OK, well you also now only have untrue replies. I have told you several times in this thread that I do not think Jesus was just a "myth". And with one possible exception (ie dejudge) I don't recall anyone else here saying they are sure Jesus must have been merely mythical. So your reply above is, I'm afraid, just yet another example where truly neutral objective readers can see for themselves who is writing honestly and truthfully in good faith and who is not.
Historical Jesus
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OK, well you also now only have untrue replies. I have told you several times in this thread that I do not think Jesus was just a "myth". And with one possible exception (ie dejudge) I don't recall anyone else here saying they are sure Jesus must have been merely mythical. So your reply above is, I'm afraid, just yet another example where truly neutral objective readers can see for themselves who is writing honestly and truthfully in good faith and who is not.
I agree with two important things in the above. And I think those are actually the two points you are making -
1 There is simply not enough reliable material that could qualify as credible or reasonable evidence of Jesus (actually of "Jesus ever being known to anyone" ... because if nobody who ever wrote about him, ever actually knew any such living person, then at best you are dealing only with anonymously sourced hearsay ... and in fact that was hearsay that made scores of claims about Jesus, all of which were widely believed at the time 2000 years ago, but where now we know for sure (courtesy of science, and not courtesy of any bible scholars or theologians) that all those stories were certainly untrue). So, in brief - the necessary evidence is not merely woefully lacking, but in fact all actually known credible evidence is to the contrary (e.g., the gospels and letters are in fact clearly evidence of myth making).
2 You are right to be highly suspicious of how much trust we can place in the authenticity and accuracy of any of the biblical writing. And we can add to that, that none of the non-biblical writing (e.g. Josephus, Tacitus and the rest) can be shown as independent of the biblical writing/preaching ... in fact it is just not credible to believe on trust that authors such as Tacitus or Josephus knew from their own personal experience anything at all about Jesus (or indeed about any "brother James) ... for the very little that those authors said about Jesus or James, they were almost certainly just repeating what they had heard as beliefs preached at the time by Christians themselves (but where none of those Christians could be shown as ever having known any living Jesus either). And that is apart from the fact that with the earliest actual copies of such non-biblical writing actually being written 1000 years later (i.e. around the 11th century AD), that enormous time gap makes what would have been a very long line of copyist writing, simply untenable as a reliable source for what those authors could never have personally known anyway.
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Jerrymander
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Because he says so. What more evidence do you need. A court stenographer?
We already went over James being mentioned as the brother of Jesus by Joesphus. What more of evidence do you need? A DNA test? This is why people on this board aren't taking you seriously.
Now answer my questions and stop deflecting.
IanS said:
It is quite illogical just to accept what is claimed in the Epistles when there are four other NT authors and multiple Christian writers who contradict the bogus claim by the Pauline writer.
The Lord Jesus did not have a brother [James or not] as an apostle in Christian writings.
Examine gMark, gMatthew, gLuke, Acts of the Apostles, Papias, Jerome and the Apocalypse of James.
The list of the twelve apostles are mentioned in gMark, gMatthew, gLuke and Acts of the Apostles and the Lord Jesus had no brother as an apostle [James or not].
In writings attributed to Papias and Jerome it is stated that the so-called James was not the brother of the Lord but the son of Alphaeus and the supposed sister of Mary.
In the First Apocalypse of James, the Lord Jesus himself declared that he was NOT the brother of James.
The claim in the so-called Pauline Epistles that Paul met an apostle James the Lord's brother was made out of thin air -complete fiction.
Now, in the Epistles, the character called Lord Jesus is the GOD of the Christian cult.
In the earliest Greek manuscripts of the Pauline Epistles [P46] written in UNICAL the Lord is written in the very same Nomina Sacra as the LORD GOD of the Jews.
earlybible.com/manuscripts/p46.html
The LORD Jesus is the very same as the LORD GOD of the Jews.
Tassman said:
It has already been show that James in Josephus Antiquities of the Jews 20.9.1 was not the apostle James in Galatians 1.
James, the son of Damneus, in Josephus was stoned to death around c 62-63 CE and James the apostle was alive up to c 68-69 CE or still alive about 5 years after James, the son of Damneus, was already dead. See the Preface to the Recognitions.
The existing evidence shows that the LORD Jesus had no apostle as a brother and the LORD Jesus is GOD [a non-historical being].
In effect, the Pauline writer have been found to be lying for his God Jesus.
