Books on the historical Jesus?

[Anonymous No.19502496]

And by that I mean non biblical sources of his existence(not to imply books from the bible are an illegitimate source). Bonus points if they support the biblical view of Jesus.

[Anonymous No.19502846]

>>19502496
this

[Anonymous No.19503012]

file not found

[Anonymous No.19503031]

>>19502496
Books 18 and 20 of Antiquities of the Jews by Josephus (scholars mostly agree that the Testimonium Flavianum is an edited expansion of an original testimony).
Book 15, chapter 44, of the Annals of Tacitus.
Various passages of the Talmud - see Peter Schafer's "Jesus in the Talmud". These are the extra-biblical testimonies which most support the biblical view of Jesus as a miracle worker, as they variously refer to Him as a sorcerer/magician, which is exactly what the Gospels say they referred to Him as (eg. Luke 11:14-15).

[Anonymous No.19503048]

Is that you in the picture? you're so cute~

[Anonymous No.19503075]

>>19502496

Did Jesus Exist by Bart Ehrman

is a good one, despite the click-baity title. He looks at things through an academic lens (and yes he did exist to answer the title.)

[Anonymous No.19503115]

It is a historical fact that Jesus Christ rose from the dead

[Anonymous No.19503124]

>>19503115
How can we be sure when nobody saw it happen

[Anonymous No.19503159]

>>19503124
Well we know that he was scourged, crucified and then stabbed with a spear and then put in a tomb, and then three days after his death people claim to have seen the risen Jesus, both disciples and opponents alike. There’s no way he could have lived, and given the fact of the empty tomb (accusations by the Jews of body-snatching are present within the Gospels, and if Jesus was still in the tomb the Jews would have taken him out and showed the people to quash Christianity), he rose from the dead bodily. The mere idea of someone rising from the dead prior to the general resurrection at the end of time is pretty foreign to Judaism too, and bodily resurrection is foreign to paganism as well, so it begs the question of where the belief came from, and why people genuinely believed it.

[Anonymous No.19503160]

>>19503124
I saw it happen in a vision. And I was on my meds when it happened so it was genuine

[Anonymous No.19503248]

>>19502496
Ehrman, Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium is a good place to start for the general reader
Sanders, The Historical Figure of Jesus is also great
Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus is the classic text
Meier, A Marginal Jew for a comprehensive multivolume study

[Anonymous No.19503627]

>>19503115
This book is really powerful—nearly 800 pages of solid scholarship and overview of dozens of sources, narratives, meanings of terms and how they were used and then finally the argument that he rose. It blew my mind. A real tour de force

[Anonymous No.19503746]

>>19503627
Did you right that amazon review? Regardless, I am 100% buying it and am very excited.

[Anonymous No.19503777]

>>19503627
Did you write that amazon review? Regardless, I am 100% buying it and am very excited.

[Anonymous No.19503814]

>>19503777
I see the review you’re talking about, haha—it’s not me, but it really goes to say that people are using the same sort of language to describe what the N. T. Wright wrote here. The author can be almost overly thorough at times, but I think you’ll find it a great read.

[Anonymous No.19503868]

>>19503814
I definitely prefer academic works to pop lit, so I am definitely happy to hear that lol. Thanks!

[Anonymous No.19504529]

>>19503031
Please post a quotation of a source outside of the New Testament and any religious texts that attests to a man named Jesus that preached to a crowd in Palestine. You can’t use the obvious forgery in Josephus or an oblique mention in Tacitus of a “crowd of people”.

You won’t. Because there isn’t a single shred of evidence. Not a single letter from a husband to his wife about a man named Jesus. Not a single diary entry from an eye witness attesting to his existence. Not a single shard of Roman pottery. Amazing, isn’t it?

[Anonymous No.19504676]

>>19502496
>not to imply books from the bible are an illegitimate source)

Ancient anecdotes and folklore do not meet the criteria of history. Explicit religious texts even moreso.

[Anonymous No.19504910]

>Bonus points if they support my point of view

That's not how the world works, kid. Reality isn't a supermarket, you can pick whatever you like

[Anonymous No.19504916]

>>19504910
*can't

[Anonymous No.19504974]

>>19503115
>>19503627
refuted by Kamil Gregor (pbuh)

[Anonymous No.19505699]

>>19503115
New Testament scholars are the worst. They construct a pseudo-historical worldview on a predication of history that simply didn’t happen, that we have no answer for. What a total waste of time to read this nonsense.

