The Absence Of Convincing Evidence For An Historical Jesus Christ

An excellent discussion on the absence of any unbiased, disinterested, 
contemporary historical evidence for Jesus Christ. Why wouldn't  the 
god of the Bible, if he is the true God, have providentially provided such 
considering the extreme, eternal consequences for unbelief? From the 
Errancyn Discussion list, 7-21-98:

Till

If the historical evidence for the existence of Jesus of Nazareth is so

overwhelming, why can't you produce records and references that were 

left by disinterested contemporary parties?

KENT

Obviously Mr. Till, any writing which mentions Jesus Christ you would

consider either a "biased writing" or in error. Luke was a Greek doctor

writing an account of Jesus' life and the early church for a Greek

(Theophilus)... but oops! He mentions Jesus... he's a biased religious

writer. Don't you see the fallacy of your position?

TILL

Do you deny that Luke was a proponent of Christianity? After all, he

alleged in the book of Acts that he was a companion of the apostle Paul on

his missionary journeys. That hardly sounds like a disinterested, unbiased

spokesman. So, no, I don't see the fallacy of my position. Why don't you

find records from contemporaries who hated and despised Jesus, just as we

can find contemporary references to Thomas Paine that were made 

by people who disliked him? That kind of evidence would be convincing, 

but, alas, there is no such evidence, and so you can do nothing but cry and 

accuse me of fallacious reasoning.

KENT

Jesus interacted for only 1 week that we know of with the Romans... why

would we have a secular account of him?

TILL

So all you can do is beg the question of NT accuracy in this matter. 

Where is your disinterested, unbiased evidence from contemporaries 

who corroborate this NT claim? That's what you need, but, alas, you don't 

have it.

KENT

He was hated by the Jewish leadership at the time who wanted him

forgotten... why would we have a Jewish account of him? You're asking the

impossible.

TILL

Their hatred is all the more reason why we should expect that his enemies

would have made some kind of reference to him. Josephus disliked Herod 

and Pilate, but he still wrote rather extensively about them in *Antiquities of

the Jews." Why should we think that the Jews who disliked Jesus would 

have reacted any differently toward him? See my comments about Thomas 

Paine above. Would you like for me to point out examples in the Bible of 

people who were disliked by biblical writers who nevertheless wrote about 

them?

So why am I asking the impossible? I'm not even asking for the unlikely.

This really galls you, doesn't it? But you shouldn't blame me; you should

blame yourself for having gullibly accepted very unlikely premises.

KENT

Therefore, it is at least extremely unlikely (at the time he lived) for

anyone to write about him other than a Christian and yet any Christian

author we present is viewed as biased and therefore wrong by you. No

matter whether they were a common Galilean fisherman, a Jewish

 Pharisee, a Greek doctor, or myself.

TILL

It isn't at all unlikely that someone who was disliked would not have been

mentioned by contemporary writers. The fact is that the opposite would be

more likely, as I explained above. This is an argument from silence, but

the nature of the argument is such that I am going to make it anyway. Have

you ever heard of Justus of Tiberias? He was a Jewish historian who lived

in Galilee at the very time that Jesus allegedly lived there. He wrote a

history of that region, which has not survived, but it was known as recently

as the 9th century, because the Christian apologist Photius was familiar

with Justus's history. In *Bibliotheca, code 33,* Photius made this

statement: "He [Justus] makes not the least mention of the appearance of

Christ, of what things happened to him, or of the wonderful works that he

did." If this statement of Photius is correct, then it means that a

Galilean historian, who was a contemporary of Jesus and wrote a history of

this region, didn't mention someone right in his own back yard who went

about feeding multitudes on just a few scraps of food, changing water into

wine, healing the lame and the blind, walking on water, raising the dead,

etc. That's a bit hard to believe. Apparently it never occurred to Photius

that Justus may not have mentioned Jesus of Nazareth because there 

was no Jesus of Nazareth to mention.

Farrell Till