Okay, convince me Jesus existed.

[Craig B]

Astrodude

Four or more people aren't going to convene at a secret conference to start a religion out of completely thin air and then have it be incoherent.

I understand that current theory of the origin of the gospels is this:
The earliest is Mark. Matthew and Luke used Mark as a source, and they also had another source in common, unknown to Mark - the "sayings source" or "Q". M and L were unaware of each other, so where they are not guided by Mark or Q, they offer very different versions of the same events.

That is why they have different birth and post-resurrection stories, for Mark, at least in the best early manuscripts, says nothing about these things.

So, no "secret conference" was required to achieve the observed result of partial agreement plus incoherence.

 

[Craig B]

Kapyong

Thanks for your exhaustive review of the absence of references to Jesus in the ancient sources.

I explored a little of this in
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?p=7413303#post7413303 and later in the same thread, but you expound vastly more, and I will copy and keep it.

 

[Kapyong]

Gday,

The best evidence for the existence of Jesus is the strange incoherence of the gospels. There are gaps, inconsistencies, misquotations of the Hebrew Bible, etc. If you were making something like this up, you wouldn't have that as much.

Nonsense.
Greek myths are just as bad.

Anyway - it was NOT just "made up" from thin air.
Please pay attention.
The Jesus story was based on previous Jewish stories and legends and books, and some pagan elements.

The most likely explanation for the disorganization of the gospels is if the writers based their events, either directly or indirectly, on a person who actually existed.

Wrong.
The most likely explanation for the disorganization of the gospels is if the writers based their events, either directly or indirectly, on myths and legends and books.

Four or more people aren't going to convene at a secret conference to start a religion out of completely thin air and then have it be incoherent.

Jesus H. Christ Astrodude !!!!
NO-ONE is claiming some "secret conference" !!

This is the same old ******** argument :
* it can't be a conspiracy -
* so it must be TRUE !

Because there are ONLY TWO possibilities :
* a deliberate secret conspiracy
or
* TRUTH

Grrr!
I get so sick of this stupid argument.
Astrodude - mate - please PAY ATTENTION to what the Jesus Myth is all about.

It is NOT ANYTHING to do with a "secret conference"!
Where did you get that silly idea?
No-one here said anything like that.
(In fact, I'm not sure if ANY Jmer has ever claimed such a thing.)


K.

 

[Greediguts]

Kapyong,

Just wondering...are you the poster "Iasion" mentioned in the reply to your list at the Tekton site??

 

[RandFan]

Kapyong,

Just wondering...are you the poster "Iasion" mentioned in the reply to your list at the Tekton site??

1. The writers that mentioned Christ did not document that he actually lived or that any thing attributed to him actually happened.
2. If the events in the Bible had actually taken place why wouldn't they have been documented by some writer/historian?

 

[RandFan]

Kapyong,

Just wondering...are you the poster "Iasion" mentioned in the reply to your list at the Tekton site??

From the link:

Jesus was executed as a criminal, providing him with the ultimate marginality.

Zombies roamed the streets! Christ was resurected!

Unimportant?

 

[Gazpacho]

Putting aside the question of whether anyone actually claims that a secret conference created Christianity out of thin air...

Incoherence is exactly what you would expect to see if the gospels represented a synthesis of many pre-existing religious ideas. You can imagine a leader of a new religious movement saying "The beliefs of cult A make more sense when combined with the beliefs of cult B."

This is routine in the creation of religious movements, and the result is of course incoherent, because the doctrines of cults A and B weren't developed to be mutually consistent.

 

[Greediguts]

1. The writers that mentioned Christ did not document that he actually lived or that any thing attributed to him actually happened.
2. If the events in the Bible had actually taken place why wouldn't they have been documented by some writer/historian?

Because the majority of the gospels aren't true. I don't think this is a suprise to anyone here.

Paul's letters and the "Q" hypothesis point towards something else.

