Kapyong
Graduate Poster
Entirely fair.
I tend to the view that Jesus is a mythical as Adam and Eve.
Kapyong
Historical Jesus
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Entirely fair.
I tend to the view that Jesus is a mythical as Adam and Eve.
Kapyong
Kapyong
Graduate Poster
Why didn't anyone point out that Jesus did not exist ?
When could they have done that ?
Who could claim Jesus did not exist ?
How could they have known ?
Where would they have lived ?
Why would they do that ?
Everything we know about the alleged historical Jesus comes from the Gospels (there is nothing historical about the alleged Jesus in Paul to disagree with, nor the early epistles.)
When ?
But the Gospels did not become known and discussed until over a century after the alleged Jesus :
All the many Christian writers from every decade 70s thru the 140s show no knowledge of the Gospels or their contents.
The first Christian writer on record to clearly have his hands on something like our Gospels was Justin Martyr in the 150s (although they were not yet named, and his quotes do not always match the Gospels.)
The first pagan writer to discuss and criticise the Gospels was Celsus in the 170s - he called the Gospels fiction based on myths (so naturally his book was burned, only some quotes remain.)
Who ?
Who could have even known that Jesus did not exist ? Only someone who lived in Jerusalem during the 30s, someone who then lived until the 150s to become aware of the Gospels.
How ?
How could you even know someone did not exist ? Only if you knew everyone, and knew everything important that went on in Jerusalem for that entire period (otherwise you might have just missed the alleged Jesus somehow.)
Where ?
The Gospels were not published in Jerusalem. G.Mark was most likely published in Rome, others later in maybe Antioch and Alexandria. Only someone who lived in Jerusalem in the 30s, then moved to those places, and lived until around the 150s - 170s (about 160 years of age at least) would even be able to read the Gospels to begin doubting them.
Why ?
Why would someone from these gullible times which believed everything and anything about all sorts of nonsense - people who almost universally believed whatever someone told them - even imagine that a historical Jesus didn't exist ?
So, to sum up - the only person who could have claimed Jesus did not exist would have been :
The empty set.
When could they have done that ?
Who could claim Jesus did not exist ?
How could they have known ?
Where would they have lived ?
Why would they do that ?
Everything we know about the alleged historical Jesus comes from the Gospels (there is nothing historical about the alleged Jesus in Paul to disagree with, nor the early epistles.)
When ?
But the Gospels did not become known and discussed until over a century after the alleged Jesus :
All the many Christian writers from every decade 70s thru the 140s show no knowledge of the Gospels or their contents.
The first Christian writer on record to clearly have his hands on something like our Gospels was Justin Martyr in the 150s (although they were not yet named, and his quotes do not always match the Gospels.)
The first pagan writer to discuss and criticise the Gospels was Celsus in the 170s - he called the Gospels fiction based on myths (so naturally his book was burned, only some quotes remain.)
Who ?
Who could have even known that Jesus did not exist ? Only someone who lived in Jerusalem during the 30s, someone who then lived until the 150s to become aware of the Gospels.
How ?
How could you even know someone did not exist ? Only if you knew everyone, and knew everything important that went on in Jerusalem for that entire period (otherwise you might have just missed the alleged Jesus somehow.)
Where ?
The Gospels were not published in Jerusalem. G.Mark was most likely published in Rome, others later in maybe Antioch and Alexandria. Only someone who lived in Jerusalem in the 30s, then moved to those places, and lived until around the 150s - 170s (about 160 years of age at least) would even be able to read the Gospels to begin doubting them.
Why ?
Why would someone from these gullible times which believed everything and anything about all sorts of nonsense - people who almost universally believed whatever someone told them - even imagine that a historical Jesus didn't exist ?
So, to sum up - the only person who could have claimed Jesus did not exist would have been :
- living in Jerusalem in the 30s, even the 00s as well,
- was well aware of everything that happened in Jerusalem in those times,
- lived for at least 160s years,
- moved to Rome (or maybe Antioch or Alexandria) - or at least lived for a few more decades until the Gospels eventually arrived in Jerusalem,
- and also someone had a sceptical doubtful mind, while living in a totally gullible world.
The empty set.
Roger Ramjets
Philosopher
Then let's see the evidence - not 'scholars' telling me I have to believe them for 'reasons'.
