jesus could not have existed, page-394

"The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. The fact is that few records survive for thousands of years. There are a number of ancient writings that have been lost, including 50% of the Roman historian Tacitus’ works, all of the writings of Thallus and Asclepiades of Mendes. In fact, Herod the Great’s secretary named Nicolas of Damascus wrote a Universal History of Roman history which comprised nearly 144 books and none of them have survived.3 So there is no reason based on the absence of other texts to doubt the existence of Jesus of Nazareth."

1. where to start: why do people who are clutching at straws always go to this statement when trying to defend something they really care about. absence of evidence does in fact mean evidence of absence. there is no evidence in the world of unicorns for example - that is because they don't exist. There is no evidence on the world of people who can fly by flapping their arms - once again, that is because they don't exist. so the fact that no evidence of jesus existed is self explanatory.

2. If 50% of tacitus' histories have been destroyed, then statistically speaking it seems ludicrous that it happens to be the exact 50% with any mention at all of a christian messiah. Seems ridiculous because it is. If all of the works of a particular author have been purported to have been lost it seems presumptuous to claim that they would have some answer that was any different from the answer we have now - that Jesus did not in fact live. THIS is the god of the gaps so cleverly perpetuated by true believers - that is - there is a hole in your story and that is where jesus or god lives. In reality, logic and statistics dictate that surviving works can be seen as representative of the most popular accounts of history, hence the idea that more copies were made and therefore more survived.

None of these mention jesus. None.

3. your quoting of figures about nicholas of damascus has been plagiarised from wikipedia - which is not considered a reliable source. If you think it is reliable, reference it in your university studies and see how that goes for you.

4. Nicholas of Damascus died at the beginning of the Imperial age of the Empire, so much of what he had or written about would have been the history of republican rome, well before constantine converted the empire to christianity. he was very concerned with recording myths and legends as reported by other writers of the age in their own works - with most of his source material purported to come from older antiquity writings. Much of his work has been denounced as such, as myth and not reliable history - he can therefore be discredited as a reliable accountant of the true events of the age.


so with no evidence recorded by roman historians who recorded almost everything significant or insignificant it is pretty easy to arrive at the reliable conclusion that no matter how much you want it to be true, it is simply a myth that Jesus could have, or indeed did, live.

why do people still try and find excuses for this?