Ljoilae

Is there real evidence Christianity started in the 1st century and wasn't created as an anachronism?

When I read the bible, that is the only way I think anyone could have bought it. I mean, if all the dead people in Jerusalem crawled out of the ground and prophecized on Pentecost or whatever it was, wouldn't that have been international news? And if someone made a contemporary claim to that, yet it hadn't actually happened, they would be completely derided by those around when it supposedly happened and no one would buy it, except for maybe people far away (another possibility, the creator was really in a completely different location).

It really seems to me like it was more likely fabricated in the 2nd or 3rd century, maybe later even, incorporating some real events and people and just making up most of it and putting it back into a time where no one could argue against events in the books. Like, we know there were people who followed something called Chrestus in the first century, but their beliefs are, IIRC, not actually mentioned.

ziffel

Add to this that much of the mythology of Jesus, turning water into wine, rising from the dead, being a son of a god, born of a virgin, etc -- were all blatantly taken from pagan mythologies that preceded the Jesus myth. I'm sure there was a "Yeshua" who purported to be something special (there were many of those), but the myths of magic were adorned to him many decades later.

A chronological reading of the gospels, from Mark to John, sees Jesus becoming more and more magical as the stories are written. AKA, the 'telephone game'.

brianscott1977

A copy of part of the Bible (manuscript P52) has generally been dated to A.D. 125.

There are also writings of second generation Christians such as Papias, a bishop of Hierapolis in Asia Minor, who lived from 60 AD to 130 AD.

Vampyroteuthis

Off to BC&H

aa5874

I think that your view is supported by the EVIDENCE from antiquity.

IF Jesus did exist and lived in Galilee for about 30 years then people from Galilee would have known that all the embellishments about Jesus would have been blatant lies.

It makes no sense for disciples of the very Jesus who is claiming to be honest and truthful who knows Jesus was just a man to go to Galilee where Jesus lived and tell the Galileans Jesus used to walk on the sea of Galilee and that Jesus was the Creator of heaven and earth.

The Jesus stories and the Pauline writings were all written very late and backdated and people who were DUPED believed the stories were true sometime around the beginning of the 2nd century or after the writings of Josephus.

mountainman

Leucius and Charinus were two dead people who crawled out of the ground and were given two writing implements are separate recorded the events in Jerusalem and elsewhere. Their books when written and presented to the Jews and to Pilate were found identical - word for word the same. They disappeared in a blinding flash in the midst of the court!

Their books became international gossip and news and their work was known by various names - one of which was The Acts of Pilate. The appearance of this book in the 4th century is conjectured by all academics and scholars, and Eusebius also tells us of its embarrassing public presence, since it was read by schoolchildren in the empire.

Examine the evidence.
The NT is an anachronism.

aa5874

It would appear that the Jesus story was PARTLY developped using information from the writings of Josephus.

There are MANY fundamental aspects of the Jesus story that are found in the writings of Josephus.

1. Josephus wrote about John the Baptist. See Antiquities of the Jews 18.5

2. Josephus lived in Galilee. See the "Life of Flavius Josephus"

3. Josephus wrote about a false prophet who predicted the fall of the Temple. See Antiquities of the Jews.

4. Josephus wrote about three crucified captives where one of them survived. See "Life of Flavius Josephus".

So whoever wrote the first Jesus story could have used Josephus' writings to PLOT the beginning, the body and end of the Jesus story.

Josephus mentioned virtually every place in Galilee as found in the Jesus story except Nazareth.

The places in Galilee where the supposed Jesus taught his disciples, carried out his miracles and the people Jesus met can be found in the writings of Josephus.

Antiquities of the Jews 18.5.2
In the Jesus story, Jesus did go to be baptised by John the Baptist who was killed by Herod. See Mark 1

Antiquities of the Jews 20.8.6 In the Jesus story, Jesus predicted that the Temple would fall. See Mark 13.


The "Life of Flavius Josephus" 75 In the Jesus story THREE were crucified and ONE survived albeit after the resurrection and even more striking is that Josephus went to Titus for the crucified and similarly another Joseph went to get the crucified Jesus. See Mark 15


Now, the "Life of Flavius Josephus" was written almost at the end of 1st century or sometime around 97 CE therefore it is likely that author of the Jesus story wrote some time after 97 CE.


The theory that the Jesus story was written late, possible 2nd century and backdated to the 1st before the Fall of the Temple appears to be supported by sources of antiquity.

ApostateAbe

I think most people here would agree with you. Certainly almost all of us think that the Christian gospels are the product of myth, and most of us suspect that Jesus never existed as a human being at all.

Secular scholars tend to think differently from the rest of us. The theory that is most common among critical scholars, and the one that I think is most sensible in light of all of the evidence, is that Jesus was a Jewish "apocalyptic prophet," or what I would call a "doomsday cult leader." He believed that the world order would very soon come to a calamitous end as an army of heaven overthrows all states and establishes a new kingdom of heaven.

