Thomas II

At this moment in time the historical reality of Jesus is almost beside the point.
I personally have my own ideas about it. I don't believe any of the virginal birth, or half man/ half god ala Roman style.(Yes,I know that the Church calls it "fully man and fully god",but I don't really care what the Church says.
Not trying to offend anyone, but I don't think the Church has the purity of Spirit to dictate ANYTHING.)
Having said that I think there is something "else" to the whole story of Jesus,and his persona seems to have taken a life of it's own,almost like if the main character in a novel or in a movie would jump out of the screen to live a life of his own fed by the collective thoughts of all christians...
At one level Jesus is the guy from the New Testament, probably created by combining sayings from more than one individual...All polished and cleaned for mass consumption...
Then there is this other Jesus...The one that came out of the movie created by the Church, and saying "the heck with you all...You are clueless!!" decided to be whatever we all make him to be...Sort of like a mirror of our own selves.
And the figure of Mary seems to have done the same thing...
Are you still with me?

Hellooo?...Where did everyone go??...

NWT

Sorry about the bad link, it is: //mama.indstate.edu/users/nizrael/jesusrefutation.html
I have read Doherty and others, and the Myths of Mankind shows were quite informative. If you are suggesting an historical figure or figures, as Hayyim ben Yehoshua contends at the above link did become known as Jesus (NO SUPERNATURAL POWERS!), then I would accept that as a reasonable proposition. The issue I am putting forth is that the fundies who are attacking the science of evolution, virtually all belief in a supernatural Jesus - literally the Son of God, who indeed did perform all those miracles etc, therefore fellow atheists should reciprocate by attacking that belief as false, and demand evidence that it is true.

The salt & pepper analogy goes like this.
I say: God does not exist.
Theist says: How do you know God does not exist?
I say: I don't know.
Theist says: There you are, God may exist.

But there is a fundamental asymetry between the two positions. Theist is arguing that this one of enormous possibilities(i.e. salt on top, pepper on the bottom is true), I am arguing that it almost certainly is not true (i.e. salt & pepper mixed up). The onus is on the theist to prove God exists, without such compelling evidence, we are left with the default, i.e. God does not exist.

As for Josephus, I will leave it to Doherty to blow that one apart, which he does quite effectively, in "the Jesus Puzzle". I read somewhere about a certain Pope who bragged about having destroyed all the historical records from the biblical period, I believe it was somewhere around the 3rd century, if I find out who, I will let you know, perhaps somebody reading this knows.

spin

We've been all over this one and few people here accept this.

Where does the LXX have that?

Yup.

My conclusion is that Nazara is a back-formation from nazarhnos and that when they looked for Nazara they only found NCRT, Nasareth as it would be transliterated into Greek, and assumed they were the same, so we end up with Nazareth.

While KAF can be confused with BET, I've never seen it confused with a NUN, so this proposition is strongly against probability.

Again definitely not. If you chose NCR then you would normally transliterate the TSADE as a sigma, but going the other way I think a sigma would be a SIN or SAMEK.

Are we going from a rendering of Caesar to the Hebrew? If so the logic is missing totally.

Not particularly. There are too many differences as I have pointed out.

Naaa.

This is right out.


spin

Jagella

Jesus is probably a myth. There's way too little evidence for Jesus as a historical person, and way too much for Jesus as a myth. All we seem to "know" about him is the many suspicious parallels between him and other mythological figures like Mithra.

Jagella

Toto

This is not a very good political tactic. The idea that Jesus is a myth is too radical for most people and just sets up walls of resistance.

The idea that Jesus was a liberal hippie Democrat who just wants people to get along and love one another is actually much more threatening to fundamentalists. If only it were a coherent picture. . .

Peter Kirby

Jagella, you might want to expand on your arguments. The first two sentences that you wrote are merely a statement of your position, i.e., that there is 'way too much' evidence against Jesus as a historical person. The third sentence refers to undescribed "suspicious parallels"--this argument is as old as modern mythicism itself, and it is not as though it has gone undiscussed. To suppor the position asserted, you would need to expand on what the parallels are, what the most "suspicious" elements are, what the ancient source material is for the non-Christian component of the parallel, what the time and means of transmission was for the parallel being incorporated into Christianity (e.g., is it post-NT? did it have a demonstrable conduit?), and then, once the syncretism is established, how this element of syncretism establishes that Jesus was not a historical person.

That is, of course, only if you wish to demonstrate the position with some kind of rigor. Perhaps you'd like to start a thread that works with the Mithras parallels.

best,
Peter Kirby

Peter Kirby

Incoherent how? I mean, besides that the NT itself doesn't present a coherent picture of Jesus? Is the idea of Jesus as someone "who just wants people to get along and love one another" (or somesuch) inconsistent?

best,
Peter Kirby

Toto

Well, that's what I was thinking of.

It's inconsistent with the Jesus who wants to preserve the Jewish law, who wants to separate the sheep from the goats, who wants his enemies brought before him and slain, who vomits up the lukewarm, who intends to return on the clouds with power, etc. etc.

Peter Kirby

Ah, the fire and brimstone stuff (the last 4 of 5 mentioned). Yes, the idea of eternal hell certainly clashes with the idea of a loving God. Then again, aren't there many ideas within Christianity as to what happens to people when they die? I don't think it must be yielded to the eternal hell crowd that theirs is the only biblical one.

best,
Peter Kirby

spin

But who are you to doubt Jack Chick?