Are there authentic secular writings about Jesus? - Creation Today Claims

for years then we haven't even copyrighted our material we allow people to copy it to give it away that's what we want are their secular writings about Jesus a lot of people ask that kind of question and what do we have outside of Scripture that coincides or confirms what the Bible says not really science but it is a good question let's see where this goes [Music] welcome apologia we're a former Christian take a look at the claims of Christians if you're new to the channel you should tap the subscribe button so that you'll be notified when new science theology and news videos are posted if you're returning you're likely familiar with Eric Hovind - the head of creation today ministries and it's possible you're familiar with Tim Chaffee he's the Answers in Genesis employee who wrote most of the signs in ken ham's Ark Encounter three noah fan fiction novels and is the 6 foot 6 inch giant who modeled for the actual giant in the Ark's infamous gladiator diorama well Tim and Eric recently began a podcast together called Bible Q&A so since this is only the 3rd podcast and when we have one listener it's my mom I think it's okay that my mom knows that yes transitions perfect into what we want to do and what we want this pot has to be about you and I get to interact with skeptics on a regular basis and answer their questions do you do any event interaction online I see a lot of people posing questions to you on Twitter and Facebook but very very rarely do you reply there I see the comment section for this video is closed so the interaction isn't on YouTube as I've done before Eric I'd like to issue you an open invitation to talk with me anytime on any number of topics on a youtube channel of your choosing I can think of several who might volunteer if you're interested drop me a line you kind of have a different vision for this podcast don't you I do it's not that we're avoiding questions from skeptics so we don't want to turn this into a podcast but that's just about answering question from the skeptics we really want this to be more about questions that believers are struggling with this is unsurprising the two ministries represented here designed almost exclusively to affirm believers rather than to seriously attempt to change the mind of a non-believer still since my channel is about addressing the claims of Christians in general I think it'll be worth looking at what they have to say regardless of to whom they're saying it if you're skeptic in your listening you know you're welcome to continue to do so thank you for listening but if you spam the unboxer and over and over again we're not gonna go through all your questions right in a row we know you just copied and pasted from Google anyway skeptics just copy and paste from Google come on Eric I don't accuse you of just copying and pasting from your dad's seminars I said you really ought to get one you know you could learn some good science on a merry-go-round if you ever have a merry-go-round handy you need to do a little science experiment if you put some fourth graders on there what I do is I get three fourth graders and I put them on a merry-go-round all right I like fourth graders I spent the best five years of my life in the fourth grade it's put the best five years of my life and fourth grader this podcast attea looks great it's just a nice little break to see Eric not trying to sell anything or promote his Genesis Paradise Lost movie we talked about doing a segment on the show where we have like a featured product where we haven't done that yet and we haven't quite coming up we haven't come up with a jingle or anything if we're gonna do that but no big sponsors yet and there we go so um just for our first featured product if you will or what I didn't working on lately tell a little bit well we just released last November Genesis Paradise Lost and we go oh no so much for that what about outside the Bible are there authentic secular writings about Jesus Tim so what'd you think yeah I think that's a great question and I don't think that one came from Jason being skeptical you know sometimes skeptical ask that question in fact they asked happen a lot does it say the Bible is the only source of the life of Jesus in instance those writers had an agenda you can't trust them me generally a skeptical person would avoid absolute statements on any topic so it seems problematic to declare that someone with an agenda can't be trusted what would make sense is to recognize when someone has a bias or an agenda and weigh that as one factor into the amount of confidence you attribute to the accuracy of what they're saying when it comes to the Bible there are lots of factors the way into our confidence level like what is the genre of the writing do we know who did the writing and how did they receive the information what kind of claims are being made etc so you gotta find somebody who is neutral somebody who who doesn't have this bias and listen to them all things being equal you should have more confidence in a neutral perspective than a biased one if there's a two vehicle collision the testimony of an uninvolved witness will generally give a less skewed version than that of either driver each of whom will obviously and naturally tend to be more sympathetic to their own circumstance well are you gonna be able find somebody who doesn't have a bias for or against Jesus during that time period it seems like you're not time-period virtually no one knew who Jesus was his following hadn't saturated culture yet and apocalyptic preachers were a dime a dozen other than the disciples Jesus family and a handful of Roman officials virtually everyone was unbiased toward Jesus a lot of these skeptics who are making these claims and we're saying there's no secular writing about Jesus there's no writing back side of the Bible about Jesus don't they have a bias to try to disprove Scripture try to say that the Bible cares this is more of a straight factual question than an opinion based one and you acknowledge already that the person who asked the question wasn't being skeptical so the very same question can be asked with equal sincerity with different attitudes I honestly don't see how the bias of the question asker affects the answer to a fact-based question it doesn't matter which team I cheer for when I ask what the score in the game is it isn't about whether you have a bias or not because we all have one it's about