The Historical Jesus III

[Belz...]

No. Why should I have any idea of whether he existed or not?

I have barely even heard of the name of that figure,

I wasn't beign serious, but simply pointing out that not having much information on a supposedly historical character doesn't mean that said character didn't exist.

In the case of Gilgamesh we have next to nothing about him, except his name in a very old mythical tale, and on a few steles. Yes, historians seem to agree that he probably existed. Perhaps you can take a few minutes to look it up and give me your opinion about this.

 

[Craig B]

The Pauline character with the NOMINA SACRA IU XU was the Lord KU who is God from heaven.

Serapis was God from heaven.

Therefore Serapis was Jesus! Paul was Jesus! Sherlock Holmes was Jesus.

Yes! I believe! I believe! In the face of reasoning like that, who could ever sustain a scintilla of doubt?

 

[Leumas]

<snip ad hominem and straw manning>

<snip... persistent incessant repetitions of utter nonsense and straw manning and red herrings and imbecilic sophistry and asinine illogic and disingenuous dissimulations ... all for the sake of Jesus>

<snip... persistent incessant repetitions of utter nonsense and straw manning and red herrings and imbecilic sophistry and asinine illogic and disingenuous dissimulations ... all for the sake of Jesus>

This the sum total of any value of your arguments

{}


This in summary is what your arguments are

[IMGw=100]http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/uncyclopedia/images/d/d3/Strawman.jpg/revision/20121026220316[/IMGw]
[IMGw=150]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/41/Red_herring.jpg[/IMGw]

 

[Belz...]

Baleeted.

 

[Craig B]

This in summery is what your arguments are

And this is the first summery day we've had in Glasgow for weeks!

 

[Leumas]

I wasn't beign serious, but simply pointing out that not having much information on a supposedly historical character doesn't mean that said character didn't exist.
In the case of Gilgamesh we have next to nothing about him, except his name in a very old mythical tale, and on a few steles. Yes, historians seem to agree that he probably existed. Perhaps you can take a few minutes to look it up and give me your opinion about this.

 

[Leumas]

...But as I said before - this is one of the problems that is pervasive throughout every last tiny bit of this entire subject. I.e. the fact that we are always dealing with late anonymous copies, and with modern translations into English, made from texts written in early Greek, and sometimes also Greek translations of much earlier Hebrew, and where you do not have to read very far in this subject without discovering all sorts of disagreements about what the correct translations should really be etc.

Exactly!!! That basically is the sum total of the whole nothing nobody Jesus empty affair.

Wishful thinking that the fabricated fairy tales and later forgeries peddled off as real stuff are not really as fraudulent as any of the fakeries by the endless list of charlatans throughout the annals of human folly... why would Christianity have been anything different from the hucksterism peddled off on unsuspecting fools as was done by the people in the list below for instance?

And that is the CRUX of the whole affair.

Right from the onset it has been nothing but a CULT built upon chicanery and hoodwinking and bamboozlement by hucksters and mountebanks. Like any of the thousands of cults that we have today let alone throughout history created and started by all sorts of vile liars and cheaters.

If any Pauls or Jesuses did ever exist they were never any different from the list of the people below.

Imagine if anyone of the people in the list below had managed to get enough IMPERIAL might and power behind him and armies so as to wipe out any opposition or critique or analysis of his fakery?

Now imagine being able to wipe out all literature and history proving his fakery.

Now imagine being able to fabricate literature and forge history saying his fakery is truths.

Now imagine doing all the above for centuries upon centuries with total impunity and with any raised objections burnt right out of existence.

What would be the state of those places and regions under the influence of such long established fakery being thought to be God sent truths? Can you imagine such places or cultures? Can you?

Basically we have God of the gaps and Jesus of the crevices and nooks and crannies whichever nether regions they can manage to devise by any machinations with which to crack open any slit no matter how tightly shut so as to let in their Jesus no matter whether the god or just any pathetic pointless nothing of a moron so long as they can shove Jesus somewhere.


It is an old and long cherished Christian Tradition to lie for Jesus' sake

Paul dissimulated and huckstered for Jesus's sake

• 1 Corinthians 9:20-23 To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. To those under the law I became like one under the law (though I myself am not under the law), so as to win those under the law. To those not having the law I became like one not having the law (though I am not free from God's law but am under Christ's law), so as to win those not having the law. To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some. I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings."

Eusebius, Emperor Constantine's bishop, legalized deception for Jesus' sake

• How it may be lawful and fitting to use falsehood as a medicine, and for the benefit of those who want to be deceived.

