patcleaver

The Gospels are Fiction:

The burden rests on those who claim that the gospels are reliable - if they can not prove that they are reliable then they are fiction.

1. Most narrative stories are fiction - not history. There is lots of surviving fiction from antiquity.

2. There are hundreds of religious scriptures from all over the world and they are all fiction.

3. There are tens of thousands of stories about supernatural beings and they are all fiction.

4. There are tens of thousands of narrative stories in the world where a miracle worker performs miracles and they are all fiction.

5. There are tens of thousands of narrative stories in the world in which magical prophesy is fulfilled and they are all fiction.

6. There are thousands of narrative stories in the world about magical births of magical heroes and they are all fiction.

7. There are tens of thousands of narrative stories about and Nature recognizing magical heroes, and gods publicly recognizing magical heroes, and magical hero's performing all kinds of magical feats, and magical heroes magically triumphing over horrible defeats. All those stories are fiction.

8. The gospels are narrative midrash (they are constructed from events in the old testament) and all the narrative midrash that we have is fiction.

9. The authors of Matthew and Luke knew that Mark was fiction because they changed the words of Jesus just for aesthetic reasons.

10. The authors of Luke clearly knew that Mark was fiction based on the OT, because the authors of Luke add details from the OT stories that the authors of Mark had used. For example, the Gethsemane Scene, of Jesus praying in the garden, is based on the scene where Elijah is hiding in a cave on the run from Jezebel. An angel appears to Elijah in the cave. One of the authors of Luke realized that Mark left out the angel, and figured out how he could fit the angel into the Gethsemane Scene so he added it to the story in Luke. This shows that the authors of Luke knew that Mark was a fiction, and they knew how Mark was constructed from the OT stories.

11. Mark was written as Chiasmus. There are many examples of narrative poems written in Chiasmus and they are all fiction.

12. All the gospels are anonymous and all anonymous narrative stories that I am aware of are fiction.

13. Almost all the story of Jesus is derived from the Jewish Scriptures. We know that the Jewish Scriptures are earlier fiction. All stories derived from earlier fictional stories are fiction.

14. Historians of the first century made up the dialog of historical figures. Even if Mark were a first century historian, there would be no reason to think that Jesus said any of the things attributed to him in the Gospels.

15. The moderate Christian scholars of the Jesus Seminar, who started with the presumption that Jesus was an historical character, determined that Jesus was probably not the source of 85% of the sayings attributed to Jesus in the Gospels.

16. Almost all fictional books contain some things that are true, but there is no way to determine, from the fictional book, which parts are fiction and which parts are true. The only way to determine which parts of a fictional story are true is through confirmation from archeology or from reliable, contemporaneous, first-hand sources.

17. Mark was allegory see http://www.rationalrevolution.net/ar...ospel_mark.htm Jesus never existed see http://www.rationalrevolution.net/ar...th_history.htm

18. Mark makes mistakes in geography that a native Galilean would not have made. He makes errors about Jewish culture that a Jew would not have made. He discusses the destruction of the Jewish temple that did not occur until 65 AD. He discusses an abomination that did not occur until around 131, when Hadrian tried to build a pagan temple on the sacred site of the destroyed Jewish temple. Mark discusses an exodus from Jerusalem that probably occurred until the Bar Kokhba uprising in 132. He mentions other Christs that did not occur until 132 when the Jewish sage Rabbi Akiva declared that Bar Kokhba was the messiah and he took control of Judea and began rebuilding the temple. Mark contains Latinisms that indicate that he was probably a Roman. Thus, mark was probably written (or at least heavily redacted) in Rome sometime after the Bar Kokhba uprising was crushed in 135. Mark is not a reliable source.

19. Matthew and Luke are fiction. Matthew and Luke copy large sections of Mark practically word-for-word, but with different additions to Mark's text, so they were written after Mark.

20. John is fiction. John harmonize contradictions and inconsistencies between Matthew and Luke. Thus, John was probably written after Matthew and Luke. None of the authors of the gospels had any reliable source.

