spamandham

Neither are the canonical Gospels.

Joan of Bark

I love you absolutists ... the gospels, canonical and gnostic, constitute zero evidence?

So I'll ask the question yet again ... why do the majority of scholars believe in an historical Jesus? Are they all complete idiots? Hell, they must be if they believe in something with zero evidence.

You might say that there are no documents contemporary with Jesus mentioning His existence. How do you know this? Have you read every 1st century Palestinian manuscript in the original Greek and Aramaic? Or are you relying on someone to tell you this is so? Those people being -- say -- scholars?

show_no_mercy

The majority of scholars in this instance are Christians first and scholars second. The reason they became scholars in the first place was because they were Christians.

Are there any cases where a non-Christian became a Biblical scholar and then concluded that Jesus existed? It almost seems like a nonsense question - why would anyone other than a Christian become a Bible scholar? It seems like a de facto selection bias in this particular field.

Toto

I think that the majority of scholars believe that Jesus was a historical figure because that is the conventional wisdom. The Christians among the scholarly community have the strongest commitment to that position, but there are non-Christians who are historicists (Paula Fredriksen.)

This is not the craziest thing that is widely believed among intelligent people without any real evidence.

Zenaphobe

I have thought about this "why would people believe in something with zero evidence" question when applied to the Bible and Jesus and I look at something much more recent in history to us and that is the Mormons.

Here you have approximately 11,000,000 people who believe in the historicity of events placed in pre-Columbus America and have a whole structure of apologetics to support that belief although there is no archeological proof to back it up. See http://www.lightplanet.com/mormons/r..._loopholes.htm

Imagine a scenario where Mormonism becomes the prominent faith like Christianity did during Constantine and continues under various forms for the next 2000 years.

The Book of Mormon has no independent sources to back it up, but does this convince devout Mormons that it is false? They have scholars too.

Educated, intelligent people believing in something with absolutely no evidence to confirm it is not as uncommon as we might wish.

And like your last point, maybe we just haven't found those corroborating sources yet for the Book of Mormon? Perhaps anti Mormon scholars just can't be open to the possibility that we haven't excavated enough of America yet for these proofs to be discovered?

Vindication of Joseph Smith could be a shovel full of dirt away.

The Mormons are accused of special pleading, but why not Bible scholars who have 4 anonymous gospels, that appear to suffer from numerous issues, to be the only source of info on the life of this person named Jesus?

spamandham

Has anyone taken a poll of scholars to see if it's really true that the majority believe in a historical Jesus? ...and if so, did they follow that poll up with questions as to why they believe that?

I'd be interested in the results of such a study.

Joan of Bark

I would too. I am basing my statement on all my readings on Biblical literature, many of which were written by skeptical scholars (Bart Ehrman and Robin Lane Fox, for instance). If I can trust them to tell me that the gospels were not written in Jesus' lifetime, I can trust them to tell me that such writings are still solid evidence for an HJ.

IamJoseph

This depiction of early christianity appears to contradict everything else written of this period. The terms christians and christ never emerged till after 174 CE, the NT was forbidden to the population for a 1000 years - anyone caught with a Christian bible was liable to a punishment. Europe's country folk hardly knew to write and read, and most of the ancesters of today's christians were converted by force, ex-comminunication, persecution or a form of spiritual blackmail they will have no salvation and go to hell forever.

All of the villifications heaped on the Jews was based on false or antithetical premises: Jews never killed Jesus and there was no Roman trial - the pre-chrstian Romans and greeks crucified Jesus and millions of his kin, then enforced peoples in Europe to adhere to the Gospel beliefs - a people who had no knowledge of this event, and one who never demanded proof.

IamJoseph

This issue requires a scientific examination which gives insight into this phenomenon, which is not limited to christianity. Basically, it is like a child being raised by non-biological parents; the child will grow to love those parents like any other normal child. This is alligned with a religion, and perhaps even more so. While a child can raise a quest to find his true parents, this is not so common for one after many generations of belief inculcation.

Basically, all humans have an inherent belief or questioning of the Creator premise. And this syndrome is also the easiest one to exploit. Here, the qestion must be asked, if the entire Gospels story was fictional - will it still have become a believed story and developed into a large religion, even emersed in the DNA of its adherants? Why not? - when we see two religions, Christianity and islam, totally contradictory of each other, nonetheless sold to the brim of their beings each is right and the other false: which is false here?

IOW, we know for a fact both the NT and Quran cannot be equally correct and true: at least one is 100% false, yet believed unquestioningly by its adherants, and they would sacrifice their lives and kill for it if push comes to shove. This situation becomes more alarming when each of those religions promote a doctrine of exclusivity - anyone not 'believing' is an evil person or nation.


In such a scenario, there is also the attached syndrome of rejecting any disdained truth to a preferred falsehood. This is again subsequent to the doctrine of attaching a villification of another as the conditional requirement of that belief. Here, any negation or disproof, even if true, becomes an abyss for the adherant of that religion - they have nowhere to go, and thus cannot entertain such a disdained truth: a falsehood becomes far more preferable, they cannot remove the false negations anymore - it is too attached to their core doctrine, if only for its underlying existential reasonings.

This is what humanity faces today - two of the world's most powerful religions, pointing to a road of total insanity and chaos. And nowhere is this best seen with both these religions based on the villification and negation of the Jews, itself a syndrome of total falsehoods and antithetical inculcations. This is also why the forgeries of the blood libels and the Protocols was believed by christians for many centuries, which eventually led to the Holocaust and the artificial response 'we were not aware'. It seems humanity is in a transit zone: some heavy duty paradigms are going to fall, with a great thud. This is inevitable and is felt like a tsunami approaching. Hold on tight to your armchair - we don't know who will get hit - only that many will.

spamandham

Since the idea of a creator is a fairly recent development in the history of humans, it seems doubtful there is any inherent belief or questioning of the idea.

Hope springs eternal, as they say.