Nailed: Ten Christian Myths that show Jesus never existed

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The existence of the texts, like the existence of anything else, has to be explained. In the HP case an explanation is easily found, and it excludes the reality of the hero. The books are intentionally composed as fiction.


Well, first of all - whether any ancient religious text does, or does not, “need” to be explained, the fact that you would like to find out what lead people to write those texts, does not make those texts into actual evidence of the truth of whatever they say.

And in fact, in the case of the gospels and epistles, the only evidence about Jesus offered in any of those texts, is that the writers believed that such a figure had in some sense existed at an unknown earlier date.

The texts you are talking about (the biblical texts) actually contain no evidence of anyone ever knowing Jesus, and hence no actual personally confirmed evidence of Jesus at all.

What they contain is only evidence of peoples beliefs, i.e. in fact fanatical religious beliefs, about a messiah that none of them had ever known in any way at all except as a matter of their religious faith. But there is no actual evidence of Jesus in any of those gospels or letters.

They might easily have contained such evidence of a human Jesus. But in fact they do not. Instead they talk only about such things as Paul seeing visions of the dead Jesus, Paul believing he understood God’s messiah message from what had been revealed to him in the OT scriptures, about gospel writers saying that although they never knew Jesus, people had told stories of “disciples” who witnessed Jesus performing constant miracles and constantly making all sorts of wise and wonderful insightful religious statements, prophecies, and pronouncing all sorts of apocryphal tales of religious guidance to the faithful …

… those are accounts of the writers beliefs about what they had heard as earlier anonymous stories about a miraculous Jesus. But there is no actual evidence there of anyone ever claiming to have met Jesus and thus providing any first hand reliable evidence of what they actually knew of their time with Jesus. In fact, as many people have pointed out, there is a deafening silence on any such evidential details which might conceivably have qualified as actual evidence of the living human Jesus … e.g. no credible evidence of any real details of an ordinary human life, but instead what is written as the accounts of Jesus is practically all a collection of entirely theological and religious “pericopes” each of which presents various advice and guidance preached to the faithful as illustration of how they too should follow the example of the messiah in living their religious lives unto God.



But this is not evidently the case with the gospels, dejudge's forged false fiction hoax thesis aside. One possible explanation is that there really was a Jesus figure. Another possible explanation is the "pre-existing myth" hypothesis, and in these threads other proposals have been advanced. Thus the gospels are "evidence" for these explanations, including the not outrageous or impossible proposal that a Jesus really existed.



You are attempting to introduce something called “evidence of a possible explanation” (see your highlighted words). I.e., you are now talking about the bible as “evidence” not of Jesus himself, but as evidence of a “possible explanation” of something!

Well, the gospels and letters are indeed evidence of a “possible explanation of something” ... they are evidence of a possible explanation of peoples religious beliefs!

Yes, of course one possible explanation for those beliefs is that Jesus may have really existed. But in that case you have then to ask “OK, so what is the evidence that he did indeed exist?” … and there is, as we have all repeatedly explained, actually no evidence in the gospels & letters of anyone knowing any existing human Jesus.

As I have said before - that biblical writing could very easily have contained genuine evidence of Jesus, if it had been that sort document. But it does not actually contain any such evidence. E.g., there is no first hand eye-witness statement from any person who reliably claimed to know Jesus, and there is no indication of any physical remains or artefacts which could reasonably be traced, verified or discovered as support for a human Jesus … though of course, to the contrary, there have been countless attempts to forge such claimed artefacts (which in itself is just further evidence of how untrustworthy and filled with deceit this entire subject actually is).
 
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pakeha

I don't see it as 'excavating a historical figure'. Historians of the period are faced with some undoubted facts - there is a collection of early Christian documents, and there is the beginning of Christianity.

Your statement is a fallacy. There is no undoubted fact with respect to the story of Jesus or the cult.

If there was undoubted facts there would be no need to initiate a QUEST for an HJ and there would not have been Multiple irreconcilable version of HJ.

