Nailed: Ten Christian Myths that show Jesus never existed

[The Norseman]

Are you saying the evidence has not been provided, or merely that you haven't read it?

When you answer my questions, I'll be happy to answer yours.

This has been done in these threads, producing the arguments and analyses that indicate a probability - not prove; who said prove? - of an HJ.

Sure.

So go back and read the material.

Okay.

But if Piggy wants to take you up on it, fine.

If you had read what I said, I did not ask Piggy to do anything, now did I? I said that Stone walking us through the historical method would be informative and easy for him to do, noting his knowledge of the subject.


ETA: I was posting at the same time as Stone. Thank you for the information again Stone. I will read it.

 

[Brainache]

When I first began to look into the history of Christianity about seven or eight years ago the first time I had ever heard of the Jesus didn't exist theories was from this article:
http://mama.indstate.edu/users/nizrael/jesusrefutation.html

The author's main point is that the early Christian stories were derived from a misunderstanding of Jewish history and from the garbling of information from the Talmud and that there was never an HJ.

I don't think information in the Talmud provides much support for either the non-existence or existence of an HJ. Perhaps it might be argued that the failure of the Talmud to mention a clearly identifiable HJ suggests strongly that a hypothetical HJ was not widely known of in first century Palestine?

What it does show is that the Teachings ascribed to Jesus fit perfectly into the milieu of 1st century Judaism.

There is no references to any sort of "Heavenly Messiah" in that version of Judaism, but there are Messianic pretenders who were flesh and blood. That was a requirement for a Messiah.

People who say the Jews were expecting a spiritual Messiah have not provided evidence for this belief.

There is also a possibility that the Jewish oral tradition deliberately removed or disguised insulting references to Jesus because of persecution by Christians throughout the middle ages. That's why they speculate that "Balaam" is Jesus, because the name is an insult that Christians didn't understand, but Jews knew meant an insulting reference to this guy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balaam

Though other sources describe the apparently positive blessings he delivers upon the Israelites, he is reviled as a "wicked man"[2] in the major story concerning him. Balaam refused to speak what God didn't speak and would not curse the Israelites, even though King Balak of Moab offered him money to do so. (Numbers 22–24). But Balaam's error and the source of his wickedness came from sabotaging the Israelites as they entered the Promised Land. According to Numbers 31:16 and Revelation 2:14, Balaam returned to King Balak and informed the king on how to get the Israelites to curse themselves by enticing them with prostitutes and unclean food sacrificed to idols. The Israelites fell into transgression due to these traps and God sent a deadly plague to them as a result (Numbers 31:16)...

So there is debate about just which references are about Jesus, but no one claims Jesus was a "Myth".

Another possible reason for MJ-ers and HJ-ers talking at each other at cross purposes may lie in the fact that the HJ model developed by the most up-to-date professional academic specialists of the 21st century does _not_ involve Jesus the rabbi being a celebrity in his own day at all! The fact that he is not widely known in his own day thus makes the vagueness of texts like the Talmud of no bearing in attempts to question his historicity. Their vagueness is of a piece with today's academic peer-vetted conclusion that, in his day, Jesus the rabbi is an utterly obscure rabble-rouser who ends his "journey" with an excruciating and humiliating execution.

That's the general consensus. Now, my own personal suggestion is that the Jesus "way" only "grew legs" later on for two reasons, one related to notoriety, the other to lifestyle:

1) A few of his followers were so heartbroken when he was nailed that they got all hysterical and excited when the body disappeared and some began to think that perfect strangers were Jesus in disguise, and

2) Jesus's ethical doctrine was so counter-culturally sympathetic with the vulnerable and his own life shewed such an evidently ready nature to help everyone that his horrible death made his devastated followers want to emulate him, if they could, kind of like the effect that President Kennedy's assassination had on the Civil Rights Movement, when some historians have suggested that the Civil Rights laws could never have gotten through in '64 without the memory of Kennedy as a "martyr" spurring people on.

Stone

I have also seen a good argument for censorship of the Jewish Traditions. Whether self-censorship or imposed by outsiders, I don't know.

From your source


Apparently the Talmudic authors were familiar with the NT.
What do you reckon this proves?

