We have exactly zero writings of Socrates today, do you believe he existed?
If you take the four Gospels, and consider them as the four different accounts they are, written at four different places, at different times, by different people, then toss in Paul’s letters, and the Acts of the Apostles (written by the author of Luke) you’ll have more documented authors writing about Jesus than you have writing about Socrates.
The common confusion comes from looking at the Bible as one book, rather than as an anthology of 66 different books, which it is.
So, four or five different authors writing about Jesus.
Three authors writing about Socrates.
And not one scrap of paper remains written personally by either Jesus or Socrates. All that exists is oral traditions of each, recorded by others and passed down through time for thousands of years.
Again . . . Jesus and Socrates . . . why is one easier to accept than the other?
Your answer may say more about you than it says about Socrates or Jesus.
Faith on the Fringe 
Yeah. Lot’s of problems with the historical Jesus. What I keep going back to is the existence of the Church. Without a resurrected Jesus, how is the Church possible? What would convince people to face death if something momentous hadn’t happened? If there was no historical Jesus, I think you’d have to come up with some sort of explanation of a movement that in a few decades swept the known world.
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I’m working on another post that addresses this. Thanks for commenting.
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Yes, it’s hard to prove that historical figures from that long ago existed.
I think the reason it’s difficult to prove jesus (and the reason I can’t imagine he existed) is because of the contradictions in the stories written about him. There is a lot of points where mark does not match luke, or john is different than matthew. Was it one person or two that found the tomb opened? How many donkeys did jesus ride into jerusalem?
Finally, there are events in the NT that one would assume would be written about in historical documents of the time. If there really was an eclipse after jesus was ressurected, why haven’t any other local historians written about it? Don’t you think that would be something notable? And why don’t we have any records from the romans about this jew causing problems? There is no record of jesus anywhere in roman records from the time he was alive.
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Thanks for the comments. To me, the differences in the gospels serve as proof of the truth of the overall story. If you’re trying to concoct a lie, then you’d want the versions to be the same, not different.
The Romans didn’t write about Jesus because it would be like the Europeans writing about the Native Americans as they were butchering them.
Some aspects of the Bible shouldn’t be taken literally by believers nor nonbelievers.
I’ll be writing about the Bible in future posts.
Thanks again.
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Philo of Alexandria was born in 25 BCE in Alexandria, Egypt. He died about 47-50 CE. He wrote an account of the Jews covering the entire time that Jesus is said to have existed on earth. Philo spent time in Jerusalem where he had intimate connections with the royal house of Judaea. One of Alexander’s sons (and Philo’s nephews), Marcus, was married to Berenice, daughter of Herod Agrippa, tetrarch of Galilee and Peraea, 39-40. After the exile of Herod Antipas – villain of the Jesus saga – Marcus ruled as **King of the Jews**, 41-44 AD. But nothing from Philo on Jesus, the other ‘King of the Jews’.
Philo was living in or near Jerusalem when Jesus’ miraculous birth and the Herodian massacre occurred. He was there when Jesus made his triumphal entry into Jerusalem. He was there when the crucifixion with an earthquake, daytime darkness, and resurrection of the dead ‘saints’ took place and when Jesus rose from the dead after 3 days. He was there when Jesus ascended into heaven. About thirty manuscripts and at least 850,000 words by Philo are extant. It was Philo who developed the doctrine of the Logos, or Word, and although Jesus, this Word incarnate, was walking around giving speeches and performing miracles, Philo wrote not one word about him or about any of this.
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This is really interesting. Thanks for sharing.
Do you know what Philo wrote about the Essenes?
Being a Hellenistic Jew, I would imagine the teaching of Rabi Jesus would be as far as they could possibly be from the beliefs of Philo.
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First I’d like to begin with the starting argument makes no sense. Sure we have no surviving works by Socrates himself. But the same can be said for Christ the Christ character is not credited with authorship of anything. Also Christ character takes it to the more extreme.
Socrates while there is little evidence for his existence surely, does have known historical figures of his time that wrote about him. Socrates is also a perfectly plausible person.
While in Jesus’s case we have writings about him that came well after his supposed existence. Those apostles credited for writing the new testament simply could not have. Nor are those apostles proven to exist themselves. This would be like a saying Bugs Bunny confirms the existence of Daffy Duck because Bugs Bunny speaks of him. But we know Bugs Bunny isn’t real either. Also the character of Jesus is way beyond the plausible there is a very big reason to be skeptical about the claims associated with him.
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Thanks for the comments.
Scholars don’t claim the apostles wrote the gospels.
I’ll be writing more about the Bible in the coming weeks.
Thanks, again.
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Wait? Bugs Bunny wasn’t real?
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