"Welcome to Enlightenment!"

http://jesusneverexisted.com/

"Religion–the Tragedy of Mankind - Articles by Kenneth Humphreys"


I just discovered this place today while searching for information about the Christian persecution of pagans in late antiquity (something I've been reading about in The Closing of the Western Mind by Charles Freeman, which I also recommend). I'm impressed with its comprehensiveness.

I'd be very interested to know how the information at this site goes down with people who disagree with its basic premise.

as I don't care to read this in detail, but you wanted feedback. The people writing this site are obviously of a particular mind set about Jesus and have set their topics up to debunk what they consider to be a falsehood. I think those who agree with their mindset will find it very supporting, but I don't see anyone who disagrees likely to change their mind.

My question is, in looking back on how history was shaped by Christianity, among other religions, does it matter if Jesus lived or not? People who felt he did and built a dogma around this fact have greatly influenced history, as the very site shows when talking about persecution.

What I see happening with religion through the ages is an evotion of thought about what It is that causes all things and also an evolution of thought as to how humans are to treat one another. And, like evolution, you have your "dead ends" where one sort of thought peters out, and also your mutations where a thought changes, often greatly, from its original source. And evolution never stops; perhaps right now we are in the midst of one of those times of great change where old thoughts and new ones are clashing to find which will be dominant.

that religion is a late-comer to the field of ethics and, in fact, often borrows (to put it mildly) its systems from philosophy, in certain cases not admitting it. For example, one case for Jesus's historicity people often make is his allegedly radical new ethics, supposed evidence of his startling originality. Actually, most of those ideas were already several hundred years old.

It may not matter if Jesus lived or not. But it does matter if we're honest about the actual intellectual contribution Christianity made.

intellectual contribution to the world? And how do you define "intellectual contribution"?

And why should religion worry about intellectualism?

As I see it, non-believers are mostly in their heads, and are concerned mostly about knowledge gained that way.

Don't know about religists, but mystics tend to work more with the heart and intuition.

I think that is one reason that it will be difficult for non believers and believers to ever agree very much on the subject of religion.

were made totally by believers, not by the alleged founder. Further, one of its longest-lasting and most insidious intellectual legacies is institutionalized anti-intellectualism. Of course it contributed indirectly to more expansive ideas, but I think it did that mainly through the filters of individual believers' consciousness.

Wow, that's actually a very profound question. If you consider some of the greatest Christian philosophers like Augustine, Kierkegaard, and Aquinas, they all seemed to wrestle with the incompatibilities of their faith with their world experience.

Is there a source of consciousness other than the brain?

:)

Remember, internal experiences don't count, because you can't be CERTAIN they are what you think they are, as you can't detect exactly where it may be originating from, be it 'god' or your cerebral cortex.

"I think so" is a much more honest and supportable answer to H&E's question.

because I don't think you can be certain of anything OTHER than your internal experiences...or a combination of internal experiences and resulting events. And maybe God IS our cerebral cortex?

I have an internal dialogue with a spirit all day. Now, I know this is a symptom of schizophrenia, but I don't have any other symptoms and I am very functional so I would assume I don't have it. Could it be just my imagination? But who is to say imagination isn't God?

But you are right. "I don't know" is the only honest answer. Anything else is vanity.

Sometimes I wonder about atheists and believers and whether the twain ever shall meet. And I come up with all sorts of rationalizations. Like atheists do not have the capacity to believe for some sort of genetic, evolutionary, species purpose. Or that reincarnation exists and atheists are either at the bottom or the top of the ladder, and believers the opposite.

But I don't know.

When was the last time you heard about an Inquisition imposed by people who are open to the possibility that, say, leprechauns exist?

No more supernatural than a godson performing miracles and rising from the dead, yet despite the utter lack of corroborating evidence for the latter, people fervently believe he existed.

And history has born monstrous scars thanks to that ability to believe in things without a shred of evidence behind them.

I'll take Lucky the Leprechaun over Jesus any day, because NO ONE is crazy enough to believe the former exists and is dictating how they and others should live.

And he told us all so when he said "think not that I am come to bring peace to the earth but a sword."
And those were not his wishes but a prophesy knowing full well the nature of man.
Never the less his teachings are the moral high ground for humanity if we can ever overcome our love of violence and conquest. But every civilization we have formed on this earth favors the ruthless and greedy and so it is no surprise to the thinking man that shit happens the way it does.
I have no problem with those that want to think he never lived, but I do with those that would twist his teachings to suit there own dogma, no matter whether they call themselves atheist or Christians.
Enlightenment is a lot more than just knowing the facts.

Jesus never bothered to record his thoughts for posterity.

And the reason why is not that much of a mystery.
If he was a man that lived and had 12 men and a bunch of women that followed him because of his miracles it may have been different if he had just died and ben put in the tomb. even the twelve would have forgotten him and we would have never have hard of him.
But he had an even greater trick up his sleeve, he came back from the dead and showed himself to them even to the point of letting them put there fingers in his wonds....Now ask your self this, even if you were an atheist and had seen him die and then witness him siting at the table eating with you for forty days after he was dead what would you think? Would that be enough evidence to convince you?
Would you think to preserve his teachings and try to remember every word he said?
The major argument against him is that it could not have happened.

There it is.

Science believed that rockets could not work In space because there was no atmosphere to push against.
Could you imagine what they would say if you told them about black holes and pulsars?

Interesting.

It is called artificial insemination and is widely used in the cattle industry.
And in the future the mail seamen may not even be necessary sense all the elements that are needed to make the chromosomes are already present in the egg. How else could the cell divide if they were not?
And in th future it may be realized that the body is just a vehicle to give us mobility and an ability to live on the physical world. But enlightenment would not mean that it must be retained to have life.

:o

Seriously, and more to the point: if someone were to tell you today that their neighbor rose from the dead over the weekend, would you take it at face value? Maybe you would. Lots of people would, I know. Some people, as they say, will believe anything. But is it wise to take extraordinary claims at face value? Christianity teaches that it is not only wise, but that it will save you from an eternity of damnation. However, most other methods of philosophy (paths to wisdom) caution against being too ready to trust someone else's word. Even Christianity, in its apocalyptic mood, warns against being seduced by false Christs. But how do you tell which Christs are the false ones?

Because what I know even with the latest science is that nothing is imposable, even the regeneration of the body. And in fact the body does regenerate every 7 years or so.
And what Jesus said is that there would be many false Christs but none of them would be real because he would never come that way again,
So I have a lot of doubt about Christian claims but I never say that they are imposable nor do I ridicule those that believe them.

of what is *probable,* never mind possible. If someone says, "It is possible that if I hit you in the face with this sharp axe, you will be unharmed," that could be true. But it would probably be safer to think about the very good odds that the axe would cause you harm.

That most of the evidence for his life is lost given the age of it and looking at how much of what the Romans generated and just how much of that was lost.
And it is also probable that it was purposely destroyed in that Christianity was persecuted for 200 years after the fact.
And it is also probable that much of what did survive was copycat stuff that was made up.
And it is also probable that if you truly believe in atheism that all that you allow yourself to see is the biased information, just as you would say the same for the Christians.

Its full of heresy, and short on miracles (I mean it would be if it existed). SO if the Church found any actual documents they'd be the first to burn them or put them in a vault where no one would ever get to see them again.

TRYPHO

someone who preserved his teachings and tried to remember every word he said, and someone who twisted his teachings to suit their own dogma. Or someone who fell in between - they remembered the rough idea of what he said, but emphasised what they liked and understood best, and filled it in with some things they felt were true to his spirit. Or someone who made him up as a character, possibly for the most noble of reasons.

For every gook that is true there are probably a dozen that are not.
Such is the case with every thing in this world. And that is why the truth is often covered with a pile of lies. In the CIA it is called disinformation and is used to cover the truth of many things.

I was browsing through the links provided in that website and one of them was a link to the "atheist handbook". In there I found the "Jewish version" of the handbook and it was pretty funny since the person who created it had Christianity in mind and tried to debunk the "old testament" and make fun of the literal accounts. Apparently this person has no idea what Judaism is and thought that debunking the OT would be debunking Judaism. My favorite was this one:

"Location of the Garden of Eden. Yes, the bible does state a close proximity of the Garden of Eden. This is shown in Gen 2:11- 14 , this shows that the area is in the Arabian district. Isn’t this mainly a Muslim faith? Maybe Judaism derived itself from Muslim religion. "
:rofl:

This one was also funny...

"... Another added idea was Adam and Eve eating the apple from the tree of knowledge. Where does it state it was an apple in the bible? Eating apples does not make you intelligent all of a sudden, we feed apples to animals yet they do not talk to us. And where is the garden of Eden on earth? It has never been found, yet the tree of life still exists there, in a paradise of God that does not exist. We have a close estimate of where it should."
:rofl:

http://www.geocities.com/atheisthandbook/jewish

On edit (a disclaimer): please don't take this as me making fun of atheists. I'm making fun of this guy specifically and I am not trying to link this person to our cultured atheists here in DU. So please don't flame me! :-)

No matter what my POV on religion. The guy who wrote that is seriously lacking in critical thinking skills.