[Anonymous No.19505727]

Gnostic gospels Thomas, Mary, Judas, James

[Anonymous No.19505783]

>>19505699
Christ rose. Cope

[Anonymous No.19505840]

>>19505783
If you need to believe that to get you through your day then that's fine, not trying to take that away from you.

[Anonymous No.19505845]

>>19502496
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_dOhg-Fpu0

[Anonymous No.19505967]

>>19503159
>bodily resurrection is foreign to paganism as well
I'm by no means a student of comparative religion but this doesn't seem correct.

[Anonymous No.19506080]

>>19504529
>Please post a quotation of a source outside of the New Testament and any religious texts that attests to a man named Jesus that preached to a crowd in Palestine
The Testimonium Flavianum.
>Craig Evans and Robert Van Voorst state that most modern scholars accept the position that the Testimonium is partially authentic, had a kernel with an authentic reference to Jesus, and that the analysis of its content and style support this conclusion. [...] In the estimation of James Dunn, there is "broad consensus" among scholars regarding what the Testimonium would look like without the interpolations. According to Dunn's reconstruction, the original passage likely read:
"Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man. For he was a doer of startling deeds, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. And he gained a following both among many Jews and many of Greek origin. And when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him. And the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day."
>You won’t. Because there isn’t a single shred of evidence.
It is surely more amazing that this conclusion, seemingly obvious to you, is rejected by the vast majority of secular scholars:
"Today nearly all historians, whether Christians or not, accept that Jesus existed and that the gospels contain plenty of valuable evidence which has to be weighed and assessed critically. There is general agreement that, with the possible exception of Paul, we know far more about Jesus of Nazareth than about any first or second century Jewish or pagan religious teacher." (Stanton (2002, p. 145))
"Today, most secular scholars accept Jesus as a historical, although unimpressive, figure." (Wells (2007, p. 446))
"Serious historians of the early Christian movement—all of them—have spent many years preparing to be experts in their field. Just to read the ancient sources requires expertise in a range of ancient languages: Greek, Hebrew, Latin, and often Aramaic, Syriac, and Coptic, not to mention the modern languages of scholarship (for example, German and French). And that is just for starters. Expertise requires years of patiently examining ancient texts and a thorough grounding in the history and culture of Greek and Roman antiquity, the religions of the ancient Mediterranean world, both pagan and Jewish, knowledge of the history of the Christian church and the development of its social life and theology, and, well, lots of other things. It is striking that virtually everyone who has spent all the years needed to attain these qualifications is convinced that Jesus of Nazareth was a real historical figure." (Ehrman (2012b, p. 4–5))

[Anonymous No.19506109]

>>19505967
Pagan views were most often based on the immortality of the soul. This is what would survive death and become deified in some instances, or would potentially reincarnate into a different body. Pagan writings are very clear in denoting that the body is usually some sort of ‘prison’ for the soul (as Plato was apt to say with his ‘soma sema’ phrase), or else a sort of clothing temporarily worn by the soul. Other views involved annihilation upon death such as the Epicureans. We can see other views in Homer where the dead are basically witless shades in the underworld. There are some tales of Asclepius that seem to be the one major exception, but even in this case interestingly, there are dissenting voices—Diodorous Siculus states in his Library of History that because Asclepius cured so many that were on the drink of death that it was said he could raise the dead. By and large though, the particular Jewish conception of bodily resurrection from the dead, where the bones and everything are reconstructed, refleshed, etc. was foreign to pagan modes of thought. A close view of the use of the term resurrection / anastasis in the early Christian sources shows that originally it was used for bodily resurrection, but that later gnostic sources under the influence of Hellenistic modes of thought spiritualized the concept to closer fit the pagan one where the body was evil and needed to be escaped

[Anonymous No.19506120]

>>19505967
Pagan views were most often based on the immortality of the soul. This is what would survive death and become deified in some instances, or would potentially reincarnate into a different body. Pagan writings are very clear in denoting that the body is usually some sort of ‘prison’ for the soul (as Plato was apt to say with his ‘soma sema’ phrase), or else a sort of clothing temporarily worn by the soul. Other views involved annihilation upon death such as the Epicureans. We can see other views in Homer where the dead are basically witless shades in the underworld. There are some tales of Asclepius that seem to be the one major exception, but even in this case interestingly, there are dissenting voices—Diodorus Siculus states in his Library of History that because Asclepius cured so many that were on the brink of death that it was said he could raise the dead. By and large though, the particular Jewish conception of bodily resurrection from the dead, where the bones and everything are reconstructed, refleshed, etc. was foreign to pagan modes of thought. A close view of the use of the term resurrection / anastasis in the early Christian sources shows that originally it was used for bodily resurrection, but that later gnostic sources under the influence of Hellenistic modes of thought spiritualized the concept to closer fit the pagan one where the body was evil and needed to be escaped

[Anonymous No.19506585]

>>19503115
Giga-based

[Anonymous No.19506703]

>>19503115
if it’s a fact, what’s the point of faith?

