Historical Jesus

[smartcooky]

How can you even know if Carrier's opinion on the Epistles are credible?

How can we even know if your opinion on the Epistles is credible?

As usual, Carrier cannot and will never present any historical evidence for the character called Paul at anytime. Never ever.

As usual, you present you opinions as fact, your beleifs as proof, always

You seem to think that the unsubstantiated claims by Carrier can magically make Paul a figure of history.

You seem to think that your unsubstantiated claims can magically make the Pauline epistles into forgeries.

Only historical evidence is needed-not assumptions.

An opinion that is not unversally shared among other scholars and historians

No NT writer corroborated that Paul wrote a single letter to any Church anywhere at anytime.

And?

 

[smartcooky]

He argues that the absence of extra biblical writings about Jesus makes the likelihood of his existence far less because "Jesus belongs to several myth-heavy reference classes" whereas Paul does not.
https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/7643

I seriously doubt if dejudge will read the link.

Opinionated absolututists who "know" everything are by default closed minded to any contrary views or evidence.

 

[acbytesla]

I seriously doubt if dejudge will read the link.

Opinionated absolututists who "know" everything are by default closed minded to any contrary views or evidence.

What's amusing to me is neither one of is saying he's definitely wrong.

I'm also not saying Carrier is a authority. Hell, Ehrman has borderline called him a crackpot. That said, while Ehrman has done his homework, I don't agree with his logic on some things.

I question whether Jesus existed but I usually don't argue that he didn't simply because there is little reason to. It's much easier to suggest that there is little reason to believe anything written about him is true.

Arguing Paul didn't exist has even less going for it. Even if Paul didn't, it says nothing about Jesus.

 

[dejudge]

How can you even know if Carrier's opinion on the Epistles are credible?

As usual, Carrier cannot and will never present any historical evidence for the character called Paul at anytime. Never ever.

You seem to think that the unsubstantiated claims by Carrier can magically make Paul a figure of history.

Only historical evidence is needed-not assumptions.

No NT writer corroborated that Paul wrote a single letter to any Church anywhere at anytime.

So?

It should be noted that Carrier agrees with the highlighted line. But the Epistles do exist and someone did write them. The question is who and when they were written.

Carrier has no historical evidence whatsoever to answer such questions. He only made assumptions.

Carrier points out that while there are many forgeries of letters attributed to Paul, he's convinced that 6 of them are written by the same person in the 50 to 60CE timeframe and that person is Paul.

What an illogical argument!!!

Where did Carrier get those dates for the Epistles?

Who made up those dates?

None of the so-called Pauline Epistles claim they were written 50-60 CE.

He argues that the absence of extra biblical writings about Jesus makes the likelihood of his existence far less because "Jesus belongs to several myth-heavy reference classes" whereas Paul does not.
https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/7643

Again, how illogical!!!

1. If the existence of Jesus was not likely then how could Paul have written and preached that Jesus was crucified since the time of Aretas?

2. If Jesus was not likely to exist how could he tell the supposed Paul about the Last Supper in the letter to the Corinthians?

3. If Jesus was not likely to exist why did the so-called Paul claim Jesus was God's son born of a woman in Galatians?

4. If Jesus was not likely to exist then why did the Pauline writer claim he saw Jesus after he was raised from the dead?

5. If Jesus was not likely to exist then why is it claimed in a Pauline Epistle that Jesus was God Creator?

If Paul wrote letters 50-60 CE about a character who people in the Roman Empire knew did not exist then he would be regarded as a total liar, an idiot, a madman or a combination.


It is clear to me that if it is likely that Jesus did not exist that Paul was a fabricated character and the Epistles are total fiction invented after stories of Jesus were already known to the authors.

Stories of Jesus were invented sometime in the 2nd century.

Who told Paul about the Last Supper if Jesus was not likely to have existed.??

 

[acbytesla]

Carrier has no historical evidence whatsoever to answer such questions. He only made assumptions.


What an illogical argument!!!

