aa5874

The sacrifice could have been figurative or fiction, the authors wrote many things about Jesus that could not be true.

And it may be that the explosion of Jesus believers took place after Constantine, since there are written statements that Jesus believers were persecuted, killed, had their property confiscated, and were regarded as atheists and cannibals at times.

After Constantine, Jesus believers became the persecutors in an unprecedented expolsive fashion.

gurugeorge

Eh? The self sacrifice meme wasn't new at that time at all. There were myths of something like "kenosis" in many cultures (the ancient passage in the Upanishads about Prajapati immediately springs to mind ). The Mysteries concepts seem to have been based on a similar idea, at least, for a major example, the Mysteries of Demeter and Persephone (the deity gives of their life or substance so we can live - it comes from an agricultural context, obviously). The Mysteries took it further and had (according to Burkhardt) the idea of a personal relationship with such a deity as a saviour, (soter, giving some kind of post-death boon; the term "saviour" was in religious currency well before Christianity). Also the virtue of self-sacrifice in the ordinary, human, moral sense, was nothing new at the time.

What was new about Joshua Messiah was the marriage of an idiosyncratic version of the Jewish idea of the Messiah with this kind of personal-saviour-deity-cum-Platonic-intermediary. But that points to the artificial nature of the Joshua Messiah myth as we know and love it (whether or not there was some poor, unknown schmuck at the root of the myth).

GakuseiDon

I don't believe there is much recoverable history in the Gospels at all, but I have no problem with the idea that even if most of the events in the Gospel are true, we wouldn't see much from contemporaries. Think about John the Baptist, Honi the Circle Drawer and his miracles, the Egyptian (who lead 30,000 people out to the Mount of Olives and threatened to take over Jerusalem), Theudas (led a number of people out to Jordan). Think of Mt Vesuvius erupting, killing thousands, making tens of thousands homeless, and probably spoken about throughout the Roman Empire. Yet we only have the one eyewitness account, and the only reason we have that is because Tacitus asked Pliny the Younger for his account.

If you want to treat the Gospel accounts as true (God knows why you want to do that on this board, but let's say you insist on the Gospel accounts must be treated as true), then note the Pharisees DON'T fall at Jesus's feet when he does his miracles, they say "Hey! You can't do that on a Sabbath!" or "He's working with the devil". Also note that according to the Bible, Jesus died in apparent failure, and people turned away, just as we would imagine the followers of Theudas and the Egyptian would have done.

Does anyone here doubt that the earliest followers of Jesus probably saw visions of Jesus, regardless of whether he was ever historical or not? From a follower's perspective, is there any more reason for them to record such an appearance? And from a non-follower's perspective, would they be more likely to record something that they didn't regard as true?

So, even treating the Gospels as pretty much true (and to repeat, I certainly don't), if we want to look at how likely the Gospel events would have been recorded elsewhere, then we need to note that similar events simply aren't well represented in the extant record:
* Failed Messiah claimants like Theudas and the Egyptian
* Miracle workers like Honi the Circle Drawer
* Catastrophic natural events like Mt Vesuvius

And, if you want to assume the Gospel accounts were true, you would need to note:
* Jesus's miracles weren't convincing to everyone
* Many of his disciples abandoned him at death

Probably the only event that would have stirred interest is the "zombie" attack at the end of Matthew. But even for that, I would be interested in how we can determine how many such references would be recorded. Probably Josephus may have -- but if he didn't believe the accounts and so didn't record them, then that would have been about it.

Let me repeat again: I don't believe that we should assume that the Gospel accounts are true. I have no idea why Jesus myth proponents want to keep bringing these questions back to the historicity of Gospel accounts, at least on this board where few -- if any -- regular posters take that view. But EVEN IF the Gospel accounts were true, I doubt a strong case could be made that those events would have been recorded.

Elijah

Gurugeorge I already talked about this but it's prob too far back in the thread for you to hunt down.

I'm talking about sacrificing yourself like Jesus did that Stephen imitated and Paul follow after with Peter and the rest of the apostles. I'm talking about the line of martyrs he started. I don't want to argue about martyrs before or whatever just take a few to recognize that followers dying in imitation of Christ is what helped spread the message no matter how unique you want to argue it is or isn't.

