Nailed: Ten Christian Myths that show Jesus never existed

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Maybe because they asked? Because it came up in a conversation, say, when they asked you to join them to go to church?

And what's confrontational about giving just a straight answer and tell the truth?

Yes, that implication was very obvious.

FWIW, I have no such problem, my whole family is atheist. But whenever I read such stories, I cannot be but amazed how "Christians" can behave in such a manner.

They did indeed ask me, and I told them straight out. It was the first time I'd ever told anyone I didn't believe in any god or gods, and within minutes they were making not too subtle suggestions about how I could KNOW there was a god by going to meet him. They didn't try anything then, they're rather cowardly (and I beat them up a lot when they tried to gang up on me when we were younger.)

 

[dejudge]

It would be possible to invent a word for it, but it would be a jawbreaker that you'd have to speak German to love.

dejudge, could you please explain to us why you consider it so frightening when people claim that the Gospels are independent, reliable documentaries? I think that that's a hokey proposition, comparable to considering Parson Weems a good historian, but a frightening one?

Why can't you even repeat what I wrote? You have left out the most significant part.

You have identified something else which frightens me. People here openly mis-represent what I write hoping to win arguments.

It is completely frightening when people advocate multi-attestation in the Bible for reliable historical accounts of Jesus of Nazareth.

The Bible is multi-attested fiction. It is multi-attested that Jesus was born after his mother was made pregnant by a Ghost and the Son of a God that walked on water and transfigured.

 

[DGM]

They believe in a religion just to annoy you?

Maybe because they asked?

Still doesn't address what I asked (and he jumped in on).

 

[DGM]

Troll much?

You're the one that jumped in to a post not addressed to you.

That makes you the........................

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

You're the one that jumped in to a post not addressed to you.

That makes you the........................

...person that replied. I made it clear it wasn't addressed to me but I had something to say. Then you get all weird.

 

[DGM]

...person that replied. I made it clear it wasn't addressed to me but I had something to say. Then you get all weird.

I asked you if they were religious just to annoy you (remember the post to replied too).

I'm the weird one? (well, maybe in this subforum )

 

[tsig]

I asked you if they were religious just to annoy you (remember the post to replied too).

I'm the weird one? (well, maybe in this subforum )

Well, you're the one trying to tell someone else how they should deal with their own family.

 

[DGM]

Well, you're the one trying to tell someone else how they should deal with their own family.

Where? I asked a simple question. Do you need me to post it again?

 

[Brainache]

Where? I asked a simple question. Do you need me to post it again?

I think it might be an Aussie thing. When Lionking says he wants to annoy people, what he is really saying is that he and his friends will get together and laugh about this stuff.

I don't think he is actually planning to Troll his own Christmas BBQ.

I could be wrong.

 

[DGM]

I think it might be an Aussie thing. When Lionking says he wants to annoy people, what he is really saying is that he and his friends will get together and laugh about this stuff.

I don't think he is actually planning to Troll his own Christmas BBQ.

I could be wrong.

Must be a northern>< southern hemisphere thing.

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I think it might be an Aussie thing. When Lionking says he wants to annoy people, what he is really saying is that he and his friends will get together and laugh about this stuff.

I don't think he is actually planning to Troll his own Christmas BBQ.

I could be wrong.

My relatives are Southron Baptists*. They are annoying when they're asleep.


(*Some of you will get that.)

 

[Brainache]

Must be a northern>< southern hemisphere thing.

It goes along with calling each other "Bastard" as a term of endearment. Or people with red hair being called "Blue". Irony is built into the language.

 

[DGM]

My relatives are Southron Baptists*. They are annoying when they're asleep.


(*Some of you will get that.)

Funny thing, I do get this.

 

[IanS]

A supernatural messiah who is risen after he croaks in 1000 BC? Help me out with this one. What did King David say when he met the guy? The Torah is nothing like as old as that, and it not merely says nothing about a messiah rising after death; it says nothing about anyone rising again after death.

According to Bible Scholar John Huddleston, King David probably did not even exist. Does that "help you" at all?

Since at least 500BC, if not 1000BC (afaik), the OT has prophesised the coming of Yahweh’s saving messiah. Paul thought that OT scripture meant that the messiah would rise from the dead on the 3rd day. Did you not know that? Because you seem incredulous and entirely unaware of it. So …

.... who were "these people" who you say Paul “did not invent” … who was “not invented" by Paul” ?

 

[Brainache]

According to Bible Scholar John Huddleston, King David probably did not even exist. Does that "help you" at all?

Since at least 500BC, if not 1000BC (afaik), the OT has prophesised the coming of Yahweh’s saving messiah. Paul thought that OT scripture meant that the messiah would rise from the dead on the 3rd day. Did you not know that? Because you seem incredulous and entirely unaware of it. So …

.... who were "these people" who you say Paul “did not invent” … who was “not invented" by Paul” ?

James, Peter, Cephas, The Pillars, Those From James, Those who were Apostles before him, the audience of his letters...


Do you need more?

 

[Foster Zygote]

That book is a bit beyond my budget at the moment, but I may eventually get it.

However, here's something I consider strong evidence that Jesus Christ was largely mythical if not completely mythical: how well he fits Lord Raglan's mythic-hero profile.

I have composed a big list of Lord Raglan evaluations at List of Lord Raglan evaluations - Atheism, though these are mostly by myself. Other evaluations may differ.

Out of a maximum score of 22, I find a score of 18.5 for the four canonical Gospels taken together, close to what Alan Dundes had found. Treating them separately, I find
Matthew: 19
Mark: 11
Luke: 16
John: 13

Jesus Christ is way up there, alongside Krishna (17), Zeus (14.5 out of 16), Hercules (15), Perseus (17), Oedipus (13), Romulus (19), King Arthur (14.5), etc.

