Historical Jesus

[abaddon]

Your post is irrelevant and absurd since you cannot ever and will never provide any historical evidence to support a likely composite Jesus and an actual Saul/Paul.

You give the impression that because you claim to be an atheist that whatever you believe about Jesus and Saul/Paul must not be challenged.

Why should I produce evidence for something that DOES NOT MATTER?

I DON'T CARE if an actual jesus, composite jesus or no jesus existed. BECAUSE IT DOESN'T MATTER.

I DON'T CARE if Saul/Paul existed or not. BECAUSE IT DOESN'T MATTER.


Why does it matter so very, very much TO YOU.

 

[Darat]

Why should I produce evidence for something that DOES NOT MATTER?

I DON'T CARE if an actual jesus, composite jesus or no jesus existed. BECAUSE IT DOESN'T MATTER.

I DON'T CARE if Saul/Paul existed or not. BECAUSE IT DOESN'T MATTER.


Why does it matter so very, very much TO YOU.

Don’t want to be misreading you, but I think you may be saying you don’t care?

 

[abaddon]

Don’t want to be misreading you, but I think you may be saying you don’t care?

Apparently, dejudge is unable to read that part for reasons that remain unexplained.

 

[dejudge]

The abundance of evidence show that NT Jesus was made up- a non-historical character- fabricated with fiction, implausibilities and mythology found in Jewish, Greek and Roman religious writings.

The next and extremely important question is when was NT Jesus fabricated??

Answering that question using the available evidence will make us understand when the Jesus cult likely started.

NT authors and apologetic sources place their made up character called Jesus in the time of Pilate who was a Roman Governor c 26-36 CE.

A significant clue to determine when the NT Jesus was made up is found in the Gospels.

Examine gMark 13

gMark

13. 1 As he was going out of the temple, one of his disciples said to him, “Teacher, look! What massive stones! What impressive buildings!”

2 Jesus said to him, “Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left upon another—all will be thrown down.”

So it would appear that the fabricated NT Jesus correctly predicted the Fall of the Jewish Temple about 35 years before it happened.

It was not really a prediction.

The anonymous authors of the Jesus stories were writing their fiction after c 70 CE or after the Fall of the Jewish Temple.

The Jesus cult, believers in the Jesus stories, could not have been before c 70 CE or before the Fall of the Temple.

Apologetic writers of antiquity claimed it was prophesied in Hebrew Scripture that the Fall of the Temple c 70 CE was the sign that their invented Jewish Messiah had already come.

Tertullian's Answer to the Jews 8

Accordingly the times must be inquired into of the predicted and future nativity of the Christ, and of His passion, and of the extermination of the city of Jerusalem, that is, its devastation. For Daniel says, that both the holy city and the holy place are exterminated together with the coming Leader, and that the pinnacle is destroyed unto ruin...

Justin's Dialogue with Trypho

Accordingly, these things have happened to you in fairness and justice, for you have slain the Just One, and His prophets before Him; and now you reject those who hope in Him, and in Him who sent Him--God the Almighty and Maker of all things...

Celsus' Against Celsus

Now this writer, although not believing in Jesus as the Christ, in seeking after the cause of the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple, whereas he ought to have said that the conspiracy against Jesus was the cause of these calamities befalling the people, since they put to death Christ...

Their fiction character called Jesus could not have been killed by the Jews.
Their invented Jesus is not found anywhere in Hebrew Scripture.
Their invented Jesus is not found in any non-apologetic writings by supposed contemporaries.

It was the Fall of the Temple c 70 CE that caused anonymous authors to invent propaganda and conspiracy theories to blame the Jews.

Some of the people who believed those fiction stories of the fabricated character are those who started the Jesus cult.

The Jesus story and cult must have started after the c 70 CE, after the Fall of the Jewish.

All Epistles by anyone [Paul or not] to Jesus cults must have been after the cult was already started.

In other words, every NT writing must have been composed after c 70CE or after the Fall of the Jewish Temple.

 

[HansMustermann]

That's also not as clear cut. Yes, it's known even to the bible studies guys that Mark must be written after 70 AD. It's really that obvious. But it doesn't necessarily mean that nobody had heard of Jesus before Mark wrote his fiction. Really, there is no requirement that a story springs up in its final form.

 

[dejudge]

That's also not as clear cut. Yes, it's known even to the bible studies guys that Mark must be written after 70 AD. It's really that obvious. But it doesn't necessarily mean that nobody had heard of Jesus before Mark wrote his fiction. Really, there is no requirement that a story springs up in its final form.

It is clear that there is presently no historical evidence at all to show that the Jesus character and story was known before the fall of the Jewish Temple c 70 CE.

