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Historical Jesus

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If you remove the fake elements from the Jesus stories you get no history- you get nobody.

Reality doesn't work that way

When a real person is written up in later accounts as a larger than life character, or is accorded or endowed with attributes that are later shown to be undeserved or false, it does not mean the original person on which all that was based, becomes a fictional nobody.

A great example of this is the story of the von Trapp family as told in the classic movie "The Sound of Music". The von Trapps were a real family, Georg and Maria von Trapp and Georg' s children were were real people and real musicians and performers. The fact that a whole lot of fiction was told about them in the movie, and the fact that many of the things the movie portrayed as happening, never actually happened at all, does not mean that the von Trapps didn't exist, and that there wasn't a real story.
 
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If a historical Jesus exists, but he doesn't have the special powers we read about in the bible. Does that mean that he is not the Jesus of the Bible?

What it means is how your posited HJ was portrayed in the bible, is fiction and has been embiggened and fictionalized by subsequent authors. However, this does not mean that there could not have been a real character (IMO, more likely a group of characters) on which the story was loosely based.

Unless heretofore undiscovered contemporaneous documents are discovered, we will likely never know whether there really was a single HJ, or whether Jesus was based on multiple persons living at the time, or if the whole story is fiction from the get go. The absolute best we can achieve is to say that we do not know.

Anyone who claims to know for certain, one way or the other, is lying.
 
Reality doesn't work that way

When a real person is written up in later accounts as a larger than life character, or is accorded or endowed with attributes that are later shown to be undeserved or false, it does not mean the original person on which all that was based, becomes a fictional nobody.

A great example of this is the story of the von Trapp family as told in the classic movie "The Sound of Music". The von Trapps were a real family, Georg and Maria von Trapp and Georg' s children were were real people and real musicians and performers. The fact that a whole lot of fiction was told about them in the movie, and the fact that many of the things the movie portrayed as happening, never actually happened at all, does not mean that the von Trapps didn't exist, and that there wasn't a real story.
The Von Trapp family has nothing whatsoever to do with the Jesus stories.

If it is simply ridiculous to assume Jesus, the disciples and Paul existed because some known and documented family existed.

Jesus, the disciples and Paul have zero historical corroboration which is quite unlike the Von Trapp family.

Religion does not require history only belief.

The Jesus fiction stories were extremely believable just like the myth fables of the Greeks, Romans and Jews.

NT Jesus had no known parents that is precisely why it was claimed he was born of a Ghost and a virgin.

Non-apologetic writers of the 1st century wrote nothing at all about this son of a Ghost character called Jesus who was worshiped as a God until the 2nd century.
 
The Von Trapp family has nothing whatsoever to do with the Jesus stories.

You missed the point of the analogy - as usual

If it is simply ridiculous to assume Jesus, the disciples and Paul existed because some known and documented family existed.

Still missing the point...

Jesus, the disciples and Paul have zero historical corroboration which is quite unlike the Von Trapp family.

Aaaand, still missing it

Religion does not require history only belief.

And?

The Jesus fiction stories were extremely believable just like the myth fables of the Greeks, Romans and Jews.

And?

NT Jesus had no known parents that is precisely why it was claimed he was born of a Ghost and a virgin.

And?

Non-apologetic writers of the 1st century wrote nothing at all about this son of a Ghost character called Jesus who was worshiped as a God until the 2nd century.

And?

You should try climbing down off your high horse once in a while. You have a lot to contribute to this kind of debate, but you need to check your supercilious attitude at the door.
 
You should try climbing down off your high horse once in a while. You have a lot to contribute to this kind of debate, but you need to check your supercilious attitude at the door.

You have already admitted you don't know whether or not Jesus existed.

You have nothing to contribute.

I have no reasonable doubt that NT Jesus, the disciples and Paul are fiction characters based on the existing evidence.
 
You have already admitted you don't know whether or not Jesus existed.

You have nothing to contribute.

Your sheer arrogance is plain for all to see.

My ability to contribute to a debate is not predicated on what I know or do not know.

I have no reasonable doubt that NT Jesus, the disciples and Paul are fiction characters based on the existing evidence.

At last, you are not substituting your opinion in the place of fact. This post is the first time you have come remotely close to posting anything honest in this thread. Its just a pity its taken eight months and 25 pages for that to happen.
 
It's a literary device.
One could argue that entire NT is a 'literally device'. What evidence is there that any of it is more than just a collection of 'literary devices'?

In what bizarro world is a story MORE believable if you DON'T have evidence that it actually happened exactly as you said?

