Nailed: Ten Christian Myths that show Jesus never existed

Status
Not open for further replies.
jhunter1163 said:
And, as has been explained to you repeatedly, we don't expect to find the "best" kind of evidence for Jesus because a) he was not that important a figure in his time and b) espousing the Christian faith in those days was akin to signing one's own death warrant. Anyone creating a lasting monument to Christ before the time of Constantine would almost certainly find themselves on the business end of a Roman sword posthaste.
Click to expand...



Well that's no help to you. Because as has been explained to you countless times - the fact that you say you would not expect to find such evidence and in fact do not find it, still leaves you with zero genuine credible evidence ...

... it's no defence at all for you to say "we don't have any evidence, but might not expect to find any anyway, so we can just believe without the evidence!"
 
On the possibility that Paul didn't exist and the possibility that all the writings attributed to him were created around 180 CE.

I don't think the existence of Paul can be proved. Certainly not in the sense that the existence of any significant leader of the period can be proved.

However, there is evidence that suggests that Paul's writings existed significantly before 180 CE and those writings also suggest that Paul himself existed.

There seems to be little doubt that Marcion existed. His name has become attached to a branch of Christianity that lasted 100's of years. Marcion is reputed to have put together the first Christian canon and this is usually dated between 120 and 130 CE. Marcion's canon is reputed to have contained most of Paul's letters excluding the pastorals. Marcion's canon is attested to by Tertullian and Epiphanius.

Marcion is reported to have been excommunicated in July of 144 CE.

Marcion is attested to by Justin Martyr and Iraneus among others and various statements by Justin Martyr and Iraneus and others are used to date the life of Marcion.

Ignatius, Polycarp and Clement mention Paul's letters. These men are believed to have died before 120CE. This evidence is not as strong as it might seem though because most of the writings of these men are not available today. Their writings have been recreated based on the writings of others who quoted them.

There are a variety of arguments as to why Paul might not have existed. dejudge listed people that didn't mention him. I don't see why one would expect Paul to be mentioned by non-Christian historians of the day. If there was a Jerusalem Jesus sect it was a small time thing and I don't see why one would expect the actions of a small time proselytizer for a small time group to be worthy of mention by historians of the time.

But some of the people who didn't mention Paul are interesting. It does seem strange that he wasn't mentioned by Justin Martyr. Justin Martyr wrote against Marcionism and he provides evidence for the existence of Marcion. Did Justin Martyr not mention Paul because he saw Paul as part of the Maricion tradition that he opposed? I don't know. Certainly answering a question like that involves a lot more knowledge of Justin Martyr than I have.

It is also interesting that Acts didn't mention Paul's writings. I assume that the author of Acts was aware of Paul's writings and just chose to create a story based on them. I have thought that it was just a creative choice by the author of Acts to not include quotes of Paul directly. Is that right? Is it plausible? I don't know.
 
Last edited:
IanS said:
... That means we don’t want any more claims of utterly useless so-called “evidence” such as the anonymous 4th century copyist gospel preaching from people who never knew Jesus and who could not name any informant who knew him either, nor the usual examples of 11th century Christian copies of authors such as Tacitus and Josephus who were not ever born at the relevant time of Jesus.
Click to expand...
"Anonymous fourth century copyist gospel preaching"!! Magnificent. That puts NT higher criticism and the discussion of the "Synoptic Problem" in their place, good and proper. And mediaeval Christian Tacitus and Josephus copyists too? You go, nay rush, where even dejudge steps with care and trepidation. I salute your courage and your indefatigability!
 
IanS said:
Well that's no help to you. Because as has been explained to you countless times - the fact that you say you would not expect to find such evidence and in fact do not find it, still leaves you with zero genuine credible evidence..."[/I]
Click to expand...

There is evidence, in the Gospels, apologetic writings, Josephus, Tacitus, Suetonius and Pliny. The fact of the matter is that, although you might not find those writings "credible", most scholars of antiquities do, and those scholars are generally agreed that there was indeed a real person called Jesus of Nazareth who lived in the first half of the first century and was eventually crucified for sedition.

The case for the MJ is not excluded; however, it is not the most parsimonious explanation for the writings that have come down to us.
 
IanS said:
Well that's no help to you. Because as has been explained to you countless times - the fact that you say you would not expect to find such evidence and in fact do not find it, still leaves you with zero genuine credible evidence ...

