We Know From Hard Evidence Dinosaurs Existed 66 Million Years Ago Yet We Have No Objective Evidence Jesus Existed Just 2 Thousands Years Ago

A. We have no firsthand testimony from anyone who knew Jesus or wrote anything about him during his life time. (All the Gospels are late and anonymous). No person living in Roman Palestine neither saw, knew of, nor heard of either Jesus or his followers.


B. We have nothing written by Jesus himself. Ironically, Jesus is portrayed as highly educated speaking Hebrew (Luke 4: 16 – 20), Aramaic (Matt. 27: 46), Greek (Matt. 16: 6) and Latin (Matt. 8: 5 -13), yet he remained unable to write anything. (The story of Jesus writing in the sand in John 8: 2 – 11 is textually late and begs the question as to why Jesus wrote nothing. This could be because the author(s) of these forged accounts didn’t know either Hebrew or Aramaic.) (1) Even Jesus’ contemporary, the itinerant miracle working Apollonius of Tyana had works ascribed to him. (2) In short, the lack of Jesus having left anything in writing could be due to the fact that the forgers of the Gospel traditions viewed their detailed verbatim creations as totally sufficient.

C. The Jesus of the Gospels cannot be separated from the context of myth and theology. Jesus will (and must) remain an integrated part of myth and faith joined at the head just as Siamese twins who share vital organs are joined. To remove some type of reconstructed “Historical Jesus” from his world of faith and myth will only destroy both.

D. The Gospels don’t tell us where they were composed. However, the fact they were composed in Greek and not a Semitic language which was native to Roman Palestine (such as Aramaic or Hebrew) points to their composition outside of Palestine. (See point, H)

E. While Roman Palestine is center-stage for the Gospels events, there has never been found any early manuscript of any Gospels or section of any Gospel or wall graffiti to validate Jesus ever lived in the entire country from Galilee to Jerusalem. In short, when scholars look to first century Roman Palestine for any evidence for the Gospel Jesus, they find totally nothing!

F. The early (65 -90 CE) traditional dates for the Gospels are purely based on conjecture and faith.

G. Philo (the only contemporary source during Jesus life time) doesn’t mention Jesus although Philo was acutely interested in the Jerusalem Temple and anything that happened there.  A Jesus who fought with the Temple Priest and Jewish leaders in Jerusalem would have mostly likely caught Philo's attention.

H. Josephus’s account of Jesus (as well as his account of James and John the Baptist) is little more than Greek stories which tell us no more than what is stated in the Gospels composed outside of first century Palestine. These Gospels accounts were composed in Hellenistic Greek most likely in Asia Minor or somewhere around Alexander Egypt. (3) So far facts point to the case that early papyri such has P52, P45, P46, P47, P66, P72, and P75 (all found disposed of in Egypt) were likely also composed in Egypt. If this fact is correct, the statements by Josephus used to support a Historical Jesus have totally nothing to do with Roman Palestine, but Christian Egypt. This can be supported by the fact that most all quotations cited by the Old Testament are taken from the LXX ; a text which, like Jesus, never uses God’s personal name (Yahweh / Jehovah), but Theos. This very likely gives us a hint of the Gnostic theological beliefs of the composers as well as a location somewhere in Egypt for the creation of the Gospels traditions. (4)

I. I have discussed Josephus’s often wild and unreliable fabrications dealing with the Bible stated as history HERE   Regardless, Josephus NEVER said he had any firsthand knowledge of these three Gospel events nor does he tell us how he got his information. His use of this material (that which a Christian did not interpolate) in his Jewish Antiquities has more to do with the embellishment of his work (a standard ploy of Josephus in his Antiquities) than with truth.

J. St. Paul NEVER saw or met any earthly Jesus. Paul’s letters are little more than theological discussions. If Paul had the Gospels at hand, why does he know so little about Jesus? It has long been known among scholars that the account of Paul’s life in the latter half of the Book of Acts and his Epistles can’t be reconciled. Moreover, like the Gospels themselves, neither Paul’s letters nor the New Testament as a whole can textually be dated with any certainty prior to 200 CE as there is no manuscript evidence.

K. None of the original apostles (be they 12 (Mark 6:7) or 72 (Luke 10: 1) or 120 (Acts 1: 15) left us anything. 1 and 2 Peter knows little of any Historical Jesus, but is highly theological.

