[net.religion] Genealogy

mikec (03/15/83)

(Response to rocheste.924!FtG)

  Actually, the genealogy of Jesus is in far worse shape than
that. For example :

    Matthew 1:16 "And Jacob begat Joseph the husband of Mary,
                 of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ."

    Luke 3:23    "And Jesus himself began to be about thirty
                 years of age, being (as was supposed) the son
                 of Joseph, which was the son of Heli,"

  Thus Joseph (the father of Jesus) appears to have two fathers.

  Furthermore :

    Matthew 2:1  "Now when Jesus was born ... in the days of
                 Herod the king ..."

    Luke 2:2..11 "And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius
                 (Quirinius) was governer of Syria. ... And
                 Joseph ... with Mary ... being great with
                 child ... which is Christ the Lord."

  The contradiction is that Herod died in 4 B.C. while the census
of Quirinius occurred in 6 A.D.

  Moreover Matthew 1:6..7 claims that Jesus was a descendant of
David's son Solomon while Luke 3:23..31 claims that Jesus was a
descendant of David's son Nathan.

  Jesus is not mentioned outside of the Bible and the Dead Sea
Scrolls showed that virtually all of the so called "wisdom" that
Jesus supposedly preached was common knowledge centuries earlier.
Biblical Scholars are not all convinced that Jesus even existed.

  Anyone interested in how poor and circumstantial the historical
evidence for Jesus really is should consult the following books :


    Pagan Christs by J.M. Robertson  1967 University Books

    The Historical Evidence for Jesus by G.A. Wells  1982
    Prometheus Books (the author is a New Testament Scholar)


Micheal D. Cranford
Tektronix
Teklabs

greg (03/21/83)

#R:teklabs:-182300:zehntel:19200004:000:492
zehntel!greg    Mar 20 18:28:00 1983


Re: "Jesus is not mentioned outside of the Bible..."

I know a lot of people have a poor opinion of Josh McDowell, and a lot of
people rely too heavily upon his work, but wrt the historicity of Jesus,
he has a list of non-biblical references to Jesus in Evidence that Demands 
a Verdict, pp 84-88.  Anyone who is seriously interested in this question 
should try to check these out.  I'll be happy to provide the list to anyone 
who wants it.

				Greg Boyd
				...decvax!sytek!zehntel!greg

hss (03/27/83)

#R:teklabs:-182300:sri-unix:15700003:000:2938
sri-unix!hss    Mar 24 11:30:00 1983

Re: Non-biblical references to Jesus

To be charitable, Josh McDowell is not a very good historian. He never 
examines his sources with a modicum of skepticism. Even when he does
admit that some of his material is a bit questionable, he refuses to
discuss opposing points of view fairly. He's quite aware of what 
conclusions he wants his audience to reach. Some examples:

1.  McDowell's most famous quotation is attributed to Flavius Josephus:
    "Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful
    to call him a man..." McDowell describes the passage as being
    "hotly contested" but doesn't go into detail. He also points out
    that the passage is included in the most recent Loeb edition of
    the works of Flavius Josephus. McDowell failed to point out that
    there were also several lengthy (and critical) footnotes. It's
    obvious to most scholars that the passage is a Christian interpolation.
    (It'd be embarrassing if Josephus' detailed history of the times
    were to neglect mentioning Jesus.)

2.  McDowell also quotes Suetonius. "Punishment by Nero was inflicted
    on the Christians. McDowell never tells the reader that the sentence
    is sandwiched between a regulation concerning cooked foods at cabarets
    and a mention of a crackdown on the abuses of chariot drivers. The
    paragraph dealt with minor police reforms. This is another Christian
    interpolation.

3.  Some of McDowell's funnier mistakes involve a couple of pagan writers,
    Thallus and Phlegon. McDowell attempts to show that the Romans knew of 
    the unnatural darkness at noon that is recorded in Matthew. Thallus'
    "writings have disappeared and we only know of them from fragments 
    cited by other writers. One such writer is Julius Africanus, a Christian
    writer from about 221 A.D." Aside from the fact that a Christian writer
    would be tempted to commit a pious fraud, McDowell apparently doesn't
    know that most of Africanus' works have been lost too. Indeed, the remark
    in question comes from Africanus' history of the world, a work that 
    survives in the form of fragments scattered through a history (Eusebius' 
    Chronicle) that was written much later.

    McDowell quotes "Phlegon, a first century historian," as writing that
    "during the time of Tiberius Caesar, an eclipse of the sun occured 
    during the full moon." (This, of course, would be a miracle.) 
    Unfortunately for McDowell, Phlegon was really a writer of the second
    century. Phlegon's most famous work is a history of the Olympics. It
    covered up to the 229th Olympics, that is, A.D. 137. (This is another
    quotation that survived after being filtered through a couple of 
    Christian writers.)

    So much for McDowell's accuracy.

I have to admit that this is McDowell's worst evidence. But rest assured,
the rest of it isn't much better.

			    Harry Sameshima
			     HSS@SRI-UNIX