Nailed: Ten Christian Myths that show Jesus never existed

[Brainache]

Can you recall when it was first claimed that many of the Pauline letters were in fact not authentic? Do you recall the names of those who argued that the Pauline Corpus is riddled with multiple authors?

Well, it is some of those very people who successfully argued that the Pauline Corpus were composed some time in the 2nd century.

You could have gone to Wikipedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authorship_of_the_Pauline_epistles

No actual corroborative evidence has EVER been presented at any time to show that an actual character named Paul did live, did preach and did write letters to Churches.--None.

Incredibly, some so-called Scholars have assumed that Paul did live, did preach and wrote letters to Churches which has been spread by Chinese Whispers.

The un-evidence assumptions about Paul is believed by many as fact when it was NEVER ever successfully argued.

It is virtually impossible for an argument to be successful without evidence.

The claim that Pauline writings were composed before the Fall of the Temple is inherently a total failure because no evidence will ever be presented.

Not even the author of Acts, the supposed close companion of Paul, ever claimed Paul wrote Epistles to Churches and Pastorals in Acts of the Apostles up to at least c 62 CE.

And further, it has already been DEBUNKED that there were Pauline writings which predated the Gospels because there is hardly anything about the life of Jesus.

Such a claim is highly illogical because the supposed forgeries written AFTER the Gospels also have little or nothing about the life of Jesus

These forgeries or falsely attributed writings have little or nothing about the life of Jesus---Ephesians, 2 Thessalonians, Colossians, 1&2 Timothy and Titus.

Is there anybody in the world of Academia who agrees with your ideas?

If so, can you give us a link?

 

[Craig B]

@ davefoc

dejudge's source says nothing about dates of composition of the generally accepted authentic epistles. It talks about the canonisation of the collection, including the false ones. A very different matter. For dates of composition, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pauline_epistles

These are the seven letters (with consensus dates)[4] considered genuine by most scholars (see main article Authorship of the Pauline epistles: section "Undisputed" epistles):
First Thessalonians (ca. 51 AD)
Philippians (ca. 52–54 AD)
Philemon (ca. 52–54 AD)
First Corinthians (ca. 53–54 AD)
Galatians (ca. 55 AD)
Second Corinthians (ca. 55–56 AD)
Romans (ca. 55–58 AD)

 

[dejudge]

Is there anybody in the world of Academia who agrees with your ideas?

If so, can you give us a link?

Is there anybody in Academia who argues that HJ was NOT from Nazareth?

 

[pipelineaudio]

Then right now you have proven that you haven't read the thread, and that your conclusions about it and the proponents of either side in this debate is pure fabrication on your part: I have never claimed to have evidence for Jesus.

What I DID say is that the HJ hypothesis fits known history, that Christianity (the real-life religion) requires an explanation (a cause), and that HJ provies a simpler and less question-begging solution.

None of this refutes my claim you were seeming to attempt to refute.

All the evidence given in this and the other threads comes down to the bible itself

 

[dejudge]

@ davefoc

dejudge's source says nothing about dates of composition of the generally accepted authentic epistles. It talks about the canonisation of the collection, including the false ones. A very different matter. For dates of composition, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pauline_epistles

That is exactly, exactly, exactly what I predicted.

You will never, never, never ever present any corroborative evidence from antiquity for the dates you provided for the Pauline Epistles.

No-one before you and no-one after can do so unless new evidence is found.

Chinese Whispers has now become evidence for early Pauline writings.

Not even Carbon Dating could give those precise dates acquired by Chinese Whispers.

Dating by Chinese Whispers using copies of copies of copies. Margin of Error +/-1year

First Thessalonians (ca. 51 AD)
Philippians (ca. 52–54 AD)
Philemon (ca. 52–54 AD)
First Corinthians (ca. 53–54 AD)
Galatians (ca. 55 AD)
Second Corinthians (ca. 55–56 AD)
Romans (ca. 55–58 AD)

Dating by Paleography --Margin of Error +/- 50 years

P 46--the Pauline Corpus--(c 200 CE)

Chinese Whispers have now become the most accurate means of dating the Pauline Corpus--far superior to Paleography and C-14.

