bacht

Do we have to assume that there was some person in 1st C Palestine who was the kernel of the Christ myth? Wasn't there already precedent to accept legendary figures like Moses and Odysseus? Mythical figures like Osiris weren't located in normal time and space were they?

aa5874

There is actually no evidence to show that the letter writers called Paul wrote anything before the death of Nero. And, there is no evidence to show that anyone knew the real letter writers. It would appear that ALL the Church writers thought that the writer of Timothy was also the writer of Romans.

There is no evidence from any credible external source that any person actually saw the letter writers and actually read the letters before the death of Nero.

The NT already claimed Jesus had a mother, the so-called brothers can hardly be stronger evidence than the mother.

It is expected that the so-called mother would tell her children who are their siblings.
Some people have brothers and sisters they have never seen.

And if Jesus had a human brother and was just human, then the entire Jesus story must be reviewed, it would then be still complete fiction and deliberately erroneous with zero veracity.

Ben C Smith

From the Osiris article on Wikipedia:

Plutarch recounts one version of the myth surrounding the cult in which Set (Osiris' brother) fooled Osiris into getting into a box, which he then shut, had sealed with lead, and threw into the Nile (sarcophagi were based on the box in this myth). Osiris' wife, Isis, searched for his remains until she finally found him embedded in a tree trunk, which was holding up the roof of a palace in Byblos on the Phoenician coast.

....

Diodorus Siculus gives another version of the myth in which Osiris is described as an ancient king who taught the Egyptians the arts of civilization, including agriculture.

Ben.

bacht

Without Paul, is there any other evidence for gentile Christian beliefs before the mid-2nd C? Should we imagine that only variations of Jewish Christianity were present before the second revolt in the 130s?

Ben C Smith

There is Pliny.

Ben.

spin

Argument by inventing probabilities. Very convincing.

Argument by assumption of conclusions. Also very convincing.

No argument at all. Just explanation of how a non-historical part of the Jesus story was added to the Jesus story.

Argument by creation of motivation.

Now all you have to do is show a historical source for the non-miraculous content. And as you can see in the century between the time of the Kochba revolt and Origen there was a lot of creation of such material. What about the century before?

So far you've shown no understanding of history. Can you hope to say anything about it?


spin

show_no_mercy

hmmm...

A "Jesus" that was stoned about 100 years before the events depicted in the gospels

Most scholars (even St. Jerome) consider the Testimonium Flavius a forgery.

Paul never met a historical Jesus.

No Robots

There are several unambiguous references to Christ in the Talmud, including this one where Rabbi Eliezer undergoes an inquisition for having appreciated one of Christ's witticisms:

Our Rabbis taught: When R. Eliezer was arrested because of Minuth they brought him up to the tribune to be judged. Said the governor to him, 'How can a sage man like you occupy himself with those idle things?' He replied, 'I acknowledge the Judge as right.' The governor thought that he referred to him — though he really referred to his Father in Heaven — and said, 'Because thou hast acknowledged me as right, I pardon; thou art acquitted.' When he came home, his disciples called on him to console him, but he would accept no consolation. Said R. Akiba to him, 'Master, wilt thou permit me to say one thing of what thou hast taught me?' He replied, 'Say it.' 'Master,' said he, 'perhaps some of the teaching of the Minim had been transmitted to thee and thou didst approve of it and because of that thou wast arrested?' He exclaimed: 'Akiba thou hast reminded me.' I was once walking in the upper-market of Sepphoris when I came across one of the disciples of Jesus the Nazarene Jacob of Kefar-Sekaniah by name, who said to me: It is written in your Torah, Thou shalt not bring the hire of a harlot … into the house of the Lord thy God. May such money be applied to the erection of a retiring place for the High Priest? To which I made no reply. Said he to me: Thus was I taught by Jesus the Nazarene, For of the hire of a harlot hath she gathered them and unto the hire of a harlot shall they return. They came from a place of filth, let them go to a place of filth. Those words pleased me very much, and that is why I was arrested for apostacy; for thereby I transgressed the scriptural words, Remove thy way far from her — which refers to minuth — and come not nigh to the door of her house, — which refers to the ruling power.—Abodah Zarah, folio 16b-17a

Elena

Where is evidence outside NT for historical Paul?
If no conclusive evidence for Jesus, how can someone say Paul existed?
No Marcion = no Paul. Possible: Marcion forged letters.

patcleaver

This is untrue. The Jesus Seminar determined that 85% of the sayings of Jesus were unlikely to have been said by any historical Jesus. A Jewish sage could not have said the things that Jesus supposedly said in the Gospels.

Even respected historians of the time invented the words of historical figures. Even if the gospels were based on a particular first century Jewish sage, it is unlikely that he said anything that is attributed to him in the Gospels.

This is untrue, there is no reasonable evidence that there were any early followers of Jesus of Nazareth.

The works of Flavius Josephus, Pliny the Younger, Caius Suetonius and Cornelius Tacitus are not reliable evidence that there were any early followers of Jesus of Nazareth. The Testimonium Flavianum is the only one of these documents that claims first hand knowledge of a group that is unambiguously followers of Jesus of Nazareth, but its a 4th century forgery. In fact, Christianity operated (and continues to operate) the greatest fraud mill in history, so there is no reason to accept any of these documents as authentic.

Do you have any reasonable evidence that the conical gospels existed before the 4th century. Do you have any evidence that anyone except a few crackpots believe that the conical gospels were non-fiction before the 4th century. There are always a few crackpots who believe anything - some people believe that the Oz books by L. Frank Baum are historical.

All sacred religious texts are just fiction. Lets consider the sacred text of the Jedi-knight religion.

There are people who really believe that the star wars saga are true, and they are crackpots in exactly the same way as the crackpots who believe that the Jesus stories are true.

There are many things in the star-wars saga that are not preposterous, but non-preposterousness can not be used as a criterion for determining that they are true. There is no reason at all to believe that Jesus was a real person but that Obi-Wan Kenobi was not. What reason do you have to think that Mark based the fictional Jesus on a real person, but that George Lucas did not base Obi-Wan on a real person. People who study literature tell us that fictional characters are rarely based on real people, but I don't think that George Lucas has ever denied that Obi-Wan was based on a real person.

There are lots of people named Hans and Leia, so does that prove that the fictional Hans and Leia characters of Star Wars really exist? Some crackpots think so.

Perhaps the entire star wars saga is based on some real series of events in some war that we are not familiar with, and all the non-preposterous things that happened in star wars really happened. Perhaps all the star war characters are based on real characters who really said the non-preposterous things that the characters said. Perhaps all the information about the force religion and mitochondria communicating and controlling energy is true, but we do not know about it because of some secret government coverups.

You can make all kinds of wild unsupported speculations that are possible, such as the existence of a human Jesus, or the truth of star wars, but there is no evidence that its true, and if you believe its true, when you know that there is no reasonable evidence that its true, then your just a crackpot.

The historical Jesus Christ never existed for exactly the same reason that the historical Zeus and the historical Poseidon never existed - there is no evidence for their existence except fictional stories.