Welcome to City-Data.com Forum!
U.S. CitiesCity-Data Forum Index
Go Back   City-Data Forum > General Forums > Religion and Spirituality
 [Register]
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
View detailed profile (Advanced) or search
site with Google Custom Search

Search Forums  (Advanced)
 
Old 10-30-2022, 08:49 AM
 
18,203 posts, read 16,807,198 times
Reputation: 7465

Advertisements

Quote:
Originally Posted by mordant View Post
The basic problem IMO is the difference between the methodology and standards of historians, and that of scientists. All historians care about is the "least unlikely" explanation for which no contrary evidence currently can be found. This is fine when we are arguing about some nuanced aspect of a historical figure concerning which there are multiple independent sources, including both supporters and detractors. When it comes to Jesus, you have a perfect storm however: there is very little else but his own fan fiction to go by -- accounts that are clearly fabulist and not entirely self-consistent -- and you have a third of the planet at least culturally invested in the unexamined notion that these accounts are in any way factual. As a historian, your salary may directly or indirectly depend on people who assume some degree of truth to these accounts.

Science really can't say much about all this other than that it is impossible to raise the dead and walk on water, so many aspects of the Jesus mythos are embellishments of reality at best, perhaps well-intentioned campfire stories.

The question Thrill has chosen to take up is whether some part of all this is real, and the necessary if insufficient basis for Christianity is that Jesus existed in history, so he's trying to go after that. I would argue that we can't know this with any certainty based on the available evidence, and anyway it is irrelevant to the alleged claims of god on man today. If Jesus, The Miracle-Working God-Man, was, or was "based on" a singular, real, historical person, is irrelevant because THAT miracle-working Jesus simply did not exist and ALL evidence points away from it, given an understanding of what "evidence" actually entails.

As to the notion that this works in reverse -- that strikes me as "apples and oranges". If we can't disprove Historical Jesus then we can't prove him either, but that is a separate question from whether Christianity is some sort of evidence from the opposite direction, from THIS end of history. If we could point to Christians and say in some truly unique way, "behold, how they love one another" (and here I must simply say, LOL) then we could perhaps begin to argue backwards, showing how Christianity has elevated civilization, made life better for billions, how Christian theocracies are models of human rights and dignity, and how secular democracies are cesspools of human suffering. Then we might start to think, hm, there might be something to all this, and maybe this Jesus fellow even actually DID exist.

But alas, the track record of Christianity is checkered at best. It has built soaring cathedrals (with generations of commoner labor) and it has also given us the Inquisition. It has been generally opposed to scientific progress and knowledge (heliocentrism, Gallileo, you name it, right up to modern Young Earth Creationism). There is zero evidence that the marriage of church and state has improved the rule of law, human rights, or freedom of conscience. Quite the opposite.

That's not to deny that individual Christians and particular churches provide true belonging and refuge and support for people. It's just to suggest that good people will do good things, despite a fundamentally bad ideology.

This is a terrific post, mordent. I think you're the ONLY one in here who gets it.



Important points from your post:


If I can't prove the gospels Jesus was mythical, then Mink and Michael Way and EscMike and the rest of Jesus' devoted fan club cannot prove he was real, though Christians have been trying to do just that for centuries before Jesus mythicism even came around.


Take away the Bible, simply a collection of fan fiction, and a Christian has absolutely nothing historical to prove Jesus either as a historic man or the gospel Jesus. Sure, they trot out Tacitus and Suetonius and Pliny the Elder but these men NEVER mention "Jesus Christ" they only refer to a group of followers who call themselves "Christians" after some unknown unnamed individual. "Christian" means "followers of the Anointed One" and that could be any one of a hundred different people from the period, since Yeshua bar Joseph in Israel at that time was the Jewish equivalent of our John Smith.



Despite all the evidence pointing to the gospel of Jesus being a myth, roughly 1/3 of the planet call themselves Christians even though 90% of them have never read the Bible and couldn't quote you a single verse in the Bible if you offered them the Powerball winnings. "Christian" is just a cultural tag to them to separate themselves from the Islamists and Hindus, that's all.



The core of my contention is this: how do we know the gospel Jesus was a myth?


Simple, apart from the fact there isn't a single credible entry bearing his name in the entire historical record of the first century when people would have known him or at least mention some of these "fabulist" miracles he supposedly performed, to use your word,


Apart from the blank historical record Jesus left behind, it stands to reason that a Christian god who invested himself so heavily in setting up this elaborate plan of salvation from time immemorial to send his only son into the world to die for mankind would not sabotage his own plan so badly by leaving nothing behind to prove to the world that his son was a real person.


