dog-on

Sorry, but you may be a bit deluded.

All "evidences" for HJ only work if one assumes an HJ to begin with.

Therein lies the problem.

jakejonesiv

Good point. And I don't consider myself a Jesus mythicist, rather an agnostic on this issue. I think it is naive to assume that Jesus existed, especially as portrayed in the gospels.

DrZoidberg

I'm with Tom here. We don't really know. I'm a fan of Bart Ehrman's theory. It says that Jesus existed, but does not match the Bible at all. The only thing that he believes is real is that Jesus was crucified. He also believes that there's a number of "prophets" that have been conflated into one man's story. Some of which were Pharisee prophets, which I think is delightfully ironic.

There's a bunch of letters that mention a Biblical scholar (on the Torah) and rabbi called Jesus. This man we do know certain facts about. According to Bart Ehrman, this was the true Jesus. But his life wasn't even close to the story mentioned in the Bible. This was a rich and from birth influential guy. No humble birth in any way.

According to Ehrman, this Jesus thought that his interpretation of the Torah, was the true interpretation and should have replaced the Torah entirely. Unfortunately we don't know which of the surviving fragments, if any, is from this Bible.

Toto

I think this was asked and answered before by Chaucer in this thread. It appears that Chaucer did not like the answer?

So let me suggest that this is a function of age. Chaucer's historical Jesus was a favorite figure of an earlier generation. Each generation had to remake basic myths.

Let me also point out that Chaucer describes himself as a "non denominational theist" which seems a bit at odds with calling onself a "skeptic." I think that Chaucer's skeptics put limits on how far they are willing to take their skepticism.

Chaucer

Thanks for distorting my question. The surest way to derail a topic is to deliberately distort the way a word is being used. I am very definitely using "skeptic" to mean one who doubts the dogma of ALL religions, and you're going off on a tangent here that needs to be nipped in the bud. I'm only talking about skeptics like 100% of those I've known personally who doubt the dogma of each and every religion/creed, no matter under what rock it's found.

It would not be 99.99999999999% of all atheists and skeptics I know who would say that Jesus is not God. It would be 100%, since they do not believe that God exists.

I have already "found", thank you very much -- through a lifetime of intense discussions. In my private life, in fact, the intensity and thoroughness of the many discussions that I've had from boyhood on, and still have, with friends and colleagues of my parents -- and my father was an atheist and a history professor -- are and have always been targeted around many key questions, not just those you cite, which have been addressed in some detail, but many others.

The chief and most intense interest emerging from the remarks of my father's many skeptical colleagues is the degree to which ethical precepts become encumbered through time with supernatural baggage. There will often be some creed, some essential philosophy, that someone with a certain degree of social/cultural insight, someone like a Buddha, a Confucius, or a Jesus, may advance in some considerable detail, and then followers will claim certain supernatural things about him and swamp the essential social message that first made the person at all worthwhile. This is a pattern that recurs again and again.

Some other chief preoccupations that emerge from erstwhile colleagues of my father's (my father died in 1980) are the detailed readings that we have of the ethical/social precepts emerging from such figures. What's the historical context that we can perceive from such groundbreaking precepts, both in terms of the degree to which prior influence can be shown in them and also of the degree to which their own pioneering precepts can be seen influencing others of their own and subsequent generations in turn? What are the linguistic, stylistic traits of the texts in which these pioneering precepts are first found? What's the social, cultural contexts in which these pioneers lived? What related texts show us something of that world? And so on.

In other words, the "important stuff" to them is not if Jesus is God, if there is a God, and blah-blah-blah. All that no longer interests them. That's old hat to them. What interests them far more is the history of human culture. The history of human culture is impacted in various profound ways by events and philosophies. Tracing the interactions between those events and those philosophies alongside them is far more fascinating and productive than lingering on questions that were already disposed of in childhood.

The in-depth readings in history and in-depth knowledge of the literature in various periods viewed through the prism of a profoundly inquiring and skeptical community in academia affords a rich treasure trove of material in which the historicity of certain groundbreaking figures becomes readily apparent while the ridiculousness and impossibility of a cartload of flagrantly supernatural add-ons becomes equally readily apparent.

Fact: In-depth reading reflects a world in which, to these perfectly well-read skeptics, each and every one, philosophically groundbreaking thinkers like a Jesus emphatically lived in the real world but were subsequently lionized by followers, making something partly supernatural out of them where nothing supernatural really was. This is the -- in-depth -- understanding of those skeptics who have done the closest reading.

My question still stands: How come 0% of those well-read and much queried (by me) skeptics I've known personally are Jesus mythicists? How come 0% of the skeptics here on this board (unless we except "Tom Sawyer") are Jesus historicists? Just what is going on here? I've already done the spadework in the real world, thank you very much. So you can quit being patronizing now, and instead do your own spadework in the on-line world (but only if you're seriously interested in addressing my question).

Thank you,

Chaucer

Chaucer

Well -- thank you for responding. You are a (lonely) historicist among the skeptics on this board.

Chaucer

Chaucer

And you are in a minority -- AMONG SKEPTICS -- in making such an absolutist and outlandish declaration.

Chaucer

dog-on

Maybe this will help you, Chaucer.

What Tom Sawyer did is called making shit up.

In other words, he has absolutely no imperical data with which to support his hypothesis.

I as a mythicist can easily say that, according to the story, Jesus Christ is the Son of God, born of a virgin, crucified under Pilate, etc...

Of course, as a sceptic, I realize that this is simply a story and not a description of historical events.

Does this help?

Chaucer

Understood -- and thank you. You're now the second historicist among the skeptics on this board to participate in this thread.

Chaucer

jakejonesiv

Thanks for this Toto. Apparently there is an agenda at work here.

It is a very peculiar request, to ask someone to explain why someone else unnamed holds an opinion.
It is a waste of time, like asking how can two billion Christians be wrong.