Where did Carrier get those dates for the Epistles?

Who made up those dates?

None of the so-called Pauline Epistles claim they were written 50-60 CE.



Again, how illogical!!!

1. If the existence of Jesus was not likely then how could Paul have written and preached that Jesus was crucified since the time of Aretas?

2. If Jesus was not likely to exist how could he tell the supposed Paul about the Last Supper in the letter to the Corinthians?

3. If Jesus was not likely to exist why did the so-called Paul claim Jesus was God's son born of a woman in Galatians?

4. If Jesus was not likely to exist then why did the Pauline writer claim he saw Jesus after he was raised from the dead?

5. If Jesus was not likely to exist then why is it claimed in a Pauline Epistle that Jesus was God Creator?

If Paul wrote letters 50-60 CE about a character who people in the Roman Empire knew did not exist then he would be regarded as a total liar, an idiot, a madman or a combination.


It is clear to me that if it is likely that Jesus did not exist that Paul was a fabricated character and the Epistles are total fiction invented after stories of Jesus were already known to the authors.

Stories of Jesus were invented sometime in the 2nd century.

Who told Paul about the Last Supper if Jesus was not likely to have existed.??

Take it up with Carrier then. As well as all the many many other historians that disagree with you.

My problem with your assessment is there is about a dozen letters that most historians say are forgeries.and were written in the second and third century. Some that are part of the Bible.

Why would second and third century individuals say they were Paul at that time if there wasn't a Paul?

 

[dejudge]

Take it up with Carrier then. As well as all the many many other historians that disagree with you.

Just as I expected. All you can say is that plenty plenty people believe Paul existed.

My problem with your assessment is there is about a dozen letters that most historians say are forgeries.and were written in the second and third century. Some that are part of the Bible.

Here you go again, telling me what plenty people say!!!!. What letters are you talking about??

Why would second and third century individuals say they were Paul at that time if there wasn't a Paul?

Perhaps, you have never heard of deception!!!

Why did Christian writers falsely claim that the Gospels were written by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John?

Why did Christian writers falsely claim that Epistles were written by Paul, Peter, James, Jude and John?

You don't seem to realise that all the NT authors were invented. Everyone !!


Tertullian's Prescription "Against Heretics"

But if there be any (heresies) which are bold enough to plant themselves in the midst of the apostolic age, that they may thereby seem to have been handed down by the apostles, because they existed in the time of the apostles, we can say: Let them produce the original records of their churches...

Christian writers invented their fake early NT authors to claim that their teachings preceded the heretrics.

 

[HansMustermann]

1. If the existence of Jesus was not likely then how could Paul have written and preached that Jesus was crucified since the time of Aretas?

There are a lot of things that are unlikely to a normal person, that can be very real to a hallucinating schizophrenic.

Or really to someone who really really wants to believe that stuff. I mean, it's more than unlikely that the Earth is flat, in fact it's provably wrong, but we just had someone kill himself with a homemade rocket to prove it's true.

2. If Jesus was not likely to exist how could he tell the supposed Paul about the Last Supper in the letter to the Corinthians?

Given that Paul only saw Jesus in his hallucinations, I'm pretty sure that no real existing Jesus was needed there.

3. If Jesus was not likely to exist why did the so-called Paul claim Jesus was God's son born of a woman in Galatians?

If Sherlock Holmes isn't real, why do people claim that he lives at 221b Baker Street?

4. If Jesus was not likely to exist then why did the Pauline writer claim he saw Jesus after he was raised from the dead?

Schizophrenia?

5. If Jesus was not likely to exist then why is it claimed in a Pauline Epistle that Jesus was God Creator?

If we're at the point of why someone was claimed to be a god, I'm pretty sure it wasn't based on any hard evidence

If Paul wrote letters 50-60 CE about a character who people in the Roman Empire knew did not exist then he would be regarded as a total liar, an idiot, a madman or a combination.

