ApostateAbe

No, the only real scholarly agreement is that at least one person exists, either on the planet Earth or as a brain in a jar of a mad scientist.

Toto

Cute.

:wave:

aa5874

There is no such scholarly agreement. Scholars who support the MJ argument do not agree that Jesus existed and was crucified.

The Scholarly agreement is that the NT is not a credible source.

Effectively, virtually all Scholars whether MJ, HJ or Agnostic do not consider the NT as a credible source.

wordy

Jesus as an empty vs a powerful signifier?

Seems to work regardless of being either or the other.
Is that not surprising. Reminds me of some Political Correctness words
that also works regardless of being very powerful or very empty.

The reason they work is because the actions
of those that are motivated by them are powerful
or have effect. To lose ones job or to get be seen
as a despicable outcast is a powerful motivator to conform.

aa5874

There is a quest for an historical Jesus.

A quest is not a consensus.

People are looking for their Jesus but they have no idea who he was.

The consensus is that the NT is not credible historical source.

If Jesus of Nazareth was not a Water walking Son of a Ghost that was raised from the dead then the NT cannot be credible.

Once it is agreed that the NT is not credible then we cannot ever know who Jesus was because non-apologetics wrote nothing of such a character.

MrMacSon

Jesus of Nazareth is merely a proposition, a narrative, just an assertion or contention.

There is nothing that verifies the narrative that there was a Jesus [the Christ] of Nazareth. There is no actual proof Nazareth existed at the time Jesus is alleged to exist:

There is not a single scrap of evidence from the time that Jesus is alleged to have existed to support his existence - not a single contemporary text, artifact, or archaeological site or object that supports the contention there was a Jesus of Nazareth.

The Jesus the [anointed] Christ story is, in itself, an anointed story.

The alleged preachings are there for all to see - there may be opinions about their significant on today's social discourse and speculation about their significance in the 1st few centuries AD/CE, but those narratives exist - when they were written and by who is not known.

MrMacSon

No. There is a tradition of confirmation bias - in Christian countries and Christian theology colleges - that Jesus existed.

There is no historical evidence he existed beyond the gospel stories.

Crucifixions at the time Jesus is alleged to have existed were usually performed on T or X shaped crosses, not t shaped ones. Moreover, the bodies were left there to rot with maggots & be picked at by the vultures - they were certainly not taken down & entombed.

MrMacSon

We are now on the third quest.


Many have found their Jesus, but they have not found an alleged real Jesus.


The NT does not meet criteria of 'The Historical Method' - it is not supported by contemporary data.

ApostateAbe

That seems to be the perspective of the common Internet mythicists, relying primarily on an argument of silence. The problem of that argument is apparent to anyone who knows the first thing about ancient history, and that is: extant written or physical evidence about anyone in the ancient past is desperately scarce, a problem magnified for any ancient person in the lower class. We have knowledge about many powerful figures only from one written ancient text, scribed decades afterward, and the earliest copies of the text date centuries afterward. Using the standard you have proposed, we have proof of only a trifling number of ancient people ever existing.

The FRDB mythicists have tended to move beyond that, but they maintain a fallacious perspective in my opinion. Their perspective is to discount the gospels as evidence. My perspective is that the gospels count as direct evidence of what ancient Christians believed. In turn, those ancient beliefs count as evidence for some ancient realities. It isn't that we believe everything those ancient Christians believed, but valuable conclusions of ancient history are made by explaining ancient beliefs, and it is very difficult to make plausible sense of the set of ancient Christian beliefs without a historical human Jesus with the same rough profile as drawn in the gospels. For example, there is a historical human founder of a cult corresponding to every myth of a human founder of a cult, without any exceptions as far as anyone is aware. Mythicists demand a special exception for Christianity. I don't.

MrMacSon

Yes, "we have proof - [primary and subsequent secondary sources based on those primary sources] - of only a trifling number of ancient people ever existing", but in the case of the alleged Jesus of Nazareth we have such a 'detailed' narrative - written at least several generations later by unknown authors; likely embellished transliterated, & edited enough, and collated by peoples with a special interest - to be of dubious value.

Most of Matthew & Luke are repetition of Mark.

The letters attributed to Paul could even be other stories moulded into the narrative.

And containing so much dubious supernatural stuff.