Other historical figures are accepted on weaker evidence than Jesus

From Religions Wiki

The evidence of Jesus is sometimes compared with other historical figures or events, including: Julius Caesar[1], Alexander the Great[1], the Holocaust, Caligula[2] and others. Apologists argue that other historical figures are accepted on weaker evidence than Jesus. This is often used as a counter argument to the claim that Jesus is ahistorical.

The apologists comparison of the evidence is factually incorrect. The evidence for Jesus is a collection of writings that are not independent, that are anonymous, that have no physical evidence, that are written decades after the fact by non-eyewitnesses, and written as religious scripture not objective history. By comparison, the historical figures and events have multiple sources, often which are primary sources together with physical evidence.

"If we maintain that the life of our Lord is not a historical event, we are landed in hopeless difficulties; in consistency, we shall have to give up all ancient history and deny that there ever was such an event as the assassination of Julius Caesar[3]"
"If we believe what the best sources say about Julius Caesar, then we should believe what the best sources say about Jesus Christ.[4]"

Comparisons with other historical figures[edit]

The evidence of Jesus is sometimes compared with other historical figures or events, including: Julius Caesar[1], Alexander the Great[1], Spartacus[5], the Holocaust, Pontius Pilate[6], Hannibal[7] and others.

  • Alexander the Great: Unlike Jesus, we actually do have historical evidence for Alexander the Great. We have treaties, and even a letter from Alexander to the people of Chios engraved in stone (332 B.C.E). Alexander left a mass of destroyed and created cities behind. We have buildings, libraries and cities, such as Alexandria, left in his name.
"It's ridiculous to claim the source situation is better for Jesus than for Alexander the Great (or indeed any comparably famous person of antiquity). The exact reverse is the case, by many orders of magnitude.[8]"
  • Julius Caesar: We have portraits and artifacts of Caesar, contemporary witnesses, even letters written by his own hand. We have a number of inscriptions and coins produced contributed to Caesar. Contemporary and reliable historians (Suetonius, Appian, Cassius Dio, Plutarch) all mention and describe the life and actions of Caesar. They often quote and name many different sources (both friendly and hostile to Caesar), showing a wide reading of the witnesses and documents. We have letters from his enemies, including Cicero, that mention Caesar. [9] Also, the history of Rome could not have proceeded as it did had Caesar not physically moved an army into Italy.
"In fact, when we compare [the evidence of the resurrection to that of Caesar crossed the Rubicon], we see that in four of the five proofs of an event's historicity, the resurrection has no evidence at all, and in the one proof that it does have, it has not the best, but the very worst kind of evidence--a handful of biased, uncritical, unscholarly, unknown, second-hand witnesses.[10]"
  • Augustus: For Augustus Caesar, we have the Res gestae divi augusti, the emperor's own account of his works and deeds, a letter to his son (Epistula ad Gaium filium), Virgil's eyewitness accounts, and much more.
  • Napoleon: Napoleon left behind artifacts, eyewitness accounts and letters. We have contemporary eye-witnesses, journals, even portraits of Napoleon.

In summary, the argument is factually incorrect. Historical figures and events have multiple sources, often which are primary sources together with physical evidence.[11] By comparison, the evidence for Jesus is a collection of writings that are not independent, that are anonymous, that have no physical evidence, that are written decades after the fact by non-eyewitnesses, and written as religious scripture not objective history. The evidence for any figure that is considered historical is almost always better than the evidence for the historicity of Jesus.

Carrier argues that it is inappropriate to compare Jesus to other historical figures because characters with the attributes of Jesus are usually mythical e.g. people worshipped as Gods tend to be mythical not historical. For this reason, demonstrating the historicity of Jesus requires a higher standard of evidence.[5]

Comparisons with other mythical figures[edit]

  • Moses is considered to be mythical by most historians. It is absurd to claim he existed because a set of teachings and sayings are attributed to him.[8]

Many accurate copies of my holy book exist[edit]

Main Article: Many accurate copies of my holy book exist
"If the Bible cannot be trusted as being reliable because it has only a small percentage of copyist errors, then neither can the above documents be trusted that have far less textual support. [12]"
"There are more early manuscripts of the Bible available for verification than any other ancient document. [13]"
"The famous Dead Sea Scrolls, discovered from 1947 onward, added 100 scrolls to the existing Old Testament documents, while we have over 5,000 manuscripts of New Testament material in the original Greek and a total of some 20,000 sources to help us piece it all together. Other ancient works compare very badly.[14]"

Just because a text was transmitted faithfully from an author does not mean that the author was reliable. Believers just have to assume the Biblical authors (whoever they were) were telling the truth. The Bible was neither written by eyewitnesses or by impartial observers. It was actually written by mostly anonymous, non-eyewitnesses who lived long after the events and were trying to promote a political or religious agenda.

Almost contemporary[edit]

According to apologists, the surviving New Testament manuscripts are also closer to the events they describe than many other ancient texts.

"Critics are quick to seize on these gaps as a reason for rejecting the Bible, yet ignore much bigger time-gaps for other documents which are accepted without question.[14]"

This is mostly false. Many figures in ancient history have primary sources and physical evidence, as well as multiple independent secondary sources. As historical source, the New Testament is very weak being written by anonymous non-eye witnesses decades after the alleged events to suit a religious agenda.

Historical sources should never be "accepted without question".

References[edit]

  1. 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 [1]
  2. [2]
  3. Monser, An Encyclopedia on the Evidences: Or, Masterpieces of Many Minds, 1961, p. 377
  4. [3]
  5. 5.0 5.1 Okay, So What about the Historicity of Spartacus?
  6. Bart D. Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist?, Huffington Post, Updated May 20, 2012
  7. Did Jesus Exist? The Jesus Myth Theory, Again.
  8. 8.0 8.1 Richard Carrier, On the Historicity of Jesus, 2014
  9. [4]
  10. Richard Carrier, [5]
  11. So What About Hannibal, Then?
  12. [6]
  13. [7]
  14. 14.0 14.1 John Blanchard, Why believe the Bible?, 2004