Jesus Has Left the Building, Part 4 (Celsus, Lucian, and Thallus)

[HimesInu]

I was confused about the Criterion of Embarrassment. Would the early Christians use it or not. I'm not sure if it's because I'm tired, but it sounded like you were giving reasons as to why they would and wouldn't.

[EdM021]

I would put Mara Bar-Serapion between 138 CE and 200 CE because he remarks that the Jews were utterly impoverished and disposessed from their territory [never to return until 1948 CE]. Also like Lucian he doesn't mention Jesus' NAME. Which means there were disagreements over what his name actually was. Iesous? Issu? Yehoshua? Yeshu? Christus? Chrestus? With these six names you have fourteen differnt possible combinations!

[alvaboyfilms]

If having very few written references to Christ outside the bible within the first 50 yrs of his crucifixion qualifies Christ as a myth than having absolutely no written references eluding to Christ as a myth until 1840 (Bruno Bauer) over 1800 yrs after the crucifixion, by its own reasoning, would render the Christ myth a NO possibility. Internet sensationalist and many modern Jesus Mythologist fail miserably to bring anything new to the table.

[TaylorX04]

@alvaboyfilms Are you kidding me? You're gonna post this same shit on every video in the series? To anyone interested, see my evisceration of this nonsense in the comments on the first video.

[2011iam4god]

THE END OF THE WORLD IS ALMOST HERE !HOLY GOD WILL BRING JUDGMENT DAY ON MAY 21,2011

[TaylorX04]

@2011iam4god The world didn't end in 1988, it didn't end in 2000, and I will be commenting on your page laughing at you when it doesn't end on May 21st, 2011.

[DarkEmergence]

@TaylorX04 Well, did you do it?

[TaylorX04]

@DarkEmergence No, but thanks for reminding me. She approves her comments though. :-p

[HimesInu]

@2011iam4god And yet, here we are, June 6th, 2011. Looks like we win this one. And we'll win the October fight and the December 21st, 2012 fight, which, ironically, isn't even a Christian prophecy.

[alachabre]

@2011iam4god Crap, I missed it. When's the next one?

[jimk47]

@2011iam4god dec 17 2011 and still here. did i miss the bus?

[Akatam0t0ma]

I've recently read in an introduction to a copy of Xenophon's Socratic dialogues I have that Aristophanes' comedy "The Clouds" which features Socrates as a sophist used as a piece of evidence to affirm the existence of a historical Socrates. Do you think it's invalid to use The Clouds as a piece of evidence for historical Socrates, just as it invalid to use Lucian's The Passing of Peregrinus as evidence for a historical Jesus?

[TaylorX04]

@Akatam0t0ma It does make it questionable, I'll agree, but the problem with Lucian is that it's too late to be contemporary AND it's a satire. We know that Christian beliefs had begun to circulate in Rome by the mid-2nd century, and I say Lucian's invalid as evidence because there's no guarantee that he wasn't simply commenting on these beliefs. In the case of Xenophon though, it is contemporary and seems more to be a parody of a real person than of Socratic philosophers.

[canaanav]

The Gary Busey pic was a nice touch.

[Godshoulddie]

I love the Thallus quote the best...

Eusebius tells us that Africanus tells us that Thallus tells us...

Whisper game, anyone?

[8blkcat]

Thnx so much for all your effort in educating us on the earliest sources of the historical J! Much appreciated!!!

[ModernDeism]

AWESOME JOB as usual !

History will be kind to me for I intend to write it. - Winston Churchill

Peace

[320iguy]

LOL Gary Bucci is the reincarnate of Mara Bar....

[sfg911]

When talking about the historical evidence for Jesus it always leads to me being accused of claiming Jesus didn't exist. I just reply that I'm quite sure a guy named Jesus existed and that I've even met a few. It's Jesus Christ that there is no evidence for and really there should be a lot.

[bonnie43uk]

I've always thought of Jesus as some kind of Ghandi type preacher/ philosopher. All the stories and myths surrounding him ( miracles etc) were made up by his followers after he died.

I am currently in the process of making a time machine, so i can go back to biblical times and check out his validity .

I like this series of video's though.. well made.

[8blkcat]

@bonnie43uk

Time machine? Awesome. Could you aslo pick up the ealiest versions of the Quran burned by Usman? I'd love to read the parts which didn't make it into the various versions we have today!

[TaylorX04]

@8blkcat Great idea. It always amuses me how Muslims proudly declare that the Qur'an has no evidence of change... that's because you DESTROYED all the variant copies, you morons! Lol.

[Proletariat12]

Keep up the good work!

[NotWhollySane]

You've made a pretty strong case for why the non-biblical references to Jesus should be unreliable. For what reasons do you think Jesus was an utter myth without even a basic man behind it? I think it makes a lot more sense to say that there was a guy named John who preached standard philosophical ideas of the time, got himself crucified (ropes not nails), got taken off the cross while still alive and the myth took off from there.

[TaylorX04]

@NotWhollySane I'm not absolutely sold on the idea that Jesus was an utter myth, but the problem is determining what is actually true. Sure, it doesn't take much faith to believe there was a man in first century Judea who was crucified (there were MANY of them) for preaching "dangerous" ideas, but I'm more concerned with what the evidence supports. I don't think the Jews had the authority to have messiah claimants executed by crucifixion, and they could have just stoned them anyway.

[TaylorX04]

(cont'd) Likewise, I don't find any evidence for presuming that the Romans executed someone for preaching heretical ideas. Maybe for opposing Roman rule, but there's little to no basis for that in the New Testament or in non-biblical sources. When you strip away the myth and get down to what could have been a plausible basis for the Jesus story, you find you're left with a character that is almost entirely unlike the Jesus story. So exactly how historical is it then?

By the way, why "John"?

[NotWhollySane]

@TaylorX04

"I'm not absolutely sold on the idea that Jesus was an utter myth"

Excellent. People who claim that Jesus was certianly a myth drive me nuts. Do you think Jesus was a myth or are you simply unsure?

[TaylorX04]

@NotWhollySane I think it's probable that he was largely a myth, if not entirely. Like I've said before, I don't see anything unique in the earliest descriptions of Jesus, it all primarily comes from the New Testament authors' interpretations of the Old Testament and what they thought the messiah would be like.

[ReIigionOfPeas]

@TaylorX04 I always thought if Jesus did exist that it could be possible records existed in the library of Alexander...even then if so, the references to Jesus are scarce is nearly missing altogether. The Talmud is not a credible source because it was written hundreds of years after Jesus.

[Naked4Jesus]

Well researched and with a great delivery! Many thanks for your efforts.

[inmedx]

great vid

[ntoiyt]

Good work! Thank you.

[D3PyroGS]

Always a pleasure to watch your videos, Taylor.

[corthew]

Taylor, I'm always impressed with how well thought out and researched your videos are.

Thanks

[colonelkentucky81]

Wonderful presentation as always. Thank you.

[gir908922]

Another excellent video. ^__^

[OhmySKoD]

lold at the Approximation of Mara Bar-Serapion. You make such wonderful presentations. Thank you!

[TaylorX04]

@OhmySKoD Thanks! I really wish there was some website where you could look up the names of people and hear pronunciations, lol.

[mousegeek]

Excellent. Really enjoying your series :)

[SenariXarn]

Another great video. I hope to complete the set when you get done with the next one =)