The Bible and Jesus of Nazareth

Essay: The Bible says Jesus of Nazareth was a teacher who used miracles to help people. In reality he was a wandering man whose simple tricks and healing remedies were mistaken for miracles. He wandered Judea preaching about the validity of the jewish laws. This gained him a large following. Roman officials caught wind of this and were scared of an uprising. So they had him executed; however this had the opposite effect. The jewish sect that followed Jesus was pacified for some time but emerged again as Christianity, with a larger following than before. Eventually, and ironically, it ended up surviving the Roman Empire.

Thesis: the historical Jesus was a Galilean man who who lived during the first Century A.D. and gained fame through chicanery and tricks, which ensured him as the basis of modern day Christianity.

P1: Secular evidence

Ts: Jesus was a wandering teacher in Judea who amassed a large following.

The roman historian Tacitus(56 A.D.-176 A.D.) was a well known skeptic who consistently criticized Christianity. He researched the historicity of Jesus Christ and came to the conclusion that he was a real man. "Christus, the founder of the [Christian] name, was put to death by Pontius Pilate, procurator of Judea... through Judea, where the mischief originated.”This quote, from the works of Tacitus, appears in every known copy, downplaying the idea of tampering by Christians. From this quote we can discern that Jesus was a jewish man who wandered Judea preaching. He eventually gained a massive following. This gained the attention of roman officials. another man who confirms these notions in his writings is Lucian of Samosata(120 - ~180 A.D.). He wrote “The Christians... worship a man to this day- ... who introduced their ...

... middle of paper ...

..... by the use of incantations.” Celsus says that Jesus learned tricks and skills in egypt that would of seemed foreign to the people of Judea. they would then interpret his skills as magic, miracles, or even witchcraft, which he was accused of in the Bible. In his writings Celsus also deals with the idea of a virgin birth. He says that mary was “turned out by her husband... on being convicted of adultery[with a roman soldier].” this explains why she would claim to be a virgin and how jesus might have been thought to not have a father. Celsus also explains that Jesus was real, because Christians would never make up the story of Jesus being baptized by John the Baptist. He brings up that John the baptist was jewish and would have absolved a sinless man of his sins. Both of these Contradict the church’s ideology making it unlikely that they would fabricate this story.