spin

The gospels are anonymous works written at unknown times for unknown audiences in unknown locations. They are in themselves not the stuff of history.

Though not contemporary and his works were preserved by christian scribes who have a heritage of changing texts.

Prince John (John Lackland) was certainly real too. Does that make Robin Hood real?

Do you think that the characters in the Satyricon were real because the text refers to various real people?

This stuff is not evidence for the existence of Jesus, just that the writers knew something about the period.

He may have lived.

How come so many people who seek recourse in the notion of burden of proof just don't seem to understand it?

The substantive claim already in the arena: that Jesus existed. The burden of proof is firstly on the substantive claim: What proof have you got that Jesus existed?

Where? What contemporary documents are there that you can establish? If you look through the archives we have been considering what's available for a long time and still can't agree on the existence of such contemporary documentation.

I see by your reference to "trying in some way to discredit them" that you may have difficulty understanding the issues. None of those works are contemporary, not Josephus, nor Tacitus, nor Suetonius. We need something tangible from the period, not 50 years later.

I won't be debating on this.


spin

French Prometheus

Except of course for the so-called Massacre of the Innocents, which is pure bullshit.

joedad

Just because we write novels like Gone With the Wind and Wreck of the Titan doesn’t mean Rhett Butler is real or that a man found himself marooned on an iceberg with a child, a mother and a hungry polar bear.

These accounts, just like the gospel stories, all contain lots of dates, names and places that are real but they are still fictional accounts. These stories were penned within the continuum of human history and obviously by humans, and as such are artifacts of history, perhaps much like Piltdown Man. But they remain fictional.

reniaa

This is an old and ridiculous type of arguement! by this arguement you can't rely on any historical document as fact you might as well discount all history before TV and photography was invented and even then you can argue camera trickery to make your case. what makes you guys experts on deciding which historical sources you should believe compared to others?
You can pick any historical figure and argue against their reality if the only information on them is what historians write about them but you don't you only pick on jesus because it suits your purposes too.
in the end robin hood isn't from historical documents his name is a word originally used as a word for outlaws or felons in law registries at the time and anyone can research this.
In jesus day word of mouth was the popular method or letters that these only later got put down is normal as christianity started as a very small group and only as it got larger did the word on jesus need to be put down. All the documentation we have describing points to there being a real historical figure called jesus but it's you guys that have to decide if he was the messiah or not.

aa5874

So, are you claiming non-Christians wrote the Gospels and the epistles? It should be obvious that it was not. Christians wrote the history of Jesus of Nazareth, who was born under a star that most likely was never seen and died during a 3-hour darkness that never occurred. In effect, Jesus was born and died during apparently fictitious circumstances.

And Josephus, Tacitus and Suetonius all claimed that the Messiah was probably Vespasian who was expected at around 70 CE by the Jews, not about 33 CE as the forgeries in the "TF" implied.


There is no evidence for entities that do not exist. There is also no known credible evidence for Jesus of the NT, therefore, it is reasonable to consider Jesus of the NT as never-existant.

You have the history of Jesus being the offspring of the Holy Ghost, on the pinnacle of the Temple with the Devil, walking on water, transfiguring or changing his appearance to that of men dead long ago, rising from the dead and going through the clouds into heaven. That is the history you have, it appears to be bogus.

aa5874

From where did you get information about Vespasian and the Roman empire? Do these sources have anything about Jesus of Nazareth, an anecdote, a rumor? Do these sources claimed that Jesus of Nazareth was rumored to heal the sick, was rumored to raise the dead, or that he was believed to be the Son of the God, or the Messiah and he used to tell people he would come back to earth a second time?

The same sources that claimed Vespasian was rumoured to heal the sick, what rumours do they have of Jesus?

There is nothing, no rumour, zero. Jesus of Nazareth is not even a rumor, he appears to be nothing.

Sheshbazzar

Perhaps if you would address the point being made, rather than attempting to sway the direction of this thread into a personal attack on my character or convictions, your so called "reach out" might have came off as something more than a verbal assassination attempt.

The premise that I set forth still stands,
Produce something substantive or germane that actually addresses, or disproves that premise.
Personal attacks against the messenger, do not serve to address the contents of the message.

gurugeorge

Hmm, you know I've got some sympathy with your point of view. I started off life like that. I was raised a Roman Catholic, but as soon as I was subjected to the absurdities of the Catechism, I rejected it partly, and then eventually wholly and became something of a socialist for a while because that's where I found the strongest emotional "anti-" feeling expressed.

But I think as others are saying, one has to really separate questions of truth or fact from matters of consequence - not forever, but one has to make that initial separation and acknowledge that there is a difference.

Sometimes, truth or falsity of claims has lead to horror and death, but sometimes bad things happen without people attempting to justify them by appeal to hokey ideas, and sometimes bad things happen despite good intentions and despite an appeal to actually true ideas.

Which means, better to be circumspect, calm the heart, and seek the coolth of truth for its own sake primarily, let that be the anchor point - then you can go into a more passionate enagagement with things knowing you've done the best you can not to be speaking nonsense in the course of that passionate engagement, and while that might not be enough for bad things never to come from what you do, it would be enough to exonerate you from blame, either in your own eyes or the eyes of others.

Wrt to Christianity though, I have to say I do partly agree with you: the idea of a one-shot avatar of the divine through whom alone one can be "saved" has been a tremendous evil in this world, tying in so neatly as it does with the pernicious idea of original sin. It has been a very good con game so that small groups of geeky masturbators can maintain dominance over large populations, get fed, get rich, etc.,etc. But the game's up.

aa5874

And this con game wiil be played for a long time because politicians need their votes to get elected.

ApostateAbe

Fifty-eight years as a fundamentalist is much more than I can brag. I was a fundamentalist up until the age of 18. When I finally realized that there was no actual God, that Christianity was all an elaborate lie, I turned against Christianity with more passion than I ever had defending it. When I heard the theory that Jesus started as a myth, it seemed perfectly appropriate for a religion that was nothing more than a systematic hoax, and I believed it and ran with it. It was only by debating the theory and losing the debates with intelligent Christians did I realize that reality does not always stand on the other side of the blind assertions of religions. Sometimes, they get a few things correct, you know, like a broken clock. I have been an atheist for six years (only I normally call myself an ideatheist--someone who believes the gods exist primarily as ideas). What is more important than being non-religious, to me, is someone who values reason and truth.

My opinion today is that Jesus started as a doomsday cult leader, something like Jim Jones or Joseph Smith. I brought my idea to the IIDB a year ago, and the moderator Toto pointed out that it isn't original, that it is shared by agnostic Jesus-scholar Bart Ehrman, someone who popularized that opinion shared by most critical New Testament scholars in his book, Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium (or via: amazon.co.uk). Is that aiding and abetting Christianity? I don't know any Christian who would be happy with my opinion on Jesus. But there is at least one Christian here, schilling.klaus, who has masterfully integrated the Jesus-myth theory into what seems to be another Christian variation.