aa5874

MJers have ZERO obligation to show how the Christian religion and texts came into existence.

No one who considers Romulus and Remus as MYTHS have any obligation at all to prove how Romulus and Remus became MYTHS or why Plutarch wrote about Romulus and Remus. It is just the available data that needs to be examined and an OPINION can be formed that Romulus and Remus were myths.

No one who considers MERMAIDS as myth have any obligation to show how and why people started writing about MERMAIDS. It is the extant information about MERMAIDS that MUST be examined and an OPINION can be formed that MERMAIDS are mythological creatures of the sea.

And, it is exactly the very same with the Jesus stories. The extant DATA about Jesus depicts him as a MYTH and there is no external corroborative source for any event about or a person with such a name. An OPINION can be formed, as in the the case of Romulus and Remus, and Mermaids, that Jesus was a MYTH.


But, perhaps you are playing the same game.

How can you even attempt to show how Christianity ACTUALLY started when the Christians themselves may have either destroyed or manipulated the records of the true history of Christianity?

How can people claim Jesus did exist as human when no such credible external evidence can be found? It is obvious that some are playing games with their own imagination.

There is only sure thing and it is that the Church have claimed Jesus was both God and man, without a human father, the offspring of the Holy Ghost and a Virgin, the Creator of heaven and earth, equal to God, walked on water, transfigured, resurrected and ascended to heaven.

Such is the evidence that have survived and the Church claim it is evidence from antiquity.

Well, the written evidence the Church provided describes Jesus as a MYTH.

Now, I don't really know who started the MYTH. ALL we know the description from the written evidence of antiquity provided by the Church is similar or identical that of a MYTH and there is no external historical source for Jesus.

Jesus was a MYTH is a completely reasonable OPINION. Jesus is not the first to be declared a myth and in the 4th century became a direct replacement for multiple mythological Gods.

Perhaps Jesus was the almost PERFECT MYTH.

If the Church or anyone else want me to change my opinion then just simply provide credible evidence that Jesus was just a man. That is all.

I have the written evidence in gMatthew 1.18, gLuke 1.35, gMark 9.2, gJohn 1, Acts 1. and Galatians. 1.

Why is it that HJers have nothing external to support HJ?

Perhaps Jesus was a PERFECT MYTH.

Zaphod

I have remarked often here that I am impressed by the lack of understanding of the erudite scholars here who don't seem to understand this point, nor the significance of the problem of silence on the HJ which has direct bearing on the failed hypothesis of the HJ.

The so-called argument from silence is evidence against the HJ. The fact that nothing reliable has been found in the histories, testaments, and archaeology of the time and place of the HJ is powerful evidence that he did not exist. Now, one may accede to the wettest dreams of Christian apologists and dismiss this ear-shattering silence on the grounds that he was a nobody.

But that is of little or no help to the HJ hypothesis, for it does nothing to address the first of two central issues - that currently, there is NO reliable evidence for the HJ. ( 1 - It also undermines, in a a very significant way, the veracity of the Gospels as having even a tenuous relationship to objective truth, because if the HJ was a nobody, then many of the core foundational events of the NT are utterly corrupt. And if they are corrupt... 2) It also makes no sense because we have records of Roman statesman of the time dismissing the veracity of the HJ whilst bemoaning the decidedly newsworthy scale of the Christian movement.)

The second issue central to the rejection of the HJ hypothesis is that there is no need for an actual historical Jesus to exist to explain the rise of Christianity. Here we have the evidence of uncanny parallels of the Christ story with former myths, as well as the MJ hypothesis that offers plenty of evidence that JC was not earthly, did not have a historical core, but was indeed originally divine.

We now have all we need to reject the HJ hypothesis, and that is why the default position must be - if we are going to treat the HJ hypothesis with the same type of rigor with which we treat other scientific hypotheses - that Jesus Christ did not exist.

To advance a proper hypothesis, you need evidence upon which the hypothesis is supported. For the hypothesis of the HJ, we have no real evidence for, and quite a bit against.

A proper hypothesis needs to be epistemically necessary. But the HJ is not epistemically necessary, the MJ will do just fine.

The HJ hypothesis has no reliable evidence to support it, and no reason which demands its existence. It fails, and by default so fails the idea that JC actually existed.

An additional question would be whether a HJ actually improves or degrades the incoherence of the story of Christianity. If it makes it even more incoherent, it would virtually prove the nonexistence of the HJ.

Juststeve

There are no contemporaneous accounts of the historical Jesus, therefore he did not exist.

