Freethought & Rationalism Archive

mountainman · 07-05-2013, 06:12 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by outhouse

Thats the exact reason why most mythicist cannot even make a case that parallels any other mythicist. There is ZERO consensus in this field.

There is zero consensus among historicists over Christian history and the chronology of the authorship of the canonical and non canonical books. Was Jesus the son of the Poobah, an itinerant preacher, a rebellious rabbi, a failed prophet, an unknown nobody? The historicists are all over the shop as well. Get real. How many versions of the bible exist? How many Christian sects and denominations exist?

εὐδαιμονία | eudaimonia

James The Least · 07-06-2013, 04:09 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Toto

Quote:

Originally Posted by James The Least

... If they had published strong, peer-reviewed, scholarly books on their theory in the 1980s, the discussion would have evolved beyond where it is now, I believe. By not publishing then, the Ehrmans of academia can present the myth theory as a recent internet fad perpetuated by ignorant amateurs. ..

Robert M. Price had stated at the time that he thought that Jesus was a myth based on Osiris but that he didn't think he could prove it because the evidence was lost to time. And you saw what happened to Brodie once he did come out with the thesis that Jesus never existed - he could not do that until he was ready for retirement.

Besides - I remember 1980. I don't think you are being realistic. There is no way such an idea could have gotten through "peer review" at the time. The Biblical Studies guild had circled the wagons against the idea. Conservatives were not willing to concede that the Bible had no basis in real history, and liberals needed a historical Jesus for their own purposes.

The Jesus Seminar was started in the 80's, and made a radical change to the culture by promulgating the idea that Jesus probably didn't say most of what the gospels claimed that he did say.

G. A. Wells started writing on the existence of Jesus in the 1970's, but his academic background was in linguistics, not "New Testament," so the guild used that as an excuse to ignore him.

I guess I should have written, "If they had been able to publish strong, peer-reviewed, scholarly books on their theory in the 1980s..." I didn't necessarily mean to blame them for not publishing.

Was it Thomas Paine who bemoaned the fact that he had to dredge up the same old arguments for a mythical origin of Christianity for a new generation ... in 1795? When the overwhelming number of people want a myth to be true, arguing against that myth is always going to a Sisyphean ordeal.

Steve Weiss · 07-06-2013, 10:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Toto

Now available as an e-book on Kindle:

The Historical Bejeesuz (or via: amazon.co.uk) by Robert M. Price

a collection of essays which are much more serious than the title of the book.

I'm confused about the story that Christians are trying to sell about a "real" Jesus. A female human being gets with god and produces a man/god. This man/god is the true man/god (in comparison to the many others that made the same claim) because as the Messiah he can trace his lineage to the House of David. But the David connection is through Joseph who had nothing to do with the reproductive act. In addition, what kind of DNA would this man/god have? Part human and part what? And if the martyrdom of Jesus is what saves mankind from sin and hell isn't a martyrdom that lasts a day really a phony martyrdom? He's dead, but wait a minute, he's back? He never really died then; he just disappeared or went walkabout. Does any of this make the slightest bit of sense? Is it necessary to debate historicity when the story is nonsensical and there is not a shred of evidence for any of the claims? Isn't the default position that the story is fiction from start to finish?

aa5874 · 07-06-2013, 11:38 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Steve Weiss

I'm confused about the story that Christians are trying to sell about a "real" Jesus. A female human being gets with god and produces a man/god. This man/god is the true man/god (in comparison to the many others that made the same claim) because as the Messiah he can trace his lineage to the House of David. But the David connection is through Joseph who had nothing to do with the reproductive act. In addition, what kind of DNA would this man/god have? Part human and part what? And if the martyrdom of Jesus is what saves mankind from sin and hell isn't a martyrdom that lasts a day really a phony martyrdom? He's dead, but wait a minute, he's back? He never really died then; he just disappeared or went walkabout. Does any of this make the slightest bit of sense? Is it necessary to debate historicity when the story is nonsensical and there is not a shred of evidence for any of the claims? Isn't the default position that the story is fiction from start to finish?

It would appear that the Jesus cult of Christians publicly sold a Mythological Jesus.

It was non-believers who sold or attempted to sell a real Jesus.

The Quest for an historical Jesus was initiated after some could no longer buy the Jesus of Faith in the NT.

Now, it has already been admitted by Albert Schweitzer that Jesus of Nazareth had NO existence and was either literary fiction or an eschatological idea.

Albert Schweitzer ended a quest for an historical Jesus a hundred years ago.

See http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/schweitzer/
See http://www.earlychristianwritings.co...chapter20.html

Quote:

The Jesus of Nazareth who came forward publicly as the Messiah, who preached the ethic of the Kingdom of God, who founded the Kingdom of Heaven upon earth, and died to give His work its final consecration, never had any existence.

He is a figure designed by rationalism, endowed with life by liberalism, and clothed by modern theology in an historical garb...

Schweitzer is precise. Jesus of Nazareth NEVER had any existence.

The Quest for an historical Jesus is futile.

Albert Schweitzer continues to make precision cuts on the autopsy of the quest for an Historical Jesus.

See http://www.earlychristianwritings.co...chapter20.html

Quote:

... He will be a Jesus, who was Messiah, and lived as such, either on the ground of a literary fiction of the earliest Evangelist, or on the ground of a purely eschatological Messianic conception.

See http://www.earlychristianwritings.co...chapter20.html

Quote:

The mistake was to suppose that Jesus could come to mean more to our time by entering into it as a man like ourselves. That is not possible. First because such a Jesus never existed.

