aa5874

The fundamental problem with the Gospels is that the authors did not identify when they wrote, who they were, or if they were writing history and were eyewitnesses.

One must attempt to deduce or speculate when the Gospels were written and that there maybe some history in them.

Even if one assumes or deduces any Gospel was written around 70 CE the veracity of the contents is still a major problem.

What can be assumed to be history in the NT Canon?

In antiquity, as is clearly evident, the virgin birth of Jesus was just as plausible as the virgin births of Greek mythological Gods. In antiquity the ascension of Jesus to heaven was just as plausible as the ascension of Romulus.

It really makes very little significant difference when Plutarch's Romulus or Homer's Achilles were actually dated since the contents REMAIN mythological.

And such is the case for the Gospels, no matter when they are practicably assumed or speculated to have been written, the contents of the Gospels remain very similar to the mythology found in Plutarch's Romulus and Homer's Achilles.

And, what is extremely important is that Christian writers recognised the mythological similarities since the 2nd century over 1800 years ago.

This is Justin Martyr admitting that the Jesus story is like Greek mythology in "First Apology" XXI.

It is reasonable to consider that Jesus was a MYTH since shifting the dates of the Gospels cannot alter the mythological contents that is no different to Greek mythology.

Juststeve

aa:

I posed the question to Doug because I’m interested in what he has to say. I didn’t pose it to you because I’m not interested in what you have to say.

Thanks anyway,

Steve

aa5874

Well, this is not a private forum.

But, in any event, I am extremely and exceedingly interested in what you say. I must listen or read attentively and with utmost diligence to what those who believe Jesus was just a man have to say.

So far it would appear that the belief that Jesus was a man cannot be supported by any credible external historical source.

But, I will continue to listen and read what you have to say.

It is fundamentally imperative that I listen to those who do not agree with my position.

Juststeve

aa:

When you demand an external source of evidence for the HJ I take it you mean external to the Christian Canon. If that’s there case there is little for us to discuss since almost all of the evidence for the HJ is in the Christian Canon. What then do we discuss? I certainly don’t want to encourage you to demand what doesn’t exist, again.

Steve

gurugeorge

Begging the question.

Once again, the "evidence" in the Christian Canon is of a god-man.

To extract evidence of a real human being from the myth may or may not be possible, but it's not done simply by retaining some kind of detachable abstract evidentiary quality from the god-man story and just transferring it onto a hypothetical human being supposed to be the euhemerist root of that god-man story.

Juststeve

Guru:

I’ve begged no question, I’ve simply stated as a matter of fact that almost all of the evidence, not all but almost all, comes from the Christian Canon. This is a fact of which you should be aware, not a question being begged. I’m not sure that you even know what it means to beg a question. I am pretty sure that you are more interested in simply arguing than you are in having a reasonable discussion.

Steve

spamandham

I think that depends on what is meant by "historical Jesus". If we make it mean something very vague like "the historical Jesus is that dead dude" then I think we can assert without equivocation there was a historical Jesus. If we define him as "exactly what is depicted in Mark, miracles and all", then we can assert equally strongly that he did not exist.

From a typical skeptic's perspective of HJ, I would tend to agree that agnosticism is the most reasonable position.

But none of that really matters. At the end of the day, modern history is not about trying to figure out what *really* happened thousands of years ago, it's more about trying to glue a shattered vase back together using the minimum amount of glue, when you have no a priori knowledge of what it looked like.

Sheshbazzar

Without the tall tales that are presented within the NT.....there would be no knowledge of any 'Jesus' as being 'that dead dude'.
Any assertion that 'Jesus' the Christ was ever a living historical personage, is just that, an assertion.

'Is Agnosticism the only Reasonable Position on the Historical Great Pumpkin? '
This is a serious question, one based upon exactly the same reasoning that posits an actual 'historical' Jesus.

spamandham

http://www.nytimes.com/learning/gene...bday/1126.html

As it turns out, the inspiration for the Great Pumpkin story was Schulz' belief that worshipping deities was hazardous....in particular in regard to Christianity.

So, once we find the historical Jesus, we will have also located the historical Great Pumpkin.

aa5874

Once you admit no external evidence for HJ exists then we can now discuss credibilty, veracity, HISTORICAL accuracy, forgeries, interpolations and date of authorship of Christian writings that mention Jesus.

Please state which christian writer or author of the NT in all of antiquity who "eyeballed" Jesus, who claimed they saw him alive before he died.

Paul claimed he and over 500 saw the resurrected Jesus.

The Pauline writer claimed he was in a basket in Damascus when Aretas was king, yet he never saw Jesus alive only resurrected.

1. No external evidence exists for Jesus.

2. No internal evidence exists for a human Jesus.

What is there to discus when there is no credible evidence for the historical Jesus?

We can discuss the theory that it is reasonable to claim Jesus was a MYTH.

1. The conception, birth, temptation, miracles, transfiguration, resurrection and ascension of Jesus are implausible.

2. No external evidence exists for Jesus.

3. No internal evidence exists for a human Jesus.


Jesus was a myth and there are more reasons to discuss.