Vorkosigan

I think you missed my main question there. Does he have 4 suriving biographies written within a hundred years of his death or not?

Tercel, Caesar has works about him from his own time and from his own hand. Discussion over. Jesus is not the best-evidenced figure from antiquity (I notice you ignored my comments from China completely).

BTW, the Gospels are not biographies of Jesus. In fact, the "biographical details" like the birth narratives in Mt and Lk are the quickest to be dismissed as legendary invention by scholars.

In any case, we do not know when the character underlying the gospels died, so your question assumes to be true what is actually at issue: the historicity of the story of Jesus' life.

Jesus mything is to history what Young Earth Creationism is to science.

Just show that historical method for sifting truth from reality again, Tercel. Or quit making that claim.

...significantly[/i] more support. Just remind me, how many professional scholars currently support the Jesus-myth hypothesis again?

Lets see...do you want me to start with the mythologists, psychologists of religion, comparative religionists, or NT scholars?

How many people have advanced the hypothesis (ie published it) over the last hundred years?

Prior to World War II, it was the most common position, Tercel.

Precisely what percentage of those have actually had relevant qualifications (eg History, Biblical studies etc)?

All, as far as I know. In what way are mythologists such as Joseph Campbell, who does not think the NT legend cycle can be taken seriously as history, not qualified to comment?

Also, there is no part of the NT legend cycle that some scholar out there does not think is myth. If you can show the reliable method NT scholars use to separate truth from fiction, I'll be happy to adopt your position. But nobody has one of those methods.

Is not the obvious conclusion that the theory is simply a wacko one, and the few who do advance it do so for little more reason than that it’s sure to sell their books?

Sure, that's right. I notice Earl Doherty right up there on the bestseller list, next to Alfred Loisy and Robert Price. Don't be an idiot, Tercel. Who is going to sell more books this year, Josh McDowell or G. A. Wells?

Vorkosigan

Perchance

Hmmm. I might have to quibble with you there. I do think it's possible for something to be true even if a minority of the population, or even just one person, perceives it.

After all, a lot of ethical positions (such as the abolition of slavery) were once unpopular with the majority, and some scientific facts (such as the earth going around the sun) also weren't accepted. That doesn't really make them any less "true."

On the other hand, if you're talking about the kind of truth that some Christians present, then I'll agree with you. Something might be true, but it generally doesn't become True until hallowed by the majority and considered unarguable.

Not by dint of repetition, no. But one could argue the same about other positions (such as humanism). I suppose I would ask: What sets the positions you favor apart from Christianity, for you? (This is not meant as a criticism; I am just curious).

For me, the positions I favor have survived numerous tests in my mind- or haven't survived, have gone down in flames, and have been replaced by something else or simple uncertainty. For example, I used to hold to a moral system that was a lot closer to "enlightened self-interest" than it is now. Then I discovered that I really did hold humanity in a different light than just "people I wanted to treat well so they would treat me well" (which is still a fine position- just not mine any more). I haven't discovered exactly why yet, but I'm working on it .

It depends on what court of truth you're putting it in, I suppose. Yes, on logical, scientific, and some other grounds (such as humanist morality in parts) it fails spectacularly. But I think a lot of people- not that I'm one of them - would talk about how it fulfills them personally. And a lot of these people, at least the ones I've talked to, turn out not to believe every bit of it.

Understood. I suppose I still find it fascinating because:

A) That uncertainty/agnostic thing again. I haven't quite decided that I should disregard it.

B) I haven't had as much exposure to it.

C) If it turns out that I decide it's ridiculous, I want to know why people believe it.

Do you mean truth about Christianity, or truth about anything at all here?

And even Judaism has changed (I think). Or do some Jews still practice regular animal sacrifices? (Can someone help me out here?) I think Christianity is perfectly capable of change, and some Christians in fact have changed it; but some are holding back.

I also enjoy mythology. I just wish that more Christians- or people in general- were amenable to submitting the Christian stories as "mythology," so that study on that front could be more productive.

I like it, too. And I have been accused several times of being a constant one (ironically, often while arguing things I don't personally believe in, simply because I want to understand apparent weaknesses in someone else's argument or because no one else appeared to have anything to say about it).

[Edited because of spelling mistakes, which is what happens when you're yelling at the dog to stop barking while you're typing ].

-Perchance.

[ May 30, 2002: Message edited by: Perchance ]</p>

Tercel

Using Jesus-Myther-Logic (tm) these would be no problem to explain away whatsoever.
A little "the majority of scholars believe them to be later forgeries" and "no manuscripts of such works appear until several hundred years until after their supposed date of composition" and "later Roman Emperors were not above a little forgery to promote the greatness of their mythical founder in order to increase their peoples' patriotism" and "no contemporary non-Roman sources mention these works"...
Heck, with Jesus-Myther-Logic anything can be explained away... and then of course we argue from silence [cough]that we have created ourselves[/cough].
I enjoy Bede's satirical use of Jesus-Myther-Logic to prove that Hannibal never existed:
Really? Perhaps it might just be because I'm sick of you trying to bring China into the discussion. I sometimes wonder if introducing China into discussions is your major reason for posting...

