DrZoidberg

Well... the mythological narrative doesn't have to have anything to do with the person they're modelled on other than just appearance and roots of its name. I'm certainly not claiming anything from the Bible is an accurate description of events in Jesus life. I strongly doubt it, since it wouldn't fit with anything else we know about mythic ancient events. I'm not even saying they stories on Jesus are approximate. I think it's quite likely that absolutely everything about Jesus life could have been changed in the Bible. In spite of this the real man Jesus could still have existed.

But for the Greeks it gets really confusing. Greek mythology have a couple of good ones. Poseidon wasn't just the king of the sea, he literally was the sea. If you're in a boat, you're literally floating around on Poseidon's body. The same with Demeter which was fertility, which isn't even a tangible thing to be.

Greek's didn't seem to have any problems with this, which I think tells us a lot about the ancient mindset.

avi

An itinerant preacher, or "maggid" as I believe it is called, is not synonymous with rabbi, so far as I understand. I don't know of any credible evidence, that the man described by the Gospels as Jesus, functioned as maggid, carpenter, rabbi, or fisherman. I guess that as the mythology evolved, he acquired more and more functionality. I would welcome a link to the "general consensus" that the Jesus of the New Testament was based upon a "Galilean preacher".
Is it also my burden of proof to give evidence that kryptonite is actually a harmless white material, not a potent green crystal? Is it "perfectly reasonable for anyone to believe in a historical" Superman by default? Of course the evidence does not "better support" a "fully mythical Jesus". Is there a partially mythical Achilles? How does one assign the grade or degree of mythicism? An idea, a process, an entity is either mythical, or it is not. Can you provide an illustration of the concept of "partially mythical"?

Does that process require synaptic transmission accomplished by enzymes produced by ribonucleic acid transcription of DNA?

Outstanding.
Absolutely.
We lack data to support either position, however, that does not mean that the proposal is neither fictional, nor mythical. It simply means that we don't know the answer, exactly as you wrote, correcting yourself, below:
yes, you think this, or you think that. Fine. However, that does not mean that someone else's opinions, though perhaps different from yours, are incorrect.

rizdek

I simply don't know. So I probably don't fit into either of your categories. Jesus could be entirely myth and it wouldn't surprise me. Or there might be one or more core "people" around whom various tales evolved and these were collected into the Jesus of the gospels. That wouldn't surprise me either. It really doesn't matter to me other than out of academic interest and thinking about how people come to believe what they believe. The thing that amazes me is how many people are absolutely convinced Jesus must be historical and that he was born of a virgin, performed all those miracles and was actually a god.

Tom Sawyer

Of course it has no explanatory power. I never suggested it did.

wordy

I have not followed the polls on it but my recall of several years are that very few supported mythicism among us atheists and the few that do maybe post more than those that think there was a Jesus but that he was not as it is described.

I lean towards that there was no real jesus but that there was several rebels like Simon bar Kochba? and similar that got killed by the Romans.

could not they be used as templates?

What about the Macabean uproar. Did that one take place? Could not such real historical things be used as a source for myths? "Jesus" being a symbol for such resistance to occupation?

spin

Then I can see no value for you in holding it.


spin

Sea

If you didn't suggest it, I sure will. A historical Jesus explains the following:

* The entire popular movement. It isn't easy to start a self-sustaining cult. A charismatic, controversial, and real Jesus more readily explains how things got off the ground. The theologians shaped the precise teachings, but esoteric writings themselves are less likely to provide the necessary inspiration.

* If all we had was the well-developed Gospel of John it would be easier to claim Jesus' biography was made up from scratch. The prior written and oral history implied by the synoptic problem points to the kind of messy and decentralized development we would expect from a historical Jesus but not a neatly composed new myth.

* Jesus' teachings about an immediate apocalypse and the failure of those teachings are better explained by him being an apocalyptic preacher who was wrong.

* The birth narratives in Matthew and Luke have completely different plot devices for Jesus being born in Bethlehem but growing up in Nazereth. Since many Jews expected the Messiah to be from Bethlehem not Nazareth, a historical Jesus from the wrong town would explain the need for the whole mess.

* Jesus' own teachings usually have a lot more to do with reforms within Judaism than anything like full-on Christian theology. A historical Jesus who wasn't trying to start a new religion would explain this. Not so much for a Jesus invented as the vehicle for Christian theology.

* The crucifixion itself has little to no basis in BCE Judaism. Even any Jews who took Isaiah 53 to be an future individual would have expected disease, not state execution of this or any form. A real crucifixion which had to be explained by quote mining anything even vaguely connected would explain the central role of the crucifixion over all else.

There may be ways for a mythicist view to account for the above points, but a historical Jesus more readily does so.

show_no_mercy

The gospel of Mark is a highly literary, ironic work. Basically "made up from scratch". The editors of Mark - commonly called Luke and Matthew - assumed a historical Jesus and edited Mark to make him present a more "historical" Jesus. There's no prior oral history in Mark, and considering that Luke and Matthew used Mark as a source probably means they are making shit up as well.

spin

You are taking what Tom Sawyer said completely out of context. His approach was trying to assume that any myth is eventually if loosely based on the life of someone with a lot of mystical elaborations and outright thefts from other mythologies added in.

Now any story can explain things, any myth. That's what a lot of myths are for, so they can have explanatory power, but that says nothing about reality. So your musings as to what a historical Jesus can explain won't get you anywhere.

Paul's movement, which is the earliest Jesus movement we can be sure about, needed no knowledge of a real Jesus, as Paul claims that his knowledge, his gospel comes from revelation. The movement he started seemed to have been successful without need of a real anything.

When was John or any other gospel written? How long after the Pauline movement got under way? You need to have perspective on what you relate. You do not know when. We only have the flimsiest conjectures enforced with miles of christian apologetics behind them.

However, once communities of Pauline believers were established they will have developed their traditions as any tradition bearers do and in relative isolation, disturbed only by break-off itinerant preachers who'd spread the good word for a feed as long as they could (they are discouraged by the Didache). A good story gets a feed, so you make your story appetizing. Traditions spread until there is enough for a group to write some of them down, leading to the spread of a written source which gets added to as one expects from tradition bearers. New stories or factoids will be absorbed and reproduced.

An immediate apocalypse helps believers to focus. It helps them to persevere in the face of hardship and conflict.

This is all happily explained by different people telling different versions of the same story. Remember that the patriarch in a foreign land story was told three times in Genesis, twice with Abraham as the protagonist, once with Isaac, once in Egypt and twice in Gerar, and each time the patriarch passes his wife off as his sister to dupe the local king and succeeds, so it is only natural that storytelling gets different forms.

Does that explain why most of the message from the mouth of Jesus was aimed at gentiles?

Crucifixion has a long history in Judea. During the Hellenistic persecution Jews were crucified. During the reign of Alexander Jannaeus thousands of Pharisees were crucified. Even the pre-rabbinical figure Shimeon ben Shetah crucified a number of "witches". The Greeks crucified people. The Persians crucified people. And the Romans crucified people. There's a lot of crap going round about crucifixion.

Mystery cult figures get done in in various ignominious ways. It's par for the course.

You can believe what you want. Mythicists will believe what they want. I'd just like a bit of sceptical reason out of the lot of you.


spin

aa5874

You have only assumed what you need to prove.

Where is the evidence or source of antiquity, external of the Church, that show there was a popular movement of Jesus believers in the 1st century?

There is none.

Where is the evidence or source of antiquity, external of the Church, that can show there was a charismatic, controversial and real Jesus?

There is none.

Please examine the writings of antiquity.

Jesus believers were considered cannibals and atheists.

It was the Emperor Constantine that saved the name JESUS and Jesus believers from extinction.

The significant differences between the Synoptics and gJohn actually help to show that Jesus was a fabrication. The Church claimed Matthew and John were disciples of Jesus yet each produced a different Jesus.

It would have been far more realistic to claim Matthew and John were authors of the Synoptics where the Jesus of the Synoptics appear to far more compatible.

But, there was no immediate apocalypse during the time of Pilate or Tiberius. Based on Josephus, it was Jesus the son of Ananus who did warn the people of an immediate apocalyptic event when he shouted day after day "Woe unto Jerusalem".

And further, even if Jesus warned people of such an event, the majority of them would have been dead 40 years later.

The Nazareth story actually augments the notion that Jesus was a fabrication. It would seem that the fabricators of the Jesus story realised that they could not make Jesus grow up in Bethlehem, so Jesus was placed in some remote area perhaps not even established in the 1st century.

Again, you are assuming what you have to prove.

Where is the evidence or source of antiquity, external of the Church, that can show that there was a teacher, the Lord and Saviour, Messiah and son of God called Jesus during the time of Pilate or Tiberius?

Why do you first assume that JESUS existed and was crucified? You cannot use Isaiah 53 to prove Jesus was crucified or explain that JESUS did exist. You need external corroborative or credible sources that can show that there was a character called Jesus who was crucified.

When do you intend to provide those sources external of the Church?

Now or Never?