Hamas legalizes Crucifixion

[mrstickball]

Comrade Tovya said:

mrstickball said:

Then what of Tacitus' acount of Jesus' death by Potious Pilate? Did Tacitus lie too?

OMG, you are not really going to go here are you?

Tacitus wrote the "Annals" in 116 C.E., which was 80+ years after the supposed crucifixion.  That's not a historical account any more than if some writes about me 2 generations from now.

A historical account in this context is one that is written during the same time as an event.  (or at least very closely). 

Secondly, Tacitus was not witness to this "crucifixion" as he was not even born yet.  By the time he would have been an adult to make a logical decision as an adult on the subject, it would have be around 60 years after the event took place, and that's certainly not historically viable.

Lastly, and most importantly, it has been shown that his writing, at best, were questionable and were probably modified by the early church. 

So, the answer is, he didn't "lie", because he probably didn't write such things to begin with.

Ok. So we've thrown out:

• First hand accounts of Jesus' death and crucifiction
• Second hand accounts of Jesus' death and crucifuction
  
• Historical accounts of Jesus'

How many more documents are skeptics going to strike? There ARE first-hand accounts. They're called the Gospels, ya know?

The argument is a very difficult one to argue, I think, on either side. Either you accept the actual first-hand accounts which are very pro to what the argument is (that a man named Jesus Christ was crucified around 33AD) and the related accounts (such as Tacitus), or you throw virtually everything out the window in favor of 'historical accuracy' yet it's an impossibility to get historical accuracy at that period. I don't believe we've ever seen manifest documents from that era concerning names & home addresses for victims of crucifictions...Did we?

Also, you argue that 'it has been shown that the documents were probably modified by the early church' - Who said that? The large body of scholars agree that the work wasn't edited, since Tacitus was rather anti-Christian in his work, and referenced the actual burden of blame that Christians did indeed burn down Rome - to agree with Nero's accusations. So then we either believe that Tacitus' had words inserted from the church - including convincing arguments against Christianity, just to further some sort of general reference to Jesus in a work that has helped build the foundations of understanding history at the turn of the common era.