aa5874

So, what is your point? You don't even know what Jesus said or if he lived yet you think he was wise.

How smart is that?

[ And what about you who claim Jesus was probably wise? What does that prove?

At least, I can show that Jesus was a mad dumb-ass idiot based on the NT if he did live and you can't show me that Jesus was wise and can't show me that Jesus did live.

And now, I will show how Jesus was born in the NT.

Mt 1:18 - Even if you don't know what Matthew 1.18 proves you can read what it says. Jesus was the Child of a Holy Ghost in the NT or a mad dumb-ass idiot if you believe he was a man.

What is your point and what can you prove?

Achwienichtig

It is surely a different thing to say that Jesus never existed than to say that there is no evidence that Jesus existed. Even if he didn't exist, there still might be evidence indicating he did, and even if Abe is mistaken, where he cites evidence one should look into such evidence.

Achwienichtig

This is a false dichotomy through and through. You never once considered the possibility that Jesus was a real person but somebody else was the dumb-ass who called him a child of the Holy Ghost. You never once considered that all the idiocies of the Bible were falsely attributed to the real Jesus who was not an idiot.

aa5874

Do you really understand what is a FALSE dichotomy?

Apparently not.

You are putting forward a logical fallacy also called a FALSE dichotomy

If Jesus in the NT was NOT as described then the NT is not credible or reliable.

I cannot use unreliable sources to determine the nature of Jesus.

I can only use the evidence presented in the NT

Jesus was described as the Child of a Ghost and claimed he would resurrect on the third day and come in the clouds.

Have ever considered the possibility that Jesus existed as deaf-mute who was born blind with no limbs?

I can only discuss the written evidence about Jesus while you attempt to discuss a false dichotomy.

Have you ever considered the possibility that Jesus lived as a "vegetable"?

The HJ theory is based on a LOGICAL fallacy since the theory assumes the very NT is unreliable and still use it to determine the nature of Jesus.

bacht

The bottom line is that there isn't enough evidence to settle the question afaik. But history is never finished, every new generation brings either new material or new interpretations. This is why the Jesus story needs to be continually re-examined, not just consigned to theology.

I don't object to Abe's position that there was someone at the root of the Christian gospel. The problem is that he insults well-intentioned people by accusing them of ulterior motives.

DCHindley

Why do mainstream scholars reject the Mythical Jesus?

Super defensive debaters who post 100+ posts in just a day or so, mainly consisting of hurled insults, slurs and innuendo.

How could they take Mythicism seriously if this kind of knee jerk reactionary response is going to inevitably result?

DCH

Kapyong

Gday,

Quite literally false.

Books arguing a MJ have been written for centuries - long before the internet :

C.F. Dupuis, 1791, Abrege De L'Origine Des Cultes

Robert Taylor, 1829, Diegesis

Bruno Bauer, 1841, Criticism of the Gospel History of the Synoptics

Mitchell Logan, 1842, Christian Mythology Unveiled

David Friedrich Strauss, 1860, The Life of Jesus Critically Examined

Kersey Graves, 1875, The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviours

T.W. Doane, 1882, Bible Myths and their Parallels in Other Religions

Gerald Massey, 1886, Historical Jesus and Mythical Christ

Thomas Whittaker, 1904, The Origins of Christianity

William Benjamin Smith, 1906, Der vorchristliche Jesus

Albert Kalthoff, 1907, The Rise of Christianity

M.M. Mangasarian, 1909, The Truth About Jesus ? Is He a Myth?

Arthur Drews, 1910, The Christ Myth

John M. Robertson, 1917, The Jesus Problem

Georg Brandes, 1926, Jesus – A Myth

Joseph Wheless, 1930, Forgery in Christianity

L.Gordon Rylands, 1935, Did Jesus Ever Live?

Edouard Dujardin, 1938, Ancient History of the God Jesus

P.L. Couchoud, 1939, The Creation of Christ

Alvin Boyd Kuhn, 1944, Who is this King of Glory?

Karl Kautsky, 1953, The Foundations of Christianity

Herbert Cutner, 1950, Jesus: God, Man, or Myth?

Guy Fau, 1967, Le Fable de Jesus Christ


Kapyong

ApostateAbe

The OP posed two questions, and I answered them honestly. Yeah, it is insulting. I don't mean to imply that anyone has bad intentions, which are not mutually exclusive from ulterior motives, which I believe everyone has. If anyone accused me of having an ulterior anti-Christian bias, then it would be a very difficult accusation to refute, because I take the accusation to be perfectly true. It is especially strange that I am much more often accused of having a pro-Christian bias, and I don't let such absurdities stand if I can offer a more plausible alternative.

You say that there isn't enough evidence to settle the question. The way I see it, there is a an abundance of relevant facts reflected in the early Christian myths (be the facts of myth true or false) and secondhand accounts (true or false) to more than settle the question, because the facts are very powerfully and thoroughly explained by one and only one hypothesis. I actually think that there is too much evidence. If we didn't have the evidence of the gospel accounts and Paul, which mythicists tend to believe corrupts all knowledge of the historical Jesus, then the passing mentions of Josephus, Pliny, Suetonius and Tacitus would be much more than enough to conclude that there was a historical Jesus without so much as a question.

ApostateAbe

The only places where such books are found is on Amazon.com and Google books, not in bookstores and not in easily-accessible libraries, so my assertion stands.

No Robots

Most people, including most scholastics, don't want to talk about Christ at all. Philistines, whether of the common or the scholastic sort, are embarrassed by him. They really don't understand what the fuss is all about, but they feel that they have to say something. Mythicism offers a clean way out of ever having to discuss the subject again. Most scholastics would jump on the mythicist bandwagon if they felt certain that they weren't exposing themselves to even greater embarrassment than they have with a historical Christ.