It's actually a clever trick - convince your followers that nothing is as it seems, that the 'real' world is just an illusion and your fantasy is the real one. It leverages the propensity for humans to believe what they are told, even (or even especially) if it contradicts what they thought they knew. But the really clever part is locking them in by turning logic on its head. You can't get into Heaven without faith - but if you have evidence for something it's not faith! Only skeptics need evidence, and they have no faith at all. And the so-called wise? They are the most foolish - thinking they know it all when they actually know nothing! The Bible is full of that kind of stuff.
 
At last, you are not substituting your opinion in the place of fact. This post is the first time you have come remotely close to posting anything honest in this thread. Its just a pity its taken eight months and 25 pages for that to happen.
He's right though. NT Jesus, the disciples and Paul as described in the NT are almost certainly fiction characters.
 
dejudge said:
You have already admitted you don't know whether or not Jesus existed.

You have nothing to contribute.

smartcooky said:
Your sheer arrogance is plain for all to see.

My ability to contribute to a debate is not predicated on what I know or do not know.

Just as I expected. Your ability to contribute is based on confusion.

dejudge said:
I have no reasonable doubt that NT Jesus, the disciples and Paul are fiction characters based on the existing evidence.

smartcooky said:
At last, you are not substituting your opinion in the place of fact. This post is the first time you have come remotely close to posting anything honest in this thread. Its just a pity its taken eight months and 25 pages for that to happen.

You honestly seem to have a lot of problems with facts and fiction.
 
One could argue that entire NT is a 'literally device'. What evidence is there that any of it is more than just a collection of 'literary devices'?



It's actually a clever trick - convince your followers that nothing is as it seems, that the 'real' world is just an illusion and your fantasy is the real one. It leverages the propensity for humans to believe what they are told, even (or even especially) if it contradicts what they thought they knew. But the really clever part is locking them in by turning logic on its head. You can't get into Heaven without faith - but if you have evidence for something it's not faith! Only skeptics need evidence, and they have no faith at all. And the so-called wise? They are the most foolish - thinking they know it all when they actually know nothing! The Bible is full of that kind of stuff.


Hebrews 11:1
Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
[
Hebrews 11:6
But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.

1 Corinthians 2:5
That your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.

Belief , not historical evidence, is the fundamental requirement to accept the Jesus stories.
 
He's right though. NT Jesus, the disciples and Paul as described in the NT are almost certainly fiction characters.

"Almost certainly" is not the same as "fact". I too believe the NT account of what what has been written by Paul (who I doubt really existed as a historical figure) and others such as the gospel writers, is almost certainly fiction. The NT description is rubbish, and dejudge has made his position clear on that...

He knows it is all fiction
He knows that neither a single or multiple HJ existed
He knows Paul did not exist

What I want to see is evidence of how he knows, and so far his entire argument seems to be closed minded, and boils down to "I know because I know", which in scholarly circles is regarded as arrogance.

Where I differ from dejudge is that I am prepared to accept the possibility that these fictional stories may have been based on one or more real people, who may or may not have existed at the time. Somebody wrote these stories, they didn't just appear out of thin air, and the fact that they exist at all is evidence that somebody wrote them. If not Paul, then who?

Where did these ideas come from?
Were they based on single or multiple individuals?
Was the time span for the source material wide or narrow?
Were they entirely from the imaginations of a single writer or of multiple writers?

For mine, these are facets of the REALLY interesting debate to be had here.

Some years ago, I did a really deep dive into the origins of both the Robin Hood and the King Arthur legends (cue dejudge instructing me that these two have nothing to do with Jesus/NT - he does not understand what an analogy is).

I found the subject fascinating as I came to understand how the legend of Robin Hood came to be though little bits of information; names in a census from Yorkshire, the lyrics of a ballad from Lincolnshire, county records from Nottinghamshire, stories from Derbyshire and all evolving over period of a thousand years from the 6th century to the 16th, gleaned to make the familiar story we know today.
 
One could argue that entire NT is a 'literally device'. What evidence is there that any of it is more than just a collection of 'literary devices'?

I'm not talking figuratively there, though. I'm talking about actual content analysis. There are tropes and structure that educated ancient authors used, and which kinda are markers that they're not writing a literal biography, for example.

The inclusion and chiasm are the most blatant such marker. When someone's biography (e.g., Jesus's) is from start to end a 20 level deep sandwich made of sandwiches, yeah, that doesn't happen with any known real people. We know they occasionally did that with real people, but it tells you that it's at the very least rearranged.

