GakuseiDon

Sure. You can get that from Paul, at least in my own personal opinion. Jesus was a Jew. He led a good life, and was obedient to God, even unto death. He was crucified and then appointed Son of God by the resurrection. This all happened in Paul's recent past.

No details there, but enough to establish that Paul probably thought that Jesus was a historical figure, at least with a prima facie look at the evidence. Mythicists have their own interpretations of the evidence, of course.

ApostateAbe

I think that the evidence that Jesus existed is the same evidence that gives us a rough profile, not a very detailed profile, of who Jesus was. Almost all of the scholars agree, for example, that Jesus was a traveling Jewish preacher who was raised in Nazareth, was baptized by John and crucified by Pontius Pilate in Jerusalem. He had a mother named Mary, a father named Joseph, a brother named James, and few disciples named Peter, John and Judas. The debates are not over those things, at least not in the scholarship, so maybe that is why they wouldn't come to mind. I am not asking you to believe any of those things. Go ahead and believe whatever you want about how weak the evidence may be. I am just saying don't make the mistake of thinking that the debates over many of the details of Jesus are an indicator that we know absolutely nothing about him.

spamandham

I think you are factually incorrect on this point. From what I've been able to gather, the consensus is nothing more than Jesus existed and was crucified by Pilate.

spamandham

Well, ok. Although I don't think any of this can really be supported in any substantial way, it is at least more than just "Jesus existed".

ApostateAbe

OK, you can prove me wrong by finding literature where any of those things I mentioned are significantly debated. I have tracked down quotes in the past when I had such a debate with Toto, which showed the consensus being that Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist. I think that is even something that Robert Price acknowledged in his book, The Incredible Shrinking Son of Man, and I can fetch the relevant quote if you like.

spamandham

I'm more interested in why you think this is the consensus than I am in proving you wrong. I really have no ego stake in all this.

I'd be interested in whatever polls you are aware of that establish the scholarly consensus. I will not generally simply accept a given scholar's assessment of the consensus, since I have seen well qualified scholars say there is no consensus at all.

aa5874

What you have stated is absurd. The story about Jesus in the Gospels is what is being questioned. Repeating the Jesus story in the NT has no corroborative historical value at all.

Jesus worshipers who agree that the Jesus story is wholly true or part true and part fiction has no effect whatsover on the fact the people have questioned the veracity of the Jesus story and cannot find any external source of antiquity that can corroborate the Jesus story.

There is no external corroborative evidence whatsoever that there was a Messiah called Jesus in the 1st century before the Fall of the Temple who was eventually worshiped as a God with the ability to forgive the sins of the Jews after he was crucified for blasphemy on behalf of Jews.

The abundance of evidence show that Jesus of the NT was invented from Hebrew Scripture, Greek mythology and possibly the writings of Josephus.

ApostateAbe

You seemed to write with confidence that I was factually incorrect, which really was a threat to my ego, to be honest. There are no scientific polls about anything that the New Testament scholarship believes. When someone within the field, who reads the literature and who talks with scholars day to day claims that a certain conclusion is near-unanimous, then I accept that as sufficient evidence. Not that I know for sure that there is a consensus, for example, that Jesus had a disciple named Judas. It is my guess, what Toto would call shooting from the hip. But, I do have confidence in the consensus regarding the point that John the Baptist baptized Jesus. I have found two scholars who affirm that consensus, including Robert Price.

Chili

How can you say that if he never claimed to be more than "the way the truth and the life" and that is exactly what the pupa stage is all about . . . and must it not die to make heaven know?

So why do you think Matthew and Mark feel 'forsaken' while Luke echo's the words of James Joyce at the end of his Portrait: "Old father, old artificer, stand me now and ever in good stead."

Chili

That was done to innitate babtism as a sacrament whereby the water is the wisdom of Rome, = baptised into Catholicism that now reserves heaven for Catholics only wherein water represents truth set aside but added to the wine that Jesus had made to so increase the wisdom of God on earth that is manifest by Mary who is the She of Catholicism.