a great multitude from Galilee... and from Jerusalem, Idumea and beyond the Jordan, and... from Tyre and Sidon" once followed him to the Sea of Galilee (3:7-8). So huge was the multitude that Jesus told his disciples to keep a boat ready for him to board, "lest [the multitude] crush him" (v:9). Matthew claimed that "great multitudes followed [Jesus] from Galilee, and from Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea, and beyond the Jordan" (4:25). In the verse before this, Matthew said that "his fame went throughout all Syria" so that the people there "brought to him all sick people who were afflicted with various diseases and torments, and those who were demon-possessed, epileptics, and paralytics."
All of this presumably happened, but no one in Syria, Idumea, Tyre, or Sidon left any record of the mass hysteria that the Jesus of the New Testament created. Only the New Testament gospels mention the huge crowds that he attracted. As Rob Berry points out in his article The Fivefold Challenge (p. 10, this edition), historical silence in some matters is quite telling, and such is the case in the matter of public attention that the Jesus of the New Testament presumably attracted. If these gospel accounts are even reasonably close to being accurate, why did no one in the regions from which the multitudes came ever mention the crowds that thronged around Jesus? Why did no one in the places where the crowds gathered (with the exception of the biased gospel writers) mention these huge crowds? The answer is that such multitudes probably never existed, because the quasi-historical Jesus wasn't nearly so popular with his contemporaries as the gospel writers allege for their Jesus.
The gospel writers claim that Jesus made a triumphal entry into Jerusalem just before his crucifixion and that "a very great multitude spread their clothes on the road" and "others cut down branches from the trees and spread them on the road" (Matt. 21:7-8; Mark 11:8; Luke 19:36) and that multitudes went before and after him shouting, "Hosanna to the son of David!" Such vast multitudes as these welcomed Jesus into the city and then just a short time later crowds were screaming for Pilate to crucify him. Who can believe it? There may have been a quasi-historical Jesus who was crucified during Pilate's administration, but it is unreasonable to believe that this Jesus was welcomed into Jerusalem so enthusiastically by huge crowds only to have mobs demanding his crucifixion just a few days later. In this sense, we can assume that the Jesus of the gospels never existed.
If there was a quasi-historical Jesus who was crucified by the Romans, certainly his execution did not occur as recorded in the New Testament. All three synoptic gospels claim that while Jesus was on the cross, darkness fell "over all the land" from the sixth hour until the ninth hour (Matt. 27:45; Mark 15:33; Luke 23:44). In all three accounts of this event, the word land has been translated from the Greek word ge, which can mean "earth," so it is quite possible that all three gospel writers intended to say that the three hours of darkness covered the whole earth. In fact, the KJV even translates the word as earth in Luke's version: "(T)here was darkness over all the earth."
Whether the synoptic writers intended to say that darkness covered the whole earth for three hours is really immaterial, because their language is such that they obviously didn't mean that this was only a phenomenon that was localized to the city of Jerusalem. They claimed that darkness covered "all the land" for a period of three hours, beginning at midday, so this would have been at least a regional event that would have been noticed and mentioned in the contemporary records of other nations. Who can seriously imagine a three-hour period of darkness happening in midday without references to it being recorded in Egypt, Greece, Syria, Arabia, Persia, and the other nations that would have experienced it? Even if it were merely a regional darkness, we can reasonably expect that other writers of the time would have referred to it. The fact that no such records exist is reason to believe that this midday darkness was simply another part of the legends and myths that evolved as Christianity grew.
We can say the same about Matthew's reference to the "many saints" who were resurrected after an earthquake opened their tombs at the moment of Jesus's death and who later went into the city and appeared unto "many" (27:52-53). Such an event as this would have attracted far more attention than the resurrection of Jesus, because its results would have been witnessed by far more people, but no one else besides Matthew (not even Mark or Luke) mentioned this remarkable event. Rationality, then, requires us to interpret this story as just another legend that developed along with Christianity. A quasi-historical Jesus may have been crucified, but certainly his death was not accompanied by a mass resurrection. Such an event simply would not have passed unnoticed by historians of the time.
Bible fundamentalists, of course, will contend that these are all arguments from silence, but sometimes silence can scream to those whose minds have not been numbed by religious indoctrination. Since Rob Berry discusses this point quite well in his article (p. 10), there is no need to comment further on it. Suffice it to say that there are many good reasons to assume that the Jesus of the gospels never existed.
Some will also dismiss these points as just the rantings of a cynical atheist, but the average churchgoer doesn't realize that radical revision is taking place in modern Christian thought. Many seminaries teach their students some of the same things that we publish in The Skeptical Review, so it isn't at all uncommon to find Christian scholars who agree that the real Jesus was very different from the fictionalized Jesus of the gospels. After its March meeting in Santa Rosa, California, the Jesus Seminar, a group of Christian scholars dedicated to identifying the real historical Jesus, announced their belief that the "story of the historical Jesus ended with his death on the cross and the decay of his body." The group concluded that "whatever Jesus' followers experienced after the crucifixion, it happened in their hearts and minds, not as a matter of history." Speaking for the group, Stephen J. Patterson, an associate professor of New Testament at Eden Theological Seminary in St. Louis, said, "`God raised Jesus from the dead' is a statement of faith, not historic fact."