What a big Joke!!

The Pauline writings were UNKNOWN up to at least c 180 CE which is compatible with the dating of the P 46 and writings attributed to Irenaeus, Aristides, Justin Martyr and Celsus.

 

[Brainache]

Is there anybody in Academia who argues that HJ was NOT from Nazareth?

Yes.

Here's one at an obscure little tech school somewhere called Yale:

Dale B. Martin:

Oops not him. I guess it must be more controversial than I thought. He does acknowledge it as a possibility though.

 

[Brainache]

That is exactly, exactly, exactly what I predicted.

You will never, never, never ever present any corroborative evidence from antiquity for the dates you provided for the Pauline Epistles.

No-one before you and no-one after can do so unless new evidence is found.

Chinese Whispers has now become evidence for early Pauline writings.

Not even Carbon Dating could give those precise dates acquired by Chinese Whispers.

Dating by Chinese Whispers using copies of copies of copies. Margin of Error +/-1year

First Thessalonians (ca. 51 AD)
Philippians (ca. 52–54 AD)
Philemon (ca. 52–54 AD)
First Corinthians (ca. 53–54 AD)
Galatians (ca. 55 AD)
Second Corinthians (ca. 55–56 AD)
Romans (ca. 55–58 AD)

Dating by Paleography --Margin of Error +/- 50 years

P 46--the Pauline Corpus--(c 200 CE)

Chinese Whispers have now become the most accurate means of dating the Pauline Corpus--far superior to Paleography and C-14.

What a big Joke!!

The Pauline writings were UNKNOWN up to at least c 180 CE which is compatible with the dating of the P 46 and writings attributed to Irenaeus, Aristides, Justin Martyr and Celsus.

Do you ever wonder why every expert in the world says otherwise?

Are they all stupid? All of them?

 

[Craig B]

That is exactly, exactly, exactly what I predicted.
<snip dejudge prediction>
Chinese Whispers has now become evidence for early Pauline writings.
<snip Chinese Whispers>
Chinese Whispers have now become the most accurate means of dating the Pauline Corpus ...

As I have suggested before, there is internal evidence. I cited Aretas and the Jerusalem Temple. Here's another example, linking Acts and Paul with a person known from the historical record.

Acts 18 reports that a year-and-a-half into Paul's sojourn in Corinth, the leader of the Corinthian synagogue converted, for which Paul came under attack in the courts: "But when Gallio was proconsul of Achaia, the Jews made a united attack on Paul and brought him before the tribunal." - The majority of scholars find no reason to doubt this report of Paul's trial before Gallio, proconsul of Achaia, the Roman district that included Corinth. And this is the starting point for any absolute chronology of Paul's life and work, because we have evidence that helps us pinpoint the era of Gallio's rule.
Archaeologists have discovered, in the ancient Greek city of Delphi, a letter by Emperor Claudius that refers to his friend and proconsul Gallio. Claudius dates the letter to the 26th year he was "acclaimed emperor," a stock phrase referring to a PR event that celebrated an Emperor's success in battle or some other accomplishment.
Unfortunately, we don't know when Claudius was acclaimed for the 26th time. But we do know the date of his 27th acclamation, and, based on that and other information, we can fairly well date his 26th acclamation to the spring of 52 C.E., following the first battle victory of the new military season ...

See http://hebrew.wisc.edu/~rltroxel/Paul/dating.htm. Whether such chronological clues are right or wrong, I don't really think they can properly be described as "Chinese whispers" whatever meaning that expression may be supposed to have in this context.

 

[dejudge]

Do you ever wonder why every expert in the world says otherwise?

Are they all stupid? All of them?

Why do you openly make statements for which you have no data?

