bacht

You've obviously studied this material, which is a nice change from the usual apologist ignorance. But you put a lot of faith in these writings as being credible and authentic when they are clearly biased and tendentious (and possibly written by borderline personalities).

On the one hand there is a Galiean preacher. No problem with this. On the other hand there is the pre-existent eternal Son of God who becomes a focus of worship. Why? How are these two roles connected?

The gospels, starting with Mark, provide biographical detail about Jesus the Nazarene. This could mean there was no such info previously circulated, or that Jesus never lived on earth. No one knows when Mark wrote, but it doesn't have to have been immediately after the first revolt, it could have been near the second revolt in the 130s.

Mark is not necessarily writing a faith document, he can also be read as a satire: the failed messiah who can't even explain himself to his closest followers, especially Peter. He may be making a statement about the failure of early Christianity itself, or maybe he's using Jesus as a metaphor for the nation of Israel. If he was trying to be celebratory and exultant I think he failed.

The characters of James, Peter and Paul can all be read as symbols of later (2nd C) factions within Christianity. There is no historical evidence for any of them, even John the Baptizer is sketchy.

There are other ways to explain the origin of the parables, we don't have to assume that Jesus was the source.

The only evidence for 1st C Christian origins is the New Testament. Without these writings there is nothing else to support the Jesus myth. This has nothing to do with faith or atheism, it's a matter of historical method. Even Moses required two or three witnesses, why shouldn't we?

spamandham

There aren't many within the genuine Pauline epistles, and of those that there are, most are contained in 1 Cor. 15:3-11 - which is contended by several qualified scholars to be a later addition.

Paul uses words like 'crucify' and 'resurrection' in an unambiguous symbolic manner in many places. Aside from 1 Cor. 15, there is little reason to think he does not mean them as symbolic in all cases.

Read Galatians 1:11-12 (generally believed to be genuine):

I want you to know, brothers, that the gospel I preached is not something that man made up. I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it; rather, I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ

Does this sound to you like Paul is claiming an earthly source for his message?

Yes, but your reasons aren't good. The idea that such legends about Jesus - a real man of recent history - could grow into what we see in Mark in such a short time, is a problem with your position not the mythicists!

The mythicists do not suffer from this oddity of a wandering preacher who failed to make an impact outside his own direct followers, and who was yet elevated to god status within the lifetimes of the writers - with amazing well developed legends attached to him. Why? Because the mythicists have not started with the traditional apologetic datings that are based on nothing of substance.

There isn't any compelling evidence that Paul was a contemporary of Jesus (though he didn't know him), nor is there any compelling evidence that Mark was written right around 70 CE. These are apologetic datings designed to force the bifurcation that it was either all a grand conspiracy, or it was all real. There's nothing of substance behind them. The mythicists simply stretch out the datings to something more reasonable.

Your position is the worst of all worlds. You've accepted the apologetic datings, yet rejected the magical aspects of Jesus tightly bound to his character. You are left holding a bag that must explain how the process of legend making could turn an otherwise unnoticable peasant into a god the equivalent of the emperor gods, within a ridiculously small timeframe.

You seem to accept that legends can build at light speed, yet demand that only a conspiracy could result in mythmaking doing the exact same thing! I'm having a hard time extracting any consistency or sense from your position at all.

Unless of course, Jesus was a myth. If Mark believed that Jesus had said the end would come within a generation, then it would make sense to place Jesus exactly 1 generation prior to the end (the fall of the temple in 70 CE).

Which is more likely, that Jesus actually lived a convenient 40 years (exactly a generation) prior to the end (the desecration of desolation) and accurately predicted that, or that the writer of the story retrojected Jesus to 40 years earlier than the end?

Perhaps you've failed to recognize that the end Mark refers to is the destruction of the temple and the fall of Jerusalem in 70 CE?

