There are a few things that could be added further regarding John’s Gospel and Jesus’ eloquence.

Firstly, for many Biblical scholars John’s Gospel provides powerful testimony in favour of the historicity of Jesus and which support the historical accuracy of John’s Gospel itself. It contains detailed accounts of particular locations in Jerusalem, such as the Temple and the Pool of Siloam, that were totally destroyed after 70 AD. For most scholars, it seems these descriptions were based on eyewitness accounts. Even if the Gospel itself was written too late to be by John himself, from what I understand the community that wrote it were strongly influenced by John and his ideas. So regarding those details, its historically very accurate.

As to the Lord’s eloquence, the German New Testament scholar Jonas Jeremias noted that if you translated Jesus’ words into Aramaic, they had all the qualities of Hebrew poetry. For him, this was a powerful indication that they were based on Christ’s own teaching and an indication of the Gospels’ authenticity. As for Jesus’ eloquence, it has to be noted that He was a preacher and teacher of the Law, not a poet or novelist, and so stylistically His speech and comments are not going to be like that of a modern writer, who composes his works according to contemporary aesthetic conventions. Furthermore, the structure of Hebrew poetry is different from contemporary poetic conventions. Hebrew poetry was based on repetition and refrain, rather than meter and rhyme. Nevertheless, Jesus clearly produced some powerful, memorable images in His parables and teaching, and articulated ethical commands, which have inspired both moral reformers and artists and writers for millennia. The Sermon on the Mount is a powerful example of this.

Now the type of Greek the Gospels are written really isn’t terribly impressive. It’s in Koine Greek, the type of Greek used by the ordinary people of the eastern Mediterranean. It’s not the polished, classical Greek of the educated upper classes, and it contains a number of Semitisms. I suppose that if you want to put it into a modern context, it’d be like the type of English spoken by Jewish immigrants in the Bronx in the early part of the 20th century, compared to, say, the very polished type of English spoken by the British or American upper classes. At the time a number of educated Romans looked down on the Bible because it was written in what they saw as very poor Greek. However, the whole point of the Bible’s revelation was that God had come and appeared to ordinary men and women, rather than only to members of the aristocracy, and the type of Greek used by the Bible writers is a powerful witness to this fact. One could also argue that it further demonstrates the truth of the Bible’s witness that it was accepted as an authoritative account of God’s revelation because of the strength and truth of its contents, rather than because the language in which it was written was particularly impressive.

More than you can know.

Not a problem about the time issue!

As far as the Golden Rule, my own thinking on reflection is that treating some people HOW the way the want is NOT recommended due to particular issues in their mind. And I agree that the purpose is to set forth moral precepts that MUST apply to all, else they are not morals but preferences—and not universal.

Right, Suetonius’ brief comment does indeed really refer to Christianity as a religion. However, he clearly considered ‘Chrestus’ to be an historical figure, as he says that the Jews were expelled from Rome ‘because of the riotsthey were causing at the instigation of Chrestus.’

Note – he does not cast doubt on the existence of Chrestus, as he could by stating, for example, that Christus was supposed figure.

In fact all of the Roman authorities considered that Christ was a real historical figure. Celsus, one of the Christianity’s most bitter opponents, did not doubt that Christ existed, even though he was severely critical of His miracles and argued that Christ had adopted His teaching from the ancient Egyptians. The Greeks and Romans had very sophisticated text-critical techniques, which were used to argue against the historicity of literary sources. The early Church used them against the Gnostic Gospels. None of the pagan opponents of Christianity argued that Jesus never existed. Instead they argued that he was indeed a criminal who had been correctly sentenced to death by Pilate.

What hack of a teacher/pastor did you get this list from? Please tell me you were ignorant of these works’ flimsiness and you werent trying to deliberately sell a brick as a jade. For shame.

Actually, that list of extra-Biblical sources is eminently respectable. The great Biblical scholar E.P. Sanders uses the Roman sources, for example. The classical historian Robin Lane Fox refers to the Roman source in his book, Pagans and Christians , which is a work of secular history. As I said, the vast majority of historians really do reject the claim that Christ never existed, and it’s the individuals making those claims who are in the minority and whose claims are ahistorical and unsupported.

No, the passage doesn’t refer to Jesus by name, but it certainly seems to refer to Him nevertheless. The passage reads that Christians

‘got their name from one Christ, who was executed by sentence of the procurator Pontius Pilate in the reign of Tiberius. The pernicious superstition, suppressd for the moment, broke out again, not only throughou Judaea, the birthplace of the plague, but also in the city of Rome…’

Now as the Bible clearly states that Christ was executed by Pontius Pilate, who governed Judaea during the reign of Tiberias, it seems very clear to me that it does indeed refer to Jesus. As for not mentioning Him by name, Tacitus is trying to explain who the Christians were, and this means explaining the origins of their name in the word ‘Christ’, rather than Jesus’ own, personal name.

Firstly, there’s no reason why he should have referred to the events of the life of Christ Himself. Judaea was an imperial backwater in which the Romans actually took very little interest. Josephus is the only secular historical source for the country in the 1st century AD. Jesus was just one of a number of rebels who simply aren’t mentioned elsewhere as they were of no real interest to Roman authorities. It’s only when Christ’s worship spreads, and threatens the proper worship of the Graeco-Roman gods and so is perceived as a threat to imperial society that high ranking civil servant like Pliny begin to take notice.

