jakejonesiv

So Jesus is "one with everything?" That is mystical fluff.

No, Mozart is dead.

Jake Jones IV

Roger Pearse

Some thoughts:

By this I presume that you mean that the author's own handwritten copies do not now exist. You infer (somehow) from this that what is contained in those texts is fictional. These are unrelated issues, however. And no ancient literary text is extant in autograph.

I'm not sure that I understand; the authors of those 4 texts have always been known. If you mean that we know nothing much about them, of course this is true. So I'm not sure that your point here has been thought through. What do you mean, and how do you infer from this that what these texts say must be fiction? I wonder if perhaps this 'fact' is in fact a conclusion? If so, of course, you see why people have problems with this?

This cannot be a 'fact', but a conclusion of some train of logic.

And this. I did see briefly above your thesis that the existence of two different genealogies of Christ proves that both are untrue. This is fallacious, unless you know more than I do about the genre of ancient genealogy writing; I wonder whether you are presuming both must be patrilinear and drawn up in accordance with standards of the American Genealogical Association? -- Such assumptions once stated look rather doubtful.

I think that this tendency to consider conclusions as facts, and to infer your arguments, and assume various things silently, is perhaps responsible for some of the criticism you are getting?

This is not a 'fact' or a conclusion, but a prejudice, tho.

This is obviously an error of fact, not a fact; but if it were, how would it therefore support your presumption that he never existed? You have not actually made your argument, you see.

This appears to be an argument that, if you can find fault with the authors of some books written in a different culture 2000 years ago of which you are not a part and which we can read only in translation, then this proves that what they say is all -- not in part -- nonsense, and also proves that the person they write about never existed.

There are a very large number of fallacies in that type of argument, don't you see? It's a subset of "I can debunk x, therefore whatever I choose to assert instead is true". But we don't believe in debunking as a methodology these days -- at least, I don't.

Not a fact, but either a conclusion or a prejudice.

I am unable even to classify this statement, since it doesn't fit in any manner with the argument.

Well, all of them appear to me to suggest rather strongly that you are rationalising a conclusion arrived at in advance. Your conclusion doesn't logically follow from any of them, even if they were all true.

I hope that helps.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

jakejonesiv

There is no doubt that Jesus as portrayed in the gospels is fictional.

Jake Jones IV

Ted Hoffman

Ultimately, all copies derive from the originals. Copying was a way of sharing and transmission.
Even the ends of some, like Mark, are unknown. It doesn't prove that Christ did not exist. It just proves that the author is not indicated.
Even if so, that does not mean Christ did not exist. It just means some of the authors wanted to link their writings to the OT to appeal to their readers.
So if one is correct Christ existed?
True. Neither is it likely for Apollonius - that doesn't mean he (Apollonius) did not exist.
See above on Apollonius.
He could have been apotheosized to Christ after his death. This has been done to many historical persons: being deified after death.
Says who?
We can chalk that down to poor memory. In any case, the buggers never maintained diaries.
They were probably having dinner when Christ was arrested and frogmarched to the streets and so they also got info from eyewitnesses.
They most certainly are not credible. That does not mean that Christ never existed. We just have to trim off the appendages that result from their wild imaginings.
So the buggers weren't thorough. This tells us more about those who were involved than about the historicity of Jesus.

More Please.

aa5874

Jakejonesiv, may I refer you to Matthew 16:13-14, '.....he (Jesus) asked his disciples, saying, 'Whom do men say say that I, the Son of man, am?
'And they said, Some say that thou art John the Baptist: some Elias, and others Jeremias, or one of the prophets.'

So we see Jesus, according to the unknown authors, refering to himself as the Son of man, not as Jesus, the name he was given at birth. The people do not call him the Christ.

Now, we go to Matthew 16:15-17, ' He saith unto them (the disciples), 'But whom say ye that I am?
And Simon Peter answered and said, 'Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God'.
17:And Jesus answered and said unto him, 'Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona:for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven'.

