Toto

Turn that around. We have no record of anyone asking around or looking for evidence of the historical Jesus until Constantine and the Empress Helena arrived in Palestine. This indicates that no one treated the story as material history until that time.

We've gone through this whole question of whether there were early mythicists before, and it's hard to say. Who were Paul's opponents who claimed that Jesus had not come in the flesh? Were the Docetists mythicists, or did they think that Jesus appeared to be on earth, but was really of some other substance? The historical record is not so clear as you claim.

James The Least

Peter's denial and the desertion of the disciples are part of the story's plot.

1 Corinthian's "stumbling block" passage is not expressing embarrassment about Christ crucified. Paul simply means that Jews and Greeks are not as spiritually blessed as Paul to understand the significance of the crucifixion like he does. Nowhere is Paul embarrassed by the crucifixion: it is the centerpiece of his theology, how could he be?


Really? Why do the surviving documents give us so little reason to believe that?


1. Suetonius has Christ himself in Rome in 49
2. The gospels were not written by Jews, and not written in Judea or Jerusalem, Palestinian geography is remote to them
3. Your other points are all aspects of church theology and legend, not verifiable history

Christianity was not a Jewish movement. It later invented legends about "the mission to the Gentiles" to try and establish credibility, since it wouldn't look good if it had merely been a Gentile movement with zero Jewish involvement.

How would Mark have even heard about it, then?

aa5874

I will RESPOND to you. It is MY DUTY.
I MUST respond to your posts. It is IMPERATIVE that I do so. YOUR Jesus is based on Presumptions, Imaginary evidence and Admitted Discredited sources.

All DATED Texts of the Jesus stories are from the 2nd century yet you continue to SPOUT your imaginative "evidence" as history.

Please, this is BC&H. We are NOT here to BELIEVE your imagination. We are here to EXAMINE the ACTUAL written statements of antiquity and the DATED TEXTS of the Jesus stories.

There is ABSOLUTELY Nothing but FORGERIES about Jesus and Paul--Seneca/Paul letters and Antiquities of the Jews 18.3.3 and 20.9.1.

100% of the DATED Texts about the Jesus stories do NOT support your imagination. You are wasting PRECIOUS time.

ALL of DATED and Documented History is AGAINST you.

People who argue AGAINST dated and documented history must NOT ever be ignored. They MUST be held responsible for their statements.

TedM

Because no one saw a need to question it.



That's my point. There is no clear indication of early mythicists, which means they probably never existed. Do you honestly think there were no skeptics back then? The gospel and Acts is full of people who challenged skeptics.

aa5874

We have NO early evidence. The evidence we have is FROM the 2nd century.

You are living in a DREAM world.

The earliest DATED Fragment of Acts of the Apostles is from the mid 3rd century.

Again, you have NOTHING but your imagination and Admitted Discredited sources PLUS 100% of the DATED Text of the Jesus stories outside the 1st century.

mountainman

Was Tolkien a hobbit, or Longfellow an Ojibwe?

The inventors of Christianity were rat cunning.

mountainman

What? Because Socrates was dead ?


No one saw a need to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land either. Or scratch the sacred name of Jesus "J_S" into their house-church or upon the tombstone of the Bishop and his assistants. Or create a figurine, or a cross, or a trinket or even a shrine to the HJ.

Certainly after Nicaea, no one saw a need to question it for many legions of other sharp reasons.

Toto

But you just said that

What if they told you he was the Messiah your culture had been looking for for 600 years, desperately needed, and that he had been raised from the dead after being crucified in front of thousands during Passover? Completely different scenario. Then you might have a motive to ask around, discuss this in the synagogues, etc

Surely some one would have looked into these reports?

If not, you can't use the absence of evidence as evidence of absence.

What is your point? That you won't consider the possibility that there were early mythicists unless they left really clear evidence that survived the later church's efforts to erase it?

I see no evidence of a first century Palestinian Skeptics Society. The era was quite credulous. Most people believed in gods who came down to earth, and that demons caused illnesses.

Oh? Did Jesus submit evidence of his miracle healings to a first century Devil's advocate? Did he apply to the Randi Foundation?

In Acts, when Paul was challenged, he showed how the Scriptures foretold the Christ. He didn't produce evidence, or set up double blind experiments.

Diogenes the Cynic

A few scattershot points;

Suetonius does not say Jesus was in Rome or mention him at all. "Chrestus" is not Christos and is not Jesus.

Paul himself effectively admits the crucifixion is an embarrassment by calling it a "stumbling block for the Jews."

We don't know that no one tried to investigate the story, because there's no reason such investigations would be recorded in any historical record.It would be beyond the ability of most converts to even attempt, and even people with the education and money and will would not have been able to investigate anything after 70.

Journalistic investigation of claims made by religious cults is not something we would expect to see in the ancient world, regardless and there is certainly no reason we should expect to see documentation of it.

TedM

This is so condescending to the human race. Since known history some people have been gullible, others the opposite. It's human nature. I see no reason to think that things were different back then, especially given the nature of the issue--claim to a Messiah who rose from the dead. To suggest that this was not put up for review because we don't have a Randi Foundation report is plain silly. Diogenes, however, has said this better than I can.

We have records of a historical Jesus. We can reasonably assume his history was questioned and validated in the absence of evidence. We cannot reasonably assume it was not questioned in the absence of evidence. And, we cannot reasonably assume it was questioned and invalidated in the absence of evidence, given the information we have about the culture and the skeptical views of others.