mountainman

Unless you are unwilling to examine your postulates, there is no reason to play the man against those who appear to be challenging your postulates. The historical jesus is a postulate. The postulate does not appear to be supported by the available evidence. Are there other postulates which are supported by the evidence? Of course, there is the historical Marcion postulate ...

Sheshbazzar

Certainly I agree that there was and is 'something authentic and original' beneath (or rather behind) these latter layers of pious Christian forgery. But with reference to the innovations presented within the NT, not necessarily due the existence of, or the impetus of any actual flesh and blood individual as the inspirer...
Uncle Sam Wants YOU! does not entail that there ever need be an actual flesh and blood individual identifiable as that 'Uncle Sam', nor would a 'Joshua' -YAH ha oshua require any physical manifestation. The significance of the name and what it represented resting entirely upon what that name represented to those who rallied around it, As a symbol of liberty, and freedom from domination by others operating under any other name.

Why take over and corrupt an existing body of literature?
Perhaps simply because it is the easiest and the most expedient means to wrest power and establish a new order of religious authority?

Many forces were long at play in what cumulated as the 'Christian New Testament', albeit none of it was accomplished through any of the 'miracles' reported within those fabricated texts, but simply through natural evolution of religious reasonings, doctrines, and the attendant social divisions and movements.
The texts, as they exist, are not at all accurate or trustworthy accounts of what actually transpired, but are only fabricated propaganda documents produced and selectively preserved by the emergent and bloodily dominant orthodox 'church' of the 2nd through 4th centuries.

gurugeorge

Zhang Daolin hallucinated Laozi, who was thought to be a person, a few hundred years after he was supposed to have lived (although some contemporary scholars now think there was no such person ).

Some of the Tibetan Buddhist "Terma" are received from Padmasambhava, a teacher thought to have lived around 600 AD, but who may or may not have been an actual person. Garab Dorje the "founder" of Dzogchen, again, is said to have taught Dzogchen to some early Tibetan Buddhists, but may or may not have existed.

More generally, the idea that deities were based on real human beings, human beings mythologized, sometimes fits, and sometimes doesn't.

And also, as I've continually pointed out, many mythological entities are human, or are divine beings that have human-seeming aspects - embodied in human form, or capable of possessing human beings, etc., etc.

To have evidence for a human being behind the story of a divine entity, it's not enough to just have human-sounding aspects to the divine entity's story.

gurugeorge

Before the metal plates nonsense, there was just a young man who talked to angels.

But let's take some other recent examples. In the 1700s, Emmanuel Swedenborg, a scientist and inventor, starts having visions at the age of 53 and produces a whole slew of communications with hallucinations.

A well-known English artist, called William Blake, had visions and spoke to the entities he saw.

In 1904 in Cairo, the English poet and occultist Aleister Crowley hallucinated a presence and a voice in a room and wrote down what the entity told him, starting his own religion.

Do we need to count how many New Age books are written every year by people who painstakingly record their communications and earnestly give them out to the world? Only a few of them become famous; only a few of them are published by major publishing houses. Some of them are self-published at peoples' own cost. Years ago, people used to mimeograph these things at great expense because they just believed their message.

Have you ever read William James' The Varieties of Religious Experience?

Religion, fundamentally, is not about doctrines and ideas, it is fundamentally about people having strong experiences of mystical union, and/or talking to entities that present themselves as divine.

Nothing need surprise us about this - it's quite explainable by science. If it weren't, we'd be forced to the absurd conclusion that every single person who has ever been religious in this way has either been lying or a con-artist. Fortunately, because there are plausible scientific explanations for these kinds of phenomena, we don't have to go to such ridiculous lengths to explain them away.

J-D

I didn't say that every such claim is a deliberate fraud. I asked, about a particular instance, whether it was the product of fraud or hallucination, a question which I notice you did not attempt to answer. I don't see how you can be sure that all such claims are the product of hallucination and none of fraud.

aa5874

You are confusing the issue at hand.

The Jesus of the NT is NOT the "historical Jesus".

The "historical Jesus" REFERS to an ordinary man with earthly parents that may have existed.

The "historical Jesus" is HERESY according to the Church and its writers.

Whether Christians BELIEVED Jesus of the NT existed or NOT is really IRRELEVANT.