According the author of Matthew, Peter gets a revelation from God and tells Jesus, for the first time, that He indeed is the Christ. Jesus, in v.18, then declares on the spot that He will build His Church upon this rock, Peter.

However, something strange happens, Jesus does not want anyone to know He is the Christ. Matthew 16:20, Then charged he (Jesus) he his disciples that they should tell no man that he was Jesus the Christ

From Matthew ch1 to ch 16, no-one knows that Jesus is the Christ and his disciples are warned not divulge this information to anyone and Peter, the fisrt Pope of the Roman Catholic Church is bestowed with special honors. But, the words of Jesus have a fatal flaw, God is not known to exist, so God could not have revealed anything to Peter. The first Pope of the RCC, the 'rock', Simon Peter Barjona is honored through fallacies.

Now, we go to the trial and crucifixion, in the book called Matthew 26:63-64, 'But Jesus held his peace. And the high priest answered and said unto him, I adjure thee by the living God, that thou tell us whether thou be the Christ, the Son of God.
And Jesus said unto him, Thou hast said: nevertheless I say unto you, Hereafter ye shall see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven'.
And Matthew 27:11, 'And Jesus stood before the govenor: and the govenor asked him, saying, Art thou the King of the Jews? And Jesus say unto him, Thou sayest'.

So, here we have a person introduced in the book called Matthew as Jesus Christ, whose birth was mistaken to be prophetic, his time in Egypt erroneously considered to be predicted, all the miraculous events appear to be false,not known as the Christ, except his disciples through a false revelation, and who died never admitting publicly that He was indeed the Christ.

The unknown author of Matthew shows clearly that no living person ever answered to the name Jesus Christ in public, 2000 years ago.

But, we have a serious problem, the unknown author of John does not agree with Matthew, he describes a different Jesus.

jakejonesiv

There are no extant autographs before the third century. This is 100 to 150 years after the presumed writing, a period that encompasses the theologically volatile second century. The proto-orthodox had means, motive, and opportunity to change the texts in their battles with the so-called heretics. It is extremely naïve to assume that what we have today is the original version.


About the "other ancient texts" card. If you have in mind any other ancient texts that are as clearly religously biased in nature as the NT, then these would also be considered non-histortical.


Matthew, Mark, and John are pseudononymous works; the alleged authors are not named in the text. Justin in the mid second century knew gospel material as the generic “Memoirs.” The four gospels were unknown by name before about 180 CE when Irenaeus named them along with ludicrous reasons for why there were four.
This is where someone usually brings up Papias.
We do not possess any works by Papias, only odd quotations by other writers. The "tradition" that
Mark gained his information from Peter is apocryphal.
The Eusebius-Papias-Prester John-Mark-Peter connection is heresay. (Euseb., Eccl. Hist. iii. 39.) . A chain is no stronger than it’s weakest link, and all we have here are a series of weak links.

"Since we have no text of Papias at all and no manuscript of Irenaeus
as old as Eusebius, it becomes reasonable to treat the passages
(concerning the authorship of Mark J.A.) we have quoted from Papias
and Ireneus as no older than Eusebius's _Eccelsiastical History_. For
us, they are no more than apologetic garnishes to that fourth-century
treatsie and may be no older." _The Incredible Shrinking Son of
Man_, Robert M. Price, Prometheus, 2003, page 38.

Roger, did you not note that aa wrote that “The birth of Jesus Christ is false in either Matthew or Luke.” I don’t know what you thought you read. Matthew and Luke are contradictory not only on the vain genealogies but many other details. Aa’s statement is actually about as mild and non controversial as can be made.

Please slow down and read what aa actually wrote. He said the miracles (healing and raising the dead) are not likely. This is an eminently rational statement. It leaves room for some types of healing. But this “raising of the dead” business, that is unlikely in the extreme. Such claims can hardly be proved from nearly 2000 year old manuscripts. Occam’s razor, Roger. I think that here you are the one considering conclusions as facts.

If the fulfillment of prophecy is considered to be a supernatural action, then it is not amenable to historical inquiry. The alternative of “prophecy historicized” is preferred.

