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Stephen Hawking Service: Possibility of Time Travellers 'Can't Be Excluded' (bbc.com)
Organisers of Prof Stephen Hawking's memorial service have seemingly left the door open for time travellers to attend. From a report: Those wishing to honour the theoretical physicist, who died in March aged 76, can apply via a public ballot. Applicants need to give their birth date - which can be any day up to 31 December 2038. Prof Hawking's foundation said the possibility of time travel had not been disproven and could not be excluded. It was London travel blogger IanVisits who noticed that those born from 2019 to 2038 were theoretically permitted to attend the service at Westminster Abbey. He said: "Professor Hawking once threw a party for time travellers, to see if any would turn up if he posted the invite after the party. None did, but it seems perfect that the memorial website allows people born in the future to attend the service. Look out for time travellers at the Abbey."
Yeah, but that's the 19th of January. Maybe if you attempted to enter a date after that, it would revert to 1970....
09F91102 no, 455FE104 nope, F190A1E8 uh-uh, 7A5F8A09 that's not it, C87294CE no. Ah! 452F6E403CDF10714E41DFAA257D313F.
Any documentation comes from 2nd century, and is very obviously tainted -- either comes from Christians themselves or is a copy of their works. If a preacher leading a popular movement of anything of the scale postulated in the Bible happened, it would be mentioned in secular sources, which have quite detailed records of those times. Yet, any such mentions are conspicuously absent.
Convincing forgery is tricky to do. Most would be scribe-forgers altering documents they copy to insert things they would like to be there rarely, if ever, sophisticated at who do construct forged passages that would state out from sophisticated textual analysis (consideration of context and textual flow, writing style, word choice, etc.). So modern scholars have a pretty good handle on when passages in ancient texts by one author are altered by insertions of others.
We have Antiquities of the Jews written by the Jewish historian Josephus about 60 years after the death of Jesus, i.e. written in the First (not Second) Century. There are two passages in this that refer to Jesus that do appear and seem to be originally authentic references from Josephus's hand. They have been altered by Christian scribes to make them more affirmative of Christian claims, but do not appear to be wholesale fabrications inserted later. On the bare question of Jesus's existence the mere fact that any mentions would appear in Josephus's writing supports the historical existence of Jesus.
This reference meets the demands you make for there to be external surviving references of Jesus's existence. So they are "conspicuously absent" only if you ignore the references that do indeed exist.
Also, you have a very exaggerated sense for how detailed and thorough the surviving records about the First Century Roman Empire really are, and accounts of happenings in the provinces are nearly non-existent. We did not have a single contemporary piece of evidence of the existence of Pontius Pilate who ruled Judea for 10 years under his name appeared on an inscription found in 1963. Before that the only evidence of his existence were Christian literature and three mentions in non-Christian sources (Josephus was one). There many important Roman documents from that era we know of that have been entirely lost. One example: the last Testament of Augustus Caesar, we did not have a single copy of until fragments of it inscribed on plaques were found in Turkey about 100 years ago.
On the other hand, there was a lot of religious kooks (this particular thing hasn't changed...), thus it's possible the story has some basis in truth, but has been mangled beyond recognition.
So, it's like that old Russian joke: "Did you hear that in Moscow they give Volga cars for free?" "Sure, they do, you just got three details wrong. First, not in Moscow but in Leningrad. Second, not Volga cars but Zavmash bikes. Third, they don't give but take away.". Thus, Jesus might indeed have existed, save for some little details...
All this is absolutely true. We do not have any reliable accounts of really anything about Jesus and in keeping with what one expects from oral accounts, the later things were written down the more extravagant and fanciful (or imaginative) they become. But if we restrict the question to the most basic one - whether there was such a person as Jesus - then we have pretty good evident that it is yes.
The earliest evidence is best, and that would be the authentic letters of Paul (there are fake ones in the New Testament also) which were written within 20 years of the death of Jesus by a man who had become an adherent within 10 years of his death, and knew several people who had followed Jesus and knew Jesus personally including his brother James (who is also mentioned in Josephus). This documentation at least to existence is as good or better than most people we know of from ancient times who who were not leading members of society or else authors themselves. It is t
Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
There is a universal clock. It's the speed of light.
That is not a clock.
The speed of light in vacuum is 299,792,458 m/s for all reference frames, but that's a ratio. As distance (m) shortens, time (s) contracts so the ratio remains the same. But time changes.
If you travel at 99.5% of light speed, you might insist that you travelled one light year in a little over a year, yet someone watching your travel from the sideline might say you travelled ten light years in over ten years. Both of you are correct, because both distance and time changes depending on viewpoint.