If the Historical accounts of disputes in Jewish Communities and Christians being expelled from Synagogues have any veracity at all, the Jews were involved from the start. I don't see how they could avoid knowledge of Jesus stories.

It proves that no Jewish Rabbi at any time denied the actual existence of Jesus. They would have been in a position to know.

We see disputes about his parentage, his teachings, his killers, but at no point does any source question his actual existence.

Ancient Judea was not such a big place that people wouldn't notice something like that. It wasn't New York or Mexico City.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_Jerusalem

First Century Jerusalem[edit]
The population of Jerusalem in the time of Josephus has been estimated to be around 80,000.[3] The total population of Pharisees, the forerunners of modern Rabbinic Judaism, was around 6,000 ("exakischilioi"), according to Jospehus.[4]
During the first Jewish-Roman war (66–73 CE) the population of Jerusalem was estimated at 600,000 persons by Roman historian Tacitus, while Josephus, estimated that there were as many as 1,100,000, who were killed in the war.[5] Josephus also noted that 97,000 were sold as slaves. After the Roman victory over the Jews, as many as 115,880 dead bodies were carried out through one gate between the months of Nisan and Tammuz.[6]

Not a small town, but not like a big modern city either...

 

[Brainache]

I already did that, and it failed to convince any MJ-er.

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=9602560&postcount=441

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=9603160&postcount=443

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=9603235&postcount=444

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=9604509&postcount=450

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=9604546&postcount=452

The sure sign of a lunatic is to indulge in the same behavior again and again and expect a different result every time, even when exactly the opposite thing happens instead -- again and again and again and..............

By that definition, I must be a lunatic.

Stone

It is disheartening to go to all that effort and then to be repeatedly told that it never happened.

It's just as if some people are deliberately telling lies about this stuff.

Why?

 

[pakeha]

...If the Historical accounts of disputes in Jewish Communities and Christians being expelled from Synagogues have any veracity at all, the Jews were involved from the start. I don't see how they could avoid knowledge of Jesus stories.

It proves that no Jewish Rabbi at any time denied the actual existence of Jesus. They would have been in a position to know.

We see disputes about his parentage, his teachings, his killers, but at no point does any source question his actual existence.

Ancient Judea was not such a big place that people wouldn't notice something like that. It wasn't New York or Mexico City.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_Jerusalem


Not a small town, but not like a big modern city either...

It also shows the Talmud references are hardly independent, coming very late and are, according to your own source, derived from the NT.

 

[IanS]

And _that_, frankly, is the pattern that I've seen too many times on all these boards. And -- whether warrantably or not -- it's that pattern that has changed me from someone who was first curious about the MJ idea to someone who became frankly furious at so many MJ quacks having wasted their -- and my -- time. This is fraud, pure and simple -- as I see it, IMO, etc. And if that makes me irrational, it makes me irrational. I'm just furious at such quacks putting others through the same nonsense I was put through.

Sincerely,

Stone

Re the highlight, you don't have to spend any of your time replying then.

And indeed, neither you nor anyone else on the HJ side here should be replying any more unless and until they can produce at least some scintilla of genuine reliable independent evidence of a living human Jesus ... which so far they have completely and entirely failed to do (despite claiming that thousands of expert scholars have surely published it all).

All these many thousands of posts and the best anyone can offer as evidence is the proven unreliable, incredible, mess in the bible of 1st century ignorant superstitious religious beliefs.

 

[pakeha]

It is disheartening to go to all that effort and then to be repeatedly told that it never happened.

It's just as if some people are deliberately telling lies about this stuff.

Why?

Not so.
The strata discussion has been on-going here and elsewhere.
Apparently it's no longer taken seriously by mainstream scholars, correct me if I'm wrong.

 

[Brainache]

It also shows the Talmud references are hardly independent, coming very late and are, according to your own source, derived from the NT.

Not necessarily. That is your interpretation of some Scholars' views on a few particular verses. Not the bigger picture.

Not so.
The strata discussion has been on-going here and elsewhere.
Apparently it's no longer taken seriously by mainstream scholars, correct me if I'm wrong.

I hadn't heard that.

Do you have a link?

