Clivedurdle

Is this not a hmm, we have a pearl, there must have been some grit argument?

But stars and planets form by the coalescence of myriad bits of dirt and dust, resulting for example in the largest super nova humanity has seen - we may see it now but it happened 240 million years ago.

Casper

I am starting to like the idea that Jesus was a borrowed persona from the emperor cults, first used by Marcion through his "Paul" persona, in an effort to ground a blue-collar religion with something a little more esoteric.

In other words, Jesus was Augustus Caesar and Marcion changed him into a wraith in order to recruit eastern followers, while the Catholics made him a Jew in order to fit into Western Roman culture better.

I know, stretching the razor, but it has carried me far in trying to formulate it.

Doug Shaver

There might well be some way to mathematize the joint questions of Jesus' existence and Paul's existence, but I have no idea, and I'm not guessing, whether your matrix method would do the trick. Until I see an explanation by a mathematician of how it would work, I'm not interested.

In the meantime, I can clearly see good reasons for believing that Paul did exist and Jesus did not.

aa5874

Do you have any support for these claims? It has been established that there is no credible extra-biblical historical references to the Jesus in the NT, not even the TF, when examined closely.

All references to Paul and his association or non-association Jesus cannot be supported historically.The NT claims a person named Jesus was deified, put on trial and even called the king of the Jews, no known historian record these events, I therefore have no basis to claim this Jesus may have existed.

There are historical references to Pilate, John the Baptist, Herod, Jesus the son of Gamala and Jesus the son of Sapphias, I have basis to claim that these person may have existed, but who is this deified Jesus, son of Mary, king of the Jews, when did he live, where was he from and who knows him?

Who is Mark? Did he live in the 1st century, or was it the 2nd? And what really did Mark write?

spin

So far we've only got 79 people who've given their views on this poll. I thought we had a lot more readers than that! C'mon folks, we need as wide a representation as possible to get a general disposition of the views of this forum. Don't hold back or we'll sick the hounds of heaven onto you...


spin

No Robots

I vote "Messiah", but I mean this in the Spinozist, non-supernatural sense:

A man who can by pure intuition comprehend ideas which are neither contained in nor deducible from the foundations of our natural knowledge, must necessarily possess a mind far superior to those of his fellow men, nor do I believe that any have been so endowed save Christ. To Him the ordinances of God leading men to salvation were revealed directly without words or visions, so that God manifested Himself to the Apostles through the mind of Christ as He formerly did to Moses through the supernatural voice. In this sense the voice of Christ, like the voice which Moses heard, may be called the voice of God, and it may be said that the wisdom of God (i.e. wisdom more than human) took upon itself in Christ human nature, and that Christ was the way of salvation.--Spinoza, TTP

spin

I guess by now there is not much chance of many more votes coming in, though a number of our regular voters have so far abstained, some of whom we can guess as to how they would vote others we couldn't. We only apparently have five of the forum's christian participants, though I'm sure they could swell the ranks of the yes vote. I suppose GakuseiDon would have voted "Yes/messiah", Ted Hoffman would have voted "No/myth" and Amaleq13 would have gone "Yes/just this guy". And what would our catholic naturalist say?

I put the poll up as a replacement for one which offered a straight yes/no vote, which couldn't divine the state of thought on the subject on the forum, but what was an eye-opener to me was that participants would have liked yet more options. This is an indicator that the question was a serious one to all the participants who voted, perhaps with the exception of those who voted "Who cares?"

I'm personally happy to see that the "insufficient evidence" to decide option one by a length from "Yes" Jesus "was just this guy, ya know", with "No" he was a myth a half length away third. This suggests that when we have a loud HJer/MJer debate in the future we realize that it is not representative of the the views of the majority of participants on this forum, that if you're not a HJer, you are not automatically a MJer.


spin

Peter Kirby

I answer that, the non-existence of Jesus may be demonstrated in five ways.

aa5874

When someone declares that there is 'insufficient evidence', what exactly do they mean?

It could mean that they have not done any research and do not intend to do any.

Peter Kirby

Great point!

My poll avoids this pitfall, while perhaps falling into others.

Was there a Historical Jesus? The IIDB Poll