Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Sarpedon · 11-16-2006, 07:30 AM

I'm sorry, but mythology cannot be accepted as 'documents' in the legal sense of the word. We have seen so many peculiar beliefs (i.e. urban legends) arise over such a short amount of time and widely believed by so many people, that we simply can't give credence to anything that isn't a firsthand account. Rumor frequently masquerades as fact, and religious people are not known to be skeptical or to bother confirming 'facts' that they would prefer to believe. This is true now, I think its reasonable to expect that early christians would do the same.

It has been firmly established that the gospels etc were not written by the people who's name they bear, or at the time they were living. Most mainstream theologians accept that, but claim that they were based on oral traditions that did come from Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Even aside from the textual and factual errors in these gospels, I do not think that 'oral traditions' are necessarily reliable, considering the various 'oral traditions' (i.e. rumors, urban legends) I hear today. To go and call these things 'documents' and to pretend that they are authentic is very faulty.

For all that, I believe that Jesus was a real person, or is a character based on a real person of a different name. Christianity is a cult, and cults are started by charismatic, mentally deranged men. The Jesus described in the bible appears to fit the personality type of a cult leader quite well. We have seen so many cults arise in recent times, it is easy to conclude that christianity arose in the same way. It doesn't matter if his name was Jesus, or Ishmael, or Assurburnipal, nor does it matter whether it was in Judea or Greece. There was probably someone like Jesus at the root of it all, because thats how religions get started.

gstafleu · 11-16-2006, 07:42 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by No Robots

On the application of a phenomenological approach, or on the conclusions I draw therefrom?

I have no problems with a phenomenological approach, but I don't think I share the conclusion. Honesty does force me to admit here that I'm not totally familiar with your phenomenological approach, though!

Gerard

Malachi151 · 11-16-2006, 07:43 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Bishop

The mainstream ignores the Jesus Myth arguments because all those arguments too closely resembly conspiracy theory arguments to be taken seriously.

There is no hard evidence, only "look at this! And this! And this!" emphasis on supposed anomalies, and a theory which can only derive from twisting the meaning of what was evidently meant.

Not so. Aside from the claims of those like mountainman, I'm not aware of any conspiracy elements.

Here is what I listed as the evidence for the JM hypothysis from a different thread:

Quote:

Here, IMO, and the best "pieces of evidence" against a historical Jesus, in order of importance:

1) All of the story gospels rely on Mark, and virtually every detail of Mark is pulled from Old Testament scriptures.

2) Some of the critical uses of OT scriptures from the Septuagint in the gospels are based on mistranslations.

3) There is not one single would-be contemporary writing about Jesus, either from the Bible or otherwise.

4) Philo, who we know for a fact wrote about events in Judea during the reign of Pontious Pilate, never wrote about Jesus, though he clearly shows an interest in the ideas that are later purported to be of Jesus in the gospels.

5) None of the non-Christian references to "Jesus" are either legitimate or show that they are not themselves based on the claims of Christians, i.e. there are no independent references (and here I am reliant on the arguments that dismiss the "Jesus brother of James" quote by Josephus).

6) Josephus (assuming that the two attributions about Jesus are false) never wrote anything about Jesus or even Christians.

7) The gospels make many claims that are not supported by other historical sources or facts.

8) Many aspects of the gospels are much better explained as allegory or allusion than they are as history.

9) Paul, the first person to write about Jesus, provides no details of his life and in many cases says things that lead one to believe he does not believe that Jesus Christ had ever been on this earth.

10) There were many conflicting ideas about who Jesus was among early Christians from the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd centuries, including ideas that he never exited "in the flesh" and that he never came to earth.

11) The Catholics made a purely THEOLOGICAL argument for why Jesus had to have been human and "in the flesh"

12) There are other non-Christian examples of "fictional" people being written about as if they existed, and with similar powers, from the same period.

13) There was never any unbroken tradition that acknowledged the death of Jesus and either his burial or his empty tomb. Either way, if he had any significant followers at all, whether he was simply buried or there really was an empty tomb, someone would have been worshiping it, some groups of people would have sanctified it, some group of people would have written about it, and honored it, and known where it was, etc.

As you can see, nothing in there involves a conspiracy. Nothing more is required than simply the state of affairs and the reality of misinformation that existed in the ancient world. No conspiracy is needed, or even likely.

The real nonsense is actually proposed by the defenders of a historical Jesus.