It is like any other advocacy site, designed to promote the political view of it's founder. It is apparently a view that you agree with, which is nice, but if I am looking for impartial scholarship, I wouldn't be looking at a site that is founded on the concept that www.jesusneverexisted.com. That in itself is a rather extreme view, though popular with some of the atheists here, which is no surprise.

Enlightened? Don't think so.

than to think he did exist. Thinking he didn't exist, given the evidence, is a perfectly reasonable point of view.

It may not be considered extreme for one to believe that the Holocaust did not happen too.
The same reasons will be applied...How could anyone kill 9 million people, it is just too hared to pelieve...Photos can and often are manipulated and changed as in photoshop...So the evidence is unreliable. And we can only believe what is normal behavior.

Don't believe words. Believe the evidence.

And so evidence of the truth is always corruptible.

There's no writing of his, no evidence of him in writing about the times and places he supposedly lived in from those times and places (outside of gospels, epistles and apocrypha by his followers), and endless contradictions about him and his life in the writings we do have about him from Christians in the first two centuries.

then, of course, there is no written evidence. How conveeeeeeniently self-serving. :rofl:

You do realize, by the way, that much of Humphreys' "evidence" is spurious, and that the poor man doesn't know the difference between theology and art history?

Please.


PS: :rofl: (Two can play at that game! ;-) )

but here's five minutes worth of stuff on his front page and within one click of same:

Humphreys: David was a mythical king.

At least two inscriptions say otherwise.

Humphreys: Nazareth didn't exist at the time of Jesus.

Lots of broken pots and some 1st. century tombs say otherwise. There's also, apparently, a Roman bathhouse from the 1st. century beneath a later one. Excavation will bear this out or not.

Humphreys: Paul originated Gnosticism, basing his teachings on a "wholly spritual Christ."

Patent nonsense. Pauline theology depends absolutely upon the physical life and death of Jesus. "If Christ is not raised, then the dead are not raised." In order to be "raised," from the dead, Jesus had to be dead--physically, unequivocally, flat-line dead. And in order to be physically dead, he had to be--wait for it--previously physically alive. Later, genuine Gnostics (eg., Marcion) rejected Pauline theology for exactly that reason.

Humphreys: The supernatural nativity stories and heroic archetypes prove that Jesus was fictional.

No. What they actually prove is that the writers of Luke and Matthew--but interestingly enough, not the writers of Mark and John--chose a familiar narrative form for their gospels. I used to teach Raglan's heroic archetype in literature classes, where, just for fun, we ran some actual historical figures through. Would you care to argue that Richard III, for example, is a fiction because he fits the archetypes? Go for it.

Humphreys: His whole iconographic section. This one's actually funny. His logic goes like this: if Mithras is depicted as the Good Shepherd, carrying a lamb on his shoulders, then the depiction of Jesus, carrying a lamb on his shoudlers as the Good Shepherd, proves that Jesus is derived from Mithras.

What it actually proves, of course, is that Christian artists adopted an existing iconographic convention.

Humphreys, in short, is a huckster. He peddles his merchandise as well as his ideas to the ignorant, the credulous and the already convinced. Kind of like Jerry Falwell, actually, just at the other end of the spectrum.

Humphreys: David was a mythical king.

At least two inscriptions say otherwise.


Which inscriptions?


Humphreys: Nazareth didn't exist at the time of Jesus.

Lots of broken pots and some 1st. century tombs say otherwise. There's also, apparently, a Roman bathhouse from the 1st. century beneath a later one. Excavation will bear this out or not.


Pots, tombs, even a bathhouse may be evidence of former settlements under what is now called Nazareth, but they in themselves do not mean the settlements were "Nazareth."



Humphreys: Paul originated Gnosticism, basing his teachings on a "wholly spritual Christ."

Patent nonsense. Pauline theology depends absolutely upon the physical life and death of Jesus. "If Christ is not raised, then the dead are not raised." In order to be "raised," from the dead, Jesus had to be dead--physically, unequivocally, flat-line dead. And in order to be physically dead, he had to be--wait for it--previously physically alive. Later, genuine Gnostics (eg., Marcion) rejected Pauline theology for exactly that reason.


Says you and who else? And just because you assert it's nonsense, it doesn't mean it actually is nonsense. As for the piece of epistle you quote, I don't know about the logical soundness of it, but I'll have to agree with it totally. ;)

But you're wrong about Humprhies' reading of Paul. He actually argues that the Pauline epistles show signs of being Marcionite fabrications that the Roman church later redacted to bring more in line with "orthodoxy." And Humphries isn't the first to think that.



Humphreys: The supernatural nativity stories and heroic archetypes prove that Jesus was fictional.

No. What they actually prove is that the writers of Luke and Matthew--but interestingly enough, not the writers of Mark and John--chose a familiar narrative form for their gospels. I used to teach Raglan's heroic archetype in literature classes, where, just for fun, we ran some actual historical figures through. Would you care to argue that Richard III, for example, is a fiction because he fits the archetypes? Go for it.


Care to argue that Hamlet--or Superman--are real historic figures based on that logic? Care to argue that Richard III actually spoke the words, "A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!"?


Humphreys: His whole iconographic section. This one's actually funny. His logic goes like this: if Mithras is depicted as the Good Shepherd, carrying a lamb on his shoulders, then the depiction of Jesus, carrying a lamb on his shoudlers as the Good Shepherd, proves that Jesus is derived from Mithras.

What it actually proves, of course, is that Christian artists adopted an existing iconographic convention.


And why would they do that--not just in that instance, but in every instance in which he is depicted--if Jesus had an actual individual biography based on a real life lived?



Humphreys, in short, is a huckster. He peddles his merchandise as well as his ideas to the ignorant, the credulous and the already convinced. Kind of like Jerry Falwell, actually, just at the other end of the spectrum.


That's funny. I've never heard Falwell breathe word one about High Criticism or the Tübingen School. ;)

The Tel Dan stele and the Mesha stele. Some scholars dispute the readings, but if barenaked minimalists like Finkelstein and Silverman accept them and can reach agreement with a united-kingdom guy like Dever, I'll take their word for it.



See? I always knowed Jesus was borned in Muleshoe, Texas!
So what do you think the town was called in 25 CE if it was called "Nazareth" sixty years later? Any linguist can tell you that place-names are extraordinarily stable, surviving even foreign invasion and drastic changes in the local language. Archaeology shows the site occupied continually from the Seleucid period to present. If it underwent a name change in that time, it's up to you to demonstrate it.



Says me and a couple thousand years of Christian theologians. Also says Paul. Look, all you have to do is read his Epistles to realize how completely his theology relies on the physical existence of Jesus. The formula of institution in I Corinthians relies on it: "'This is my body...This cup is the new covenant in my blood'. . .For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes." (11:23-25) Paul's teaching about the resurrection of the dead depends utterly on a physically present Jesus: if Jesus did not physically die, and if he was not physically raised, then no one else can be/will be. That's about as far away from the Gnostic purely spiritual Christ as it's possible to get.

As for Humphreys' notion that Marcion or his followers produced Paul's writings--I agree that having two contradictory assertions on his site is a problem. But it's Humphreys' problem, not mine.

You're getting into a really complicated nested conspiracy theory here. Paul concocted Jesus. Marcion concocted Paul. (And maybe Tertullian concocted Marcion. None of Marcion's own writings survive--how do we know he wasn't made up? Why does Humphreys have faith in his existence? Why do you believe in him? ;)) Seriously, at some point you fall into insurmountable difficulties with all the back-dating that kind of Chinese-box fantasizing entails, and that point comes fairly early in
the game.


"Appeal to the populace (sic)" is only bad when someone else does it? You disappoint me.



Please don't strike a match around that straw man. My point, which for some reason you insist on reversing, is that conformity with the heroic archetype does not prove that the person so conforming is fictional. Your response relies on the fallacy of the undistributed middle and is, of course, rather pointless.



Because they didn't have a photograph? I wonder what else you would expect artists to do when they didn't have an actual likeness in front of them. We don't have contemporary portraits of any religious Jews from the time in question because Jewish law forbade "graven images." Ergo,artists in different times and places depicted Jesus according to their own contemporary and local conventions, usually with a large measure of idealization. By your logic, one would have to assume that David was a fictional character because Michelangelo's statue looks a whole lot like a Greek Apollo. (Davy's even uncircumcised. That clinches it! The whole Hebrew monarchy "history" was a solar myth!)

Incidentally, Humphreys' misidentifies some of the pieces on his art-history page. The "Good Shepherd Apollo," for example, is actually a kouros votive figure from the Temple of Athena known as the Calf Bearer. Maybe he doesn't know any better, or maybe he's just hoping his readers don't.