What we have in reality are doubts about the stories of Jesus in the Entire Canon and doubts about when they were composed.

zugzwang said:
How can these developments be explained? It strikes me as plausible that the Jesus described in those documents actually existed, although not as described in Christian theology, e.g. as the pre-existent Logos. This also has the virtue of parsimony.

Your statement is contradictory.

The Jesus described in those documents could NOT have existed and that is precisely why you are on a Search for another Jesus.


zugzwang said:
I find that the work done by scholars of Judaism, such as Vermes, and Paula Fredriksen, adds to this, in their arguments that the portrayal of Jesus in the synoptics fits quite well with what is known about charismatic and apocalyptic Jewish preachers of the first century.

However, I don't think you can go beyond 'plausible'.

Well, Myth Jesus [the Jesus of Faith] was in fact plausible in antiquity and it is for that very reason why a Quest was initiated to attempt to find an HJ.

No HJ was ever established up to 30 years ago--up to around 1980.
 
That much is obvious.



Sheesh, Pakeha, that was the whole point of my post.

The sun moving across the sky is evidence. It's an observation. What conclusion can we draw from that ? Well at some point it was evidence for the conclusion that the sun moved. Later we made other observations that made the sun moving across the sky evidence for a different conclusion.

The text is an observation. We observe that it's there, in the form that it is, and that it was a bit different in ages past. We observe Christianity and its early centuries and apologetics, etc. All those are observations. They are evidence.

Of course they're evidence, Belz...
Of a cult, but obviously not of the existence of an HJ.
 
pakeha

I don't see it as 'excavating a historical figure'. Historians of the period are faced with some undoubted facts - there is a collection of early Christian documents, and there is the beginning of Christianity.

How can these developments be explained? It strikes me as plausible that the Jesus described in those documents actually existed, although not as described in Christian theology, e.g. as the pre-existent Logos. This also has the virtue of parsimony.

I find that the work done by scholars of Judaism, such as Vermes, and Paula Fredriksen, adds to this, in their arguments that the portrayal of Jesus in the synoptics fits quite well with what is known about charismatic and apocalyptic Jewish preachers of the first century.


However, I don't think you can go beyond 'plausible'.

We're in complete agreement there, zugzwang.
Welcome to the dark side.
 
The existence of the texts, like the existence of anything else, has to be explained. In the HP case an explanation is easily found, and it excludes the reality of the hero. The books are intentionally composed as fiction.

But this is not evidently the case with the gospels, dejudge's forged false fiction hoax thesis aside. One possible explanation is that there really was a Jesus figure. Another possible explanation is the "pre-existing myth" hypothesis, and in these threads other proposals have been advanced. Thus the gospels are "evidence" for these explanations, including the not outrageous or impossible proposal that a Jesus really existed.

I missed your post, Craig B.
Hagiography treads a fine line between deliberate fiction and devotional literature and pure and simple jive. Is picking through such texts for historical references for a not impossible HJ as good as it gets?

Anyway, I found a venerable description of an HJ that I'll contribute to the HJ possible candidates:
"born in a certain Jewish village, of a poor woman of the country, who gained her subsistence by spinning, and who was turned out of doors by her husband, a carpenter by trade, because she was convicted of adultery; that after being driven away by her husband, and wandering about for a time, she disgracefully gave birth to Jesus, an illegitimate child, who having hired himself out as a servant in Egypt on account of his poverty, and having there acquired some miraculous powers, on which the Egyptians greatly pride themselves, returned to his own country, highly elated on account of them, and by means of these proclaimed himself a God."

Would this description work as an HJ?
 
Anyway, I found a venerable description of an HJ that I'll contribute to the HJ possible candidates:
"born in a certain Jewish village, of a poor woman of the country, who gained her subsistence by spinning, and who was turned out of doors by her husband, a carpenter by trade, because she was convicted of adultery; that after being driven away by her husband, and wandering about for a time, she disgracefully gave birth to Jesus, an illegitimate child, who having hired himself out as a servant in Egypt on account of his poverty, and having there acquired some miraculous powers, on which the Egyptians greatly pride themselves, returned to his own country, highly elated on account of them, and by means of these proclaimed himself a God."