The claims for a "historical Jesus" are not religious claims. There are Christian apologists that try to co-opt the scholarship but that ain't what it's for.
Historians look for a Jewish peasant. Most likely illiterate. He convinced a few other peasants (most likely illiterate) to follow him. After a brief time playing in the sticks he moved to Beverly (Jerusalem that is, baptismal pools and Roman guards) did something to piss off the Romans and was killed. His closest followers stayed in Jerusalem teaching what he taught. Back in the sticks, among the peasants, the story of his life grew. The church Paul encountered and converted to was probably rooted more in this tradition than the Jerusalem school. Paul's letters allude to differences between his beliefs and the Jerusalem clan.When the Romans wipe out Jerusalem in 70 you see the end of the Sadducees and probably the majority of the Jewish-proto-Xians who regarded Jesus as a Jewish teacher (but not a god). The apotheosis of Jesus becomes complete over time.

No one would bother to take the time to write about someone like that when they were alive. Even if Jesus thought he himself was the Messiah, he would have had to take a number and stand in line with the other Messiah wannabes.

IF Jesus had been gathering thousands, feeding thousands, walking on water, healing lepers, turning water into wine, and rising from the dead then yes, I agree, some contemporary should have written about him.

 

[Brainache]

It's a scan of part of 'Redating the Radiocarbon Dating of the Dead Sea Scrolls' by Atwill and Braunheim, you can read it in html here.

However, to put it simply, no-one outside a handful of cranks takes their commentary on the process seriously. Here¹ is a detailed critique of their purported re-examination of the dating process by Johannes van der Plicht who said of Atwill and Braunheim's work: Furthermore they (Atwill and Braunheim) fail to take into account that the dating process for the scrolls was not limited to C¹⁴ but also included textual/scribal and paleographic and these techniques agreed well with each other.

When Eisenman published the work of Atwill and Braunheim back in 2004 Edward Cook said of it:
and
Greg Doudna said, on the dating controversy²:

¹ 13 page PDF with text and graphics
² Greg Doudna, "The Legacy of an Error in Archaeological Interpretation: the Dating of the Qumran Cave Scroll Deposits"

Thanks for that.

I'm curious about how the DSS were dated to the first century BCE, given that most of the coins found there are from the first century CE.

I also think it is a bit strange that the international team of Catholics who kept the scrolls locked away from Academia for fifty years are so keen to throw insults at Eisenmann.

Eisenmann might be totally wrong with his theories, but at least he details how he arrives at his conclusions and he certainly seems to know what he is on about. He also helped make the scrolls available to others so that if people disagree, they can search the same material and draw their own conclusions.

Until 1992, anyone who wanted to study these things had to go through the Catholics and the Catholics wouldn't let anyone see the scrolls unless they agreed that their conclusions would match the "consensus". So I take criticisms from these people with a pillar of salt.


Sorry Randfan if I sounded aggressive before, it was a long day.

 

[Kapyong]

Gday,

Kapyong,
Just wondering...are you the poster "Iasion" mentioned in the reply to your list at the Tekton site??

Yup.
I posted that list a few years back under the name "Iasion".

I had a few different names in use then - I subsequently consolidated them and now use the name Kapyong in most places.


K.

 

[Kapyong]

Gday,

Putting aside the question of whether anyone actually claims that a secret conference created Christianity out of thin air...

Nowadays, people love to dismiss something they disagree with as a "conspiracy theory".

This has degraded the term "conspiracy theory" to mean little more than "a fringe idea that I don't agree with".

But Astrodude has taken it to it's literal extreme - an actual 'conspiracy' - a secret agreement (to commit some crime or misdeed.) A secret council that met in some shadowed back-room, and secretly created Jesus right there, on-the-spot, from thin air, from nothing, from imagination, from whole cloth.

This is a very common mis-conception - Dan Brown has a lot to answer for.

But sadly it clouds a key issue of the Jesus Myth theory (at least as I see it, and as Earl Doherty argues it, and as many other authors have pointed out) -
that the Jesus story is crafted from prior stories -
* from the Psalms
* from Righteous Jew meme
* from the Messiah meme
and even some pagan themes and elements too.

Paul really said very little about Jesus - it mostly came from G.Mark.
The Gospel of Mark is a masterpiece of religious literature - and it has a Jesus whose every part can be found in the prior writings.


Anyway - Astrodudes's comments boils down to the old :
the Jesus Myth theory is just a conspiracy theory,
so
Jesus must be real !

Incoherence is exactly what you would expect to see if the gospels represented a synthesis of many pre-existing religious ideas. You can imagine a leader of a new religious movement saying "The beliefs of cult A make more sense when combined with the beliefs of cult B."