You can think of the evidence to be similar to a class of evidence for the biological theory of evolution. In biology, we observe "vestiges," such as the wings of ostriches or embryonic human tails, almost useless today, but they offer clues of the history. The New Testament also has vestiges of its historical roots. For example, the gospel of Matthew says John the Baptist baptized Jesus, and Jesus is quoted as giving a somewhat flimsy excuse for why this is appropriate, and spinning the baptism into a miracle story. The other three gospels seem to dodge it, either leaving out John or skipping the baptism entirely. There doesn't seem to be a sensible way to explain that except with the proposition that John really did baptize Jesus, and the gospels reflect that commonly-accepted fact. Other vestiges include the identity of Jesus being of the town of Nazareth, Jesus having a father named Joseph, Jesus preaching hatred against the family, Jesus being divided against his own family, the betrayal by one of his disciples, the crucifixion of Jesus, and the discovery of the resurrection by poor rural uneducated women. Especially telling are the prophecies that the kingdom of heaven would arrive before "this generation" passes away and before "some standing here...taste death." All of these things seem best explained as vestiges of a genuinely human Jesus, a somewhat normal human cult leader whose life was mythologized, much like Muhammad, St. Nicholas, Buddha, and Emperor Haile Selassie I, the founding figurehead of the Rastafarian religion.

There is other evidence that you can think of as "fossils," or direct preservation of ancient information, such as the apostle Paul writing of meeting James, the "Lord's brother" (reputed brother of Jesus) and the apostle Peter. Paul got into a bitter argument with Peter, not over whether or not Peter ever met Jesus, but over whether or not uncircumcised Gentiles should be accepted into the church. Josephus wrote about both James, the brother of Jesus, and John the Baptist, with no connection to Jesus.

There is still more evidence that you can think of as "genes." Christianity was most certainly founded as a cult. If so, then we expect the founding cult leader to be the central figurehead of the succeeding religion, to match so many other religions in existence. The other class of religions are those that are born from ancient tribal myths, such as Judaism, Hinduism, and Greco-Roman mythology. They are myths that developed in the most evolutionary way, from simplicity that developed gradually, and they greatly diversified before gaining their intricate complexity. On the other hand, religions such as Zoroastrianism, Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, Rastafarianism and Mormonism would match the creationist model, of special creation that initialized complexity in an instant, and the evolution happened only afterward. In each such case, the human figurehead at the center is the best explanation for the historical human founder.

Welcome to the BC&H forum. We have a diversity of ideas about how Christianity started, and I hope that my model makes the most sense.

mountainman

No - there is no such evidence.

Perhaps one of the more recent publications touted as presenting a selection of "convincing evidence" is one called "Ante pacem" by Graydon Snyder which attmpts to present all the evidence by which we think Christianity started before Constantine in the fourth century.

I have conducted a critical and skeptical review of this data. None of it is "convincing evidence". See my review at -------- Critical Examination of the Ante pacem Data. If you are just interested looking at the evidence being discussed by the so-called experts in the field, then start with this article. I think you will quickly determine from my presentation that you will not find one single unambiguous citation in the entire book.

The NT is Bullneck's Bullshit

As far as I am concerned Christianity was fabricated in the 4th century, and there is presently no evidence that can be brought against this hypothesis in order to refute it. The three types of evidence generally cited in support of the standard TRADITIONAL ANACHRONISTIC HISTORY OF THE ROMAN CATHAOLIC CHURCH are:

(1) The Dura-Europos "house-church" shipped back to Yale c.1929 CE, and
(2) Bundles of paleographic attestations related to the dating of papyri fragments.
(3) Attestations of Eusebius and his 4th and 5th century "continuators".

The "Evidence" at the end of the day is "Poetic Licence" - nothing more !!!!

Here is a classic example of "Poetic Licence" from the catacombs of Rome:

Here we see Jesus as a child, never mentioned in the Canon, but featured
in the Infancy Gispel of Thomas in which Jesus is presented as an utter brat,
and a malevolent trickster wizard boy. Behind this bullshit is de Rossi and
the Papal revolution of the 19th century which miraculously started finding
the relics of Jesus and the bones of Peter in the Catacombs and other safe
places.



Plate 13 -- "The sarcophagus located in Sta. Maria Antiqua, Rome

It is summarily described by the author as being "Likely the oldest example of Early Christian plastic art", and a full description is given is as follows:

"The Teaching of the Law stands in the center, with a Good Shepherd immediately to the right and an Orante immediately to the left. Continuing left is a Jonah cycle, first Jonah resting, then Jonah cast out of the ketos, and finally Jonah in the boat. To the extreme left side stands a river god. To the right of the Good Shepherd there is a baptism of Jesus with a dove descending. Jesus is young, nude, and quite small next to the older, bearded John the Baptist. A pastoral scene concludes the right end"

This is "Poetic Licence" on a grand scale.
The scene is Graeco-Roman.
Nothing about it says "Christian".

Ante pacem has an endless succession of such bullshit.
If you dont believe me, have a look at the book.

mountainman

Secular scholars have a tenured investment with the unexamined hypothesis of the historical jesus. While we are free to explore the mythical and the fictional varieties of jesus, secular scholars see themselves an asset to secular scholarship concernin the historical facts of christian theology. They dwell in the intellectual shadow of the church --- in which the assumption that jesus existed somewhere in history is taken as true.

The fact of the matter is simply this -- maybe jesus was just fabricated. Both Smedley Butler and Sherlock Holmes would (IMO) favor the 4th century Constantine as the culprit. Secular scholars are not equipped to operate like Smedley Butler or Sherlock Holmes because they do not understand the historical reality of dirty politics and gangsters. See Lord Acton's comments on absolute power of the church at the turn of the 20th century, and then think about the absolute power of "The Lord God Caesar" in antiquity. "The Lord God Caesar" Constantine malevolently exploited the technology of the codex.