General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: do you believe there was a historical figure the Jesus story was built on? [View all]John1956PA
(2,654 posts)I hesitate to post something that might start a debate, since I agree with a poster on anther thread who wrote that we have House and Senate elections to win in a mere 200 days and that we can debate religion after that.
That being said, I will say that do not place a lot of weight on the writings of Josephus and Tacitus, since they wrote during in the latter part of the first century and the beginning of the second century. As for Josephus's two mentions of Jesus in Antiquities of the Jews, I believe that first one was a later-century interpolation and the second one refers to a certain Jesus who differs from the central figure of the New Testament. Last year, at the time Bill O'Reilly's book about Jesus was published, I had a debate on the Amazon.com page concerning that book. My opponent was the holder of a Ph.D. in the field of religion studies and ancient languages. A Roman Catholic, she staunchly supported the status of the second Josephus clause as a reference to Jesus Christ and his brother ("cousin" in Catholic teaching) James. I felt she had a good bit of emotion invested in the subject. Neither of us changed the other's mind.
As for Tacitus who wrote Annals about the year, 107, his reference to early Christians has to do with Nero supposedly cracking down on them in the mid-first century because they were insurrectionists starting fires in Rome. To me, that reference seems to be another example of a later-century interpolation.
We will never definitively answer the question of whether Jesus Christ existed. For me, debate on the subject can wait until after the 2014 elections.