Let me make myself a little more explicit, then. The similarity is not in whether one or both are familiar with Higher Criticism--though I suspect they're about equally ignorant--but about the fact that they're both con men preying on the gullible. They both lie, and they both want your money.

Here's a suggestion: if you want to know what real scholarship in historical Jesus studies looks like, read Crossan's The Historical Jesus and The Birth of Christianity. Regardless of whether they change your mind on the central issue, they will at least give you an idea of the kind of methodology and documentation that goes into addressing the question on a credible level. They're not easy reads, but they are the gold standard in the field.

The Tel Dan stele and the Mesha stele. Some scholars dispute the readings...

So the arguments *against* the authority of the steles as witnesses to the fact of King David's exisitence are *credible* enough that you would concede it's *not* "spurious" to cite a paucity of evidence to question the historic fact of David's existence. Check.

So what do you think the town was called in 25 CE if it was called "Nazareth" sixty years later?

Refute Humphreys' points if you can:

• Nazareth is not mentioned even once in the entire Old Testament. The Book of Joshua (19.10,16) – in what it claims is the process of settlement by the tribe of Zebulon in the area – records twelve towns and six villages and yet omits any 'Nazareth' from its list.

• The Talmud, although it names 63 Galilean towns, knows nothing of Nazareth, nor does early rabbinic literature.

• St Paul knows nothing of 'Nazareth'. Rabbi Solly's epistles (real and fake) mention Jesus 221 times, Nazareth not at all.

• No ancient historian or geographer mentions Nazareth. It is first noted at the beginning of the 4th century.


Any linguist can tell you that place-names are extraordinarily stable, surviving even foreign invasion and drastic changes in the local language.

You mean like New Amsterdam? Or Lutetia? Or Tenochtitlan? Or Babylon? Or Constantinople? Or Stalingrad? Or Edo?


The formula of institution in I Corinthians relies on it: "'This is my body...This cup is the new covenant in my blood'. . .For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes."

From Paul's assertion that a piece of bread is flesh and a glass of wine blood we're supposed to assume he was talking about a real body and real blood? Isn't everything he is talking about here purely symbolic?

Paul's teaching about the resurrection of the dead depends utterly on a physically present Jesus: if Jesus did not physically die, and if he was not physically raised, then no one else can be/will be.

Do you think he might be talking about "spiritual death and rebirth"? Why does he not talk about Jesus's many miracles? His virgin mother? His betrayal by Judas? His Sermon on the Mount? His Davidian lineage? Any of the witnesses to Jesus's life? Is it because he didn't know about any of that? Or didn't think any of that was important?

You're getting into a really complicated nested conspiracy theory here. Paul concocted Jesus. Marcion concocted Paul. (And maybe Tertullian concocted Marcion. None of Marcion's own writings survive--how do we know he wasn't made up? Why does Humphreys have faith in his existence? Why do you believe in him? ) Seriously, at some point you fall into insurmountable difficulties with all the back-dating that kind of Chinese-box fantasizing entails, and that point comes fairly early in
the game.


First: No one said Paul "concocted" Jesus. Second: Humphreys, I believe, posits that "Paul" is a psuedonym, possibly for Marcion--not that Marcion "concocted" Paul. Third: The argument, which I don't fully understand as I haven't read the original papers (in translation from the Dutch or German High Critics who wrote them) but which from Humphreys's and a French writer Patrick Boistiers's summaries I gather, is that, if you strip the letters of clear interpolations added by later orthodox redactors, you find a core message in the most Pauline of the epistles that reflects Marcion's dual-God, "apparent" Christ theology. They started with the texts to see what was actually in them and to analyze, by textual comparison, *how* they were made, and, by their context in the contemporary literature, *when* they were made. They did not start with the "insurmountably difficult" (arguably) assumption that Paul is who the church has claimed he is.

Please don't strike a match around that straw man.

Take your own advice. It was you who made the assertion that Humphreys's claimed that "The supernatural nativity stories and heroic archetypes prove that Jesus was fictional." Humphreys, in summarizing the arguments of others, shows how elements of the Christ myth were long-preceded by myths from all over the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East. While it may be true that some living persons' lives can seem mythic (and often were turned into myths in any case after their deaths), the elements we're talking about are strictly godly: a child of a god and a virgin grows up to perform superhuman feats, conquer death, and rise from the dead. Is there any human life you know of from personal experience that contains any of those elements? Or were you claiming Richard III was that kind of guy?


Because they didn't have a photograph? I wonder what else you would expect artists to do when they didn't have an actual likeness in front of them. We don't have contemporary portraits of any religious Jews from the time in question because Jewish law forbade "graven images."


So why would Greeks and Romans suddenly start making images of a "religious Jew," when virtually all of their art subjects until that time had been gods, heroes, aristocrats and emperors? I think it's because they thought of him as a god or hero (man-god). How about you?


Let me make myself a little more explicit, then. The similarity is not in whether one or both are familiar with Higher Criticism--though I suspect they're about equally ignorant--but about the fact that they're both con men preying on the gullible. They both lie, and they both want your money.

I may not be Christian, but I do believe in the principle of being careful not to judge. You've made a pretty outrageous claim there. Humphreys puts all his info on line for free. He sells his book for $25. Is anyone who sells a book a conman?

Uhm, no. It's just good practice to cite a dispute when it exists. In this case, it concerns the reading of the characters DWD, which in almost all other cases is read "David" without causing a kerfuffle. There's one scholar who wants to interpret it as reading "Dod," an otherwise unknown deity, and at least one who thinks it might refer to the Egyptian god "Thoth." Either of those readings would make two kings of Judah, elsewhere firmly ascribed to the "House of David" to be descendents/inhabitants of the "House of Dod/Thoth," a usage attested nowhere else. Since archaeologists as divergent as William Dever, who holds out for the glorious united kingdom of David and Solomon, and Finkelstein and Silverman, who characterize David as scarcely more than a hill bandit, accept this reading, and since context alone would argue for it, I think we can set aside the outliers. Check and mate.



You miss the point. Humphreys' points are irrelevant because the archaeological evidence shows the site inhabited at the appropriate time. Even Humphreys himself slips up and admits to the burials, but goes on to sputter that that doesn't mean the site was inhabited. Of course it does--Jewish law required burial by sunset on the day of death. How many miles does he think folks were going to portage grandma by sundown if she died past teatime? How many miles does he think folks on foot were going to haul anyone?

If you're dead set to know exactly why Josephus doesn't mention Nazareth, though, maybe you could get Sam Harris to hold a seance and ask him.



That would be Lutetia Parisiorum, right? Babylon is still Babylon, though no doubt the late dictator thought about renaming it "Saddamville." Stalingrad has reverted to Volgograd, and Leningrad to St. Petersburg. Would you like a do-over on this one?



Short answer, no. He speaks repeatedly and in more than one epistle about Jesus' descent from David "according to the flesh" and about the quite physical death of Jesus on the cross. The bread and wine are symbols, the body and blood they symbolize are to be taken as real.



Again, no. Let's take it from the top. Paul was a Pharisee. The Pharisees preached the explicitly physical resurrection of the dead at the end of time. You can see a reflection of that in the passion narrative of Matthew, which states that at the crucifixion of Jesus, many of the local dead came out of their graves, walked about Jerusalem and were seen by many people. One may demur that such an event actually occurred, but one may not deny that something very like it was expected in Jewish apocalyptic eschatology of the first century CE.

For Paul, the resurrection of Jesus was not a singular, anomalous event but part of this larger process of universal resurrection of the faithful dead. He calls Jesus "the first fruits of those who have died ("fallen asleep"). His kerygma, or proclamation to his converts, is that if they believe in the redemptive, physical death and resurrection of Jesus, they, too, will participate in that (again, very physical) resurrection. That's why Paul is so convinced that the end is upon his own generation. The resurrection is a process that has already begun with Jesus and will continue with others.



Well, let's take a real life example. I use my "real," legal name for my non-fiction and scholarly work and write fiction under a pseudonym. I would have no objection to the characterization that I "concocted" my pseudonym. I tend to be plain-spoken, though, so maybe we should say that Humphreys claims that Marcion "created an alternate, fictitious persona" and called it "Paul." Will that do?

I did not say, as you can see above, that anyone started with the "'insurmountable difficult' (arguably) assumption that Paul is who the church has claimed he is. I said that at some point in all this conspiracy theorizing, you come upon insurmountable difficulties with dating. The gospels and other writings are dated not only by the discovery of datable papyri, which provides a firm terminus ad quem, but by their relationship to each other. Luke and Matthew are necessarily later than Mark, for example, since they make use of Markan material, the Q and Sayings gospels necessarily earlier than all the synoptics, and what is known as the Common Sayings Tradition, which may or may not have been written down, still earlier than any of them. (That takes us back, by the way, to no more than ten years after the crucifixion. So much for no witnesses for decades or centuries later.) Internal evidence places the earliest form of the Didache no later than Q1, the first of its three levels.