Start where you will. I would be fascinated to see you list more reputable people than could be counted on the fingers of one hand.
I would have to congratulate you for sheer ingenuity if you managed such a feet...

Uh.
Are you crazy...?
I see little point in continuing this discussion.

I never said Josh McDowell wasn't out to make money: I don't know. But there is certainly a reaonable market to be had on the Jesus-mything front and it seems that only that can sufficiently explain it.

Vorkosigan

Really? Perhaps it might just be because I'm sick of you trying to bring China into the discussion. I sometimes wonder if introducing China into discussions is your major reason for posting...

Well, if you'd quit making indefensible, ethnocentric claims about Jesus being the best-supported figure from antiquity, it wouldn't be necessary to crush you with actual facts. I can't help it if you make unsupported leaps into the abyss of ignorance, but I am not going to have any mercy on you when you do. Jesus isn't even the best-supported figure from Palestine of his own time: that would be Josephus, from whom we have works by his own hand.

Bede's parody is hilarious. Of course, if Jesus were a figure out of history, and not a Founding Myth figure, it might make sense. I am sure the Romans thought of Romulus and Remus as real people, but I doubt that any modern scholars do. You see, there are good sociological reasons to regard Founder figures as heavily mythologized, which is why figures such as Confucius, Jesus, Romulus, Arthur and Buddha are taken with a grain of salt. At least, by scholars, though not by believers [cough]. None of those exist in or apply to the case of Hannibal. Since Bede knows this, his Hannibal parody reflects on him, and not on the Jesus-mythers.

<strong>I never said Josh McDowell wasn't out to make money: I don't know. But there is certainly a reaonable market to be had on the Jesus-mything front and it seems that only that can sufficiently explain it.</strong>[/QUOTE]

Right. Loisy and Doherty had a deep and abiding belief in the historicity of Jesus. They just lie to make the big bucks from printing mythical stuff. The point is that if one is interested in making money, one can make a lot more by writing Max Lucado-style nonsense then by attacking Christianity.

Vorkosigan

sighhswolf

"Jesus isn't even the best-supported figure from Palestine of his own time: that would be Josephus, from whom we have works by his own hand."

Yea, and Josephus has a rather untrustworthy and traitorous reputation in the Jewish community.
He makes a suicide pact under seige , everyone goes through with it but him. The ancient hebrews considered suicide to be an unpardonable sin.
So to avoid capture, each man kills the next and his family right on through the group until only one remains, so out of a large group only one actually engages in the taking of his own life.
And they all avoid being captured and enslaved by
enemy forces. It would seem from the accounts given that Josephus was the instigator in this particular incident, and then backed out after everyone else had completed the act.
So he had first hand knowledge of Masada and what happened there even though he was not with that group when he wrote about it.

I would agree that some researchers are motivated by financial reward, but after spending a great deal of time in the EMail forum of the Jesus Mysteries with Earl and Elaine Pagels
I would not classify them to be fortune hunters.

They believe in the work they do, they see the inconsistances in the gospel accounts.
Elaine is very interesting because of her long years of research on mythology.
Earl started out with the premise that he wanted to find the sources that would have proven that Jesus was in fact a live flesh and blood historical figure.
Through his many years of study he realized there was nothing there......no substance to back the claims of an historical figure.

The evidence just does not exist..at this time.
I never saw Earl badmouthing Christians or Christianity, only relating information about his work.
He has said on numerous occassions that he approached the work as clinically unbiased as he could possibly be, in other words he did not undertake this research for the specific goal of attempting to discredit christianity.

It would be almost an impossible task to find anyone to research these areas totally without bias, the legend and mythology is too deeply embedded and the emotional content of this work is volatile with strong reactions from both sides.

Whether or not you believe in god, is not the relevant issue.
Even the historicity of Jesus is not the central issue.
The issue is one of credibility.
The original Greek text of the "holy bible" from what I have read was not written until around the 4th century and that was a revised edition of writings compiled decades earlier in Aramaic and Hebrew.
Nothing survives of the original manuscripts, so whatever you are reading may or may not be the "words of god".

Then along comes King James who commissions a total rewrite of the bible with instructions to the writers to protect the interests of the King at all costs.
After the rewrite was finished, James had no idea if it was in fact accurate or did not have the knowledge to critique the work.
So, he sends it to Bacon to proof and Bacon uses the opportunity to inject ideas of his own, and remember that Bacon was the prime supporter of the Knights Templar.

I mean come on....nothing that has been translated and reinterpreted so many times throughout the course of history can be expected to have been kept in it's original form, with the original wording intact.
So everything in the bible is questionable as to origin and content.
As far as being able to verify the authors of the NT gospels no one has been able to definitively
name the writers, only that the authors attributed to them, most probably are not who actually wrote them.

The point is very simple. Apologists love to rip up the noncanonical gospels and give all kinds or reasons that they were not included in the NT.
Christians have a very nasty habit of trying their best to discredit anything that would give an unfavorable image of their icon.
But not a one of those folks can give any more of a sound verification/authentication of those works adopted by the church as any of the the conflicting views.

