The Modern scholarship you refer to consisting mainly of Christian apologists, largely acknowledged another universally agreed fake Josephus reference to the highest level of authenticity, until they stopped doing it due to the evidence supplied by real Modern scholars. The crap put out there by religious scholars tends to diminish proportionately to its absurdity over time. Your dependence on Josephus is tantamount to finding 2 forged twenty dollar bills next to each other, eventually having to admit one is fake, while claiming the other genuine, even though it carries all the hallmarks of the faked bill. There are no birth records, no trial transcripts, no death certificates... not so much as a single solitary reference to Jesus in any non religious source of any kind. In all the vast array of ancient writings, Jesus’s name isn't even so much as mentioned. It would have to be to make bible Jesus historical. Jesus fake news. So sad
you are misrepresenting things again. Wikepedia wrote that not me. And if you do the research as I have presented to you before it is accurate. there are few if any serious scholars who question the legitimacy of both entries in Josephus. How about a citation to all these real scholars who claim the both entries in Josephus are fake. as far as records... all the records from 2000 years ago would fit on a small bookshelf. but.. in the interest of scholarship. how many birth records and trial transcripts do you have from 2000 years ago. I would really like to know more about your argument. in summary... there are few records that are 2000 years old. Josephus is considered one of the great historical records of the time Jesus was mentioned in it and so were christians. One passage is disputed one is not.
Scholars do not question one entry but generally agree it has been interpolated . A less polite term for that is forged. But you are missing the point. Serious scholars didn't doubt the faked passage in Josephus until they were eventually obliged by other serious scholars to accept they could not consider the whole of Josephus was authentic. Serious scholars still dispute both entries in Josephus. They have done for centuries. Josephus is indeed considered one of the great historical records of the time yet the only place where it is considered to have been forged, is where the words Christ/Jesus have been entered. If you think all the records from 2000 years ago would fit on a small bookshelf then I suggest you tell that to the numerous great libraries accross the land where tens of thousands of volumes and countless documents spanning accross the whole of the Bible Jesus era, bear testament to the fact that by the process of historical methodology, none, not one fragment, confirms in historical terms that Bible Jesus ever actually existed. Yet the contemporaries Mark Antony, Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius.....(need I go on) .... extistences can be. But as ever you are going round in circles with this. Even if Josephus was authentic in all it's passages which it isn't, it would not be enough. The historicity of a figure cannot be confirmed without at least some separate authorititive and independant evidence to substatiate it. As far as the Josephus Testimonium Flavianum's reference to Christ/Jesus goes, there is none whatsoever. Futhermore it was written in a period 100 years after the supposed Jesus event. So in any case whether it is considered the passages are authentic or not, without some other uncontroversial evidence in support, it is only hearsay. Unlike the rest of Josephus where his writing, if not directly validated, does at least hold some contextual accord with other evidence, there is nothing at all to underpin the dissputed Testimonium passages. By any objective view, what Josephus can only be supposed to have said about Christ/Jesus - is not mentioned, referred to, or even inferred in any other ancient confirmed historically accurate record. There is no support for Bible Jesus in any non religious form anywhere, which makes all the mention of Jesus in Josephus dubious especially as one passage had been later altered by others. That is a devistatingly remarkable fact which has to be comprehensively and ignominiously ignored when assuming fictional characters like Bible Jesus actually existed. If Bible Jesus's existence is simply a matter of faith then I have no particular beef. In those terms it should just be about the message, generally understood as one of goodness and the Golden Rule, which incidentally never did require a religious mythical archetype to understand. But to insist Bible Jesus existed requires historicity - in light of that fact and as there happens to be none whatsoever, it seems to me either fundamentally dishonest or willfully ignorant to claim otherwise.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Claus Q Saint Nicholas of Myra was a 4th-century Greek Christian bishop of Myra (now Demre) in Lycia, a province of the Byzantine Empire, now in Turkey. Nicholas was famous for his generous gifts to the poor, in particular presenting the three impoverished daughters of a pious Christian with dowries so that they would not have to become prostitutes.[7] He was very religious from an early age and devoted his life entirely to Christianity. In continental Europe (more precisely the Netherlands, Belgium, Austria and Germany) he is usually portrayed as a bearded bishop in canonical robes. The remains of Saint Nicholas are in Italy. In 1087, the Italian city of Bari mounted an expedition to locate the tomb of the Saint. The reliquary of St. Nicholas was conquered by Italian sailors and his relics were taken to Bari[8][9] where they are kept to this day. A basilica was constructed the same year to store the loot and the area became a pilgrimage site for the devout. Sailors from Bari collected just half of Nicholas' skeleton, leaving all the minor fragments in the grave. These were collected by Venetian sailors during the First Crusade and taken to Venice, where a church to St. Nicholas, the patron of sailors, was built on the San Nicolò al Lido. This tradition was confirmed in two important scientific investigations of the relics in Bari and Venice, which revealed that the relics in the two Italian cities belong to the same skeleton. Saint Nicholas was later claimed as a patron saint of many diverse groups, from archers, sailors, and children to pawnbrokers.[7][10] He is also the patron saint of both Amsterdam and Moscow.[11] UQ
Not as productive as connecting to the living christ within (or any other master). This knowing is transformative, all quoted novelty not so much.
