Nailed: Ten Christian Myths that show Jesus never existed

[pakeha]

... what is the basis for the claim that Paul's writings predate the Gospels? I went looking for the evidence that Paul's wrote his works before any of the Gospels were written and I didn't find much. Perhaps the assumption is based on the fact that Paul doesn't mention the Gospels and if his work post dated the Gospels then he would have? Perhaps it is based on the idea that the Gospels seem to be derivative and present a more detailed view of Christianity than Paul did? Perhaps the idea is that the author of Luke is presumed to have written Acts after he wrote Luke and Acts seems to have required Paul to have existed and written his stuff before Acts could have been written?

Anyway, I'd be interested in what people have to say about the theory.

I've seen that wiki states that Acts is an 'independently written narrative of Paul's life and ministry'.
"An independently written narrative of Paul's life and ministry, found in the Acts of the Apostles, is used to determine the date, and possible authorship, of Pauline letters by locating their origin within the context of his life."

Well, that's that, then.

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. 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.

Thanks for the link!

 

[Belz...]

How ridicules this thread is, the most remembered person throughout all of history never existed?

Irrelevant. What's remembered is his story, not his historical person, if there ever was any.

Perhaps you should read the thread.

 

[Belz...]

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

What part of "No" didn't you understand ?

 

[Belz...]

Joan the Baptist

Gosh, I hate retroactive gender switching in media franchises.

 

[pakeha]

...

Originally Posted by tsig

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.

I'm not entirely certain about 'respectable', but it was a traditional punishment
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_and_corporal_punishment_in_Judaism


But back to davefoc's question.
Unless I've misunderstood the issue, dating Paul's Epistles relies on taking Acts as a source of historical data?

 

[Brainache]

...
But back to davefoc's question.
Unless I've misunderstood the issue, dating Paul's Epistles relies on taking Acts as a source of historical data?

I'm with Craig B on this, in that the dating of the Epistles is from internal clues matched with archeology (the Gallio thing).

I think it is safe to assume the Author of Acts knew of the Pauline cannon and set some of his episodes accordingly.

He changes the basket escape story, from being chased by Aretas the foreign ruler who destroyed Herod's army in that episode with John The Baptist. To being chased by "The Jews", because thats what "The Jews" do.

 

[IanS]

You might get a better response if you ask the HJ side why they often post in a hostile and rude manner.

Indeed. There seems to be some sort of enormous double-standard going here.

Where, virtually never a wrong word is said by anyone on the sceptical side, where HJ posters have very frequently peppered these HJ threads with comments saying "idiot, ignorant, moron, dishonest, lying liar...", and yet those same HJ posters appear not to have ever noticed that, and instead complain when their opponents say such extremely mild things as dejudge is being singled out for above.

These HJ threads have long since begun to look less like a rational constructive difference of opinion on the evidence for Jesus, and far more like a catalogue of name-calling, personalized abuse, and pursuits of individual vendetta’s, and always with sky-high level of obfuscation, prevarication & diversions into all sorts of other figures and other events, but never ever producing any reliable credible evidence of Jesus whatsoever.

The entire HJ performance in all these threads on JREF, and similarly in the almost identical threads on Rational-Skepticism, and also from years before that on the old Richard Dawkins forum, has been almost a carbon copy every time for every such thread on this subject. Where, the HJ side always loses it’s temper very early in the thread and comes out with a constant stream of increasingly vitriolic personalised abuse, and where despite claiming such abundant and clear evidence that expert “historians” who we are told must believed, conclude beyond doubt that Jesus most definitely did exist, still in not one of these threads anywhere in any of those forums did any of these HJ people ever produce a single spec of any genuine reliable credible evidence for the existence of a human living Jesus … and that includes all sorts of people who have set themselves up as great experts on the subject, such as Tim O’Neil, Grahbudd, Piggy and various others.

 

[Brainache]

Indeed. There seems to be some sort of enormous double-standard going here.