Name every expert in Europe!

You too have no evidence for early Pauline writings .

 

[davefoc]

Why do you openly make statements for which you have no data?

Name every expert in Europe!

You too have no evidence for early Pauline writings .

In defense of his view, I have read about the issue of an HJ from a wide range of authors over a period spanning about eight years. I do not recall even once seeing an author/specialist on the origin of Christianity put forth the theory that Paul's works post date the Gospels.

It is obviously easier for you to prove your contention than it is to prove Brainache's contention. As you correctly imply with your comment it would be very difficult to name every expert/specialist on the origins of Christianity in Europe, but it should be quite easy for you to name one that agrees with your view that Paul's writings post date the Gospels.

 

[Craig B]

Why do you openly make statements for which you have no data?

Name every expert in Europe!

Name every "Chinese whisperer".

 

[Brainache]

In defense of his view, I have read about the issue of an HJ from a wide range of authors over a period spanning about eight years. I do not recall even once seeing an author/specialist on the origin of Christianity put forth the theory that Paul's works post date the Gospels.

It is obviously easier for you to prove your contention than it is to prove Brainache's contention. As you correctly imply with your comment it would be very difficult to name every expert/specialist on the origins of Christianity in Europe, but it should be quite easy for you to name one that agrees with your view that Paul's writings post date the Gospels.

Thank you. You said it well.

Name every "Chinese whisperer".

The Chinese Whisperer.

Coming soon to Reality TV on the Racism Network...

I think I'll just stop there.

 

[David Mo]

If they found the crucifixion embarrassing they would have expunged it from the records instead of making it the centerpiece of their religion.

Some questions which have been gnawing at me are the following:
Why were the Romans introduced into the tale at all?
Why was Jesus not beheaded, as was his cousin, JtB?
If Jesus was executed by the Romans for sedition, why weren't his followers rounded up and crucified as an example?
Would Pontius Pilate have mentioned Jesus in an official report to Tiberius if he was such small beer?

The Gospels contain several contradictory traditions. This is a fact. There are diverse reasons of. Perhaps the main reason is that for the evangelists it was better to alter ‘subtly’ (‘this is not exactly what really happened’) a well known tradition about Jesus that to try to silence it (mission impossible). This was a very common dialectical tactic in Antiquity. We have here the basis of the difficulty criterion. The participation of Romans in Jesus' death can be explained so.

Some scholars think the two 'thieves' in Golgotha actually were Jesus' followers. But I think this kind of things is indiscernible, as almost all the Gospels' content. We don’t know how many followers had Jesus… if any. ETA: the whole episode of the tieves exudes too much literature to be credible.

The Imperial bureaucracy seemed to be very meticulous. But it seems impossible to know where a hypothetical Pilate’s report is now... if Pilate was the real executor of Jesus.

Paul's theology demanded that Jesus die a shameful death, how else was he supposed to redeem mankind?

Why? A humiliating death wasn't needed to redeem the Humanity…if any death was needed. I know many dead gods. No one with a humiliating death reserved for men of ‘lower quality’. See Joan the Baptist, as Pakeha indicates. Being beheaded was a respectable death.

 

[davefoc]

@ davefoc

dejudge's source says nothing about dates of composition of the generally accepted authentic epistles. It talks about the canonisation of the collection, including the false ones. A very different matter. For dates of composition, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pauline_epistles

I was aware of the generally accepted dates for the Pauline epistles. That they predate the Gospels is one of the facts that I have never seen contested in any of the secular Christian history sites that I've seen including the ones that tend toward myther views.

There are certainly some authors that theorize that Paul's epistles have been misinterpreted as being about a human Jesus (Doherty and Carrier) and other sites that have speculated that they were faked (jesusneverexisted) and there is certainly speculation that Paul lied or was crazy (common JREF forum theory) but the idea that they were written as late as 180 CE or that they were written after the Gospels are new theories at least to me.

