Chris Weimer

False and irrelevant. Constantine never had "absolute power". As emporer, he had considerable amount of power, but to suggest that he was an ancient Castro is absurd. Many emporers were disposed early, some by even their own people.

But conspiracy theories proposed by someone without an education in the subject matter who has no inkling of the amount of implausibility his suggestion contains and which disregards an entire validated science is not only inappropriate, but it's stupid.

Jobar

Guess I'll have to plead guilty as charged, but with no malice aforethought. :redface:

My change in wording was meant only as a space-saving measure, so I could get all the options in the poll (I had some problems with that, so I re-worded things more compactly than I did in '04.)

JoeWallack, I'm intrigued that you say that both Paul and "Mark" "sold Jesus based on MJ". Didn't Paul make it plain that he believed in a flesh-and-blood Christ? Even though he did imply that Christ was unknown to the world. And the Gospel of Mark purports to be a biographical account, doesn't it? How can you label that as based on a MJ?

Do any of the experts here think that Q was actual sayings of HJ, and if so, why?

JoeWallack

JW:
When I say "MJ" it also means Supernatural Jesus or "Impossible Jesus". My guess is that Paul thought Jesus was Historical but was mainly interested in the supposed Supernatural powers. Of primary importance to Paul was the supposed Supernatural Death and Resurrection of Jesus. I think Paul was competing with those who knew the Historical Jesus and were promoting Jesus mainly based on Memories (Teaching & Faith Healing). Paul's selling of Supernatural Jesus was competing with Peter/James selling of Natural (Historical) Jesus so I think Paul (and the subsequent Church) deliberately minimized references to the Natural Jesus. I also think most of Paul's few apparent references to a Historical Jesus are related to supposed Prophecy Fulfillment and therefore are not as good evidence for HJ as the HJ's say.

The Preference for Supernatural Jesus over Historical Jesus also goes for "Mark" and he takes the competition a step further by discrediting those who knew Jesus, like Peter/James, once they were no longer around (surprise). That's why Paul couldn't, they were still alive (Understand Dear Reader?). You've probably seen for yourself that the Christians here are still in denial about how "Mark" eliminated the Disciples as witnesses and how "Matthew"/"Luke" resurrected them.

"Mark" is a Gospel, not a biography and is designed to show the supposed Character of Jesus and what to do about it (have Faith). Note that in "Mark" almost everything about Jesus is Supernatural. The Natural Jesus is minimized so the purpose of the Teachings/Healings isn't to educate the characters, it's to condemn them. The Disciples see Jesus' Glory in the Teachings/Healings and the author's point is that there was no Glory there. The Glory was in the suffering & death which "Mark's" Disciples never understand or witness.

When subsequent Orthodox Christianity ("Matthew"/"Luke") needed to Edit "Mark" due to the Failed Jesus would SOON return prophecy, there was No Historical witness for them to check with that could tell them about Impossible Jesus. So they were forced to Copy the only Source of Impossible Jesus Narrative they had, "Mark", because it was the only Impossible Narrative at the time.

The Fictional Gospel format allows the author to exaggerate to make his points. There is no Narrative before the Baptism. Up to this time there was only Historical Jesus which "Mark" has no interest in. The Baptism in "Mark" is Separationist not Adoptionist. As Ehrman explains the original "Mark" was "unto" and not "upon". This was God's spirit which transformed Historical Jesus into Impossible Jesus. The theme of "Mark" in total is Good Spirit vs. Bad Spirit and specifically the dispute over Jesus is whether he has God's spirit or Satan's. Note that when "Mark's" Jesus comes to be baptized there is no reason for John to notice him. Similarly, at the end of "Mark", Jesus' last words are more literally "why have you left me behind", supporting Separationist on the other end.



Joseph

http://www.errancywiki.com/index.php/Main_Page

aa5874

For the polls, shouldn't 3 more categories be added so that the information can be assesed in terms of whether one is a believer or not. I would like to see questions asking if one is christian, atheist or other, because that information is critical in reading your poll.

Jobar

Good thought, and if I do this again after another couple of years, I might add an 'I am a believer/unbeliever' option, make the poll accept multiple answers, and ask everyone to make 2 selections.

This is a public poll, so if you wanted you could research it by correlating the votes to people's profiles, where most note whether or not they believe. With nearly a hundred votes though, I don't plan on doing it myself!

------------------

I've been devouring Humphreys' excellent site, http://www.jesusneverexisted.com. In the past I've seen many believers in a HJ assert that the mythicist position is historically recent (I get the impression that they mean only within the past 30 years), and that one would expect the opposite to be true; Humphreys points out that the mythicist position is more than two hundred years old!

Plus, there have always been sects of Christians who believed in a 'supernatural' Jesus, though of course they were declared heretical. Still, this seems to me to qualify as support for the mythicist position, from the very dawn of Christianity!

jjramsey

Some the "courageous scholars" that he mentions:

• Kersey Graves, 1875, The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviours. Pennsylvanian Quaker who saw through to the pagan heart of Christian fabrications, though rarely cited sources for his far-reaching conclusions.
  
• D. Murdock (aka 'Acharya S') 1999, The Christ Conspiracy: The Greatest Story Ever Sold. 2004, Suns of God: Krishna, Buddha and Christ Unveiled. Adds a astro-theological dimension to christ-myth demolition. Murdock identifies JC as a composite deity used to unify the Roman Empire.
  
• Timothy Freke, Peter Gandy, 1999, The Jesus Mysteries. 2001, Jesus and the Lost Goddess : The Secret Teachings of the Original Christians. Examines the close relationship between the Jesus Story and that of Osiris-Dionysus. Jesus and Mary Magdalene mythic figures based on the Pagan Godman and Goddess.

I also caught him quote mining. Here's his quote from A. N. Wilson on his page about Nazareth:

The implication is that Wilson is saying that Jesus is a myth. Yet Wilson is clearly an HJer:

Toto

It is altogether consistent to say that the Jesus of the Gospels is a myth, while there still was a Historic Jesus somewhere at the beginning of the Christian movement. I wouldn't consider that "quote mining" in the creationist sense.

jjramsey

I'm sure that is exactly what A. N. Wilson meant when he wrote, "The Jesus of the Gospels is an artificial creation."

Wait a minute. Words that in context mean merely that the Jesus as portrayed in the Gospels--as opposed to the Jesus behind the Gospels--is a myth, are taken out of their original context and put in a new context that falsely implies that Wilson is saying that Jesus is a myth altogether. That is quote mining: taking words out of context to make them appear to mean something other than what the author intended.

aa5874

It is also consistent to say many persons were called Jesus or the Messiah, one of the Jesus Christ in the NT warns about that. In the book called Matthew, one of the person named Jesus Christ said many will be deceived. It is improbable that only one person would have claimed to be the Messiah or the Christ, at least one historian claim such events.

If an event or character is fictitious, coincidental similarities to known persons or events do not make them historic.

mountainman

This is good logic. Now if you can persuade the poll-master
to permit a discrete vote, to be labelled "FICTION" he might
get two further votes.

Would you then be voting "fiction"?


Pete Brown