Another is subverting expectations, a.k.a., irony. If a story reads exactly like a(nother) known myth at the time, save for a plot twist that turns the message on its head, yeah, it might not be a literal account of what happened there.

People acting unnaturally is another one, especially when you can recognize that it's to form one of those sandwiches. E.g., Jesus feeding the multitudes is one of the instances where the sandwich is made by just duplicating a story. And by the time the second one happens verbatim, the disciples have completely forgot that they've seen the exact same thing before. They ask about it again before, and are dutifully amazed again after. To make the sandwich work, basically they have no memory even medium term. They're thicker than two planks. Sideways.

Etc.

All 4 gospels show those markers and then some. Paul's epistles do NOT show the same markers. He does a bunch of fallacies, but in a way that just shows he was educated in sophistry. He's basically just trying to be as convincing as he can, not writing a novel.

So no, not everything is a literary device.

It's actually a clever trick - convince your followers that nothing is as it seems, that the 'real' world is just an illusion and your fantasy is the real one. It leverages the propensity for humans to believe what they are told, even (or even especially) if it contradicts what they thought they knew. But the really clever part is locking them in by turning logic on its head. You can't get into Heaven without faith - but if you have evidence for something it's not faith! Only skeptics need evidence, and they have no faith at all. And the so-called wise? They are the most foolish - thinking they know it all when they actually know nothing! The Bible is full of that kind of stuff.

I don't think that's what Paul is doing. He's not that sophisticated a theologian. In fact, he appeals to evidence all the time. It's weak sauce, even delusional "evidence", not what you'd call evidence as a modern (or even ancient) skeptic, but it's still far from what you describe.
 
All your claims about 'most bible scholars" and authentic Epistles in the 50's are bogus.

It is demonstrably true that Paul’s (authentic) epistles are dated early - in the 50’s according to most biblical scholars. Google it.

There are no authentic NT writings anywhere. All existing NT writings are dated by paleography - not bible scholars.

The NT writings are dated by scholars using the historical-critical method (i.e. higher criticism) which includes paleography, but is not limited to it.

Existing NT writings are dated by paleography no earlier than the 2nd century.

See above re the Pauline letters. The gospels are dated by the majority of scholars earlier than the 2nd century: the earliest Mark c. 70 CE up to the latest, John c. 95 CE.

Plenty bible Scholars worship Jesus and pray to him for their salvation in order to go to heaven and must say that Jesus exist and that Paul wrote letters 50-60 CE using the Gospels and Acts of the Apostles, a known work of fiction.

Some bible scholars worship Jesus but many are atheist – Bart Ehrman for one. Richard Carrier is another and although the latter would agree with you about Jesus being mythological (Ehrman does not), he doesn’t doubt the existence of Paul. “Paul falls into the class of ordinary persons who wrote letters and had effects on history”.

https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/7643
 
I would add that:

1. No actual historian claims that every document was written at the date of its earliest existing copy that we have. E.g., nobody would claim that Josephus's books were written in the 5th century, just because that's the earliest copy we have, and even that's of a translation.

In fact one technique that is actually in use, and both Ehrman and Carrier (among others) will tell you about it, is that you can reconstruct what a document looked like BEFORE a bunch of altered copies that you have. Basically if you have half a dozen copies that have different changes to them, you can have a good idea what it might have looked like before them.

But anyway, there we go. There are methods BASED on the idea that a document may (or may not) be earlier than the earliest copy you've dated by paleography.

2. I keep hearing this dumb assertion that Paul's letters were made based on the gospels and Acts, but I've yet to see any support for it. It just keeps getting repeated again and again, as if it's gonna become true if it's said one more time. And frankly that assertion just tells me that dejudge hasn't actually done that analysis and is just repeating some nonsense CT he's heard about. In fact what any scholar can tell you is that Paul seems to have never heard of almost anything that's in the gospels, and most of Acts.

He spends many pages (which also meant hundreds of bucks just for the paper in today's money) using his own logic and excerpts from the OT to make a point about something... that Jesus had already ruled about in the gospels. So he could have solved the whole thing both simpler and more decisively by just going "Jesus said so!"

He even basically contradicts the later theology based on the gospels in places, and that is why such forgeries as his testimony of the resurrection have to be inserted in the epistles. E.g., if you remove that forged paragraph, not only Paul has never heard of a Jesus bodily resurrected or going bodily to heavens, but he argues for a whole page that that's not even possible. For him you CAN'T enter heavens as a creature of flesh, and you have heavenly bodies waiting for you in heavens. And Jesus himself became a life-giving spirit, in his own words.

