OK, it looks like your post, which the Religion moderator said was antagonistic, will survive; so it’s not a waste of my time to respond to it. I’ll try to respond to the actual questions and let the antagonistic tone go by, forgiven.
Provide any contemporary historic source about the life of Jesus outside of the Bible. There are none.
***Well, right off the top of my head, there was a circular letter put out by the Sanhedrin explaining that they killed this man, Jesus for blasphemy. Basically, even Jesus’s ENEMIES acknowledged that he made the claim to be equal with God. There is plenty more evidence, and since you don’t seem to be aware of it, I’ll point you to a few good apologetic books.
Note that the best place to start is right here on Free Republic, where a classic of the literature is being reproduced in whole:
THE NEW TESTAMENT DOCUMENTS Are they Reliable? (Chapt. 10)
http://www.worldinvisible.com/library/ffbruce/ntdocrli/ntdocont.htm ^ | 1959 | F.F. Bruce
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/1981738/posts
Posted on Thursday, March 06, 2008 8:14:57 PM by blue-duncan
Then you can click on the “apologetics” keyword and topic index to discover a myriad of choices:
http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/apologetics-religion/index
In addition, there is the keyword Biblical Archaeology
http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/biblicalarchaeology/index?tab=articles
Someone who has been reading through these apologetic resources right here on FR wouldn’t post what you just did. It would behoove you to come up to speed.
Some more books to recommend:
“Evidence that Demands a Verdict” by Josh McDowell
“More Evidence that Demands a Verdict” by Josh McDowell
“The Stones and the Scriptures” by Edwin Yamauchi
“Jesus: God, Ghost or Guru” by Buell and Hyde
That’s just a starter. Once you’re up to speed, there’s a few more books to round out the education process on textual criticism and the science behind biblical archaeology and the historicity of Christ.
The first time Christ enters the historic record is 60 to 90 years after his death.
***Nope. Wrong. You’ve got some reading to do. Historians accept the gospels as part of the historical record, so you’re off by an entire generation.
1st Century writers write about Christians and what Christians believe. There are absolutely no contemporaneous records of his life, his writings, his image, his tax records, his execution order or anything.
***This is a very high standard, to throw out all contemporaneous records that are friendly — not one other historical figure would survive such a process in tact, and yet, we would still have Jesus being put to death for Blasphemy as claimed by his Enemies.
All we have is the Bible, is that not enough for you?
***There was a time when it was not enough for me.
Counting the number of manuscripts is “science” that is “sturdy”? You really have absolutely no idea what Science is.
***Looks like maybe you have some reading to do here.
Science is based upon theory and experimentation. Science can be performed upon objects like the Shroud of Turin or a statue of Caesar to see if either object is actually old enough to be contemporaneous, but that is not the same thing at all.
***Exactly. And it is the science behind such things that confirm the gospel records as reliable history. Also, the evidence from the enemies of Christ as well as indifferent sources adds to the scientific weight.
So you not only think Science is Religion, you also think it is History? Anything else you want to throw in there?
***This is classic mind reading, as well as straw argumentation. I can state categorically that what you claim I think is not what I really do think. At this point it bears out that we are spending a lot of attention on something that is outside of the purview of this thread. If you want to continue down this line of discussion, open your own thread on the historicity of Christ and invite me to it.
History is not Science. Science is not Religion. Counting manuscripts, contemporaneous or not, is not ‘sturdy Science’ it is Historic analysis. One cannot approach issues of history from a Scientific perspective because there is no experiment, no null hypothesis, no control group. Scientific experimentation can be done to attempt to date artifacts, but that is, as I have said, not nearly the same thing.
And I am not at all trying to be antagonistic. Faith is faith. Science is not based upon faith but upon evidence. This makes Science more transitory and of less permanence, as Scripture states....
“So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal” (2 Corinthians 4:18).
Hebrews 11
1Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.