That however is complete nonsense. I mean, seriously? Some random illiterate guys in Corinth would know exactly which guys existed and what they had claimed some 30 years before, at the other end of the Empire? Really?

Who told Paul about the Last Supper if Jesus was not likely to have existed.??

I'm pretty sure people can make that kind of stuff up, especially when they're in regular communication with a ghost.

 

[HansMustermann]

Why did Christian writers falsely claim that the Gospels were written by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John?

Because some earlier sources -- e.g., Papias -- say that there actually were some guys by those names who had written gospels. They're quite clearly not the same gospels we have under the names of Mark, Matthew, Luke and John, but they were already known names. That's why the church tried to claim authorship by them.

Again, that's how forgery worked. If you were going to write someone else's name on the book, it had to be a name that carried more authority than your own. Not invent another nobody that had no authority either. E.g., if you were Larry and wrote a bogus medicine manual, either you signed it that, or went for a more authoritative name like Galen. You didn't sign it Jerry, because that doesn't give it any extra authority than just signing it Larry.

Why did Christian writers falsely claim that Epistles were written by Paul, Peter, James, Jude and John?

Again, because those were already known names for their intended audiences and carried more authority than if you signed it as the epistle of Larry. Once you have people knowing that there was some guy called "James the brother of the Lord" going around earlier and having some kind of authority in the church, people might be more interested in what HE has to say, than in what some contemporary nobody has to say.

It's an appeal to authority, really. It doesn't work if the name you put on it doesn't already carry some authority.

It's basically like why nowadays if you're gonna make up some quote to support a point, you might claim it's from Jefferson or Churchill or Adam Smith or whatever other figure of authority. But it makes little sense to just invent some new nobody that doesn't have more authority than yourself anyway.

E.g., if I wanted to make up a quote about how it's the start of tyranny when the government tells people to stay at home instead of assembling in public, signing it George Washington gives it that bit of extra authority for a certain kind of lemming. But if I just invent some guy called Jerry from Dunwich as the source of the quote, it doesn't really work that way, does it? The only thing that comes to a reader's mind is who the hell is Jerry and why should you care about what Jerry said. I might as well just sign it Hans.

 

[HansMustermann]

I should add at this point that basically whoever was going around starting those tiny congregations -- whether anyone was actually called Paul or Peter or not -- were really small fish and not very likely to attract anyone's attention. Nor to find counter-witnesses. And this goes for those who need to postulate hostile witnesses to make Jesus real too.

The Paul of Acts does miracles and gets into big conflicts with the Jews abroad and all that. Sure, that would have been notable by someone.

But in practice we know that for example the real Corinth hardly had any Jews, nor a synagogue, until the influx of slaves taken in the Jewish revolt.

You must also remember the importance of the temple, before it was destroyed. It was the ONLY place with strong enough magic to take your sins away and whatnot. So the farther away you got from the temple, the less convenient it was for everyone. Unless you were a rich merchant or such, you wouldn't choose to live in a place from which you have to travel half the empire a couple of times a year to conform with your religion.

So anyway, there were VERY few people around who could even theoretically be in a position to go, "nope, I was there, there was a Jesus party at our inn, but that's not what he said before they took him."

Also, you have to understand how all mystery cults worked. The clue is in the name. They wouldn't set up a shoebox on a street corner and start preaching their good news to everyone. Until you were properly initiated into the cult, you wouldn't even know WTH is the big secret of salvation they have. Some even had several degrees of initiation, and it wouldn't be until top level before you were told everything. A lot of people lived and died and never actually got to the level of being initiated enough to be guaranteed to be saved.

What you actually had was some group that fit in someone's living room, where they'd sit and preach their stuff. And we know that was the case for early Xians too, BECAUSE that's why Paul (or whatever the author's name was) brings up the last supper. He has to rule over how much do you have to feed your people, once they came to your house for communion. Apparently some came and expected a proper full meal.

