Historical evidence of Socrates stronger than Pauline-Jesus?

[paarsurrey1]

Is historical evidence of Socrates stronger than Pauline-Jesus of NT Bible, please?

Regards

______
One may like to read Post 41 of friend Jagella in the thread :�Is Jesus of Gospels a fiction, Jesus of Quran the reality?� Debating Christianity and Religion Forum Index -> Christianity and Apologetics

[Willum]

[Replying to post 10 by Mithrae]

As HAS been mentioned before, it is really about what specifically you are looking for -
Here is a book that cites quite a few ancient Hebrew Scientist:
http://dlib.nyu.edu/awdl/isaw/ancient-j ... ter8.xhtml found after a basically random search.

If you want to know something specific from the literature of the time, you need to look for it. Those people weren't ignorant people, and had letters and education limited by their medium. But to say there is some kind of paucity of literature from the time to defend religion, or saying it was destroyed as a defense, is making a broad over-statement.

You seemed also to have missed the second bit:

I wouldn't trumpet too much about Hillel, I mean, since he is a big part of a religion that is being argued to be false, one must say, "So what?"

Perhaps it is a similar situation to Jesus, no one cared about him while he was 'alive.' But you know, hundreds of years after the fact, amazing stuff happened then.

[liamconnor]

Is historical evidence of Socrates stronger than Pauline-Jesus of NT Bible, please?

Regards

______
One may like to read Post 41 of friend Jagella in the thread :�Is Jesus of Gospels a fiction, Jesus of Quran the reality?� Debating Christianity and Religion Forum Index -> Christianity and Apologetics

Historical theories need to pass some basic criteria; the most prominent for this discussion is what is the simplest explanation that covers all the data. For both Socrates and Jesus the simplest and most explanatory theory is that both existed. Whether the deeds and sayings attributed to them are all historical is another question.

[Mithrae]

[Replying to post 10 by Mithrae]

As HAS been mentioned before

So you claim, but have utterly failed to show any examples: In fact far from referring to information that you already know - as you would if you'd posted them on the forum - you've actually acknowledged that you had to randomly trawl the internet to find something which you hope might be relevant.

Here is a book that cites quite a few ancient Hebrew Scientist:
http://dlib.nyu.edu/awdl/isaw/ancient-j ... ter8.xhtml found after a basically random search.

If you want to know something specific from the literature of the time, you need to look for it. Those people weren't ignorant people, and had letters and education limited by their medium. But to say there is some kind of paucity of literature from the time to defend religion, or saying it was destroyed as a defense, is making a broad over-statement.

Have you bothered to even skim this randomly-discovered page to see what sources it refers to? Let me help you out with a few of its most prominent references:
- Book of Watchers; probably 4th or 3rd century BCE, preserved in manuscripts mostly from Egypt, Ethiopia and Qumran
- The Astronomical Book; probably 3rd or 2nd century BCE, again preserved in manuscripts mostly from Egypt, Ethiopia and Qumran
- Book of Jubilees; 2nd century BCE, preserved only in manuscripts from Ethiopia and Qumran
- Wisdom of Solomon; 1st century CE, but from Egypt rather than Judea

Texts written a century or more before the Jewish Revolt have had a much better chance of surviving simply because there was more time for multiple copies to be disseminated outside Judea itself and therefore escape the ravages of the war: Or, similarly, had more time to become considered significant works which could make their way to the library at Qumran and eventually hidden in the caves there. (And again, why did the folk there feel it was necessary to hide them...?)

But as for the actual point of discussion - literature from Judea in the century before the revolt - a quick search suggests that really the only strong example available is the Testament of Moses. Perhaps you can search more thoroughly and find some other relevant examples: http://www.earlyjewishwritings.com/ However from glancing over all those listed on that site, it looks as though basically all other sources were either from outside Judea (eg. Philo and Josephus), did not survive except in fragments or dramatically altered versions from other regions (eg. Apocryphon of Ezekiel and Life of Adam and Eve), or cannot be reliably dated to the early/mid 1st century (and in most cases can be reliably dated to some other time).