Tassman
Graduate Poster
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I’m not a biblical scholar and I suspect you are not either. So, I guess we can only rely on the expertise of those who are. And modern scholarship in this area relies upon higher criticism and historical-critical methodology.
The seven “authentic” Pauline letters are in all probability by the same author because of the similarity of literary structure and style and the use of a common vocabulary, idioms, common phrases and sentence structure etc. etc. etc.
Re. the highlighted bit (and the bit in bold) - as I just explained above in post 1394 ; we actually do have a huge mass of completely undeniable evidence (most would call it absolute "proof") which shows that the gospel stories of Jesus were invented ... the writers were creating myths about a messiah who was believed from many hundreds of years before in OT prophecy. Those appear to be the undeniable facts.
And at that time, Jewish people in that region believed that OT prophecy was a certainty so pure and undeniable that it came from God himself. The coming of the messiah had to be true, because it was a God-given "fact".
Do we have, to use your highlighted words, "enough information" to "determine" that the stories were being created as religious myth intended to fulfil what were believed to the infallible prophecies of God? Well, yes! As just explained in post 1394, we now have an absolute mountain of undeniable evidence that shows those stories were untrue invented myth making about a promised messiah from the word of God in scriptural prophecy.
I think people here (inc. you in that above quoted post) are confusing or conflating the idea of "proof" vs the idea of mere "evidence". We have loads of evidence showing how the biblical stories of Jesus are quite definitely invented myth. That really cannot be in doubt. What we don't have, and what is impossible in any such situation, is literal "proof" that no such preacher named Jesus (or actually, named Yehoshua, Joshua, Iesous) could possibly have existed in any way at all in the 1st century AD.
It's an impossible demand to say that we must show "proof" that no such person could have existed. But if the demand is only that we show evidence that he did not exist (and that's the only credible & realistic demand that anyone could truly make), then there is a huge mass of evidence for that.
Also as I think someone just pointed out above – the burden of “proof”/evidence here is not on any sceptics who say that they doubt the existence of Jesus, it is instead upon those who say he was certainly real (eg almost all bible scholars) and those who say the evidence shows or suggests that he was most probably real (which means a claim of showing better than 50% likelihood).
I am not saying that he did not exist. I am not even saying that the probability of his existence is less than 50%. I don't think it's possible to guess at any percentage. But what I am saying is that the actual evidence that we do now have, is that such stories contain so much myth-making, and are so similar to all the other hundreds & thousands of other religions that are now universally rejected as clearly untrue products of ancient uneducated superstition etc., that now in the 21st century they (the Jesus stories) have to be dismissed as not credible or reliable any more as accounts of actual real events.
On which note, it's also worth pointing out that the Jesus figure we are talking about actually IS the miraculous figure of the bible! There is no other Jesus. A Jesus figure who never performed any of the acts in the gospels, is NOT what was ever claimed to be a living or real person by any of those who produced the stories in the first place. A “historical Jesus” of that kind is an invention from modern-day biblical scholars (ie over, say, that last 200 years) who have slowly come to accept that they cannot any longer accept the miracles as true … and so what they have done in order to keep the possibility of Jesus alive as a real 1st century person who was/is the entire foundation/basis of the religion today, is to simply claim that they can cross out or erase almost every significant thing that was ever said about him! How valid is that supposed to be? How valid is it to completely change the original claim by crossing out almost everything that was described for this person? …
… on what basis are they claiming that it's valid to cross it all out? Well, the basis is that unless they do cross it all out then the stories become untenable and clearly shown as myth-making!
abaddon
Penultimate Amazing
So you think that some bloke existed 2,000 years ago is somehow an extraordinary claim? Good look with that.
Now you have moved on to the strawman that some bloke existed to the consequence that aliens are house guests? Really?
Nope. The claim is that maybe some bloke existed. I fail to see what faeries have to do with.
Look to thine own.
And those ancient gullible had shedloads of itinerant apocalyptic preachers. Wingnuts preaching the end of the world. Hell, we still have them to this day.
False. As a moments thought would inform you.
And according to you Jerusalem therefore cannot possibly exist.
Nor does Israel, Gallilee, Bethlehem, Asherah, or any of it exist merely by dint of mention in the holey babble.
You really haven't thought this through.
