MCalavera

Ok, no arguing in this thread. Let's each list our own set of reasons for why each of us either believes Jesus existed historically or he was simply a myth the whole time:

My turn:

1. The historical Jesus is more parsimonious than any of the mythicist explanations I've heard of. If an explanation fits well, then there's no reason to add more assumptions if they're not needed.

2. Jesus was quite recent to those who wrote about him and was placed in history. It would've been very very difficult to just have every person within that setting (even the opponents and enemies) to believe without an issue that he existed.

3. There are theological embarrassments in the Bible. The Messiah coming from Nazareth instead of the supposed birthplace of the Messiah, being baptized for the repentance of sins and by supposedly a lesser man, failing to do miracles, prophesying things that didn't happen, being crucified on the cross by the oppressors instead of gaining victory over them, etc.

4. The authors don't try to convince the readers that Jesus existed. Instead, they try to convince the reader that he really was the Messiah, the Son of Man, the Son of God, etc. and that he was resurrected and that he was the son of David.

5. Most mythicist explanations are based on very faulty interpretations disregarding the context and such.

6. The consensus is that Jesus did exist.

Conclusion: His existence was very likely. archibald will disagree on how likely, but I'm quite sure he existed. Just that the evidence is still too incomplete.

Now your turn.

stephan huller

I think it is impossible to tell whether or not Jesus was meant to be taken to be God descended from heaven or a physical man born to a woman. It has to be recognized that the two traditions existed side by side in the very earliest period of the tradition. There are a series of difficulties here. The first and most obvious difficulty is that most scholarship is developed in a Protestant culture which unconsciously favors one particular interpretation - i.e. the 'common sense' historical position. It is almost as if the argument that Jesus was God is pushed under the table and relegated to some sort of 'exaggeration' on the part of over-enthusiastic believers.

Anglo-American Protestantism also over emphasizes Jesus's 'Jewishness' again as a kind of tonic against allowing this supernatural being to be understood to have walked on the face of the earth. Clearly if we want to 'take the history seriously' we have to imagine Jesus as a thirty year old Jew but it has to be noted that this isn't the approach of the Ante Nicene Church Fathers.

When you read Irenaeus in fact, perhaps one of the earliest champions of both Jesus's physical birth from Mary and his coming to fulfill the prophesies of the Jewish writings, both these concepts seem imposed on the supernatural Jesus narrative inherited from the heresies. Yes, we have to believe that Jesus suffered, that he was born from a virgin and that he was Jewish. Yet these concepts co-exist fully side by side the supernatural Jesus of the heresies. There is never an attempt to rationalize how miracles happen. If an attempt to explain how Jesus walked on water, or how any of the miracles occurred we find ourselves inevitably falling back upon the 'he was God and anything is possible with God' argument.

The only examples we have of something approaching the 'historical Jesus' in the strictest sense - i.e. someone who appears fully human rather than the supernatural God figure - we hear about the tradition portrayed as a heretical body. The group is inevitably described as 'Jewish' Christian in some form, however more often than not the group also believes in a God above God, demons controlling the world or the Jewish religion - in other words, something which separates the tradition from a reliable historical witness that we would need to confirm that Jesus actually existed.

Clearly on one level it makes sense to assume that because a religion developed around a figure named Jesus that he must have existed. Nevertheless there are a lot of curiosities which I just mentioned. Indeed unlike Moses, Muhammad, Mani and other monotheistic religious figures, Jesus does not even attempt to leave behind any writings. Indeed no tradition preserves any record even of an attempt to set forth a written document or physical evidence of his existence. Instead the tradition in every way possible makes 'belief' the centerpiece to religious life and in many ways this faith can be argued to get in the way of a clear sign that Jesus was a historical figure.

It was the apostle who argues most strenuously for some kind of 'faith' in Jesus. Yet the traditional model of faith is faith in God. Abraham has such a faith and it is accorded to him as righteousness. Muhammad is portrayed as possessing a similar kind of faith. The expected example of faith to be associated with historical person is to accord them with righteousness for trusting God in some capacity. Yet Christians have always seemed to have defined faith in terms of believing that Jesus was the Lord (= God) or when the Catholic tradition wished to distance itself from the heresies you get all these absurd creeds (like that of 1 John) where the faithful are demanded to believe that Jesus had flesh which is clearly reactionary and argues in fact for the pre-existence of the belief that Jesus was a wholly divine figure (otherwise why ask people to believe in something which would come naturally to a man = having flesh).

The only clear sign that we get in fact is that the Catholic tradition - the one upon which we depend for our information about Jesus - defined itself against a large and much older tradition that believed Jesus was wholly divine. This doesn't mean that this was the original tradition, however it makes clear that we are so far removed from the original tradition that we will never be able to say with any certainty that there was a historical man named Jesus who did any of the things said in the gospel.

At best we have the basic formula that at least one man claimed to be an eyewitness to Jesus's ministry and death on the Cross. Yet even here we have the strange situation that this individual wrote a gospel which wasn't 'historical' enough for Matthew and Luke and that they subsequently added two different genealogies and all kinds of internal signs that Jesus had human emotions, drives, pains etc. - as if the original narrative didn't stress these details clearly enough. Yet the obvious question emerges - why didn't Mark emphasize Jesus's humanity enough for the liking of these later editors? Could his orthodoxy have been suspect? Indeed why is the oldest gospel - Mark - cited so rarely?

