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Did Jesus really exist?

A Christian Sceptic said:
Did Jesus Exist?:

You might want to read

Jesus: A Historians review of the Gospels by Michael Grant. It's pretty interesting so far.
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I have read that author's books in the past, he's quite good. Is that a new release publication? If so, can you post more info. please. Thanks in advance.

all the best Angelo.
 
There is nothing more negative than the result of critical study of the life of Jesus.
The Jesus of Nazareth who came forward as the Messiah, who preached the ethic of the kingdom of God, who founded the kingdom of heaven upon earth, died to give his work it's final consecration, never had any existence.
This image has not been destroyed from without, it has fallen to pieces, cleft and disintegrated by the concrete historical problems which came to the surface one after another. ~source~ Albert Schweitzer. ''The search for the Historical Jesus''
 
ambnp said:
There is nothing more negative than the result of critical study of the life of Jesus.
The Jesus of Nazareth who came forward as the Messiah, who preached the ethic of the kingdom of God, who founded the kingdom of heaven upon earth, died to give his work it's final consecration, never had any existence.
This image has not been destroyed from without, it has fallen to pieces, cleft and disintegrated by the concrete historical problems which came to the surface one after another. ~source~ Albert Schweitzer. ''The search for the Historical Jesus''
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I think it may be misleading to present that quotation without context. Schweitzer did believe that there was a historical Jesus, a Jewish apocalypticist; indeed he insisted that "it must be admitted that there are few characters of antiquity about whom we possess so much indubitably historical information, of whom we have so many authentic discourses." He simply believed that the historical-Jesus scholars of his day were engaged in a fool's errand to extrapolate from the Gospels a Jesus who conformed to their own values and attitudes; that there was not enough biographical material in the Gospels to justify their conclusions; and that such efforts could not ultimately hope to clarify who the Son of God was in either his historical or spiritual dimensions.
 
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What Schweitzer is pointing out is that the ''biblical'' Jesus had no existence.
Their may well have been a mad fire and brimstone preaching rabbi with alternative ideas roaming the Judean countryside. But it was not the exalted Jesus of the N/T. He was no more than a mortal preacher who may have drawn people to his sermons by his charasmatic personality.
 
A Christian Sceptic said:
Did Jesus Exist?:

You might want to read

Jesus: A Historians review of the Gospels by Michael Grant. It's pretty interesting so far.
Click to expand...


And the conclusion is:
Conclusion

When we compare the standard historicist theory (SHT) with Doherty's ahistoricist or "mythicist" theory (DMT) by the criteria of the Argument to the Best Explanation, I must admit that, at present, Doherty wins on at least four out of the six criteria (scope, power, plausibility, and ad hocness ; I think DMT is equal to SHT on the fifth criterion of disconfirmation ; neither SHT nor DMT wins on the sixth and decisive criterion). In other words, Doherty's theory is simply superior in almost every way in dealing with all the facts as we have them. However, it is not overwhelmingly superior, and that leaves a lot of uncertainty. For all his efforts, Jesus might have existed after all. But until a better historicist theory is advanced, I have to conclude it is at least somewhat more probable that Jesus didn't exist than that he did. I say this even despite myself, as I have long been an opponent of ahistoricity.
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http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/richard_carrier/jesuspuzzle.html#Conclusion
 
When you finally stop celebrating, you may have a look at John Shelby Spong's latest book ''Jesus For The non Religious'' He just about knocks every story about Jesus on the head until there's precious little left.
Of course you have to realize that the man is a retired Bishop [of Newark,] therefore he stills clings to a very weak and about to snap at anytime thread of string.
Yea, yea. happy birthday. I don't understand why people celebrate getting older and ever closer to oblivion.
 
ambnp said:
What Schweitzer is pointing out is that the ''biblical'' Jesus had no existence.
Their may well have been a mad fire and brimstone preaching rabbi with alternative ideas roaming the Judean countryside. But it was not the exalted Jesus of the N/T. He was no more than a mortal preacher who may have drawn people to his sermons by his charasmatic personality.
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Personally, I believed Jesus didn't exist for quite a while. This was mainly because I had studied Kabbalah and there was so much symbology relating to his name alone, that I felt it was clear to me that the whole story was essentially just a means to hide some esoteric symbology.

