Ferryman to the Dead

Your right, wisdom by authors that only heard rumors and second hand hearsay and drew from text that their mythological God man obviously knew better than they did. The whole debate is an argument from silence, taking what was not said and introducing it as evidence that Jesus existed. You can make hundreds of analogies and comparisons, draw dozens of conclusions but until this Jesus makes an actual return as was predicted in the Bible his history as a myth will continue. The whole basis for the Christian theory that he lived is the Gospels that were hand picked by the Council of Nicene in 325 out of the hundreds of text that were available to them at the time these were the only 4 that fit the bill......

Disagree. He does matter. Without some form of historical background to support their Jesus figure the only thing the Christian faith has is the crucifixion and resurrection. Anyone ever noticed that all of the pictures you see of this Jesus he always has the "Sun" behind his head historical or coincidence?

-Thomas Paine

http://www.usbible.com/Astrology/gospel_zodiac.htm

aa5874

The real question is why does Juststeve BELIEVE the author of gMatthew wrote history when:

1. The author of gMatthew did NOT even claim that he WROTE history.

2. Virtually all the claims about Jesus in gMatthew are FICTIONAL from conception to resurrection.

3. The author showed that almost every event with Jesus was LIFTED from Hebrew Scripture as fulfilled prophecy.

4. The supposed prophecies that Jesus fulfilled were actually mis-interpreted by the author.

The author of gMatthew wrote PROPHECY was fulfilled when Jesus RODE two DONKEYS simultaneously. See Matthew 21-5-7 and Zech. 9.9


Why does Juststeve BELIEVE that gMatthew is history when NOT even the author made such a claim?

Why does Juststeve BELIEVE gMatthew is history when he rejects virtually everything about gMatthew's description of Jesus from conception to resurrection?

Why does Juststeve believe gMatthew's Jesus lived in A CITY called Nazareth when gMatthew's Jesus was the offspring of the Holy ghost and NO prophets mentioned ANYTHING about a city of Nazareth contrary to gMatthew 2.23?

Why? Why? Why?. No answer.

Kapyong

Gday,

Oh - you DON'T have a list?
So when you said :
"Let’s just consider scholars from the top 50 or so universities in the world."
You had not actually checked for yourself?

Then, when pressed you came up with four names - not one of which was an atheist NT scholar. It turns out you could not name a single one.

Now you say
"I'm sure there are others" without any evidence either.
Like you were sure there were atheist NT scholars who agreed with you about HJ.

(Now, finally someone ELSE has found one it seems.
Well done No Robots :-)

Your argument always seems to boil down to :
"I'm sure ..."
without presenting evidence to support you
while ignoring the arguments against.


K

Kapyong

Gday,

He most assuredly DOES count - he's a modern NT scholar, published and credentialled in the field.

So, does he support you on an HJ, Steve?

Doesn't look like it (thanks spamandham.)

Of course 1 case whose an agnostic really proves little - but Steve's claim that there are plenty of atheist NT scholars who support an HJ is clearly false.

This goes to that whole point of cultural baggage that I saw Neil Godfrey mention on Vridar (forget who he was sourcing) - our Western culture is steeped in Jesus themes, he is the most well known name of all. The vast majority of NT scholars are themselves steeped in that brew - the assumption that Jesus existed is so ingrained that is rarely actually questioned.

So ingrained, so deeply ensconced that when it IS questioned, the response tends to attack rather than debate.


K

Kapyong

Gday,

Pardon me, but I have to pick this nit - it's my personal bug-bear :-(

The CoN did not select the Gospels. They had nothing to do with choosing the NT canon. It's a pervasive web legend. The famous Bible of Constantine was sponsored a few years after the CoN - it appears we still have one of those copies - it's not quite the same canon as now (Hermas, Barnabas.)

The list of 4 Gospels was fairly solid by end of 2nd century (er, if Irenaeus existed, that is :-)

The canon finally crystalised informally a few decades after the CoN thru various letters (Athanasius' letter 367) and some later local councils (Hippo, Carthage, Rome IIRC.)

Actually the canon was not formally approved by the church in full council until a millenium later at Trent 1544.

Also 'hundreds' is a bit exaggerated.
Another common claim is "about 50".

But I've never seen a list of more than about 30 "Gospel"s.


K

aa5874

Well, you really cannot claim that the list of 4 gospels were solid by the end of 2nd century and yet be unsure of the source.

The source "Against Heresies" that mentioned a list of 4 Gospels is NOT credible. Virtually every detail about chronology, authorship, dating and even some contents the 4 Gospels in "Against Heresies" has been deduced to be ERRONEOUS.