That is simple logic: a God does NOT shoot himself in the foot by setting up a plan for salvation so riddled with holes and flaws that it actually drives people away from Jesus rather than draws them to him.



And the best Gldn and others can do is say that Christianity is spreading in the world. Sure it is, among the dumb and uneducated and gullible in 3rd World countries. Once these countries get an education like in 1st World countries like North America and Europe then Christianity declines dramatically as we are witnessing here in the US--from 90% to a projected 35% within a span of a meager 100 years. At that rate of decline how long is it before Christianity is at effective 0? And this Jesus of theirs is doing absolutely nothing to stop it.


That's not a plan of salvation, that's a plan of annihilation.

Last edited by thrillobyte; 10-30-2022 at 09:31 AM..
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message

 
Old 10-30-2022, 09:18 AM
 
Location: Sun City West, Arizona
50,358 posts, read 23,944,182 times
Reputation: 32637
Quote:
Originally Posted by mordant View Post
The basic problem IMO is the difference between the methodology and standards of historians, and that of scientists. All historians care about is the "least unlikely" explanation for which no contrary evidence currently can be found. This is fine when we are arguing about some nuanced aspect of a historical figure concerning which there are multiple independent sources, including both supporters and detractors. When it comes to Jesus, you have a perfect storm however: there is very little else but his own fan fiction to go by -- accounts that are clearly fabulist and not entirely self-consistent -- and you have a third of the planet at least culturally invested in the unexamined notion that these accounts are in any way factual. As a historian, your salary may directly or indirectly depend on people who assume some degree of truth to these accounts.

Science really can't say much about all this other than that it is impossible to raise the dead and walk on water, so many aspects of the Jesus mythos are embellishments of reality at best, perhaps well-intentioned campfire stories.

The question Thrill has chosen to take up is whether some part of all this is real, and the necessary if insufficient basis for Christianity is that Jesus existed in history, so he's trying to go after that. I would argue that we can't know this with any certainty based on the available evidence, and anyway it is irrelevant to the alleged claims of god on man today. If Jesus, The Miracle-Working God-Man, was, or was "based on" a singular, real, historical person, is irrelevant because THAT miracle-working Jesus simply did not exist and ALL evidence points away from it, given an understanding of what "evidence" actually entails.

As to the notion that this works in reverse -- that strikes me as "apples and oranges". If we can't disprove Historical Jesus then we can't prove him either, but that is a separate question from whether Christianity is some sort of evidence from the opposite direction, from THIS end of history. If we could point to Christians and say in some truly unique way, "behold, how they love one another" (and here I must simply say, LOL) then we could perhaps begin to argue backwards, showing how Christianity has elevated civilization, made life better for billions, how Christian theocracies are models of human rights and dignity, and how secular democracies are cesspools of human suffering. Then we might start to think, hm, there might be something to all this, and maybe this Jesus fellow even actually DID exist.

But alas, the track record of Christianity is checkered at best. It has built soaring cathedrals (with generations of commoner labor) and it has also given us the Inquisition. It has been generally opposed to scientific progress and knowledge (heliocentrism, Gallileo, you name it, right up to modern Young Earth Creationism). There is zero evidence that the marriage of church and state has improved the rule of law, human rights, or freedom of conscience. Quite the opposite.

That's not to deny that individual Christians and particular churches provide true belonging and refuge and support for people. It's just to suggest that good people will do good things, despite a fundamentally bad ideology.
That's one of the most well-written posts I've ever seen on this forum.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 10-30-2022, 09:50 AM
 
4,638 posts, read 1,766,096 times
Reputation: 6415
Quote:
Originally Posted by thrillobyte View Post
I guess not.
You're right. I'm not. This whole thing has got you so emotionally twisted up, that you don't just stick to ONE issue. You often end up throwing in the whole 'kitchen sink', and I simply don't have the time to address everything you write.

I may sign into CD daily and stay signed in for quite a while, but that doesn't mean that I'm sitting in front of my computer the entire time I'm signed in, just waiting to address the next 'novella' that thrill posts.