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So, you believe that because in one of Paul's letters it says “other apostles saw I none, save James the Lords brother”, that makes it a fact that James was indeed the actual brother of a human Jesus? That is the standard or your ability to determine things as quite certain facts – it says so in the bible, so to you that makes it a fact?
You know very well that sceptical authors have for well over a century explained why that cannot be taken simply at face value as a fact. Do you really think they are all academic idiots, such that you can claim to know the truth whenever you want to believe an obviously contentious ambiguous half-sentence in one biblical letter? ... your biblical belief turns things into actual facts?
If you say it's an actual fact, which is what you are saying here, then can we please have your proof that James was indeed the brother of Jesus? It's not a proof for you to merely claim that you believe it to be so … when you claim something as fact that proves Jesus then you most definitely need a proof for your fantastic claim -
Q – where did you prove that James was the brother of a human Jesus?
You are now claiming that you personally know that something written by Christian copyists around the 11th century, proves as an actual fact that Josephus knew “James” to be the actual brother of a human Jesus??
How on earth did you determine that to be a fact?
Q - where & when did you prove that something written a 1000 years later in a copy of writing from Josephus, proves as a fact that Jesus was human (since, according to you, it is a fact that Josephus knew James to be the brother of a human Jesus)??
I'll leave readers here (though obviously not those blinded by belief in Jesus) to see for themselves how utterly absurd your answers and beliefs here are.
Once again we see how the study of ancient history eludes you.
People who read here without posting much, and who do not already have a fixed belief that Jesus was probably real, e.g. Lithrael and Theheno & others, should have a look at this public lecture from Richard Carrier, where he goes into great detail (with refereneces, ie "citations") through every single one of the points raised in this thread as evidence claimng to show Jesus was real -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTllC7TbM8M
Now, people in this thread have tried to dismiss Carrier as some sort of crackpot who should not be listened too. That has also happened in all previous HJ threads going back many years now (i.e. those who post belief in a HJ have for years tried to tell the more casual readers that Carrier is not a biblical scholar, that he is an atheist anti-Christian crank “Mythicist” who's views, indeed it's actually his explanations, evidence, and references rather just his “views” on a HJ, should be derided and brushed aside with scorn and ridicule (actually they also try to do that to anyone in any HJ threads who has the temerity to expresses doubt about their claimed HJ evidence).
But any fair-minded educated person who is not already committed to HJ belief, only has to watch that above video film, to realise how completely Carrier demolishes the evidence & the sources claimed by all biblical scholars. But be clear please, I am not saying that Carrier establishes that Jesus was a myth, or even that he establishes that Jesus was probably a myth. I am only saying that if you watch that film (and there are many others like that), that you should realise that it's an inescapable fact, as Carrier explains in great detail, that what is being cited by biblical scholars, and indeed cited by all HJ posters here, as the very best evidence of a HJ, is in fact extremely weak to put it mildly, and for much of it, it is actually simply wrong and untrue and not evidence of a HJ at all.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTllC7TbM8M
Now, people in this thread have tried to dismiss Carrier as some sort of crackpot who should not be listened too. That has also happened in all previous HJ threads going back many years now (i.e. those who post belief in a HJ have for years tried to tell the more casual readers that Carrier is not a biblical scholar, that he is an atheist anti-Christian crank “Mythicist” who's views, indeed it's actually his explanations, evidence, and references rather just his “views” on a HJ, should be derided and brushed aside with scorn and ridicule (actually they also try to do that to anyone in any HJ threads who has the temerity to expresses doubt about their claimed HJ evidence).
But any fair-minded educated person who is not already committed to HJ belief, only has to watch that above video film, to realise how completely Carrier demolishes the evidence & the sources claimed by all biblical scholars. But be clear please, I am not saying that Carrier establishes that Jesus was a myth, or even that he establishes that Jesus was probably a myth. I am only saying that if you watch that film (and there are many others like that), that you should realise that it's an inescapable fact, as Carrier explains in great detail, that what is being cited by biblical scholars, and indeed cited by all HJ posters here, as the very best evidence of a HJ, is in fact extremely weak to put it mildly, and for much of it, it is actually simply wrong and untrue and not evidence of a HJ at all.
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Jerrymander
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Once again, you demonstrate why New Atheists are terrible at ancient history. The Bible is not a book. Its a collection of writings. Just because some people decided to put a bunch of ancient texts together doesn't mean all one thing. Historians treat the writings like any other ancient text. Paul did not intent to write sacred scripture. He was writing letters to various communities. We have no reason to believe he made up meeting Jesus' brother.