And in fact that was getting to be a PROBLEM for the early church, which is why they had to add forgeries to make him actually say what they wanted him to say. Because the guy who wrote those 7 epistles (whether he was actually called Paul or not) sure as heck wasn't.

Even his perpetual conflict with Peter is actually a PROBLEM there. Most think Mark was written in Rome, and that church claimed to be founded by Peter, which is why Peter gets that endorsement from Jesus himself to be the rock upon which the church would be built. When Irenaeus unites those churches into a cartel, yeah, you can guess which church that had at the top. But Paul basically says "don't listen to Peter". He also says that he's the one given a mandate to make a gentile sect, while Peter sticks to the Jewish one. So essentially he says that Peter can't be the guy who founded the Rome church. The only reason that didn't get erased from history by the early church is that they get confused and think that their "Petros" and Paul's "Cephas" are different persons, instead of the latter being the Aramaic original and the former being the translation of it. But at any rate, if you were just making up some letters from Paul to support your position, it's not clear why you'd make them attack your own founding father.

So anyway, that unsupported assertion that the epistles were just based on the gospels and acts is just that: a counter-factual, unsupported assertion. The only "support" I've seen for it is just repeating it like a broken record, with no more support than the previous time it was just asserted.
 
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It is demonstrably true that Paul’s (authentic) epistles are dated early - in the 50’s according to most biblical scholars. Google it.

It is absolutely true that there are no existing NT Epistles dated to the 50's by paleography.

It is absolutely true that there are no known original version of the NT Epistles.

Please tell me which version of NT writings have been dated to the 50's? The Epistles in the King James Version, in the Codex Sinaiticus, in the Codex Vaticanus, in the Codex Alexandrinus or Papyri 46?


The NT writings are dated by scholars using the historical-critical method (i.e. higher criticism) which includes paleography, but is not limited to it.

It is virtually impossible to date any NT writing to a specific year using only the Epistles.

So-called Bible Scholars use Acts of the Apostles, known useless fiction, as a credible historical account for Saul/Paul in their bogus attempt to date Epistles.

Acts of the Apostles does even not claim anywhere that Saul/Paul wrote letters to any Church before or after travelling to Rome, Corinth, Galatia, Ephesus, Thesalonica, Philippi and Colosse.

See above re the Pauline letters. The gospels are dated by the majority of scholars earlier than the 2nd century: the earliest Mark c. 70 CE up to the latest, John c. 95 CE.

Which version of NT writings have been used to date the Gospels to 70 CE and 95 CE? Is it the King James Version, in the Codex Sinaiticus, in the Codex Vaticanus, in the Codex Alexandrinus or Papyri 46?

Some bible scholars worship Jesus but many are atheist – Bart Ehrman for one. Richard Carrier is another and although the latter would agree with you about Jesus being mythological (Ehrman does not), he doesn’t doubt the existence of Paul. “Paul falls into the class of ordinary persons who wrote letters and had effects on history”.



https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/7643

You believe whatever atheists say? If Ehrman is an atheist and argues that Jesus existed then why did Carrier, another atheist, argue that Jesus is not a figure of history?

All you have shown is the historical critical method of so-called Bible Scholars can produce opposite results.

You need to examine the evidence for yourself.

Did not NT authors state multiple times that their Jesus was born of a Ghost and a Virgin?

This is not rocket science. The evidence is right in front of us.

NT Jesus had no known father and mother.

The fabrication of Jesus is documented in the very NT.

Matthew 1
that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost.


NT Jesus was never a figure of history from conception to ascension.

Once you understand that Jesus never existed then his so-called disciples and the supposed Paul are all fiction characters of the NT Jesus fables.

NT is a Ghost story.

People in antiquity and even today believed Ghosts were really real.
 
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I
Please tell me which version of NT writings have been dated to the 50's? The Epistles in the King James Version, in the Codex Sinaiticus, in the Codex Vaticanus, in the Codex Alexandrinus or Papyri 46?

You tell me which manuscript of the Beowulf saga predates the 12th century.
You tell me why many experts place the making of the saga between the 6th and 12th century.

Please.
 
You tell me which manuscript of the Beowulf saga predates the 12th century.
You tell me why many experts place the making of the saga between the 6th and 12th century.

Please.

Your diversion tactics won't work anymore!!!

We are presently debating the historicity/non-historicity of NT Jesus.

It is claimed NT Epistles were written in the 50's CE however there is absolutely no evidence anywhere from anyone that any NT writing was composed before the 2nd century.

