Clivedurdle

And the second group have an agenda - a belief in a chimera type of being.

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/...111597/Chimera

What does the Chimera Jesus look like? Half invisible, the Holy Spirit bit, a bit of Lamb and what?

Toto

Please give a link when you cite something like that.

Most scholars accept that there was a historical person behind the character of Jesus portrayed in the gospels. But if you are wondering why, you would have to pick one particular scholar and ask him or her. That scholar might think that there is some evidence, however slim, that makes a historical Jesus the best explanation of the evidence that we have. Or that scholar might think that there is no evidence, but a historical Jesus is a reasonable hypothesis and not worth challenging. Or the scholar might be a Christian and could not imagine the possibility that there was no historical Jesus. Or there might be some other reason.

Tammuz

Here is the link.

"Some scholars draw a distinction between Jesus as reconstructed through historical methods and Jesus as understood through a theological point of view, while other scholars hold that a theological Jesus represents a historical figure."

Toto

So - check the footnote. The example of a scholar who holds that the theological Jesus represents a historical figure is <drumroll> Pope Benedict XVI! You can find other recent threads on his biography of Jesus, which is theology, not history.

thedistillers

It baffles me that some people constantly refer to principles like Occam's razor, but refuse to acknowledge that Jesus being historical is by far the most simple explanation given all the historical evidence we have.

Even if NT scholars might have their bias or set of presuppositions, it is glaring the atheist is just as much biased by giving up principles he generally uses to support the JM hypothesis.

To be clear - I'm not saying that Jesus being a myth is impossible, but rather, that it is not the most simple hypothesis, far from it, so there is no reason to cling to it.

Toto

Occam's Razor doex not require the simplest explanation. It just calls for removing unnecessary hypotheses.

The question is which theory best explains the evidence.

The historical Jesus is a creation of deists and atheists, who rejected the divinity of Jesus. There is no particular atheist implication to the JM theory. There are even some Christians or religionists who are more sympathetic to mythicism than enlightenment historicism.

Who is clinging to what? Hardly anyone here started off as a mythicist.

brianrein

We do not have much solid evidence for the existence of Jesus. Many of the stories in the Gospels are obviously not true - like the trial on Passover or the virgin birth - and Jesus' contemporaries are otherwise quite silent on his existence. But one argument for his existence which seems hard to refute is, quite simply, the fact that the Gospels and letters exist and that a whole slew of churches had sprung up by the end of the first century. Within 120 years of Jesus' death, a copy of the Gospel of John (the last to be written) had made it to a provincial town on the Nile in central Egypt (the oldest surviving copy of anything in the New Testament, that I know of). Within 50 years of his death he had whole crowds of followers in Rome. The fact that a completely imaginary person could cause such a massive religious movement to spring up within a few decades of his imaginary death boggles the imagination - it's almost as miraculous as turning water into wine. I am still waiting for an explanation from the "Jesus never existed" people of how, quite simply, the Christian faith spread so quickly and successfully if there was not at least a wandering preacher guy who got executed somewhere in Judea.

(For what it's worth, that's what I suspect Jesus was - a wandering prophet who said a lot of stuff, drew a following, and got killed. Nothing more, but not much less.)

thedistillers

Removing unnecessary hypotheses is an example of favoring simplicity over complexity. FTR, I don't think Occam's razor has anything to do with the discussion, I just gave an example of the kind of principles atheists usually use.

The JM hypothesis is contrived, and is not the kind of hypothesis a person who generally favors simplicity would adhere to. Unless there is a hidden agenda, like a deep disdain for Christianity.

I know, but considering this is an atheist board, I was referring to atheists.

Solo

In the 1907 encyclica Pascendi pope Pius XI. proscribing the sin of Modernism, outlined the doctrine that Benedict XVI. has recently revived in his Jesus of Nazareth. Far from having to do with scholarship, it is essentially a rejection of critical thought in favour of pastoral function.

Jiri

Toto

Removing unnecessary hypotheses is not the same thing as favoring a simple theory over a more complicated one, if the more complicated theory can explain the data better.

You are saying that atheists usually use logic, so you are throwing in a particular principle of logic that does not make logical sense here? What am I missing? (What are you missing?)

Repeat: simplicity per se is not the goal. Quantum theory is not simple, but it does a better job of explaining the data than Newtonian physics.

I can assure you that there are people with a deep disdain for Christainity who believe in a historical Jesus, and I would ask you not to make unwarranted assumptions about anyone's motives based on no evidence.

You were claiming, were you not, that there was some atheist motive behind the Jesus Myth theory? Would you like to clarify that?