 

[Stone]

It is disheartening to go to all that effort and then to be repeatedly told that it never happened.

It's just as if some people are deliberately telling lies about this stuff.

Why?

I have thought up all sorts of answers to that very question and have not come up with anything that "sticks". In exasperation, I've even ended up tooling around with some tongue-in-cheek notions, as well as downright sinister ones. (And I wonder why my blood practically boils whenever I revisit all this.) There really is some pretty pathological denial patterns here as well -- in my opinion. But there is also the fact that these tactics take such eerily similar behavioral and rhetorical patterns, almost as if they've all been coached in precisely the same way, on board after board.

Both my parents were atheists, and they used to say -- in other contexts and not necessarily to me -- "Qui bono?" (sp.?). In other words, when one sees something bizarre, figure out in "whose interest" it is to pursue some weird behavioral pattern -- kind of like the warning given Bernstein & Woodward in the Watergate era: "Follow the money". Try figuring out who might actually bother to, say, bankroll a whole propaganda effort. That kind of thing.

At the end of the day, it's hard for me to say if there are any bigger special interests here who would really be interested in bankrolling a bizarre meme like this myther one. But this certainly seems awfully well orchestrated at times.

Stone

 

[Brainache]

I have thought up all sorts of answers to that very question and have not come up with anything that "sticks". In exasperation, I've even ended up tooling around with some tongue-in-cheek notions, as well as downright sinister ones. (And I wonder why my blood practically boils whenever I revisit all this.) There really is some pretty pathological denial patterns here as well -- in my opinion. But there is also the fact that these tactics take such eerily similar behavioral and rhetorical patterns, almost as if they've all been coached in precisely the same way, on board after board.

Both my parents were atheists, and they used to say -- in other contexts and not necessarily to me -- "Qui bono?" (sp.?). In other words, when one sees something bizarre, figure out in "whose interest" it is to pursue some weird behavioral pattern -- kind of like the warning given Bernstein & Woodward in the Watergate era: "Follow the money". Try figuring out who might actually bother to, say, bankroll a whole propaganda effort. That kind of thing.

At the end of the day, it's hard for me to say if there are any bigger special interests here who would really be interested in bankrolling a bizarre meme like this myther one. But this certainly seems awfully well orchestrated at times.

Stone

I think IanS has already told us that for some it is an Ideological fight against Christianity and religion in general as a result of 9/11.

I think there is something about 9/11 that stops some people from thinking about this subject rationally.

Maybe it's the same thing that causes things like 9/11 - Ideology.

This is an "Atheist Ideology", based on denying the legitimacy of anything connected with religion, IMO.

 

[pakeha]

Not necessarily. That is your interpretation of some Scholars' views on a few particular verses. Not the bigger picture.

Actually, it's what your own cited link states.

I hadn't heard that.

Do you have a link?

You have a pm.

 

[Stone]

Re the highlight, you don't have to spend any of your time replying then.

And indeed, neither you nor anyone else on the HJ side here should be replying any more unless and until they can produce at least some scintilla of genuine reliable independent evidence of a living human Jesus ... which so far they have completely and entirely failed to do (despite claiming that thousands of expert scholars have surely published it all).

All these many thousands of posts and the best anyone can offer as evidence is the proven unreliable, incredible, mess in the bible of 1st century ignorant superstitious religious beliefs.

-- And you notice, folks, that Ian S too is pretending that I haven't produced any data toward addressing this question. It really is provoking. The same sort of response again and again, reflective of an alternate reality, where no data has been submitted.

If an Ian S or a DeJudge would go line by line through the postings that I just cited at the bottom of the previous page, shewing how the analyses of professional academics of today don't hold up through chapter and verse, that would be one thing. But to just give the same old airy answers that "Nothing has been submitted", "They have nothing" and blah blah blah seems deliberately provocative sometimes, as if mythers know very well that data has been submitted, but that acknowledging it in detail would not follow some weird "playbook".

Ian S also says stuff like "You don't have to spend your time replying". Well, you'll note that the last set of substantive posts I sent (the ones I just linked to) are indeed extremely truculent, _because_ I have been actually following IanS's advice for a while and have not responded substantively for a looooooong time. Most likely, my responses to TC and others that I just linked to here were also a big waste of time, and I should have allowed the fact that I was extremely reluctant this last go-around to dictate my not submitting anything at all.