So. What this has to do with Paul is that (a) Acts can be placed no later than very early second century CE, which means that the earliest surviving manuscript evidence for Paul not only predates Marcion's career but probably predates Marcion's birth. So Paul cannot be merely Marcion's pseudonym. And (b) the Paul of the Epistles has obviously had access to, and preaches, an extremely early eucharistic tradition known in Jerusalem and Antioch and based on a praxis arising among a rural peasant population. None of that is compatible with the intellectualized, ethereal flesh-as-dirty-dirty doctrine preached by Marcion--which is why he found it necessary to redact Paul very heavily in order to adapt Paul's theology to his.

As for reversing that process, claiming that the early church redacted an original Marcion into acceptability--why ever would they? Can you show that any other apocryphal writing was treated this way? It seems to me that if they had wanted to edit any of the extracanonical books into conformity, the likely candidate was Thomas, which has some dualist tendancies but is not outright Gnostic or otherwise "heretical." Marcion, on the other hand, clearly was. Why not just consign him to the fate of the other extracanonicals and be done?



You might have been more explicit to begin with. No mainstream biblical scholar claims that the virgin birth, for example, is historical fact. Clearly it's embellishment, equally clearly it's aimed at a particular, gentile audience. The earliest witnesses--Q, the Sayings Gospel and short-ending Mark--significantly, are innocent of such elements.



I'm resisting the urge to go "Duuuuhhhh." Of course the Greek and Roman artists thought of him as at least a semi-divine being. It does not follow from that, though, that Jesus was created from an amalgam of pagan deities and heroes. Just for starters, you'd have to explain why pious, rural Galillean Jews suddenly took up, say, the cult of Attis, when they had been in the forefront of rebellions against pagan images in the Temple at Jerusalem. Let's not move the goalposts, okay?



I'm not a Christian, either, but I've been an academic long enough to know intellectual fraud when I see it. I'll say it again: Humphreys is a con artist. Show me, if you can, any work of his that has either appeared in, or been favorably received by, peer-reviewed journals in classics, New Testament or historical Jesus studies. I don't charge him with hucksterism for selling his book per se--I'm way too fond of my own royalty checks for that--but for selling such a farrago of misinformation, fiction and misrepresentation to an audience that is gullible enough to take him seriously.

Again, allow me to suggest again that you read some genuine scholarship in the field.

But I can't let this idiocy stand without a response:


I'm not a Christian, either, but I've been an academic long enough to know intellectual fraud when I see it. I'll say it again: Humphreys is a con artist. Show me, if you can, any work of his that has either appeared in, or been favorably received by, peer-reviewed journals in classics, New Testament or historical Jesus studies. I don't charge him with hucksterism for selling his book per se--I'm way too fond of my own royalty checks for that--but for selling such a farrago of misinformation, fiction and misrepresentation to an audience that is gullible enough to take him seriously.

Again, allow me to suggest again that you read some genuine scholarship in the field.


A con artist, by definition, is someone who knows something is a fraud and sells it to gulls and marks anyway to exploit their gullibility and make a tidy profit from it--a description much more accurately attributed to vast numbers of the "religious" throughout history, it seems pretty obvious to me, and probably to anyone who gives it a little thought--even you, if you tried. If you're caught selling a con in the US and many other countries, you can do time in prison. Is that really what you think Humphreys is doing? If so, show me how. If not, you agree with me he's not really a con artist and you're choosing your words incredibly thoughtlessly. And you call yourself an *"academic"*? What great academy taught you to so casually toss off cheap slander at opponents of your beliefs like that? Is this what you teach your students? This kind of patent snobbery and exclusionary inquisitionism?

When you're speaking of something as rigorous as the sciences, it makes a kind of sense to trust the review of peers as a sign of a works' own rigor. When you're speaking of something as fundamentally flimsy in thought as religion per se, peer review becomes much less convincing a sign. I think it's on your head to show me why Humphreys' summaries of other scholars' work is--on its own merits and not just because some metaphysical club doesn't have him as a member--not to be taken seriously. If one or two errors of fact is all you can come up with, I have to assume you reject almost every scholar on the planet as a "fraud" or conman.

pounding your chest and resorting to personal insult only concedes the argument and makes you look silly.

Incidentally, I attempted to find Humphrey's book on Amazon and couldn't. When I Googled IconoclastPress, though, something interesting came up--it's apparently a private printing outfit for one Jack Haas' New Age and photography offerings. Now, your boy Humphreys includes "photographer" as one of his former occupations. Makes me wonder if he's working both sides of the street under different pseudonyms.

Holy St. Sam the Levitating Torturer, Batman! Say it isn't so.

Then why don't you follow your own lesson here?

I don't want no stinkin' facts!" was supposed to be your parting shot.

No? Well, then, I refer to Humphreys in his apparently professional capacity rather than personally. He lists no current occupation on his bio, so it would seem that he's living off the proceeds of his site or sites and his book or books. And yes, someone who knowingly hawks misinformation to the enthusiastic but uninformed, as he does, is in fact a con artist. I doubt you'd have trouble applying that term to Tim LaHaye, for example, or be offended at a "personal attack" if someone else did.

:eyes:

Here is evidence that Jesus lived in writings:
http://www.reluctant-messenger.com/issa.htm
But let me guess...they don;t count
.

I don't. Even if it authentically came before the Russian who allegedly discovered it, why should I not believe it was written after Christians first came into the area? They had about 2000 years to do that, after all. It could have been written at any time during those years.

But why should we believe any inscription on any Temple?
It could have been added many years after the fact.
And then there is that problem of Jules Verns. I have always thought he was a creation of someone in the 1950s...After all how could he have known all that stuff.

:shrug:

If anything, the Koran could be considered to be a much more accurate account of what Mohammed said and did as it was written from first hand accounts of Mohammed's followers a few years after his death. The same cannot be said of the New Testament and Jesus.

You know thats gonna get a repsonse from the faithfull. I might as well defend your stance in anticipation and say in a reverse logic style that "it can be said" - but it wouldn't be provable. Then we'd all post some wiki links, I'd come back with my usual one, and then "they" would say they still have their faith and that God knows who is right.

Shall we give up before it starts?

TRYPHO

but it can be humorous. It is pointless to "debate" the faithfull but I dont take it too seriously. My devout christian parents got an earful from me for many years from about age 8 onward. Even as a little kid in sunday school religion never made any sense. I would ask my Sunday school teachers questions like, "but how did Noah feed all those animals?" and "if Noah only had two rabbits on board what did he feed the lions?". They labeled me disruptive and a discipline problem.

So your position isn't reasonable.

is a myth. There's much, much less evidence that he was a real person.

Still waiting for the evidence.

But if you want to view the evidence, Kenneth Humphries does an extraordinarily thorough job of assembling it. You can start here, for example:

http://www.jesusneverexisted.com/scholars.html

A taste of the info to be found here:

...

The "received wisdom" of the Church was first challenged during the European Reformation, which gave legitimacy to criticism of the papal system. Having opened the flood gates, all religious authorities and scripture itself were called into question and Protestantism emerged in myriad disparate sects. But after a thousand years of Church-enforced ignorance "school men" had but a small stock of real knowledge. As sinecured churchmen, these scholars struggled to use the rediscovered tools of logic to defend the dogmas of Christianity, whether of the Roman Catholic or new "pure" reformed variety.

But after two centuries, as the Enlightenment unfolded, brave theologians began to draw attention to the obvious errors and incongruities in accepted scripture. Why, they asked, was the New Testament silent about most of Jesus’ life? Why did Paul say almost nothing about the life of Jesus?

During the American and French Revolutions freethinkers went much further, questioning the veracity of the entire Bible and denouncing Christianity as a bogus superstition and an instrument of oppression. A new minimalist faith was born, "deism", in which a creator god played no direct role in human affairs.


Higher Criticism

In the century that followed a radical minority – notably, scholars of the Tübingen School in mid-19th century Germany and Dutch Radical critics of the late-19th/early 20th centuries – continued to press the case that the Christian Lord and Savior was a pious fabrication, his whole "life", trial and crucifixion a pastiche of verses from Jewish scripture.

To those who looked beyond the blinkered vision of Christianity it was very apparent that much of the Jesus tale had parallels in much older fables, which had identical principal and supporting characters, identical story lines, and identical moral purpose. Christianity, it was clear, had not fallen from heaven but was a man-made production.


...

and there are many, many competing ones.

You choose one, and claim it is true. Truth is, you don't know much about biblical scholarship and are cherry-picking the theory, or part of the theory, that satisfies your pre-existing belief. Higher criticism, in and of itself, doesn't come to a single conclusion, as your author has done in a very broadbrush sweep.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higher_criticism

Although the questions of higher criticism are widely recognized by Orthodox Jews and many traditional Christians as legitimate questions, they often find the answers given by the radical higher critics unsatisfactory or even heretical. In particular, religious conservatives object to the rationalistic and naturalistic presuppositions of a large number of practitioners of higher criticism that leads to conclusions that conservative religionists find unacceptable. Nonetheless, conservative Bible scholars practice their own form of higher criticism within their supernaturalist and confessional frameworks. In contrast, other biblical scholars believe that the evidence uncovered by higher criticism undermines such confessional frameworks. In addition, religiously liberal Christians and religiously liberal Jews typically maintain that since belief in God has nothing to do with belief in whether a certain text, such as Isaiah or the Pentateuch, has more than one author, it is possible to maintain religious faith while accepting most of the conclusions of religiously uncommitted higher criticism.

