brianrein

I guess I can understand that. But I have only been here for something like a week, so I wouldn't know. Perhaps part of my frustration is that I came here as a place to discuss social, political, and philosophical issues with fellow atheists, freethinkers and so on, and have - to my considerable discomfort - found myself in the painful position of defending a man I find odious who inspired a religion I find ridiculous from claims of being made-up. Cognitive dissonance indeed!

Anyways, after looking around it seems that the whole was-Jesus-real debate has gone on all over the place here. If further exercises in such matters will remain futile in changing minds or producing some sort of new insight, I'll happily go find a thread that doesn't ask me to defend my foes against my friends.

No Robots

Yeah, it's too bad that there really isn't a relaxed attitude toward all this Jeebus stuff, where we could actually just talk about whether he was "odious" or awesome.

spin

"[M]ade-up" is fictional Jesus. Mythical Jesus works on the notion that Jesus didn't exist in this world but was thought to have performed his act of salvation on a mystical plane. Understand though that the notion MJ is not understood well by people not in the know.

There is no need for you to defend Jesus. There are already enough people to do that. But if you bring the notion of a historical Jesus as a presupposition to a discussion, that notion will certainly be looked into.


spin

Solitary Man

Thanks for the incompetent handwaving. What should I have expected coming from the guy who twists and contorts the Hero paradigm (which is BS to begin with, a solid study of real Greek heroes comes from Farnell's immense studies on the subject).

Solitary Man

The first is true, the second is false. The case is far from respectable, and more like laughable. Moreover, as much as evidence as there is, it's far, far more simpler an explanation to go Josephus -> Luke, especially considering that Jerome preserves a simpler form of the TF, and further backing it up is Tacitus (oh noes! we're back to the giant conspiracy theory of they made it all up. where's pete?).

But nice evasion.

Toto

Take that up with Ken Olson and his thesis advisor.

patcleaver

The fact that gospels and letters exist is not proof of anything except that someone wrote them sometime.

The gospels could be fiction or mythology or forgery or heavily interpolated.

Most of Paul's letters are forgeries and there is no reason to believe that they are not all forgeries.

If the letters were true, there should be archeological evidence of the churches that he wrote the letters to, but there is nothing - no evidence of any of Paul's alleged churches.

There is no evidence that the alleged Letters of Paul even refer to the Jesus of Nazareth of the gospels except a section about going to Jerusalem that may have been interpolated.

The existence of p52 ( the John Rylands fragment) only establishes that its contents existed when it was created. It is only the size of a credit card and contains 118 letters including parts of John 18:31-33. It may have been just part of a small document that was incorporated into John at a much later time.

P52 is dated merely by handwriting analysis (paleography).

Handwriting analysis can only be used to show that its unlikely that something could have been written before that style of handwriting was used. After a handwriting style is known then anyone can use that same handwriting style to write something at any later time, and it is not unusual for documents to be discovered written hundreds of years after what was previously the last known use of a handwriting style.

All we really know is that P52 was probably written after 117 CE. P90 is a full page with text that is much more deteriorated and only has a few decipherable words, but seems to contain parts of John 18:36-19:7. P66 contains most of John. For both P66 and P90 handwriting indicates that it was probably written after 175 CE. Although the Majority of Christian bible scholars claim that John was written around 90-100 CE, these unsupported prejudices are not really evidence of anything. Other bible scholars have claimed that John is a late 2nd century document.

The evidence for the existence of Christians much before Justin Martyr and Irenaeus around 180 CE is not very convincing. Justin Martyr tells us that there were other large religious groups that called themselves Christians that had nothing to do with Jesus of Nazareth including most of the entire nation of Samaria. The fact that the gospels incorporate phrases, similar to those found in Justin's first apology, indicates that the gospels were written later.

There is no evidence that there were large numbers of Christians in Rome around 65 CE except a statement in Tacitus, written around 115 CE, which could easily be fiction or forgery or later interpolation. Even if there were Christians in Rome in 65 CE that could not be used as evidence that Jesus ever existed.

There could not have been large numbers of Christians before the 4th century because no Churches have been discovered and almost no Christian symbols have been found, for example, on mausoleums or grave stones. For example, in Pompeii, which was covered in 79 CE, there is no Christian church or Christian symbols or art. In Dura-Europa c. 270-280, there was a synagogue and a Mithraeum, but no Christian church, and the only possible sign of Christians was a baptismal font with a mural of the good-shepherd which could just as easily be pagan, since baptism was practiced by the pagans and the good shepherd was a common pagan theme.

Fictional stories are relatively easy to invent. Urban myths can develop and sweep the country in only a few months. For most urban myths, the people in the myths never existed. Most, if not all, of the great religious movements were based on imaginary characters. The pagan Gods such as Mithra were imaginary, all the Greek Gods were imaginary, Yahweh was imaginary, the Egyptian Gods were imaginary, the Hindu Gods were imaginary, Gabriel who dictated the Quran was imaginary, even Buddha may have been imaginary. Imaginary is exactly what you should expect.

Solitary Man

It has already been done so.

mens_sana

Ummm, there should be archaeological evidence of house churches???

Toto

Source? Details?