Recently I wrote a letter to the editor of our local paper commenting on an article about Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code book and the movie that just hit our area.
I simply mentioned that you cannot condemn the book or the movie as totally untrue when in fact we have no historical secular evidence about Jesus or his life. Without hard evidence, no one knows what really happened.
Well, I have heard some comments about my statement from people that, as I mentioned in previous posts, know very little about their religion. The storm created by the book and the movie, might entice them to learn a little bit more about their religion and their beliefs instead of attacking people with their ignorance.
There are many, many records from the historical period of Jesus. The Romans kept meticulous records of everything going on around them. There are countless letters, reports, books, etc. from that period. None of them EVER mention Jesus. In fact it is easier to tell people what evidence we DO have.
Josephus, a Jewish historian of the first century A.D. or C.E. that worked for the Romans published the History of the Jews. In one of the volumes there is a simple reference to James the brother of Jesus. James, it appears was well known in Jerusalem and his death merited a mention in Josephus’s book.
This ONLY mention of Jesus (at all) in the millions of writings of that period was found by some Christian monks. They edited it by adding their own thoughts or re-writing the passage the way they thought it should be written. Today, historians have been able to clean it up, removing what was added and leaving what Josephus probably, really said. I guess we should be thankful to these monks because without them we would not even have Josephus – they preserved it for the future, even though heavily edited.
The only other secular historical reference to Jesus was in a letter by a Roman governor somewhere in Asia Minor requesting Rome to instruct him how to handle these “Christos followers”.
That is it gang! As important as Jesus and Christianity is to our history and our civilization – no hard evidence – period!
But, you say, what about the Gospels. Well now, this is where the problem lies. Many Christians believe these literary works as historical pieces and they are NOT.
They were composed way after the time of Jesus by writers that never met Jesus. They were not even from the land of Jesus or spoke in the language of Jesus (Aramaic). They relied on information about Jesus from previous Gospel writers (Mark was the first according to historians) and whatever stories were being passed around at that time. Note, we are talking about stories – hearsay if you will – NOT DOCUMENTED HISTORY.
This is a huge subject and there are many volumes written about the “historical Jesus” and what can we really know about him and his life.
I am not saying you should not believe that the Gospels are historically correct but if you do you have to know that your beliefs are based on faith and not on fact - so please do not jump down my throat about Jesus if I don't agree with your beliefs. I am just stickin with the known facts – thank you.
Janusz
No comments:
Post a Comment