And Martin Luther the founder of Protestantism sanctified lying for Jesus' sake

• What harm would it do, if a man told a good strong lie for the sake of the good and for the Christian church ... a lie out of necessity, a useful lie, a helpful lie, such lies would not be against God, he would accept them.

• Muhammad
• Joseph Smith
• Brigham Young
• Charles Taze Russell
• Harold Camping
• Margaret Rowen
• L. Ron Hubbard
• Bahá'u'lláh
• Baba Buta Singh
• Swami Vivekananda
• David Koresh
• Joseph Hibbert
• Jim Jones
• Charles Manson
• Sathya Sai Baba
• Gerald Gardner
• Claude Vorilhon
• Pat Robertson
• Kenneth Copeland
• Joel Osteen
• Paula White
• Robert Tilton
• Benny Hinn
• William M. Branham
• Louis Farrakhan
• David Berg
• Chen Tao
• Jerry Falwell
• David Horowitz
• etc.
• etc.
• etc.

 

[Leumas]

There are many possibilities. How do you calculate the most likely?

I suggest you read this book to find out how to do it

• Proving History: Bayes's Theorem and the Quest for the Historical Jesus

 

[Leumas]

As far as I can see, the three posts prior to that one of mine were by Mcreal, Leumas and dejudge. I have no idea if you are a mythicist. I said, and do now say, that those who think Paul invented Jesus from OT texts are Mythicists, though it may be that the converse is not true.

So you are the best judge of what you believe as regards these things, and also of whether you are a mythicist or not. It makes no difference to my observation one way or another.

__

I'll have you know that I personally am neither a mythicist nor a historicist.

I in fact would love to have it be true that Jesus was a real live person because then he would have been nothing but one or all of these alternatives

• a mountebank and charlatan
• a great fool of a coward
• a blaspheming pathetically deluded moron
• the 1st century CE version of Osama Bin Laden
• the 1st century CE equivalent of David Koresh or Jim Jones

And as such I am sure that would be a much bigger dent in the religious grip than any mythical claptrap Jesus the fraudulent fabrication of hucksters and believed by ignorant sheep in a benighted era and enforced upon humanity by the sword of brigands and pillagers to replace numerous similar but indigenous fairy tales and mythical fables of the remnants of vanquished and defeated cultures in the wake of human villainy and folly.

Just like Tacitus said (with a slight rephrasing), Christianity was (and still is) nothing but the most mischievous superstition and their hideous and shameful evil beliefs were hateful of humanity.

But despite my wishful thinking that Christians would start to realize that their Jesus was nothing but a pathetic nothing of a great fool or a vile heinous zealous jihadist terrorist or a huckstering cultist, I am still willing to entertain the very high possibility that he was nothing but what the mythecists postulate he was ... a protagonist in a stupid retarded fairy tale fabricated with the express purpose of huckstering and bamboozling.

Instead of wasting so much time telling us that you have no desire to waste your time except in trying to stop us from wasting our time.... can you answer the following questions:

I go to buy a used car that I saw advertised in the local newspaper and I examine it and find that it is not in the condition it was claimed to be in.

Moreover, the guy trying to sell it to me does not have an original title deed but only a copy of it and a badly made one at that.

Additionally, when I ask him for an I.D. he gives me one with a name that does not match what is clearly his ethnicity from looking at him.

Furthermore, when I ask him to come with me to the DMV to register the sale he comes up with some excuse.

Am I right in suspecting something fishy (pun intended)?

Should I go ahead and just trust and buy the car and pay for it?

Am I right to CHANGE MY MIND and walk away?

Who is the INSANE one

the one who has faith that the seller is on the up and up because MOST people who sell their cars are honest people?​

or

the one who drops the whole thing and walks away even if he does not have a 100% proof that it is not a fraud?​

 

[Leumas]

...What I asked you for, which you don't like because you have no such evidence, is that I asked where in any of the biblical writing or in any non-biblical writing anyone had ever claimed to have met a human Jesus. That is what I asked you. So what is the answer please? Just give an honest reply without all of your usual constant evasion, and simply tell us where in any of that writing anyone ever claimed to have met a human Jesus.

Because if you cannot show that, and if on the contrary I am right to point out that nobody at in any of that writing, biblical or non biblical, ever says they had met any human Jesus, then as I pointed out to GDon, and where afaik he could not dispute this - that means that in all of that biblical wring and in all of the non-biblical writing too, the only evidence which those writers could possibly produce is evidence of their belief (a religious belief in the case of the biblical writing) in a messiah who was completely unknown to any of them.