... it's no defence at all for you to say "we don't have any evidence, but might not expect to find any anyway, so we can just believe without the evidence!"
Click to expand...

If you decide that no evidence is credible because it can't be proven that the evidence is true then of course there is no credible evidence. In order to make this conclusion you just need to assume that evidence must be provably true.

The problem here is that you insist on assuming that people mean the same thing as you do with your unusual definition of the word evidence and then you disagree with them because they don't mean the same thing as you do when they say evidence.

There is no evidence about the origin of Christianity that is provably true. That is accepted by everybody participating in this thread. The existence of an HJ can not be proved. Even most of what is put forth as evidence of an HJ can't be proved to be true. For you that means there is no credible evidence of an HJ. I don't see why you continue. You have found your truth and it is unassailable. It is extremely likely that there will never be evidence in the sense that you want to use the word of an HJ available.
 
davefoc said:
... But some of the people who didn't mention Paul are interesting. It does seem strange that he wasn't mentioned by Justin Martyr. Justin Martyr wrote against Marcionism and he provides evidence for the existence of Marcion. Did Justin Martyr not mention Paul because he saw Paul as part of the Maricion tradition that he opposed? I don't know. Certainly answering a question like that involves a lot more knowledge of Justin Martyr than I have.
Click to expand...
It is generally agreed that Justin did know Paul; and dejudge is wrong on this point. Sources stating this have been cited in these threads before. Here's another one. http://www.forerunner.com/churchfathers/X0028_.html
In his opposition to Marcion, he quotes from several of Paul’s epistles. Distinct references are found to Romans, 1 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Colossians, and 2 Thessalonians, and possible ones to Philippians, Titus, and 1 Timothy. It seems likely that he also knew Hebrews and 1 John.
Click to expand...
dejudge misdirects this argument by stating that some of the above are pseudonymous (irrelevant in this context) therefore the source is false, therefore Justin didn't say it. Or the forgers of these NT writings copied Justin; or whatever. I've given chapter and verse before, and won't do so again, but the details of Justin's use of earlier works are easy enough to find on the internet.
 
Craig B said:
"Anonymous fourth century copyist gospel preaching"!! Magnificent. That puts NT higher criticism and the discussion of the "Synoptic Problem" in their place, good and proper. And mediaeval Christian Tacitus and Josephus copyists too? You go, nay rush, where even dejudge steps with care and trepidation. I salute your courage and your indefatigability!
Click to expand...




What's in the gospels (and indeed in all the biblical writing), is not so much factual-type accounts of a life of Jesus, but short individual so-called "periscopes", ie short illustrative preaching stories that were told to the faithful.

As you know, those gospels were all entirely anonymous, and they told stories of legend from equally unknown anonymous sources. But afaik, the earliest extant copies we have that are in anything like relatively complete and fully readable form, ie the copies that have been used to obtain the detailed picture of Jesus that is discussed by biblical scholars, comes from Christian copies dating from the 4th century onwards, and mostly from the 6th century onwards.


But, too much worthless empty froth of Jesus belief already; Question is -where is the actual evidence of him? Reliable and credible evidence please (not hopelessly unreliable claims of the utterly incredible)…

… Where is the Evidence??
 
Craig B said:
"Anonymous fourth century copyist gospel preaching"!! Magnificent. That puts NT higher criticism and the discussion of the "Synoptic Problem" in their place, good and proper. And mediaeval Christian Tacitus and Josephus copyists too? You go, nay rush, where even dejudge steps with care and trepidation. I salute your courage and your indefatigability!
Click to expand...

I have to admit that I find IanS super-skepticism to be tiresome. It does no good to presume that we know nothing. It's the historical equivalent of solipsism.
 