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I was saying that certainty in the matter is not evidence based because the evidence is just not there. If DeJudge were just saying, Jesus probably didn't exist, that is not a particularly controversial claim. I would just say, he's probably wrong. He isn't saying that. He's saying that he is certain that the evidence shows that Jesus, the Apostles, and Paul definitely did not exist. Those claiming either that there probably was or probably was not a real person have loads of evidence to support the claim. None of it is very good.
Deification of actual historical people was a fairly common thing in the ancient past. Its a mildly interesting question as to which gods were based on real people and which weren't and what evidence there is. Lots of ancient people claimed ancestry from some god or mythical hero. Those myths do not prove that those ancient people had no ancestor.
DeJudge's argument seems to be something to the effect of, "the available records of Jesus contain obvious falsehoods therefore there could not have been any person named Jesus that the Gospels are based on nor could Paul or the other characters in the Bible have existed" His argument would also mean that Pontius Pilate did not exist either. That is a fairly silly argument. To apply it to your analogy about aliens. Since there are loads of books about aliens visiting the earth that are obviously false, there can't be any alien life elsewhere in the universe.
It would only be a worthless argument if DeJudge wasn't making such a strong claim. He seems to think that Paul and the Apostles didn't exist because the were mentioned in the Bible. Again, like saying that Prince John didn't exist because he was a character in Robin Hood.
This is easily the most ignorant thing I've seen posted in this thread. Certainty has no bearing on relevance or the truth. The only reason you are so clearly wrong about the existence of Jesus, Paul, and the Apostles is because of your certainty. If you were just as certain that Jesus was a real person, you would still be just as wrong.
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abaddon - I think you are forgetting something - we know that the foundational character/entity of a religion are made up in every recent religion. For Jesus to have actually been the creator/originator of Christianity would make him the exception. We have no reason to simply assume he may have existed in any form, there is much more evidence against him existing even as a person.
IMHO there is a spectrum of beliefs about Jesus.
A. Definitely existed, the Gospels are either entirely true or basically true.
B. Definitely existed but just as a human being and the Gospels are basically true but for the miracles.
C. Probably existed as a human man but the Gospels don't tell us much about him.
D. I don't know
E. Probably didn't exist in any form.
F. Definitely didn't exist in any form.
The underlined are unsupported by the evidence. A is clearly false. If you believe B through E, you are reasonable.
A. Definitely existed, the Gospels are either entirely true or basically true.
B. Definitely existed but just as a human being and the Gospels are basically true but for the miracles.
C. Probably existed as a human man but the Gospels don't tell us much about him.
D. I don't know
E. Probably didn't exist in any form.
F. Definitely didn't exist in any form.
The underlined are unsupported by the evidence. A is clearly false. If you believe B through E, you are reasonable.
Just on that I think (but who can be sure) that there is a communication issue with dejudge, what I think they are saying is that we know the characters as described in the accounts we do have did not exist. And we can say that with 100% certainty.
In other words no one turned wine to water, Paul wasn't visited by the spirit of Christmas past (may be getting my ghost stories mixed up).
I then think they are saying that because of that we have nothing that describes these figures, we remove the nonsense and we have nothing left so why do we try to find a way to make these characters "exist".
(I could be totally wrong in my interpretation!)
Just as I expected you will never provide any historical evidence for your Jesus. All you will always do is just list names of people who believe their Jesus lived.
Bart Ehrman, Dr. James D G Dunn and Dr. Michael Grant have never ever presented any historical corroborative evidence for their Jesus. Never ever.
Ehrman is most absurd in his argument for an HJ.
See Bart Ehrman's Did Jesus Exist? page 46.
Ehrman admits
See Bart Ehrman's Did Jesus Exist? page 71.
Ehrman states
Now, look at Bart Ehrman's Did Jesus Exist? page 74.
Ehrman declares
He admitted that the Gospels are not eyewitness accounts of the life of Jesus and were falsely attributed to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John but yet stated that they should be treated as historical sources for Jesus of Nazareth.
How completely ridiculous!!!
There is simply no historical evidence anywhere at all for an HJ so please stop wasting time.
HJ is derived from fiction in the NT.
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Of course people existed 2000 years ago. Of course Jewish religious preachers existed 2000 years ago in that small region of Judea. But that is not evidence that the biblical Jesus existed!
