Steve Weiss

So, what is it in Christanity that you view as factual? Is there any possibility of any of the stories and miracles being confirmed by science and independent historical evidence? Not a one. The absence of any credible evidence for any religion makes them all myths, Christianity only being the most prominent one in the Western World. To say that one is anti-Christianity is the same as saying that one is anti-lying.

Steven Carr

'Why do mainstream scholars reject the Mythical Jesus?'

Because mainstream scholars realise there must have been an Historical Jesus to change the attitude of some Jews from regarding Romans as oppressors to calling them God's agents, who do not bear the sword for nothing, hold no terror for the innocent, and are sent to punish wrongdoers.

The only thing which could have effected that seismic change in attitude so that the Romans became God's agents, sent to punish wrongdoers , was if they had killed the Son of God in the most shameful , humiliating way possible.

Therefore, Jesus must have existed.

Steve Weiss

There is as much validity to the apologetics of Christianity as there is for alchemy and astrology. Many people have believed and still do believe in such, but fictions they remain. If only people were convinced by the facts and reason religions would have disappeared long ago, and they have largely done so in Europe. It is only among the hysterical (not the historical) that faith trumps reason.

Steve Weiss

You assume that people think rationally and that rational arguments and facts 2000 years ago were sufficient to change people's minds. Let me remind you that Romans viewed the Caesars as gods, and that that idea has applied to Egyptian Pharohs, to the divine right of kinds in Europe, to Alexander, and to the Japanese Emperor. The number of people who believe in something is no indication that what they believe in is true. One myth has made way for more popular myths, and that is what happened in the Roman Empire, especially since the Constantine decided that the Christian myth was a useful means of uniting church and state. The herd mentality is easy to mobilize once critical mass is achieved and powerful institutions stand behind it.

hjalti

Wow. Why should I, as an anti-christian atheist, prefer that Jesus never existed as a human being but rather as a god, rather than him having been a first century version of Harold Camping?

Really?

I remember that someone said that you were once a mythicist, was this your thinking at that time?

mountainman

There are exceptions. I class myself as one. To me what is more important than Christianity is the historical truth of its "Origens".

dog-on

I hold no animosity towards Christianity. In fact, I think that the religion is simply stupid, regardless of who invented it.

Sheshbazzar

If one believes that Jebus never existed, WHY would that person want to give to support to a religion that has long used its religious lies to manipulate men into engaging in ceaseless hatreds and wars? :huh:

It really shouldn't take much of a Sherlock to figure out that the former view would quite logically lead to the latter.







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sweetpea7

Please provide some MJ Scholars who have published peer review articles. I would love to read what they have to say. I have listened to and read Non-Christian scholars who apply the historical-critical method (the same methods which are applied to other figures from antiquity) and strongly defend a HJ. Not the Jesus of Christianity, but a HJ.

I am not seeking info on why people believe in a MJ. I am not wanting a debate re: HJ/MJ. Personally, I am not taking a side in that debate. I am not attempting to defend the reliability of the NT or any merits or flaws of Christianity. I am seeking to understand why mainstream Non-Christian scholars accept a HJ and overwhelmingly reject the MJ. What are their reasons for doing so?

ApostateAbe

Well, first remember that this is about sociological tendencies, not universal behaviors, so the proposed patterns may or may not apply to you. To think of Jesus as a historical person of the same rough profile as in the gospels would be granting legitimacy to many of the myths of the gospels in the minds of many mythicists, and mythicists would rather not have that. Their worldview is framed as us-against-apologists, and they see primarily those two options. Many of the mythicist debaters have that unintended perspective. They often explicitly tell me that my own claims for a historical Jesus resemble the claims of Christian apologists. If you want to see it taken to the extreme, you need only to examine aa5874.

Funny story: I was hashing out a resolution for a debate with an experienced Christian apologist on Debate.org, and I proposed the resolution: "The cult of Jesus believed that the end of days was imminent." The Christian apologist didn't like that resolution. Why? Because he already agreed with it!
Yes, for sure. I was engaged in debates against religious apologists on a Christian forum, and it was a very appealing and useful line of attack. It fits the theme that the Bible is all myth, from start to finish. The standard historical-critical way of thinking of Jesus as like a normal human being buried in the legend granted too much ground and was a little too hairy.