So, anyway, what you had from the point of view of the outside world, was just some group that gathered regularly at someone's house. And whatever they talked about, you wouldn't be there to know, and they'd be told not to talk to you about it because you're not initiated. Hell, you might not even know it's a religious congregation, as opposed to, say, just a bunch of guys discussing philosophy.

So basically even if you happened to be a Jew in Corinth, and let's say happened to actually be from Nazareth and to have been in Jerusalem for passover in 32AD, you couldn't really be a hostile witness to challenge the Xians version. They wouldn't even tell you WTH they're talking about when they meet at someone's house, much less ask for your opinion.

 

[Darat]

..... Also, you have to understand how all mystery cults worked. The clue is in the name. They wouldn't set up a shoebox on a street corner and start preaching their good news to everyone. Until you were properly initiated into the cult, you wouldn't even know WTH is the big secret of salvation they have. Some even had several degrees of initiation, and it wouldn't be until top level before you were told everything. A lot of people lived and died and never actually got to the level of being initiated enough to be guaranteed to be saved.....


And the same is true today, Scientology is again a classic modern example.

 

[HansMustermann]

Well, there are some other differences from 1st century cults, but as the modus operandi goes, yep, Scientology is indeed as close as you can get to an ancient mystery cult.

 

[dejudge]

1. If the existence of Jesus was not likely then how could Paul have written and preached that Jesus was crucified since the time of Aretas?

There are a lot of things that are unlikely to a normal person, that can be very real to a hallucinating schizophrenic.

Or really to someone who really really wants to believe that stuff. I mean, it's more than unlikely that the Earth is flat, in fact it's provably wrong, but we just had someone kill himself with a homemade rocket to prove it's true.

Don't you realise how brutally absurd your explanations are?

If Paul was a known hallucinating schizophrenic since the time of Aretas it makes no sense at all, none whatsoever, that normal people in the Roman Empire who knew Jesus did not exist to accept Paul's hallucinating idiotic madness that people should worship a non-existing crucified man as a God.

Perhaps, you have no idea that people in the Roman Empire were already worshiping real Emperors as Gods.

I give all your explanations a minus zero. [-0]

 

[HansMustermann]

Also, since Acts is thrown about a lot at this point, along with claims that the author claimed this or that, let's clear that up a bit.

The bulk of Acts is basically written by the same gLuke that wrote the gospel. In fact, it's the sequel to the gospel. It starts directly where the gospel ends.

(And since at that point they had a trilogy of gospels, and his name was Lucas, we can only be thankful that he didn't decide to do a prequel trilogy)

Not only he says so, but it's the same style, down to word usage and whatnot. So yeah, that's gLuke writing it.

EXCEPT it's not all of it. There are whole chunks, and big ones at that, that don't match his style at all, and make claims that conflict with the rest of it in some way or another.

One example are the "we" sections, where essentially the author becomes some protagonist that travelled with Paul. Not only the style doesn't match, or in what person it's written doesn't match, but basically it contradicts that 'great historian' claim that gLuke makes at the beginning of the gospel. There he claims to have researched this kinda stuff, while here he's travelling and meeting with first hand witnesses. Why didn't he make THAT claim about his sources, if that were the case.

Another are the 'trial records'. When people like Peter or Stephen speak in court in Acts, it's a completely different style than gLuke's. Those are definitely not written by the same person that wrote most of Acts.

So at this point there are two main 'theories' among scholars about WTH is with those sections. They're as following:

1. Luke, being such a great historian that he has to say so himself, copied those from earlier texts. Like, he found some speech by someone in court, and just copied it there. Or found some earlier source from someone who actually travelled with Paul, and just copied those pages verbatim.

And it wouldn't even be hard to imagine that Luke is a plagiarist, since most of his Gospel is copied verbatim from Mark and Q. (Whatever Q was. Some make a convincing case that it could have been simply Matthew.)

2. Later forgery.

 

[HansMustermann]

Don't you realise how brutally absurd your explanations are?