LOL so you're suggesting that Christian copyists added the "James brother of Jesus" to Josephus? For what? To prove he was human and historical? You know that no Christian apologist ever felt the need to defend Jesus' existence right? Just his divinity. And Jesus having a brother complicates with Mary's viriginity so they said he was Joseph's son from another marriage. So yeah, adding James the brother of Jesus totally helps the apologetics.
Anyhow, I'm not answering anymore of your sea lioning. It's clear you're moving the goalposts to avoid answering my questions. I'm taking that as an admission that you can't answer then so....
https://media.giphy.com/media/sRMPFaVQLGSw8/giphy.gif
So your answer to the question of how you personally proved that James was the human brother of a human Jesus, and hence proved Jesus to be real, is that you read it in the bible.
OK, well, people here can see for themselves that you have no answer except to make the laughably ridiculous naive claim of saying that the bible must be true for facts about Jesus.
No. I am saying (and I've told you this at least a dozen times already), that -
1 Josephus cannot be shown to be independent of the biblical preaching/writing for what little passing mention he makes of Jesus or James.
2 There is no good reason to think Josephus had ever personally witnessed anything involving Jesus or James, and he does not name whoever it was that told him any such information. So as far as we can honestly tell, he's actually just producing hearsay from anonymous Christians of the time.
3 When a "witness" is known only from a copyist record made 1000 years after the claimed events, that witness is of no reliable value at all.
The Lord Jesus , the Son of God, had no apostle who was his brother in multiple Christian writings including the NT.
There were only two apostles called James.
1. James the son of Zebedee
2. James the son of Alphaeus.
Matthew 10. 2
Mark 3.14
Luke 6.13
Acts 1.13
The very Bible contradicts the Pauline writer.
The Lord Jesus in the NT had no apostle who was his brother [James or not].
Jerrymander
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And you've been told that Josephus was in Jerusalem when James was there and he was from a aristocratic Jewish family that would likely have known about the events with Jesus in Jerusalem.
What on earth is a "New Atheist"?
Delvo
Дэлво Δε&#
An outspoken atheist; one who is eager to get into debates/arguments with theists; an easy target for being thought of as too belligerent and prone to going to extremes in such debates/arguments, such as disputing anything & everything the religious think, regardless of whether there is sound reason to do so, just because the religious think it
He doesn't come anywhere near anwering everything that's in this thread. He hadn't read this thread, of course, so there's no reason why he would answer it, but still, he didn't. You just can't help yourself from tossing out weird falsehoods on tangents that wouldn't matter even if they were true, can you?
Anyway, I saw that video and a few others like it a few years ago, and no longer think he makes as good a case as he seemed to have made at first. For example, he says there were Jewish sects that believed in an angel named "Jesus" who had been "killed" in one of the heavens, but his support for that is The Ascension Of Isaiah, which not only doesn't predate the Epistles & Gospels but also has some other content-based problems for his story. Because of its fragmentation, it's ambiguous about whether the Jesus character reached Earth on his journey down from the highest heaven through other heavens toward Earth or what might have happened here if he did, and Carrier's argument needs it to be non-ambiguous on his side. Also, even if it does really tell of an angel who never came to Earth according to its writer, its late date means it doesn't point to that as the original Christian concept of Jesus from which the Gospels got extremely mundanified; the dates alone kind of point the opposite way and are kind of ambiguous, but even with an ambiguous interpretation of the dates, it still points toward a probably originally human character getting deified, not the other way around, because he has a human name, not an angelic name. And even aside from all that, there's no sign that TAOI represents a following of any significant number or influence.
And the other major point of Carrier's, which he invites people to check out for themselves, I did check out, and, while it was interesting to note how close to his claims the actual material came, there was still a difference. He said that the six or seven authentic letters of Paul described Jesus as only in the sky/heavens like a spirit in visions, never as a person whose life on Earth was over. But I read the Epistles that he suggested reading to see that, and it wasn't accurate. It was interesting how much of those books was ambiguous about it, but, in the handful of scattered cases where they were unambiguous, they were unambiguous in describing Jesus as having lived a human life on Earth which was over. Modern Christians might be surprised at how seldom Paul was really clear about that, but Carrier's argument needed it to be "never", not "seldom".
I don't believe that that actually happened.
Most of what we've been saying isn't even mentioned in that video at all, neither to go against it nor to support it, neither rationally nor irrationally. If you're not lying, then you're experiencing severe hallucinations in which posts in this thread are replaced in your mind with Carrier's descriptions of the points Carrier chose to counter.
