mountainman

The historical Jesus existed because Eusebius -- our one and only source -- said so in his "history".
Eusebius was sponsored and well paid to say as much by his very influential fourth century boss.
Julia Domna, the empress sponsored Philostratus to write a history about the historical Apollonius of Tyana.
Constantine the emperor sponsored Eusebius to write a history about the historical Jesus of Judea.

Civil1z@tion

Someone had to have lied that a guy named Jesus existed. Either the Gospel writers themselves or the people they heard these stories from (hell, Paul either has to be a liar or interpolated). It also requires planted evidence in the Testimonium Flavinium, Suetonius, Pliny the Elder, and perhaps even in Paul's epistles just to name a few things.

dog-on

Except it is equally likely that some simply thought that the Christ existed because, as in Paul's seeming case, th LXX told them so.

aa5874

So, you must now admit that it is the HJ that needs a vast amount of liars.

Once there was an actual Jesus who was ONLY human then the Canonical NT must be a pack of lies.

Once Jesus was only human and had disciples that were actually telling people that Jesus was a God, the Creator, that he could answer prayers, walked on water, talked to storms, instantly healed incurable diseases, transfigured, was raised from the dead, and ascended through the clouds, then these disciples were all part of the vast amount of liars.

Once Jesus was actually Only human and there were actual disciples and Saul/Paul during the reign of Tiberius then Acts of the Apostles must be part of the vast amount of lies about the human Jesus.

The HJ is fundamentally based on the theory that virtually everything about Jesus are a vast amount of lies, or embellishments.

ApostateAbe

I stepped up to the plate and challenged your linguistic argument, despite you having greater background knowledge in the subject. And, you failed to return fire. You are merely dismissive. If so, then I guess I will go back to being merely dismissive of you the same as aa5874.

I seemed to be excluding the bits that were correctly excluded. Tell me specifically why my reasons for excluding certain words or phrases are bad ideas. Or, fulfill my request and give me a set of words or names that are comparable to what we would expect for Nazareth.

aa5874

Once it is proposed that Jesus was actually only human who virtually did not do or say anything as found in the NT, Church and Apocryphal writings then the best argument for HJ is that there was a massive evil conspiracy against Jesus by his own disciples, family, friends, followers and acquaintances.

Another argument for HJ is that his disciples destroyed all the historical records of Jesus in order to propagate their lies and then fabricated their own history of Jesus as a God and Creator and every body forgot that Jesus was human, possibly because many people were illiterate and perhaps blind, including Jesus himself.

Even in gLuke, there is a story where a man was made dumb so that he could only write what he heard and saw. Now, if many people were illiterate and blind then it must be obvious that they would not really know what was written.

These arguments may not actually be good but they are some of the best for HJ.

PhilosopherJay

Hi Pete,

Yes, I think this falls under a line of argument that may be called "In Eusebius We Trust." Perhaps the TF falls under it too.

And please don't leave out Augustus Caesar's sponsorship of Virgil's Aeneid as a possible parallel.

Warmly,

Philosopher Jay

PhilosopherJay

Hi aa5874,

Yes, one can imagine a wide conspiracy by Christians, especially after the defeat in the first Roman-Jewish War, to replace the man with a myth that succeeded so well that nobody can tell if the man existed or not.

Then, pragmatically speaking, it almost doesn't matter if there was a man to begin with.

Warmly,

Philosopher Jay

Tristan Scott

I don't know if I have three, but I may have one, but first I'd like to preamble what I have to say with a few statements.

Written word in 1st century Galilee was not a common method of communication or even of chronicling events. Galilee was a poor region, and writing was expensive. The most common method would have been word of mouth.
While the biblical accounts of Jesus make it sound as though he had many thousands of followers, that probably wasn’t the case and if it was, it was probably local to Galilee. Hardly a place considered central to anything in 1st c. Judaea. Regardless there does not seem to be any contemporary records that describe his ministry, which by biblical accounts only lasted three years. (TF is unreliable in this, IMO, although it is possible that there was mention of Jesus here, the obvious dogmatic redaction makes any authenticity suspicious.) Anyway, under the circumstances, I think it would be pretty incredible if there had been any contemporary written records of Jesus.
However, I don’t think that one can discount word of mouth. There were parables that were passed down from someone. Sayings, that were later written down by multiple sources. Now it’s possible that these parables were composites of other liberal Jewish teachers, such as Hillel and Philo, or other Stoic and Cynic philosophers of the day.
Anyway, I don’t believe there is any good evidence of HJ, but I believe the best evidence would probably be the parables and sayings attributed to him.

mountainman

Most, the large majority, could not read, and relied on what they were told by the authority of the "Guardian Class of academics". The Guardian Class of academics changed hands in the fourth century. Constantine savagely and fascistly got rid of the Greek academic priesthood by the sword, and surplanted them with, in the words of Ammianus, the plain and simple authority of his homespun christians.

The common people - 95% of the population - simply followed the leaders as they had done since the beginnings of time itself. Nothing much has changed, except that the level of education has increased and people are now in a position to try and think for themselves. The operative word of course being "try".