However, whilst checking out some of the claims of the internet CT movie, Zeitgeist, I became no longer so convinced. When one considers the more mystical texts from the era, notably the so-called Gnostic Gospels mostly revived from Nag Hammadi, there is evident a considerable condensation of both symbolic mystical knowledge and direct teaching present. To me it does point to one individual from this era being the source.

If you examine simply the beliefs of orthodox Christianity it is relatively easy to dismiss Jesus. I think it's a lot harder from the mystical perspective. If not a living being of the era, who then was the source of, say, the Gospel of Thomas?

Of course, for this argument to have any validity, one does have to be familiar with Christian mysticism from this era and to what the symbology and direct teachings are pointing. Which I figure is why one doesn't hear much about it.

Nick
 
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I think the Gospel of Thomas was from a pre Markan group of Jews who believed the end of the age was just around the corner. It may have been the same group who were responsible for the so called document known as Q. Thomas and Q are both sayings gospels, more gnostic in nature than the later gospels of Mark. Mathew, Luke and John which could be as late as the beginning of the second century.
All had in common the idea of a kingdom of god on earth. All had their own interpretations of how this was to be achieved. This hosh posh of differing groups are responsible for the gospels and really shed no light on a historical Jesus at all, only on a man-god Jesus, or an exalted Jesus if you prefer.
 
ambnp said:
I think the Gospel of Thomas was from a pre Markan group of Jews who believed the end of the age was just around the corner. It may have been the same group who were responsible for the so called document known as Q. Thomas and Q are both sayings gospels, more gnostic in nature than the later gospels of Mark. Mathew, Luke and John which could be as late as the beginning of the second century.
All had in common the idea of a kingdom of god on earth. All had their own interpretations of how this was to be achieved. This hosh posh of differing groups are responsible for the gospels and really shed no light on a historical Jesus at all, only on a man-god Jesus, or an exalted Jesus if you prefer.
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Looking at it purely from the perspective of answering the question of whether Jesus lived or not, it seems to me that there is a depth of awareness present in the sayings attributed to Jesus consistent with them having emerged from an authentic mystery school likely with a single figurehead.

Of course, this is just my opinion and hard to substantiate academically, but I feel it's a valid perspective to consider. The symbology - Jesus as a solar deity - one can find in other, earlier places and certainly could have been simply a result of the growth in mystical awareness well known to be present around the Mediterranean basin at the time. But the sayings - Jesus as an embodiment of the logos - are a bit harder for me. Where would they have come from?

Nick
 
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ambnp said:
The facts are that there were no eyewitnesses to the Jesus legend.
The whole story is hearsay. The earliest writings we have belong to Paul who was writing at least 20 years after the supposed death of Jesus, by which time the myth had time to grow out of all propotions to the facts.
Voice recorders were 2000 years into the future . Imagine word of mouth year after year being reliably told with no mistakes whatsoever? No way Hosea.
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One need not assume the only errors were word of mouth "transcription" errors, or flowery embellishment either.

Full-blown fraudulent invention is certainly a possibility when one wants to get supporters to give you money so you can have a cushy life. Books were hard to come by, as was reading itself. Who's to know, seven towns over, that you aren't altering some other religion, claiming you have the true variant?


I recall somewhere in my tweens learning about Paul and how he wasn't even an apostle, and something seemed wrong, very very wrong about that.

Nah, he was the reason Christianity survived rather than vaporizing to an also-ran of history. He massively expanded on it and became the de facto leader. He inhaled some texts floating around at that time that were reasonably successful at extracting money from the hoi polloi, added his own BS story about some magical, but as usual, secret, encounter with Holiness, and in flowed the cash and power.
 
DOC said:
There were many eyewitnesses to the resurrected Jesus.