1. Nearly all modern scholars of antiquity, which is the majority viewpoint, agree that Jesus existed and most biblical scholars and classical historians see the theories of his non-existence as effectively refuted.[53][55][56][nb 9][102] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus 2. On the same page we see Josephus discussed... Non-Christian sources which are used to study and establish the historicity of Jesus include Jewish sources such as Josephus and Roman sources such as Tacitus. These sources are compared to Christian sources, such as the Pauline Letters and the Synoptic Gospels, and are usually independent of each other; for example, the Jewish sources do not draw upon the Roman sources. Similarities and differences between these sources are used in the authentication process.[27][28][29][29][30] Josephus' Antiquities of the Jews, written around 93–94 AD, includes two references to the biblical Jesus in Books 18 and 20. The general scholarly view is that, while the longer passage, known as the Testimonium Flavianum, is most likely not authentic in its entirety, it is broadly agreed upon that it originally consisted of an authentic nucleus, which was then subject to Christian interpolation or forgery.[31][32] Of the other mention in Josephus, Josephus scholar Louis H. Feldman has stated that "few have doubted the genuineness" of Josephus' reference to Jesus in Antiquities 20, 9, 1, and only a small number of scholars dispute it.[33][34][35][36] There are three references to the name 'Jesus' in Book 20, Chapter 9: "Jesus, who was called Christ" (i.e. ' Messiah'); "Jesus, son of Damneus", a Jewish High Priest (both in Paragraph 1); and "Jesus, son of Gamaliel", another Jewish High Priest (in Paragraph 4). The Roman historian Tacitus, in his Annals (written ca. AD 116), book 15, chapter 44.,[37] referred both to 'Christus' and his execution by Pontius Pilate. The very negative tone of Tacitus' comments on Christians make the passage extremely unlikely to have been forged by a Christian scribe.[38] The Tacitus reference is now widely accepted as an independent confirmation of Christ's crucifixion,[39] although some scholars question the historical value of the passage on various grounds.[38][40][41][42][43][44][45][46] --- 3. regarding 2000 year old records... please let me know the thousand of them you know about... I am not talking about copies of manuscripts... I am talking about unique manuscripts. If you want to talk about copies... lets remember many of the letters in the bible were written within one generation... some would say that some were written by Jesus's disciples themselves. here is a list of new testament papyri... which go back to ad 150... and apparently there are some papyri which may go back to the first century. 4. your argument about josephus make no sense. Josephus is consider part of the historical record. If you are in there you are historical. You once again are making up arguments about what makes something historical. In the case Jesus... you have letters that were written about him and his disciples at the time... Many of which made it into the bible but some did not. You have fragments of these letters going back to the first century... and maybe earlier. On top of that you have Jesus mentioned in historical records such as Josephus and Tacitus and others. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus
Shocking news: Biblical scholars are mostly Christians Islamic scholars are Non-Christian sources as well as Jewish scholars are, and they both rely on religious / biblical accounts only as source for Jesus. Because there is literally no other source to rely on. Tacitus is less useful than Josephus who is no real use except to apologists. What is your point? If there are no records of the time as you assert, then there is de facto no record of a Jesus, therefore he cannot be confirmed as actually existing in history, and you make the point for me. Funny though how for instance so many Roman Emperors of and around the time do fit with basic standards confirming historicity. However, not one bit of Jesus does. All the parts of Josephus which are considered to be the historical record are the parts that fit the context of the time, reflect and accord with other similarly verified material, and follow a logical narrative with other separate sound and independently based sources. That means all parts of Josephus are considered historical without much dispute - except the tiny scrap which mentions Christ and Jesus - indisputably found to have been forged in part, still leaving a few sentences in serious dispute, despite what the mostly Christian Biblical scholars write in Wikipedia. No letters were written about Jesus at the time. There are no letters about Jesus that aren't simply religious writings made around 100 and more years later. As a standard for historicity, what you are arguing would mean in 2,000 years, the Philosopher's Stone is going to be the historical record that gives Harry Potter the quality of having existed as a real person in history. As I have said, Josephus and the rest aren't enough evidence for Jesus even if the few lines hadn't been faked. There simply is nothing written there about Jesus that is supported in any independent way at all, in the way every historical event considered to be factual is. When it comes to deities, all there can be and actually has been throughout the whole of history, is blind faith. At best naive, but basically dishonest to pretend otherwise.