Where, virtually never a wrong word is said by anyone on the sceptical side, where HJ posters have very frequently peppered these HJ threads with comments saying "idiot, ignorant, moron, dishonest, lying liar...", and yet those same HJ posters appear not to have ever noticed that, and instead complain when their opponents say such extremely mild things as dejudge is being singled out for above.

These HJ threads have long since begun to look less like a rational constructive difference of opinion on the evidence for Jesus, and far more like a catalogue of name-calling, personalized abuse, and pursuits of individual vendetta’s, and always with sky-high level of obfuscation, prevarication & diversions into all sorts of other figures and other events, but never ever producing any reliable credible evidence of Jesus whatsoever.

The entire HJ performance in all these threads on JREF, and similarly in the almost identical threads on Rational-Skepticism, and also from years before that on the old Richard Dawkins forum, has been almost a carbon copy every time for every such thread on this subject. Where, the HJ side always loses it’s temper very early in the thread and comes out with a constant stream of increasingly vitriolic personalised abuse, and where despite claiming such abundant and clear evidence that expert “historians” who we are told must believed, conclude beyond doubt that Jesus most definitely did exist, still in not one of these threads anywhere in any of those forums did any of these HJ people ever produce a single spec of any genuine reliable credible evidence for the existence of a human living Jesus … and that includes all sorts of people who have set themselves up as great experts on the subject, such as Tim O’Neil, Grahbudd, Piggy and various others.

Maybe they lose their tempers with you guys because your arguments are transparently dishonest, while you simultaneously claim moral superiority.

That might have something to do with it.

IMO.

 

[dejudge]

...I think it is safe to assume the Author of Acts knew of the Pauline cannon and set some of his episodes accordingly.

This is exactly how Pauline writings were made authentic--by assumption.

No-one before and after you will ever present a shred of evidence for early Pauline writings pre-62 CE.

 

[Craig B]

This is exactly how Pauline writings were made authentic--by assumption.

No-one before and after you will ever present a shred of evidence for early Pauline writings pre-62 CE.

We're giving you evidence. Refute it if you can - but it's foolish to deny that these references constitute evidence.

 

[The Norseman]

This is another example of reading the Gospels at face-value. That is not how to do History.

Josephus:

http://www.biblestudytools.com/history/flavius-josephus/antiquities-jews/book-18/chapter-5.html

JTB was famous for "Preparing The Way In The Wilderness", he wasn't hanging around that corrupt nasty big Temple.

Well I don't know if that definitely happened, but I was just trying to explain the differences in the story. Why Jesus got crucified as opposed to beheaded like JTB, just going by what the stories say. This is of course just my opinion.

Well we have Paul's talk of James and the other "Brothers of The Lord". We have the epistles of James and Jude in the Bible. We have Hegesippus' testimony about the grandchildren of Judas being taken to Diocletian.(ETA: Domitian? I just woke up... sorry not sure.)

And IMO we have the DSS.

Maybe they lose their tempers with you guys because your arguments are transparently dishonest, while you simultaneously claim moral superiority.

That might have something to do with it.

IMO.

I appreciate your detailed answer above, but "moral superiority"? "[T]ransparently dishonest"? That's blatant hyperbole and you know it.

If only all your posts were as honest and informative as the former. Why do we even need to put up with the latter?

 

[Brainache]

I appreciate your detailed answer above, but "moral superiority"? "[T]ransparently dishonest"? That's blatant hyperbole and you know it.

If only all your posts were as honest and informative as the former. Why do we even need to put up with the latter?

Because I have to deal with people who make transparently dishonest arguments (ie: "No one has any evidence!", or "You must believe in Jesus") and then they play the martyr when they get called on it.

No sympathy for that sort of nonsense.

 

[David Mo]

Gosh, I hate retroactive gender switching in media franchises.

Originally Posted by David Mo : "Joan the Baptist"?????

Ai, mare! My nephew's first name is "Joan"; it is to say, "John" in Catalan (Catalonian langage). My family speaks Catalan.

Spanish, English, Catalan... what a damned imbroglio!

 

[tsig]

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.



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.

It was a brilliant marketing maneuver "Our god must be real because who would make up a humiliated god", so brilliant that you're still using it.

