I wanted to comment on your statement that Jesus Christ is a myth. I want to tell you truly, Jesus Christ is NOT a MYTH! I ask you to reconsider your beliefs. Do some serious research and keep in mind...some things are true whether you believe them or not.
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Zombiejesus-1
Have you done the research? Jesus of Nazareth is a historic person. Go back to history and examine the evidence. There is a book written by Josh McDowell that can help. It's called "Evidence That Demands a Verdict". This has historical evidences for the Christian faith. His book gives Biblical AND non-biblical sources on the history of Jesus.
There was Cornelius Tacitus (born A.D. 52-54) a Roman historian. In 112 A.D., Govenor of Asia, son-in-law of Julius Agricola who was Govenor of Britain A.D. 80-84. Writing of the reign of Nero, Tacitus refers to the death of Christ and to the existence of Christian at Rome.
There are several others he refers to in this book. I implore you to read it!
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Zombie...
It grieves me that you feel such animosity toward Christians. You are clearly not interested so I will leave it at that.
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I Corinthians 2:10-14
"The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the man's spirit within him? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God.
We have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God, that we may understand what God has freely given us. This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, expressing spiritual truths in spiritual words. The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understnad them, because they are spiritually discerned."
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No sense arguing with you, zombie. You believe what you want and I will believe in Jesus if I want.
Yes, everyone has a right to their own opinion and religion.
Good Luck To You.
The source you list is not credible in any form or fashion.
By this point, the Roman Empire was mostly Christian. Basically, he wrote his passage to coincide with what he was reading in the New Testaments. In other words, Tacitus (which is apparently the only non-biblical reference that even refers to Jesus), was basically using the NT (which is being refuted by our friend here) as his historical reference.
Why wouldn't he? To him, it's true, because a priest told him it was.
Man, it feels great to stump short-minded morons.
Easy, too!
Much as I detested this movie, I'm going to have to correct you there, Skrayper77. Christianity didn't become the official religion of the Roman empire until the 4th century of the common era, and Tacitus wrote early in the 2nd. Christianity, while growing, was still very much a minority religion at the time, and remained so until Roman emperors gave it state support. Only about 1 Roman in 4 was Christian when Constantine gave Christianity its favored status. I haven't seen figures on how many Romans were still Pagan when Theodosius banned all other religions in the late 4th century.
In short, Tacitus is a fairly reliable source on this matter, not a random Christian regurgitating what his priests told him. The odds that there was a historical figure whose name got translated as Jesus are excellent, though that is no more proof of the the Christian JC's divinity than the historical evidence of the man Julius Caesar is proof that the Romans of the era were right that their JC became a god.
Makkabee
History major
Classics minor
Jew-boy extraordinaire
Er, no. Tacitus was writing long before Christianity was a majority religion, shows no knowledge of the NT, and is hostile to Christianity.
Though I think there's something of a false dichotomy being created here between historical and mythical figures. We're dealing with, essentially, legend, which is full of composite figures, historical characters who've acquired the attributes of mythical ones or vice versa. It's perfectly possible that the biography of a mythical god-king became attached to a man who really lived; that would seem to be the best explanation for what is otherwise contradictory evidence.
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"An inglorious peace is better than a dishonourable war" ~ John Adams
Jesus of Nazareth may have existed. He may not. There is simply no reliable or credible historical evidence to prove that he did. There are no primary sources--historical documents written by contemporary eyewitnesses--describing his life or death that have ever been discovered. If they are out there, archaeologists have not found them yet.
The four gospels are anonymous third-person heroic narratives, and only one of them even claims to have eyewitness testimony edited or compiled within it, and that one differs almost entirely from the other three. The Book of Acts is historically inaccurate, if we are to believe the apostle Paul, whose writings contradict it, and just the first chapter of Acts deals briefly with Jesus, and only in a fantastic or mythical way, not reporting anything about his pre-"risen" life or teachings. In 1 Corinthians, Paul quotes an early creed and cites some possible witnesses, none of whom left extant writings discussing the life of Jesus. 1 & 2 Timothy, Titus, 2 Peter are no hope to us, being forgeries, and Hebrews, 1, 2, 3 John are anonymous. We have no idea which of many possible Johns wrote Revelation. By his own report, Paul was not an eyewitness to the life of Jesus. He only appeared to him in a vision on the Damascus Road, during what appears from the descriptions, if we can believe them, to have been a transcendence hallucination caused by a temporal lobe seizure.
No non-Christian contemporary historians or writers mention Jesus at all. He is contained in no government records. A native of his region, Philo, who compiled a detailed historical account of the area at the time of Jesus, mentions none of the events depicted in the gospels at all. Not one!
I direct you to "The Verdict Is In," which you can find easily with a search engine. It is a detailed and comprehensive refutation of practically every misleading statement or piece of propaganda contained in Josh McDowell's magnum opus.