He even scores higher than the Buddha, who scores 13.

Looking at the Old Testament, Moses scores 15, while King David scores 4.

Alexander the Great scores 9, Julius Caesar 9.5 and Augustus Caesar 10, but real people in modern times typically score much less. People like George Washington (6), Napoleon (8), Abraham Lincoln (6), Charles Darwin (5), Winston Churchill (5), Adolf Hitler (4), JFK (7, with controversies about his death, 8), Muammar Khadafy (or any of the numerous other Roman-alphabet spellings of his name, 5.5).

I included MK because he's one of the few notable leaders in recent centuries to have been repudiated by many of his followers late in his career. Richard Nixon and Mikhail Gorbachev may also qualify. RN in the Watergate scandal and MG by the Soviet Union's republics voting the Soviet Union out of existence and him out of a job.


Lord Raglan had neglected to include another criterion: prophecy fulfillment, especially with attempts to thwart it. That's a common Christian apologetic, what prophecies Jesus Christ had fulfilled, but Jesus Christ was far from alone in fulfilling prophecies. Krishna, the Buddha, Zeus, Oedipus, Perseus, Romulus, King Arthur, even some historical people like Alexander the Great and Augustus Caesar.

Assuming any validity to the methodology, we would expect the Jesus of the gospels to have many mythical qualities because he was, without a doubt, at least largely made up by the authors. But I fail to see how that weighs against there having been an historical person who's life was the inspiration for the mythical stories. Just think about the mythical qualities of Santa Clause. But that doesn't change the fact that the mythology ultimately traces back to Nicolas of Myra. The creators of myth are going to weave popular cultural themes into their myths whether they are ultimately derived entirely from imagination or from appropriated oral traditions about a once living individual.

 

[Foster Zygote]

On being repudiated, I decided against that for Napoleon and Hitler, despite their being defeated. Napoleon's followers helped him get into power a second time after his first defeat, and Hitler's followers only deserted him as they saw Germany getting conquered. Some of them considered who they might want to surrender to, and others stayed loyal to the bitter end.


An interesting feature about these comparisons is what Jesus Christ has in common with mythical people and not with historical people, at least as a general rule.

Like someone trying to kill him when he was a baby. That is a common part of legendary people's biographies, but it is rare in biographies of well-documented people. In fact, with well-documented people, there is no hint at all that they were coming, let alone someone trying to kill them in their infancy because of it. We don't see:

• Psychiatrists vs. baby L. Ron Hubbard
• A cabal of rabbis, Jewish bankers, and Jewish revolutionaries vs. baby Adolf Hitler
• Slaveowners vs. baby Abraham Lincoln
• Fundamentalists vs. baby Charles Darwin
• Oil-company executives vs. baby Muammar Khadafy
• ...

That's because the mythical Jesus created by storytellers long after his reported death were making things up to embellish the story with each successive retelling. It is highly unlikely that anyone attempted to kill an historical Jeshua ben Joseph (the author of Mark never even mentions Jesus' early life), but very likely that people making up morality tales based on events in his life would add dramatic garnishments to their tales. Just look at the narrative of the "historic" film Braveheart. If Hollywood can make up mythologies about real people, why couldn't dramatic storytellers nearly two millennia ago do the same? Heck, just look at the portrayal of Thomas Edison in MGM's 1940 films Young Tom Edison and Edison The Man. These stories have a great deal of fiction in them and present Edison as a mythical figure in the American consciousness. What if someone concluded from the films alone that Edison must have been a fictional character?

 

[Foster Zygote]

Furthermore, the argument from crime/accident seems like a way of destroying the village in order to save it, of attacking the reputation of the Bible as a way of rescuing it. If nobody agrees on what went on, then their accounts cannot all be presumed to be letter-perfect documentaries.

You seem to be employing a false dichotomy: either the Bible is true and Jesus really existed, or the Bible is false and Jesus never existed.

Biblical scholars are well aware of the fact that the stories about Jesus that made it into the Bible are works of fiction by their respective authors, and based on oral traditions that had been around for decades prior to the gospel attributed to Mark was ever written. The question is: was there an historical person named Jesus who lived in Palestine in the early 1st Century, who led a group of religious Jews, and was executed by the Roman authority? The general consensus among the majority of New Testament academic scholars is, "Most likely, yes". The Jesus mythology seems to be based on oral traditions started by the followers of an apocalyptic rabbi who was put to death by the Romans for sedition. These followers reinvented his apocalyptic message of evicting the Roman invaders and reestablishing the sovereign Kingdom of David as a message of self sacrifice and impending return to finish the task, so as to avoid admitting they were wrong about their beliefs, much like the cult members in tsig's post #78. From that point on the stories about this man were appropriated by a great many people who saw different themes and theologies, retelling the stories in their own ways to emphasize what they felt to be the meat of the narrative.

 

[Craig B]

Why can't you even repeat what I wrote? You have left out the most significant part.

You have identified something else which frightens me. People here openly mis-represent what I write hoping to win arguments.

The Bible is multi-attested fiction. It is multi-attested that Jesus was born after his mother was made pregnant by a Ghost and the Son of a God that walked on water and transfigured.

Nobody misrepresents what you write. They merely disagree that the false or mythical stories about Jesus' birth necessarily mean that he never existed. Some people believed that Alexander the Great had divine parentage, but he most certainly existed.

 

[Foster Zygote]

Nobody misrepresents what you write. They merely disagree that the false or mythical stories about Jesus' birth necessarily mean that he never existed. Some people believed that Alexander the Great had divine parentage, but he most certainly existed.

Or look at the stories that schoolchildren in the DPRK are taught about the origins of their last three leaders.