(there is an argument to be made that Mark's end is mid-2nd century, but I find that weaker)

GakuseiDon

Pliny the Younger wrote around 110 CE, and talked about people who claimed that they were Christians up to 25 years before, so this appears to establish Christianity in the 1st C CE.

Kapyong

Jesus as Myth is hardly a new idea unknown to scholars, many writers have argued that way :

C.F. Dupuis, 1791, Abrege De L'Origine Des Cultes
Robert Taylor, 1829, Diegesis
Bruno Bauer, 1841, Criticism of the Gospel History of the Synoptics
Mitchell Logan, 1842, Christian Mythology Unveiled
David Friedrich Strauss, 1860, The Life of Jesus Critically Examined
Kersey Graves, 1875, The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviours
T.W. Doane, 1882, Bible Myths and their Parallels in Other Religions
Gerald Massey, 1886, Historical Jesus and Mythical Christ
Thomas Whittaker, 1904, The Origins of Christianity
William Benjamin Smith, 1906, Der vorchristliche Jesus
Albert Kalthoff, 1907, The Rise of Christianity
M.M. Mangasarian, 1909, The Truth About Jesus ? Is He a Myth?
Arthur Drews, 1910, The Christ Myth
John M. Robertson, 1917, The Jesus Problem
Georg Brandes, 1926, Jesus – A Myth
Joseph Wheless, 1930, Forgery in Christianity
L.Gordon Rylands, 1935, Did Jesus Ever Live?
Edouard Dujardin, 1938, Ancient History of the God Jesus
P.L. Couchoud, 1939, The Creation of Christ
Alvin Boyd Kuhn, 1944, Who is this King of Glory?
Karl Kautsky, 1953, The Foundations of Christianity
Herbert Cutner, 1950, Jesus: God, Man, or Myth?
Guy Fau, 1967, Le Fable de Jesus Christ


K

bacht

Yes but it's pretty vague isn't it? It could mean either orthodox worshippers or any of the other heretical versions of Christ worship. I don't see how it confirms any specific details of the gospel narratives.

Toto

Unless, of course, those poor schmucks who claimed that they hadn't been a Christian for 25 years were lying about something.

Rick Sumner

While I have seen it claimed that Strauss finally concluded that Jesus never lived, I've never been able to find a reference for it. It's not in his Life, at any rate. And I believe the final edition of the book was published in 1840, not 1860. As late as 1865 Strauss was still not a mythicist, a point attested to by the existence of his important piece entitled "The Christ of Belief and the Jesus of History," a dichotomy emphasized to this day.

You'll probably do better if you don't cite books you haven't read, rather than just repeat lists on the assumption that the author has read them.

Regards,
Rick Sumner

Kapyong

Fair comment - that was a bit naughty of me.
I found this list in my notes with no cite :-(


K.

aa5874

The Pliny letters have nothing at all about Jesus. The word Jesus is nowhere in the letters.

Even Pliny seems to be unaware of a man called Jesus who was worshipped as the son of the God of the Jews. Pliny seems to be unaware of churches in Rome, or of a religion where a man called Jesus was born of a virgin, believed to have done miracles, crucified, resurrected and ascended through the clouds.

In fact, Pliny had to inflict torture on some of those called christians to get them to talk, and eventually found out they prayed to Christ as God.

Pliny seemed completely unaware of anyone named Jesus.

thedistillers

Do all those authors defend the JM hypothesis? That's one thing to doubt Jesus existed, that's another one to defend the JM hypothesis as the one that best explains the evidence.

If almost no serious historian today defends the JM hypothesis, there has to be a reason. What is it? Lack of courage? Hypothesis not worth spending energy on? A worldwide, universal bias? Or simply a bad hypothesis?

The problem that I see with the first 3 explanations is that there are millions of atheists around the world, and many are actively motivated to debunk Christianity. If indeed the JM hypothesis is the one that best explains the evidence, then wouldn't there be plenty of skeptics by now with their ph.d. in history who would defend that hypothesis?