21. There were over 30 Gospels and hundreds of Epistles in the 4th century. The Christians declared that they were all fraud or fiction except 4 gospels and 23 Epistles. We know that some of the epistles that they chose were forgeries - such as the epistles of Peter and at least some of the epistles of Paul. The selection process was illegitimate. The Christians relied on political considerations, un-evidenced rumors and wishful thinking to make their selection. For example, there are four Gospels because Irenaeus said that there had to be four because there were four winds, four elements, four corners of the earth, for pillars holding up the heavens, and four cherubim sustaining the throne of God. The four winds are of course pagan Greek/Roman demigods. Its more likely that all the early Christian gospels and epistles are fraud and fiction then that the Christians made the correct selection. Then the Christians tried to burn the epistles and gospels that were not selected. Censorship for religious or political purposes is evidence of fraud and forgery. In fact, we know that at least some of the documents of the new testament have been intentionally altered for theological purposes.

spamandham

...not sure if this was directed toward me, but if so...

I have no idea. I don't need to offer you an alternative historical conjecture to point out the problems with yours. The fundamental contradiction that the historical core group must deal with simply is not a problem at all for mythicists. That's one of the points that makes mythicism the simpler explanation.

Mythicism can easily explain how a myth about a god man coming to earth and aligning himself with the poor could form, but the HJ crowd must simply hand wave away the problem in their root argument, namely, they must argue that a man who did not make enough of an impression on his contemporaries to leave a record, nonetheless made enough of an impression on his contemporaries to form a new religion.

aa5874

And, also bearing in mind that probably many hundreds of Jews were crucified before the so-called Jesus, and there were many who may have called themselves "Christ" or the "Messiah" before him since the alleged prophecies in Daniel preceeded Jesus.

It is just incredible to me for a man to be worshipped as the son of God of the Jews who was called a blasphemer by the chief priests by Jews and that this occurred while the Jewish Temple was still standing.

Doug Shaver

They are not claiming that Shakespeare never existed. They are claiming that he did not write the plays attributed to him.

Doug Shaver

I understand it doesn't convince you. But where is the flaw in my argument? Can you tell me that?
My premise is not that I have a hard time doing it. My premise is that in the case of ring species, it is impossible for anybody to do it non-arbitrarily. Can you explain how it could be done? That would disprove my premise, if you could.

Doug Shaver

If you can read everything Paul wrote about the Christ and still deny that Paul thought he was a god, then there is surely nothing I can say that would convince you.

But whatever Paul and his contemporaries believed about Jesus, to assert that they believed it because of anything Jesus said -- and there was no other way for them to have known what Jesus believed about himself -- is to beg the question of Jesus' historicity, because Paul attributes nothing that he says about Jesus to anything that Jesus himself ever said. Furthermore, Paul attributes nothing that he says about Jesus to any disciple of Jesus or to anybody else who might have known Jesus in the flesh. In short, your argument here assumes it conclusion.

He was not the first religious martyr, nor was he the last. How did that sacrifice get him deified and not any of the others?

Doug Shaver

Yeah, that's what Plato said. But Aristotle disagreed.

Can you summarize the argument of each and then explain why Plato's argument is better than Aristotle's?

Doug Shaver

It disagrees with a fundamental aspect of our culture. Your argument presupposes that our culture cannot be mistaken about this particular aspect. That presupposition is about as dangerous as any idea gets.

Elijah

Any actual evidence to support your myth theory? What is your version of the myth theory by the way? Who where what why when and how? There is a lot of variance in the different theories, but no actual evidence to support any of them that I have seen.

I’m not claiming the gospels are reliable but I’m going to go with the most likely scenario on what happened instead of one that is one is a million with no evidence of its occurrence there to support it. Believing in the myth theory takes the same suspension of reason as believing in miracles in my mind, it’s just wishful thinking.

Elijah

No what I’m claiming is that you are reading the scripture like a cartoon. Regardless if you think it is historical or fictional you should hold it in political and philosophical context so you don’t look like a fool who doesn’t know anything about the world around them and is only familiar with the cartoons of children. Do you understand what I am trying to say to you?