In short, not only have you failed to substantiate your false accusation that I have been personally "shown" the error of what I claimed, but both some further research on my part and even your own random grasping at straws seem to further suggest what already seemed intuitively obvious:

The ravages of the Jewish war and total destruction of Judea's center of culture and religion left us with extremely limited remnants of the literature produced in that time and region.

[bluethread]

A much more direct comparison for Jesus - in terms of time, culture, and ultimate attributed influence on the respective directions which Judaism eventually took - would be with Hillel the Elder.

Since Yeshua's teachings mirror Hillel the Elder's, it could be argued that Hillel was devised as an alternative to Yeshua. I do not make such a case myself, but it follows that same conspiratorial reasoning.

[Willum]

[Replying to post 13 by Mithrae]

I am SO SORRY that all the references, particularly the most prominent, weren't from where and when you wanted them to be.
But like I said, if you want them you need to look for something specific. That someone writes from several sources can't be helped.

Nobody wrote a book specifically to prove your personal response on this topic.

You said literature about the time didn't survive,then how do people know it? Also if you have a problem with Hebrew knowledge coming from elsewhere, then you have problems with Hebrew authorities not being in Jerusalem, which IS a problem, because some scholarship didn't come fro Jerusalem.

Then there is the problem of the literature simple not changing much, rather like the Bible.

You also have a problem with a certain fraction of history not matching Biblical claims.

But once you acknowledge these bits, you'll find your gross over-statement simply doesn't help you.

I'll wager if you bothered to look for references to support your premise I am sure you'd find the literature you'd want, but I'll wager it wouldn't say what you wanted it to, so you'd ignore it, and safely say the real literature was destroyed.

[Mithrae]

[Replying to post 15 by Willum]

So you've gone from your original, false accusation that a supposed error had been "shown to [me] a few times" (which you have obviously failed to substantiate in all subsequent posts) all the way down to guess-work, wagering and hoping that I would eventually be proven wrong if I or someone else did your homework for you.

I actually don't particularly mind your apparently unrepentant slander against me, so please don't feel too bad about that: This simply serves as an excellent case study in the kind of flawed approach which is sometimes brought to bear on this topic

[Willum]

[Replying to post 16 by Mithrae]

The flawed approach is basically laziness.
The truth is out there for anyone to examine, and now with "Google," more than ever before. I can't repent you inferring good scholarship (using multiple references from different sources to prove a thesis) is a bad practice, nor can I force historians et&al to write books and papers to satisfy you on this site, for your convenience.
If you want it, it is there, you need to do the work, not just claim "all my proof was all destroyed."

Even when we say Christianity destroyed so much that it left us in the Dark Ages, we know this is true because the knowledge was rediscovered in other cultures/countries.

So, no.

Claiming the Roman's destroyed Jewish culture is just such a broad overstatement that it is ridiculous.

If you are going to make that claim, you might as well go all the way: Say that you don't know what remains valid from Jewish culture and what was recreated unreliably.

But then you would need to track down and validate the OT, and etc., and you'd find so many references to other cultures children's fables and mythology, you'd be forced to abandon it.

No, the claim that stuff was completely destroyed is an "Apologist" tactic, a relic from when you were not able to find information at a key-stroke.

[Mithrae]

Claiming the Roman's destroyed Jewish culture is just such a broad overstatement that it is ridiculous.

Then why are you creating such a ridiculous strawman?

No, the claim that stuff was completely destroyed is an "Apologist" tactic, a relic from when you were not able to find information at a key-stroke.

Yet you apparently are not able to find such information at a key-stroke (and you've devoted several thousand to this exchange so far): Even though you initially claimed that it had already been posted on this forum multiple times. Even after I provided you with a fairly comprehensive source on early Jewish writings to work from! Instead, all you've got to offer is guess-work and insults. I think that most reasonable people will conclude that if you actually had something of substance to offer, you would surely do so.

Don't get me wrong, the fairly obvious inference that the ravages of the Jewish War and razing of Jerusalem resulted in the loss of much of the fragile written material in that region (except when hidden from destruction, as at Qumran) might - if such evidence arises or is presented here - turn out to be incorrect. But what little I've researched of the subject and presented in post #13 supports rather than refutes that inference, and this feeble smokescreen that you are trying to put up suggests nothing other than how little you have to offer on the subject.

