aa5874

But what about those who keep on repeating "historical core" ad nauseum without ever producing a single shred of information to support their position.

Just claiming there may be an historical core does not disprove that Jesus of the NT was fictitious.

And by the way, the account of an event can only be deemed to be embellished if the event occurred in some way, and then blown out of proportion. There is no evidence that any miracles were done by Jesus of the NT, therefore, the accounts of miracles, as written in the NT are more correctly catergorise as fictitious, they just never happened. For example, the ascension of Jesus as described in the NT was not embellished, it just never happened, it is just plain fiction.

The authors of the NT all failed to explain the events from the crucifixion to the ascension. The core of Jesus is better explained by fiction.

Toto

We don't seem to have anyone obsessively posting about the historical core here.

aa5874

All we have, it would appear, are those who are obsessed with the term "historical core" but cannot defend it.

The existence of Jesus is purely faith-based whether one thinks he was a god or a man of god.

arnoldo

It appears that Jesus, the twelve and Paul are fiction as well as all of the heretics/gnostics of the first through third century since the profane cannot exist without the sacred. So yes, Apollonius of Tyana is fictional.

aa5874

So, what or where is your convincing evidence for your core of historicity? Where is your compelling evidence to support your position? You obviously have none, except for your faith in Jesus.

arnoldo

It is obvious that unless a person from the first century actually left archaelogical proof of his/her existence, or indisuputable historical records, then that person never existed.

aa5874

So, you have a major problem. There are no known historical records of Jesus, and he is associated with fictitious or miraculous events, from birth to his ascension. His profile is similar to Achilles. You have nothing but faith, I have nothing but fiction.

Toto

arnoldo was being sarcastic.

spamandham

No-one knows if there is or isn't a historical core, but in order to test the strength of various theories, we have to start with "suppose there is a historical core...", or "Suppose there is no historical core...", and see if anything seriously undermines the assumption.

There's obviously bias toward the idea of a historical core, even here, but many of us would enjoy the opportunity to explore that idea.

aa5874

I think you methodology is upside down, you first look at the evidence, or gather information about Jesus and then make a determination on the strenght of the evidence or information you have collected.

The authors of the NT and the Church fathers all make one fundamental claim, that should be very easy to corroborate, that Jesus was well known all over region and had thousands of followers.

There is no extant non-apologetic record of such a man, called Jesus with thousands of followers, in the 1st century by any writer, of any country, any where in the world. But, strange at it may seem, Josephus wrote about a Jesus son of Ananus, who had no followers, a loner, declared to be a madman and who died accidentally.

I now suppose Jesus has no historical core.