And I wondered just how solid the dating of Paul's epistles is. Is it possible that dejudge is right or is it possible to prove him wrong? In one area,at least, I think he is highly unlikely to be right. In the time span between 100 CE and 200 CE there are many identified Christian authors, they quote each other and their existence is generally uncontested. And even if for some reason they didn't exist, people that did what they did must have existed because between 100 and 200 CE Christianity became an established religion and somebody had to be doing the establishing.

What is the latest date that Paul's epistles could have been written before there is absolute proof of their existence?

 

[dejudge]

As I have suggested before, there is internal evidence. I cited Aretas and the Jerusalem Temple.

You have already been DEBUNKED.

Aretas and the Jerusalem Temple in the Pauline Corpus are not the only clues for when the Pauline writings were composed.

You have conveniently forgotten or ignored the clues that show that the entire Pauline Corpus was unknown to virtually ALL the authors of the Canon.

You have conveniently forgotten or ignored that Apologetic writers claimed the Pauline letters were composed AFTER the Apocalypse of John and Paul was ALIVE after gLuke was composed.

You have conveniently forgotten or ignored that the Pauline Corpus was UNKNOWN to Apologetic writers in the 2nd century like Aristides, Justin Martyr and Minucius Felix.

You have conveniently forgotten or ignored that Philo, Josephus, Tacitus, Suetonius, Pliny the elder, and Pliny the younger did not mention any character called Paul who started a NEW RELIGION--Worship of resurrected dead as a God.

You have conveniently forgotten or ignored that the Pauline Corpus would be historically and theologically constipated if HJ did exist and was just an itinerant preacher.

It is unheard of that a questioned source become the corroborative source of itself.

Anyone who reads the Pauline Corpus can see what is written but there is NO corroborative evidence to show that Paul did live and wrote Epistles.

Here's another example, linking Acts and Paul with a person known from the historical record. See http://hebrew.wisc.edu/~rltroxel/Paul/dating.htm. Whether such chronological clues are right or wrong, I don't really think they can properly be described as "Chinese whispers" whatever meaning that expression may be supposed to have in this context.

Those are not clues that the Pauline Corpus was composed c 50-60 CE.

 

[Craig B]

Why do you openly make statements for which you have no data?

Name every expert in Europe!

You too have no evidence for early Pauline writings .

The sceptic site http://www.rejectionofpascalswager.net/epistles.html makes the same point I referred to earlier about the reference to Gallio as governor of Corinth.

Around this time, according to Acts 18;12, Gallio was proconsul of Archaia. Based on an archaeological discovery (an inscription found in Delphi), Gallio's administration can be dated accurately to AD51-52. The earliest extent Christian document, the epistle to the Thessalonians, was therefore written around AD51 or 52; this means that it preceded the earliest gospel, Mark, by at least two decades. We can conclude that all the Pauline epistles were written between AD51 and 64. Using similar deductive methods, by tying the chronology of Acts to the content of the epistles, the other genuine Pauline documents can also be dated.

I await your response, unless it is merely to tell us that this was all cunningly devised by the unknown fourth century forgers of the entire NT, to throw future researchers off the scent, and so hide their nefarious deeds from the generations to come.

 

[davefoc]

...
Why? A humiliating death wasn't needed to redeem the Humanity…if any death was needed. I know many dead gods. No one with a humiliating death reserved for men of ‘lower quality’. See Joan the Baptist, as Pakeha indicates. Being beheaded was a respectable death.

This argument has been made a few times in this thread and is certainly a common argument that at least the crucifixion is an accurate fact from the NT.

I'm not so sure how strong this argument is though. Suppose you are a mucky muck in a religion that has believed the coming of the Messiah is imminent and you need to deal with the fact that your flock is wandering away because they've been waiting for the Messiah and they've noticed he hasn't come.