 

[Brainache]

It was a brilliant marketing maneuver "Our god must be real because who would make up a humiliated god", so brilliant that you're still using it.

The crucifixion wasn't used as proof of Jesus' existence in Early Christianity. What makes you think anyone would have ever said anything like that back in those days?

 

[dejudge]

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.

What have evidence for early Pauline writings have you read in the last eight years?

Identify the EVIDENCE--NOT the EXPERT.

You can perhaps name Billions of people who believe the Pauline writings are authentic but will NEVER, NEVER, NEVER ever identify any corroborative evidence from antiquity in the NT.

You need to examine the evidence from antiquity and stop dealing with Chinese Whispers propagated by "experts".

1. The author of gMark wrote about the story of Jesus but did not include a single detail about the Pauline post resurrection story.

2. The author of Acts, a supposed close companion of Paul, wrote about the activities of Paul from his time as a persecutor to his time in Rome c 62 CE and NEVER once mentioned a Pauline Letter.

3. c 117-138 CE Aristides knew a story of Jesus but did NOT know Paul and the Pauline Corpus.

4. c 138-161 CE, Justin knew a story of Jesus but did NOT know of Paul and the Pauline Corpus.

5. c 161-180 CE, Celsus knew a story of Jesus did NOT known of Paul and the Pauline Corpus.

6. c 161-180 CE, Irenaeus argued Jesus was crucified c 50 CE so could not have known of the Pauline Corpus.

7. c 180-3rd century, Minucius Felix wrote about the story of Jesus but Nothing of Paul and the Pauline Corpus.

8. 3rd-4th century, Arnobius wrote about a story of Jesus but did not write anything abot Paul and the Pauline Corpus.

9. c 4th century, Ephraem the Syrian wrote Against Marcion and hardly mentioned Paul and the Pauline Corpus and did NOT claim Marcion knew of or manipulated the Pauline writings.

10. The earliest dated Pauline writings are around the 3rd century.

11. It is from the 4th century that ALL Apologetic writers knew of the Jesus story and the Pauline Corpus.

12. It is from the 4th century that Non-Apologetics begin to make arguments AGAINST the Pauline Corpus.

13. The Paul/Seneca Letters to place Paul in the 1st century has been found to be forgeries.

14. The Clement letter to place Paul in the 1st century has been found to be a forgery.

15. At least six letters under the name of Paul have already been deduced to be forgeries or falsely attributed to Paul.

16. Hippolytus claimed Marcion did NOT use the Pauline writings.

The abundance of evidence for the Last 1800 years shows the Pauline Corpus was most likely not composed before c 180 CE.

In effect, the Pauline Corpus is historically and theologically constipated and were NOT part of the early development of the Jesus cult of Christians.

 

[Brainache]

What have evidence for early Pauline writings have you read in the last eight years?

Identify the EVIDENCE--NOT the EXPERT.

You can perhaps name Billions of people who believe the Pauline writings are authentic but will NEVER, NEVER, NEVER ever identify any corroborative evidence from antiquity in the NT.

You need to examine the evidence from antiquity and stop dealing with Chinese Whispers propagated by "experts".

1. The author of gMark wrote about the story of Jesus but did not include a single detail about the Pauline post resurrection story.

2. The author of Acts, a supposed close companion of Paul, wrote about the activities of Paul from his time as a persecutor to his time in Rome and NEVER once mentioned a Pauline Letter.

3. c 117-138 CE Aristides knew a story of Jesus but did NOT know Paul and the Pauline Corpus.

4. c 138-161 CE, Justin knew a story of Jesus but did NOT know of Paul and the Pauline Corpus.

5. c 161-180 CE, Celsus knew a story of Jesus did NOT known of Paul and the Pauline Corpus.

6. c 161-180 CE, Irenaeus argued Jesus was crucified c 50 CE so could not have known of the Pauline Corpus.

7. c 180-3rd century, Minucius Felix wrote about the story of Jesus but Nothing of Paul and the Pauline Corpus.