These quotations have been taken from an article from Religion News Service that was published in various newspapers last March, so their accuracy can easily be verified. That they represent conclusions reached by conscientious Christian scholars rather than atheists and skeptics indicates the transition that is presently occurring in Christian thought. The average church member who doubts the major points in this article has simply not kept up with the latest scholarship.
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The Fivefold Challenge
Introduction
Fundamentalist Christians claim that the Bible is a historically accurate work in every detail. They delight in showing how "modern archaeology" has verified this little biblical detail or that minor biblical event. But something they don't talk about much is the failure of modern archaeology to confirm some major events in the Bible.
Specifically, there are five major miraculous events in the Bible which are completely unconfirmed by modern archaeology. These miracles are:
The parting of the sea by Moses (Exodus 14:21-31)
The stopping of the sun by Joshua (Joshua 10:12-14)
The reversal of the sun's course by Isaiah (Isaiah 38:7-8)
The feeding of thousands of people by Jesus using only five loaves of bread and two fishes (Mark 6:34-44; see also the parallel accounts in Matthew 14:14-21, Luke 9:12-17, and John 6:1-14)
The resurrection of the saints, and their subsequent appearance to many (Matthew 27:52-53)
The Argument From Silence
When skeptics point out that some event in the Bible is unconfirmed by non-biblical records, fundamentalists usually respond by claiming that this is an argument from silence, and that just because nobody else confirms it doesn't mean it didn't happen. Sometimes, this is a legitimate response-- the argument from silence is not always valid. If the event is an ordinary event which attracted little attention, or a private event not witnessed by others, than the argument from silence cannot be used to show the event never happened.
But in the case of the above five miracles, the argument from silence is perfectly valid. All five of these miracles were allegedly witnessed by thousands of people-- indeed, two of these miracles would have been visible worldwide. Hence, fundamentalists cannot claim that the events were simply not noticed by others. Furthermore, all five of these events were of an extraordinary nature. They are the most impressive miracles in the Bible, more impressive than even the resurrection of Jesus. It would be absurd to claim that other people could have witnessed a change in the sun's course, or the resurrection of a large number of long dead people, without having been amazed by it. Such events would have attracted widespread attention and generated dozens of documents concerning them. Take the resurrection of the saints, for instance. Other first-century Christians would have used this event as further proof of Jesus' divinity-- Paul and the other gospels would certainly have mentioned it, for instance. Or how about the sun turning backwards? This would have been visible worldwide, and thus other cultures active at the time would have noticed the event and offered their own explanations, in keeping with their own cultural and religious beliefs. And so forth. Hence, the argument from silence is valid in the case of these miracles. If no other evidence can be found to support them, we are justified in concluding that they never happened, and thus that the Bible is wrong in at least five points.
The Challenge
With this in mind, I present The Fivefold Challenge. The challenge is this: Pick any one of the five miracles listed above, and provide one piece of documentary evidence that confirms this miracle. The evidence must conform to the following requirements:
The evidence must be contemporary. It should have been written shortly after the miracle in question.
The evidence must be independent. The author must have obtained his information about this miracle from a source other than the biblical book(s) in which the miracle is described.
The evidence must be unambiguous. The document should clearly describe the miracle in question. I will not accept claims which argue from double entendre or hidden meanings, unless you can prove that a person living in the time and place in which the document was written would have clearly understood the hidden reference.
The evidence must be reliable. The evidence must have been written by a person known to be reliable. If the document's author is unknown, the rest of the document must be shown to be reliable. Other miraculous claims within the document will disqualify the document unless these additional miracle claims can themselves be independently verified.
Reward (Sort Of)
I wish I could offer a monetary reward for anybody meeting the challenge, a la Ralph Nielsen or the Skeptical Review. Alas, I just don't have $1,000 to toss around-- not that I'm worried about losing it, but I believe it's wrong to offer a reward you can't pay, even if you know you'll never need to pay it. I'm also not interested in getting sued over the matter, which has happened to some skeptics who offer rewards. So instead, I'll offer something more valuable-- a chance at saving my eternal soul. If somebody manages to meet the challenge successfully, I will either read three books of that person's choice, or attend a church of the denomination of that person's choice for three months. To a fundamentalist, that kind of reward is probably more valuable than money anyway.
Conclusion
Those wishing to take me up on The Fivefold Challenge may contact me at the following address:
Robby Berry
2496 Hard Road
Dublin, OH 43016
E-Mail: berry@bronze.coil.com
Unless you specifically ask me not to, I reserve the right to publish your answers, with your name intact. So to those fundamentalists who truly believe that archaeology confirms the Bible (and who would like a shot at impressing, and maybe even converting, an atheist) here's your chance to prove it. I wish you luck-- you'll need it. |
