aa5874

Why can't you admit that you support an historical Jesus??? Why can't you admit that you BELIEVE the Bible contains history of YOUR Jesus like the Creationists Believe the Bible contains the history of ADAM and EVE???

Come on!!!! Billions of people BELIEVE the Bible is a history book without a SHRED of evidence. You won't be the first or last to BELIEVE the Bible is a history book for a Human Jesus based on Imagination.

All I know is the the DATED Codices claimed Jesus was the Son of a Ghost, Son of God, God the Creator, that WALKED on water, Transfigured, resurrected and ascended in a cloud.

The DATED Bible is a COMPILATION of Ghost stories and Myth Fables of the Son of a Ghost.

I no longer accept imagination to re-construct the past.

I accept the DATED Matthew 1.18.

Matthew 1.18 People who have NO evidence and REJECT the DATED sources can NO LONGER dictate the past. No way!!!

It is the people who use the DATED evidence, the DATED sources that will DICTATE or re-construct the past.

Imagination days are DONE.

This is BC&H--NOT I&S[ imagination and speculation]

Source FIRST--DATA FIRST.

Please IDENTIFY the source for your human Jesus.

Adam

OK--now it comes out.
Everybody's afraid to admit there might be something to my evidence for HJ because then aa would harass them for confessing such heresy. I've counted eleven times today alone he has taunted Tom Sawyer.

steve_bnk

Yes that's it. How embarasskin'. Oooh the pain. Are we done now?

We would want coorboration. Cleopatra was known to both Rome and Egypt. That kind of hard to dispute evidence Cleopatra exists.

Even if such HJ evidence surfaced for a single human, we would not accept the supernatiural aspects.

In thosee days writers and historians commonly filled in the blanks. They had to. Our modern communications did not exist.The Greek historian Herodotus was known as Herodotus The Liar.

The gospels were not intended as a journalistic account. They were likely promtional literature embellished to draw interest to the new movement.

The problem is simple, regardles of which writings you settle on, how do you say objectively one is correct and others are wrong among all the writings?


The basic question precludes you from proving anything. I'd have to look up the name.There was a Christian scholar who decided he was going back to all the earliest writings and end all disputes once and for all. He learned Hebrew and Greek. His conclusiion at the end was that there were no original sources.

Most here have littlee doubt if any. It is your own faith that you are testing. Convince and convert someone and you validate yourself.

Plato/Aristotle and Atlantis.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantis#Recent_times
The journey to validate Christianity has lasted 2000 years, it is an infinetly deep well. It is like the search for Atlantis.

Remember there was fiction, myth, and novels in Greece and Rome. From a PBS show, the gospels plus the acts take on a literary form of the times. It is an action advcentuire morality story in two parts. The life of JC, folloewd by Part 2 the apostles. Taken in the context of the history of religion, myth, and literature up to the times, the gospels were nothing new or remarkable.

How much is fiction nad how much actual events? No way to know. We can say the story fit the times in a general political sense.

Buddhists have the same issue, I believe thyey would say whether Buddha lived or not is irrelevant, it is what Buddhism does for you and how you live that matters. It appears the Abrahamics in the form of Islam and Christianity are singularly plagued with having to force beligion opn thers. Like walking up to people on the street.

When you are busy trying to prove it to us, you are not thinking of your own doubts.

Adam

Havn't I made it clear enough that I am not demanding that all of you are logically required to become Christians? In this thread I am working with the MJ Confession of Faith that automatically rejects considering any evidence for HJ. I show historical provenance for several source texts within the gospels that lack any supernatural trappings that would by your standards tarnish consideration of the texts. If there is no supernaturalism, how can you dismiss a priori anything that looks like it may be referring to the Jesus underlying Christianity? ( Many atheists prefer to accept such evidence because they believe they can show that the evidence points to a Jesus incompatible with institutional Christianity--so what is the problem here?)