I agree that there is a mixing of platonic ideas with Jewish ones but that isn't what fueled the belief in Christ it was his sacrifice and the imitation of that sacrifice. IMO.

Toto

Well, here we go round the circle again. Is there any evidence outside the gospels of Jesus' existence? No contemporaneous evidence. at best a few disputed passages in Josephus that might have been added by Christians, which certainly have the fingerprints of Christian forgers close by. So the only real evidence of Jesus' historical existence, as RT France recognized, is the gospels. But if the gospels are not reliable as a historical source, and we don't have a reliable method for extracting the historical core from the legendary accretions, then there is no historical Jesus. There are just the legends. Are legends history? No. You've got nothing.

You are left with the NoRobotic argument that Christianity was so powerful and unique that it must have been started by a self-sacrificing genius. But we can see religions being started today by people who are just good salesmen. We can see Christianity evolving today in response to the social and political conditions of its environment. We can see that the result of the quest for the historical Jesus has been a reflection of the needs of the seekers.

Have we learned anything from this exercise? Can we apply what we have learned to Jim Jones? L. Ron Hubbard? Jerry Falwell? Can we figure out how to achieve personal or societal salvation without waiting for a Savior from outer space?

GakuseiDon

That's a separate issue. My point is that even if the Gospels were 100% accurate, I speculate that very few events would have been recorded. So, beyond the strawman appeal to silence of Gospel events (since most people here don't believe the Gospels are completely or even mostly historical), even if the Gospels were true, I doubt we would see many references to events therein.

aa5874

And there is really nothing "genius" about the Jesus, as presented by the authors of the NT, his so-called gospel was full of threats of eternal damnation, false promises and mis-leading information.

John 6.47 This is not genius, it is just a false promise.

patcleaver

Yes, in the enlightenment, secularists had to get it from the Moslems who got it from Philosophers who fled the Roman Empire with their literature.

Do you really believe that the quality of the paper was why Christians would not have burned evidence of the existence of Jesus?

I figured it out from all the cartloads of fake and fraudulent evidence contained in every Christian Church of the middle ages.

There is no abbey so poor as not to have a specimen. In some places there are large fragments, as at the Holy Chapel in Paris, at Poictiers, and at Rome, where a good-sized crucifix is said to have been made of it. In brief, if all the pieces that could be found were collected together, they would make a big ship-load. Yet the Gospel testifies that a single man was able to carry it.
— Calvin, Traité Des Reliques.

Do you think the lack of popularity of the Christians among the pagans would have caused the Christians to lose their favorite evidence? Do you have any evidence that some Christian evidence has been lost.?

Over 99% of pagan literature was lost. There is evidence that pagan literature was burned by the Christians. Why should we think that the Christians also burned any evidence of Jesus?

It is true because it is a tautology. A tautology is something that is true by definition.
If there were a historical Jesus who was significant enough to be a major influence on history, then there should be lots of contemporaneous evidence. That is why the vast majority of Christians think that there is contemporaneous evidence, and that Christian apologists are lying that there is contemporaneous evidence (e.g. eyewitnesses testimony).

Do you have double standards?
You have regularly supported statements such as "It is not true that Mithra rose from the dead." simply because there is no primary source that indicates that Mithra rose from the dead. If it is true that Jesus existed, then provide the primary source indicating that he existed, or accept the statement that "It is not true that Jesus ever existed" in exactly the same way that you accept the statement that "It is not true that Mithra rose from the dead".

andrewcriddle

I think you are confusing the recovery of Aristotle and other philosophers from Moslems during the high middle ages, with the recovery of a much wider range of pagan texts from Constantinople and from obscure Western monasteries by humanists during the renaissance.

Andrew Criddle

Jeffrey Gibson

Leaving aside the matter that "over 99%" is equivalent to 100%, I wonder if you'd be kind enough to tell us what the basis of this statistic (and your claim) is? Do you have actual evidence (or a quote from a recognized authority on the viscisitudes of the transmission and survival of "pagan literature", such as, e.g., Moses Hadas) to back it up?

Jeffrey