That said, I don't want to get into some petty back-and-forth over nothing, so as usual I will await any comment of actual substance before replying again




Edit:

Claiming the Roman's destroyed Jewish culture is just such a broad overstatement that it is ridiculous.

Come to think of it, this is actually a remarkably interesting case of projection and implicit self-condemnation.

I suggested merely that material written in Judea in the century or so before 70CE, having had less time to disseminate beyond Judea or (in most cases) gain enough prominence to be preserved at Qumran, from all that I've read seems to have been heavily impacted by the war.

By contrast, Willum has openly asserted on numerous occasions things like:
"we know that Judaism wasn't written down until AFTER the New Testament"
"Hebrew is a twice dead language"
"about 66BC-70AD. Exactly when the Rome was replacing the power of the pagan Sadducee with the Pharisee"
"That Judaism began in about 66BC? I think this explains the most."

Perhaps this slander against me was simply Willum's reluctant, tacit way of recanting these self-declared ridiculous beliefs which he was attempting to propagate just a few short months ago. I can understand the difficulty of that admission, so if that's what it took to do so, I am here for him But hopefully he will one day understand that swinging from one wild extreme to the opposite is not the most rational approach to take; the effects of the war were not a complete overhaul of Jewish culture as he once promoted, but nor was the effect on contemporary written material completely negligible.

[Jagella]

[Replying to post 8 by Mithrae]

They're more or less comparable from what little I know of Socrates...

In that case the evidence for Socrates is almost entirely comprised of the writings of fanatical, religious cultists who were bent on making people believe he was a god with magical powers. Almost everything written about him has some difficulties placing him into history. Is that the case for Socrates? It is the case for Jesus.

And considering the overwhelming abundance of material from classical Greece compared with material from Judea prior to the 70CE revolt, that's really quite remarkable.

The fallacy in what you're arguing here is that quantity of written material indicates authenticity in that material. Not true: a lie can be copied as many times as you wish. You need to assess the quality of the evidence as well as quantity. In my opinion, the quality of the evidence for Jesus is low.

A much more direct comparison for Jesus - in terms of time, culture, and ultimate attributed influence on the respective directions which Judaism eventually took - would be with Hillel the Elder. In fact Hillel was actually far more prominent in his own day than Jesus, yet in terms of surviving historical evidence Jesus wins hands down.

Did you consider that the early church destroyed any documents that were not in accord with its "orthodoxy"? Forgery was also very common practice among the early Christians. So there's little about the evidence for Jesus that is "remarkable." Unless you see how remarkably dishonest the early Christian cult was!

[Mithrae]

[Replying to post 8 by Mithrae]

They're more or less comparable from what little I know of Socrates...

In that case the evidence for Socrates is almost entirely comprised of the writings of fanatical, religious cultists who were bent on making people believe he was a god with magical powers. Almost everything written about him has some difficulties placing him into history. Is that the case for Socrates? It is the case for Jesus.

No it's not the case for Jesus

A much more direct comparison for Jesus - in terms of time, culture, and ultimate attributed influence on the respective directions which Judaism eventually took - would be with Hillel the Elder. In fact Hillel was actually far more prominent in his own day than Jesus, yet in terms of surviving historical evidence Jesus wins hands down.

Did you consider that the early church destroyed any documents that were not in accord with its "orthodoxy"? Forgery was also very common practice among the early Christians. So there's little about the evidence for Jesus that is "remarkable." Unless you see how remarkably dishonest the early Christian cult was!

When and how do you imagine that "the early church" destroyed any documentary evidence about Hillel the Elder? And more importantly why? This reeks of conspiracy theory thinking.

The reality is that with some exceptions (eg. some but not all Greek and Roman thinkers and writers), the historical evidence regarding most ancient teachers and sages is extremely sparse, for the obvious reason that these are people who conquered no cities, erected no monuments, and minted no coins. Cases like Socrates, Hillel the Elder, Pythagoras and so on are just a few of the more interesting points of comparison amongst thousands of possible examples. The reality is that within that field - that is, relative to what we might reasonably expect to be preserved - the evidence regarding Jesus' existence is quite strong.

Of course you or anyone else can certainly choose to sit back and arbitrarily declare that it's "just not good enough."