Can you please just admit that? Because it's really 100% unarguable, to say that all you are ever offering as "evidence", is actually just un-evidenced writing of peoples religious beliefs in an completely unknown un-evidenced messiah. And where despite being asked hundreds times here both by myself and by virtually every other sceptic in these many years of various HJ threads, you have never once been able to give a straightforward honest admission of the fact that the so-called "evidence" of a HJ, is actually only ever evidence of peoples un-evidenced beliefs about Jesus.

This will never happen because even when the error is blatantly and arrantly proven, not a single admission of error is ever conceded.

By the way, NIV rejects the long ending, because it is not found in the earliest mss. They've got versions without these verses....

Whether the short version or the long version.... Mark 16 is a story about the resurrection of Jesus.... go read whichever version you prefer.

Your statement below is ARRANTLY WRONG..... why are you unable to admit that your statement is JUST WRONG?

Mark may have believed that Jesus rose from his grave, but he doesn't know any story about it. The posthumous activities of Jesus, which appear in different forms in the later gospels, were simply unknown to Mark...

Mark 16

• 16:1 And when the sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome, had bought sweet spices, that they might come and anoint him.
• 16:2 And very early in the morning the first day of the week, they came unto the sepulchre at the rising of the sun.
• 16:3 And they said among themselves, Who shall roll us away the stone from the door of the sepulchre?
• 16:4 And when they looked, they saw that the stone was rolled away: for it was very great.
• 16:5 And entering into the sepulchre, they saw a young man sitting on the right side, clothed in a long white garment; and they were affrighted.
• 16:6 And he saith unto them, Be not affrighted: Ye seek Jesus of Nazareth, which was crucified: he is risen; he is not here: behold the place where they laid him.
• 16:7 But go your way, tell his disciples and Peter that he goeth before you into Galilee: there shall ye see him, as he said unto you.
• 16:8 And they went out quickly, and fled from the sepulchre; for they trembled and were amazed: neither said they any thing to any man; for they were afraid.

 

[Craig B]

As far as I can see, the three posts prior to that one of mine were by Mcreal, Leumas and dejudge. I have no idea if you are a mythicist. I said, and do now say, that those who think Paul invented Jesus from OT texts are Mythicists, though it may be that the converse is not true.

So you are the best judge of what you believe as regards these things, and also of whether you are a mythicist or not. It makes no difference to my observation one way or another.

So you're telling me that you're neither a mythicist not a historicist. That's fine.

 

[dejudge]

The highly improbable hypothesis that Pauline writers were referring to your Dead Obscure HJ requires evidence which you cannot ever present.

The Pauline character with the NOMINA SACRA IU XU was the Lord KU who is God from heaven.

Serapis was God from heaven.

Dead Obscure HJ is the very least likely character with the Nomina Sacra for the Lord [KU] who is GOD in the Pauline Corpus.

See Papyri 46.

http://earlybible.com/manuscripts/p46.html

Therefore Serapis was Jesus! Paul was Jesus! Sherlock Holmes was Jesus.

Yes! I believe! I believe! In the face of reasoning like that, who could ever sustain a scintilla of doubt?

You SCORE OUT words from my post and put in words that you prefer.

I NEVER EVER said Serapis was Jesus.

I NEVER EVER said Paul was Jesus.

I NEVER EVER said Sherlock Holmes was Jesus.

I said you have NO historical data for your DEAD OBSCURE HJ.

You will NEVER EVER get any because there NEVER was

Yes! I believe! I believe! In the face of reasoning like that, who could ever sustain a scintilla of doubt?

Yes, Yes, Yes!!! You have ALREADY admitted that the LORD in Galatians 1.19 is your DEAD OBSCURE HJ.


You BELIEVE the LORD [KU] who is called OC and IU XU was REALLY your DEAD OBSCURE HJ

You use Galatians 1.19 to argue that the NOMINA SACRA LORD is your DEAD OBSCURE HJ.

Your DEAD OBSCURE HJ is a MYTH/FICTION character called the LORD who is GOD in the Christian Bible.

Galatians 1:19---- But other of the apostles saw I none, save James the Lord's [KY] brother.


Acts 2:39 ----For the promise is unto you, and to your children, and to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call

Your DEAD OBSCURE is the LORD the God of the Christians.

Your DEAD OBSCURE HJ is a NOMINA SACRA myth/fiction character.

You will NEVER EVER find any historical data for DOHJ except for the FAKE Shroud of Turin.