Having said that, I AM considering responding to Mordant's post, depending on how much time I'll have to do so. As it stands right now, his post has only one area that I'd address. But I'm debating if I address it, that I would be hijacking this thread so...I may just let it go.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 10-30-2022, 10:04 AM
 
18,203 posts, read 16,807,198 times
Reputation: 7465
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mink57 View Post
You're right. I'm not. This whole thing has got you so emotionally twisted up, that you don't just stick to ONE issue. You often end up throwing in the whole 'kitchen sink', and I simply don't have the time to address everything you write.

I may sign into CD daily and stay signed in for quite a while, but that doesn't mean that I'm sitting in front of my computer the entire time I'm signed in, just waiting to address the next 'novella' that thrill posts.

Having said that, I AM considering responding to Mordant's post, depending on how much time I'll have to do so. As it stands right now, his post has only one area that I'd address. But I'm debating if I address it, that I would be hijacking this thread so...I may just let it go.

It's okay, Mink, I can do it without you like in post #585.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 10-30-2022, 10:06 AM
 
Location: Germany
16,609 posts, read 4,896,591 times
Reputation: 2073
Quote:
Originally Posted by thrillobyte View Post
Don't forget the authentic letters of Paul in complete form don't show up until the Codex Sinaiticus sometime in the 4th century, almost 300 years after they were purportedly written. That was plenty of time to add and subtract from the texts by the church--and we know for a fact tampering of the texts was rampant through the first few hundred years of the early church when they were trying to settle on what dogmas they wanted for their new religion.
We know they have been tampered with, and sections ignored. But if they had mentioned the destruction of the temple, I am sure the later Christians would have left that part of the text in.

Quote:
Originally Posted by thrillobyte View Post
Additionally, historians aren't sure Hebrews was written by Paul--they just attribute to him for lack of anyone better to attribute it to.
That is why I said Hebrews AND Paul. They are independent of each other, which we know because Hebrews is well structured and the Greek is of a higher quality, while Paul is more passionate in his letters.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 10-30-2022, 11:47 AM
 
18,203 posts, read 16,807,198 times
Reputation: 7465
Quote:
Originally Posted by Harry Diogenes View Post
We know they have been tampered with, and sections ignored. But if they had mentioned the destruction of the temple, I am sure the later Christians would have left that part of the text in.

Since we have no copies of the epistles until about 200 CE in small fragments, secular Biblical scholars are forced to make their best educated guesses about when the epistles came about. They are forced to take as "gospel" the idea that Paul was persecuting Christians shortly after Christ's crucifixion and shortly after that his conversion on the road to Damascus occurred, even though historians have nothing in the historic record to base these assumptions on.



With nothing in the historic record to go on, historians therefore are forced to conclude the epistles don't mention the destruction of the temple and so that would place them before 70 CE. But the epistles are theological, not historical so there's no real reason to even mention the destruction of the temple whether they were written before or after its destruction.



The idea that it was the destruction of the temple that brought about the creation of Christianity is not anything that could be put into words during that time obviously because this was the result of thousands of macro and micro events occurring over a period of at least three centuries leading up to the Council of Nicaea when the persona of the avatar god Jesus was finally formally recognized as being a real person rather than a celestial one as Paul had advocated in his epistles. We only see how the destruction of the temple in 70 CE led to the creation of Jesus as a one-time sacrifice replacing the annual sacrifices in the temple--we only see this 2000 years later through the lens of time passed and being able to piece together all these thousands of large and small events. In those days the thought NEVER would have occurred to anyone. It's like an astronaut from space being able to look down on earth and see a vast landscape of 12 thousand miles while people on the ground cannot see more than a mile ahead of them on a clear day.


Now check this out: the ONLY place in the epistles where it even hints that Jesus' sacrifice replaces the temple sacrifice is in Hebrews 7:27


27 He has no need, like those high priests, to offer sacrifices daily, first for his own sins and then for those of the people, since he did this once for all when he offered up himself.



Since Hebrews is not one of the authentic Pauline epistles and we have no idea who the author of Hebrews was and because Paul's epistles come so close to the actual temple destruction 5 years later, it's perfectly conceivable that Hebrews was written sometime AFTER the temple's destruction when Jews were trying to make some sense out of how God could have allowed his own temple to be destroyed. Somewhere in all this it's not inconceivable that the idea started to circulate,



"Well, maybe Yahweh doesn't want us offering animals anymore. But then what are we going to sacrifice if not animals? Well, what about a man? Since we can't sacrifice a man every year especially because we have no holy of holies anymore, this man would have to be a one-time sacrifice that would cover sins forever. But a natural man couldn't possibly be sufficient for something that important. Well then how about a son of God being sacrificed for our sins--just one time. I mean even the pagans had sons of gods, why can't we?"


