ApostateAbe

I am bumping this thread, because I would like to deliver a challenge to anyone who thinks or suspects that Jesus never existed as a human being: write your own gospel.

That is, write a detailed account of early Christianity that contains your best guesses regarding how Christianity first began.

It doesn't have to be probable on the whole. It has to be possible at the minimum. At a maximum, it has greater probability than any competing model, including this one. That is a high bar, but even just a possible model is a good start. Name names, if you know them, and say where they lived, how they made a living, who they listened to, what they read, who they talked to, what they talked about, what ideas they invented, and whatever else may illuminate the position that Jesus never existed.

It is easy to tear down the established history. History of the ancient times is fundamentally uncertain. It is not so easy to construct another history in its place.

aa5874

The information about the MYTH has already been produced by the authors of the NT and the Church writings. There is no need whatsoever for any one to fabricate anymore Jesus story about an entity that was a GOD/MAN.

Just look at Matthew 1.18-20, Mark 9.2 Luke 1.34-35, John 1, Acts 1.9 and Galatians 1.1.

The MYTHOLOGICAL JESUS WAS HANDED TO THE MYTHICIST IN A PLATTER by the authors of the NT.

Who has dared to even attempt to write detailed historical accounts of Romulus and Remus, Achilles and Serapis before considering them myths?

You can only guess but mythicists can show you their source of antiquity with the mythological description of Jesus.

Mythicists can show you all the Canon and virtually all the Church writings, even the non-canonical sources.

The history of your Jesus cannot be found so you resort to guessing.

Who will be the judge that will determine the best guesses? The man who has already claimed he makes the best guesses?.

You are contradicting yourself. Once YOU CLAIM history of ancient times is fundamentally uncertain then you have really only established UNCERTAINTY, not history.

spamandham

There is insufficient information to construct such a detailed history regardless of whether one favors a HJ or nonHJ position as simpler. If there were sufficient information, there could not be such a wide variety of contradictory competing HJ reconstructions. Your own reconstruction you posted a month or so back is not to be found anywhere in the scholarly journals. You invented it, just like they do.

However, it is possible to construct a very plausible nonHJ timeline, to include the motives of the dominant authors (but not who they were) and why they wrote what they wrote roughly when they wrote it, that is consistent with everything we know independently about the time period, what we know about cult behavior, and is consistent with what the best scholarship has said regarding the genre of the gospels and the layers that have been detected in the epistles... and I've done that here (I think at your request?) in the past.

But even that much is highly speculative, and more than that would simply be an exercise in pure creative writing, like most of the HJ reconstructions.

But you demand this as if there were no scholarly nonHJ reconstructions. There are. Are you familiar with Detering's reconstruction?

ApostateAbe

No, I am not familiar with Detering's reconstruction. I would be happy to hear more. Did you happen to know what happened to your own reconstruction? It would make me feel like an idiot if you wrote one at my request and I missed it, but I am comfortable with my own failings.

spamandham

Ok, much of his work has been translated and is available free online. Here's the portions with English translations.
. Detering goes through an *exhaustive* nonHJ reconstruction. He is a well qualified scholar, but certainly not even remotely close to mainstream. (how many well qualified non-mainstream chemists do you know? :constern01: )

...I'd have to search for it. I probably should have tagged it somehow. Anyway, if you don't recall making such a request, then you probably didn't. My memory of it is fuzzy at this point.

ApostateAbe

Thanks a bunch, spamandham. There is at least a rough sketch of your model in the time machine thread.

ApostateAbe

In the spirit of the holidays, I am bumping this thread up. This is what Christmas is all about.

maryhelena

The spirit of the holidays!

That ‘miracle’ birth in Bethlehem of a man who eventually walks that road to Calvary and the cross; a cross that has brought forth what is possibly the most anti-humanitarian theology in history. Celebration be damned...

The cross is the very symbol of Christianity and at the same time it’s most hideous element...

Well, this xmas eve Dawkins has had his say:

To assume, as Christian theology does, that this is what the gospel crucifixion story is about, betrays not only moral depravity but also imputes such to the gospel writers themselves.

The only way out for Christianity if it wants to present a humanitarian face to the world - is to ditch the claimed historicity for the gospel Jesus - thereby ditching a historical crucifixion along with all the anti-humanitarian theology that has been based upon it.

Toto

No, this is not what Christmas is all about. If your reconstructed historical Jesus has a shred of historical value, there is no reason to think that he was born on December 25 (or Jan 6, depending on your calendar and your sectarian commitment) or that he would want you to celebrate his birth with presents and pagan rituals including bringing a tree into the house to decorate and worship, in violation of God's Holy Inspired Word at Jeremiah 10:2-4 “Learn not the way of the heathen, and be not dismayed at the signs of heaven; for the heathen are dismayed at them. For the customs of the people are vain: for one cutteth a tree out of the forest, the work of the hands of the workman, with the axe. They deck it with silver and gold; they fasten it with nails and hammers, that it move not”.

December 25 is not the birthday of the historical Jesus. It is the symbolic celebration of the mythical birth of the mythical Jesus Christ, who incorporated all prior myths regarding light and the rebirth of the sun and the necessity of rites to help the sun return; which myth was then turned into an American family celebration of childhood materialism. That's why you get a vacation at this time of the year.

ApostateAbe

Well, then you can write your own gospel. :-P