There simply was NO Jesus of Nazareth, NEVER was.

Jesus of Nazareth and Nazareth are Not found in any writings of antiquity outside the Bible and Apologetics.

Steve Weiss · 07-07-2013, 01:37 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by aa5874

Quote:

Originally Posted by Steve Weiss

I'm confused about the story that Christians are trying to sell about a "real" Jesus. A female human being gets with god and produces a man/god. This man/god is the true man/god (in comparison to the many others that made the same claim) because as the Messiah he can trace his lineage to the House of David. But the David connection is through Joseph who had nothing to do with the reproductive act. In addition, what kind of DNA would this man/god have? Part human and part what? And if the martyrdom of Jesus is what saves mankind from sin and hell isn't a martyrdom that lasts a day really a phony martyrdom? He's dead, but wait a minute, he's back? He never really died then; he just disappeared or went walkabout. Does any of this make the slightest bit of sense? Is it necessary to debate historicity when the story is nonsensical and there is not a shred of evidence for any of the claims? Isn't the default position that the story is fiction from start to finish?

It would appear that the Jesus cult of Christians publicly sold a Mythological Jesus.

It was non-believers who sold or attempted to sell a real Jesus.

The Quest for an historical Jesus was initiated after some could no longer buy the Jesus of Faith in the NT.

Now, it has already been admitted by Albert Schweitzer that Jesus of Nazareth had NO existence and was either literary fiction or an eschatological idea.

Albert Schweitzer ended a quest for an historical Jesus a hundred years ago.

See http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/schweitzer/
See http://www.earlychristianwritings.co...chapter20.html

Schweitzer is precise. Jesus of Nazareth NEVER had any existence.

The Quest for an historical Jesus is futile.

Albert Schweitzer continues to make precision cuts on the autopsy of the quest for an Historical Jesus.

See http://www.earlychristianwritings.co...chapter20.html

See http://www.earlychristianwritings.co...chapter20.html

Quote:

The mistake was to suppose that Jesus could come to mean more to our time by entering into it as a man like ourselves. That is not possible. First because such a Jesus never existed.

There simply was NO Jesus of Nazareth, NEVER was.

Jesus of Nazareth and Nazareth are Not found in any writings of antiquity outside the Bible and Apologetics.

QED

Tenorikuma · 07-07-2013, 07:14 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Steve Weiss

I'm confused about the story that Christians are trying to sell about a "real" Jesus. A female human being gets with god and produces a man/god. This man/god is the true man/god (in comparison to the many others that made the same claim) because as the Messiah he can trace his lineage to the House of David. But the David connection is through Joseph who had nothing to do with the reproductive act. In addition, what kind of DNA would this man/god have? Part human and part what? And if the martyrdom of Jesus is what saves mankind from sin and hell isn't a martyrdom that lasts a day really a phony martyrdom? He's dead, but wait a minute, he's back? He never really died then; he just disappeared or went walkabout. Does any of this make the slightest bit of sense?

The conundrum for liberal and progressive theologians is that they recognize the patent implausibility of the story, but redeem its starring figure by replacing the mythical demigod with a protagonist who was just a man, but was a really, really wise and flawless man — the greatest there ever was. And they anchor their theological presumptions to that figure.

In a way, the paucity of evidence for a historical Jesus is a much bigger problem for those who don't take the biblical stories at face value. The Jesus your typical Christian believes in, otoh, is pretty much a docetic phantom who only looked human.

aa5874 · 07-07-2013, 07:24 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tenorikuma

The conundrum for liberal and progressive theologians is that they recognize the patent implausibility of the story, but redeem its starring figure by replacing the mythical demigod with a protagonist who was just a man, but was a really, really wise and flawless man — the greatest there ever was. And they anchor their theological presumptions to that figure.

In a way, the paucity of evidence for a historical Jesus is a much bigger problem for those who don't take the biblical stories at face value. The Jesus your typical Christian believes in, otoh, is pretty much a docetic phantom who only looked human.

Jesus of Nazareth was NOT docetic. Jesus of Nazareth never had an existence.

The docetic son of God came down from heaven--Not Nazareth.

There is no claim that the docetic son of God was born on earth or had a human mother.

Tenorikuma · 07-07-2013, 07:54 AM

But do you have Christian friends in real life, aa? How do they think and talk about Jesus?

Jaybees · 07-07-2013, 08:01 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tenorikuma

But do you have Christian friends in real life, aa? How do they think and talk about Jesus?

That's an intriguing question. I rather suspect there's a wide range of differing ways of treating our Xtian friends in real life. Speaking for myself, if someone I regarded as a friend suddenly began to spout off about whether or not I was bathed in the blood of the lamb, I'd embarrassingly break off contact, go home and watch an old Marx brothers movie.

aa5874 · 07-07-2013, 09:06 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tenorikuma

But do you have Christian friends in real life, aa? How do they think and talk about Jesus?

Let us not divert from the OP.

In antiquity, Docetism had nothing to do with Jesus of Nazareth who was born of a Virgin.

In antiquity and even today, Christians of the Jesus cult claimed Jesus of Nazareth was born after his mother was made pregnant by a Holy Ghost.

Examine writings attributed to Ignatius, Aristides, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Origen, Eusebius and others.

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07-07-2013, 07:54 AM	#38
Tenorikuma Regular Member Join Date: Jul 2011 Location: Japan Posts: 156	But do you have Christian friends in real life, aa? How do they think and talk about Jesus?

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