What is you strategy? At first glance it might seem like a good idea to just claim that a messiah like everybody expected has come, except if you go down that path a lot of your flock is going to notice that no super hero has showed up to defeat the forces of evil and fill the world with goodness. So you need a different kind of messiah, one that was powerful, but what he did, didn't have such widespread consequences that everybody would have noticed. But you've still got a problem. If this guy is so great why doesn't he just show up and fix everybody's problems? You can solve that problem by killing off your super hero, but how to kill him off? Clearly you can't give him some mundane death like he tripped and fell while he was taking a bath. It needs to be an impressive, emotional death worthy of your super hero's station. So what are your ideas?

My thought is that a crucifixion is a pretty good way to kill off your super hero. It is something that everybody knows about at the time so it's plausible. It is maximally dramatic. It is, as you note, perhaps embarrassing that your super hero is getting killed in a horrible way, but you can deal with that by claiming that the super hero acquiesces to his own death.

And whether somebody dreamed up the Jesus story out of whole cloth or there was a real HJ that served as a seed for the origin of Christianity you can't argue with the results. The story resonated with people and one of the most compelling elements of the whole thing is the narrative around the crucifixion. So it looks like it might have been a pretty good strategy for somebody to make it up if that's what somebody did.

 

[davefoc]

Craig B,
I just saw your post about Galliio from the Pascal's wager web site. I am not ignoring it and I look forward to taking a look at it. But I'm going to bed, so I'm not going to do it tonight. I realize that your comment was not directed at me, but I am following your comments on this issue.

 

[Brainache]

This argument has been made a few times in this thread and is certainly a common argument that at least the crucifixion is an accurate fact from the NT.

I'm not so sure how strong this argument is though. Suppose you are a mucky muck in a religion that has believed the coming of the Messiah is imminent and you need to deal with the fact that your flock is wandering away because they've been waiting for the Messiah and they've noticed he hasn't come.

What is you strategy? At first glance it might seem like a good idea to just claim that a messiah like everybody expected has come, except if you go down that path a lot of your flock is going to notice that no super hero has showed up to defeat the forces of evil and fill the world with goodness. So you need a different kind of messiah, one that was powerful, but what he did, didn't have such widespread consequences that everybody would have noticed. But you've still got a problem. If this guy is so great why doesn't he just show up and fix everybody's problems? You can solve that problem by killing off your super hero, but how to kill him off? Clearly you can't give him some mundane death like he tripped and fell while he was taking a bath. It needs to be an impressive, emotional death worthy of your super hero's station. So what are your ideas?

My thought is that a crucifixion is a pretty good way to kill off your super hero. It is something that everybody knows about at the time so it's plausible. It is maximally dramatic. It is, as you note, perhaps embarrassing that your super hero is getting killed in a horrible way, but you can deal with that by claiming that the super hero acquiesces to his own death.

And whether somebody dreamed up the Jesus story out of whole cloth or there was a real HJ that served as a seed for the origin of Christianity you can't argue with the results. The story resonated with people and one of the most compelling elements of the whole thing is the narrative around the crucifixion. So it looks like it might have been a pretty good strategy for somebody to make it up if that's what somebody did.

Have you started reading Josephus yet? You can probably skip the first 16 or so books of the "Antiquities", but "The War" is a definite must for this subject IMO. I haven't read the whole thing, and parts are pretty difficult to understand (maybe the online translation isn't the best) but I keep going back and learning more each time.

Take him with maybe half a grain of salt, he has his agenda too.

 

[Craig B]

Craig B,
I just saw your post about Galliio from the Pascal's wager web site. I am not ignoring it and I look forward to taking a look at it. But I'm going to bed, so I'm not going to do it tonight. I realize that your comment was not directed at me, but I am following your comments on this issue.

Thank you. I think the internal evidence of Paul's chronology is reasonably strong. Needless to state, this has nothing to do with belief in the validity of Paul's message, which I regard as preposterous; and insofar as it relates to the doctrine of vicarious atonement, positively obnoxious.