Ben C Smith

Are you even following the discussion? Do you even have a clue as to what it is about?

Ben.

dog-on

I never said that Paul/Gospels were scriptural/revelatory to you, nor to Tacitus, for that matter.


But, your feelings aside, that doesn't actually change what these texts are, or what the sources of these texts were.

Those sources being either scriptural or revelatory...

Ben C Smith

If these texts are scripture neither to you nor to me, then I think you will agree with me that whatever you and I get out of them is not based on scripture.

I am amazed. I did not know you regarded these texts as scripture. Let me edit my above statement to read: If these texts are not scripture to me, then I think you will agree with me that whatever I get out of them is not based on scripture.

Ben.

dog-on

We are talking past each other, my apologies.

Of course I regard them as scripture, what else could I regard them as?

I am using the term "scripture" as a sort of genre, if that is more clear and for lack of a better description. My own limitation, perhaps...


Paul tells us he got his info from scripture/revelation

Mark obviously got his info from scriptures and, perhaps, Paul.

Tacitus got his info from Christians, I suppose.

Christians got their info from Mark (or one or more of the variants) and, possibly, Paul.

Which, of course, leads back to the original source being, once again, scriptural or revelatory.

Is this more clear?

avi

I am not disputing your explanation that but, I don't understand why you feel "quite certain" about Tacitus' sources. May I request elaboration of the basis of your conviction regarding Tacitus' view of (1) Paul, and (2) Gospels? In particular, if Paul's epistles represent revelatory data, rather than witnessed events, doesn't his account represent a mythical construct, regardless of the lofty credentials of the person reading his letters? I do not comprehend why the Gospels should be regarded as non-scripture, by Tacitus or anyone else. So far as I am aware, the English word scripture represents a synonym for Gospels, i.e. New Testament. To me, writing "Tacitus did not consider the Gospels to be scripture" is like writing "123 is not equal to 123". Obviously, the Gospels are not historical documents. Tacitus must have understood, if the documents we call Gospels, were available to him in the same form we know them today, that he was reading faith based accounts, written and revised, by unknown authors, describing in contradictory fashion, events of uncertain progression, confounded and comingled with myth and hyperbole.
Avi.

Steven Carr

I'll take that as a yes, you concede there is no more evidence for the historicity of a crucified Jesus of Nazareth than there is for the non-existent Maitreya.

So where did Tacitus get his information about Christ ,other than from Christians, who got it from scripture and revelation?

Apostate1970

For every entirely made-up messiah character you find, you will also find many more real people claiming to be a messiah. So merely showing that there are entirely fictional messiahs isn't remotely a good argument that Jesus was one.

Similarly, I'm confident that I could find not only parallels from Benjamin Creme to Paul but from David Koresh to Paul, or any number of others of that sort. Now call me naive but I'm imagining that David Koresh was a real person.

Who is that latino man over in Florida who says he's the antichrist, has a huge following, and warns against belief in false antichrists? And that Russian figure that all those people holed up in that cave for? I think that most self-proclaimed messiahs and religious movements warn against false prophets. I mean, heck, look at Scientology ... they demonize psychiatry with which they compete. So it's the same thing there. I'd be surprised if a religious movement didn't warn against false prophets. Heck ... you've convinced me! L. Ron Hubbard never existed!

But there is evidence and you've simply chosen to ignore it. Specifically there's a body of highly distinctive sayings and parables which are common to several early sects which, despite significant differences, all identity themselves as "christian" but which sayings/parables are not a part of other traditions. It's this basic principle of identifying "similarity amidst differences" that takes many forms which strongly suggests that there was, to use a biology metaphor, an "original mutation" which was then subjected to "descent with modification".

We have only two options: Either this original mutation really is largely traceable to a single teacher-figure that more or less matches up with the nonmiraculous biographical elements in the gospels, or else the original mutation does not match up with that and instead was created jointly by a pure-fiction writer or a cabal of figures working together. Then you just have to ask yourself how likely each of those options are ... you look at the style and content of the parables and of the biographical elements to do that.

This is from

http://atheism.about.com/od/philosop...p/Socrates.htm

"There has been some question about whether Socrates really existed or was only ever a creation of Plato. Just about everyone agrees that the Socrates in the later dialogues is a creation, but what about the earlier ones? The differences between the two figures is one reason to think that a real Socrates existed, There are also a few references made by other authors."

This Plato/Socrates issue is a much better parallel than your Creme/Maitreya talk. In my opinion we have nearly enough reason to believe that Jesus existed as that Socrates existed, and maybe even more if we closely examine the character of what's attributed to each of them rather than only the number of supposed contemporaries referring to him. The situation really is eerily similar.

So, I think Socrates and Jesus both existed. Am I a lunatic? No. Am I a believer come-what-may. Not at all ... in fact I'd say that the people who deny Jesus' historicity are probably the ones grinding bigger ideological axes. Am I ignorant? Hardly. And if I am then at least I'm in agreement with many more educated than yourself.