The apostle John. -- John 21: 24

The apostle Peter -- 2 Peter 1: 16

And over 250 eyewitnesses were "still alive" when Paul wrote his epistles.
1 Corinthians 15; 6

And do you think an intellectual like Paul would have went through these kinds of beatings:

(2 Corinthians 11; 24-28)

if he wasn't convinced of the evidence that changed him from someone who persecuted Christians to probably the greatest evangelist of all time.
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I think the crucifixion is definitely suspect, whether Jesus lived or not. Although the cross has long-time been a Christian symbol, the crucifix is pretty recent, I've heard. I've been told there are also very early Coptic iconic images of the Crucifixion in which the cross is standing up, surrounded by soldiers, some of whom are jabbing spears at the place where a body would be hung on it...but there's no body there. They stab into thin air.

I think there could well have been a major spiritual figure around at the time, who was teaching in the area and who set up mystery schools. But the crucifixion is purely symbolic, if you ask me.

As to Jesus in general, the issue of lack of eyewitness reports, from guys like Philo, is also pretty major, I think.

Nick
 
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Nick227 said:
I think the crucifixion is definitely suspect, whether Jesus lived or not. Although the cross has long-time been a Christian symbol, the crucifix is pretty recent, I've heard.
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Interestingly, what is believed to be the the earliest known surviving visual depiction of a crucified Christ, the Alexamenos graffito, believed to date from no later than the 200s, was not made by a Christian but by a pagan presumably mocking a Christian acquaintance. Even crosses, though, are not commonly found until sometime after prohibitions on Christianity were dropped in the fourth century. Earlier Christian crosses, in fact, tended to be disguised in other pictorial elements. An actual crucifix (that is, cross plus corpus) is a very open statement; it makes sense to me that an artistic tradition employing them (at least widely enough for examples to have survived) would not have arisen during the period when Christianity was essentially an underground movement.


Nick227 said:
I've been told there are also very early Coptic iconic images of the Crucifixion in which the cross is standing up, surrounded by soldiers, some of whom are jabbing spears at the place where a body would be hung on it...but there's no body there. They stab into thin air.
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That's interesting. Do you have any links to more information?


Nick227 said:
I think there could well have been a major spiritual figure around at the time, who was teaching in the area and who set up mystery schools. But the crucifixion is purely symbolic, if you ask me.
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One difficulty I have with that is that even the earliest Christian sources - well before explicit representations of the Crucifixion became conventional in Christianity - manifest belief in the Crucifixion without any indication that they believed it in a different way (e.g. figuratively rather than literally) than later Christians. Indeed, the earliest Christian text supposed (at least by a majority of scholars, according to earlychristianwritings.com) to have been composed is a now-lost pre-Markan account of the trial and crucifixion of Jesus, probably composed between AD 30-60 - which, if Mark is any guide, presumably presented the events as historical.
 
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ceo_esq said:
That's interesting. Do you have any links to more information?

One difficulty I have with that is that even the earliest Christian sources - well before explicit representations of the Crucifixion became conventional in Christianity - manifest belief in the Crucifixion without any indication that they believed it in a different way (e.g. figuratively rather than literally) than later Christians. Indeed, the earliest Christian text supposed (at least by a majority of scholars, according to earlychristianwritings.com) to have been composed is a now-lost pre-Markan account of the trial and crucifixion of Jesus, probably composed between AD 30-60 - which, if Mark is any guide, presumably presented the events as historical.
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Thank you for an interesting and informative response. I don't have a link to the picture I described. I heard the statement in a recent-ish lecture by the Gnostic, Stephan Hoeller. He himself said he couldn't recall the actual book it was in, aside that it was an authoratative work on iconography. I could ask him, I suppose, he's still alive as far as I know.

What is your position on Jesus - real or imaginary?