In fact, none of the supposed 1st century writers like Philo, Pliny the Elder, Plutarch,Seneca, Josephus, Tacitus, Suetonius wrote anything about a new Jesus cult or stories about a character called Jesus of Nazareth who was worshiped as a God by Jews and people in the Roman Empire up to the end of the 1st century.

The Jesus story and cult most likely started no earlier than the end of the 1st century.

 

[acbytesla]

That's also not as clear cut. Yes, it's known even to the bible studies guys that Mark must be written after 70 AD. It's really that obvious. But it doesn't necessarily mean that nobody had heard of Jesus before Mark wrote his fiction. Really, there is no requirement that a story springs up in its final form.

No it doesn't. But it would also be wrong to assume that it was created before that.

 

[HansMustermann]

It is clear that there is presently no historical evidence at all to show that the Jesus character and story was known before the fall of the Jewish Temple c 70 CE.

In fact, none of the supposed 1st century writers like Philo, Pliny the Elder, Plutarch,Seneca, Josephus, Tacitus, Suetonius wrote anything about a new Jesus cult or stories about a character called Jesus of Nazareth who was worshiped as a God by Jews and people in the Roman Empire up to the end of the 1st century.

The Jesus story and cult most likely started no earlier than the end of the 1st century.

That or was too insignificant to be known about. Remember that even later, in Rome out of a population of anywhere between 1 and 2 million people (depending on exactly which point in time we're talking about), estimates based on the number of Christian tombs can be as low as a couple thousand people total were Christians. As in literally, fractions of a percent.

Even by the second or third century, Dunbar's number being what it is, chances are most people didn't even personally know anyone who was a Christian. (Secretly or otherwise.) Especially if you were among the upper strata, chances are you didn't even personally know anyone who personally knew a Christian.

Nor would they have any reason to inquire into it, really. Being a Christian was not yet illegal or anything. I mean, only VERY late, as in third century, did it really become a crime per se. Otherwise, the generic crime was denying the gods of the state, and the procedure was basically, "ok, pray to the altar of whichever state-approved god you wish, to show that you're innocent." You could literally go, "ok, watch me pour a libation to Fortuna Primigenia for the good luck of my firstborn" and you'd be off the hook, scot free, no further questions asked. So pretty much you had to WANT to be martyred to even get in front of a judge for it, much less in the Circus Maximus, and even then most stories of such willing martyrs are later fiction.

So basically they wouldn't even make the headlines or anything.

So, you know, it's not really stretching suspension of disbelief that people weren't writing about such obscure cults. It's like why even in our age of MUCH easier access to information, you don't see many people writing about the Baha'i.


Mind you, I'm not saying that it HAD to exist before, either. Just that you can't conclusively say it absolutely didn't, either.


But most importantly, does it even matter? The Gospels are, as you say, later fiction, and Paul is a non-witness either way. Regardless of how one wants to date Paul, and how authentic they want to make him, Paul says point blank that all that he neither ever met Jesus, nor is he transmitting anything from any other human (who might have met Jesus). All he says is coming from his hallucinations of a ghostly Jesus and some delusions of reference about what phrases out of context in the OT mean. It's simply not evidence at all. So, does it really matter when does that non-evidence appear?

 

[dejudge]

It was known since at least the 4th century that there was no mention of the Jesus and Paul in 1st century non-apologetic writings and that is precisely why Josephus' "Antiquities of the Jews", Tacitus "Annals" and Suetonius and" Lives of the Twelve Caesars" were corrupted.

In "Against the Galileans"composed by Julian the Emperor c 362 CE it is implied that no well-known writer mentioned Jesus and Paul when writings about events in the time of Tiberius and Claudius.

Julian's Against the Galileans"

But if you can show me that one of these men is mentioned by the well-known writers of that time,----these events happened in the reign of Tiberius or Claudius,----then you may consider that I speak falsely about all matters.

There was no rebuttal to the challenge by Julian.

It appears that the earliest non-apologetic source which mentions Christians who worshiped a crucified man is Lucian of Samosota Peregrinus written around c 165 CE.

Lucian's Peregrinus

11. “It was then that he learned the wondrous lore of the Christians, by associating with their priests and scribes in Palestine......... they still worship, the man who was crucified in Palestine because he introduced this new cult into the world.

It must be noted that Lucian writing at around c 165 CE described the Christians as a new cult which would contradict the NT where the Jesus cult should have been known for at least 130 years earlier or since the time of Tiberius.

The mere fact that at around c 165 CE the Jesus cult in Palestine was regarded as a new development this means it was initiated sometime in the 2nd century and not since 26-36 CE.

The abundance of evidence support the argument that the Jesus story and cult were really started in the 2nd century and that all NT Epistles to the cult must have been composed sometime later.

 

[dejudge]

.... All he says is coming from his hallucinations of a ghostly Jesus and some delusions of reference about what phrases out of context in the OT mean. It's simply not evidence at all. So, does it really matter when does that non-evidence appear?