And so over a period of decades one could envision how this idea of a one-time sacrifice for Jews' sins and then eventually for all men's sins could evolve that would solve the problem of no more temple to make annual animal offerings for sins. It's called evolution and it fits perfectly with how see see events unfolding in Israel during that time.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 10-30-2022, 11:54 PM
 
63,494 posts, read 39,783,865 times
Reputation: 7805
Quote:
Originally Posted by mordant View Post
The basic problem IMO is the difference between the methodology and standards of historians, and that of scientists. All historians care about is the "least unlikely" explanation for which no contrary evidence currently can be found. This is fine when we are arguing about some nuanced aspect of a historical figure concerning which there are multiple independent sources, including both supporters and detractors. When it comes to Jesus, you have a perfect storm however: there is very little else but his own fan fiction to go by -- accounts that are clearly fabulist and not entirely self-consistent -- and you have a third of the planet at least culturally invested in the unexamined notion that these accounts are in any way factual. As a historian, your salary may directly or indirectly depend on people who assume some degree of truth to these accounts.

Science really can't say much about all this other than that it is impossible to raise the dead and walk on water, so many aspects of the Jesus mythos are embellishments of reality at best, perhaps well-intentioned campfire stories.

The question Thrill has chosen to take up is whether some part of all this is real, and the necessary if insufficient basis for Christianity is that Jesus existed in history, so he's trying to go after that. I would argue that we can't know this with any certainty based on the available evidence, and anyway it is irrelevant to the alleged claims of god on man today. If Jesus, The Miracle-Working God-Man, was, or was "based on" a singular, real, historical person, is irrelevant because THAT miracle-working Jesus simply did not exist and ALL evidence points away from it, given an understanding of what "evidence" actually entails.

As to the notion that this works in reverse -- that strikes me as "apples and oranges". If we can't disprove Historical Jesus then we can't prove him either, but that is a separate question from whether Christianity is some sort of evidence from the opposite direction, from THIS end of history. If we could point to Christians and say in some truly unique way, "behold, how they love one another" (and here I must simply say, LOL) then we could perhaps begin to argue backwards, showing how Christianity has elevated civilization, made life better for billions, how Christian theocracies are models of human rights and dignity, and how secular democracies are cesspools of human suffering. Then we might start to think, hm, there might be something to all this, and maybe this Jesus fellow even actually DID exist.

But alas, the track record of Christianity is checkered at best. It has built soaring cathedrals (with generations of commoner labor) and it has also given us the Inquisition. It has been generally opposed to scientific progress and knowledge (heliocentrism, Gallileo, you name it, right up to modern Young Earth Creationism). There is zero evidence that the marriage of church and state has improved the rule of law, human rights, or freedom of conscience. Quite the opposite.

That's not to deny that individual Christians and particular churches provide true belonging and refuge and support for people. It's just to suggest that good people will do good things, despite a fundamentally bad ideology.
I am so glad that you returned to the forum, mordant!!
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 10-31-2022, 04:19 AM
 
Location: Germany
16,609 posts, read 4,896,591 times
Reputation: 2073
Quote:
Originally Posted by thrillobyte View Post
Since we have no copies of the epistles until about 200 CE in small fragments, secular Biblical scholars are forced to make their best educated guesses about when the epistles came about. They are forced to take as "gospel" the idea that Paul was persecuting Christians shortly after Christ's crucifixion and shortly after that his conversion on the road to Damascus occurred, even though historians have nothing in the historic record to base these assumptions on.



With nothing in the historic record to go on, historians therefore are forced to conclude the epistles don't mention the destruction of the temple and so that would place them before 70 CE. But the epistles are theological, not historical so there's no real reason to even mention the destruction of the temple whether they were written before or after its destruction.
Except Paul mentions Aretas, which puts his conversion before 40 AD. And from Josephus, there are good reasons to argue this was around 35 to 37 AD. And using Paul's numbers in the Epistle to the Galatians, that work must have been written in the 50's AD.

Quote:
Originally Posted by thrillobyte View Post
Now check this out: the ONLY place in the epistles where it even hints that Jesus' sacrifice replaces the temple sacrifice is in Hebrews 7:27


27 He has no need, like those high priests, to offer sacrifices daily, first for his own sins and then for those of the people, since he did this once for all when he offered up himself.



