uncle_onion

I have read a few books on the subject, on both sides of the void ("jesus mysteries" and "Case for christ").I would be interested in other peoples thoughts as to what they believe i.e whether "Jesus" is another ancient "god" that has morphed into christ or whether a man actually existed and the legend has just grown? Not sure on this one!

JOHN

Dean Anderson

Well, here's my opinion (and it is just my opinion - I am not presenting this as The Truth)

Freke and Gandy's 'Jesus Mysteries' hypothesis sounds possible. I would venture to extend this to 'plausible'. I would not consider it to be probable, though. The 'mystery cults' certainly had an an influence on the developing Christian religion - but I don't think there is conclusive evidence that Christianity was a deliberate attempt to construct a mystety cult suitable for Jews.

Strobel's 'Case For Christ' is fairly typical poor quality apologetics. You may want to check out Earl Doherty's 'Challenging The Verdict' for a thorough trashing of it.

On the subject of Earl Doherty - you may want to check out his 'The Jesus Puzzle'. It gives a much more likely story of the development of Christianity as the merging of two different religions - the Paulish Messianic religion and a local Jewish sect with a series of 'Wisdom Sayings'. According to Doherty's hypothesis, the two were merged when the author of Mark's gospel took Pauls messianic teachings (which didn't involve a physical Jesus) and wrote a story where this messianic Christ was retro-fit to be the founder of the Jewish sect and the 'Wisdom Sayings' were put into his mouth. I don't do his hypothesis justice, here, so you are better reading the book than taking my word for it.

My own opinion is that I am in the 'Mythical Jesus' camp. I think Doherty is mainly right and that there was no Historical Jesus.

uncle_onion

Have you a link to ED work please?

JOHN

Dean Anderson

Here is a fairly thorough review of 'The Jesus Puzzle'.

And Here are some links to articles written by him (and responses to them).

I'm not sure how active Earl Doherty is on the web. I bought his books from Amazon.co.uk after they were recommended by people on this site.

Doing a Google search for Earl Doherty mainly finds Fundamentalist Christian Apologetics websites attacking his work. If you sort through the dross then you should be able to find his web site (if he has one).

Mr. Bird

I've only read "Challenging the Verdict: The Case against the Case for Christ", this after having been forced to read "The Case" by a former girlfriend. Doherty wreaks total havoc on Strobel's case. A good read.

His "Jesus Puzzle" is on my list of books to read and his website is here. I noticed Doherty has recently added a review of Robert M. Price's "The Incredible Shrinking Son of Man" - which I am just about to finish up - will be interesting to see what ED has to say.

I'm fairly knew to "The Debate" and there are a lot of folks who know more than I do on the topic, but based upon what I've read I'm leaning toward the myth camp.

Kevin

funinspace

In the end, I found most of the major debating books to be a side note. Though much of it was interesting. I thought Paul Johnson's book "A History of Christianity" very interesting and readable. Here's part of one review:

"Although I am a Christian--or perhaps because I am a Christian--I did not find this historical compendium quite as interesting as the author's History of the Jews. Nevertheless, much of it was fascinating, and Paul Johnson certainly put a great deal of research into this tome, which spans the period of the New Testament through 20th century America. For a Catholic, Johnson does not seem the least bit ashamed of depicting all of the dark, sinful actions of the institutional church. He approaches Christianity as a historian, and as a Christian he pursues the truth, unafraid of where it will lead him. His opinions infiltrate the work, but I always find them interesting and worthy of respect, even when I disagree with them. Any party-Christian will find something to be offended by when he or she reads this book, as all aspects of the lives of religious founders and the works of Christian institutions are discussed, both the good and the bad. "

From every aspect very intellegent people have come to opposite conclussions on faith, whether it be philosophy, logic (yes it's a subset of philosophy), evolution, or apologetics. I grew up United Methodist, tried fundy stuff for a few years (long dumb story), but never quite figured out how all the major miracles and stuff worked. I finally decided to read allot and figure things out. That's most of why it all came crashing down. And to those fundies out there, though you won't believe me, I prayed and begged God to help me as I was getting more confussed. The more I read, the more I realized that the major miracles could only be 1 thing, fairy tails. So if they are fairy tails, then the OT is human writtings, whether vaguely inspired or not. So that puts the NT on a weak foundation to start with. I guess I would call myself a deist at this point, not quite fully accepting evolution and saying there's no God. And not accepting a Xian God, who considers infantcide and genocide just. Nor forcing an Egyptian King certain death, by mind control. Where is the free will? Nor finding righteous a Bible that accepts REAL slavery and poligomay.