Nick
 
The whole scenario of the crucifixion is a whole lot of contradictions and possibly fraudulent story telling. For example the gospels state that a trial was held headed by Pilate himself which in normal circumstances does not occur. Pilate would have a subordinate to head the trial not himself, remembering that Jebus had not yet become the christ therefore not important enough to bother Pilate himself. Secondly, Pilate spoke Latin while Jebus spoke Aramaic. How did they converse without an interpreter. The gospels say that they conversed back and forth without one. Thirdly, all this happened in one night, the arrest, the trial, not to mention that he was sent back to Herod, and then back again to Pilate. They never had cars in those days, transport was either walking or on horse back which would have taken at least 2-3 days. So it was impossible for all this to occur in one night as stated by the bable.
 
ambnp said:
The whole scenario of the crucifixion is a whole lot of contradictions and possibly fraudulent story telling. For example the gospels state that a trial was held headed by Pilate himself which in normal circumstances does not occur. Pilate would have a subordinate to head the trial not himself, remembering that Jebus had not yet become the christ therefore not important enough to bother Pilate himself. Secondly, Pilate spoke Latin while Jebus spoke Aramaic. How did they converse without an interpreter. The gospels say that they conversed back and forth without one. Thirdly, all this happened in one night, the arrest, the trial, not to mention that he was sent back to Herod, and then back again to Pilate. They never had cars in those days, transport was either walking or on horse back which would have taken at least 2-3 days. So it was impossible for all this to occur in one night as stated by the bable.
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I don't have a problem with saying that the crucifixion of Jesus is essentially a symbolic act that has become woven into a mythos presented as fact.

Where I struggle these days with the "Jesus didn't exist" perspective is around the dialogues and stories of the NT and the Apocrypha. Why is there so much direct teaching presented as dialogue, if no one said it? Why bother with this mode of presentation? And how do we account for the origination of the direct teaching (as opposed to symbolism) if it didn't come from one person?

Nick
 
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ambnp said:
The whole scenario of the crucifixion is a whole lot of contradictions and possibly fraudulent story telling. For example the gospels state that a trial was held headed by Pilate himself which in normal circumstances does not occur. Pilate would have a subordinate to head the trial not himself, remembering that Jebus had not yet become the christ therefore not important enough to bother Pilate himself. Secondly, Pilate spoke Latin while Jebus spoke Aramaic. How did they converse without an interpreter. The gospels say that they conversed back and forth without one. Thirdly, all this happened in one night, the arrest, the trial, not to mention that he was sent back to Herod, and then back again to Pilate. They never had cars in those days, transport was either walking or on horse back which would have taken at least 2-3 days. So it was impossible for all this to occur in one night as stated by the bable.
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I'm not sure that I would make those particular arguments. For one, the easy answer as to how they conversed back and forth would be "Greek". We have no evidence that Jesus spoke Greek, but he might have. Around that time there seems to have been a movement among some Jews to dissociate themselves from Greek speakers and Greek philosophy, so it is entirely possible that he would not have spoken Greek. Pilate certainly would have as an educated Roman citizen.

As for the arrest, trial, etc. the story of taking Jesus to Herod occurs in only one gospel that I am aware of -- Luke -- and in that story Herod is specifically said to be in Jerusalem at the time, so the transportation issue shouldn't arise.

As to whether or not Pilate would have heard the case or not I can't comment.

Regarding language use, I think there is a better argument to be made against another story in John's gospel when Jesus speaks to Nicodemus about being born from above/born again. The conversation rests on an equivocation over a Greek word that can mean born a second time or from above. Jesus and Nicodemus, both being Jewish, would have been speaking aramaic in that situation (and there is no equivocation over this sort of word in aramaic), so the conversation doesn't make historical sense. It is pure invention for theological purposes.
 
Ichneumonwasp said:
Regarding language use, I think there is a better argument to be made against another story in John's gospel when Jesus speaks to Nicodemus about being born from above/born again. The conversation rests on an equivocation over a Greek word that can mean born a second time or from above. Jesus and Nicodemus, both being Jewish, would have been speaking aramaic in that situation (and there is no equivocation over this sort of word in aramaic), so the conversation doesn't make historical sense. It is pure invention for theological purposes.
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What does the actual Aramaic word mean in English?

From my personal understanding of Christian mysticism I would say that being "born again" refers to the process probably best related as "ego death and subsequent rebirth." Being born "from above" is similar but adds the extra concept of being "born again in the spiritual realm," relating to the Platonic notion of there being an archetypal realm from which our world descends.

Nick
 
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