GenesisNemesis

I'ven't seen any credible evidence for Jesus's existence.

spamandham

I didn't vote, because the poll is too simplistic. Did Jesus as depicted in the NT exist? Obviously not.

Is there a historical root to Jesus? Maybe.

That said, I don't see how assuming a historical root helps us understand anything. The simplest explanation for the evidence we have is, IMHO, that Jesus started either as a truly fictional character, or resulted from mythmaking.

karlmarx

The origins of the Christ crucified story could have had its origins at any time before Paul's letters. We rely on the Gospels for a historical context - but these are unreliable, so we don't know if the authors, writing after the destruction of the temple, simply took a pre-existing myth and gave it a historical context in the recent past (dating it to just before the destruction of the temple). If this is the case, then the beginnings of Christianity could date to anytime before Paul.

Paul here is arguing that salvation comes through Christ, and that both Gentiles and Jews are on the same footing as far as God is concerned. Traditional Jews have argued that God has chosen Israel as His own special people. Why wouldn't Jews persecute Paul? What need is there for a near contemporary Christ to justify this persecution?

The Jews in Paul's day probably didn't care about the historicity of Jesus, or how long ago he had lived assuming he was historical. I find it more plausible that they were more concerned about threats to their belief-system. And clearly, their traditional beliefs were being questioned, given the appearance of cults such as Christianity, that are clearly an amalgam of Judaism and paganism.

Why wouldn't Jews persecute a rival cult in its own midst? Why would this persecution depend on whether Christ had lived in the recent past or not? Christian Europeans persecuted Jews though-out history - no need for a recent historical figure to trigger the persecution.

aa5874

But there is no evidence that there were followers of Jesus during the days of Claudius. Chrestus is the name used by Suetonius not Jesus. It would appear that Chrestus was just a name like James, David or Jesus.

According to Eusebius in Church History, Constantine Augustus wrote an epistle to Chrestus the bishop of Syracuse. See Church History 10.5.21.

spin

I can't help it if you can only see two options, but the situation is not a binary taxonomy. I've developed RSI of the brain dealing with the problems of colloquial uses of technical language.

To help people understand the problem a little I usually refer them to a person mentioned by Tertullian and Epiphanes called Ebion. They understood him to be the founder of the Ebionite movement, yet he did not exist, though they thought he did. It was a logical assumption that someone made that turned out to be wrong. Ebion is not a myth, he is an error. We make mistakes all the time and if the right people make them, then you believe that the mistakes are in fact veracious. The existence of the figure of Ebion has nothing to do with myth. He doesn't take part in some theological story as Jesus does in the eyes of someone like Doherty. He was simply brought into existence because he was thought to have existed.

Others have claimed that the gospel materials were a Roman invention, neither myth nor a natural development. So there are at least three different means of Jesus material without a historical source for the figure.

I've proposed that Paul's revelation in Galatians is more in the line of natural development, ie through human mental activity which is not fictionalizing in intent, nor myth-making in intent. (The fictionalizing approach to me is highly unlikely and reflective of a modern jaded view of human beliefs.) I don't say that Jesus was born in Paul's head, just that such a development fits the data better than the other proposals I've read. I don't in fact endorse any position on the matter.


spin

Monad

There were probably lots of guys called Jesus around at that time (still are). It's not impossible one or more of them got crucified but that doesn't make them the Jesus.

spin

I wrote Tertullian and Epiphanes Epiphanius. -- spin

Solo

No, I think it is more probable that Paul' activity falls in a definite period, i.e. cca 40-50 CE and that he makes mystically wrapped allusions about a near-contemporary, of someone who is very much in living memory. The questions I have asked stand. Of course, you can refute them if you provide some evidence for your (and spin's) opinion. G.A.Wells thought Paul's Jesus was a historical personage who Paul thought lived long time ago. He asserted that simply because to him it was not credible that Paul would talk about a person recently departed in such highly exalted terms. That kind of theory however will not stand, if for no other reason than because we have elements of the same kind of mythology replicating itself around live leaders of our own time. (e.g. the magical celestial events around the birth of Kim Jong Il). More importantly, a study of the genuine Pauline will confirm a profile of someone who had violent mood swings, and "paranoid" assessment of himself as the sole (chosen) possessor of ultimate truths. (BTW, Karl Marx also exhibited the kind of "messianic" personality traits, described by Abraham Maslow). The highly exalted attributes of Christ have to do with Paul's strategy of "transference", and objectification of his experience. One cannot - if one is rational - judge from them the nature or disposition of the object to which they relate.

There was a very interesting criminal case in Canada a few years back of a woman killing her twelve-year old son because she "discovered" he was a clone of Hitler. (This is a violent analogy, I know, but people do not always catch on if I am subtle.) Now, one cannot construct from her accounts and explanations and cosmologies, actual data about her son, but one can - by studying the frame of reference - make reasonable "guesses" about what irritated her and what contributed to her agonistic attack.

So, I simply note that you are asserting something which you are having hard time defending against disconfirming evidence. Paul wrote before the destruction of the Temple. His writing attests that several accounts of Jesus existed in his time. He is violently opposed to some of the ideas that are later recorded in the Gospels ushering from the mouth of Jesus. The church in Jerusalem is led by James, who insists on strict observance of the law. Where would such puritan Judaism as James apparently practiced find interest in a proto-pagan mythical godhead, let alone go out on missions and preach him outside of Palestine ? Doesn't make sense.


I don't think you understand the issue. Among other things Paul's Galatians confirms there was tension in the Jerusalem church of James about observances (alluded to in Acts 6). This means in all likelihood that a group in sectarian Judaism embraced Jesus as Jewish propetic figure. We do not exactly know what these traditionalist Notzrim believed about Jesus but it is hugely improbable that they apprehended him as Paul did, i.e. through post-mortem revelations. It seems much more natural and logical to accept that the later Ebionite heresiarchs were simply the continuation of the Palestine traditions about Jesus and not that they created their own version of Yeshu in exile by re-Judaising an essentially pagan figure of Redeemer.

I ask again: why did these sectarian views of Jesus arround the time of Paul suddenly begin to erupt and clash internally, and come into conflict externally with the Phariseic Jews ? Do you have any plausible explanation for that ?


But then again the persecutions are historically attested, and start at a point in time, i.e. when Christianity becomes an imperial religion. It would be a mystery of mysteries and analogous to what you are proposing, if the pogroms had started in the 16th century, a new religion was involved in the bloody mayhem, and it turned out that they related to some anointed sage by the name of Moses Maimonides, who it was believed flew on a magic carpet and therefore did not exist.

Jiri

Soul Invictus

I couldn't vote inthe poll because it was poorly worded.

I don't "deny" anything.

In the biblical historical debate, it's common to find phrases like saying someone may "deny" his existence or to call a critic a "Jesus-Myther".

One can't deny something that has failed to be proven to exist.

My stance is pretty simple. I view it through the lens of weak atheism.

There is no archaeological, empirical evidence to support the claim that Jesus existed, and as such, there is no justifiable basis for me to find the claim of his existence to be valid or factually correct.

Solo

Surely, one can assert and deny something exists as a possibility ? No ?

Jiri