Grog

The above is from ToF's quote of Tim O'Neill. O'Neill misses the point, and by proxy so does ToF. The mythicist position is not that early Christians argued that Jesus did not exist, or that anyone was arguing that. The position is that the idea of an historical Jesus evolved from an earlier Jesus-belief that did not include an earthly ministry (I would argue, not a recent earthly ministry, but a mythical one, such as the mythical history of Remus and Romulus legend of the founding of Rome). That make this entire post by ToF a straw man.

thief of fire

Ok.
Why wouldn't they have argued it with those who did believe jesus was a man on earth. If both groups co-exsisted then they would have debated it.
What did it include, and again, why wouldn't they have disagreed with others who believed he did?
Hmmmm, again why wouldn't the people who saw Jesus as "mythical" have disagreed with and argued with with those who thought he was man on earth?
It's not a strawman
You need to explain how both groups could have co-existed and yet leave nothing, absoluting no evidence, of any disagreement between them.

This is the real point, I believe, that if these groups co-existed with competing views they should have disagreed with each other, and we would have evidence of that. From this perspective I don't believe it is a "strawman".

Toto

Regarding the issue of why no early opponents of Christianity denied the historical existence of Jesus, Tom Verenna has a relevant blog post:

Undisputed! Ignatius, Skepticism, and the Problem of Ignorance

I argued in an old thread that no enemy of Christianity in the first to third centuries would have bothered to argue that Jesus never existed - Christianity was based on the spiritual and supernatural aspects of Jesus. It was a much more effective criticism of Christianity to argue that Jesus was merely human. It was only in our modern materialist age that not existing in the physical world would be counted as a point against a spiritual figure.

I may split this topic off to allow this thread to concentrate on Jospephus.

PhilosopherJay

Hi Toto,

This is a good point. We should remember that all the Gods of Mount Olympus were nearly universally accepted as existing too.

In ancient times people accepted myths as facts. Except perhaps for a high elite intellectual strata of a few Greeks and Romans, nobody argues that Achilles or Hercules, or the cyclopes or minotaurs did not exist. The arguments are only over what they did and what it meant.

Most adults today knows that unicorns do not exist because they have a strong sense of what animals exist and what animals don't. In ancient times, because of their lack of knowledge of the world, the ordinary person had no way of knowing if some thing or person they were told about existed or not. They generally accepted things that we now know to be fantastic. For example (from Wikipedia):

Even Pliny the Elder, the great naturalist, and one of the most knowledgeable Romans of the First century, did not deny that the Biemmyes existed.

A well armed Blemmy

As some argue that Jesus must have existed because no ancient source denies his existence, we may argue that the Blemmyae must have existed because no ancient source denies their existence.

Warmly,

Jay Raskin

Grog

Which two groups are you going on about? My argument is that there was no belief in a Jesus rooted in the time of Pilate until the gospel of Mark, which I believe is late first century or early second century. Previous Jesus belief merged with this, it didn't compete with it. You make the assumption that people who believed in the revealed Jesus would automatically reject the historicized story. I am not making that assumption. I can see where these stories would have been accepted. I'm only speculating here, but "sayings sources," in my view were first thought of as the teachings that the Risen Christ revealed to his apostles like Paul in his revelations. They were emergent out of the Christ-belief of people like Paul, initially, post-resurrection. The gospel writers rewrote those teachings as pre-resurrection, first the author of Mark and followed by the others.

But one doesn't have to accept my speculations here. We can also see that there was conflict and we are not sure what that conflict was about. Paul decries false apostles who teach "another Christ." Surely that could be taken as just the evidence you ask for.

aa5874

Remarkably, to accomodate an early Paul you have made many errors.

First of all Jesus in the Gospels was NOT historicized at all. Jesus of the Gospels was fully fictionalized and Mythologized.

From Walking on water and transfiguring, Mark 6.49 and 9.2,--Jesus became the God Creator who was with God from the beginning. John 1.

In effect, the Evolution of Jesus in the Gospels actually appears to go OPPOSITE to what you propose.

From a belief to be the son of God in gMark to Jesus actually stating that he was was the Son of God in gJohn.

At the end of the FOUR Gospels--gJohn's Jesus was like Paul's Jesus.

gJohn's Jesus is FULLY God without doubt and the Pauline Jesus is similar.

The proposal that the Pauline Spiritualised Jesus was first, then was historicise by gMark only to be Re-Spiritualised by gJohn does NOT make much sense.

The Canonised Jesus story evolved from the short-ending gMark, then to the Synoptics, to gJohn then the Pauline writings.

gMark's Jesus was a Secret Messiah and in gJohn Jesus Publicly DECLARES himself as a Savior, God and Messiah and the Pauline writer ALSO goes around the Roman Empire telling people and writing letters that Jesus was the Son of God, Lord, Savior and Messiah.

gMark's Jesus was LIKE the "Son of man" and was believed to be the son of a God, the Synoptic Jesus was LIKE the Son of Man but was the Son of the Holy Ghost of God, gJohn's Jesus CALLED himself the Son of God and then Paul claimed he was a WITNESS to the resurrected Son of God.

The early Salvation story was based on the Crucifixion of Jesus and the Pauline Gospel of Remission of Sins by the Resurrection was LAST.

As soon as we take Paul from the 1st century everything is RESOLVED.

Even for an HJ argument, an early Paul is a disaster.

If Jesus did exist it cannot be explained how Paul did NOT even regret that he did NOT see his Lord and Savior. In fact, the Pauline writer appeared DELIGHTED that he saw Jesus when he could NOT.

mountainman

The writings of Nestorius may provide evidence for the existence of the belief that Jesus was pure fiction.


Nestorius, Ex-ArchBishop of Constantinople wrote a summary of all the various heretics mid-fifth century, and his writings were targetted for burning by edict. By some miraculous means, assisted by writing under the pseudonym of Heracleides, a Syriac translation survived. The English translation of these presumed destroyed writings of Nestorius became available, and reveals that certain groups of heretics in the mid-fifth century still believed that Jesus was fictitous; moreover that these beliefs were insisted to be based on ancient truth. One of the Christian euphemisms for fiction is Docetism, in which the heretics are descibed as not believing in the physical body of Jesus, only that "it seemed" to have existence, but in reality, did not in fact have existence. Nestorius writes a systematic classification of heresies, and states the following:

I see many who strongly insist
on these [theories of fiction]
as something [based] on
the truth and ancient opinion.

Also see the thread on the idea that Jesus did not exist being a modern notion. (Ehrman)

mountainman

My explanation is that the Arian controversy may be such a disagreement, and the nature of the controversy has probably been corrupted by the orthodox canon-following heresiological victors of the political conflict.

Roger Pearse

The transmission of a text is not related to whether or not we agree with its content, nor with the reliability or otherwise of what the author has to say.

Yellum Notnef

They knew deep in their hearts Jesus was for reals. That's how you know, the heart.