The Jesus of the NT was DIVINE and does NOT qualify to be "historical".

The "historical Jesus" is expected to SACRIFICE if he was a Jew and follow the Laws of the Jews for ATONEMENT of Sins or worship ZEUS and the DEFIED Emperors of Rome and SACRIFICE to the Greek/Roman Gods or whatever he choose to worship.

HJers simply cannot find a SINGLE CREDIBLE SOURCE of antiquity for their "historical Jesus" of Nazareth and are engaged in logical fallacies, absurdities, strawman arguments, and are using forgeries about the same DIVINE Non-historical Jesus Christ, as a source for HJ of Nazareth.

There is no need for any complex arguments at all.

There are two basic proposals.

1. HJ is the more likely overall explanation.

2. HJ is NOT the more likely explanation.


The Church and its writers claimed Jesus was DIVINE.

The Church and its writers are in effect claiming that the Jesus story did NOT need an historical Jesus.

The Church and its writers PUBLICLY claimed Jesus was the Child of a Ghost and the Word that was God.

The Jesus of the Church and its wrirters is A myth character.

ALL the evidence from the Church and its writers SUGGEST that the Jesus story was INVENTED from MYTHOLOGY.

What is the source of antiquity that claimed Jesus was really a man and did IDENTIFY the historical Jesus of Nazareth?

There are ZERO sources.

The HJ argument CANNOT proceed. We are just GOING around in circles with HJers.

It is time to tell them the game is over.

NO SOURCES HJ of Nazareth means it is time to take a time out.

It is NO secret that there are NO SOURCES for HJ.

The HJ game is done.

J-D

They nowhere make any such claim.

archibald

Toto,

This was what you said when I asked you to clarify what 'clear evidence' there was in the gospels, for MJ.

Then I commented that what you were calling clear evidence was in fact speculation. Then you said something about personal incredulity which didn't seem to make sense.

I don't mind anyone speculating, I do it myself, everyone interested in this topic has to do it at some point. But I think that some may have been doing it for so long that at times they think they are dealing with clear evidence instead, that is to say they have stopped thinking about how they are thinking about it.

There must be at least a dozen speculative responses to your question, do you think, for example it has stumped everyone? The general answer is that the writer did not know very much about the man via mainly oral tradition and so added detail and embellished what he did know, tieing it in to scriptures as best he could (even though the absolute key event, the crucifixion, is not mentiouned in them), because he actually thought the man had been a crucified messiah. Same man is held not to have heard all the oral tradition, and so oral tradition 'Q' is left out, at that time. Same man makes his hero's exploits out to be much more impressive than they actually were, because his hero wasn't as famous as he made him out to be. In fact, he was pretty much unknown outside a small group of followers.

Even the fact that a birthplace was apparently added is not, as some seem to think, indicative of any likelihood that the writer thought he hadn't been born. It is indicative of the fact that his birthplace was not part of the oral tradition. People who were seen as having existed were given birthplaces (even 'Ebion', for example.)

Let me ask you a similarly speculative question. People follow a figure who was thought of as purely spiritual. At some point not long after, someone decides to make it that the guy actually existed. Other people in other locations appear to follow suit. No trace is left of any of the former group. No especially persuasive reason is given for the switch, which is rather unique in any case. Later enquirers, hundreds and thousands of years later, conclude that the most likely explanation is that this coordinated yet unevidenced switch took place and that earlier material was also heavily interpolated to give the false impression that he had always been thought of as having existed and no one ever even addresses the heresy that he didn't, even though addressing heresies was arguably something of an obsession. No one outside the religion does either.

And you read that as a more likely scenario?

I might add, for clarity, because it is easy to be misunderstood here, that my position is agnostic with a leaning in favour of a likely HJ (or EP). I haven't yet heard any good reason to think otherwize. How much more likely? Impossible to quantify. At least slightly more likely, when looked at objectively. As for MJ hypotheses, I accept that these are possiblly correct.

maryhelena

icardfacepalm:

maryhelena

Yep - Stephan rejects the idea that Marcion was a historical person - it seems fiction is his preferred position on Marcion - and as far as I can make out - he holds to the position that Jesus was a historical figure :huh: