Doug Shaver

I'm not about to pretend that I can make a cogent argument out of a few sound bites, but, for what you may think it's worth, here is my answer:

• For almost the entire first century of Christianity's known existence, no Christian document attests unambiguously to such a belief among Christians. For all we can tell from the surviving record, the first Christians that we know about worshipped a divinity with some human attributes, not a man with some divine attributes.
• The sole possible (not certain) exception are the canonical gospels, and all subsequent references to the man from Galilee are clearly based on those books. The secular record, contrary to reasonable expectations, is silent about that man.
• The gospels themselves give no evidence that their authors were recording history. There is no reference to any sources. (Not even in Luke. The author of Luke claims there were witnesses, but he does not say he used any of them in compiling his narrative.)
• All counterarguments to the above points beg the question.

aa5874

What evidence can you find for a person who did not live 2000 years ago?
What evidence could a person find to show that a person did not die 2000 years ago, whom you do not know lived?

What is the evidence of an event that never occurred?

It should be clear that it is far easier and reasonable for those who claim events occurred and that persons existed 2000 years ago to provide the evidence for their position, instead of making false statements about the historicity of Jesus.

How do I prove nothing happened when I don't even know when these things were supposed to occur?

Clivedurdle

Why exactly are the points made in this thread not damning?

What have we got? Clear parallels to earlier godman ideas - acknowledged by early church fathers and put down to satanic pre copying, clear similar literary and dramatic traditions, clear political reasons, clear philosophical ideas about gods and the heavens being more real than the "real" world, very good trading contacts between various empires and power blocs over thousand of years allowing free interchange of ideas and plenty of evidence of this - like Hannibal taking elephants over the Alps - if anything is ecologically inappropriate that is - and over the last few hundred years an unsuccesful search for a historial Jesus that has only resulted in a micro Jesus, Che Guevara or Billy Graham figure.

Is not the clinging on to this tawdry HJ only habit and brainwashing?

Oh I forgot our psychologies - how we socially construct reality. The full blown Jesus Christ does hit all our emotional and psychological buttons - to such an extent that a Prime Minister can start doing god!

Please, all MJists are doing is asking for honesty, if you must worship the Christ, worship the real one:

http://www.glasgowmuseums.com/venue/...id=4&itemid=68

(If Dali agrees with Doherty, what are we arguing about?)

Oxymoron

A timely reminder: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7155903.stm

breathilizer

It's not about what we like or dislike. It's about the evidence. If the evidence shows that, in overwhelming likelihood, Jesus is a fictional character and that furthermore Christianity itself is a manufactured religion designed to recruit from as many demographics as possible, then that's what I'm going to conclude.

Ask yourself this... Suppose the Superman comics/movies/shows/books all took place 2000 years ago, and Superman died a middle-aged man. What would you expect the world to be like if a Historical Superman never really existed?

godschristianarmy

Yes, we have the bible.

Religious texts are perfectly fine when we are talking about the existance of pharohs for instance, why not Jesus? According to the Egyptian religious texts Pharoh was God so does that false claim automatically mean his very existance is false?

No, the existance of Pharoh is mired in the same religious fundamentalism and awe as most historical texts of the time. How do we know Buddah (an Indian prince) really existed? What about Muhamed? His works and actions are also mired in religious context, does that mean he never existed either?

aa5874

And we have Philo, Josephus, Tacitus, Suetonius, Julian, and the Jews as having no evidence for the historicity of Jesus.

Toto

The existence of the Pharohs does not depend on religious texts. It is shown by surviving hard evidence, such as their mummified bodies, death masks, statues, writings and pictures on stone walls, etc.

mountainman

We have "Constantine's Bible"
dated to c.331 CE, and the
actual greek codices dated
perhaps the end of the same
century.

But what happened before this
date is a mass of competing
conjectures and assumptions
due to lack of any evidence.



Best wishes



Pete Brown

godschristianarmy

This thread is silly, what is the real evidence we have for the existance of the Scorpion King? What about Narmer? Buddah? How about Nemes?

All the accounts of the existance of these people are mired in religious mysticism, so why the double standard here? If the fact that the bible contains mythical referances discounts it's credibility as a source then it should also apply to all other sources.