Not only did religious people exist in Judea 2000 years ago, but those same people also invented all manner of untrue stories and beliefs about almost every aspect of their religion. They claimed to encounter flying angels and demons ... they claimed to hear the voice of God ... they claimed to witness countless miracles ... they claimed to see Jesus risen from the dead ... they claimed to hear Jesus speaking ordinary coherent sentences whilst nailed to a cross. People claimed to see, hear, & witness almost everything imaginable when it came to them recounting or preaching their religious faith.
The issue is whether or not there is sufficient evidence of a real Jesus ever known to anyone, sufficient to conclude that it amounts to a better than 50% chance that Jesus was real. IOW which writer at that time gave an account of Jesus that is convincing at a level of better than 50% that he had personally encountered Jesus, or else that he named someone else who was trustworthy to greater than 50% when claiming that he had known Jesus.
Or to put that another way – who was it that actually ever encountered a living (or dead) Jesus? And the answer appears to be … nobody! Certainly not Paul, and certainly not any of the gospel writers. And anyone apart from those biblical writers, is even less likely or believable as a source of any personal honest knowledge of Jesus.
What we have is a Jesus who was actually unknown to everyone at the time, except for being “known” to them as a belief taken from their most ancient prophetic God-given scripture.
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When I asked for clarification, I got:
That seems pretty clearly that there wasn't even a preacher or carpenter named Jesus some 2000 years ago. He also argues that neither Paul nor the Apostles existed, which almost nobody, not even most published mythicists claim. Not just that Paul wasn't visited by a ghost but that Paul didn't even exist either.
abaddon
Penultimate Amazing
Correct. Nobody ever lived in Jerusalem as it doesn't exist.
Nobody knew what happened in Jerusalem since it was mythical and didn't exist.
The 160 years thing is a bizarre invention all your own.
Since the holey babble talks about Antioch and alexandria, they cannot exist
Skeptical you are not. Driven by an ideology, quite plausible.
abaddon
Penultimate Amazing
That is not the HJ claim and you know it.
How absurd can you be!!! If Jesus did not exist how could he have chosen 12 disciples in the time of Pilate?
In addition, the writer called Paul is caught lying when he claimed he saw the resurrected Jesus and met at least two apostles when none of them existed.
Jesus, the disciples and Paul are all fiction characters.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_L._Brodie
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruno_Bauer
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Drews
Who said that Jerusalem doesn't exist? You just said that, but who else ever said that?
Just because Jerusalem exists, that is zero evidence that Jesus existed.
What do you think exists as actual evidence (anything at all) of anyone ever making a credible claim to say that they had met or seen Jesus?
If nobody ever wrote to make a credible claim of meeting Jesus, then all you have as "evidence" is the anonymously written hearsay in “copies” produced centuries later ... and that is just not credible as reliable evidence, and especially not when all of that anonymous hearsay was filled from end-to-end with accounts of miracles & the supernatural, which at that time everyone was only too willing to accept as certain fact (because it was deeply religious & claimed to derive ultimately from the word of God himself), but which 2000 years later is now known to be almost certainly & very clearly, mere religious fanatical invention.
Are gospel stories like that “evidence”? Well they are evidence of how gullible and superstitious people were 2000 years ago. But that's about all. It is clearly not credible as evidence of any real Jesus ever known to anyone.
If anyone makes a claim to say a HJ existed, then the burden is upon them to produce the evidence. What is the evidence? The gospels? Paul's letters??
Where in any of the gospels or letters does it give a credible account of anyone ever meeting a real Jesus?
Even the people named as the authors of the canonical gospels have since turned out not to be the true authors ... the actual authors are anonymous ... they were anonymous authors repeating hearsay stories of the miraculous and the supernatural.
And Paul's letters also describe belief in a supernatural Jesus who was unknown to the author.
If you believe there is evidence of Jesus shown in the gospels or letters of the bible, then it is evidence of the supernatural … because that is how Jesus was repeatedly and insistently described there.
Kapyong
Graduate Poster
Pardon ?
If that's some sort of bizarre joke, then I don't get it.
Jerusalem obviously DID exist, and STILL exists.
I never claimed otherwise, and I have never seen anyone claim Jerusalem didn't exist.
In fact I clearly explained that covers the period from the 30s when the alleged Jesus was active, to the 150s (or 170s) when the Gospels became known to the wider Christian community (and then pagan critics a little later.)
Was that explanation too complex for you ?
Bizarre. No connection to my post at all. Obviously Antioch and Alexandria DID exist. Did you read my post in a hurry with your eyes closed ?