what's true what's real I couldn't agree more so why are you spending all this time talking about bias surely it is the bias of the question answerer and not the question asker that is important and let me give you an example of a couple of quotes from skeptics here's from the film zeitgeist and this is one that I met and Christians you don't need to watch this film skeptics probably don't need to watch the film either the scholarship presented in the movie is it best uneven and at worst somewhat suspect there are more academic presentations of the arguments elsewhere see the description for a few suggestions furthermore is there any non biblical historical evidence of any person living with the name Jesus percent of Mary who traveled about with 12 followers healing people and alike okay well that sounds like an honest question that could be asked by either a faithful Christian or a hardened skeptic without knowing which is which it's a straightforward yes-or-no question that makes no judgments about Jesus whatsoever there are numerous historians who lived in and around the Mediterranean either during or soon after the assumed life of Jesus how many of these historians document such a figure again just the straightforward question asking for a simple count not one all right well the film attempts to provide account given the agenda of the film I willing to remain skeptical of the answer provided though I still see no bias in the question being asked I'm sure Eric or Tim will let us know what the answer is that's very dogmatic of them to say oh yeah efforting it you can't tell from Tim's reading if the film's answer of zero was a good-faith count on their survey of sources or some kind of over-the-top assertion but as Tim said it's all about the facts and not about bias so I'm sure we'll eventually get to the factual answer to this question here's another guy that says devastating to historians there occurs not a single contemporary writing that mentions Jesus all talking about Jesus came well after the life of the alleged Jesus from either unknown authors people have never met an earthly Jesus or from fraudulent mythical or allegorical writings okay there's some subjectivity in this preamble we haven't got to the question yet there are good facts here too the Gospels are anonymous Paul's encounter with Jesus was described as a vision not a physical encounter certainly classifying a writing as fraudulent mythical or allegorical is in the realm of subjectivity rather than certainty but this isn't the question yet let's see what he asks where all the contemporary sources for the life of Jesus you can't count the Bible there's less statement because they all had an agenda and the Gospels were written a generation or two later I don't think the question writer needed to pose bias as a reason to exclude the New Testament from his question as the time of the writing of the material is enough to qualify the count taken on their own without the preamble his real questions where are the contemporary sources for the life of Jesus and why didn't Roman or Jewish historians write about him are perfectly objective questions to ask people say you can't trust the Bible because think I'd advise the fully expressed bias of the Gospel writers is just one among a number of reasons that not every claim in them should be given a high confidence in historical accuracy the authors are anonymous they don't claim to be eyewitnesses they were written lifetimes after the events they described they copy from each other so cannot be considered independent and yet even so they contradict each other I heard the claim that these guys are making that Jesus didn't even exist it's not that he didn't do all of these things or I don't know that I could trust out the miracle story but yeah there probably a guy some of the skeptics I think he didn't even exist among the small handful of credentialed scholars who don't think that Jesus was historical they say that it is more likely that Jesus didn't exist rather than say that he definitely didn't exist history deals only with probabilities so the claim would be that Jesus probably didn't exist but I digress I'm generally willing to take the position Tim suggests here granting that there probably was a guy named Jesus but that we don't have supporting evidence for the miracles Jesus honestly I wish the question that was being covered was Arthur authentic secular writings about the miracles of Jesus because I think that's the more independent but that's just one source you have to now you have to deny eight early sources who knew him or met him and several of them all of them but but one walked around with two and foot two Luke and Paul walked around with him and talked with him and and lived with him for some time with Luke and Paul aside there's actually six sources now three of these sources Matthew Mark and John never actually identified themselves in the text so the books are anonymous nor do any of the text attributed to them even claim that the author is a witness and Matthew supposedly the Apostle copied almost all of Mark word-for-word which is particularly strange since it would mean the eyewitness apostle is copying the non I witness scribe for some reason if we accept the latter traditions of what authorship the letters of James Peter and Jude are generally considered by textual critics to be forgeries but checking that can be homework for you or wait for an upcoming video I'm producing on the topic of who wrote the Bible let's talk about some of the secular writers that was the question well the first one I don't know if they're called secular but Josephus so he was a Jewish general who was captured during the revolt against the Romans and he records the history of the Roman conquest of Israel which happened in AD 70 in the years leading up to that and then he wrote a history that Jewish people but here's what he wrote about Jesus he's talking about James and he says James is called the brother of Jesus who was called the Christ no Josephus is not saying that Jesus is the Christ the Messiah but he's saying that he was called then I can go with that I'm glad that Tim acknowledges that this is a report about what people say about Jesus now here's the statement that gets called into question a lot and if you pick up a book on Josephus it's translating in English you're probably gonna find the statement now there was about this time Jesus a wise man if it be lawful to call a man for he was