eccles

(1) First Council of Nicea 326CE
(2) First Council of Constantinople 381CE

As faf as who WROTE the books of the New Testament, the authors of the four Gospels are unknown, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were names given much later by the Church. Paul might have written some of the Epistles. Acts were not by Luke.

em hotep

Rev. Robert Tobin (Minister, First Church of Atheism)

Thank 'god' I am Atheist

IBelieveInHymn

The Council of Nicea in "325 A.D" was the origin of the Catholic Church.

ph2ter

This is oversimplification. That would mean that ancient Israelites did not have their own myths. The myths of Israelites were in reality similar to the myths of their neighbors, but that similarity was not so much the result of the borrowings, but rather because of the common source.
So, it would be more fruitful to search for the Christian origin inside the Jewish culture and only after that take into account also the influence of other surrounding mythologies like the Greek one and some others.

eccles

Remember that the Jews were in Alexandria, Egypt for a long time, the home of the Great Library of Alexandria. The Egyptian religion was still strong at that time. Also The Septuagint, the translation of the Tanakh into Greek was done there - with all it's mistakes in translation.

em hotep

Rev. Robert Tobin (Minister, First Church of Atheism)

Thank 'god' I am Atheist

mountainman

These are not dates of authorship of the NT. Are they?
When do you suggest the NT was written?

Unknown authors in an unknown century?

PhilosopherJay

Hi Spin,

Good points.

I think the analogies of King Arthur and Robin Hood are very good. I would add Hercules. It is possible that a very strong man who did some difficult things existed and these formed the basis for the 12 Labors of Hercules. It is possible a rabbi or magician existed and he has some disciples, and these formed the basis for the Jesus and 12 apostle stories. Unfortunately, we have no facts to prove that either Hercules or Jesus did exist.

Warmly,

Philosopher Jay

aa5874

There is no such thing as LACK of evidence for NON-existence.

Lack of evidence of existence is a fundamental criteria for NON-existence.

All things considered NON-existing logically have no -evidence or Lack evidence of their existence.

Jesus of the Gospels LACKS evidence of existence. Jesus can be REASONABLY considered as never existing UNTIL credible evidence can be found of his existence.

And further, to augment the position that Jesus of the Gospels never existed[, the Church writers and the authors of the Gospels described Jesus in such a way where no evidence can be found of their description.

Jesus of the Gospels, based on the Church, was TRULY the offspring of the Holy Ghost of God, who TRULY transfigured, TRULY resurrected and TRULY ascended through the cloud.

In addition no external source wrote about a Messiah called Jesus who was deified by the Jews after he was crucified for blasphemy.

This Jesus, as described by the Church, satisfies the criteria for NON-existence.

Jesus of the Gospels is fiction.

Now, there are really two fundamental positions that can be maintained with Robin Hood and King Arthur, either agnosticism or non-existence, since there is a lack of evidence for historicity.

Lack of evidence or lack of corroborative sources does not in anyway alter a claim of non-existence.

It is those who claim that Jesus did exist who have major problems when there are no sources of antiquity to support their belief.

People who claim Jesus did exist MUST provide the evidence or the sources of antiquity external of Church. So far, HJers have failed to even attempt to produce anything except their unsubstantiated belief.

show_no_mercy

You only think it's "Yahweh" because some Christian theologians about 300 years ago read YHWH with the adonai vowel points and simply combined the two.

The Hebrew word for "lord" is ADNY. Due to the vowel points underneath the letters, it can be pronounced as either "adonai" or "adoni". The same vowel points used to pronounce "adonai" are placed under YHWH to let the reader know to pronounce YHWH as "adonai" such as in Psalm 110:1. YHWH also has vowel points underneath it that are associated with the Hebrew word for "god(s)" which is ALHYM. The vowel points associated with ALHYM can also be placed under YHWH to let the reader know to pronounce YHWH as "Elohim" (god), such as Ezekiel 37:3. In both cases, Psalm 110 and Ezekiel 37, the letters are YHWH, but in Pslam 110:1 it's pronounced as "lord" and in Ezekiel 37:3 it's pronounced as "god".

If you read Biblical names that are highly theophoric, like the name of Moses' successor, it's nothing like "Yahweh". It's actually closer to Jehovah. Moses' successor is named "Yehoshua" by Moses which would probably be closer to "Jehovah is salvation" rather than "Yahweh is salvation". This Hebrew name was shortened to Yeshua in Aramaic from where we get the name "Joshua". If Yehoshua was translated directly into English we would probably be something like Jahoshua instead of Joshua.



Quite honestly, though, no one knows how The Name is to be pronounced.

spin

I agree, but I'd state the corollary that it's possible that Jesus didn't exist, but unfortunately, we have no facts to prove that Jesus did not exist.


spin

wordy

They could still have borrowed themes how to construct Jesus based on other religions.

I find it rather unlikely that Jesus has ever existed. I don't buy the bit about eknaton.

But Horus maybe is part of the nativity story. Mother Mary is a typical myth. A kind of Goddess that bear the coming king and the ruling king try to kill the baby.

That is very typical theme.