My 10 cents worth, work time.
DK

Sparrow

I was brought up in a Southern baptist family. Where I lived, if someone was said to believe in another religion, you could safely assume they were Methodists. It wasn't until I was in high school that I met my first Jew. I then researched and discovered there were other faiths. Realizing that their competing claims were not reconcilable, I knew most of them (if not all) had to be wrong or at least mostly wrong. Geometry class in 9th grade gave me an introduction into logic and proof. That was probably the last straw for me.

I doubt very much that we'll know for certainty whether Jesus existed until the invention of the time machine. Any evidence for or against will be doubted by the other side. Still it is at least troubling that there is nothing contemporaneous with the alleged lifetime of Jesus to support his existence. I'm leaning with the mythical Jesus camp for now.

I'm not sure, but there might be a difference between being a deist and being a Deist. If one takes the position that there is an active god, intervening in current affairs (i.e. a personal god?), then I think it's more likely your god concept can be refuted. If god's actions ended long ago, basically confined to 'setting things in motion', then I think it is less likely that such a concept can be refuted. Of course, this brings up the question of whether such a god requires worship. If we can define 'god' loosely enough, then I'm probably a theist. Frank Lloyd Wright, the famous architect, said "I believe in God - I spell it N-A-T-U-R-E".

I'm not sure what you mean by the term 'evolution', but fundies often add things into the term that don't belong there. Probably the most common is the theory of abiogenesis, which is the study of the origin of life. Evolution comes into play only after replicating entities exist. I may be oversimplifying this, but there's a lot of high powered knowledge in the Evolution/Creation forum that can give you more details than you'll likely want.

godfry n. glad

I'm a militant agnostic on the issue of the historicity of Jesus - "I don't know, and neither do you."

However, I lean clearly toward the "mythic Jesus" in preference to that of an historical Jesus. Yet, I cannot prove that Jesus did not exist as an historical individual who might have served as some kind of seminal teacher figure. I am clear that the Jesus as presented in the gospels is NOT historical. That is accretion and embellishment of theological dogma as a propaganda tool. It is a tale told to impress the impressionable and garner their adherence to the creed. (Or, alternatively, "a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.")

Now, if anybody asks you about the "historical Christ" you can tell them that such is a nonsense concept. There has been no such, as expected, and if reinterpreted to include those considered as christ in the Hebrew Bible, then it loses much of its influence... after all, if Saul, David, Solomon and even Cyrus, emperor of the Persian empire, can be considered "christs", then the definition varies from that used for the term when it is attached to the reputed Jesus. "Christ" is a mythic term, simple as that.

There is not enough historical evidence to clearly support the existence of an historical Jesus, as portrayed within the multiple and variant writings of what is now known as the New Testament and the associated apocryphal and any near contemporary historical documents.

That is my opinion. I do not portray it to be "truth". Indeed, I wonder whether "truth" is even possible in this issue, given the the charged atmosphere and nearly two thousand years of "information management" - suppression of variant thought, redaction of scriptural documents, embellishment and extension of creed and dogma.

There are other forums that focus specifically on the issue of the historical Jesus, the best one being JesusMysteries . Of course, that's a biased statement, as I'm one of the moderators.

We've been at it for nearly three years now...

godfry

Postcard73

Hey uncle_onion. If you have some time, then you could also check out this thread which has been active the last few days. It is a discussion specifically about Doherty's book.

funinspace

Sparrow,

Geese, divisions even within deism, what's one to do? Nah, I'm not into the personal god thing. Whoa, I just barely escape assault on that side. I would say my opinion on evolution, is one of withholding opinion more than anything. I am far to ignorant of the topic, to hold a serious position. Gotta know your limitations. More reading... I have far too many reading interests to keep me on the god thing all the time, like reading a biography on Benjamin Franklin. I would say I lean toward there being a historic J(Y)oshua, but highly fictionalized and not THE Christ.

Getting back to the original poster, I would say one of the things that helped me the most was reading some of the ancient history/archeology of the 3 millennium BC. Two books (warning: they are kind of dry) that gave much breadth to the level of civilization then were these (I lost track of an Egyptian book):
Sumer and the Sumerians by Harriet Crawford
The Sumerians: Their History, Culture, and Character by Samuel Noah Kramer

I used to have a list of apologetic books that I borrowed from a Bible college Professor, but lost track of it. Anyway, I rapidly found most apologetic works of poor logic and very selective (if I were harsh I would say deceitful). I found reading from the original works of Eusebius, Joseph Flavious, and some of the other extant early writers far more interesting.

DK