Now the word ‘Christos’ does indeed predated Christ. It means ‘the anointed one’, and is a translation of the Hebrew ‘messiah’. Now scholars today have rejected the theory that the claims of Christ’s divinity were invented by the early Christians, so this statement by Pliny does corroborate that Jesus was being worshipped as God by the early 2nd century, even if it does not give the details of His life and ministry.

Now there are indeed references in the Talmud to a Yeshua who lived about 130 years before Jesus. However, the passages describing this Yeshua, and his disobedience to a superior rabbi, are quite dissimilar to the passages that refer to Jesus. The passage that is believed to refer to Christ seems very clear that it does indeed. The passage is in b. Sanh. 43a:

‘On the eve of Passover Yesu was hanged. For forty days before the execution took place, a herald went forth and cried, ‘He is going forth to be stoned because he has practised sorcery and enticed and led Israel astray’.

Other passages seem to refer to Christ’s disciples, and there’s one which records a debate, or rather an exchange of insults, between a rabbi and one of Christ’s followers in Sepphoris, which would itself indicate a date after 130 BC, and that it refered to Jesus, rather than the Yeshua who preceded Him in the second century BC.

It’s also true that there are Jewish scholars who don’t believe that the Yeshu in these passages refers to Christ. However, the texts certainly seem to refer to Jesus, and are accepted as such by scholars.

Flavius Josephus (A.D. 93) FORGERY according to consensus of scholars since the 18th century. Authenticity of this was disputed since at LEAST the 17th century. You need to catch up a few hundred years.

Actually, not quite. Yes, the majority of scholars do consider that one of the references to Jesus in Josephus was forged, but it’s only a minority of scholars who believed it to be a complete forgery. Most of the rest believe that the reference to Christ in Josephus is genuine, but was added to by his Christian compilers and copyists from veneration and respect for the Lord. It’s not a complete invention. For more information on this, have a look at the entry for Josephus on J.P. Holding’s awesome Tekton site, where he gives the precise breakdown of how many scholars believed what about the reference there.

Social scientists have shown that it is harmful to treat others “as we wnat to be treated.” We should treat others as “they want to be treated.” The platinum rule.

IE., I like to be treated as the salty old skeptic that I am, but it is obvious that if I treated all the people I know like that, I would be a pariah. Pay attention.

The point of the Golden Rule is to universalize moral norms. Each person is to be treated in the same way. It’s the same principle behind Kant’s statement that if you’re legislating for one, you’re legislating for all. Moral values have to have universal validity and cannot be arbitrary.

Secondly, the Golden Rule is based on Christ’s statement that you are to love you neighbour as you love yourself. In other words, it’s expected that you love and respect yourself, and should extend this natural self-love to others.

As for the comments that you should treat others how they would like to be treated, there are real problems with this interpretation of morality. For example, think of those poor souls with extremely low self-esteem. The individuals who really suffer from this may believe, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that they deserve the suffering and abuse they receive. Yet they don’t. By the standard of the maxim that people should be treated the way they would like to be treated, these people should be abused and maltreated. Yet the most moral way of treating them would be to do everything possible to increase their self-esteem.

At the other extreme there’s the example of the complete egotist or megalomaniac who believes he’s far better than everyone else, and so must be treated accordingly, despite the fact that he’s no better than anyone else, and frequently behaves much worse. Clearly, such extreme selfishness is immoral and shouldn’t be encouraged. In this instance, moral behaviour consists in giving the person exactly the same treatement that everyone else experiences, regardless of that person’s delusions of grandeur.

The statement that people should be treated according to how they wish to be treated actually doesn’t work as a moral principle, because it assumes and mandates that people should be treated differently according to their expectations, rather than that everyone should be treated with same love and respect most people have for themselves.

The sayings of Jesus would fit into a small pamphlet. And most of those were plagurized from the Old Testament.

This doesn’t have anything to say about the profundity or otherwise of Christ’s sayings. The Gospels make very clear that there was much more they could say about the Lord, but just include the most profound and important. I’m not sure that length in this context is particularly relevant, as I’ve got a feeling many other Roman bioi of great historical figures, such as Suetonius’ portraits of individual emperors, are similarly short.

As for Christ’s sayings being plagiarised from the Old Testament – this is pretty much what you’d expect from a 1st century rabbi expounding the Law. Christianity emerged from Judaism, and Christ was the consummation of the divine revelation which began with Almighty’s election of Abraham. It’s why the early Christians saw themselves as the new Israel. Furthermore, it also corroborates Jesus as a real, historical figure. The argument used by Bultmann that only one saying by Jesus could be traced back to Him comes ultimately from the 19th century view that the Christ of faith was developed in the 2nd century by the early Church. But the work by E.P. Sanders and Geza Vermes that shows how much of what Jesus taught and preached was similar to the common culture and debates in 1st century Judaism have strengthened the argument that the Gospels are historically accurate.

For example, the statement by Jesus that ‘The Lord your God is the only Lord. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your mind and with all your soul. On this hangs all the Law and the prophets’ is a kelal – a very, very brief summary of the very essence of the Law. It’s an example of the debates about the essence of Jewish faith and observance at the very time Christ lived and ministered. One of the questions rabbis would ask each other was ‘Can you summarise the Law while standing on one leg?’ Which means, basically, can you produce a very brief encapsulation of the fundamental principles of the Law, as you would if you were balancing on one leg, in the time you had before you fell over. Christ is here a real figure in history, not a late invention produced by the importation of ideas from Hellenistic paganism.