one who wrought surprising feats he was the Christ he appeared to them alive again the third day as the divine prophets had foretold these in 10,000 other wonderful things concerning him does that sound like something a Jewish man who did not believe in Jesus as the Messiah would say you would never say he rose from the dead three days later I mean that was the that was the taboo that was you can't go to and he was the Christ so it sounds like some later Christian embellished the writings of Josephus again points to Tim and Eric for acknowledging the consensus view of ladder forgery or interpolation form or play freezing on this passage here's what scholars have done they've gone back and they looked at the different versions that we have of just even in the different languages and they pieced together what they think is probably what he said and so here's a statement now there was about this time Jesus a wise man for he with the doer of startling deeds a teacher of such man has received the truth with pleasure and he gained it following both among the Jews and many other of Greek origin and when Pilate at the suggestion of principal men among us amongst us condemned him to the cross those that loved him at first did that forsake him and the tribe of Christians so named for him are not extinct at this day 3rd century historian origin of Alexandria vigorously defended Jesus using the James passage from Josephus yet mentions nothing about this longer disputed passage from Josephus the testimonial flavy annum as it is known which is a highly suspicious omission if that passage had existed at the time he probably would have used it nevertheless most historians who have studied Josephus agree that the original manuscript probably included some kind of mention of Jesus many Christians concentrate on this affirmation that Jesus was killed on a cross but a Romans at the time were killing people on crosses on mass every single day so that in and of itself isn't an outlandish claim I'm most curious about the inclusion of the phrase startling deeds as part of Josephus original text since that's as close as we've come to an extra biblical confirmation of miracles working backwards to attempt to recreate what might have been Josephus original words is a highly speculative endeavor I found a copy of the book by James Dunn the Tim quotes here so that I could find out more about the methodology for the claims made the first thing I noted was that Tim slide doesn't match what Dunn has in his book on the very page Tim references teacher of men instead of teacher of people at the suggestion of instead of because of an accusation made and other minor variations not sure what to make of this inaccurate quote but I hope Tim is looking at primary sources for his information I know we'd all like to be as accurate as possible rather than the exposition I was hoping for Dunn spends only a single sentence talking about this the first passage has clearly been subject to Christian redaction but there is a broad consensus that Josephus wrote something like the following the footnote for the phrase broad consensus reads see particularly gays of Burma's the Jesus notice of Josephus reexamined JJ s 38 1987 one to ten who points out that the two keyphrases a wise man a doer of startling deeds are characteristic of Josephus and so far as the possibility of an interpolation is concerned improbably Christian see further charlesworth Jesus 91 to 98 and van Vorst Jesus 89 to 99 unfortunately I couldn't secure copy of Verma is 1987 study but did track down the third one referenced Van Voorhis also says that the Greek phrase which he translates as amazing deeds is not likely to come from a Christian however Van Voorhis says that the phrase could equally be translated as controversial deeds and that the whole sentence can be read to mean that Jesus had a reputation as an order worker if that is correct we're back to this whole thing just being a report about what people believed about Jesus rather than events that were historically verified so he's still writing on Jesus and he's still saying things that are consistent with what the New Testament says but he's not saying I believe they think happened he's just saying here's what's reported exactly Josephus is telling us what other people are claiming another historian is named Dallas he wrote in Greek and he flourished around the mid-50s so within 20 years or so of the resurrection he wrote a three-volume history of the world unfortunately the his writings are lost other than being quoted by Julius africanus Julius africanus was the second century Christian whose primary contribution to the church was to influence later writer Eusebius in fact we don't have Julius africanus writings any longer the passage will be Eusebius quoting Julius africanus commenting on phallus the game of telephone is getting long on this one and here he said on the whole world they're pressed in most fearful darkness and the rocks were rented by an earthquake that many places in Judea and other districts were thrown down this darkness valise in the third book of his history called and appears to me without reason an eclipse of the Sun so salicin trying to make sense of the the darkness in the land will sit on the cross we don't actually know the context of what thalis was calling in Eclipse because we don't have things we know that Eusebius is quoting Julius africanus dismissing a vaguely described claim of someone he disagrees with we all know that falsely representing an opponent's claim happens all the time whether deliberate or through genuine misunderstanding talking about crucifixion he's talking about the darkness on the line we don't know what the Ellis was talking about Julius didn't even provide a direct quote from phallus so there's three are ready to there's two already josephus some phallus and no one says that phallus was talking about Jesus phallus said something about an eclipse which everyone agrees couldn't have happened during the Passover that may or may not have had something to do with alleged darkness on the day of Jesus death yeah well we got more we got how many well let me let me read few more say there's plenty of the younger will sit through some of these in people can follow on the slide he's a Roman author live born in AD 61 and dies in 112 he says they talking about Christians we're in the habit of meeting on a certain thick day before it was like when they sang an alternate versus a hymn to