spamandham

If we can track the rise of Christianity independent of a historical Jesus - and I think we mostly can - then Christianity did not result from a historical Jesus. Searching for The Real Jesus™ is then a distraction, since he was not the founder of Christianity.

Juststeve

Guru:

Although you claim to be dealing with my comment on its own terms you did not. You misquoted me by imputing to me the statement that all of the evidence for the HJ comes from the Christian canon. I actually said "almost all of the evidence comes from the Christian canon, and I stand by that statement.

Steve

Toto

No, it was not. It is your own invention.

Arius believed that Jesus existed. He was a heretic because he believed that Jesus did not exist at the beginning of time, but was created.

Please stop spreading this misinformation that just muddies the waters.

gurugeorge

Sure, ok, but it's a minor point. Whatever evidence there is is the evidence there is - what it's evidence for is the very thing that's question.

Your statement simply assumes it's evidence for the existence of an ordinary human being, which is the very thing that needs to be established - especially in view of the fact that, on the face of it, it's supposed to be evidence for a god-man.

Once again, I understand your position because I held it myself at one time, and I venture to say that many thinking people hold to it. It just seems plausible that if you strip away the fantastic elements from a fantastic story, then what's left could be the story of an ordinary human being. Yes, could be, it's logically possible. But you can't just assume that's the case, it has to be demonstrated - it has to be demonstrated that this myth has an euhemeristic basis.

Otherwise you might (for all you know) be in the same logical position as some future investigator would be, when faced with Superman comics, of assuming that there was a historical reporter who was a bit of a doofus and worked out. There is just no connection of logical necessity there whatsoever - it does not follow.

andrewcriddle

The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs are, in their present form, Christian works, drawing upon earlier Jewish material. It is hazardous to use them as evidence for pre-Christian parallels to Christianity.

Andrew Criddle

spamandham

Perhaps, but it's generally acceptable to make the connection between later texts and earlier ones when earlier fragments show a strong resemblance to those later texts. The exact same argument is used to connect P52 to the gospel of John.

spin

You're shifting the issue. Depending on the evidence, there is quite a lot that can be said about the past that is not "in the realm of fiction". I know for example with relative certainty that there was a battle between the Egyptians and the Hittites that led to a peace agreement between the two antagonists that involved a Hittite princess marrying the pharaoh (Ramses II). That's well over 1000 years earlier than the time we are investigating. We go with the evidence and talk about what we can. We know with relative certainty that the basic events narrated by Josephus about the Roman conquest of Masada happened because of the corroborating archaeological evidence. Extracting history out of unprovenanced, undated, anonymous works that have no external support is beyond most efforts of history. We work with standards and say what we can, acknowledging that there are many things that we can only speculate about. And I'm not too interested in the speculative aspects of christianity.


spin

jgoodguy

Gee The gospels, early Christian writings and Josephus. Same old stuff we always have had. As I said, it is not good evidence, but it is evidence never the less. What the evidence means is open to conjecture. Even the methodologies to analyze the evidence are disputable. Most of the available ancient Christian writings describe something called Christ. Was Christ in the minds of the writers myth or human and historical or somewhere in the range requires much better evidence that we have. There is no way to take the dust and ashes of ancient minds and make them talk to us. The best we have is what we have and all we can do is speculate upon it.

jgoodguy

Indeed. There is evidence, but it is not sufficient to do more than make informed speculation. This results in many speculations, for example about what Jesus was, by HJers that are flights of imagination more than historical inquiry.

spin

And if we want to leave it here, the onus is always on the substantive claimant to demonstrate the claim with sufficient evidence. If one wants to say that there was no Jesus, however, one makes a substantive claim needing demonstration. The HJer usually ignores their own problems and claims that there is no alternative, attacking--using questionable presuppositions--the lack of substance of the mythicist and related positions. This is simply obfuscation.


spin