Toto

This calumny comes up occasionally, but every time it does, the mythicists can show that the evidence for accepted historical characters is quantitatively and qualitatively different from that for Jesus.

lpetrich

The "mythmaking is too slow" argument. But mythmaking can happen VERY fast.

And I suggest a thought experiment. Imagine that you have a time machine, and that you could visit the places where Jesus Christ had supposedly lived at the times that he had supposedly lived. And imagine that you could pass yourself off as a local and speak and understand the locals' languages reasonably well.

Would you have been able to see Jesus Christ in the flesh?

Would you have been able to see what his infancy was like? His childhood? His early adulthood? His career as a religious prophet? How he died?

Malachi151

Indeed this has happened many times, especially in America. Molly Pitcher, classic example.

rlogan

Not a concise statement of a shifting-of-the-burden-of-proof strategy used by apologists.

Question: Show me the evidence

Response: Prove you are not a hypocrite.



Cheers.

rlogan

And so the "evidence" you submit for historicity is that the writer of the OP is disengenuous.

I see. Pretty compelling.


I see. NT cognative structures are complex and therefore Jesus existed.


My positive evidence for existence of Jesus is that you cannot assume there is no unidentified man beneath the admitted mythical encrustacians.

If we assume he existed - well, I guess he existed! By assumption, yes.



Re-statement of same "logic" as earlier. Prove there is not some unidentified man underneath the myth.

As soon as you tell us who this man is, and what evidence you have then we can go about the business of the OP.

Of course, this is the cunning of apologists having their day with "prove that someone I can't identify did not exist".

Well, yes - we can't prove a negative about something that is not identified in the first place.

Too bad that is not what the OP is asking for.

rlogan

Hi Laura D. I'll try to follow your thinking here. I'm just a dump truck driver amongst other things so I need things in positive direct terms.

If I can apply the statement, I think you are saying histirians are biased towards their common analytical process. Like carpenters are biased to hammers and nails.

I'm familiar with Doherty's Jesus Puzzle. Not this piece.

But from that familiarity and my own observations - we don't know how tall Jesus was, whether he had a big nose, was fat or wiry and so on. Nothing at all on his profile - whereas (for example) we have the likeness of other figures on busts, coins, etc.

Not sure where you want to go with this. I know what it means to me.

If I understand you, it was ancient authors who worried they'd gave to drop their own poorly-sourced figure if they dropped Jesus.

Sorry, I have trouble following this as a demonstration that ancient authors feared dropping X if they dropped Y. It seems the argument is different now.

That "second-source" material should be allowed for Jesus because it is for Alexander.

Well - I'm all for consistency. What we have to do though is just set forth what evidence exists for Jesus in the first place so that we can address the OP instead of diverting attention into the "prove you are not hypocrites" arena.

Finally we have it there I think. The standards for proving Jesus existed are higher than for other figures.

That's just silly. I don't see anyone here even defining who they are talking about. Instead, just some hand-waving about the possibility of some unidentified person being behind the myth.

Until you actually identify someone specific we can speak to - you are not doing any history at all. Just pure speculation.

Since you brought up Alexander, there simply is zero doubt about this. The historians are not saying some unidentified person may have inspired legends are they?

Well I sure understand what it is you were saying there about wanting a professional source, yes. The problem in religion is that professional historians are generally not doing this work.

When we look back at the "work" that has been done, we run into people like Eusebius who write "Church History" with an agenda that simply cannot inspire the slightest confidence in its veracity.

Crossan has been a huge disappointment for me. Good gracious I would rather eat cardboard than read another Crossan book.

The answer to your question is "yes". When you say "win points" - absolutely. Maybe I misunderstand because it goes without saying that any author on "their team" gets "points". On this score, the "athiest" writers get the most points of all - that is why GakusiDon gave big points to Grant.

Take care.

Laura D.

David Koresh (Vernon Howell) is another interesting example. It’s not so much his 1985 vision that he was the Messiah or his belief that he would bring about the "reunification" of Islam, Christianity and Judaism. It’s that more a dozen years later, he has believers with a web site awaiting his return—albeit a return date that is put off every few years (March 2012 currently). He seems a little unusual in that he or his followers deified him during his own lifetime.

Modern examples of developing religions exist. If we assume (for argument) that the psychiatry of modern man—with respect to how religious movements develop—mimics that of ancient man, then we have the ability to study these modern religions and glean insight into how ancient religions may have developed. The Church of Latter Day Saints, the Church of Scientology, the Branch Davidians, Bahai’s Faith, Cao Dai, the People’s Temple, etc.

Historically (and I now speak in the modern sense), we often see religious movements develop around a charismatic male leader, they usualy involve an insistence of doctrine over experience (e.g., if experience contradicts doctrine, doctrine prevails), salvation is only possible in the group (if you leave the group, you die or are doomed), demands for purity, leader is regarded as the supreme leader, usually leader has a special mission in life, the group is innovative—ie.,it is breaking in some way with tradition, often the leader assumes the role, guise, or personal of some former spiritiual leader (as a matter of disclosure, I do not argue here that any particular one of the example movements listed above meet this paragraph’s criteria).

We can see a tendency by people to hang the mythical hat on an historical hook. I’ve used the “Stagger Lee” example before. Around 1900, we see the development of not just the “Stagger Lee” song, but stories and tales of this bad-ass African-American man who defeats the caucasion sherrif, goes down to hell and takes over. We’ve got the myriad of “Stagger Lee” songs with their various lyrics. When there devoloped a later interest in how the Stagger Lee mythology began, some scholars eventually pointed to an 1895 article detailing the shooting of William Lyons by a Lee “Stag” Sheldon as the beginning for this mythic hero.

Obviously, modern man also creates myths from scratch. But these do not generally inspire the same fanatical devotion.

God bless,


Laura

Toto

I have often thought that 1st c. Jesus is an analogue to 20th c. Luke Skywalker. In two centuries, I would be more willing to bet on a surviving religion based around Luke Skywalker than around David Koresh.

Laura D.

You draw an excellent analogy. Certainly, far more know of Luke Skywalker than the 30 to 50 people who reportedly still have faith in Koresh's Messianic status. Moreover, if it happened, it would represent an excellent verified example of how future religion might develop from an obvious fictional source. Who do you consider the closest actual modern-day analogy?

I had another thought. For all I know Luke Skywalker may have actual faithful followers. In which case, you have made your case.

God bless,


Laura

GakuseiDon

I agree, which is why I said "unlikely but not impossible".

Yes.