Are you feeling OK ?
Perhaps you need a nice cup of tea and a lie down
Kapyong
Kapyong
Graduate Poster
Yup -
a large collection of writings from many early Christians - and yet NONE of them contain a credible claim of meeting Jesus !
Paul
Paul never met a historical Jesus, and never claimed to.
He did claim to have had revelations "thru Christ" etc.
He did claim to have had a vision of Christ.
And others (Acts) claim Paul had a vision of Christ.
It is worth noting that Paul does not place Iesous Christos in history :
⦁ No places - Paul never mentions Bethlehem, Nazareth, Galilee, Calvary, etc.
⦁ No Jerusalem connection - Paul never connects Jesus with Jerusalem.
⦁ No dates - Paul never places Iesous Christos in time.
⦁ No names - Paul never mentions Mary, Joseph, Pilate, Judas, Nicodemus, Lazarus etc.
⦁ No miracles - Paul never mentions the miracles/healings of Jesus
⦁ No trial/tomb - Paul never mentions the trial or the empty tomb etc.
Paul's Christos is a heavenly being, not a historical person.
the 500
Paul claims 500 others had a vision of Christ. The Gospels do not mention that, no other writer mentions that, and we have no names or evidence for any of the 500. Even IF it happened - they had a VISION like Paul - nothing historical.
G.Mark
The author of this book never identifies himself, and never claims to have met Jesus. According to tradition, Mark was a secretary of Peter and never met Jesus. This Gospel, like all of them, started out as an un-named book.
G.Matthew
The author of this book never identifies himself, and never claims to have met Jesus. According to tradition it was written by an apostle - but it never says so, and it mentions Matthew without the slightest hint that HE was writing it.
G.Luke
The author of this book never identifies himself, and never claims to have met Jesus. According to tradition it was written by a follower of Paul.
G.John
According to tradition this Gospel was written by the apostle John, and the last chapter says :
"This is the disciple who is testifying to these things and has written them, and we know that his testimony is true."
This is part of a chapter that was added to the Gospels, and it is clearly someone else making a claim for the book. It most certainly does not even come close to specific claim that anyone personally met Jesus.Jude
This letter contains no claim to have met Jesus.
Johanines
1 John contains this passage :
"That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life. 2The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us. 3We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. 4We write this to make our[a] joy complete."
Some believers assert this is a claim to have met Jesus.What did he see and hear? He certainly never says it was Jesus. He just had a spiritual experience and wants to tell everyone about it - "God is light". Nothing here about any historical Jesus at all.
James
There is no claim to have met Jesus in this letter - supposedly from Jesus' BROTHER ! Yet it contains NOTHING anywhere about a historical Jesus, even where we would expect it. It is clear this writer had never even HEARD of a historical Jesus.
Revelation
No claim to have met Jesus.
the Petrines
2 Peter has this passage :
"1.16 For we have not followed cunningly devised fables, when we made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his majesty. For he received from God the Father honour and glory, when there came such a voice to him from the excellent glory, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. And this voice which came from heaven we heard, when we were with him in the holy mount."
Here we see Peter directly claim to have witnessed Jesus' transfiguration. The ONE and ONLY such direct personal claim in the entire NT.But -
2 Peter is the very latest and most suspect book in the whole NT - scholars agree it is a forgery, so do many Christians, ancient and modern. A late and deliberate forgery that claims NOT to be based on "cunningly devised fables" - probably in direct response to critics claims. THAT is the one single book that contains a claim to have met Jesus.
Clement
Never claimed to have met Jesus or anyone who did.
Papias
Does not claim to have met Jesus or anyone who had. He did claim to have met Presbyters who told him what some disciples had said. Discusses two books of Matthew and Mark , not called Gospels, not quite like modern Gospels.
Polycarp
Never claimed to have met Jesus or anyone who did. Irenaeus claimed Polycarp met disciples who met Jesus.
Ignatius
Never claimed to have met Jesus or anyone who did.
Justin
Never claimed to have met anyone who met Jesus. Reviews and quotes UN-NAMED Gospels not quite like ours. The very FIRST to do so.
So,
the entire NT contains only ONE specific claim to have met the alleged Jesus (performing a miracle) - from the most suspect forgery in the whole book.
There is NOT ONE reliable claim by anyone, Christian or not, to have ever met Jesus.
Kapyong
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