hjalti

Schrödinger's Jesus! You can add that to your list!

judge

I'd agree and have argued as much here many times due to my interest in the Assyrian COE.

Maybe...but a very early period doesn't mean it must be as early as our earliest iwtnesses.

stephan huller

But it wasn't as if Jesus walked around with a sign saying 'I am the Son of God.' It is impossible to believe that the earliest manuscripts of the New Testament made it impossible to hold the 'Jesus is the Father' position. It must have had manuscript support - Luke aside (Lk 1:2).

aa5874

How can one find tangible evidence against the existence of entities considered to be mythological or not existing?

There is no tangible evidence against the existence of Homer's Achilles.

Homer's Achilles was described in a mythological fashion and there is no known credible historical source for Achilles.

It is completely reasonable to consider that Homer's Achilles was a MYTH until historical evidence be found.

There is no tangible evidence against the existence of Plutarch's Romulus.

However, Romulus was described in a mythological fashion and there is no known credible historical evidence for Romulus.

It is completely reasonable to consider that Plutarch's Romulus was a MYTH.

Now , it is not at all unusual or unreasonable to consider entities to be MYTHS that are described in a mythological manner without any credible historical support.

Jesus of the NT can be reasonably considered a MYTH since he was described in a mythological way from conception to ascension and without any credible historical evidence or eyewitnesses.

Not one single author of the NT Canon even claimed they actually saw Jesus anywhere alive, only Paul saw him AFTER he was raised from the dead.

Let's be reasonable. What else do we need?

Paul saw Jesus when it was NOT HUMANLY possible.

Jesus was a MYTH.

How can one get close to the time of Robin Hood? Once Robin Hood did not exist then no-one can get close to his time.

Tell me what was the time for Robin Hood?

Once upon a time.....


Of course the HJ hypothesis is failure and a disaster.

The fundamental problem with HJ is that it is based on the premise that the Gospel stories in the NT about Jesus are NOT credible from conception to ascension. This means that any description of Jesus or any event surrounding Jesus may be false or not completely true.

It is IMPERATIVE that there is credible evidence or data in order to carry out a search for HJ.

One cannot try to locate Plutarch's Romulus if the data provided by Plutarch is not credible.

One cannot try to locate Homer's Achilles if the data provided by Homer is not credible.

Now, it is certainly not true that Jesus was the offspring of the Holy Ghost, who walked on water, whose face shone like the sun when he was transfigued, was raised from the dead and ascended to heaven.

What else is not true?

The historical Jesus is a failure and a disaster since there is not even any credible data to begin the search.

It is completely reasonable to consider that Jesus was a MYTH.

mountainman

Good point, although the better analogy might be Schrödinger's Tomb. In an essay called "Making Fruit Salad of the Testimonium Flavianum" the various presumed states of the authenticity of the "TF" can be compared to quantum mechanics ....

Steve Weiss

There are an infinite number hypothetical miracles that one could propose as support for any myth that suits one's fancy; that's what is referred to as fiction and imagination. However, remove these miracles from the bible (OT and NT) and what have you left? Whatever it would be it wouldn't be an Abrahamic religion.

I am curious as to where you get your information that most people today refer to the alleged human Jesus rather than the biblical one in their discussion of Christianity? I would assume the opposite. Even if one did limit one's discussion to the allegedly human Jesus, there is zero credible evidence for that character's existence as well, which you concede.

If you are saying that there is merit in an historical investigation as to how the fiction of Jesus was sold as fact by the manipulatiors who concocted the Christian mythology, then fine. That is interesting detective work. But to say that most Christians dismiss the divinity of Jesus or the truthfulness of the miracles represented as fact in the bible has nothing to support it.

gurugeorge

But look at where this thread is - BC&H. That's the type of argument that goes on here.

The history of it is something like this. With the publication of the Bible in native languages, and then through the 17th and 18th centuries, rational people started to have doubts about the divine Jesus (for much the type of reason you outline). But some people wanted to have their cake and eat it - they wanted there to be some truth in the Jesus myth, so the Christian institutions could keep going - either because they thought Christianity was a good thing (keeping our wild side in check) or a profound thing (philosophically) or because they just thought the rituals and stuff are cute, or for various other reasons.

So the euhemerist position became a sort of fall-back - it allowed the study of the bible to keep going in a rational context, it allowed religious types to continue to bamboozle ordinary folks (while keeping the truth - that the whole thing is pretty sketchy - to themselves in their ivory towers).

So nowadays, while there are probably many Christians who believe in the divine god-man still, a substantial number of intelligent Christians (and even atheists or agnostics) have this "keep cake and eat it" view - that there was some human being, perhaps a remarkable preacher who said wise things, or a revolutionary who prefigured socialism, etc., etc., etc. (basically, whatever their personal intellectual hobby horse is, they extract from the Jesus myth a human Jesus to suit).

That's kind of how the situation has been for years. But it's been changing over the past few decades.

At the end of the 19th century, some radical biblical scholars doubted the euhemerist position - doubted that there was even any evidence to suggest that there was a real human Jesus behind the Jesus myth. There was a reaction to this from biblical scholarship and what with a couple of world wars and all the rest of it, the idea was forgotten for a while. But recently, it has come back on the table, and now the intellectual battle is starting to rage again.

One of the problems has been that the field of biblical scholarship has been somewhat insular - it's one of those things that the rest of academe has sort of let go on because they presume these guys are doing their jobs. But real historians are starting to get interested in the questions under discussion, and are starting to see that biblical scholarship has perhaps not been as rigorous as it might have been - not in general (of course there are plenty of clever and sincere people in the field), but with specific reference to the question of the Jesus myth having an euhemerist basis. (A somewhat analogous battle has recently been almost won wrt the OT - people just assumed it was pretty much historical, but that has now been strongly doubted, and the general position seems to be swinging away from that.)

So this is some of the stuff that goes on here at BC&H.

Doug Shaver

I don't see it as any more independent than Tacitus. In both cases, it is most reasonable to suppose that they were using Christian sources. But I see no reason to discount Christians' testimony to their founder's existence prima facie.

Could you be a little more specific? Hypotheses of which sort?

Why? What exactly is it about this particular man such that a hypothesis of his nonexistence ought to be the default?

Sheshbazzar

There is no 'HISTORICAL' Jesus to be agnostic about.
The only 'Jesus' of the Bible is -only- that one that is revealed within the biblical texts.
Remove all of the fantastic claims, and all of the uncorroborated 'events' of this 'Jesus' life, and there is no identifiable or historical Jesus left. One is left with nothing more than a nobody that cannot be shown to have done anything at all, much less those things textually asserted.
Without the Bible's highly imaginary stories, there simply would be no 'Jesus' at all to discuss.

One may as well ponder being 'agnostic' about Linus's claims concerning the Great Pumpkin. Linus believes in the Great Pumpkin, and that this Great Pumpkin has 'historically' done (and will do) certain things, therefore the Great Pumpkin must have been 'historical'.
Is Agnosticism the only Reasonable Position on the Historical Great Pumpkin?

Juststeve

Doug Writes:

"With that in mind, I offer as evidence various documents, apparently written during the second century, attesting to the belief of at least some Christians of that time that their religion had been founded by one Jesus of Nazareth, the central character of four of those writings now commonly referred to as the canonical gospels. One possible explanation for the existence of those documents is that Christianity actually was founded by either that person or certain of his followers".

Doug:

Does the dating of the Gospels effect their weight as evidence in your mind? I note that a majority of scholars date most of the Gospels quite a bit earlier than the second century. What would a 70 C.E. date for Mark do to your thinking?

Steve