If that's what you base your faith on, though, who am I to object? That is why the call it faith, after all, isn't it?

Opinions are like certain bodily orifices. Everyone has one.

One of my problems with you in our dialogues lately is your tendency to overstate my case--another way of saying you seem to like sparring with your own strawman. I do not, for example, claim to "prove" that Jesus is a myth, but you state again and again that that is my claim. Now you want to debate someone who has bought "one guy's theory," but that it's not me who has done that. I think Humphries' is an interesting Website. It brings together a large body of arguments against the historicity of Jesus, most of which have been made by other people long before Humphries made them. True, Humphries seems to have concluded that "Jesus never existed." On the other hand, he does not criticize the position that Jesus may be a composite or an exaggeration of a much less impressive character, as some scholars (like G.A. Wells, for example) seem to believe.

There's a big difference between doubters like Humphries and me from believers: we are careful about what we believe.

When someone mistates my position, I suspect they are not interested in it.

you, upthread:
"There's an abundance of evidence that the Jesus at the center of Christianity
is a myth."

you, last note:
"One of my problems with you in our dialogues lately is your tendency to overstate my case ....I do not, for example, claim to "prove" that Jesus is a myth,"

So, which of these is your real position? How am I misunderstanding what you said?

"There's a big difference between doubters like Humphries and me from believers: we are careful about what we believe."

Oh, please. You haven't been so far. You start from your conclusion and work backwards.

and everyone is a believer in something.

in favor of an argument and "proof?" Really? That's sad.

To be absolutely clear, I have never claimed to have proof that Jesus never existed. I only claim that the evidence is better that he is purely mythical than that he is historical. See if you can try to understand that claim.


I also have to point out that I started with the assumption that everyone else in the Western World is taught to start out with, that the historical argument is honest. I had to learn that that assumption was wrong.

I think you are trying to back-pedal on your arguments.

of a small satisfaction? :eyes:

Everybody here have many bodily orifices. Not only one! :-)

If a Christian questions or doesn't believe in the historicity of Jesus can he/she still be considered a Christian?

The existence of a historical Jesus seems to be a requirement for Christianity to exist otherwise you wouldn't have a problem if someone didn't believe in Jesus' existence and tried to provide their reasons for not believing.

Jesus existence cannot be proven to be a fact. There is no concrete evidence whatever you call evidence is all based on hearsay. I think a site debunking Jesus existence is as valid as a religious site trying to prove his existence. It's all opinion.

You don’t like the site making a case for the non-existence of Jesus and you try to dismiss it because it goes against your beliefs and your “proofs” that are also from biased sources.

That an entire religious faith would spring up spontaneously & simultaneously over a fictional character by groups around Judea defies common sense. Those writings discussing him are written by people that actually knew of him, or within one generation of knowing him, and met those who had met him personally. This is not a belief system that hung out in an oral tradition alone for hundreds or thousand of years, like many other religious beliefs.

How could such a fictional occurrence, necessarily agreed upon by lots of different people, be remotely reasonable? How could that fiction be maintained if there were so many still alive that would have known of him personally?

For example, neither you nor I have hardly any real notion of what was going on in the mind of a zero century Jew. But from the year 70 onwards the world was turned on its head for Jews, so the opportunity for a modern philosophy of Judaism had a window, and that opoortunity was filled.

This says what happened next. Its MASSIVE, but AMAZING.

http://jbrooks2.tripod.com/ra1fic0a.htm

Start at the beggining!

Kwassa wrote:
How could such a fictional occurrence, necessarily agreed upon by lots of different people, be remotely reasonable? How could that fiction be maintained if there were so many still alive that would have known of him personally?
Happens all the time. How many young people know the happy red-faced father xmas was a simple coca-cola advert and not some 2000 year old dogma! I have a book filled with incorrect "facts", you'd all love it - hmmm, I feel another thread starting.

TRYPHO

Pointing me to a massive website is not helpful.

"For example, neither you nor I have hardly any real notion of what was going on in the mind of a zero century Jew."

Depends on the Jew.

Kwassa wrote:
That an entire religious faith would spring up spontaneously & simultaneously over a fictional character by groups around Judea defies common sense
--
You need to tell me one which didn't.

There's no relationship between Christianity and Judean groups that I know of. The gospels appeared "simultaneously" over a 40 year period, each in direct opposition almost to the last. None in agreement and all with ever increasing amounts of hocus-pocus.

Common sense would suggest there was a "source" of information which was poorly disseminated, but widely disseminated, and that those who it was disseminated to added greatly to that which the "source" had supplied them with. Common sense would suggest that the latter gospels were written in repudiation to the earlier ones, having read them and found them wanting. Common sense would suggest that almost as soon as the faith came to fruition it became as organisation of presbyters and bishops and a hierarchy structure from man towards, but not in direct personal contact with, God.

Common sense demands these conclusions.

TRYPHO

By the way, thank you from the very beginning for completely avoiding my argument through a very weak attempt at diversion. I am still waiting for you to address my point.

Just keep asserting your point hasn't been addressed? :eyes:

which indicates to me that you have no counter-argument.

That Christianity "couldn't have been made up?" Several people are addressing that point in almost every post.

in review:

That an entire religious faith would spring up spontaneously & simultaneously over a fictional character by groups around Judea defies common sense. Those writings discussing him are written by people that actually knew of him, or within one generation of knowing him, and met those who had met him personally. This is not a belief system that hung out in an oral tradition alone for hundreds or thousand of years, like many other religious beliefs.

How could such a fictional occurrence, necessarily agreed upon by lots of different people, be remotely reasonable? How could that fiction be maintained if there were so many still alive that would have known of him personally?

Explain why it is "common sense" to trust the word of carefully controlled, heavily redacted church documents from the last 2,000 years on the question of whether its godman ever walked the earth. I don't buy that premise.

oh please.

Scholars go back to any and all extant original materials or fragments of material that they can find.

You just keep ducking.

I mean fragments of material supporting beyond a reasonable doubt that there was a contemporary witness to those alleged events? The fact that Paul and others of the earliest "Fathers" don't refer to them seems to strongly imply that they were not written or widely available until the early second century. Do you disagree with that?

Depends on how much support you need. It sounds like you want a level of physical evidence that doesn't exist.

But lack of evidence doesn't prove lack of existence.

The letters of Paul predate the Gospels, by the way.

there is a new testament fragment here from about 90
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:P52_recto.jpg

How do they know it's from about 90?

As for the Gospels coming after Paul, that much is very obvious. How, then, does it make sense to view the writers of the Gospels as reliable witnesses in any way to Jesus's alleged life?

From my favourite website http://jbrooks2.tripod.com/ra1fic0b.htm :



It's ALL lies - ALL of it.

And if you have half an hour spare, read this page please: http://jbrooks2.tripod.com/ra1fic3.htm

TRYPHO

...depends on the Jew? Nobody knows and all we have is opinion. We Jews all have opinions but nobody really knows the facts and that's the point.

Politics, needs for explanation for what is going on in your world, and tools for survival could create new religions and new thoughts. People can establish new religions and new ideas in order to adapt to change, fit their needs, and fit their interests. Jesus could have been made up to fulfill those needs. I repeat: there is no concrete evidence that people knew Jesus as a historical figure. There is a lot of hearsay. I see your need to deny this possibility but unfortunately it is a possibility.

The Jewish scripture was put together in the same way that Jesus could have been fabricated: to give authority or power to a group of people within a group.

There is a hypothesis that the Aronide Priests created the book of Deuteronomy back in 600 BCE in order to share power with the prophet class. But when the prophet class pretty much said, "fuck these stupid religious rites! We have authority over what God says and God prefers social justice over offerings at the temple..." then the Aronide priests added the ”book of P” and finalized the Torah, giving all power to the priests and phasing out the prophets.

Later the Pharisees, living under Hellenistic influence, had their revolution and added the oral law to take the power away from the Aronides Priests (still letting the priests rule what was done in the temple as far as religious matters). Perhaps Jesus was used as an attempt to say "forget this BS about written and oral torah, that's now irrelevant since we achieve our needs through accepting Jesus..." You see, another revolution like the Pharisees and the Aronide priests had done in the past.

This hypothesis is not a so crazy and could had happened. You will not accept it since Jesus as a historical figure is a necessity for you to continue to follow your religion and you will naturally fight that no matter what is presented.

