aa5874

The HJers still cannot come up with any evidence to support their view. They (HJ) still cannot come to grip wuth reality. Refuting the mythical position does make Jesus exist.

I am still waiting for the resoultion of Matthew's and Luke's genealogies, to establish a starting point for the search of the historicity of Jesus.

I am of the opinion we are looking for a specific person, not just anyone named Jesus. Now, the Jesus in the Christian Bible did certain things which were witnessed by large crowds, but we now know that these miraculous events are most likely to be false and that no-one could have seen Jesus do these acts.

If we remove all the so-called prophecies, miraculous acts, virgin birth, temptation, transfiguration, ressurection and ascension, we have nothing but a person who has died after being crucified.

How many persons named Jesus were crucified. How many person who thought they were the 'Messiah' was crucified. How many persons were crucified under Pontius Pilate?

From studying the Bible, it can easily be seen that the life of Jesus was fabricated, the prophecies,the virgin birth, the temptation, the miraculous acts,the transfiguration, the ressurection and ascension.

All that is left is to claim that this fabricated person was crucified under Pontius Pilate. Did Matthew and Luke choose the same person?

Jesus never existed unless an HJer can show otherwise, with valid evidence, not superstition.

Doug Shaver

Not necessarily, but it is quite fallacious to assume that a document is reliable absent proof of unreliability. You have to ask in every case whether the writer was in a position to know whether he was presenting factual information.

If he was in a position to personally verify his facts, do we have good reason to think he actually did verify them? If not, then we're justified in being suspicious.

If he could not have personally verified them -- e.g., he lived several centuries after the events he is reporting -- then do we have good reason to think he was basing his report on reliable sources? If not, then his report is not good evidence that the event actually happened. We might have other reasons to think it did happen, but a late report based on unknown sources cannot itself be good evidence for it.

gurugeorge

I thought he provided enough leads to check out.

Yes well, if and when you become a moderator you can chide him for it officially

No Robots

I did check it out and found nothing to corroborate the claim that Burkert asserts the existence of over 600 mystery religions. In my search, I did find what looks to be an excellent resource (or via: amazon.co.uk)* on the subject of mystery religions, with the Amazon search inside feature.

Mod note: The source is The Ancient Mysteries: A Sourcebook : Sacred Texts of the Mystery Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean World

jgibson000

Providing a list of leads to check out is the Steven Avery method of reply. It is not the same thing as answering directly, and it really an illegitimate form of reply since it shifts the burden of finding what is asked for to the inquirer. Besides, some of the pages that he pointed me/us to not only are full of crap and academically worthless; they don't contain anything that credibly supports "Malachi's' (groan) claim that there were hundreds of mystery religions in the first century C.E., let alone that Burkert actually said there were.

I also note, with respect to this latter point, that "Malachi" (groan) has yet to show us that Burkert actually did say what he is claimed (by Malachi and the "Pagan Christs" page) to have said. Not have you, for that matter.

There's no need to, since he was chided officially enough already, as (implicitly) were you. I hope you recognize that.

JG

spamandham

Being written centuries after the "fact" means it can be at best nothing more than a rehashing of pre-existing knowledge. How can the Qu'ran have more knowledge about Jesus than any book written today?

It doesn't matter how history textbooks portray him if there is no valid basis for that portrayal. All fields of study must pay continuous dilligence to questioning assumption that have never been questioned previously. That's what this thread is about - what is the basis for the assumption? So far, I really not seeing anything of susbstance.

If questioning the existence of Jesus forces us to do the same for other historical figures, then we should! I do know that the historicity of Socrates has been called into question before, and remains unresolved as far as I know. He really could just be a fictional character invented by Plato. Don't know about Siddharta Gautama.

spamandham

I tend to agree with this, and I suppose that's the reason for the OP. I am not a histirian, nor am I an expert in ancient languages, nor in textual analysis, etc. If this has not already been done, it seems to me someone could make a living out of analyzing each bit of the NT to determine if there is anything at all said about Jesus that is not rooted in Logos reinterpretations of the OT, Egyptian, Greek, and other Sumarian mythology, pre-existing wisdom sayings, etc. If there isn't, then I find the "pure myth"/fictional character explanation to be the simplest.

The HJ position seems to have no real explanation for how a non-royal ordinary man could have made such a splash as to result in widespread myths being invented in such a short time period, while simultaneously leaving behind no eye witness acounts or anything you can really "nail down". It just doesn't seem reasonable to me, particularly when there is rampant symbolism thrown into the stories aluding to the new age of Pisces. If we did not have such a pre-existing HJ bias, and we started with what we know, I think the consensus would be "fiction" rather than "history".

I have no emotional stake in Jesus being a myth rather than historical, but I am biased in that I have weighed the evidence I'm familiar with and tend to judge him "myth". In my mind, Jesus is so tightly coupled with mythology that if there was a historical prototype for him, I don't think we can really say anything at all about that person. As best I can tell, the prototype could have been anyone from any time period prior to 50CE from any location on earth. I see no justification whatsoever for the claim he was a first century itinerate Jewish Rabbi, or for anything even close to that.

Solo

Any reference to this assertion ? A single scholarly volume would do. Much obliged.

Jiri

French Prometheus

I have a coin on which you can read in Greek "of King Alexander". It was struck about two years before Alexander's death. There's thousands of such lifetime Alexander coins left (and countless Alexander coins struck over the following 200 years). I also have a coin struck under his father's reign, another one under his brother and yet a few others under his friends and successors.

Needless to say, my coins struck in Judaea in the first few decades C.E. don't bear any mention of Jesus.

Alexander conquered a huge empire, built cities and interacted with a lot of well-known powerful people during his lifetime. Jesus was at best one of many would-be prophets who had little if any impact on the world during their lifetimes.

Solo

Whatever are you talking about ? The quotations were all from undisputed Paul's letters, die Hauptbriefe in fact. Do these statements regards Jesus' status under law, i.e. him being available bodily to pay for his transgressions, crossreference each other or no ?

Do you understand what "crossreference" means ?

Jiri