Would this description work as an HJ?
No.
 
pakeha said:
Anyway, I found a venerable description of an HJ that I'll contribute to the HJ possible candidates:
"born in a certain Jewish village, of a poor woman of the country, who gained her subsistence by spinning, and who was turned out of doors by her husband, a carpenter by trade, because she was convicted of adultery; that after being driven away by her husband, and wandering about for a time, she disgracefully gave birth to Jesus, an illegitimate child, who having hired himself out as a servant in Egypt on account of his poverty, and having there acquired some miraculous powers, on which the Egyptians greatly pride themselves, returned to his own country, highly elated on account of them, and by means of these proclaimed himself a God."

Would this description work as an HJ?

Craig B said:

Well, tell us what you imagine about your HJ.

Your HJ was unknown!!

I am extremely delighted that you rejected one of the Multiple irreconcilable HJ arguments.
 
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Well, tell us what you imagine about your HJ.

Your HJ was unknown!!

I am extremely delighted that you rejected one of the Multiple irreconcilable HJ arguments.

So, dejudge, when your unknown, unevidenced, implausible and improbable 2nd century Hoaxsters faked all of the NT writings (!), did they also fake all of the Apocrypha? The Mishnah and Talmud references too?

How did they do this?

Where is the evidence of your "Hoax Theory"? You haven't even tried to explain how that could possibly work in the real world.
 
So, dejudge, when your unknown, unevidenced, implausible and improbable 2nd century Hoaxsters faked all of the NT writings (!), did they also fake all of the Apocrypha? The Mishnah and Talmud references too?

How did they do this?

Where is the evidence of your "Hoax Theory"? You haven't even tried to explain how that could possibly work in the real world.

Your response is extremely bizarre.

Please, just go and do some research on the provenance of the Misnah and Talmud.

The Misnah and Talmud do not help the HJ argument for a 1st century obscure criminal crucified by Pilate and worshiped as a God by Jews and people of the Roman Empire since the time of King Aretas.
 
Your response is extremely bizarre.

Please, just go and do some research on the provenance of the Misnah and Talmud.

The Misnah and Talmud do not help the HJ argument for a 1st century obscure criminal crucified by Pilate and worshiped as a God by Jews and people of the Roman Empire since the time of King Aretas.

I've done research.

The conclusion I have reached is that the Consensus of Historians think that Christianity grew from a Jewish Cult who were led by a Preacher who we now refer to as "Jesus".

I have seen evidence for this probable conclusion in the Historical context of the stories, the culture that produced them and the conflicts arising from the conflict between the Jews and Rome.

You have not produced one shred of evidence for your ludicrous assertion that all of the Jesus material (Paul included) was invented in the 2nd to 4th centuries. All of the Apocrypha, letters, Early Church History, conflicting histories etc etc, all of it manufactured to deceive people into thinking that Christianity was 200 years older than it really was - or something...

Where is there any evidence for your scenario? The HJ evidence has been produced, now it's your turn.
 
Well, tell us what you imagine about your HJ.

Your HJ was unknown!!

I am extremely delighted that you rejected one of the Multiple irreconcilable HJ arguments.
it wasn't an argument, but a story, nowhere made in the gospels. A nice story. If it were true, would that constitute a historical Jesus? No, it wouldn't. If there was the son of an adulteress who learned magic tricks in Egypt and returned to Judaea to proclaim himself to be God, that wouldn't be a historical Jesus. If that's what happened, there was no historical Jesus.
 
dejudge said:
Your response is extremely bizarre.

Please, just go and do some research on the provenance of the Misnah and Talmud.

The Misnah and Talmud do not help the HJ argument for a 1st century obscure criminal crucified by Pilate and worshiped as a God by Jews and people of the Roman Empire since the time of King Aretas.

I've done research.