Christ as to a God so when they say he said that the early Christians were worshipping Christ as God you're shifting around here's him are you trying to find passages that would lend to the historicity of Jesus as a person if so this passage merely tells us that people existed who believed Jesus was God without grounding Jesus at all this passage might actually help make the case that Jesus wasn't a physical person how about Tacitus a Roman historian who lived through the range of over six Emperor's from 1855 through 120 so here's what he said consequently to get rid of the report Nero fastened to guilt and inflicted the most exquisite torture than a class of on a class hated for their abominations called Christians by the populace Christos that's Latin for Christ from whom the name had at origin suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurator's Pontius Pilate where have we heard that before personally I think this is the most solid extra-biblical affirmation of a historical Jesus who died of all the people mentioned so far Tacitus as Roman connections would have put him in a position to verify if someone called Christ was crucified by Pilate in other passages Tacitus discusses how he despises and refuses to take his information from hearsay and in other places critiques his sources when he doubts their veracity and he makes no such complaint here one could point out that Tacitus uses Christ which is a title and not a name technically there's nothing here that specifically identifies the Christ of whom Tacitus speaks to Jesus of Nazareth technically any most mischievous mischievous superstition thus checked for the moment again broke out and this is where Tacitus walks it all back or at least destroys the idea that he might affirm any supernatural claims for to Tacitus everything the Christians were preaching could be dismissed as mischievous superstition Suetonius who lived in from 1869 to 1:30 in the chief secretary of emperor hadrian and had access to the imperial record they said because the Jew that Rome caused continuous disturbances at the instigation of Chris duce he expelled them from the city again it's just a misspelling a misspelling of Chris duce which is the latin name for Jesus or for Christ no no you can't confidently say crest this is just a misspelling of Christ any more than you can say that Greg is automatically a misspelling of Craig so that Craig would get all the blame for writing Greg in the sidewalk the words sound similar but crest this was itself a proper name meaning good righteous are useful while Christos meant anointed or Messiah it could be a misspelling but we can't know that it was given the timing and context of the sentence even the most biblically optimistic scholars felt that this would be a reference to the expulsion of believers mentioned in acts 18 so even in the best case scenario even this is a reference to what Christians believed rather than an affirmation that a historical Jesus existed after the great fire at rome punishments were also inflicted on the Christians a sect professing a new and mischievous religious belief this more affirms that these historians felt the claims being made were false not accurate events Lucian and 8 in the second century AD he the Greek satirist and he said that he cursed had Christian for being gullible people this is almost like saying that Ricky Gervais is critiquing a Bible story should be taken as evidence that Ricky is affirming the truth of the Bible story God looked at them and said to himself they are so wicked I would have to wipe them off the face of the earth really really straight to genocide what happened to one verbal and two written warnings strength that would be wrong so there's a bunch of secular writers well-known popular historians of time who wrote about Jesus who were within the first few generations after Jesus well I could have said yes to the question of our extra biblical references to the name of Jesus in the first two centuries what often the skeptics mock what I would want are extra biblical references to what Jesus did rather than merely reporting the beliefs of his followers I want affirmation of the miracles the supernatural part not that a man named Jesus died every man living in the first century died that's not an interesting claim that's amazing that really is cool I mean to to just hear one quote after another after another external from the Scriptures which is what I'm most familiar with that's I don't know to me that's encouraging it's a it's faith-building it's I know it's true but it's like I yep I really really know it's true you know I where everything keeps confirming I suppose that if you start with the belief and want some possible confirmations these references could help reassure however if you start from a position of not knowing whether Jesus existed or if he performed miracles or rose from the dead I think you'd have to admit that these secular snippets wouldn't do much to make the case any stronger and yet they trick the Bible as if it is guilty until proven innocent rather than innocent till proven guilty him must mean guilty of being false so innocent would mean true that's strangely worded the court analogy would be better expressed the other way guilt means that the prosecution has proven their case beyond a reasonable doubt can the Bible be convicted of being true if the evidence were presented to an impartial jury would these stories in the Bible be convicted of being true if you set aside all preconceived ideas and sat on that jury how would you rule questions Tim I love this this is educational I'm happy to do it I'm having a good time so far if you've been having a good time make your next video the top one where I talk about Tim and Eric's claims about the resurrection of Jesus or the bottom one where I talk about Eric's creation science ideas thanks for watching until next time later

Channel: Paulogia

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Keywords: paulogia, creation today, eric hovind, tim chaffey, creation today claims, eric hovind owned, eric hovind exposed, Are there authentic secular writings about Jesus, Is there evidence for Jesus outside the Bible, Is There Any Evidence for Jesus Outside the Bible, evidence for christianity, extra-biblical documents, the case for jesus, is jesus real? evidence for jesus, reliability of the bible

Id: duawfXONl34

Length: 21min 35sec (1295 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 20 2018