Yup.
Especially when those different sects already have a complex web of differences and agreements and dependencies.

Then -
add to that writers who think that THEY personally have new ideas to add to the teachings - sometimes as a result of personal revelations from God!

The result would be mixed and incoherent - just what we see in the N.T.


K.

 

[Kapyong]

Gday,

No one would bother to take the time to write about someone like that [a Jewish peasant .... likely illiterate.] when they were alive.

Well, we DO have some mentions of minor nobodies, such as 'Sabbe' -
Pausanias even mentions a Jewish prophetess - a figure so minor she is essentially unknown:
"Then later than Demo there was a prophetic woman reared among the Jews beyond Palestine; her name was Sabbe." Phokis, Book X, 12, [5]

In my list of books, there are THOUSANDS of minor nobodies mentioned. Sometimes writers DID mention very minor figures.

Essentially you are saying that Jesus was SO minor, SO insignificant, SO un-noticeable that he was less known, less recognised, than ANY of these other minor nobodies.

In which case surely THAT Jesus had nothing in common with the Gospel Jesus.

Even if Jesus thought he himself was the Messiah, he would have had to take a number and stand in line with the other Messiah wannabes.

Hang on !
How do we know about those OTHER Messiah wanna-bes?
Because they were written about.


K.

 

[catsmate]

Thanks. And the part that talks about Jesus and his apostles?

According to the vast majority of scholars it exists in the imagination of Eisenman and a few others who interpret references to mean this.
I don't want to go into great detail about the scrolls, it's certainly not a field I'd consider myself an expert in, and the translation and study of the scrolls is an ongoing field of study. Plus my expert on them is still in bed.

There are parallels between the practices of the group at Qumran (probably Essenes) and those of Jesus’ disciples, these are well known. They include the Council of Twelve; the communal meal; healing and exorcism; sharing possessions; baptism; antagonism towards the main Jewish sects; looking to the end of the world and the coming of a messiah.
Likewise similar imagery recurs: the cornerstone, the spring of living waters, the Many; the Children of Light; the poor; the elect; the meek; the Son of God.
However. while Eisenman (and others) interprets this as referring to proto-xianity, and misrepresents the age of the scrolls to support this belief, most scholars consider the similarities between the beliefs and lifestyles of the scroll writers and xianity to be down to deeper and older themes common to both. For example Allegro¹ believed that xian, Essene and Gnostic beliefs and world views spring from a common, older, set of myths.

Overall there are a number of theories as to what the scrolls represent, by far the most commonly held of these is the original one; the settlement at Qumran was a group of Essenes. This is supported by similarities between some of the practices documented on the scrolls and details of Essene life known from other sources and other evidence.
There are other theories, one of the more recent (and probably the next most popular) is Lawrence Schiffman's; he proposes that the community was led by a group of Sadducees. Some details from the scrolls, purity laws and the dating of festivals support this.
The other origin theory that is at all widely held among scroll scholars is that the Qumran community were non-Essene Jews, either a mix of different groups or more-or-less sectarian Jews (the Qumran-Sectarian Theory).

The idea that Qumran was an xian community is considered nonsense by most scholars. It originated with a a Jesuit Josep O'Callaghan-Martínez in 1972 and resurrected by Eisenman in 2004 and has little-to-no supporting evidence and much to contradict it. This hasn't done much for Eisenman's already damaged credibility².



¹ Yes that Allegro.
² I don't want to be too hard on Eisenman, is work in forcing the public release of the scrolls was a blow for academic freedom of access to information, but he's a conspiracy nut when it comes to xian history, he even believed in the cache of documents under the Tour Magdala..........

 

[Brainache]

According to the vast majority of scholars it exists in the imagination of Eisenman and a few others who interpret references to mean this.
I don't want to go into great detail about the scrolls, it's certainly not a field I'd consider myself an expert in, and the translation and study of the scrolls is an ongoing field of study. Plus my expert on them is still in bed.