8. 3rd-4th century, Arnobius wrote about a story of Jesus but did not write anything abot Paul and the Pauline Corpus.

9. c 4th century, Ephraem the Syrian wrote Against Marcion and hardly mentioned Paul and the Pauline Corpus and did NOT claim Marcion knew of or manipulated the Pauline writings.

10. The earliest dated Pauline writings are around the 3rd century.

11. It is from the 4th century that ALL Apologetic writers knew of the Jesus story and the Pauline Corpus.

12. It is from the 4th century that Non-Apologetics begin to make arguments AGAINST the Pauline Corpus.

13. The Paul/Seneca Letters to place Paul in the 1st century has been found to be forgeries.

14. The Clement letter to place Paul in the 1st century has been found to be a forgery.

15. At six letters under the name of Paul have already been deduced to be forgeries or falsely attributed to Paul.

The abundance of evidence for the Last 1800 years shows the Pauline Corpus was most likely not composed before c 180 CE.

In effect, the Pauline Corpus is historically and theologically constipated and were NOT part of the early development of the Jesus cult of Christians.

So, have you dumped this load on any "experts"?

What did they say to that?

 

[dejudge]

What have evidence for early Pauline writings have you read in the last eight years?

Identify the EVIDENCE--NOT the EXPERT.

You can perhaps name Billions of people who believe the Pauline writings are authentic but will NEVER, NEVER, NEVER ever identify any corroborative evidence from antiquity in the NT.

You need to examine the evidence from antiquity and stop dealing with Chinese Whispers propagated by "experts".

1. The author of gMark wrote about the story of Jesus but did not include a single detail about the Pauline post resurrection story.

2. The author of Acts, a supposed close companion of Paul, wrote about the activities of Paul from his time as a persecutor to his time in Rome and NEVER once mentioned a Pauline Letter.

3. c 117-138 CE Aristides knew a story of Jesus but did NOT know Paul and the Pauline Corpus.

4. c 138-161 CE, Justin knew a story of Jesus but did NOT know of Paul and the Pauline Corpus.

5. c 161-180 CE, Celsus knew a story of Jesus did NOT known of Paul and the Pauline Corpus.

6. c 161-180 CE, Irenaeus argued Jesus was crucified c 50 CE so could not have known of the Pauline Corpus.

7. c 180-3rd century, Minucius Felix wrote about the story of Jesus but Nothing of Paul and the Pauline Corpus.

8. 3rd-4th century, Arnobius wrote about a story of Jesus but did not write anything abot Paul and the Pauline Corpus.

9. c 4th century, Ephraem the Syrian wrote Against Marcion and hardly mentioned Paul and the Pauline Corpus and did NOT claim Marcion knew of or manipulated the Pauline writings.

10. The earliest dated Pauline writings are around the 3rd century.

11. It is from the 4th century that ALL Apologetic writers knew of the Jesus story and the Pauline Corpus.

12. It is from the 4th century that Non-Apologetics begin to make arguments AGAINST the Pauline Corpus.

13. The Paul/Seneca Letters to place Paul in the 1st century has been found to be forgeries.

14. The Clement letter to place Paul in the 1st century has been found to be a forgery.

15. At six letters under the name of Paul have already been deduced to be forgeries or falsely attributed to Paul.

The abundance of evidence for the Last 1800 years shows the Pauline Corpus was most likely not composed before c 180 CE.

In effect, the Pauline Corpus is historically and theologically constipated and were NOT part of the early development of the Jesus cult of Christians.

So, have you dumped this load on any "experts"?

What did they say to that?

Experts have already concluded that the Pauline Corpus were composed in the 2nd century.

 

[Belz...]

Where, virtually never a wrong word is said by anyone on the sceptical side

I guess you have Dejudge on ignore, then, and you never proof-read your own posts.

 

[Craig B]

What have evidence for early Pauline writings have you read in the last eight years?

We've discussed plenty of evidence here in the last eight hours, let alone years.

... In effect, the Pauline Corpus is historically and theologically constipated and were NOT part of the early development of the Jesus cult of Christians.

You keep saying this. What on earth does it mean?