No Robots

This "quotation" from Celsus has been soundly debunked.

Sparrow

If you really want to contest the accuracy of the site's author referenced above, then it really should have its own thread.

You're at least partially right that many of these documents do not exist in that they were destroyed by the early Christian church. The only reason we kow some of them exited is because we have the counter documents (apologies, defenses of a particular theological viewpoint) written by others.

Some examples from the site page Gospel Timeline:
120-130 2 John - warns of those who don't "acknowledge the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh".
c.135 Basilides wrote Exigetica which apparently referred to Gospel stories like the Sermon on the Mount and the Rich Man and Lazarus. He wrote many works of esoteric interpretation of the Gospel. He denied the reality of the body of Jesus.
c.135-140 Pastor (Shepherd) of Hermas was written (and accepted as canonical for centuries) - has Son of God as a spiritual principle, with Gnostic and Neo-Platonic themes.
c.169 Lucian satirised Christians and Jesus as deceivers.
c.178 Celsus wrote in On The True Doctrine: "Clearly the christians have used...myths... in fabricating the story of Jesus' birth...It is clear to me that the writings of the christians are a lie and that your fables are not well-enough constructed to conceal this monstrous fiction" Celsus was one of the greatest thinkers and most well-educated writers of the day, he was right in the thick of the action during the key period of the formation of Christianity. He was well qualified to comment on the formation of the Gospels, his critique was so damaging that the Christians eventually banned and destroyed every copy they could of this book, yet numerous quotations and refutations, and some fragments, have allowed re-construction of much of this work.
c.280 Porphyry wrote in Against the Christians : " the evangelists were inventors – not historians "
c.360 Julian wrote in Against the Gallileans: "why do you worship this spurious son...a counterfeit son", "you have invented your new kind of sacrifice "

These are all straight from the website. I don't know who was correct, the early HJers or the early MJers, but there were both a long time ago. It's not a modern invention.

No Robots

You post about the site, assert its contentions, and then expect people to refrain from debate?

This is the opposite of what you said in your other post.

Mythicism absolutely is a modern invention. Your assertion to the contrary and the citations you provide in support of your position have all been contested here on this board and elsewhere.

Iasion

Greetings all,

Thanks for your cite Sparrow :-)

Debunked?
What a laugh.

Pearse spends pages arguing these are not the exact words of Celsus.

Well,
perhaps they aren't.
They are a RECONSTRUCTION.

However, they are clearly representative -

Celsus DID compare the myths of Danea with the myths of the Gospels.

Pearse totally fails to deal with the issue -
that Celsus critiqued the Gospels as MYTH.

Instead he picks at minor issues of which words were used.


Iasion

Iasion

Greetings,

I stripped the references for brevity.

If you like, I can give you the cite for any passage you are interested in.


Iasion

Toto

The idea that Jesus did not exist is a modern theory because it is framed in modern terms. We worry about what is true in scientific materialist terms in a way that second century people did not.

In the second century, the debate was over whether Jesus "came in the flesh". Freke and Gandy identify the heretics who thought that Jesus did not come in the flesh (the "docetists") as early mythicists. Modern historicists claim that these docetists thought that Jesus existed and would have been observed as a real person, but that he was actually spiritual and not of this world.

I have never seen a resolution of this issue. If the docetists write that Jesus walked on water or through walls, and everyone knows that real people do not walk on water or through walls, does this mean that they thought that Jesus was real, but have embellished the story, or that they thought that Jesus was essentially a spirit?

seraphimkawaii

well, to be fair to him, he only said "post in another thread", not "dont debate".

Sparrow

Perhaps you have a reading problem. Note the bolded text you quoted, plus the text below from the same post.


No, I actually said there is evidence that there were people who countered the orthodox theology. Celsus' document is an example of one that we only know through the quotations of a Christian attempt to refute it. There is still evidence although there is no original Celsus document.


I'd be stunned if any of the citations had not been contested. While the refutation of the miraculous Christ does probably postdate the Enlightenment, it seems quite clear that exactly what was the Christ figure was in some dispute very early on. Suggesting that the Christ did not 'come in the flesh' seems pretty close to 'there was no human at the root of the Jesus legend'. Unless you want to claim that until recently we thought humans could be something other than flesh and blood.

No Robots

I just find it rather odd of you to make a contentious argument in a thread and then ask people who disagree to go start another thread.

Here is what you wrote:

Also from this site I see continued availability of of anti Christian documents throughout the first 4 centuries suggesting that the idea that no one disputed the historical nature of Jesus in antiquity to be false.

No one has ever denied that there were early disputes about "the historical nature of Jesus". However, his historicity itself was never part of these debates.

Wrong. Arguments that Christ was a mere man were among the earliest of documented "heresies".

The view that there was no man but only a supernatural entity at the root of Christianity is indeed an ancient belief. My understanding is, however, that mythicists think it important to distinguish their position from that of the docetists in that mythicists uphold the notion that from the outset Christ was put forward knowingly as a fiction.

No Robots

Celsus did compare, as Pearse points out, the stories of Christ's virgin birth with Greek legends. Celsus did not ever say, however, that Christ himself was a myth. Read Origen's critique and see for yourselves. Here is a representative quotation:

But how can this Jew of Celsus escape the charge of falsehood, when he says that Jesus, "when on earth, gained over to himself only ten sailors and tax-gatherers of the most worthless character, and not even the whole of these?"