If Paul was a known hallucinating schizophrenic since the time of Aretas it makes no sense at all, none whatsoever, that normal people in the Roman Empire who knew Jesus did not exist to accept Paul's hallucinating idiotic madness that people should worship a non-existing crucified man as a God.

No, do YOU realize "how brutally absurd" your premise is that every pauper from the Roman empire knew exactly who had existed and what they had done 30 years ago in a whole other province? Because we know it was very small numbers of people who converted, while the larger mass did not. So for it to even work as an argument, you'd literally need to have NO uninformed people in, say, Corinth about exactly who existed and what they had done in Palestine 30 years ago. Because it you even have like a dozen who are uninformed and gullible enough out of a population of 100,000 or so, that's enough to create Paul's congregations that could fit around someone's dinner table.

But basically forget the ancient uninformed. Even in modern times, when we have the internet and Snopes, if to make your case you need the gullible ignorants to be less than 0.01% of the population, well, that's not a very supportable premise, is it?

Perhaps, you have no idea that people in the Roman Empire were already worshiping real Emperors as Gods.

Ugh. Most didn't. Being deified wasn't taken seriously by most of the population. As in, nobody was actually going to pray at the tomb of Commodus just because some senators said he's a god now. (Yep, the bar was so low, that even Commodus made the cut)

Plus, over time it got to be just a formality, so it meant even less to anyone. By the time of Constantine saying "divus Diocletianus" was literally no more meaningful than saying "the late Diocletian".

But, be that as it may, the fact that SOME people may or may have worshipped the late Augustus, didn't prevent SOME OTHER people from getting into cults of Dionysus, Isis, Mythras, and so on. Basically unless you want to claim that EVERY SINGLE SOUL in the empire, including slaves and peregrini, was worshipping the emperor, I don't see how that contradicts the idea that people got into some other cult.

I give all your explanations a minus zero. [-0]

Yes, well, that is hardly something I'm gonna lose sleep over. If anything, it just makes an argument for why Paul isn't stretching suspension of disbelief either. He too is just another guy who rates reality very low when it conflicts with his own imagination

 

[Darat]

Don't you realise how brutally absurd your explanations are?

If Paul was a known hallucinating schizophrenic since the time of Aretas it makes no sense at all, none whatsoever, that normal people in the Roman Empire who knew Jesus did not exist to accept Paul's hallucinating idiotic madness that people should worship a non-existing crucified man as a God.

Perhaps, you have no idea that people in the Roman Empire were already worshiping real Emperors as Gods.

I give all your explanations a minus zero. [-0]

Which explanations? You really are struggling to understand people.

Hans is not saying Paul certainly existed, he is not saying Jesus existed, keep that in mind and reread his posts.

 

[dejudge]

No, do YOU realize "how brutally absurd" your premise is that every pauper from the Roman empire knew exactly who had existed and what they had done 30 years ago in a whole other province?

Why are you inventing such a false premise? I never ever made such claims at all. Your imagination is running wild.

....Because we know it was very small numbers of people who converted, while the larger mass did not. So for it to even work as an argument, you'd literally need to have NO uninformed people in, say, Corinth about exactly who existed and what they had done in Palestine 30 years ago. Because it you even have like a dozen who are uninformed and gullible enough out of a population of 100,000 or so, that's enough to create Paul's congregations that could fit around someone's dinner table.

But basically forget the ancient uninformed. Even in modern times, when we have the internet and Snopes, if to make your case you need the gullible ignorants to be less than 0.01% of the population, well, that's not a very supportable premise, is it?

Where did you get your statistics from? Your imagination?? In Acts, thousands of people were converted sometimes as much as 3000 persons in a day.

In Corinthians, a Pauline writer claimed there were 10 thousand Christian instructors.

1 Corinthians 4

15 For though ye have ten thousand instructers in Christ, yet have ye not many fathers: for in Christ Jesus I have begotten you through the gospel.

All you do is invent your own hallucinating schizophrenic stories from your imagination.

