aa5874

Your statement is worthless. You cannot show that Jesus existed, therefore Jesus must have existed, because no-one else would have existed. Total nonsense.

You need to do some research to find evidence to support your views. It is of no significance to declare Jesus existed because of your inability to find relevant information.


Again, If you claim someone is living or lived, you must have corroborated documentation to confirm your claim.
If your methodology for historicity is used, then every name written is that of a person that actually existed.

fromdownunder

Josephus full quote:

Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, [B]if it be lawful to call him a man[/B, for he was a doer of wonderful works[/B], a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews, and many of the Gentiles. He was the Christ, and when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men among us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him; for he appeared to them alive again the third day; as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him. And the tribe of Christians so named from him are not extinct at this day.

Taking out the possible interpolations (your "bad bits"), as bolded above, we are left with:

Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews, and many of the Gentiles. [A]nd when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men among us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him; And the tribe of Christians so named from him are not extinct at this day.

(Stolen unashamedly from Jeffrey Jay Lowder's response to Chapter 5 of "The Jury Is In" (http://www.infidels.org/library/mode...ury/chap5.html)

This leaves us with a picture of a not overly interesting historical character who influenced those in his immediate vicinity, but initially did not cause much of a stir anywhere else.

Now if one takes Josephus other reference to "the so called Christ" (a not very flattering description, in fact I would say rather a skeptical view of somebody Josephus believed existed, but was not interested enough in to do any more work), and this was effectively an aside as Josephus main interest is James in this passage, what is left is a picture of a pretty ordinary man who was not worth worrying about, He may or may not have been killed by the Romans as a rebel.

The canonical Gospels, as far as I am aware were written between 70ish - 100 CE. The others, I understand were written later than this. As far as Q goes, I have no idea, or any idea if it was written at all. But you need to provide evidence that the author of Mark made up the existence of his central character out of whole cloth. There is no birth sequence, no post passion sitings just a brief history of a man's life between about 30-33 years of age (perhaps) with miracles thrown in for flavour, which provide the fiction content.

The historical context is that a people were being totally trashed by invaders and needed something, anything, to hold onto hope. Those that "lost faith" in the God of their fathers picked up on the ideas of a few fanatical followers of a minor Galillean rabbi, and it slowly grew from there because of the diaspora which followed.

Regarding Paul, you must also assume that his (attributable) letters were also made up. Did Paul, writing in (probably) 50-60 CE use Jesus followers as a fictional frame for his letters? Was it Jesus followers he was actually writing to, who had already swayed from the original message, whatever that was? Who provided the original message of Jesus? The Jesus myth had to come from somewhere! Why not an actual historical person?

Regarding other references, they are all at least third hand or worse, and the non-canonical gospels were all far to late to be evidence of anything at all. So I must needs to stick with Josephus, the author of Mark, Paul and possibly Q. I discount the authors of Matthew and Luke as direct evidence, but are more as supporting documents, in that they took Mark's gospel and based their rewrites on the specific audince they were trying to reach. When reading the author of John however, I often wonder what the hell he was smoking when he wrote it.

Sorry, I have rambled on a bit much. Bad day at the office.

Norm

Roger Pearse

I don't think that this the point being made. I think what the poster is saying is that the evidence which leads reasonable people to accept that Jesus of Nazareth existed is of the same kind (and rather more extensive, in many cases) than that which is considered final in a great many other cases throughout history. This of course is true.

As does everyone. It's really much too easy for people (not you) who find something inconvenient to make demands of others for 'proof' and to just keep jacking up the levels of evidence required. The real level of evidence required is the same as for everyone else at the time.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

fromdownunder

Roger, you have pretty much covered what my response would have been. Taken to a "logical" (if that is the word I am groping for) conclusion, it becomes equally arguable that no Christian document existed before Constantine, and he arranged for all of them (even the contradictory ones) to be forged to confirm his position.

I am simply asking that MJers Provide the source of the Jesus myths.

The source of people's beliefs to whom Paul was writing. The source behind Paul's acceptance of a historical Jesus (and remember, I doubt that Paul even accepted a bodily resurrection) The source behind the character written about by Mark. The source behind the beliefs of those that Josephus called Chriistians.

Do this, provide evidence that it was not someone whom we could describe as Jesus, and I will become a MJer.

Norm

spin

I don't care where you stole it from. It's still called cherry picking. You, or in this case Lowder, choose what you want to keep and delete the rest. How do you determine what you want to keep from what to throw away in the passage?? Answer: you have no way.

What makes you think that the rest of the christ stuff was not from the same hand?? See the problem? Oh well.

Sorry sport, but this is utter drivel.

The "so-called" christ is a maliciously deceptive translation and abuse by your source of the original phrase. The text simply says literally, "Jesus the called christ", or Jesus who is called the christ, which is straight out of Matthew (1:16). There is nothing negative about ihsoun o legomenon christon or Simon called Peter (simwna ton legomenon petron).

So, sadly, your development on this bad linguistic analysis has little value.


Again, sadly, you wouldn't know and you have no way of verifying the value or the opinions of your sources. These dates are no thing more than wish-fullfilment.

Naive literalism and retrojection of current reworkings of christian theology will not get you any closer to the problems at hand.

Why?