The conclusion I have reached is that the Consensus of Historians think that Christianity grew from a Jewish Cult who were led by a Preacher who we now refer to as "Jesus".

You could not have done any research because there is no such consensus.

If you had done research you would have realised that there is an ON-GOING QUEST and NO HJ has been found after multiple failures up to 1980.

This is now the Third QUEST. Nothing has changed.

Just go and do some real research.

No HJ has ever been established and that is the reason why there are multiple irreconcilable versions of HJ.
 
You could not have done any research because there is no such consensus.


...no consensus...a few quotes on the lack of consensus

Despite divergent scholarly opinions on the construction of portraits of the historical Jesus, almost all modern scholars consider his baptism and crucifixion historically facts. James Dunn states that these "two facts in the life of Jesus command almost universal assent" and "rank so high on the 'almost impossible to doubt or deny' scale of historical facts" that they are often the starting points for the study of the historical Jesus.

Most scholars of Biblical history believe that the gospels of the Bible are sufficient evidence to say that Jesus, or some human seed for the stories who we may as well tag "Jesus", did exist, and his existence can be assumed from them

Bart Ehrman: "He certainly existed, as virtually every competent scholar of antiquity, Christian or non-Christian, agrees"

Robert E. Van Voorst "biblical scholars and classical historians regard theories of non-existence of Jesus as effectively refuted"

Virtually all modern scholars of antiquity agree that Jesus existed.



...of course...they could be all lying! In which case, dejudge would be vindicated. Any thoughts dejudge?...are they all lying?
 
Well that's the question: what is the cult and their beliefs and writings point to ? A mythicised man, or a humanised myth ?

An either or choice?
The only answer is neither.
No cult with beliefs and hagiography points to anything but their own existence, especially, as in this case, when there's no independent source to confirm the historicity of either a mythicised man, or a humanised myth.
 
You could not have done any research because there is no such consensus.

If you had done research you would have realised that there is an ON-GOING QUEST and NO HJ has been found after multiple failures up to 1980.

This is now the Third QUEST. Nothing has changed.

Just go and do some real research.

No HJ has ever been established and that is the reason why there are multiple irreconcilable versions of HJ.

Let me try this analogy.

The Consensus is that Jesus was a playing card.

Mr Crossan says Jesus is the King of Diamonds. Mr Sanders says Jesus is the King of Hearts. Mr Eisenman says Jesus is the King of Clubs. etc...

They all agree that he is a card, they just disagree about which one.

You're trying to tell me he was a Ghost who lived near the moon. You are on your own there.
 
...no consensus...a few quotes on the lack of consensus

Despite divergent scholarly opinions on the construction of portraits of the historical Jesus, almost all modern scholars consider his baptism and crucifixion historically facts. James Dunn states that these "two facts in the life of Jesus command almost universal assent" and "rank so high on the 'almost impossible to doubt or deny' scale of historical facts" that they are often the starting points for the study of the historical Jesus.

Most scholars of Biblical history believe that the gospels of the Bible are sufficient evidence to say that Jesus, or some human seed for the stories who we may as well tag "Jesus", did exist, and his existence can be assumed from them

Bart Ehrman: "He certainly existed, as virtually every competent scholar of antiquity, Christian or non-Christian, agrees"

Robert E. Van Voorst "biblical scholars and classical historians regard theories of non-existence of Jesus as effectively refuted"

Virtually all modern scholars of antiquity agree that Jesus existed.



...of course...they could be all lying! In which case, dejudge would be vindicated. Any thoughts dejudge?...are they all lying?

Please, just get a dictionary and look up the word "consensus" then look up the word "majority".

Please, get familiar with the English Language.

Let us look at some examples of the words majority and consensus in actual sentences.

1. Almost every body, the majority, believe Gods exist but Atheists have made no consensus after it was exposed that the majority have no evidence and have no idea what they are talking about.

2. Billions of people, the majority, believe there was an HJ but no consensus have been reached by those who disagree after it was exposed that there was no actual evidence from the 1st century pre 70 CE and that there are multiple irreconcilable versions of HJ.