There are parallels between the practices of the group at Qumran (probably Essenes) and those of Jesus’ disciples, these are well known. They include the Council of Twelve; the communal meal; healing and exorcism; sharing possessions; baptism; antagonism towards the main Jewish sects; looking to the end of the world and the coming of a messiah.
Likewise similar imagery recurs: the cornerstone, the spring of living waters, the Many; the Children of Light; the poor; the elect; the meek; the Son of God.
However. while Eisenman (and others) interprets this as referring to proto-xianity, and misrepresents the age of the scrolls to support this belief, most scholars consider the similarities between the beliefs and lifestyles of the scroll writers and xianity to be down to deeper and older themes common to both. For example Allegro¹ believed that xian, Essene and Gnostic beliefs and world views spring from a common, older, set of myths.

Overall there are a number of theories as to what the scrolls represent, by far the most commonly held of these is the original one; the settlement at Qumran was a group of Essenes. This is supported by similarities between some of the practices documented on the scrolls and details of Essene life known from other sources and other evidence.
There are other theories, one of the more recent (and probably the next most popular) is Lawrence Schiffman's; he proposes that the community was led by a group of Sadducees. Some details from the scrolls, purity laws and the dating of festivals support this.
The other origin theory that is at all widely held among scroll scholars is that the Qumran community were non-Essene Jews, either a mix of different groups or more-or-less sectarian Jews (the Qumran-Sectarian Theory).

The idea that Qumran was an xian community is considered nonsense by most scholars. It originated with a a Jesuit Josep O'Callaghan-Martínez in 1972 and resurrected by Eisenman in 2004 and has little-to-no supporting evidence and much to contradict it. This hasn't done much for Eisenman's already damaged credibility².



¹ Yes that Allegro.
² I don't want to be too hard on Eisenman, is work in forcing the public release of the scrolls was a blow for academic freedom of access to information, but he's a conspiracy nut when it comes to xian history, he even believed in the cache of documents under the Tour Magdala..........

I don't think Eisenmann is calling them a Christian community either. Just a minority sect of zealous Jews.

I don't know enough about Eisenmann, but does he say that Paul invented the "Jesus Christ" character?

Some questions I'd like to ask a DSS expert:
Thousands of scrolls were hidden in caves about two thousand years ago, why?
Were scrolls cheap, or were they something rare and expensive?
Who has thousands of scrolls?
If they were hiding them from the Romans, wouldn't that be around 60CE?

 

[catsmate]

From the link:

Zombies roamed the streets! Christ was resurected!

Unimportant?

From that site on Juvenal:

We would no more expect a mention of Jesus here than we would expect in your average edition of MAD magazine.

Right, comparing Juvenal to MAD.

 

[catsmate]

I'm curious about how the DSS were dated to the first century BCE, given that most of the coins found there are from the first century CE.

The scrolls have been dated over a moderately long period, at least from 200BCE to 250CE and there is evidence the Qumran site was inhabited over a long period.

I also think it is a bit strange that the international team of Catholics who kept the scrolls locked away from Academia for fifty years are so keen to throw insults at Eisenmann.

So now you're pushing some sort of conspiracy theory?
Your allegation that a Catholic group kept the scrolled locked away simply isn't true. Yes access was unreasonable restricted from 1959 until 1992, unfortunately this kind of exclusivity isn't unknown in academia. Furthermore the ownership of the scrolls is still disputed and this may have added to the reluctance of the Israeli authorities to lend them for study,

The reasons people are willing to, as you put it, "so keen to throw insults at Eisenmann" are, firstly, because he's considered a bit of a nut, and a conspiracy theorist himself on the subject of xian history and origins and, secondly, because the Christian Origin Theory for the scrolls is based on extremely tenuous evidence that has other explanations and his nonsensical reinterpretations of the dating of the scrolls. On that part I refer you, again, to van der Plicht's dissection of the errors in that theory,

Eisenmann might be totally wrong with his theories, but at least he details how he arrives at his conclusions and he certainly seems to know what he is on about.

So does, for example, van der Plicht on why the Eisenman/Atwill/Braunheim dating is rubbish.
Look, I suggest you study the scrolls in more detail; the Christian Origin Theory is based on three elements:
1. an interpretation of of part of 7Q5 to be part of the Gospel of Mark (6:52-53).
2. Eisenmann opinion that some of the community documents describe an early xian community.
3. Eisenmann's cherry picking parts of various scrolls to support his opinion that they describe elements of the life of James and Paul.

