Iasion

Greetings again,

Let's look closer at the epistle of "James" :

Now James was allegedly the BROTHER of Jesus,
so
we would expect his letter to be chock-full of personal details about Jesus.

Well,
guess what?

The letter of James only even MENTIONS the name "Jesus" twice in the whole letter.

It has NO personal details at all.
NOT one shred of historical information about Jesus can be found in the letter allegedly from a member of his FAMILY.

The person who wrote the letter of James had OBVIOUSLY never even HEARD of a historical Jesus.

Let examine the letter to see what I mean -

The ONLY 2 places to use the name Jesus are here

1:1 James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes which are in the Dispersion: Greetings.

The introduction of the letter, mentions he is a "servant" of God and of Lord Jesus Christ (ie. a typical faithful phrase invoking their highest names) - totally FAILS to mention he is brother to Jesus.

2:1 My brothers, don't hold the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ of glory with partiality.

Another faithful phrase telling us nothing about Jesus. No mention James is his brother.


What DON'T we see in James :

NO mention of Jesus' family at all - NO Mary or Joseph or siblings.
NO mention of the birth stories - NO Bethlehem, Nazareth, Magi, Herod, the flight...
NO mention of teachings Jesus - NO sermon, Lord's prayer, food regulations
NO mention of miracles - NO Lazarus, feeding the multitude, healing the sick...
NO mention of any Gospel event - NO Teaching at the Temple, Temple Cleansing, Triumphal Entry, Temptation, Baptism in Jordan etc, etc...
NO mention of the trial of Jesus - NO Pilate, Sanhedrin, Judas etc...
NO mention of the empty tomb, the crucifixion, the resurrection.

I can not find a SINGLE PIECE of information about the life of Jesus in the whole epistle of James.

From a person who was supposedly in Jesus' very family and probably would have experienced many of these events if they had really happened.


Even when expected.

Even worse, if you do read James, there are many places where you would expect him to mention Jesus or his teaching -

Chapter 1 talks about resisting temptation - NO mention of the temptation of Jesus !

Chapter 2 starts like this in some versions - "do you .. really believe in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ?" (a different translation of the phrase which in the Greek goes something like this: "do not with partiality believe in Jesus Christ the glorious").

Here is James trying to convince them to believe in Jesus Christ, and he totally fails to even mention he knew Jesus, let alone was his brother - instead all he gives to try and prove Jesus is some preaching about the poor and the rich WITHOUT mentioning anything Jesus said about the poor.

James quotes "Love Thy Neighbour as Thyself" - but NOT from Jesus, just "scripture".

James preaches about adultery - NO mention of Jesus' teachings.

James argues that faith without works is useless - when he provides examples, it's from the OT - Abraham, Rahab - NO mention of Jesus.

James reminds people not to curse or speak evil - NO mention of Jesus' teachings on that.

James preaches about suffering and patience - NO mention of Jesus as example, just Job and the prophets.

James talks about the church elders bringing healing and forgiving sins - NO mention of Jesus doing that.

James even invokes Elijah who was a "human being like us" - NO mention of Jesus.


James never knew any Jesus.

In dozens of places, James preaches something that CRIES out for a mention of Jesus or his teachings - but it looks like James has never even HEARD of Jesus of Nazareth - just the risen Christ, a spiritual being.


Note that James uses the phrase "my brothers (and sisters)" DOZENS of times - NOT the slightest hint that HE is the brother of Jesus anywhere in the letter.


There simply is NOTHING about the life of Jesus in the letter of James.


Iasion

Iasion

Greetings,

To apologists - anyone who disagrees with them is an "(organised) atheist". Now, I am not an atheist, and I am not aware of anything such as "organised atheism" - I just like to check the facts and reason for myself.

But for some people - this is all about their FAITH being challenged.

Iasion

Harry Bosch

(Snipped)
What a great, pithy, to the point quote! I would become a Christian tomorrow if a collection of Aztec stories describing Jesus and the path to salvation was unearthed in ancient Mesopotamia. That is the bottom line. There is no outside evidence for 99% of the bible. No other society on earth experienced a flood (similar to the one described in the bible); no one else recorded the sun sitting still as described in Joshua, and etc. If Jesus were real, why wouldn’t he have appeared to all societies across the world and give everyone a shot at salvation?

jjramsey

Actually, by "organized atheism" I had something fairly straightforward in mind, namely groups like American Atheists, Secular Student Alliance, Internet Infidels, etc., and also more loose associations like atheist discussion forums such as this one. The kind of groups I mentioned do publish literature and online articles, and Jesus-myth stuff has traditionally been a part of what these groups publish. The people who tend to frequent the discussion forums also read what the aforementioned groups publish.

Chris Weimer

I know for sure that Jesus mythicism is a part of the American Atheists official stance, but not Internet Infidels. I have no idea about SSA, but I wouldn't think so since they ought to be focusing on secularism and not historical criticism. Secweb may have published articles about Jesus mythicism, but as far as I know they've never taken a stance about it one way or another. Moreover, it would be kind of ludicrous to paint all of us at IIDB as JMers, especially when we all aren't!

Don Alhambra

Hi! Thanks for all this.

jjramsey: I didn't want to get into the whole "Jesus doesn't exist" thing as a cornerstone of my argument against Christianity, because it isn't. All I am looking for is something to shake certainty. I also don't want to deal too much with the Biblical history; the philosophy and evolution arenas are more my kind of thing.

As Julian said:

Personally I don't know whether Jesus existed or not, though I suspect he probably did... but he certainly was not divine.

This is the plan.

I have done, and that exactly what I've found - which is why I asked only for help with the specifically Biblical stuff here.

Many thanks in particular to Iaison, that's just the kind of thing I was looking for.

Chris Weimer

Don,

If all you're doing is shaking the strength, than we can definitely help you abolish the Biblical Jesus. It would be, actually, a pleasure.

jjramsey

I wasn't trying to say that everyone in Internet Infidels was a mythicist, and I'm sorry if I gave that impression. :blush: My point was simply that organized atheist groups do tend to propagate the Jesus-myth stuff in practice and have done so for a long time (probably at least since the 19th century), not that they necessarily have taken an official stance. Actually, while I was well-aware of Frank Zindler's mythicist stuff being on Atheists.org, I didn't know that Jesus-mythicism was a formal position of the American Atheists.

Looking at their website, they may not have been the best example. OTOH, Atheist Network and Atheist Alliance are better examples. Much like Internet Infidels, neither one has mythicism as an official stance as far as I can tell, but they both propagate it.

Chris Weimer

Quite possibly. Then again, what on earth are you doing looking at a organized philosophical system for answers to scholarly questions. ;-)

jjramsey

I don't think you can really avoid the Biblical history issues. It's easy for a not-so inerrantist Christian to write off the creation narratives as unhistorical but maintain that the parts of the OT that humans could observe was more-or-less accurate. To attack the overall accuracy, archaeology and other background knowledge come into play. One eye-opener for me was learning that the LXX version of Jeremiah was shorter and Jeremiah's predictions didn't quite sync with the contents of Ezra and Nehemiah, but that the Masoretic text had been "fixed" so that Jeremiah's purported predictions appeared to pan out. That made it a lot more plausible that there would be additions to Isaiah, commonly called Second Isaiah, with some scholars distinguishing a third addition called Third Isaiah, and that this Second Isaiah wasn't just a phantom of scholars trying to work around Isaiah appearing to predict future events.

What has pushed me away from Christianity was realizing that some of the purported flaws in the Bible were indeed real and not dishonest objections.