Stone

 

[davefoc]

I have thought up all sorts of answers to that very question and have not come up with anything that "sticks". In exasperation, I've even ended up tooling around with some tongue-in-cheek notions, as well as downright sinister ones. (And I wonder why my blood practically boils whenever I revisit all this.) There really is some pretty pathological denial patterns here as well -- in my opinion. But there is also the fact that these tactics take such eerily similar behavioral and rhetorical patterns, almost as if they've all been coached in precisely the same way, on board after board.

Both my parents were atheists, and they used to say -- in other contexts and not necessarily to me -- "Qui bono?" (sp.?). In other words, when one sees something bizarre, figure out in "whose interest" it is to pursue some weird behavioral pattern -- kind of like the warning given Bernstein & Woodward in the Watergate era: "Follow the money". Try figuring out who might actually bother to, say, bankroll a whole propaganda effort. That kind of thing.

At the end of the day, it's hard for me to say if there are any bigger special interests here who would really be interested in bankrolling a bizarre meme like this myther one. But this certainly seems awfully well orchestrated at times.

Stone

From my perspective the problem with any affirmative MJ position or with any affirmative HJ position is there is a large location, time, language and cultural gap between the people who wrote about the HJ and the hypothetical life of the HJ.

It is just not knowable what went on during the earliest years of Christianity. This is not surprising, it would have been a small sect and keeping records, let alone accurate records would not have been a priority. The closest to information that has come down to us from this period about the origin of Christianity are the writings in the NT. But even the most fundamental questions about these writings like when they were written, where they were written and who wrote them are unknown (although that hasn't kept thousands of scholars over hundreds of years from speculating about what the answers might be).

We do know that there are historic and geographical errors in the NT. We know that the Gospels are not always consistent with each other and what is most important is that the synoptic Gospels are all derived from Mark, which means that there are not independent sources contained in the Gospels to the hypothetical oral traditions that the author of Mark may have derived the facts about an HJ from.

Both sides in this debate look into this information void and speculate. The people who believe that an HJ existed speculate that the thousands of scholars that have studied this and that claim to have knowledge of the facts that bridge the information gap are right and that an HJ obviously existed. On the other hand the people that suggest that there wasn't an HJ look into the information gap and decide that the lack of reliable evidence about an HJ is evidence that an HJ didn't exist.

I think the answer is simpler than either side wants to admit in this debate. There is just no way to know.

Paul's letters are consistent with the idea that an HJ existed in my opinion. I don't think the idea that some of Paul's writings that have come down to us might contain true information can be disproved. But there is also zero external evidence to corroborate Paul's letters and we know that some of them were forged. How is it knowable that they all weren't forged?

 

[Stone]

I think IanS has already told us that for some it is an Ideological fight against Christianity and religion in general as a result of 9/11.

I think there is something about 9/11 that stops some people from thinking about this subject rationally.

Maybe it's the same thing that causes things like 9/11 - Ideology.

This is an "Atheist Ideology", based on denying the legitimacy of anything connected with religion, IMO.

-- Or maybe denying the legitimacy of anything connected with academia? Or maybe against both religion and academia on the part of separate groups that have somehow come together?

I can tell you there is an extraordinarily hostile attitude in the popular culture of the U.S. against higher learning. I also find it in creationists and I find it in mythers. It may be that that anti-academe attitude has come together with a stung response to 9/11 to produce a new toxic brew. That would certainly be ironic, because suspicion of higher learning is generally associated with those who are extremely credulous of all things religious, while suspicion of religion is generally associated with those who have had some exposure to -- and sympathy with -- higher education.

I do plead guilty to finding the coming together of an anti-religionists attitude with an anti-academics attitude deeply alarming. If religionists continue to drop in their numbers and if economic pressures continue to deny the next generation proper access to higher learning, that could lead to a "brave new world" in which the irrational suspicions generated by combined anti-religionists and anti-academics might make the Spanish Inquisition seem like a walk in the park.