The weight to be accorded to such an argument is dependent on how likely we think contemporaneous accounts would be if Jesus had existed. If the Jesus was are talking about is a peasant preacher in the early first century of the common era, who gathered a few followers, got cross wise with the Romans and ended up crucified, I wouldn’t expect to find contemporaneous accounts of his doings 2000 years later. Therefore the absence of such is of very little weight.

The absence of contemporaneous eye witness accounts makes the issue debatable, but it hardly resolves the debate.

Steve

gurugeorge

Yes they do. A historical human Jesus is one major proposed rationalistic answer to that question. If that answer is not viable, some other answer must be proposed.

That's how it looks from a rationalistic point of view for someone who's not interested in Christian religious claims per se. From a rationalist historical point of view, the existence of Christianity and the Christian texts is the interesting thing to think about and talk about - the notion of Jesus in and of itself has no intrinsic interest.

The Jesus story as we have it is OBVIOUSLY A MYTH. We could stop right there. However, one proposed reason for that myth's existence, and hence for the existence of the religion that touts that myth, is that there was a man behind that myth (euhemerism). There's nothing prima facie wrong with that idea, except it's not supported in any external evidence. But even then the euhemerist idea can still be pursued (the human Jesus might be evidenced internally in the cult texts themselves - regardless of what the overt message is of the Christian writings - that a god-man existed at such and such a time - we might find something in the texts that gives the game away that there was a man).

The existence of Jesus has no intrinsic interest to a rationalist. No such purported evidence as the NT Canon could be powerful enough to overturn common sense and science and make plausible the idea of a god-man.

OTOH, the sheer existence, per se, of some wise Jewish rabbi or revolutionary would be a pretty ho-hum fact.

The only thing that has intrinsic interest to a rationalist is the existence of this huge historical phenomenon of Christianity, and if there were a human Jesus, his only interest would be that he was linked to its origins.

gurugeorge

Again, you're missing the point - the point is that given the absence, it's worth considering other ways of how Christianity could have started in the absence of a man called Jesus, and how the myth of Jesus could have gotten off the ground, in the absence of a man called Jesus.

The absence of evidence licenses us to think of alternatives.

Once again, there is no particular reason to think that religions always start with eponymous founders, or that all myths have euhemeristic bases. These are not the default positions of historical study of religion.

If there's no evidence for an eponymous founder, or for an euhemeristic basis to this particular myth, that licenses one to look at alternative possibilities.

Juststeve

guru:

Do you actually read my post or just argue automatically? What you just said is what I said. You just used more words and said it less well.

Steve

andrewcriddle

I don't think the cases are parallel. P52 is generally regarded as a fragment of canonical John.

The surviving fragments of the Jewish Testament of Naphtali and Testament of Levi represent works that were probably used as sources by the author of the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, but, if so, were heavily rewritten.

Andrew Criddle

gurugeorge

Your post started off with:-

"There are no contemporaneous accounts of the historical Jesus, therefore he did not exist."

But that's not a typical mythicist argument here. So I outlined what I think is the usual mythicist line of thought. "The issue" is wider than the existence or absence of a particular human being, and goes beyond your trifling observation.

Juststeve

guru:

Look at post 102 and you will find Zaphod making the very argument I summarized and which you said is not the typical mythicist argument. It was Zaphod to whom I was responding. It is you that is missing the point.

As to typical mythicist arguments, I'm not sure I can define it. There seems to be about as many arguments as there are mythicists. If we can all agree that Zaphod's B.S. is disposed of we can move on to others.

Steve

spamandham

I think this is one of the better arguments against a historical Jesus. Rather than explaining the rise of Christianity, it just adds more unanswered questions.

- If Jesus was a nobody, as is needed to explain why he is not recorded by Josephus for example, then why did his cult outlive him? Once you remove the magical, the symbolic, the stories grafted in from other traditions, and the sayings that are unoriginal or otherwise non-Jesus in origin, there's nothing left of any interest.

- Why is it that the earliest Christian writer (Paul) is an outsider?

- We can see evidence of Christian ideas forming within Judaism prior to Christianity. If that movement did not transform into Christianity, then what happened to it?

- In modern cults, a cult leader's family is usually the source of the initial movement and for those cults that outlive their founder, the family becomes the leadership. What happened to Jesus' family?

- Where is Jesus' body? We know it didn't ascend into heaven, yet even the earliest Christian records seem to be oblivious of it.

- How is it that absolutely everything about the man is symbolic or obviously drawn from pre-existing sources? Why couldn't anyone remeber anything specific and nonsymbolic about him. His favorite team was the Cowboys, or he enjoyed playing the lute, or whatever. These kinds of things are typically remembered about cult leaders.

The MJ argument is better not because we've conclusively proven there was no HJ, but because it better explains the evidence.