IanS said:
What's in the gospels (and indeed in all the biblical writing), is not so much factual-type accounts of a life of Jesus, but short individual so-called "periscopes", ie short illustrative preaching stories that were told to the faithful.
Click to expand...
Your spellcheck had made your post amusing at least. Good show! But you don't address the points I was treating ironically in my last.
But, too much worthless empty froth of Jesus belief already; Question is -where is the actual evidence of him? Reliable and credible evidence please (not hopelessly unreliable claims of the utterly incredible)…

… Where is the Evidence??
Click to expand...
Having defined it out of any possible existence, you ask for it in vain, or rather purely rhetorically. And you don't read anything you don't accept as evidence. At the risk of being accused of bickering, (which I do not intend; I strive merely to register a mild protest) I find this approach so arrogant as to be unhelpful. As you know, the evidence you reject as non-existent is accepted as evidence by the scholarship of the Academy, and rightly so. The dispute there is how robust it is, and whether the case for HJ is relatively strong or weak. You reject all this with astonishing and inexplicable abusiveness ("worthless empty froth"), and declare that it is not evidence at all. That is untenable and unwarranted.
 
Last edited:
Craig B said:
Your spellcheck had made your post amusing at least. Good show! But you don't address the points I was treating ironically in my last. Having defined it out of any possible existence, you ask for it in vain, or rather purely rhetorically. And you don't read anything you don't accept as evidence. At the risk of being accused of bickering, (which I do not intend; I strive merely to register a mild protest) I find this approach so arrogant as to be unhelpful. As you know, the evidence you reject as non-existent is accepted as evidence by the scholarship of the Academy, and rightly so. The dispute there is how robust it is, and whether the case for HJ is relatively strong or weak. You reject all this with astonishing and inexplicable abusiveness ("worthless empty froth"), and declare that it is not evidence at all. That is untenable and unwarranted.
Click to expand...

It's also rather unargued, isn't it? I mean that anyone can define evidence in a certain way, and also argue that historical method falls short in various ways - there is nothing wrong with that, I suppose, although it might be seen as super-skepticism.

But then such issues belong on another thread really, concerning the nature of historical method, and its validity (or not), since presumably IanS is saying that historical method, certainly with regard to ancient history, is worthless - but oh, no, not another thread on this stuff!

I just realized that I am duplicating an earlier post by davefoc (1525), so sorry about that.
 
Last edited:
jhunter1163 said:
There is evidence, in the Gospels, apologetic writings, Josephus, Tacitus, Suetonius and Pliny. The fact of the matter is that, although you might not find those writings "credible", most scholars of antiquities do, and those scholars are generally agreed that there was indeed a real person called Jesus of Nazareth who lived in the first half of the first century and was eventually crucified for sedition.

The case for the MJ is not excluded; however, it is not the most parsimonious explanation for the writings that have come down to us.
Click to expand...



By "apologetic writing" if you mean the bible, then that contains zero evidence of Jesus as a living person. It only contains anonymously written accounts of legendary tales from even more anonymous people, who believed by religious faith that a messiah had once existed (but was by then dead). At best that is evidence of later religious beliefs. But it is certainly not evidence that shows Jesus was a living human.

Writing from the likes of Josephus and Tacitus can never be evidence of Jesus for reasons explained here hundreds of times - the authors were not even born at the time of the supposed events of Jesus, and we don't even have anything written by any of them anywhere near the time of Jesus anyway ... even the very earliest copies of Tacitus and Josephus are dated to around 11th century and later.

The fact that bible scholars such as Bart Ehrman and JD Crossan find that writing convincing, just shows you how extraordinarily weak bible studies is as anything remotely approaching an objective academic study ... Ehrman for example thinks that amongst the very best evidence for Jesus is that the bible says Paul once refered to someone named James as "the Lords brother" = hence Jesus exists!

As "evidence" that would be laughed out of the classroom by primary school science students aged 12.

There may really be some genuine evidence of Jesus. But so far no evidence at all has been cited here. And it’s certainly not evidence of Jesus that 3rd century copies of Paul’s letters make one mention of James adding three words “the Lords brother”.
 
IanS said:
Writing from the likes of Josephus and Tacitus can never be evidence of Jesus for reasons explained here hundreds of times - the authors were not even born at the time of the supposed events of Jesus, and we don't even have anything written by any of them anywhere near the time of Jesus anyway ... even the very earliest copies of Tacitus and Josephus are dated to around 11th century and later.[/I]
Click to expand...

This is not a compelling argument. By this logic, no one could quote any author of antiquity because of the extreme rarity of manuscripts from the period.
 