The defenders of a historical Jesus:

1) Foist irrelevant quotes, such as the Pliny the Younger and Suetonius quotes, as well as dozens of later ones from the 3rd and 4th century, as "evidence" that Jesus existed and was known to non-Christians. This is clearly bogus.

2) Are trying with extreme measures to resurrect the TF, providing all manner of wild speculation without any evidence for it, such as "Maybe it didn't say "he was the Christ", or "maybe Josephus wrote something about Jesus, but Christians later added to it" (and they go on to propose potential Josephus friendly edits that still mention Jesus, never mind that there is no evidence for any of these renditions)

3) Rely simultaneously on claiming that Jesus was virtually unknown during his own time, which is why we have no record of him during his own time, and that he was so well known that obscure references to him in other sources, such as Josephus, needed no explanations.

4) Continuously play down the fact that we know for sure that there was a whole lot of fabricated history produced by the early Christians.

5) Play down the fact that every detail of the life of Jesus from the gospels is ultimately sourced from external sources, primarily the OT.

6) Make bold speculations about the "real life of Jesus" based on nothing more than the few suspect and reliable sources, such as the gospels and the apocrypha (though they favor the gospels over the apocrypha, pointing again to their conservatism)

If you want to see diversity of views and a scattering of contradictions, just look at the people proposing a real historical Jesus. You will find there is much widely speculation and diversity among people claiming to flesh out "the real Jesus", his biographies from such people have ranged far and wide.

gstafleu · 11-16-2006, 07:48 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mountainman

I disagree strongly. IMO the Jesus Myth hypothesis
was hatched in the fourth century by Julian, and within
40 years of Nicaea,

Maybe the honours do go to Julian, but his insights then seem to disappear for a while

.

Quote:

when the Jesus History hypothesis
was hatched by Constantine, via his minister of
propaganda Eusebius

If MM theory holds, what C&E did is originate the myth rather than the hypothesis that the myth is a myth, if you get my drift.

Gerard

Malachi151 · 11-16-2006, 07:50 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gooch's dad

Like hyperbole much? In another thread, you claimed that there were guys all over the place claiming to be messiahs. Another poster mentioned two, and asked you who the others were. I don't recall a response from you. Hmmm.

I gave one, showing that the term Christ and Christians was used to denote those who anointed themselves with oil. Besides, I was offering one speculation on a reading of that passage, there are others that include interpolations which make the point about anointed people irrelevant.

Quote:

Now you're claiming that there were thousands of religions like the one that Paul was writing about. Where is your evidence to support this claim?

No, I said that there were thousands of religions, not "like the one of Paul". There were hundreds of mystery religions however, which were very much like the religion of Paul.

Quote:

Back that one up. I'm especially interesting in this "modern scholarship" that shows that the man Gautama Siddhartha, later called the Buddha, never existed.

I call BS. Back it up or retract. This is three claims that I'm betting you can't back up with solid scholarly evidence. And do you wonder why you don't have academic credibility?

Early Buddhism didn't even name a Siddhartha nor was it based on any one individual Buddha. Buddhism existed as oral tradition for a long time before anything was even written down.

gstafleu · 11-16-2006, 07:53 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by RAFH

I would provide the support for my position but since it consists primarily of the lack of evidence, its difficult to reference.

Have a look at the Two Threads thread. It sketches the positive evidence for the MJ case (in addition to the lack-of-evidence bit).

Gerard

gstafleu · 11-16-2006, 08:00 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by GakuseiDon

A "myth" in what context?

Not sure I understand the question, but as an answer I'd try: the mainstream agrees that the Jesus who e.g. performed miracles is a myth. Or, if you prefer: it is a myth that Jesus (whoever he may be) performed miracles.

Quote:

If the mainstream are actually not arguing for a gospel Jesus, why not? Doesn't this affect the point underlying your OP -- that Christian scholars ("probably a majority") are unable to look past their faith?

Well, yes. Christian biblical scholars have a blind spot. Now I'm sure we all have blind spots. But the problem with Christian biblical scholars is that their blind spot is smack dab in the middle of their area of research.

Quote:

And to re-ask my earlier question: What should Jesus Myth proponents do to get the mainstream to look at mythicism?

Excellent question. Frapper frapper toujours (basically: keep trying) I suppose. Of course it was tried with Doherty and 4R, and that didn't get very far...

Gerard

dzim77 · 11-16-2006, 08:12 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by gstafleu

Well, that is the question: do they follow the same accepted critical practices as are applied to the rest of history?

