Yellum Notnef

I don't. I don't have a stack of Jesus books nor do I know or care about every nit-picked detail about it. I don't belong to any other websites that talk about it nor do I scour the internet for articles and papers.
I really don't give a fuck about Jesus, BUT I do love a ruckus and a good laugh.

Find me a Star Trek website where people make a fools out of themselves arguing over if thats real or not and I'll take my lawn chair and beer over there.

No Robots

Lulz. Gotcha.

Yellum Notnef

Great. I'm sure it must go straight up your British behind to hear someone say this but I think kids could learn more important things from Forrest Gump than from Jesus.

You however think J is the greatest thing since sliced bread and perhaps was also the genius who invented sliced bread. We seem to live in very different worlds. :huh: What ever.

Toto

There is no way to answer that question with any reasonable degree of certainty. The evidences are mostly lost or missing or compromised (i.e., forged.)

You can find a lot of quotes that claim that everyone knows that Jesus was a historical person, but if you try to pin down the reasons behind the expert opinion, you won't find any hard evidence.

There is the Jesus Project, which has assembled scholars to try to shed some light on the question. Their conclusions should be available in another four years, so you can check back then.

Richard Carrier, a recent PhD in Ancient History from Columbia, has plans to publish a book next year on the subject of the historicity of Jesus. It won't necessarily answer the question, but it will examine the historical sources.

Similarities are in the eye of the beholder.

No Robots

We haven't been British for a while. This backside is pure 100% maple-smoked Canadian bacon. We do occasionally, however, have to take it up the backside from our neighbors to the south.

Toto

Not a historian - an undergradute debater when he wrote that, now studying philosophy.

Durant was a popularizer, but not a historian.

Graham_Stanton Graham Norman Stanton (1940–18 July 2009) was Lady Margaret's Professor of Divinity at Cambridge University.

Not a historian, but a professor of Divinity. But be sure to parse what he says - the gospels contain "valuable evidence" that cannot be taken at face value but has to be "assessed critically."

Stop right there. He's not a historian, he's a bishop, and his biases are showing.

And this source: "The Self-Revelation of God in Human History" from There Is A God (or via: amazon.co.uk) by Antony Flew and Roy Abraham Varghese [HarperOne, 2007]

is a pathetic example of evangelical overreaching.

Another theologian - not a historian.

This is the problem. When the issue of Jesus' existence in history comes up, apologists will list authorities who say that everyone knows that Jesus existed, case closed. But you won't find any modern historians who will make that statement with that amount of certainty, because the evidence is just not there.

Amaleq13

I think the most popular mythicist amongst our own mythicists is Earl Doherty. He has a rather comprehensive website describing his thesis which you might want to check out:

The Jesus Puzzle

He also links to some prominent critics of his view, IIRC, so you can obtain some balance.

Yellum Notnef

And for that I apologize even thought I have absolutely no control over who my country is giving it to.

Steven Carr

Historicists are never accurate.

According to *some* of the synoptic Gospels is the truth.

spin

Let me ask you which of the following do you think are historical, which are not real, and which you cannot decide about:

William Tell
Vlad Tepes (Dracul)
King Arthur
Mr Bojangles
Johnny Appleseed
Robin Hood

The issue is important. History often cannot access data that will clarify what happened. This could mean that the data has been lost (people didn't write it down or the records were lost) or the data never existed and you have a legend.

Someone who is silly enough to say, as a justification for believing in the existence of Jesus, "There is simply nothing intrinsically improbable about a historical Jesus" doesn't know much about history. "There is nothing intrinsically improbable about a historical" William Tell except for a little over-heightened archery ability, but William Tell did not exist. Many fictional characters are created in such a way that there is nothing intrinsically improbable about them. Many real people might at times seem improbable. How could Napoleon have conquered so much of Europe? How could the tsarina have been so silly as to trust Rasputin? Who in their right minds would have voted for Hitler? History is not decided on probabilities, but on evidence.

Jesus may have existed, but all the rationalizations that you find that guarantee you he did are all just hot air.

(Oh, Vlad Tepes, Mr Bojangles and Johnny Appleseed were historical. Evidence is lacking for King Arthur and Robin Hood. And I've already said that William Tell didn't exist.)

I'd say that there are very, very few similarities between Jesus and the Egyptian gods. There is more similarity with mystery religions.


spin