[Anonymous No.19506952]

>>19506080
>just posting quotes from NT guys saying shit like " yeah my non-churchgoing friends says like most secular scholars believe Jesus existed"

I said evidence anon. Not just opinions from biblemen who went to divinity school.

>The Testimonium Flavianum

Obvious forgery lol. The thing is there wouldn't be 300 books put out a year by "doctors of divinity" if the evidence was clear that he did exist...because there is no evidence.

And I'm not being doctrinaire about this point. It's hard to reason why it would have been wholly fabricated but...again...

[Anonymous No.19507009]

>>19506703
You’ve fallen for the atheist meme that faith is believing without any evidence or reasons at all. Faith is trust. If it wasn’t, then there would be no point to the faith of Paul, Peter, James, etc. and everyone else who literally saw the risen Christ. They saw it with their own eyes and had immensely strong faith. The evidence we have is pretty good to conclude that Jesus Christ indeed rose from the dead. This information edifies faith, it does not undermine it. And even still, we have faith that He will indeed come again.

[Anonymous No.19507789]

>>19503115
Based

[Anonymous No.19508092]

*ahem*
*clears throat*
*taps mic*
CHRIST IS KING

[Anonymous No.19508166]

>>19506952
>I said evidence anon. Not just opinions from biblemen who went to divinity school.
You might have noticed that those scholars include atheists (eg. Bart Ehrman) who have spent a large portion of their lives studying the field, and are quite qualified to make statements on the state of their field.
>Obvious forgery lol.
You're free to hold your baseless opinion (the Testimonium is found in every single Greek manuscript), but it is not shared by the vast majority of scholars.
>The thing is there wouldn't be 300 books put out a year by "doctors of divinity" if the evidence was clear that he did exist...because there is no evidence.
Baseless opinion. I backed up my claims with scholarly citations, and you did not. Why should I take your opinion seriously?

[Anonymous No.19508172]

>>19506120
>the pagan one where the body was evil and needed to be escaped
You're being overly reductionist and implying that there was just one view on this. There wasn't. There was the Greek religion, the Roman religion, the various Semitic religions, the clusterfuck that was Anatolia, the Celts, etc. Among the Indo-Europeans, the idea of the "body as a prison" is just completely absent. The principle arguments for it (sex, sexuality, consumption of food, sleep, urination and defecation) are all hailed as, if not good, at the very least amoral (the Gods shit, they piss, the Thunder God is so cool that he can piss through mountains, Easter loves going around giving dudes boners, Freyja farts, etc). This view IS found very early among the Semites, who seem particularly keen to say that things like urination and eating are thing that their Gods DON'T do.

Likewise, you're applying the Semitic idea of the discrete soul onto a huge swathe of people, many of whom absolutely did not believe in a singular discrete soul. The Indo-Europeans believed that a person was multiplicitious (the precise number varied culture to culture, but even then person to person; Hercules at minimum had four "souls" for example), being possessed of several things that we could call "a soul". The Shades are a good example of this. They are a product that you make throughout your life, an ossified memory bank that is separated from the rest of the bundle at death. It dwells in Hades, and, being a lump of memories that can no longer add to itself, is generally quite sad. Achilles' Shade tells us that it's better to live on Earth as a peasant than to dwell in Hades as a king. Achilles' spirit in Elysium would absolutely say no such thing because it was not only in paradise but also experiencing new things constantly and getting into all sorts of adventures. This is of course radically different from the Semitic idea of a singular soul, although non-Semitic Afro-Asiatics also attached various things to humans that could ALSO be thought of as souls (like the Egyptian Ka), but these were typically of a mind separate from a mans.