Your made up story that Paul's congregations could fit around someone's dinner table is unsubstatiated fiction.

 

[HansMustermann]

Well, to be fair, I can sorta see where he's coming from and what he wants to say. But basically it's just the same "there were hostile witnesses" argument that apologists use to make Jesus and even the miracles totally real, just spun around to point at a different conclusion. The logic here seems to be that if everyone didn't know Paul is lying about Jesus, then obviously it must be at a later time where all such witnesses would have died.

I understand that logic, but I disagree with the premise of people being that informed and skeptical.

And it's not just that most people would be uninformed. We have examples from other cults where people DID have first hand witnesses telling them point blank that no, that's wrong, and they continued to believe nonsense anyway.

E.g., in the case of Sabatai Zevi they had first hand witnesses telling that no, he didn't perform any miracles in this or that place, but they continued to believe that he did anyway.

E.g., in the case of David Reubeni you even had David Reubeni himself tell people that no, he's not the messiah... but they continued to believe he's some miraculous messiah anyway. We have at least one documented case of a guy who was told by Reubeni quite bluntly and coldly that no, he's no such thing as their messiah, and you'd think that would settle it once and for all. But no, he concluded that he's not worthy enough for the messiah David Reubeni to talk to him. Derp

So, yeah, I'm not very convinced that a bunch of religious nuts would have been swayed by hostile witnesses, even if there had been any.

 

[HansMustermann]

Where did you get your statistics from? Your imagination?? In Acts, thousands of people were converted sometimes as much as 3000 persons in a day.

Considering that Acts is a novel, well, I'm not much more impressed by that than by the Star Trek episode with where WW2 nazis had energy weapons

In Corinthians, a Pauline writer claimed there were 10 thousand Christian instructors.

1 Corinthians 4

That would be 1 Corinthians 4:15, which in Greek literally starts with "even if you had". So, yeah, "even if you had miriads of instructors in the Lord" is a figure of speech that's quite different from actually claiming that there ARE that many. In fact even in modern parlance, that's how you introduce a hyperbole to make a case.

And that's not the payload of it anyway. What Paul is doing there is claiming that he's the more important one, no matter how many others there could be. Even in the most hyperbolic conditions, he's STILL the one that's important. Basically it doesn't work by majority rule. That's the message there, not exactly how many preachers there were in Corinth. What he's saying is exactly that that exact number of preachers is irrelevant.

All you do is invent your own hallucinating schizophrenic stories from your imagination.

Considering you just produced the above, yeah, project much?

 

[dejudge]

Considering that Acts is a novel, well, I'm not much more impressed by that than by the Star Trek episode with where WW2 nazis had energy weapons

So because Acts is a novel you invent your own novel from your imagination.

[

That would be 1 Corinthians 4:15, which in Greek literally starts with "even if you had". So, yeah, "even if you had miriads of instructors in the Lord" is a figure of speech that's quite different from actually claiming that there ARE that many. In fact even in modern parlance, that's how you introduce a hyperbole to make a case.

The passage I quoted does not start with "even if you had". All you do is invent your own stories about your hallucinating schizophrenic.

1 Corinthians 4

15 For though ye have ten thousand instructers in Christ, yet have ye not many fathers: for in Christ Jesus I have begotten you through the gospel.

 

[HansMustermann]

Considering that I already told you to look at the Greek original, yet you insist that everyone is inventing stuff if they don't stick to your particular translation (presumably because many other translations preserve that "even if"), this is moving from the realm of merely uninformed into the realm of dishonest.

Here, catch: https://biblehub.com/text/1_corinthians/4-15.htm

And I mean, literally, the very first two words are "even if". Well, "if even", technically.

And again, you only need to read until the end of the line to see what is the real claim there. Paul isn't telling them how many instructors there are. What he's saying is pretty much that he doesn't give a flip about how many there may be, he's the one that's important, because he's their "father". Those other guys can't override him, no matter how many of them you may or may not get on your side of the argument. THAT is the claim he's making there.