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Jerrymander
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Not "the bible". Paul's own letter. The fact that it is included in a collection of writings called "the bible" is inconsequential. Not sure why you have a tough time understanding this.
GDon
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In fact, it isn't ambiguous at all. In all three of the extant versions of the Ascension of Isaiah, the Beloved (Christ) comes to earth and is found 'dwelling among men'. So Dr Carrier is wrong if he suggests otherwise. I go into this in detail on the Early Writings forum where I created a thread a couple of years ago on the topic:
http://earlywritings.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=4640
Jesus is crucified on earth according to the Ethiopic version, which has Jesus born to Mary and is crucified in Jerusalem. The Slavonic/Latin texts have the Beloved come to earth, to dwell among men. While the location of the crucifixion in the Slavonic/Latin texts is missing, it is clearly below the firmament, since the Beloved descends below the firmament before the story hits the fragmented sections. But the passages earlier in the text implies that the crucifixion takes place on earth, though Ben C Smith -- a man who knows much more than me! -- suggests in the thread that the original author possibly had Hades in mind. But it seems to be either earth or Hades, and not the firmament.
So in the three extant versions of the Ascension of Isaiah, we have:
1. the Beloved descending to earth and dwelling among men in all extant versions
2. No crucifixion in the firmament
That's clear in the extant texts. The text that Carrier refers to in his books and videos is a 'reconstruction', but people reading his book and viewing his videos on the topic come away with the idea that Carrier has actually found a variant text that supports a heavenly crucifixion. However, no such text exists outside of Carrier's imagination.
If anyone doubts this, read the link. I've cited all the pertinent passages so you can check this for yourself.
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It is a complete waste of time using the Ascension of Isaiah to argue for HJ.
The Lord Jesus Christ, the Beloved is a supernatural being in the non-historical writing believed to be written sometime in 2nd or 3rd century.
Anyone who read the Ascension of Isaiah would quickly realise it is about supernatural creatures, Gods, the heavenly and resurrected Lord Jesus, angels, Devil, heaven, hell and dreams or visions.
It is useless for an HJ argument.
Jesus was God who came down from heaven and was born of a Virgin.
The Bible says Jesus, born of a Ghost and a Virgin was crucified under Pilate but everybody knows that event never happened in heaven or on earth.
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That's probably one of the most bizarre statement you have made.
The inclusion of the so-called Pauline Epistles in the Canon of the Church is not inconsequential at all.
The Pauline writer claimed he was not the apostle of a man but of a resurrected being. [the first born of the dead].
Examine the words of the so-called Paul.
Galatians 1.1
Colossians 1:18
The Bible Epistles are Ghost stories of a resurrected being called the Lord Jesus.
Only magicians would use Bible stories of Spirits, Holy Ghosts, son of Ghosts,Gods, Devils, Demons and Angels as historical accounts.
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Tassman
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Oh well then…….
There were numerous concepts of the anticipated messiah throughout Jewish history, as you indicate, and they varied according to the needs of the Jews at the time. But since Rome occupied Palestine during Jesus' historical ministry, most Jews were convinced that God would send a military Messiah who would throw the foreigners out. In the first third of the first century, pious Israelites were expecting that kind of savior: 'Wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, asking, "Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed His star at its rising, and have come to pay Him homage..."' -- Matthew 2:1-2
The “suffering servant” passages in Isaiah refer to the Jewish exile according to most scholarship NOT to Jesus as the messiah. They were applied to Jesus in Christian theology only because, by getting himself crucified, he did not live up to the hype of triumphant kingship.
Oh well then…….
There were numerous concepts of the anticipated messiah throughout Jewish history, as you indicate, and they varied according to the needs of the Jews at the time. But since Rome occupied Palestine during Jesus' historical ministry, most Jews were convinced that God would send a military Messiah who would throw the foreigners out. In the first third of the first century, pious Israelites were expecting that kind of savior: 'Wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, asking, "Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed His star at its rising, and have come to pay Him homage..."' -- Matthew 2:1-2
The “suffering servant” passages in Isaiah refer to the Jewish exile according to most scholarship NOT to Jesus as the messiah. They were applied to Jesus in Christian theology only because, by getting himself crucified, he did not live up to the hype of triumphant kingship.
What you say doesn't make sense.
NT Jesus was not a military leader so would not have been called a Jewish Messiah before or after he was supposedly crucified on earth.
It is simply absurd that Jews who expected a living military ruler would have called a dead and buried criminal a Messianic ruler.
By the way, the author of gLuke wrote nothing at all about the Magi. It was all made up.
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