Talk:Evidence for the historical existence of Jesus Christ/Archive11

Early churches most compelling evidence for Jesus
The article contains this sentence: "The most compelling argument for historians that "a man named Jesus existed as the leader of a religious movement" is that a handful of pre-Christian churches existed[4] and cited Jesus[5] as their leader."

I tried to follow up on what the source for this claim was and got this: "These early churches took the name of disciples of Jesus, for example, the Church of Mary, the Church of Thomas, and the Church of Peter"

Was that supposed to be a source? It was in a section called notes so I guess it was supposed to be a note and not a source. So is there a source for the claim about the existence of pre-Christian churches that cited Jesus as their leader?

I am skeptical. It is the first time I have heard an argument like this and I've participated in debates about the existence of the HJ for several years. It looks to me like the earliest confirmed Christian churches might date to about 300 AD and anything earlier is very speculative, but I stand to be corrected.

As an aside I will login as davefoc if there is follow up discussion to this.
 * I am lost. If there were no churches before 300AD then who was Paul writing to in his letters?  DamoHi 08:29, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

Who Paul was writing to is an interesting question but not the point. What is the evidence for the claim that pre-Christian churches existed that cited Jesus as their leader? How do we know this is the most compelling argument for historians that Jesus existed? What is the time frame intended by the term, pre-Christian? Is the term, church, here meant to refer to a physical structure or is it meant to refer to a group of people?

A simplistic interpretation of the sentence might be that since Christianity exists it had to have a beginning and therefore there had to be pre-Christian churches. If that is what is intended then the sentence is just stupid and should be removed. If the sentence was intended to a convey a substantive idea about the evidence for the beginning of Christianity I would like to understand better what the claim is and what the evidence is for that claim. --Davefoc (talk) 17:11, 9 June 2013 (UTC)
 * If this is indeed the "most compelling evidence" then - without a bit more detail - this "most compelling evidence" is pretty weak.--Weirdstuff (talk) 08:55, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

While we're on the subject:
"The Quran was written in the 690s to glue the Arab Empire together. No historical evidence of it or prophet Muhammad before then." From Twitter here. Scream!! (talk) 17:42, 27 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Well if Twitter says so, then so it is. 18:32, 27 April 2013 (UTC)
 * I hope that Saudi responsible for the Boston Bombing gets punished. Oh, and apparently Cher is dead, what a shame. VOX  HUMANA  03:32, 29 April 2013 (UTC)
 * If you're British "Twit-ter" takes on a totally different meaning...one befitting the "The Quran was written in the 690s to glue the Arab Empire together. No historical evidence of it or prophet Muhammad before then." comment :-)


 * "Unlike the New Testament, the Quran was written during Muhammad's lifetime and there are some that say it was compiled shortly before his death. Moreover there are non-Muslim references by people who would have been contemporary to Muhammad." (Nigosian, Solomon Alexander (2004). Islam: Its History, Teaching, and Practices. Indiana University Press. ISBN 0-253-21627-3.) See that little thing after that statement?  It's called a reference which back up the statement being made.  More over it is a University Press book...a highly reliable source by standard wikipedia standards.--216.31.124.192 (talk) 18:53, 18 August 2013 (UTC)

Chrestus
"Not only was "Chrestus" not a familiar personal name": Query the second "not", which seems to negate the drift of the rest of the para. Scream!! (talk) 10:36, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

Cleanup, sectioning?
This article has had a lot of stuff added to it in recent months, often in a very lumpy fashion. I suggest (a) the new stuff be rewritten terser with good references (b) we section out many of the arguments into their own articles, with a summary here, since in Christian apologetics these are actually well-developed topics that would be RW-worthy. Godot, you studied this stuff ... - David Gerard (talk) 20:37, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

Reversing the polarity
What was the situation in 'Judea etc' at the time? Could 'Rabbi-Guru Joshua bin Joseph' (married to Mariam (daughter/from/other term) Magdalene' have been promoting religious theories such as picked up by the Gospels - and ditto Judas the Siccari? How often did 'fishermen, tax collectors and others' decide to link up with rabbi-gurus/go travelling around? 171.33.197.73 (talk) 17:20, 6 August 2013 (UTC)