Stone

 

[Stone]

Not necessarily. That is your interpretation of some Scholars' views on a few particular verses. Not the bigger picture.

Actually, it's what your own cited link states.

I hadn't heard that.

Do you have a link?

You have a pm.

Really interesting -- fascinating, in fact. I figured that Pakeha was a Neutral in all this. But now, he's suddenly bucking at a pretty straightforward line of inquiry, it would seem.

Odd.

Stone

 

[Stone]

You see, thoughtful as this response seems, even this response declines to address the data set I linked to at the bottom of p. 32. ============>

From my perspective the problem with any affirmative MJ position or with any affirmative HJ position is there is a large location, time, language and cultural gap between the people who wrote about the HJ and the hypothetical life of the HJ.

It is just not knowable what went on during the earliest years of Christianity. This is not surprising, it would have been a small sect and keeping records, let alone accurate records would not have been a priority. The closest to information that has come down to us from this period about the origin of Christianity are the writings in the NT. But even the most fundamental questions about these writings like when they were written, where they were written and who wrote them are unknown (although that hasn't kept thousands of scholars over hundreds of years from speculating about what the answers might be).

We do know that there are historic and geographical errors in the NT. We know that the Gospels are not always consistent with each other and what is most important is that the synoptic Gospels are all derived from Mark, which means that there are not independent sources contained in the Gospels to the hypothetical oral traditions that the author of Mark may have derived the facts about an HJ from.

============> -- totally ignoring the scholarly work done on apparently oral and partly Aramaic traditions reflected in some of the shared sayings in GMatt./GLuke -- scholarly work already referenced (if sketchily) in the posts linked to at the bottom of p. 32.

Both sides in this debate look into this information void and speculate. The people who believe that an HJ existed speculate that the thousands of scholars that have studied this and that claim to have knowledge of the facts that bridge the information gap are right and that an HJ obviously existed. On the other hand the people that suggest that there wasn't an HJ look into the information gap and decide that the lack of reliable evidence about an HJ is evidence that an HJ didn't exist.

I think the answer is simpler than either side wants to admit in this debate. There is just no way to know.

Paul's letters are consistent with the idea that an HJ existed in my opinion. I don't think the idea that some of Paul's writings that have come down to us might contain true information can be disproved. But there is also zero external evidence to corroborate Paul's letters

================== -- ignoring totally, of course, the work done on Antiquities 20 and Tacitus's Annals, also referenced in the posts cited at the bottom of p.32.

and we know that some of them were forged. How is it knowable that they all weren't forged?

==================> -- Nothing is knowable in any of this. Ancient historiography deals in likelihoods, not certain knowledge. The academic consensus is that it's more likely that some of the Paulines were forged rather than all of them.

Stone

 

[pakeha]

No, Stone, neutral I stay.
I was simply pointing out that the 'strata' paradigm would seem to be out-moded, nothing more.

 

[Stone]

No, Stone, neutral I stay.
I was simply pointing out that the 'strata' paradigm would seem to be out-moded, nothing more.

And what leads you to say that?

Stone

 

[davefoc]

...

============> -- totally ignoring the scholarly work done on apparently oral and partly Aramaic traditions reflected in some of the shared sayings in GMatt./GLuke -- scholarly work already referenced (if sketchily) in the posts linked to at the bottom of p. 32.

If the Gospels contain bits of Aramaic how does that move the argument forward that they contain some valid history? It is already known and obvious that the Gospels contain some real details about the times and location of a hypothetical HJ. Nobody claims that they were made up out of whole cloth by somebody completely isolated from the area and times where and when an HJ would have existed. My view has been that that Christianity developed out of existing gentile religion that had beliefs based on Judaism. That sect would certainly have had folks around that would have known a few words of Aramaic.

================== -- ignoring totally, of course, the work done on Antiquities 20 and Tacitus's Annals, also referenced in the posts cited at the bottom of p.32.

I don't know why Tacitus would even be mentioned in the context of this discussion. Almost nobody doubts that Christians existed by the time that Tacitus was writing (I guess dejudge does so I suppose this is relevant if this comment was directed at him). But Tacitus is definitely not an eyewitness to the HJ and the fact that you would bring him up only serves to underline the information gap that exists around the hypothetical HJ.