When the church confiscated all the copies of the Talmud that they possibly could find and ordered them destroyed why do you think that happened?
Wolf

Perchance

To add my two cents...

I think that even if it were possible to find a totally unbiased researcher, no one else would in fact accept that he (or she) was unbiased. There would be accusations from believers that evidence for Jesus was ignored, accusations from non-believers that evidence against Jesus was ignored, and everyone would end up suspecting the poor researcher of ulterior motives.

Probably the only way you could do it would be to get someone who had never heard of Christianity- but that person would probably be influenced by his/her own theological system, so even that wouldn't work.

That's what I've never understood. It seems impossible that a text could have survived 2000 years (or, I suppose, 1700 years) without at least one alteration. Even texts that are only a few hundred years old acquire variant readings, especially if manuscripts are preserved. How can anyone believe that he or she is still reading the words just as they were originally written down?

Exactly. And if by some weird chance someone did discover an original manuscript of the Bible...

Would the people who want to see one because of religious interest actually believe it if it contradicted the "known" Gospels?

Um... all right, showing my ignorance here, but...

I assume the last question was rhetorical, but I don't know the answer . Why did the Church destroy copies of the Talmud? There would seem to be no point, since their religion shared a lot of Jewish heritage.

Or was it to stop Jews from practicing a religion untouched by Christian ideas?

-Perchance.

sighhswolf

The Jewish site "Messiahtruth.com" has some very good historical information (along with a lot of religious crap and derogatory christian bashing).
Their claim is as follows:
"There are 304,805 letters (approximately 79,000 words) in the Torah. In the over 3,000 years since Moses received the original Scripture from Mt. Sinai and wrote the 13 copies (twelve of which were distributed among the Tribes), spelling variants have emerged on a total of nine words -- with absolutely no effect on their meaning. The Christian Bible, in comparison, has over 200,000 variants and in 400 instances, the variants change the meaning of the text; 50 of these are of great significance.

Remember that the English translation of the Tanach or more commonly known as the Old Testament, in nearly every Christian Bible is taken from the Septuagint, one of many Greek translations that differed considerably from the Masoretic text. It is the Septuagint, not the original Hebrew, that was the main basis for the Old Latin, Coptic, Ethiopic, Armenian, Georgian, Slavonic, and part of the Arabic translations of the Old Testament.

Even the earliest English translation of the JPS Tanach (Jewish Publication Society) was a slightly modified version of the Old Testament found in the King James Bible, instead of a direct translation of the original Hebrew which accompanied it. Far more accurate English translations of the Masoretic text are found in Koren's The Jerusalem Bible and Artscroll's Stone Edition Tanach. "

There are some answers to some very interesting questions here and some rather eye opening comments dealing with the Talmud, the KJV, the Torah, the New Testament and a wealth of historic information.
You must however realize that this is a site specifically designed to counter christian missionaries who are attempting to evangelize Jewish populations.

I have my own opinions of why the early church wanted to destroy everything but canonical versions of the Biblical texts but you may form your own opinion after looking at some of the documented and verified sources of research.

I found this site extremely interesting and somewhat entertaining, and in some cases fairly
humorous to be quite candid.
What it does supply is many sources of research works and manuscripts by respected researchers
who are not known as quacks.

It is my contention that every side of an issue should be explored before rendering any opinion.
There are just too many differing interpretations
and translations of religious works to claim that any are valid and exempt from being suspect
as forgery.

And if you want a captive audience you eliminate the competition....
Wolf

Perchance

Thanks for the link. I am trying my best to form an opinion as close to unbiased as I possibly can (though it's rendered more difficult by my thinking that logic is preferable to theology ).


Wow. I hadn't even thought of that.

I suppose I still don't really see the value of pushing beliefs- even dearly and deeply held beliefs- on someone else. Doesn't making someone a "captive audience" make it less likely that that person or group will listen to you?

In doubt and glad of it .

-Perchance.

Tercel

I see... What about George Washington? What about Julius Caesar? Do you take grains of salt with the historicity of all your founding figures, or merely the ones it suits you to do so?
Perhaps you could have a think about the length of time between the supposed existence of Confucius, Romulus, Arther and Buddha and their first mention in texts and the degree of historical detail provided the earlist texts and compare that to Jesus.

Vorkosigan

I'd be happy to rethink about the time...if we knew when Jesus was actually executed. That's what at issue here -- the veracity of the gospel legend. If you get on XTALK right now, there is a discussion going on about the existence of Christian communities prior to 30 AD. That would pretty much invalidate your view, wouldn't it?

Also, if you know anything about US history, you know that there is a robust forgery mill surrounding Washington and ironically, his religious beliefs. In Washington's case the hagiography started quite early. I am sure you can think of numerous myths regarding old George, like the cherry tree, for example, or his devotion to Christianity (Washington was a Deist). Now imagine that most people are illiterate, the forgers constitute a powerful religious orthodoxy, and there are no surviving documents from Washington or anyone who knew him. What do you think our picture of Washington would look like today?

Vorkosigan