Here aa does make an error in fact, if go by what is written in the gospels as we have them today. But again, in this particular post, aa is arguing that Jesus Christ is fictional. That is not the same as arguing that Jesus did not exist. I agree that Gospel Jesus is an impossible construct, a Frankenstein made out of disparate parts. Could there be a historic Jesus lurking somewhere in the sources? Sure, in fact there were probably several historic persons interweaved in with the myth, legend, and literary precedents. But Gospel Jesus is a fiction.

Again, the argument presented in this particular post by aa is not that Jesus never existed, but that Jesus Christ is fictional. He may well believe that Jesus never existed, I am resticting my comments to this one post.

The problem Roger, is that almost every event in the alleged life of Jesus Christ can be shown to have origin in Josephus, prophesy historicized, midrash (loosely defined) of the Jewish scriptures, and other literary works.

The details of the crucifixtion did not come from the memory of any witnesses, but were derived from Psalm 22, with a few details created from other texts. Oral tradition just does not apply
in the most key event in the career of the alleged historical Jesus. Nor does the beginning of the gospel, with Jesus' temptation in the wilderness a rewrite of 1 Kings 19. The entire gospel story is
rendered as not credible, and arguments based on the false assumption that they record historical events have no force.

This speaks to the credibility of the NT texts as historical documents.

I think perhaps that you are rationalizing that reliable historical data can be gleaned from religious documents that routinely report incredible events as common place (resurrections, walking on water, Jesus wafting away into the sky, dead saints coming out of their graves and parading around, etc). These incredibly naïve reports discredits whatever credibility may be claimed for the texts as a whole.

Jake Jones IV

Solo

I would let it stand, since we have no way of confirming what was ultimately in the originals.

I think aa.... indicates this is a step in his logical reasoning. He does not make conclusion on the basis of a single statement


ditto

Good question. Logically one cannot reason simply from the discrepances in the accounts that neither is true.

Correct. A historical figure of Juro Janosik was executed in Liptovsky Sv. Mikulas, Slovakia on March 16, 1713. Although much of his biography is known and historically recorded (see a good summary http://www.iarelative.com/history/janosik.htm ), legends of his supernatural powers and feats continued to circulate in the Slovak Tatras. Like Robin Hood, he assumed the mantle of the popular avenger of the poor, and he had a number of imitators. He was believed to have supernatural powers but was betrayed ( http://www.kresy.co.uk/janosik.html ).
His ghost was long believed to persecute the unjust oppressors of the poor highlanders.

There is a historical record of Janosik's granted request to dance under the gallows.


see above: "Janosik"

...and is it relevant ?

I would say that the later generations of worshippers wanted (needed, were persuaded) to believe that the miraculous things that were originally "a secret lingo" of the first followers, actually happened in reality.

For example, if we accept that the original set of beliefs in communing with "resurrected Jesus" (in HJ's own understanding of resurrection) through the Spirit, related to what today is medically described as manic excitement, then the miracles quickly disappear. Example: highly excited manics are notoriously uninterested in feeding themselves. So being, with "Jesus" one did not need to eat much. In fact, if you gathered 4,000 people with "Jesus" he, the tradition maintained, could feed them with 7 loaves and a few little fishes. If you had 5,000, he actually needed only 5 loaves and 2 fishes to sate them ....See the trick ? It's not really that complicated, is it ?. It is ? Well then, look at the appetite of Jesus wrestling with the devil in the desert !

Amen.

Jiri

aa5874

Ted Hoffman, you do not show that Jesus Christ existed by saying everything I say is false. You have got to put your information on the boards, so I can read it. State your position, and whatever source of information and lay down your argument.

I want to get info. Is it your position that Jesus Christ existed because the Bible says so?

jakejonesiv

You are on your own from now on.

Jake Jones

P.S. Ted Hofmann is not a fundie.

No Robots

Wanting to know something about Christ while dismissing mysticism as fluff is like wanting to know something about Mozart while dismissing classical music as elitist crap.