Not even NT authors corroborate a single Epistle from Saul/Paul or mention a so-called Pauline Church.
 
Your diversion tactics won't work anymore!!!

We are presently debating the historicity/non-historicity of NT Jesus.

No. It's not a diversion. YOU are the one trying to apply a double standard.

IF your criterion works, it should work on other examples too. It should be able to make a prediction about other data, and we should be able to test that prediction. Only THEN will we know if it actually works, and thus if any conclusion based on it actually holds. It's how the scientific method works.

Conversely,

IF it ONLY works for the NT, then it's not really a criterion at all. It's just some nonsense ad-hoc BS you pulled out of your ass.

It's the latter, isn't it?
 
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Not even NT authors corroborate a single Epistle from Saul/Paul or mention a so-called Pauline Church.

That's nonsense, because only one book in the NT is concerned with Paul at all, without being by Paul: Acts.

For the gospels it's not even in the time frame they're writing about. So basically demanding that they write something about Paul or really the church 20 years after Jesus, is as bloody stonking stupid as demanding that War And Peace, whose epilogue ends in 1820, and whose main action ends even earlier, mentions the tsar's death in 1825. I mean, if Tolstoy knew that, he must have written that in the book, and if he didn't, it's proof that Alexander I is made up. That's the kind of nonsense logic you're applying.

And Acts being a novel, frankly, if you want to decide exactly what goes into it, then write your own novel. Presuming to know exactly which mundane details the author would or wouldn't include, without even knowing for sure who that author is or any context really, is just bloody stonking stupid.

Plus, generally, it's not the kind of thing that went into that kind of documents. If you read Josephus for example, hardly any letters are ever mentioned about ANY of the characters involved, even when realistically that would be the way they got some piece of information.

But generally, you didn't mention every time one of your characters went to the loo, or sat down and wrote something. Ancient books, especially novels, were NOT the modern kind of 200 page sprawl, where even the character stopping in front of a mirror or opening a book are mentioned as flavour details. That kind of sprawling, intertwined story only appeared after mass produced paper and the printing press made it be even viable at all. Acts has a total of 28 pages, for example, and only slightly over 12 of them are after Paul's vision in Acts 16. That's it. The whole story of Paul after his conversion is a mere slightly over 12 pages. By modern standards it wouldn't even be a novel, but a rather compressed short story. They just didn't have the SPACE to include every arbitrary detail you can think up.

And more specifically it doesn't fit Luke's style. For example, in Acts 20:17, it just says, "From Miletus, Paul sent to Ephesus for the elders of the church." Realistically it would have involved sending some kind of letter summoning them. But Luke doesn't feel a need to include that message, nor what form it was in.

But to return to the actual information density in the classical world, we're already in the middle of Paul's way back to Jerusalem, a mere 4 pages after his conversion. We're talking an average of several years of the story per page. But anyway, that's flippin' it. That's the space in which you apparently expect it to mention every single detail of what Paul did, including every time Paul sat down to write some letter.

So on the whole my impression is that basically you don't actually know that kind of details, and generally aren't qualified to be making that kind of analysis. You just make up whatever BS 'criteria' as you go.
 
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You tell me which manuscript of the Beowulf saga predates the 12th century.
You tell me why many experts place the making of the saga between the 6th and 12th century.

That raises some interesting points.

Firstly, at the time the events of the NT were supposed to have happened, literacy levels were very low by our standards, and most of those who were fully literate were more likely to be among the elite who had some kind of advanced education available only to a privileged few. The region was under Roman control at the time, so its is more likely that Romans had the kind of education required for literacy. Your average peasants or itinerant goat herders of the time would very likely be totally illiterate, so the teachings of a peripatetic preacher would more likely to have relied on oral tradition to be spread. with followers passing on what they saw and heard by word of mouth.

Secondly, at this time, even if there were people capable of writing down such teachings, all such writings would have to be rewritten by hand to make copies. There were no photocopiers in ancient Palestine, and the printing press wasn't invented until the 15th century. Prior to that ALL books were handwritten copies

These two factors make any writings of the times extremely rare even at that time, and the unliklihood of their survival 2000 years later would make them even more rare.

dejudge seems to be demanding evidence that not only might not even exist, but in all likelihood, either could not exist, or if it ever did, was unlikely to survive to today. But even more importantly, the fact that we have no contemporaneous writings does not automatically mean that the events didn't happen. The kernel of the stories could easily have been passed down via oral tradition, with embellishments, exaggerations, additions alterations, subtractions, and character mergers passed right along with it.
 
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