 

[Leumas]

I've crossed swords with him a few times on FRDB and EarlyWritings forums. He has posted there in the past as "Philosopher Jay" or "jayraskin". AFAIK he doesn't have any relevant academic credentials. Like some, he doesn't care what the question is, as long as the answer is "No historical Jesus".

At least his stance is a lot less mind bogglingly astounding than someone who avers that the Buybull is nothing but a collection of myths and fables but yet proceeds to rationalizes these fairy tales to exude a mere human out of the main protagonist of the tall tales and then proceeds to worship him... no?

... not long after I converted from agnosticism to theism, and then to a liberal Christianity (I won't go into reasons why here). Even though I'd never thought the Bible was anything other than a collection of myths and fables,...

Could it be that those reasons are that you are so amazed at how this mere nobody of a nothing of a pathetic meaningless fool managed to become deified by great fools of the past and continued on to be worshiped by billions of more fools as the ill begotten son of a ghostly 1/3rd of a magical sky daddy who asks people to snip off the tips their genitals so as to ratify a worthless fake real estate deal?

Do your reasons, like those of nearly all the historicists, basically boil down to

This couldn't possible have been invented and thus it must be true.

In other words... argument from incredulity and argument from ignorance and appeal to majority and appeal to false authority and wishful thinking to alleviate an acute cognitive dissonance.
​

Is your reasoning that since this worthless nothing of a man managed to fool 1/3rd of the world for so long he must therefore be a god worthy of worship or at least a REALLY GREAT MAN worthy of worship?

 

[Leumas]

Crickets for poor Gilgamesh, I suppose.

Best I can do is say he's in the Sumerian King List c2600 BCE. But he's given the improbable reign length of 126 years.

ETA However, that was the time when listed kings start to be attested both archaeologically and in other texts.

The earliest listed ruler whose historicity has been archaeologically verified is Enmebaragesi of Kish, ca. 2600 BC. Reference to him and his successor, Aga of Kish in the Epic of Gilgamesh has led to speculation that Gilgamesh himself may have been a historical king of Uruk.​

By the above astounding illogic and "speculation" Adam and Eve "may have been a historical" couple.

All Mormons, Christians and Muslims thank you guys for proving them right after all!!!

That is nonsense.

The Torah says nothing about Jesus. gJohn contains little or no genuine historical material, but is late and elaborated.

No process at all of that kind. There are reasons for supposing that some gospel material is more likely to be authentic than other material. Your ad hominem remarks are absurd and unworthy of considered response.

You very evidently have a "thing" about this, which inhibits you from rational consideration of the subject.

 

[dejudge]

People who argue that Jesus of Nazareth was a figure of history are just "Euhemerists".

Euhemrism ---the theory that mythology has its origins in history, the gods being deified heroes of the past.

People who argue for an historical Jesus claim the myth/fiction accounts of Jesus had its origin in history and use the Christian Bible for their Biology and History of their Dead Obscurity.

For example, it is claimed Jesus was born of a Ghost in Bethlehen in the NT but the modern "Euhemerists" say those myth/fiction accounts are mere embellishments of HISTORY and his father was really Joseph and born in Nazareth.

 

[Craig B]

The earliest listed ruler whose historicity has been archaeologically verified is Enmebaragesi of Kish, ca. 2600 BC. Reference to him and his successor, Aga of Kish in the Epic of Gilgamesh has led to speculation that Gilgamesh himself may have been a historical king of Uruk.​

By the above astounding illogic and "speculation" Adam and Eve "may have been a historical" couple.

All Mormons, Christians and Muslims thank you guys for proving them right after all!!!

I don't regard Mormonism as having been proved by the archaeological verification of Enmebaragesi of Kish.

Enmebaragesi, also spelled Enmebaragisi, also called Me-baragesi (flourished c. 2700 bc), king of Kish, in northern Babylonia, and the first historical personality of Mesopotamia. Enmebaragesi is known from inscriptions about him on fragments of vases of his own time, as well as from later traditions. He was the next-to-last ruler of the first dynasty of Kish. He “despoiled the weapons of the land of Elam,” one inscription asserts. His son, Agga, was the last king of the dynasty, owing to his defeat by Gilgamesh, according to the Sumerian epic Gilgamesh and Agga of Kish.​

That is the oddest reason for conversion to belief in Christianity, Mormonism and Islam! Your will to embrace the Abrahamic faith must be overpoweringly strong!

 

[Mcreal]

People who argue that Jesus of Nazareth was a figure of history are just "Euhemerists".