What makes the Christian view unique is the materialism of it, aligning the spirit (typically conceptualized as an semi-sentient animating force more akin to Qi than the "real you" piloting your body) with the mind, and implying that the spirit is generated by the body. At the death of the body, you die, and shut off. Jesus will then turn you back on later (this is why Christians are opposed to cremation).

[Anonymous No.19508204]

>>19508172
>What makes the Christian view unique is the materialism of it, aligning the spirit (typically conceptualized as an semi-sentient animating force more akin to Qi than the "real you" piloting your body) with the mind
The Christian tradition distinguishes between the nous and the pneuma.
>implying that the spirit is generated by the body
This is not taught in Christianity.
>At the death of the body, you die, and shut off.
This is called "soul sleep", and is only viewed by an extreme minority of Christians (and none of the apostolic churches).
>Jesus will then turn you back on later
No, in the doctrine of the vast majority of Christians, you are alive and conscious in the afterlife the whole time after you die, but in the last judgment, you are restored to your body.

Please do more research.

[Anonymous No.19508228]

>>19508204
I don't particularly care about whatever Modernist heresy Pastor Bob at the local Wesleyan Presbytero-Lutheran Assembly of the Tabernacle of the Church of the Mary of the Hall of St. God managed to spout out in between playing Country Hip-Hop and talking about how more young men need to view Jesus as their boyfriend.

>>19508166
>no really dude a man writing about how vespasian was the jewish messiah in 93AD totally just randomly interrupted his tract on why vespasian was the jewish messiah to cite the revised nicene creed of 381
This is why no one takes you seriously.

[Anonymous No.19508253]

>>19508228
>I don't particularly care about whatever Modernist heresy Pastor Bob at the local Wesleyan Presbytero-Lutheran Assembly of the Tabernacle of the Church of the Mary of the Hall of St. God managed to spout out in between playing Country Hip-Hop and talking about how more young men need to view Jesus as their boyfriend.
I am repeating the doctrine of the apostolic churches (the vast majority of Christians), not Protestant churches. Do you even understand what I have written?

>no really dude a man writing about how vespasian was the jewish messiah in 93AD totally just randomly interrupted his tract on why vespasian was the jewish messiah to cite the revised nicene creed of 381
You clearly missed the post ( >>19506080 ) where I cited a scholar in the field, who summarized the widely held scholarly view on what the original Testimonium Flavanium most likely said:
>Craig Evans and Robert Van Voorst state that most modern scholars accept the position that the Testimonium is partially authentic, had a kernel with an authentic reference to Jesus, and that the analysis of its content and style support this conclusion. [...] In the estimation of James Dunn, there is "broad consensus" among scholars regarding what the Testimonium would look like without the interpolations. According to Dunn's reconstruction, the original passage likely read:
"Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man. For he was a doer of startling deeds, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. And he gained a following both among many Jews and many of Greek origin. And when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him. And the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day."

You do not have a deep understanding of this topic. Please refrain from embarrassing yourself.

[Anonymous No.19508301]

>>19508253
>joseph mentions that some people think jesus was the messiah instead of vespasian
That isn't what the Testimonium Flaviam is. You either know this, and are being inherently dishonest, and as such are a faggot, or you have no idea what you're talking about, and as such are a faggot. Either way, you're gay, your opinion doesn't matter, and you are bullied for justified reasons.

[Anonymous No.19508333]

>>19508301
>That isn't what the Testimonium Flaviam is
I quoted what most scholars agree is the authentic kernel of the Testimonium. It is an extrabiblical reference to the existence and crucifixion of Jesus Christ by Pontius Pilate in Roman Palestine. So far, you haven't posted any scholarly resources to back up your opinion, only baselessly asserted it. Why should I care? What are you even arguing?

[Anonymous No.19508341]

>>19504910
>Reality isn't a supermarket, you can't pick whatever you like
Wrong

[Anonymous No.19508380]

>>19508092
holy based

[Anonymous No.19508402]

>>19508253
>I am repeating the doctrine of the apostolic churches (the vast majority of Christians)
the majority of christians are africans and pentecostalist spics that doesnt change that the church fathers held to bodily resurrection and believed that thinking otherwise was a sin punishable by eternal damnation

[Anonymous No.19508512]

>>19508402
>that doesnt change that the church fathers held to bodily resurrection and believed that thinking otherwise was a sin punishable by eternal damnation
Are you ESL? I clearly affirmed the bodily resurrection here >>19508204. If you can't get your head on straight and actually follow what is being said, there is no point in continuing the "conversation".