L. The so-called Historical Jesus is nothing more than a straw man. To construct a so-called "Historical Jesus" out of the myth and theology of the Gospels is purely conjecture built on subjective ideas using the conflicting and contradicting Gospel accounts. There have been several dozen Historical Jesus figures created to vindicate anything that can come close to reality. When cut out of the mythical environment of the Gospels, we have nothing but a straw man created in the scholars own image. The Historical Jesus created by Bart Ehrman carries no more value that the Historical Jesus created by Thomas Jefferson after he took a knife to the Gospels stories in his Bible.

M. The use of “Jesus” by the Early Church Fathers is purely theological and used for rhetorical purposes. The confession of Jesus Christ is a statement of faith and not history.

N. While Christianity is mentioned by ten pagan writers, Jesus never is. (5)

O. Jesus is not mentioned in the Dead Sea Scrolls. Though we have about 930 texts and fragments of scrolls preserved by the dry climate of Palestine (often under bat dung), we find no Christian textual material from the first two centuries CE in Palestine. (6) Yet, with similar climate conditions in Egypt, the textual traditions of has left us with fifty-two texts, most dealing with Gnosticism.

P. The idea that Jesus was an itinerant non-literary prophet preacher is modeled after the same theory that Elijah and Elisha were also itinerant, non-literary prophets / preachers, but whose lives we now know are based entirely in fiction.

Q. Josephus, as governor of Galilee, had firsthand knowledge of the area and tells us that Galilee had “two hundred and four cities and villages” (7), yet he knows nothing about any town or village in lower Galilee called Nazareth . . . a place so important to Jesus in the Gospels.  Neither is Nazareth mentioned in the Old Testament, nor in the Talmud nor in the Midrash.

Notes:

1. With the discovery of the Palestinian Targum by Professor Diez Macho in manuscript Neofiti, we are presented with the dialect of Aramaic spoken in first century Galilee. For a review, see Natalio F. Marcos, The Septuagint in Context: Introduction to the Greek Version of the Bible (Leiden: Brill, 2000), 320 – 37.

2. Apollonius of Tyana in The Oxford Classical Dictionary, 3rd ed., (New York, Oxford University Press, 1996), p 128.

3. “Of the provenance of the other earliest papri, such as the famous Chester Beatty (P45, P46,P47) and the Bodmer papyri (P66, P72,P75), still less is known, though it was reported at the time of their purchase that the Chester Beatty papyri were discovered in a pitcher in a ruined church or monastery near Atfih (Aphroditopolis) in the Fayyum, about one-third of the way down the Nile River from Oxyrhynchus toward Alexandria. A similar statement accompanied the purchase of P52, the earliest New Testament fragment of all, which was assumed to have come from the Fayyum or from Oxyrhynchus. It has also been surmised that the Beatty and Bodmer codices may have come from the same church library, though there is no proof.” Eldon J. Epp, “The Significance of the Papyri” in Gospel Traditions in the Second Century, edited by W.L. Peterson, (Indiana, University of Notre Dame Press, 1989), p. 76. However, the problem of dating P52 early is the fact that this small section John’s Gospels is not quoted by any early patristic source.

4. “These quotations diverge from the Masoretic text in 212 cases, whereas they differ from the Septuagintal text in only 185 cases.” N.F. Marcors, The Septuagint in Context, p 324.

5. Robert M. Grant, Second-Century Christianity: A Collection of Fragments, 2nd ed. (Louisville, Westminster John Knox Press, 2nd ed. 2003), p. 3 – 12. The use of “Christus” by Tacitus in 112 -113 CE (a hapax legomenon) shows a confessional belief and not a historical Jesus (if the word is indeed a title and not simply a proper name). If Jesus was meant here, then we would expect the Latin “Iesum Christum”. Ironically, Tacitus is likely repeating an established tradition as we learn nothing more than that which is not already stated by Josephus and formed the basis for the Apostles Creed: “ . . . passus sub Pontio Pilato, crucifixus, mortuus, et sepultus, . . . “(suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and was buried;).

6. “There is very little direct textual evidence from the second century relevant to the canonical Gospels. The few New Testament papyri from this period are too small to small to be relevant. The later New Testament writings and Apostolic Fathers only provide allusion to the Gospels; more precise citations begin with the writings of Irenaeus who are also the first author who witnesses the four Gospels as a group.” Frederik Wisse, “Redactional Changes in Early Christian Texts” in Gospel Traditions in the Second Century, edited by W.L. Peterson, (Indiana, University of Notre Dame Press, 1989), p. 51.

7. “If you seriously desire me to come to you, there are two hundred and four cities and villages in the Galilee. I will come to whichever of these you may select, Gabara and Gischala excepted, the latter being John’s native place and the former in league and alliance with him.” (Josephus, Life 235

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