Yes, of course. You're talking about mainstrean 'professional' scholars, right?

By considering standard practices the evidence for HJ is more than sufficient. From what I can see, the issue occurs when you demand much higher standards for the historicity or Jesus. ("Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence" and so on...) Now you are going beyond standard practices of scholarship. I think you have to do this to make any kind of case for MJ.

Quote:

My suspicion is that they do not, for the reasons I stated. Now I'm not a historian, so I'm obviously not authoritaive on this. Given that you say "As far as I know..." I gather we're in the same boat

.

Gerard

True, I'm no historian obviously

I definitely understand what you're saying here, but instead of assuming that these mainstream historians are biased - by making another assumption that most of them are Christians - you should probably consider their reasons for dismissing a MJ more specifically.

I could assume you are thoroughly biased and that you hold to a MJ view because you don't like what the Bible says about who God is and you want to dismiss Him as a myth, but I'd rather hear out your arguments first and discuss their merits instead of dismissing them off-hand because you are biased.

gstafleu · 11-16-2006, 08:12 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by aa5874

The words 'mainstream'and 'most scholars' are of little importance to me. If we look at history, we have Copernicus and Galileo, who were not 'mainstream' and like 'most scholars', yet their research in astronmy have completely revolutionised our view of our universe.

Good point. I wonder if we aren't living a great example of Kuhn's paradigm shift (summary here: http://www.des.emory.edu/mfp/kuhnsyn.html). I'll have to re-read that book, it was looooong ago.

Gerard

Malachi151 · 11-16-2006, 08:17 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sarpedon

For all that, I believe that Jesus was a real person, or is a character based on a real person of a different name. Christianity is a cult, and cults are started by charismatic, mentally deranged men. The Jesus described in the bible appears to fit the personality type of a cult leader quite well. We have seen so many cults arise in recent times, it is easy to conclude that christianity arose in the same way. It doesn't matter if his name was Jesus, or Ishmael, or Assurburnipal, nor does it matter whether it was in Judea or Greece. There was probably someone like Jesus at the root of it all, because thats how religions get started.

All of those issues are completely solved, however, when you consider these facts:

1) John the Baptist was a charismatic leader, who seems to have been associated in some way with this cult. (speculation here: Perhaps John is the one who introduced the JC idea, and really was predicting the appearance of a Messiah, which got the whole thing started)

2) Paul was also a charismatic leader, whom we know played a large role in the development and spread of this cult.

3) The starters of the cult, whoever it was, only had to be teaching about Jesus Christ, it didn't have to be JC. Indeed, when we look at the broad diversity of opinion about JC during the first 200 years, we see that indeed there were many schools of thought that held these views.

4) The specific political and cultural conditions of the Jewish community and Judea provide a huge impetus for the creation of this mythical figure.

5) The gospel of Mark is better explained as allegory triggered by the destruction of Judea than it is as a reflection of history.

6) All of the other life of Jesus gospels follow Mark.

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11-16-2006, 07:30 AM	#41
Sarpedon Veteran Member Join Date: Sep 2002 Location: Minnesota, the least controversial state in the le Posts: 8,446	I'm sorry, but mythology cannot be accepted as 'documents' in the legal sense of the word. We have seen so many peculiar beliefs (i.e. urban legends) arise over such a short amount of time and widely believed by so many people, that we simply can't give credence to anything that isn't a firsthand account. Rumor frequently masquerades as fact, and religious people are not known to be skeptical or to bother confirming 'facts' that they would prefer to believe. This is true now, I think its reasonable to expect that early christians would do the same. It has been firmly established that the gospels etc were not written by the people who's name they bear, or at the time they were living. Most mainstream theologians accept that, but claim that they were based on oral traditions that did come from Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Even aside from the textual and factual errors in these gospels, I do not think that 'oral traditions' are necessarily reliable, considering the various 'oral traditions' (i.e. rumors, urban legends) I hear today. To go and call these things 'documents' and to pretend that they are authentic is very faulty. For all that, I believe that Jesus was a real person, or is a character based on a real person of a different name. Christianity is a cult, and cults are started by charismatic, mentally deranged men. The Jesus described in the bible appears to fit the personality type of a cult leader quite well. We have seen so many cults arise in recent times, it is easy to conclude that christianity arose in the same way. It doesn't matter if his name was Jesus, or Ishmael, or Assurburnipal, nor does it matter whether it was in Judea or Greece. There was probably someone like Jesus at the root of it all, because thats how religions get started.

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