Craig B said:
Your spellcheck had made your post amusing at least. Good show! But you don't address the points I was treating ironically in my last. Having defined it out of any possible existence, you ask for it in vain, or rather purely rhetorically. And you don't read anything you don't accept as evidence. At the risk of being accused of bickering, (which I do not intend; I strive merely to register a mild protest) I find this approach so arrogant as to be unhelpful. As you know, the evidence you reject as non-existent is accepted as evidence by the scholarship of the Academy, and rightly so. The dispute there is how robust it is, and whether the case for HJ is relatively strong or weak. You reject all this with astonishing and inexplicable abusiveness ("worthless empty froth"), and declare that it is not evidence at all. That is untenable and unwarranted.
Click to expand...



They might as well be “periscopes”, because those biblical passages are constantly submerged in the unfathomably fictional depths of the supernatural.

However, it's certainly not "defined out of existence" - that is precisely the sort of evidence we do have for many far less important figures in ancient history, in fact it fills thousands of museums floor-to-ceiling all around the world.

But for Jesus ... nothing at all, not a single spec of any such evidence at all.

And against that total lack of any real genuine evidence (plenty of anonymous claims of the supernatural, but no actual evidence), there is of course a veritable mountain of evidence to show why the descriptions of Jesus in the only known original source, ie the gospels and Paul’s letters, are certainly untrue.
 
IanS said:
However, it's certainly not "defined out of existence" - that is precisely the sort of evidence we do have for many far less important figures in ancient history, in fact it fills thousands of museums floor-to-ceiling all around the world.

But for Jesus ... nothing at all, not a single spec of any such evidence at all.
Click to expand...

Far less important now.

And against that total lack of any real genuine evidence (plenty of anonymous claims of the supernatural, but no actual evidence), there is of course a veritable mountain of evidence to show why the descriptions of Jesus in the only known original source, ie the gospels and Paul’s letters, are certainly untrue.
Click to expand...

Again, I refer you to post 1525.

It is ironic to me that those in this thread who are arguing the most strenuously against the HJ are the ones who are exhibiting the most fundamentalist-like behavior.
 
jhunter1163 said:
This is not a compelling argument. By this logic, no one could quote any author of antiquity because of the extreme rarity of manuscripts from the period.
Click to expand...



You can quote anyone you like. But if your best evidence of person X is to say that some later writer such as Tacitus once made a very brief hearsay mention of what people were said to have believed about person X, then that is not actually evidence showing that person X really existed and/or did anything that was claimed by the anonymous informants … however, afaik, we are not relying on such poor hearsay accounts for figures like Julius Caesar … afaik we have far better evidence than that for emperors like Caesar, and for countless other figures in antiquity (iirc, even DNA samples for some mummified Egyptian Pharaohs of far earlier times … though not of course for Egyptian Gods such as Osiris … those gods are far more closely in the same class as Jesus, ie supernatural religious figures, believed with certainty at the time, but now known to be described in impossible terms that are certainly fictional).

Which other figures, who were described in the same sort of supernatural terms as Jesus and similarly unseen and unknown and un-evidenced to anyone who ever wrote about them, can you cite as now believed by current-day historians?
 
zugzwang said:
It's also rather unargued, isn't it? I mean that anyone can define evidence in a certain way, and also argue that historical method falls short in various ways - there is nothing wrong with that, I suppose, although it might be seen as super-skepticism.

But then such issues belong on another thread really, concerning the nature of historical method, and its validity (or not), since presumably IanS is saying that historical method, certainly with regard to ancient history, is worthless - but oh, no, not another thread on this stuff!

I just realized that I am duplicating an earlier post by davefoc (1525), so sorry about that.
Click to expand...

Considering the repetition there is in this thread already of bad arguments and reasoning, repeating good points won't be frowned upon, I think.
 
IanS said:
By "apologetic writing" if you mean the bible, then that contains zero evidence of Jesus as a living person. It only contains anonymously written accounts of legendary tales from even more anonymous people, who believed by religious faith that a messiah had once existed (but was by then dead). At best that is evidence of later religious beliefs.
Click to expand...

Then you will, of course, agree that any report of a living person, in the absence of corroboration, suddenly becomes evidence for the belief in the existence of this person and not evidence for the existence of this person per se ?

That is a weird way to deal with the evidence.

As "evidence" that would be laughed out of the classroom by primary school science students aged 12.
Click to expand...

Stop projecting onto other people. Your incredulity, or bias, is no justification for you to assume that reality or posterity will agree with you.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Back
Top Bottom