Just some thoughts as I go to sleep.

mountainman

Hey MCalavera,

The Christian Bible, the Jewish Bible and the Koran are the by-products of war, and war and its products and by products are rackets. In the case of the Christian bible, its widespread publication in the Greek language during the 4th century was met with massive controversies, that were eventually overcome by persecution and intolerance of those contraversialists.

The bible was authored by humans and was not beamed in to the planet by an ever-present divinity who dwells this side of the Hubble limit. The evidence for the existence of the new testament, of Jesus and the Apostles, of the Christian Church and of the "Mighty Nation of Christians" before the publication of their "Christian Church Official History" in the 4th century is highly problematic.

War was engaged against the Eastern Empire and the ancient Hellenic powers of Alexandria. As a direct result of this war the old city of the warlord Alexander was literally recycled to the new city of the warlord Constantine. The old temples to the Egypto-Graeco-Roman deities were torn down and recycled into new basilicas for the Christian deity. We have no real evidence for things "Christian" before this revolution of the 4th century.

How's the Yarra?

Best wishes


Pete

yalla

Why not believe in an historical Krishna?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krishna

An extract:
"The earliest text to explicitly provide detailed descriptions of Krishna as a personality is the epic Mahābhārata which depicts Krishna as an incarnation of Vishnu.[25] Krishna is central to many of the main stories of the epic. The eighteen chapters of the sixth book (Bhishma Parva) of the epic that constitute the Bhagavad Gita contain the advice of Krishna to the warrior-hero Arjuna, on the battlefield. Krishna is already an adult in the epic, although there are allusions to his earlier exploits. The Harivamsa, a later appendix to this epic, contains the earliest detailed version of Krishna's childhood and youth."

MCalavera

Pleasant. It says "hello!"

yalla, if you want me to discuss your post, let's do it in another thread.

yalla

Not really MCalavera.
I was trying to be clever and a bit funny by suggesting that one could raise the possibility of any number of gods if one wished.
I just chose Krishna at random.
I could have chosen any number of gods who are claimed by their adherents to be 'real', mainly depending of course on the relevant culture.
I could have chosen Ameratesu or Thor or Ngurunderi or .....whoever. Lots of possibilities.
But not being raised in the relevant culture I don't, we don't, consider the pro's and con's of the historicity of those gods. Being raised, surrounded by, immersed in a christian culture we do raise the historicity of our local deity representative, its a measure of our culture not of the credibility of the claim to fame of the particular god.
At one stage when I first started looking at christianity I did mildly wonder if some sort of HJ might possibly have existed but despite looking I haven't seen any evidence for such.
So thats a less flippant response than the previous, not having any cultural links or interest in Krishna I have no measure of his alleged historicity so a discussion of such is not on my menu.
Sorry if you thought I was serious.

aa5874

MY TURN.

1. HJ of Nazareth is a PRESUMPTION.

2.HJ of Nazareth is DERIVED from Ghost stories of antiquity.

3.HJ of Nazareth is based on UNRELIABLE sources.

4. HJ of Nazareth is NOT documented in ancient history.

5. HJ of Nazareth has NO historical value.

6.HJ of Nazareth has NO theological value.

7. HJ of Nazareth could NOT resurrect.

8. If gMark is about HJ of Nazareth then HJ of Nazareth was a TOTAL DISASTER which is shown in the LAST verse of Sinaiticus gMark 16.8.

9. If gMark is about HJ of Nazareth then he did NOT start a new religion under the name of Christ. The Markan Jesus wanted NO MAN to know he was called Christ.

10.If gMark is about HJ of Nazareth then it clearly show us that his disciples ABANDONED him and that Peter DENIED ever knowing him when he was arrested.

11.If gMark is about HJ of Nazareth, then he was a BLASPHEMER when he claimed he was the Son of the Blessed.

12. If gMark is about HJ of Nazareth then we see what happened when his body was MISSING from the burial site. The Visitors were DUMB-STRUCK and RAN AWAY.

13. If gMark is about HJ of Nazareth then HJ of Nazareth could NOT have developed or INITIATED the Jesus cult.

14. The WHOLE of the Sinaiticus Markan Jesus from chapter 1 to the very End chapter 16.8 was a FAILURE.

15. It cannot be shown that the Jesus cult preached that men should be worshiped as God.

16. It was the RESURRECTED MYTH JESUS in gMark 16.9-20 that developed and INITIATED the Jesus cult.

17. If Jesus was an ordinary man then there would have been NO JESUS cult based on Sinaiticus gMark.

18. It was the ADDITION of the RESURRECTION of Jesus, MARK 16.9-20 that SAVED the Sinaiticus gMark Jesus.

19. The Christian FAITH and REMISSION of Sins was DEVELOPED and INITIATED by MYTH JESUS, the RESURRECTED.

20. And if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins. See 1 Cor 15.

MYTH JESUS the resurrected is the Basis of the Christian FAITH.

gurugeorge

My turn

1) I come from a position of general interest in religions, and a reasonable layman's knowledge of them, worldwide, and a particular interest in mysticism and magic, which I believe are the actual root of religion, the primary causes of the phenomenon that are prior to and supervenient on the usual rationalistically-posited causes (anthropomorphism, religion as proto-philosophy, social glue, etc.) IOW, I take my departure from William James' investigations of religion in The Varieties of Religious Experience. That sort of stuff is where religion starts - in peoples powerful individual experiences of what they call "divine", "numinous", "god", "spirit", "devil", etc., etc.