I’m not trying to prove to you that Jesus did not exist. I cannot do that. But the fabrication of Jesus is a possibility whether you want to accept that or not.

Don't forget that the Temple had just been demolished and every Jew in Jerusalem was either dead or moved away. The Jews may have despised Roman overseers but the Romans were also no fans of the zealot Jews, who kept rioting against them, and continued to do so throughout the Roman period.

From a Jew-in-Southern-Europe's perpective, losing the Temple was a big deal, as it meant they had to re-design their religion from scratch. In other words, every single Jew in Europe from 70 CE onwards expected Judaism to be "renewed" in some manner. AS I have said in other threads there were competing modernisation philosophies offered - one from the Yeshivah at Yavneh, run by the Sanhedrin; and another atleast by 80 CE, offered to Jews to follow an easier path of religious relaxation. Many went with the latter, as you can imagine. And then the religion was offered to gentiles and was eventually expelled from the synagogoes of Europe as not being compatible with Judaism.

It was a crazy time for sure.

And no one, and I mean no one, was likely to have been around in Spain or France to say what or who had or hadn't been on the Temple Mount on the Saturday before Pesach 3756, at ten past 4, for example.

TRYPHO

that we can know what Josepheus wrote on the subject, being the only extant contemporary historian, and also the followers of Jesus, who all considered themselves Jews for quite awhile.

Mr. Wiggles
"Politics, needs for explanation for what is going on in your world, and tools for survival could create new religions and new thoughts. People can establish new religions and new ideas in order to adapt to change, fit their needs, and fit their interests. Jesus could have been made up to fulfill those needs."

Jesus certainly COULD have been made up, but not in that short a time frame. That is where it defies common sense. Not in a generation or two, not in response to anything to the many people who could have known him. It would be far more believable that Moses was made up.

I would add that the various books of the Old Testament had hundreds of years of evolution and were not canonized until after Christ was on the scene, and the rise of rabbinical Judaism came in response to the Jewish sect of Jesus.

"You will not accept it since Jesus as a historical figure is a necessity for you to continue to follow your religion and you will naturally fight that no matter what is presented."

Actually, no, as I don't consider myself a Christian, except in the broadest possible sense, and I don't think that it is all that important that he actually did live, because it is what people believe about him that is important, rather than anything else. I just think the idea that he was completely made up completely implausible.

"Jesus certainly COULD have been made up, but not in that short a time frame. That is where it defies common sense. Not in a generation or two, not in response to anything to the many people who could have known him. It would be far more believable that Moses was made up."

Most certainly it could have been made up in that time frame. Just as the pharisaic and aronide revolution were put in place for the same purpose and it did not need a long period of time to be established. It's a political force that brings forth a new idea and the process of accepting it starts immediately and grows from there. By the time Josephus wrote anything about the followers of Jesus that was plenty of time for this revolution to be in place and for Jesus to have a considerably big following by that time having the historical Jesus existed or not.

"I would add that the various books of the Old Testament had hundreds of years of evolution and were not canonized until after Christ was on the scene, and the rise of rabbinical Judaism came in response to the Jewish sect of Jesus."

Where did you get that from? Based on literary evidence (different forms of hebrew used from specific times), political (interest of the people who put it together), cultural and geographical evidence (the location and under whose rule they were at the time) you could say that the Torah had hundreds of years of evolution and that the rest the old testament had the same. However this evolution based on these evidences could not go beyound fifth century BCE for the Pentateuch or beyound 2nd century BCE for the rest of the old testament. The Tanach (old testament) needed to be canonized in the second century BCE in order for the Pharisees to have their revolution and exist as a power before Jesus time.
What is your evidence for your hypothesis that the old testament had evolved during or after 1st century CE and that was only canonized after Jesus was around?

"Actually, no, as I don't consider myself a Christian, except in the broadest possible sense, and I don't think that it is all that important that he actually did live, because it is what people believe about him that is important, rather than anything else. I just think the idea that he was completely made up completely implausible."

My perception with your attitude is that to you it is important there to be a historical Jesus since you say that the idea that he is completely made up is implausible when it is not at all given all that's been presented.

You are trying hard but sorry, the idea that Jesus did not exist is not implausible.

and the vast weight of biblical scholarship comes up with that conclusion. Do I need to reference that again??????

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus

A few scholars have ventured to question the existence of Jesus as an actual historical figure. The views of scholars who entirely reject Jesus' historicity are summarized in the chapter on Jesus in Will Durant's Caesar and Christ; it is based on: a suggested lack of eyewitness, a lack of direct archaeological evidence, the failure of certain ancient works to mention Jesus, and alleged similarities between early Christianity and contemporary mythology.<60>

Perhaps the most prolific of these scholars disputing the historical existence of Jesus is George Albert Wells. In more recent times, it has been advocated by Earl Doherty and Robert M. Price.

This view has not found acceptance by the historical community. Michael Grant stated that the view is derived from a lack of application of historical methods:

…if we apply to the New Testament, as we should, the same sort of criteria as we should apply to other ancient writings containing historical material, we can no more reject Jesus' existence than we can reject the existence of a mass of pagan personages whose reality as historical figures is never questioned.<61>


as to your arguments:

Mr. Wiggles:

Most certainly it could have been made up in that time frame. Just as the pharisaic and aronide revolution were put in place for the same purpose and it did not need a long period of time to be established. It's a political force that brings forth a new idea and the process of accepting it starts immediately and grows from there. By the time Josephus wrote anything about the followers of Jesus that was plenty of time for this revolution to be in place and for Jesus to have a considerably big following by that time having the historical Jesus existed or not.

Like I said, this doesn't make sense. This is not just about a new ideas, which also don't spring up out of nothing. Nor do revolutions for that matter. They percolate for a long time before they erupt.
If this was about a new idea alone, I could agree with you, but this is about a person, a being that lived and died, who others experienced and talked and wrote about, within their lifetimes.

To create a fictional PERSON, others would have to get together, conspire and invent that person. How would they do this? Who would do this? Why would they do this? How would they fool others??? Lots and lots of others??

...to prove a historical Jesus existed.

By the way, the revolutions I am talking about did get the help from changes in society and it didn't come out of nowhere. The aronides revolution was a response for the exile of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, the pharisaic revolution was a response to Hellenistic influence, Christianity was one of the responses for the people living under Roman rule.

Like I said before and you fail to understand my point: there were people who finalized the torah to gain power. They said the Torah was the word of God therefore this class of people gained power since the torah (the word of God) gives them authority. Someone had to make that up eventually!

There were people who claimed that an oral torah was also given to moses by God at sinai for them to gain their power over a different class. The concept of the Oral Law was introduced second century BCE and it had to be made up at some point since Moses supposedly lived circa 1400 BCE. It's not out of this world to say that people manufactured Jesus for the same purposes.

To claim there was this semi-God figure who resurrected after being crucified and that this semi-God figure redeems humanity from their sins sounds like a good story to sell and people buy it to this day. If people can buy resurrection and miracles that quickly in that time they could buy the existence of a fictional character pretty goddamn quick. People still buy it and we live in the 21st century BCE!!! I know you don't buy it since Jesus is not your savior but others do.

you apparently ignored my earlier notes on the subject:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus

The historicity of Jesus concerns the historical authenticity of Jesus of Nazareth. Scholars draw a distinction between reconstructions of Jesus using historical methods, and the Christ of faith understood through religious methods. The veracity of the historical existence of Jesus impacts a number of academic disciplines, and also religions, particularly Christianity and Islam, in which the historical details of Jesus’ life are essential.

Most scholars in the fields of biblical studies and history agree that Jesus was a Jewish teacher from Galilee who was regarded as a healer, was baptized by John the Baptist, was accused of sedition against the Roman Empire, and on the orders of Roman Governor Pontius Pilate was sentenced to death by crucifixion.<1> A small minority argue that Jesus never existed as a historical figure, but merely as a metaphorical or fictional figure syncretized from various non-Abrahamic deities and heroes.<2>

(jump)

Scholarly views on the historicity of the New Testament accounts are diverse, from the view that they are historically accurate descriptions of the life of Jesus to the view that they are of virtually no historical value in reconstructing his life. Questions relevant to the matter include: to what extent did the authors' motivations shape the texts, what sources were available to them, how soon after the events described did they write, and whether or not these factors lead to inaccuracies such as exaggerations or inventions.

Please provide an example of historical methods that shows that a historical Jesus really existed.

The evidences I have seen so far don't qualify as valid.

if you would like to refute any specific piece of it, have at it.

Josephus, Tacitus, Suetonius, Pliny the Younger lived after "death" and never met Jesus.

Paul never met Jesus.

The Gospels were not written by the apostles at least this cannot be proven. The earliest historical mention of one of the gospels was in the mid 2nd century. Just the fact that the gospels were written in greek makes it questionable that they were written by the alleged authors at the time they lived.

None of it disproves the existence of Jesus. None of it.

All of them know of him or his followers. They did not meet him, but know, in many cases, those that did.