And what about HJ believers like you, steve bnk? Why wouldn't you welcome some textual evidence that you are correct that MJ is false? Why wouldn't you show support for a domino or two, just making certain that there is a stopping point before too many dominoes fall? I have admitted that HJ atheists can stop after Proto-Luke etc, on the grounds that supernaturalism beyond that point can be rejected a priori. You have no a priori case to stop before that point, however, because no one here at FRDB accepts the consensus scholarship that would refute me, by Appeal to Authority. You guys here need to argue against me from scratch, and no one has presented a case yet against my Gospel According to the Atheists.

maryhelena

Ah, but methinks MJ will not predominate, i.e. will not gain wider acceptance, until it starts to focus on the relevant history. History - or at least the assumption of history, is the HJ selling point. People, generally, want something to latch on to, something real - some little bit of reality that gives support to the idea. As it stands right now, MJ is a floating abstraction! The theory needs to be grounded.....

maryhelena

And where is the story about Thor today? Seems to me it never had the staying power, and the impact upon the lives of so many people, as does the JC story.

maryhelena

Sure, a composite gospel JC, a literary figure composed from the lives of real historical figures, does not rule out that specific historical figures were important to the gospel writers. Indeed, I don't view the historical figures that were used as 'models' for the composite literary JC to be irrelevant to early Christian history.

I'm not talking modern day novels here - where an author might take bits and pieces from the lives or character traits of real people and build up a literary character - and where these real flesh and blood 'models' are irrelevant to the author's story. On the contrary. With the gospel writers and their historical 'models' for their literary JC figure - these historical figures were indeed relevant. In fact it's the historical figures that generated, that inspired, through their life stories, the gospel JC storyline.

The simple answer to the JC question is a story about a flesh and blood man to whom, after his death, all the mythological elements were added.

But that answer would be to eliminate the Jewish context of the JC story. Consequently, there is no simple answer here....It seems to me that the writers of the JC story were highly sophisticated in what they were about. 2000 years later and their story is still being debated...

steve_bnk

I do not believe it. I think it is likely. Hard to imagine inventing it from scratch. The backdrop of an itinerant rabai wold not likely have been a Greek or Roman choice for the basis of an orginal story.

Around here MJ or mythical Jesus refers to a mythical fabrication with no basis in a flesh and blood human. A divine Jesus would be the character as literaly depicted in the story.

If by consensus scholarship you mean Christian scholrship, most here would diosmiss it outrightespecially once any mention of the suoernatural enters.

Your responsse seems to generally be
you atheists need to...'

There is no coorborated textual evidence. Christian scholarship involves cliamng proof based un unsbstantiated ncient souces for whom the authors and content can never be verified. As I said, by necessity filling in the blanks was common.

Again why accept one source as truth and not another? On what basis. You have to answer that first.

You need to restate your OP. If you believe Jesus is myth, then you are not a beliveing Christian. What do you believe?

Instututional Christianity for 2000 years has been a rather nasty thing. Yes we have a problem with that. That is a debate for the Abrahamic forum if you like.

aa5874

What a load of BS.

You seem to forget that PEOPLE are still looking for THEIR HJ like those who look for the SECOND Coming.

After Ehrman's disaster, the QUEST for HJ will fade away for the last time.

Only the Jesus of Faith, the Son of God born of the Holy Ghost--the Myth will remain.

It is beginning to SINK in.

Jesus WAS NEVER on earth, physically or spiritually so he will NOT EVER come back a Second Time.

Not even Ehrman can make a man from a Ghost.

Matthew 1.18 is CAST in stone.

maryhelena

Even if the quest for a historical gospel JC was to be abandoned - as well it might be - it does not give the MJ theory victory by default. No way....What remains, if the search for a historical gospel JC is abandoned, is the belief in a real flesh and blood gospel JC. The desire to hold on to reality, even if in this case, an assumed reality, is a fundamental aspect of our experience of living in this world. We don't, if we want to live functional lives, seek to live in Cloud Cuckoo Land ..we don't just live in our heads.

The social/political environment in which we live today - that reality - the social/political reality, was as much a force to be reckoned with 2000 years ago as it is for us today. Social/political realities, history, impacts us all - as it did 2000 years ago to those gospel writers. If we are seeking early christian origins, if we are seeking to understand the gospel JC story, then we have to take on-board the relevant social/political history of those gospel writers.