Now, Robert Van Voorst was a pastor of the Reformed Church of America.

The Reformed Church of America Believes that Jesus existed as God's Son, that he did resurrect and ascend to heaven.

There is no consensus among HJ scholars that Jesus was actually God's Son, actually did miracles, that he did resurrect and ascended to heaven.

Bart Ehrman believes his Jesus was a mere man, a little known apocalyptic preacher who hardly did anything in the NT.

What consensus are you talking about?

Robert Van Voorst admitted that there are sharp disagreements on the Scholarly study of Jesus over methods and conclusions.

Somebody is lying because even the majority have no consensus on THEIR HJ.

Who is lying annnoid? Is it You, them or all of you?

Let us expose the Liars once and for all.
 
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Let me try this analogy.

The Consensus is that Jesus was a playing card.

Mr Crossan says Jesus is the King of Diamonds. Mr Sanders says Jesus is the King of Hearts. Mr Eisenman says Jesus is the King of Clubs. etc...

They all agree that he is a card, they just disagree about which one.

You're trying to tell me he was a Ghost who lived near the moon. You are on your own there.

Let's not try anything. Let us deal with the facts.

1. Robert Eisenman, a Scholar, claims no one has solved the HJ question.

2. Richard Carrier, a Scholar, argues that Jesus was a figure of Mythology.

3. Robert Van Voorst, a Scholar, preaches that Jesus is the Son of God who was raised from the dead and ascended.

4. William Craig, a Scholar, argues that Jesus was a resurrected being.

5. Bart Ehrman, a Scholar, argues Jesus was little known apocalyptic preacher.

6. Robert M Price, a Scholar, questions the historicity of Jesus.

7. Earl Doherty, a Scholar, argues that Jesus was a figure of mythology.

There is NO agreement--NO consensus among Scholars that there was an HJ and NO consensus about who he was if he did exist.

Your analogy makes no sense. You merely assumed there was a consensus.

Your "consensus" of cards have fallen to pieces.
 
Let's not try anything. Let us deal with the facts.

1. Robert Eisenman, a Scholar, claims no one has solved the HJ question.

2. Richard Carrier, a Scholar, argues that Jesus was a figure of Mythology.

3. Robert Van Voorst, a Scholar, preaches that Jesus is the Son of God who was raised from the dead and ascended.

4. William Craig, a Scholar, argues that Jesus was a resurrected being.

5. Bart Ehrman, a Scholar, argues Jesus was little known apocalyptic preacher.

6. Robert M Price, a Scholar, questions the historicity of Jesus.

7. Earl Doherty, a Scholar, argues that Jesus was a figure of mythology.

There is NO agreement--NO consensus among Scholars that there was an HJ and NO consensus about who he was if he did exist.

Your analogy makes no sense. You merely assumed there was a consensus.

Your "consensus" of cards have fallen to pieces.

Still you demonstrate that you don't understand what "Consensus" means in this context. Show me a University that teaches Carrier or Doherty's MJ. There are none, so you can't sorry.

Carrier and Doherty don't teach History at University and their MJ is very different to your 2nd century hoax scenario.

I'm still waiting for evidence for that BTW.

How were all of the NT books, letters, Apocrypha and Early conflicting Church Histories all forged by someone in the 2nd Century?

The HJ side have presented their case, whether you accept it or not. We are still waiting for more from you than "The fall of the Temple did it".

Please explain with names, dates and references where possible.

I'm all ears... (or, eyes in this case...)
 
Let's not try anything. Let us deal with the facts.
<snip facts> There is NO agreement--NO consensus among Scholars that there was an HJ and NO consensus about who he was if he did exist.

Your analogy makes no sense. You merely assumed there was a consensus.

Your "consensus" of cards have fallen to pieces.
If your definition of "consensus" was valid, it would be impossible to say, "The views of X Do not agree with the consensus". The word doesn't mean absolute unanimity.
 
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