"None of it disproves the existence of Jesus. None of it."

I know, but they cannot be used as proof for a historical Jesus either. They can be historical proof that at least a mystical Jesus existed at that time. I'm not trying to prove that a historical Jesus never existed I am trying to make a point that it is also valid for someone to believe that he was fabricated. Based on the points I provided upthread.

"All of them know of him or his followers. They did not meet him, but know, in many cases, those that did."

Again, hearsay.

So you (kwassa) say, in the exact same logic:



If you quote a book of fiction (the Gospels), the contents are still fictional, not proof.

I even have a video showing Captain Kirk and Spock and the rest all talking together, but its not PROOF that there ever was a Captain Kirk.

Get it?

TRYPHO

That's basic grade-school logic.

...which any honest person not desperate enough to refuse the possibility of being wrong about their chosen deity will admit has been acknowledged AGAIN AND AGAIN in this very forum.

Heck, even the Catholic Encyclopedia states that the Josephus forgery is an unsettled issue, at BEST.

The use of Josephus usually indicates a lack of historical knowledge. You guys are really taking this poster to the mat with your knowledge, and I applaud you for it!

That and Earl Doherty's Jesus Puzzle really opened my eyes about all this.

:toast:

Talking about common sense: have you come upon any other godmen in your travels? Met anyone who was murdered and then raised from the dead?

Common sense.

You didn't do it in the last thread, you aren't doing it now.

quoting myself:
That an entire religious faith would spring up spontaneously & simultaneously over a fictional character by groups around Judea defies common sense. Those writings discussing him are written by people that actually knew of him, or within one generation of knowing him, and met those who had met him personally. This is not a belief system that hung out in an oral tradition alone for hundreds or thousand of years, like many other religious beliefs.

How could such a fictional occurrence, necessarily agreed upon by lots of different people, be remotely reasonable? How could that fiction be maintained if there were so many still alive that would have known of him personally?

So, show me, burt, how this can reasonably happen in a short time frame?

Everything comes out of whatever comes before it. Christianity included, which grew out of Jewish Messianism and pagan mystery cults. As Humphries' site shows, at that time Palestine was lousy with cults worshipping Yehoshuas said to be God's Anointed Messiah sent to save the world. Yeshua means "Savior" (literally, "Yahweh Saves"). Is it really so hard to understand that Christianity is a "universal" religion formed to exploit the ready-made mythologies of these little Jesus cults?

and you still haven't addressed the common sense test. Want to try again?

burtworm:
"Is it really so hard to understand that Christianity is a "universal" religion formed to exploit the ready-made mythologies of these little Jesus cults?"

It would not be hard to understand if there were proof that it was true. That doesn't exist. You don't have it. And, you haven't explained away Jesus to all those people who think they knew him and talked about knowing him.

The alleged authors of the gospels? What do we know about those apostles really? How could they have written the Gospels, which didn't appear until the very end of the 1st century at the earliest, and in any case, cannot be shown to actually have been written by witnesses to the alleged events (unless you know of someone who has videotape of them in the act of writing them)? Why wouldn't the witnesses have written their stories immediately after the alleged events, when the information would have been fresh in their minds? Why are there so many contradictions between the texts? Why do they say nothing about the years between Jesus's birth and his last three years? How did they know about Jesus's birth in such great detail anyway? How did they know what Jesus was doing and saying in the Garden at Gethsemane, for that matter? Why are they filled with such transparent bullshit (reports of miracles witnessed by impossibly large groups of people, self-contradictory pseudo-profound sayings, impossible and nonsensical chronologies)?

All of those questions and more *you* continue to ignore. If you think about them, you might begin to see why some are skeptical about your basic claim, that there *were* witnesses, let alone events to witness. I can't buy those premises until someone shows me plausible evidence to the existence of these witnesses.

We may have a fundamental obstacle between our understanding each other. You believe the early church's testimony is trustworthy. I find virtually all of it fundamentally dishonest.

I think its on youtube.com.

Let's talk about writing and literacy. First, Jesus was a preacher, not a writer. Secondly, writing was a profession of scribes. Third, the materials to write on, parchment, was both very rare and expensive. Fourth, these materials were very biodegradable, and this all happened two thousand years ago, with plenty of time for things to degrade.

Fifth, this is an era of oral communication. The average citizen didn't have the knowledge or access to writing materials. Sixth, because of this, no one would have the expectation of writing it down. It was done so when it was functionally necessary to do so.

You are attempting to treat this era as if the modern means of communication existed. If there was no newspapers, no vehicle of reportage, why would anyone write it down? and who knows that they didn't but that the material no longer exists? Many scholars refer to the Q-material, a common source that seems to influence several of the gospels, but we have no copies of it.

Apparent contradictions or inconsistencies in Gospel material in no way implies that Jesus didn't exist. That is just illogical. It merely means that the quality of the record varies.

;)

But evidence for any of them will be enough for me. Some questions:

1. Was Jesus literate? Maybe he didn't know how to write? (Of course that would be problematic for those who say he was God...) How come Hillel, Philo and the Essenes had access to all those materials and Jesus didn't? How come the Essenes' papyri didn't biodegrade after all those years? Do you think it has something to do with the climate in Palestine maybe?

2. Do you agree that the apostles didn't write the gospels? If so how can you trust that they're accurate?

3. If you disagree, what about all those other questions in my previous post that you ignored.

and proving those assertions is not hard, it is part of that historical record

your questions:

1) I don't know if Jesus was literate. How is this relevant to his existence again?

2) The gospels can be accurate if the stories were related accurately to the writers. There certainly are discrepancies.

3) This thread is about the existence of Jesus. Nothing you have asked has any bearing on that idea; you are focusing on what you see as problems in the Gospels. The fact that you find these stories implausible also has no relationship as to whether or not Jesus actually existed.

which--of course, according to common sense!--naturally sprung up out of the soil because he was a real guy with a real important message and point of view that caught like wildfire in the first and second centuries. Of course, on the other hand, media were extremely primitive in those days, so, according to common sense, it would have taken a while to get the message actually written down to prove it was spreading like wildfire--even though lots of other Jewish preachers and thinkers and cults in that era were able to get their words down on papyrus when they occurred to them. A special case must be made for the Son of God because he's, well, the Son of God, of course.

"even though lots of other Jewish preachers and thinkers and cults in that era were able to get their words down on papyrus when they occurred to them."

Step up.

Philo, Hillel and the Essenes left thousands of documents from that era between them. A thinker, a preacher and a cult.

they found a cave so dry and remote that it was never disturbed, and some of the papyrus didn't degrade.

We wouldn't know about them if they didn't, and we still don't know a lot about them.

We don't know about most things of that era, because there is very little extant evidence.

Don't forget your lifejacket!

All you seem to do is show up late and hurl insults, which is why I usually don't respond to you.

Do you have an argument to offer?

He's doing such a fine job, I don't even need to do anything but point out that you're wrong and not even responding to his arguments anymore.

(And you take the cake when it comes to insults - I'm flattered you even think I could approach your level of insulting behavior!)

a fairly minimal request. I am not asking that you know anything on the subject.

for the following:



with emphasis on demonstrating the existence of "cults" and "worship."

How about the Greek and Roman pantheons? Would it make sense that an entire religious faith would spring up spontaneously & simultaneously over fictional character(s) by groups around (Greece and Italy)? Does that make their gods real, too?

just as their forebears in earliest Christian times were. But an "orthodox" Christian cannot be content with a purely mythological Jesus. They're content to operate in their straight jacket of stubborn refusal to consider simple facts contradicting their literally sacred "truth."

Historicity of Jesus

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus

The historicity of Jesus concerns the historical authenticity of Jesus of Nazareth. Scholars draw a distinction between reconstructions of Jesus using historical methods, and the Christ of faith understood through religious methods. The veracity of the historical existence of Jesus impacts a number of academic disciplines, and also religions, particularly Christianity and Islam, in which the historical details of Jesus’ life are essential.

Most scholars in the fields of biblical studies and history agree that Jesus was a Jewish teacher from Galilee who was regarded as a healer, was baptized by John the Baptist, was accused of sedition against the Roman Empire, and on the orders of Roman Governor Pontius Pilate was sentenced to death by crucifixion.<1> A small minority argue that Jesus never existed as a historical figure, but merely as a metaphorical or fictional figure syncretized from various non-Abrahamic deities and heroes.<2>


Jesus as Myth


A very long and involved site, with many of the major arguments summarized.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_as_myth

quote:

The theory is held only by a small minority of scholars, and is a minority even among non-Christian scholars

(jump)

Criticism of the theory

The idea of Jesus as a religious meme based on non-Abrahamic myths has received strong criticism from a number of biblical scholars and historians. The points below highlight some of these criticisms.

