Alethias

Dis here thread looks much more like a BC&H thread to me than a GRD thread, so I'm moving it there.

BC&H Mods, if'n ya wanna move it back, I'm game.

SwordOfTruth,
GRD Moderator

AthenaAwakened

There were about 43,456 mystery cults in the region of Galilee during the time that Christ supposedly lived, all with their own messiahs. Want a Jesus? Pick one.

Peace

copernicus

I think that it is more important to examine the arguments pro and con than to categorize arguers in terms of their biases or numbers. Josephus was writing about events that took place before he was born, and he is not regarded by anyone as a reliable historian. He was, in fact, a Roman propagandist who wanted to help Rome absorb the rebellious Jews into the Empire.

We know nothing about the sources of Josephus' information, just as we know nothing about the more reliable historian, Tacitus', sources or Suetonius' sources. What we do know is that none of these historians, writing decades after the facts, said anything that they could not have gotten from the mouths of Christians in the late 1st century and early 2nd century. Since none of them considered Jesus an important historical figure, it is quite possible that they never dug further into the claims of his followers.

You ask why so many historians endorse the historical Jesus if he was really a myth. One can certainly point out that most of these historians were indoctrinated in the Christian religion in their early childhood, and most would think twice before advocating such a controversial position before the public, their friends, and their families. The default assumption of our entire society is that Jesus existed, and that includes non-Christians. But bias proves nothing. In the end, all you can do is look at the arguments of adherents on both sides, not the motives or numbers of adherents.

Doug Shaver

As the word "proof" is ordinarily understood, yes, there is none.

There are a lot of people, though, including quite a few non-Christians, who are convinced that the nonexistence of Jesus is so improbable as to be not worth serious consideration. They disagree strongly about what he was really like, but they believe that the gospels, even if mostly fiction, are at least loosely based on historical fact.

Storme

As you know, this is discussed at some length at http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.p...81#post2957481
A fair reading suggests that the evidence, argument, scholarship, consensus, etc. favor an historical Jesus. But if your “atheism� is based on whether or not there was indeed an historical Jesus . . . well dear, you might as well just make the blind leap right now.

Diogenes the Cynic

This is changing a little as mythicists make more inroads, A lot of the historicist assumptions have long been based on smoke and mirrors but few were really willing to challenge them. In the last decade or so, MJ proponents have quitely begun to stir things up at the edges. HJ is still by far a majority view but MJ is no longer regarded as the patently crackpot position that it once was. I think Doherty has personally done a lot to give the theory some credibility and at least make the mainstream acknowledge it instead of dismissing it out of hand. MJ is not quite as fringey as it once was. Doherty's Jesus Puzzle went a long was from changing me personally from a historicist to an agnostic on the matter I'm still not sure Doherty has proved his case 100% but he can't be easily dismissed.
Actually, even in mainstream scholarship very little in the Gospels is believed to be historical. The Gospels are essentially regarded as fictional narratives wrapped around a core sayings tradition and (perhaps) the bare fact of a crucifixion (albeit without the fictional embellishments of the Passion narratives) and (maybe) a very few authentic anecdotal kernels (such as some sort of Temple incident)

pharoah

Do you have a source for this?

Vorkosigan

Whoever wrote that are a couple of contemptible unethical shits, substituting one-sided apologetic shit for serious discussion. What a perversion of scholarship. I have no idea how people like this live with themselves. Observing behavior like this, nothing makes me prouder to be an atheist.

Vorkosigan

Vorkosigan

That's right, aChristain. It's opinion. For scholars are not possessed of a critical methodology for determining which facts are historical and which are not. Take a peek at the methodology section of Crossan's The Birth of Christianity sometime. It might also help if you took cognizance of the fact that the NT field is populated by Christians oath-sworn to uphold the existence of an historical Jesus, and that in many places skeptics cannot find employment (see case of Gerd Ludemann). Hence, on that topic, the opinion of the majority carries zero weight.

Vorkosigan

Vorkosigan

I've been in there editing that disingenous pile of crap. I have no idea how people totally bereft of anything resembling scholarly ethics can live with themselves. Here's what they wrote:

• The first scholarly proponent of the Jesus Myth idea was probably Nineteenth Century historian Bruno Bauer, who argued that the true founder of Christianity was the Alexandrian Jew Philo. His arguments made little impact on the wider scholarly community of his time, though Karl Marx's collaborator Friedrich Engels was impressed with his theory. [1]. In the early Twentieth Century, however, a few other scholars published arguments in favor of the Jesus Myth idea. These treatments were more influential and merited several book-length responses by historians and New Testament scholars. Since then, the Jesus Myth has had few academic proponents but has been advanced by informed lay-persons such as mathematician William B. Smith and professor of German George Albert Wells.

Did you catch that sentence that conencts the Jesus Myth idea to Marx in a sly and vicious way that has nothing to with the theory? I'm glad I don't have to go to bed at night with that conscience.

Vorkosigan