It would be good if you read the archives. How do you date Paul from his letters?? The usual fudge is to try to claim that when Paul was lowered from the wall of Damascus with a reference to Aretas, it referred to the period of a clash between Herod Antipas and Aretas IV (circa 39 CE), but I have shown that this is highly improbably and with no positive evidence to support it, making it an unlikely conjecture. You can't date Paul.

Just a little dose of David Hume: people receive sense data and from these tiny bits of sense information, they build up a picture; that picture may represent something that exists or something that doesn't -- you can think of the difference between a horse and a unicorn. Now Jesus may be myth, a composite recollection of various figures, an evolution of theological ideas, or a real person, any of which combined with the new found Greek sense of reality or historiography, could lead to the accounts we have today.

Just like the gospels, right? GMt used GMk which used other sources, etc.

How do you know when the common four gospels were written?

We have seen that Josephus has been bowdlerized and you want to keep some of the bowdlerization. Not convincing.

When were any of them written and how would you know? The usual fudge with Mark is to say that it must have been written around the time of the fall of the temple, but that ignores the Jewish literary heritage which frequently recycled long past events.

What makes you think Mark was anything much better than a Matthew or a Luke? So, you don't have any earlier documents, but we have a tradition of rehashing what was already in circulation.


spin

mountainman

Eusebius informs us that both Celsus and Porphyry
accepted the existence of Jesus, sometime after 312 CE.

It is, IMO, eminently arguable, that Julian did not
accept the existence of Jesus, simply because he opens
his entire treatise "Against the Galilaeans" with words that
specify it to be a fabrication, a fiction and a monstrous tale.
While he may discuss the details of the fiction, his opening
words leave little doubt that he considered it fictitious.



Pete Brown

fromdownunder

spin, to stop this getting too generalised and bogged down in multiple points on a single thread, please point me to compelling evidence that the synoptics, but particularly Mark, (I don't give a shit about John) were not written between 70 -90 CE. I am quite happy to be swayed by good evidence along these lines.

Or if you have anything similar to the above re: the dating (or non dating, if you like) of Paul's letters I would be very interested. I admit to not folowing the HJ v MJ Jesus myth as much as I would have liked to, and would appreciate a starting point. I will follow it from there.

But what I need is a point to begin some research to accept that there was no historical Jesus, simply because (as silly as this may sound) there is little evidence on this thread per se for the non existence of a historical Jesus.

Since you are familiar with the subject, you should be able to cite sources, and you will have a brand new MJer, if the evidence is compelling, because I could then accept that Josephus was writing from earlier sources which were (likely) based on a fiction. But I need evidence, not simply statemenst such as those you made in your response to my last post.

Thanks.

Norm

spin

fromdownunder, to stop this getting too generalised and bogged down in multiple points on a single thread, please point me to compelling evidence that the synoptics, but particularly Mark, (I don't give a shit about John) were written between 70 -90 CE.

Try dating Paul from Paul's letters. You'll find you can't.

I don't take part in the HJ v MJ tango. Agnosticism is the only way to go.

Let me make this separation: Jesus may be not historical yet still have existed. The set of "not historical" is divided into two: "not enough evidence to say the subject existed" and "the subject didn't exist".

History is about what you can show regarding the past. If you can't show it, it isn't history. Show me the substantive evidence for a Jesus, then he is historical. If you can't show me, then he doesn't make the grade as historical. Politicians tell you stuff all the time, but do you assume it is all correct?

You've got the process ass-up, if you are interested in history. You need evidence to say someone is historical. By evidence I mean substantive evidence -- not this half-baked stuff about having an account of something so show me it is fictional: I certainly cannot show you that the holy grail is fictional.


spin

fromdownunder

OK, I am through playing games with someone who tries to argue against generally accepted evidence and then will not provide sources. All I asked for was a reference for when YOU think that Mark and/or Paul and the other two synoptics were written. I thought that it was a polite request and you simply replied with static. Continuing to talk with somebody who says little more than "you are wrong" is pretty pointless.

Bye.

Is there reading this thread who can point me to a decent starting point to evidence for a MJ?

Norm

spin

The attitude below is just typical of the resilience to the basic problem I have attempted to outline (if I can outline a problem).
History is about not playing games, specifically the silly game of the type where, instead of making a case for a position, one requires that the opposite be demonstrated. This is the junky attitude: show me a better drug and I'll drop this one for it.

All these dudes, who propose the "guilty until proven otherwise" approach to history, should realise that the law requires one to prove the guilt, not the contrary.

"[G]enerally accepted evidence" is not evidence until it is put on the table and laid out.

You ask them to lay it out and they have a fit.

Having looked at the evidence, I don't know, but then nobody else does either.

One of the few tangible indications for a terminus post quem (ie the earliest point where the event must have been after) is the reference to John the Baptist, which is dated by Josephus to around 37 CE (yet the traditional date for Jesus's death, based on the Herod tale, is several years before that date). One must assume that the writer was confused and the reference is untrustworthy.

You need to turn the radio on first to able able to say this sort of thing. Sounds like you've got tinnitus.

Sad straw man stuff.

Knock off the bs and admit that you're content with plausible pasts rather than the difficult job of saying what you can about what actually happened.

:wave:

While we're at it, can someone point me to a descent starting point for evidence of a mythical unicorn? Can someone show me that Atlantis didn't exist? Can someone show me that Julius Caesar didn't become a god after his death? Can someone show me that Jesus didn't have an affair with one of the disciples (the one whom the lord loved)?

Does anyone see what's awry with these sorts of questions?


spin