The so-called Paul Epistles are not products of hallucinations at all. They are deliberate mis-representations of the history of the Jesus story and cult. All the authors of the NT Epistles lived after the Fall of the Jewish Temple c 70 CE and knew that they were writing complete fiction about a character called Jesus who never existed.

 

[smartcooky]

Do you even know what the dogma of Immaculate Conception IS?

Hint: It's not about Jesus.

ETA: Maybe you meant Virgin Birth?

Nitpickery. The Immaculate Conception is RCC dogma which states that the Virgin Mary had not had sex at the time of her conception, i.e. she was a virgin when God banged her up, and unless she put herself about sometime in the next nine month, she was was still a virgin at sonny boy's birth, so a difference with little distinction, and certainly irrelevant to the point I was making - a person who could turn water into wine, who was sacrificed by being crucified in the branches of a tree and who was resurrected three days later, fathered by the Top God.

 

[smartcooky]

Jesus is unique in that the evidence for him being a historical myth with single person behind it is next to nil. Also when compared to about any other founder Jesus is a total train wreck in terms of history (Pontius Pilate's behavior is totally at odds with what we know of him through every other source) It certainly doesn't help that there are these strange gaps in the records of people who recorded events of that time.

Yep, the Barabbas story is total bollocks. That whole shtick of Pilate offering a traditional Passover amnesty was just a pile of horse feces - there was no such tradition as an amnesty to be be granted at Passover.

Pilate was a cruel, nasty and vindictive son of a bitch. The idea that he was somehow uneasy about killing a preacher was totally out of character. He would not be afraid that the Jewish crowds would yell at him and think bad of him. More than once he set sword wielding soldiers onto protesting crowds, killing them until the rest dispersed. Pilate would have offed Jesus in a heartbeat without a second thought.

 

[clayflingythingy]

Nitpickery. The Immaculate Conception is RCC dogma which states that the Virgin Mary had not had sex at the time of her conception, i.e. she was a virgin when God banged her up, and unless she put herself about sometime in the next nine month, she was was still a virgin at sonny boy's birth, so a difference with little distinction, and certainly irrelevant to the point I was making - a person who could turn water into wine, who was sacrificed by being crucified in the branches of a tree and who was resurrected three days later, fathered by the Top God.

Epic fail.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immaculate_Conception

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[smartcooky]

Oh please. What you said is still quote at the top of the page, two pages ago, so at least have the decency to not outright LIE that those questions were all there was ever to this discussion. Those questions were you trying to decree that no other evidence or level of detail is acceptable, if it challenges your nonsense.

Please point out where I said those "questions were all there was ever to this discussion"

The ONLY thing discussed on that topic at Nicaea was Arianism, which, guess what? ALSO made Jesus divine. They did NOT think that Jesus was just some human guy or anything. The difference in Arius's position was largely that for him Jesus was a lesser divine (based on the "the father is greater than I" quote from gospel) created by God at the beginning of time. Basically the same as the Logos of Philos. Meanwhile the Catholics maintained that it's the same God, and Jesus was one of the 3 persons in that God for all eternity, and was never created.

So, yeah, they "decided" something about the divinity of Jesus, but not what you seem to think they did. The question was NOT _IF_ Jesus is divine, but _HOW_ divine was he.

Correct, The First Council of Nicea decided the divinity of Jesus. Whether they decided HOW, rather than IF, is irrelevant to the point I was making, which was that the council SUPPRESSED views other than its own, and issued a creed that, among other things THREATENED ANYONE (CATHOLIC OR NOT) WHO SAID OTHERWISE!!! That threat is something you just cannot get around

Yeah, I might have been wrong about the Council being responsible for excluding the Gnostic gospels, and that they were exluded earlier, but that does not take away from my opinion that the RCC set about suppressing any views that didn't match their own.

PS: You really do need to take a course in English comprehension. Many of your replies (not just to me) don't even relate to the things you are replying to, almost as if you haven't understood what was said.

 

[smartcooky]

Epic fail.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immaculate_Conception

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Really?

From your link

"The Immaculate Conception is a doctrine of the Roman Catholic church which states that the Virgin Mary was free of original sin from the moment of her conception"​

What I said

"The Immaculate Conception is RCC dogma which states that the Virgin Mary had not had sex at the time of her conception"​

Original Sin

Many Christian teachers teach that the fruit of the tree of knowledge conveyed carnal knowledge. When Genesis says Adam ate the fruit, it was a metaphor for sexual intercourse - original sin was sexual desire on Adam’s part - Adam’s sin was carnal knowledge. This is what I was taught in Sunday School, and as far as I am aware, many still teach this.