Steven Carr

It does refute the claim that it is impossible for a fictional character to exist like that.

And I already pointed out the similarities

http://www.share-international.org/

'While the name Maitreya is used by others, their understanding of the World Teacher may not correspond to that presented on this site. Anyone presently promoting him- or herself as Maitreya or the World Teacher is definitely not the same individual we refer to.'

How does this differ from Paul's writings?

2 Corinthians 11
For if someone comes to you and preaches a Jesus other than the Jesus we preached, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it easily enough.

How does it differ from Paul's writings?

Both show the obvious difficulty of following a non-existent person. Groups then differ over the nature of this non-existent person.

It seems that historicists will never address the question of how Paul's pleas about different Jesus's are in any way different to Creme's complaints about people following a different Maitreya.

But why are such questions forbidden in Biblical studies?

Why do historicists never address such issues? Are they frightened by the implications of what Paul writes?

'I'd be surprised if a religious movement didn't warn against false prophets.'

So what are your reasons for concluding that Jesus of Nazareth was not one of those non-existent Jesus's that Paul warned that Christians accepted all too easily?

Apostate1970

My argument is, as I said, two things:

Firstly, the nature of the parables and of the (pseudo)biographical details. I think these would probably have been different if there were not at all a real figure. The parables would have been different if written by a group and the biographical elements would have been different if written by a single pure-fiction writer. It's hard to say exactly how they'd be different, and it would be wrong to think that you could give a single example of such a detail and say "Aha! There! You see? He must have been (un)real!". That's not how hermeneutics works and it's naive to expect something like that. That's the sort of thinking however that the ahistoiricists (as well as most christians) too often seem guilty of. It doesn't matter that you can point to some seeming inconsistencies since we should expect inconsistencies in a 2,000 year old account of someone whose followers were deeply divided amongst themselves regarding such things as the future of their identity as a believing community. So in this case it's an abductive argument.

Secondly, my argument is, as others have already said, there were a plethora of messiahs of the time. Not only were there then but there are even today! For every entirely-fabricated messiah you are likely to have 2 or 3 or 6 people walking around that are real people and claim to be a messiah or whose followers claim that status for them or whatever. So in this case it's an inductive argument ... there are literally just more "true messiahs", all warning against one another as false than there are false, that is to say "nonexistent" messiahs. That's a contemporary fact that I don't see how anyone can deny.

As for the comparison of the Creme writing and Paul, I really don't know or care. It could be, as I've already said, merely a result of the fact that this theme of "warning against falsehood" is so common to these sorts of belief systems. Or Creme could have been deliberately copying Paul. But either way it has no bearing whatsoever on the historicity of Jesus and, frankly, it's lunatic to think it does.

I mean, looking more closely at both of them, all I can think is that every single belief system has to warn against people from falling away and believing in false gods. This doesn't mean that Jesus wasn't historical, only that they were trying to make him into a god, which is more than he ever was. It's like someone warning against falling away from belief in Hercules in favor of belief in the archangel Michael or any number of other such things. I'm sure there were people once who warned against belief in Zeupater rather than Khronos. No difference. You may say "Ahh! But those are all wholly fictional!" but you'd be missing the point. As I said, these sorts of warnings against belief change and threats of damnation are also made all the time even by very real "messiahs" and their followers. The theme is so common that I can't see your point. All this means is that Jesus had been mythologized and was no longer there to show up and announce himself, not that he had never existed. This was all in the days before pictures and video recording you know! It's not like they could pull out the photograph album ... testimony is all they had to go on and all we have to go on too. But that doesn't mean that the testimony is all wrong or is a complete fabrication.

Well the problem there is that Biblical study is mostly controlled by Christians, Koran study mostly controlled by Muslims, Talmud studies mostly controlled by Jews, etc. So that's your answer.

Steven Carr

So why were all these other false gods all called Jesus?

Paul claims Christians readily accepted false Jesus's and you claim these were other people, other false gods?

So why were all these other people all called Jesus?

Did Muhammad have to warn about people following false Muhammad's?

Did Joseph Smith claim there was false Joseph Smith's going around?

No.

There is prima facie evidence that some Christians were following a Jesus who did not exist.

Which raises the question of whether or not Paul's Jesus did exist.

You can say all you want that the mere fact that there are religions today based on imaginary people has no bearing whatever on the possibility that Paul's Jesus did not exist.

That won't alter the fact that the parallels are very strong.

Benjamin Creme even produces revelations from this non-existent Maitreya, just like Paul claimed to have revelations from Jesus , while he had been tormented by an angel from Satan.

Guess what? Paul's only testimony is a claim that he had seen the resurrected Jesus.

Paul produces no testimony that his Jesus was the real Jesus, that James testified to the real Jesus of Nazareth, or that other apostles testified to having seen the real Jesus of Nazareth.

Testimony was all they had to go on, and Paul, Jude, James, 1 Peter, the author of Hebrews produce absolutely no testimony about Jesus of Nazareth.