Most scholars believe that 1 is implausible, the text is open to other interpretations, that 2 is reading-into the text, that it could equally well be an Essene or other Jewish community and that 3 is just silly.

He also helped make the scrolls available to others so that if people disagree, they can search the same material and draw their own conclusions.

Yes I noted this. Eisenmann deserves congratulations for this, though even without him photographs of the scrolls would have been published not much later.
However this doesn't mean he's got carte blanche to push his own beliefs without scrutiny.

Until 1992, anyone who wanted to study these things had to go through the Catholics and the Catholics wouldn't let anyone see the scrolls unless they agreed that their conclusions would match the "consensus". So I take criticisms from these people with a pillar of salt.

I'm sorry but this appears to be more conspiratorial nonsense. The scrolls were, and are, in the Israel Museum since 1966.
Access was restricted for a number of reasons, good and bad; fragility of scrolls, academic politics, international politics and a wish to de-emphasise how some of the scrolls were acquired.

 

[Greediguts]

In which case surely THAT Jesus had nothing in common with the Gospel Jesus.

Please stop calling me Shirley.

Yes. The historical Jesus would have VERY little in common with the gospel CHRIST.

Hang on !
How do we know about those OTHER Messiah wanna-bes?
Because they were written about.


K.

Ah. So we know that all Messiah wanna-bes were written about?

Just looking at ancient writers and people they cover, I can think of a couple of examples to make us go "hmmm...":

Dio Cassius wrote a fairly detailed account of the Jewish revolt in 132-135 CE (the Bar Kochba revolt). The person passed over in this account by Dio Cassius? That would be Bar Kochba (another Messiah wanna-be).

Josephus was an admitted Pharisee, yet in his works he never mentions Rabbi Hillel, the founder of the school of Hillelites.

That is just off the top of my head. If I compiled a list of ancient authors and was able to point out how many don't mention someone of known stature would that really prove or disprove the HJ theory? Is it germane?

 

[Greediguts]

From that site on Juvenal:
Right, comparing Juvenal to MAD.

I linked to a Christian apologist site not because I believe his conclusions but because I did not want to have to go through Kapyong's list author by author. I thought the site might encourage some of the posters here who accept the list (and its conclusions) as gospel *chuckle* to dig a little deeper and become familiar with the authors and their works.

For those here who would like to engage a real scholar on the whole HJ/MJ issues, I recommend commenting on this blog. Dr. James McGrath teaches at Butler University and has been responding to mythicists for awhile. I would start here and see if some of your questions have been answered.

 

[tsig]

Fact in the make-believe world where the Bible is the sole arbiter of what is real.
I presented my evidence that Jesus could have been a real person, earlier on this thread. I could recap.
The Messiah dies and Herod kills the son, marries the daughter and proclaims himself King of the Jews. The true successor to the messiah (Jesus) lives in obscurity. He is known through family relations to one Joseph of Arimathea who is a world traveler and an acquaintance of one Pontius Pilate. When he (Pilate) arrives in Judea, he is horrified by the lock down of political power that has been created by this High Priesthood. Joseph meets Pilate and a conversation ensues and ends with Joseph recommending a certain man of the order of the high priests who is actually a relation to the former Messiah. Pilate orders this man to be made high Priest. This is allowed to stand for one year before Pilate is persuaded to relent for political reasons and the hegemony of this position reverts back to the dynasty of priests who had been controlling it.
This obscure priest returns to normal life hiding the fact that he is the Messiah, which is a lifelong appointment and the current holders are actually technically ineligible for it but use their wealth to suppress opposition. He eventually meets with the rebel religionists, including his cousin (John the Baptist) who had already given up hope on the entire temple system. This Jesus was reluctant to give up and decided to give it a chance and if he could just gain a footing in the temple he could cause a reformation. Once he made up his mind to take this thing on, his powers of Messiah took hold and they began to be exhibited, just like the ones of his predecessor Messiah.

Actually Jesus was a conman who got executed after stiffing the governor.

 

[tsig]

Shouldn't you be doing a bit more about establishing that this bloke actually existed before you start making all this other stuff up?

Once upon a time there was this married Virgin who gave birth to god.

Apparently Joesph got cuckolded by god before he ever dipped his wick.