Now maybe the RCC teaches this differently. It makes no difference, the point I made is still valid irrespective of a minor detail such as the wrong word being used.

 

[clayflingythingy]

Nitpickery. The Immaculate Conception is RCC dogma which states that the Virgin Mary had not had sex at the time of her conception, i.e. she was a virgin when God banged her up, and unless she put herself about sometime in the next nine month, she was was still a virgin at sonny boy's birth, so a difference with little distinction, and certainly irrelevant to the point I was making - a person who could turn water into wine, who was sacrificed by being crucified in the branches of a tree and who was resurrected three days later, fathered by the Top God.

Still an epic fail.

Immaculate Conception has NOTHING to do with the virgin birth of Jesus.

If you cannot understand what you wrote versus what the wiki was discussing then I do not know how to proceed.



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[smartcooky]

The Immaculate conception: Dionysus was a descendant of Zeus and mortal woman Semele.

Do you even know what the dogma of Immaculate Conception IS?

Hint: It's not about Jesus.

ETA: Maybe you meant Virgin Birth?

Still an epic fail.

Immaculate Conception has NOTHING to do with the virgin birth of Jesus.

If you cannot understand what you wrote versus what the wiki was discussing then I do not know how to proceed.

Oh, alright then. I will restate that part of my post....

My opinion is that the person the NT calls Jesus, was likely made up of a number of different people, and therefore, my opinion is that the Historical Jesus of the NT narrative is unlikely to be a single person. My reasons (NOT evidence) for thinking this is that many of the different gospel writers wrote conflicting things in the narrative about Jesus, that make it difficult for me to believe they were writing about the same person. Additionally, there are also references to things that happened in the narrative that are suspiciously similar to stories from Greek mythology, some examples:

Fathered by God: Dionysus was a descendant of Zeus and mortal woman Semele

Turning water into wine: Dionysus was God of the wine and could turn water into wine.

Crucified, died and resurrected after three days: Dionysus was sacrificed by being crucified in the branches of a tree, died and was resurrected three days later.


There, all happy now?

Hopefully that will keep all the nitpickers and pedants happy. If not "then I do not know how to proceed."

 

[bruto]

Nitpickery. The Immaculate Conception is RCC dogma which states that the Virgin Mary had not had sex at the time of her conception, i.e. she was a virgin when God banged her up, and unless she put herself about sometime in the next nine month, she was was still a virgin at sonny boy's birth, so a difference with little distinction, and certainly irrelevant to the point I was making - a person who could turn water into wine, who was sacrificed by being crucified in the branches of a tree and who was resurrected three days later, fathered by the Top God.

No it isn't. That's the virgin birth. The Immaculate conception is the even more preposterously unnecessary notion that the BVM herself was free of original sin from the moment of her conception.

eta I see I was considerably ninjaed on this. Interestingly, this is a common misconception (no pun intended), even among some people who should know better, like people raised Catholic.

 

[HansMustermann]

bruto is correct.

At some point the RCC went the extra mile, compared to the usual sons of gods at the time, of wondering basically how something as perfect as God could come out of something as sinful and imperfect and full of cooties as a woman. More specifically the problem was that Original Sin thing, which was transmitted to offspring. So wouldn't Jesus inherit it too, if he came out of that kind of a woman? The solution was that basically God had previously arranged for Mary to be conceived all perfect and free of those pesky cooties... err... I mean, of Original Sin.

Of course, as is usually the case with theology, they failed to notice that they had only moved the same problem one step back. I mean, if God can arrange for a conception to be immaculate and free of Original Sin from an ordinary woman like Mary's mother, then why does he need the extra step? Why can't he just conceive Jesus that way from a perfectly normal Mary? And conversely, if that can't be solved that way for Jesus, then why can it be solved that way for Mary?

Or realistically it could just be that they didn't want all women to think that they too can be all pure and holy in God's eyes, like Mary was. No, see, SHE was a one-off special creation, YOU are not

 

[HansMustermann]

Really?

From your link

"The Immaculate Conception is a doctrine of the Roman Catholic church which states that the Virgin Mary was free of original sin from the moment of her conception"​

What I said

"The Immaculate Conception is RCC dogma which states that the Virgin Mary had not had sex at the time of her conception"​

Lol. Considering that at the moment of her conception she would be just a fertilized egg, i.e., just one cell, I don't think she or anyone else could have possibly already have had sex at that stage. So, yeah, even as attempts to save a wrong claim go, it's still an epic fail anyway.

BUT more importantly, what you ALSO said in the same sentence and now you conveniently cut out is

The Immaculate Conception is RCC dogma which states that the Virgin Mary had not had sex at the time of her conception, i.e. she was a virgin when God banged her up.

Now you're trying to leave that part out and claim you totally meant something different. I.e., you're still arguing dishonestly.