Some scholars, like Michael Grant, do not see significant similarity between the pagan myths and Christianity. Grant states in Jesus: An Historian's Review of the Gospels that "Judaism was a milieu to which doctrines of the deaths and rebirths, of mythical gods seemed so entirely foreign that the emergence of such a fabrication from its midst is very hard to credit."<26>

Parallels between Christianity and Mystery Religions are not considered compelling evidence by some scholars. According to a Christian apologist, Michael Licona, has summed up the viewpoint of this era's historiography:
Many scholars have abandoned the religionsgeschichtliche or what was known as the “history of religions” school that regarded parallels as conclusive signs that Christianity was cut from the same cloth as ancient myth. Further research has revealed that many of the parallels to which they refer postdate the Gospels.<27>

Celsus, a second century critic of Christianity, accused Jesus of being a bastard child and a sorcerer. He never questions Jesus' historicity even though he hated Christianity and Jesus.<28> He is quoted as saying that Jesus was a "mere man."<29> Furthermore, there is debate whether Suetonius, who wrote in the second century, made reference to Christianity existing in 41 CE, though the majority of scholars believe that the reference cannot be interpreted in this fashion.<30> Lastly, there are passages of debatable significance from the historian Tacitus and satirist Lucian of Samosata, which credit "Christ" as the founder of Christianity.<31>

Proponents of the Jesus Myth disagree with the notion that the Apostle Paul did speak of Jesus as a physical being. This is largely an argument from silence. Furthermore, it is a distortion, because the Apostle Paul contradicts this viewpoint several times. He claims that Jesus "descended from David according to the flesh."<32> Paul also states that "God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law"<33> and that "the resurrection of the dead has also come through a human being."<34> Paul clearly states that in "taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness, And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death--even death on a cross."<35> Furthermore, he invokes the "command," "charge," or "word" of Jesus four times<36> in the Epistles.

The Epistle to the Hebrews is debatably an early source, which some, but not all, scholars put before 70 CE.<37> Their reasoning is that the Epistle makes mention of animal sacrifice, which was a practice that fell out of favor in Judaism after the destruction of the temple. In Hebrews, Jesus is mentioned several times in physical form<38> and even speaks.<39>

Argumentum ad populum
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search

An argumentum ad populum (Latin: "appeal to the people"), in logic, is a fallacious argument that concludes a proposition to be true because many or all people believe it; it alleges that "If many believe so, it is so." In ethics this argument is stated, "if many find it acceptable, it is acceptable."

This type of argument is known by several names<1>, including appeal to belief, appeal to the majority, appeal to the people, argument by consensus, authority of the many, bandwagon fallacy, and tyranny of the majority, and in Latin by the names argumentum ad populum ("appeal to the people"), argumentum ad numerum ("appeal to the number"), and consensus gentium ("agreement of the clans"). It is also the basis of a number of social phenomena, including communal reinforcement and the bandwagon effect, and of the Chinese proverb "three men make a tiger".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentum_ad_populum



Furthermore, it's odd to try to use Celsus, a *second century* critic of Christianity as a witness to Jesus's existence. He relied on second and third hand stories for his belief in the man called Jesus as well.

You attmept to reject the knowledge of hundreds of scholars who have extensively studied the subject, utilizing scientific historical standards.

It isn't about popularity, it is about knowledge.

You really don't have much on this subject, burtworm.

;)

You are getting progressively less logical.

You want me to refute wikipedia? :eyes:

Your position is basically: I don't care what anyone says. I believe in Jesus.

Kind of hard to argue against someone who takes that position.

You're not even responding to his, thanks to your desperation to believe.

I think you should step away, having lost this argument (repeatedly) and go get some fresh air.

Care to point that out? I await with baited breath.

I suggest you might want to calm down a little first.

Remember common sense used to tell us that the sun circled the earth.

Common sense is not an argument, it is a cop out.

is poorly distributed among this group of people.

I note that you attack the notion of common sense, but not the specifics of my argument. None of you can put a dent in that.

You do realize, I hope, that there are good reasons why Michael Grant's or Stephen Patterson's or John Dominic Crossan's opinion carries more weight on the subject of the historical Jesus than does yours, or mine, or Kenneth Humphreys'.

Edited to add: In logic, that's actually called the "argument from authority." :)

that way must be true. It's simply not the case. In 1960, most scholars thought there was no such thing as a tectonic plate in constant motion. Within 10 years, those who didn't accept plate tectonics were in the minority. The number of scholars arguing something doesn't make the argument true, nor is it wise to change one's opinion based only on the number of scholars who believe something.

It isn't because most scholars think that way, it because that is where the totality of evidence points to a certain conclusion.

When NEW information comes forth to change that totality of evidence, then new conclusions can be drawn. The problem is ....

you don't have any new information.

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have no bearing on the question of the existence of Jesus.

Makes sense.

:wtf:

Makes a great deal of sense.

From more sources since you are not going to be able to find the totality of evidence with wikipedia. Claiming that the totality of evidence points to a certain conclusion is not correct.

Well, apparently, at the beggining, they showed the "proof":



So there you have it, they wanted proof, and proof is what they got. Sort of.

From http://jbrooks2.tripod.com/ra1fic3.htm

TRYPHO

You speak as though they never existed, and as if they don't continue to exist today.

is lots of stuff about Jesus's lack of truth and proof. LOTS.

The OP in this thread is about whether Jesus ever existed. I feel the case for those against is good, and has been given a good showing, and that the case for those saying he did live still stands at zero information proven. I have shown where the lies came from, why, how they can start a religion from scratch and how the lies get hidden, shredded or obfuscated by an organisation that wants them lost once they've overcome the numbers game and become friends with the emperor, so to speak.

Having shown ALL that, you ask if I have an opinion about other pre-Abrahamic religions. Why? What relevance would that have to a discussion on whether there is proof or not of Jesus's existence? Feel free to expand my knowledge, because I would be interested to see if you can find a pertinant linkage between the Jesus story and a pre-Abrahamic pre-salvationist religion.

In anticipation,

TRYPHO

Part of your prior reply was Is it possible to start a religion without some "proof" at the beggining? in relation to Christianity. Knowing what I do about the evidence and proof you cite for your own beliefs led me to wonder if an adversarial position against Christianity serves to hide the adversarial positions against the world that Judaism, Christianity, and other salvationist religions share.
Your answer "I have no opinion at all. I dont care", helps me understand where you're coming a bit more, thanks.


edit: spling

Your "subject line" doesn't match the content in your "message". I did suggest the case against Jesus's existence had been won, was that my conclusion that was hasty? If that was a hasty conclusion then please clarify WHY?

You had previously asked me:



To which I said I don't care. I dont. Why should I care about pre-Abrahamic, pre-salvationist religions? Why? I finished my post by bringing it back to the point of the thread saying clearly WHY I THOUGHT THE CASE has been won.

Then you wonder if I, having such an adversarial position AGAINST the founding of Christianity have



To which I re-state - I don't care. (which is true - I don't CARE about religions that aren't Abrahamic, that aren't salvationist, that aren't Jewish).

The ONLY reason I can think that you are asking me would be if you could cleverly suggest that my aggravation at the lies and fakery purpertrated in the name of Christianity was somehow matched by an ancient cult which developed in to Judaism. Unfortunatelt for the debate I don't suppose you are likely to have such incredible information, and just drifted out with:



Which is all very well, but kind of ends the debate. And that would have been that IF YOU HADN'T HAD SUCH AN ANNOYINGLY INCONGRUOUS SUBJECT LINE that made me feel the need to put my own thread winning killer reply back at you.

Been a good fight though,

TRYPHO

Firstly, subject lines don't always serve as the first sentence of a following paragraph.
Second, you've reached the hasty conclusion (logical fallacy) that I disagree with you in regards to the Jesus myths.
Finally, do you really want to categorize our discussion as a fight in which one side destroys the other? Just let me know, pal.

NO, but they're what the people read first, and some never get any further in. So when one has a potentially, shall we say erroneous looking subject line in an ongoing debate, the other party in the debate, and those glancing at it, might jump to the wrong conclusion about the content.



Holy shit! I've been duped!



Well noooooooooooooooo.....but this is a DU-forum, and we do presume its an antagonistic environment (even if the opponest is sweet enough to PM you off list!). But my use of the word "fight" could easily have been better served by "debate" "discussion" or "interaction" - whatever you want to call it I was NOT suggesting we were raising our voices or that one of us was going to smash that beer bottle over there... :argh:

It's been emotional :-)

TRYPHO
edited for spelling mistakes a 6 year old should have spotted

"...led me to wonder if an adversarial position against Christianity serves to hide the adversarial positions against the world that Judaism, Christianity, and other salvationist religions share."

What would those be the adversarial positions against the world that Judaism, Christianity, and other salvationist religions share? What are we hiding?

you'd find that it doesn't say "you"(plural) are hiding anything.
I could have also said "...led me to wonder if an adversarial position against Christianity blinds one from the adversarial positions against the world that Judaism, Christianity, and other salvationist religions share".
I was carefully trying to avoid stating it bluntly like this: "Trypho's adversarial position against Christianity blinds him ..."