Justin Martyr, who appears to be far more CREDIBLE than the author of "Against Heresies", did NOT write about any Gospel writers called Matthew, Mark, Luke and John and ONLY mentioned the "Memoirs of the Apostles" and that it was used in the churches in the city and in the country during his time..

There was NO need and theologically counterproductive for any Christian cults in the 2ND century to have FOUR contradictory Gospel with Multiple birth narratives and conflicting genealogies and used them simultaneously.

The following Christian cults did NOT use 4 Gospels.

1.Simon Magus.

2. Menander

3. Valentinus

4. Basilides

5. Saturnilus.

6. Cerinthus

7. Carpocrates.

8. The Ebionites.

9. The Nicolaitanes.

10. Marcosians.

11. Marcion.

12. Apelles.

13. Ptolemy

14. Colorbasus.

15. Cerdo

16. And others

Origen and Justin Martyr both, before and after "Irenaeus", wrote that there were many doctrines and little UNITY among Christians' belief about Jesus.

It is FAR more likely that EACH Jesus Christ cult used only ONE version of the many versions of the Jesus stories. Some Christian cults may have believed Jesus Christ was a Phantom, others that he was God incarnate, others that Christ entered Jesus, and others that he was ONLY the Logos.

And further, Eusebius was probably the first to write about any compilation of 50 Bibles and NO Bibles with the NT Canon have been found that is earlier than the 4th century.

Again, It makes very little sense to give "Irenaeus" any credibility when the information in "Against Heresies" about the 4 Gospels have ALREADY been REJECTED and deduced to be perhaps 100% in ERROR, or some similar number, in chronology, authorship, dating and even some contents.

Doug Shaver

I took it as a fact, too, back in the days when I was assuming Jesus' historicity. As sparse as the data were, it was the most parsimonious explanation of the data, given that assumption.

Without that assumption, I think other explanations become more parsimonious.

gurugeorge

Nobody's rejecting them out of hand - they're evidence for sure, but evidence for what? There are several HJ scenarios that are possible or plausible, but there are also other mythicist scenarios that are possible or plausible. Compare and contrast any other myth of fantastic beings in the world - are they ALL explainable euhemeristically? Obviously not, and there's no strong reason why this one should be either, apart from certain traditions - both religious and rationalist. (As has been pointed out in this thread, the "historical Jesus" that most people believed in throughout history was the god-man, i.e. what we would call a myth. The idea that he was just some dude who got mythified is a modern way of looking at the cult figure.)

What I reject out of hand is taking it for granted that the cult texts are historical evidence. This is circular reasoning and isn't rational no matter how many people do it, or how hallowed the tradition.

That's fortunate then, since that isn't what I said.

And where is there any history in either of these?

We have a bunch of texts which may or may not contain historical information - that's yet to be ascertained. But their "aboutness" is all about a mythical figure.

Their prima facie historicity is NOT the prima facie historicity of a man, but the prima facie historicity of a fantastic god-man - that's what hundreds of thousands of human beings throughout history believed in, that's what the stories are about. He, the miracle-working, resurrecting god-man, was supposed to be the entity who was historical.

You don't get to just automatically transfer that abstract historicity over to a newly-hypothesised euhemeristic root-human-being just because the historicity of a god-man is no longer plausible. You have to start from scratch. And that's just what's not being done (except places like here).

No Robots

No? And who's stopping us? Not the churches. The only people kicking up a fuss are the mythicists. And who gives a rat's ass about them? They can't stop people from thinking and acting on the premise that Christ is indeed a figure of history, whose story has come down to us with sufficient clarity to provide us with ample material for improving our lives. Oh, sure, the mythicists can whine that we're not showing sufficient scientific objectivity, sufficient skepticism, sufficient atheist fervour. But why should these objections be heeded when the mythicist alternative is so obviously ludicrous? No, there is no reason to engage with mythicists at all. We can just proceed with our own outlook. Even if the mythicists were to acquire world-wide status and power, how could they be more oppressive than the churches or the evolutionists?

What if we feel we have everything we need in Constantin Brunner’s Christ book, which was written almost a century ago specifically to provide a rationalist defense of the historicity of Christ?

Kapyong

Gday,

Come on - I said "fairly solid".
But it's possible that is still a little too strong and/or early.

My point was that the list of four Gospels crystalised well before the wider NT did.

Even if late 2nd is a bit too strong a claim (I am quite intrigued by the possibility of Irenaeus being suspect), none-the-less by early 3rd the Gospels had clearly been decided (Clement, Tertullian, Origen.)

But the wider NT wasn't fixed until late 4th.


K