EarlDoherty

Do you mean to say, Jiri, that most Christians are so insulated and uneducated in their own religion that they have never even heard of the idea that Jesus never existed and would dismiss it out of hand if they did? Well, I guess that could make sense, considering that even people here who are anything but uneducated and insulated do the same thing. But my contention is that, however you identify them, there are a lot of basically uninformed people out there who *have* heard of mythicism and apparently have peppered Ehrman in increasing numbers about the issue. (Maybe they've been watching the TV show "Bones".) That's who he's writing for. How "disturbed" they are might be judged by the rabid and sputtering denials we constantly get on DBs like this one, or Rational Skepticism, or McGrath's blog, etc.

Anyway, I have no doubt that you (and Abe and Steve--oops, almost forgot judge) will trouble yourself to follow along with my rebuttal to Ehrman being posted in installments on the Vridar blog (link above). Or, considering that it's "absurd" perhaps you won't bother.

Earl Doherty

andrewcriddle

Tacitus emphasizes that Christians are nasty people but does not appear to claim that there was any concrete evidence they started the fire. ( igitur primum correpti qui fatebantur Accordingly, an arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty... , probably means those who openly confessed to being Christians not those who confessed to arson.)

Given the absence of evidence and Nero's motive in making the accusation, the Christians according to Tacitus are presumably innocent of starting the fire.

Andrew Criddle

Logical

The NT texts seem to indicate the following: there's this guy and he did impossible things.

While I don't believe the impossible deeds, since they violate natural laws and have no evidence to support them, I see no reason to reject the "there's this guy" claim, since it violates no laws of nature, is quite plausible, and quite reasonably fits the hypothesis that a real charismatic figure was turned into a larger-than-life legend by his very impressed followers.

To me the ones who say Jesus started out as a legend and then evolved through folklore into a historical figure are the ones with the harder case to make. And it would take more impressive evidence to convince me of that.

The difficulties inherent in that claim, which Ehrman lists in his book, I find quite convincing, which takes me back to my default stance that Jesus was a historical figure who evolved in the minds of followers into a god.

Steven Carr

So why were they impressed by Jesus getting himself killed and behaving generally as an anti-Messiah, to the extent that they called him God's agent, through whom all things were created?

aa5874

A fire broke out and people pleaded guilty to being Christians!!!

Please, don't me laugh so much!!!

It is most mind boggling how people here can TWIST any passage to mean whatever they want it to mean.

Logical

For the same reason cult followers give their lives for their cult leader. Charismatic leaders have historically proved capable of getting their followers to do bizarre and irrational things, including turning obvious defeats into foreknown-all-along victories.

aa5874

Please read the Jesus story.

In the Gospels Jesus FULFILLED his supposed prophecy when he resurrected. In fact it is claimed Jesus TAUGHT his disciples that he would be killed and then Resurrect on the Third day.

Mark 9:31 KJV

Quote:

For he taught his disciples, and said unto them , The Son of man is delivered into the hands of men, and they shall kill him; and after that he is killed , he shall rise the third day.

The Rejection and crucifixion of Jesus are PRECISELY the supposed prophecies that would be fulfilled in order for the Temple to Fall.

The start of the Jesus cult had NOTHING whatsoever to do with a human being it was a Jesus story that was believed just like people of antiquity believed stories about ALLAH and the God of Moses or even when people Belive the Mormon Bible.

Solo

It has nothing to do with education or insulation but with the psychology of belief. They simply internalize a script and interpret the world accordingly. So, e.g. when the fundy creationists are confronted with paleontological evidence they will argue the fossils are the work of the devil to ensnare the gullible and the heathen. Even as sophisticated man as Rudolph Bultmann, who admitted there was no objective historical evidence to support the gospels, called the belief that Jesus was a concocted myth ludicrous (I believe lächerlich was the word he used). He simply did what most modern Christians do - take the accounts as legendary, some of it perhaps real but fragmentary - and absolutely irrelevant for the real object of Christian faith. If you approach them trying to bluff you have evidence Jesus did not exist, they will read it as underhanded attack on their faith. They will be ok with "I don't know", but they will interpret "mythicism" as hostile. And they would not buy it even if you had a convincing proof. It would be like trying to convince a good commie in 1930's that Lenin was sent to Russia as Kaiser's agent.

Few people who break through the belief armour usually belong to the far out fanatical versions of the creed which are simply too much at odds with life and usually break down once a person changes his or her social milieu and the belief system stops being animated.

How many people are we talking about, Earl ? A few dozen, hundreds, low thousands ? What are your sales: anything approaching Da Vinci Code five million ? Guess not.

The other point is this: if things are going to change in the NT studies, it will not be because of "mythicism"; it will be an incremental thing, which will continue to ignore extremist positions. There have been very interesting developments in Markan studies which have undermined the older "historical positivist" school. Hopefully, thirty years from now noone will give a minute of their time to consider Mark a historical account. The new paradigm will likely be, whatever history there was about Jesus of the Nazarenes it was overwritten by Paul and Mark, certified by Matthew's contra-gospel and then ratified by Luke's attempt to reconcile the two. Q will have been forgotten, like Lysenkoism, or another shining example of methaphysico-theologo-cosmolo-nigology.

Yes, you may rely on me to do whatever I want.

Best,
Jiri

aa5874

I am really delighted that Ehrman wrote "Did Jesus Exist" because he did PRECISELY what I predicted.

"Did Jesus Exist" is INUNDATED with Logical Fallacies and SUBMERGED in discredited sources.

As it stands right now, HJers MUST now understand that any argument they present for an historical Jesus will be QUICKLY made into dust. Thanks to Ehrman.

Logical

aa5874 ,

The rejection and crucifixion of Jesus the Messiah are not predicted by OT prophecies. Said prophecies were taken out of context and misused by Christians as part of the evolution of Jesus from a regular defeated man to a god who knew all along he was going to be crushed by the authorities.