For starters, Mark eye witness, source material for much of Synoptics. Luke was an eye witness.
As for what happened in the name of, all I know is what atheist regimes did and are doing now. Millions dead.
No, they absolutely were not. Non of the gospel authors were eye witnesses chiefly because we have no idea whatsoever as to who wrote them.
Tons of confirmation bias here.
Lots of scholarship on Mark as significant source material.
The starting premise here for people is Jesus didnât even exist, that the gospel accounts are rumors, myths, legend handed down, then many generations later, hey presto.
So everything is being said to confirm that bias.
Meanwhile, a handful of docs, dated 900 yrs after Julius Caesar, and later, and we are happy to accept that as authoritative! Itâs laughable the double standards being applied.
In fact, itâs massively odd that people would devote so much time to shouting down - unfairly and with tons of confirmation bias - something they donât believe in. Strange way to pass the time of day.
Key point. Did Julius Caesar exist? I donât care. I donât base my life around his possible life and works.
Lads, thereâs a game on you know? 
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Yep, just got home, second half here we go. Nice finish Mane from angle.
Fuck me, Cicero, Cato, Sallust. All contemporaries of Caesar. Verified historical record. Where on earth are you gettinga handful of documents 900 years removed from. I just wrote all about it earlier and youâve ignored it to go back to making claims that are completely batshit based on an article that you dredged up that amounts to little more than propoganda. . You say that people are ignoring what youâre saying but they arenât. Theyâre debating your point, giving factual counter arguments and which you glibly ignore to restate your position as fact.
Fuck sakes man.
Nah. Itâs not. People with preconceived notions that have no basis in fact get away with spouting away all too often. Itâs a bit of a bug bear of mine, regardless of the subject.
The article I quoted mentions Cicero and Sallust as Caesars contemporaries. Did you read it?
Cicero speeches: 15 manuscripts dating from AD 400 to 800.
Sallust: around 20 manuscripts from the 10th and 11th centuries.
Caesars own autobiographical account, earliest manuscript a full 900 year removed from the events.
So, in all three, there is a HUGE gap of many hundreds of years, between the earliest manuscript evidence, and the events described. Yet what we know about Caesar, and his life, is taken as gospel (excuse the pun) from these accounts.
Now, compare to the gospels. Synoptics written in 60s and John written in 90s. Contemporaries of Jesus and eyewitnesses of the events were still alive.
And what about the manuscripts? They start appearing within decades of the events, not many hundreds of years later.
In a separate post I will comment on extra Biblical documentary evidence for the existence of Jesus.
Sure letâs go with North Korea. A regime where the leader eternal died in 1992 and is still head of state, where it was officially reported on the accession of Kim Jung Il to leader the birds sang in Korean, where the leader is literally revered as a living God, and upon visiting Christopher Hitchens described as âthe most religious country he had ever visitedâ.
I donât think this is a state characterised by reason and empiricism.
You canât say a state isnât religious because it doesnât have an âofficial state religionâ -as in one youâve heard of. North Korea doesnât have an official religion from the ones youâve heard of, but it is scarily, dementedly religious in how it operates.
They wrote about Caesar during his time. They didnât suddenly rise from the dead 400 years later and have a ghost writer take notes. The manuscripts you reference are akin to a modern day historian going over ancient texts and writing a paper about them. We have one on these very boards, by the way. So in essence, if I can use modern terms here, youâre using a paper or thesis, of the works of Cicero and Sallust written by someone in 900 AD as evidence that the actual writings by Cicero, Sallust and others themselves are 900 years removed. Youâve lost the plot. Iâm sorry for being a little short but thatâs literally nonsense.
Did Jesus exist? Yes!
Mascot and perhaps others say he didnât even exist. Iâve touched a little on the documentary evidence compiled in the Bible. Some here would say thatâs not allowed (would it be equally fair to say Roman historians or autobiographies arenât allowed for Julius Caesar?)
Still, Iâll play along with the ridiculously one-eyed construct.
Extra-Biblical documentary evidence for Jesus:
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Flavius Josephus. Jewish historian. Wrote Jewish Antiquities in AD 93. Not a Christian. In one passage he talks about James, the brother of Jesus, who is called Messiah. In another passage of his Antiquities he talked about Jesus and said he did surprising deeds and was crucified by Pilate.
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Another account of Jesus appears in the Annals of Imperial Rome, a first century history of the Roman Empire written by Tacitus, who was a Roman Senator and historian. He talks about Jesus being put to death by Pontus Pilate during the reign of Tiberius.
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Shortly before Tacitus penned his account of Jesus, Roman Governor, Pliny the Younger, wrote to the emperor about Christians who sing hymns to Christ as to a god.
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Roman historian Suetonius also referenced Jesus, noting that Emperor Claudius expelled Jews from Rome because they were disturbing people at the instigation of Christ.
It is intellectually dishonest to say Jesus didnât even exist. The blind devotion to shooting it down seems almost cultic to me.
Of course they wrote about Julius Caesar during the time! Iâm not suggesting otherwise. I am saying the earliest documents are dated many hundreds of years later.
Mark, Matthew, Luke and John wrote about Jesus during the time. Paul too. And the extra-Biblical historians I just mentioned did too, or shortly thereafter.
Josephus is transparently a fake. You can knock that one of your impressive list, which I note has reduced from âthousandsâ to four.
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I think thatâs incredibly doubtful. Particularly the authorship and date when the gospels that are named after them were written.
Do you have anything from the time of Jesus? These are all written decades after the life of Jesus, and we know how the early Christians enjoyed inserting passages about Jesus into existing texts (as almost certainly happened with Josephus)
Not comparing apples to apples mate. Thousands of pieces of evidence for Jesusâ existence compiled within Bible. And Docs dated much closer to the events than the docs we have to describe the life of Julius Caesar.
Then there is contemporaneous extra-Biblical evidence, I mentioned four things, plus some Greek stuff too, plus other historians going into the second century and beyond.
If the contention is Jesus didnât even exist, stick to your guns!
But it is nonsense.
Scholarship suggests synoptic gospels written by AD 60s, John later, AD 90.
In other words, within living memory.
My understanding (based on my confirmation) was that the gospels were written decades after the life of Jesus, and are almost certainly not written by Matthew, Mark, Luke or John. The versions we have were also likely to have been further edited in the centuries that followed.
The fact that the gospels are desperate to put Jesus in the position of fulfilling the Old Testament prophecy, to the point of inventing stuff that never happened (like an empire wide census) is ironically the best evidenced have that there was an end times preacher knocking about at the time who attracted a lot of followers, and whose followers were desperate to crowbar into the role he now occupies in the Christian faith.