2) In a nutshell, religion starts with peculiar experiences that knock peoples' socks off, either of a mystical ("all is one", "god is all", etc.) or a magical form (subjective experiences of talking to "spirits", etc.); generally this gives the religious founder a charisma and personal conviction that attracts followers, who trust that the founder's personal explanation for his or her experiences is valid ("God told me", etc., etc.)

3) So that's my background that sets my expectations. Certainly I very much expect religions to be started by charismatic founders, that is indeed the usual kind of start. However, when it comes to Christianity, I find the idea that the founder was a hypothetical human being behind the cult deity figure "Jesus Christ" to be unsubstantiated. There is no contemporary external evidence of such a man, and meanwhile nearly everything in the Christian texts is not about a man, but about a man-god.

4) Now god-men and men-gods are ten a penny. What's unusual about the Christian god-man is that there seems to be a lot of pseudo-historical detail about him - there's a semi-coherent story that's duplicated through 4 books. It is indeed vaguely plausible that this pseudo-historical detail might contain some elements of fact about a hypothetical human being, posited as the root of the myth. But, since there's no evidence outside the cult texts themselves that might enable us to independently identify (i.e. locate in time and space) an ordinary human being whose biography might bear some faint resemblance to the biography of the god-man, there is actually no compelling reason to take any of the evidence as evidentiary of a human being.

Even less so, in view of the way the gospels seem to be cobbled together from various sources, and in any case are basically just one gospel story (GMark) multipled into 3 more, by theological tomfoolery.

5) However, provisionaly accepting the scholarly consensus that the "Paul" writings are prior to the gospels, I find in them a much more plausible origin for the phenomenon of Christianity. Without the later pseudo-historical filling-in of the gospels, the god-man story in "Paul" is pretty sketchy - about as sketchy as most myths of that kind. Also, the important thing for "Paul" seems to be the transformative power of his story. Also, we have in "Paul" a plain case of the "usual religious startup" - someone of a forceful personality has visions and brings back some kind of "message" from the "god".

6) I find my position strengthened by a general look at what we can actually know about early Christianity historically. Orthodoxy looks like a relative latecomer, and if that is the case, then we have a reason for the accumulation of pseudo-historical detail, and the requirement to pin down the "Jesus" story to a specific time and place before the Diaspora. Simply put, the pseudo-historical detail was filled in in order to bolster the upstart orthodox sub-cult's claim to have a lineage that goes back to the cult figure himself, thereby bypassing and trumping the true founder "Paul".

7) The weakness of my position is that "Paul" is no better historically attested to, externally to the cult texts, than "Jesus". However, "Paul" has the virtue of being presented in the texts as an ordinary human being, therefore the internal evidence from the cult texts, that he existed, is less problematic, requires a less rigorous standard of proof, than internal evidence from the cult texts that a man existed who became deified, would require.

Atheos

I consider myself neutral on the issue of whether or not the various legends of "Jesus" were inspired by an actual figure, but in my opinion HJ vs MJ is for the most part a distinction without a difference.

Unless one is truly fundamentalist and believes that Jesus was the son of God, the result of a virgin impregnated by supernatural means, who turned water into wine, healed incurable afflictions such as blindness, fed thousands of hungry people to complete satisfaction on five loaves of bread and two small fish, raised dead people, resurrected from death and floated off into the sky then one is already at least partially a mythicist.

Rational people recognize that much of what is recorded in the various gospels is patterned after mythic tales of the period. Dionysus could turn water into wine and Asclepius was capable of healing people. Various other mythical elements were heaped upon the tale, so much so that it inspired Justin Martyr to offer the possibility that these similarities were the result of Satan trying to confuse people.

What remains when the layers of myth are peeled away is at best suspect. Sure, it's possible that an itinerant preacher named Jesus managed to gather a following, made a few witty sayings, did something to piss off the wrong people and got himself crucified for his efforts, but that's just about it. It's also possible that the entire story was made up from whole cloth. Either option fits fine with the available evidence. I've always felt that taking a dogmatic stand where none is warranted is incompatible with the application of rational evaluation of available evidence. In the absence of compelling evidence there's nothing wrong with just admitting that I don't know and leave it at that.

Otherwise one might as well explore the possibility that the legend of Hercules was inspired by a particularly strong man or that the legend of Asclepius was inspired by an actual physician. What difference does it make in the long run?

mountainman

Hey Atheos,

All good points.

The difference resides in the ancient historical truth.
What is the historical truth of Christian origins (if any)?
This is a question for the field of ancient history.


Best wishes


Pete