Josephus has been debated endlessly in these threads. The arguments are complicated. After reviewing the arguments many times I have come to believe I just don't know whether there is any writing by Josephus about Jesus. I think the mention of James the lord's brother is not a reference to the HJ however. I also think that Josephus who could not have been an eyewitness to an HJ even if some part of his writings are truly his and truly about the HJ is not a source of proof that the HJ existed. However, Josephus writings might be evidence that at a fairly early date there were people with Christian beliefs if he really wrote something of what was attributed to him about Jesus.

==================> -- Nothing is knowable in any of this. Ancient historiography deals in likelihoods, not certain knowledge. The academic consensus is that it's more likely that some of the Paulines were forged rather than all of them.

Exactly true I think with regards to the idea that nothing is knowable and probabilities are all that is possible. The discussion between you and I is about what the probabilities are. My guess is that the standard scholarly view of Paul's writings that some were actually written by Paul is correct. The problem is how to associate a probability with that estimate and then to associate a probability to an estimate that Paul was reasonably accurate about his interaction with the Jesus associates.

There is a complete lack of external corroboration for Paul's writings. None of the hypothetical letters from the people he was communicating with have come down to us. It is hidden from us exactly who Paul is preaching to. He takes it as a given that Christian sects exist at a time it is not clear why they would. His wide ranging movements for a preacher seem unlikely for the time.

So in short there are improbabilities in his letters, they are clearly written with the agenda of pushing a religion, we have no corroborating evidence for them. So what are the odds that they weren't forged and if they weren't forged what are the odds that they contain correct information? I don't know, but the situation doesn't fill me with confidence about the reliability of what is attributed to Paul.

 

[JaysonR]

Now please read who Jesus was!! Jesus was born of a Ghost, the Son of God and God Creator--a perfect myth in Matthew 1, Mark 6, Mark 9, Luke 24, John 1, Acts 1, Galatians 4, Ignatius' Epistles, Aristides' Apology, Justin's First Apology, Irenaeus Against Heresies, Tertullian's On the Flesh of Christ, Hippolytus' Against All Heresies, Origen's Against Celsus, Eusebius' Church History and others.

...and:
Revelation
The Gospel of Thomas
Oxyrhynchus 1224 Gospel
Egerton Gospel
Gospel of Peter
Secret Mark
Gospel of the Egyptians
Gospel of the Hebrews
Apocalypse of Peter
Secret Book of James
Preaching of Peter
Gospel of the Ebionites
Gospel of the Nazoreans
Oxyrhynchus 840 Gospel
Traditions of Matthias
Gospel of Mary
Dialogue of the Savior
Gospel of the Savior
Epistula Apostolorum
Infancy Gospel of James
Infancy Gospel of Thomas
Acts of Peter
Acts of John
Acts of Paul
Acts of Andrew
Acts of Peter and the Twelve
Book of Thomas the Contender
Acts of Thomas
Apocalypse of Peter
Gospel of Thomas
Secret Book of James
Basilides
Naassene Fragment
Gospel of Mary
Dialogue of the Savior
Gospel of the Savior
Marcion
Epiphanes
Ophite Diagrams
Ptolemy
Gospel of Truth
Excerpts of Theodotus
Heracleon
Acts of Peter
Acts of Thomas

And more...

Point being; you are running your definition of who Jesus was from one canonical definition.
If you believe Jesus is purely a myth, then you shouldn't be limiting the definition of who the figure was to just one mythical tradition, because the only reason that tradition does so is because they believe their texts outline a specific and real Jesus and reject all other texts as fake.

On the other hand, if you hold the canonical texts as fake to begin with, then there's no sense to limiting the definition of Jesus to the canonical texts, as the justification for the limitation to just the canonical texts is itself of no value if we adopt the view of Jesus being purely mythical and created entirely.

As I've mentioned before; your position only addresses one version of Jesus tradition and ignores all others.
There's no rational reason for dismissing other texts from the survey if we believe that all texts, no matter which we look at, are fictional creations about a figure who never existed.

 

[pakeha]

duplicate post