Euhemrism ---the theory that mythology has its origins in history, the gods being deified heroes of the past.

Euhemerism, and it's description has a chequered history, probably because Christians have used it to obfuscate since early Christianity.

Euhemerism is actually giving a mythical god human attributes - it is anthropomorphising a god; making it seem they had been real humans in the past. What Euhemerus did with Zeus and Uranus.

http://freethoughtblogs.com/carrier/archives/8161

 

[Mcreal]

Originally Posted by dejudge

The Pauline character with the NOMINA SACRA IU XU was the Lord KU who is God from heaven.

Serapis was God from heaven.

Originally Posted by Craig B

Therefore Serapis was Jesus! Paul was Jesus! Sherlock Holmes was Jesus.

Yes! I believe! I believe!

I NEVER EVER said Serapis was Jesus.

I NEVER EVER said Paul was Jesus.

I NEVER EVER said Sherlock Holmes was Jesus.

Craig B is disingenuous. Craig B likes to misrepresent others and to use his misrepresentations to besmirch.

Craig B is at least a bit of a schmuck.

 

[dejudge]

The earliest listed ruler whose historicity has been archaeologically verified is Enmebaragesi of Kish, ca. 2600 BC. Reference to him and his successor, Aga of Kish in the Epic of Gilgamesh has led to speculation that Gilgamesh himself may have been a historical king of Uruk.​

I don't regard Mormonism as having been proved by the archaeological verification of Enmebaragesi of Kish.

Enmebaragesi, also spelled Enmebaragisi, also called Me-baragesi (flourished c. 2700 bc), king of Kish, in northern Babylonia, and the first historical personality of Mesopotamia. Enmebaragesi is known from inscriptions about him on fragments of vases of his own time, as well as from later traditions. He was the next-to-last ruler of the first dynasty of Kish. He “despoiled the weapons of the land of Elam,” one inscription asserts. His son, Agga, was the last king of the dynasty, owing to his defeat by Gilgamesh, according to the Sumerian epic Gilgamesh and Agga of Kish.​

That is the oddest reason for conversion to belief in Christianity, Mormonism and Islam! Your will to embrace the Abrahamic faith must be overpoweringly strong!

You are the very same person who believes gMatthew in the Christian Bible contains the Biology and history of your DEAD Obscure HJ.

Your will to embrace gMatthew although riddled with myth/fiction Ghost stories is indeed "overpoweringly strong!

In fact, your will to embrace books of admitted myth/fiction as biology and history appear to be excessively "overpoweringly strong!

 

[Mcreal]

It's interesting that Christ is used quite a lot more than Jesus in Romans, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Galatians, & Philippians; and, for one of the other two, - 1 Thessalonians - Lord, Jesus, and Christ are used in nearly equal amounts.

I'm glad my work was of use to you.

Data is good. I'm glad you're glad.

Most of those epistles are to communities with documented serapea (in the 1st-3rd centuries), and Serapis was called Christ.

The highly improbable hypothesis that Paul was referring to Serapis, of course requires no more evidence from you than that?

Of course such a hypothesis/proposition needs more evidence than that.

The cult of Serapis, Osiris, Isis, and Horus was highly active in Asia Minor and around the Aegean Sea in the 1st and 3rd centuries. It was growing more than Christianity. There were various dimensions to it.

Christian churches took over Serapea. eg. the Red Basilica

see http://www.sacred-destinations.com/turkey/bergama-red-basilica -

History of Red Basilica (Temple of Serapis)

"The massive structure was built in the early 2nd century (under Hadrian) as a temple to the popular Egyptian god Serapis. It was later (4th-5th centuries) converted into a Byzantine church.

"The Red Basilica was destroyed in the Arab raids of 716 to 717 AD, after which a smaller church[? - temple?] was built within the ruins."​

and http://www.turkeytravelplanner.com/go/Aegean/Bergama/sites/basilica.html -

"Bergama's Red Hall (Kızıl Avlu) or Red Basilica (map) was built for worship of the Egyptian gods Serapis, Isis and Harpocrates at a time in the 2nd century AD when Egyptian religion was reaching into the Roman Empire.

"Faced with marble and surrounded by a colonnade, the huge building looked very different in Roman times. A stream ran beneath it in stone channels, its waters used for ritual bathing and ablutions.

"The Byzantines preserved the sacred space, building the Church of St John the Apostle within the mammoth ancient walls.

"The building is sacred still today, containing the Kurtuluş Camii (mosque) in one of its towers."​