Since Hebrews is not one of the authentic Pauline epistles and we have no idea who the author of Hebrews was and because Paul's epistles come so close to the actual temple destruction 5 years later, it's perfectly conceivable that Hebrews was written sometime AFTER the temple's destruction when Jews were trying to make some sense out of how God could have allowed his own temple to be destroyed. Somewhere in all this it's not inconceivable that the idea started to circulate,
Except there were several sects that wanted to replace Temple worship, including the Essenes.

Also, many Jews, including Christians, used older scripture (including much of what is now in the OT) to find alleged prophecies about events that had happened. Yet we find nothing like this in Paul, Hebrews, Clement in his Epistle, and several other NT epistles, such as 1 Peter.

That silence is expected if these texts were written before 70 AD, whereas all you have is maybe.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 10-31-2022, 07:47 AM
 
18,203 posts, read 16,807,198 times
Reputation: 7465
Quote:
Originally Posted by Derek41 View Post
Very good points.
The historical evidence for Jesus is there, and most Christians believe in his miracles, his claims of being “the chosen one” and his overall divinity. (there are after all a handful of Non-Trinitarian Christian groups too.)
I don’t necessarily believe the great flood of the Old Testament ever actually occurred, but that is another debate for another time.

Quote:
Originally Posted by thrillobyte View Post
Where? And don't say "the gospels" because I've already shown you most historians consider the gospels theological documents, not historical ones.


"Are the Gospels historically accurate?

The majority of New Testament scholars agree that the Gospels do NOT contain eyewitness accounts; but that they present the theologies of their communities rather than the testimony of eyewitnesses."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Histor...of_the_Gospels

Never heard back from Derek on that one. Not surprising. I guess even he is starting to get the message.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 10-31-2022, 08:37 AM
 
18,203 posts, read 16,807,198 times
Reputation: 7465
Quote:
Originally Posted by Harry Diogenes View Post
Except Paul mentions Aretas, which puts his conversion before 40 AD. And from Josephus, there are good reasons to argue this was around 35 to 37 AD. And using Paul's numbers in the Epistle to the Galatians, that work must have been written in the 50's AD.
I cannot dispute your assertion. With little to nothing in the way of documentation in that era all we have are "It's possible" "It's conceivable" and "Maybe". The epistles were in the hands of Christian clergy for at least 150 years before fragments start showing up. Scribes were making changes in the margins all the time. We have no idea what sorts of alterations were being made to them. So it's possible Paul wrote them in the 50's and it's possible the name "Aretas" was scribbled in by a scribe in 120 CE or 130 CE or 140 CE or pick you date. We simply don't know.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Harry Diogenes View Post
Except there were several sects that wanted to replace Temple worship, including the Essenes.

Also, many Jews, including Christians, used older scripture (including much of what is now in the OT) to find alleged prophecies about events that had happened. Yet we find nothing like this in Paul, Hebrews, Clement in his Epistle, and several other NT epistles, such as 1 Peter.

That silence is expected if these texts were written before 70 AD, whereas all you have is maybe.

My research on the Essenes turned up the "Pierced Messiah" text. They existed until the 1st century--that's up to 99 CE, long after the destruction of the temple--so again, who knows? Interesting tidbit about the Pierced Messiah text. Scholars are still in the dark about it. They thought, similar to the early 1st century copy of Mark fiasco that Daniel Wallace trumpeted in a debate with Bart Ehrman back circa 2012, that they had found evidence of an early reference to Jesus--but no, that blew up in their faces too. One line from the text translates:


And they put to death the leader of the community, the Branch of David. And the Prince of the Congregation, the Branch of David will kill him."


The “Pierced Messiah” Text—An Interpretation Evaporates


https://www.baslibrary.org/biblical-...review/18/4/23


https://jamestabor.com/wp-content/up...essiah-BAR.pdf


Quote:
Yet we find nothing like this in Paul
Don't we? Paul quotes the OT all the time. Maybe not reference to the the Temple, but as I said anything could have been done to these epistles before copies start showing up in the 4th century. They could have been and probably were edited at will to get the doctrine to exactly what the church leaders wanted them to say about Jesus. We simply don't know one way or the other.



You take an optimistic view, Harry. I say where's there's smoke there's fire, especially when you're dealing with people as unscrupulous as Church leaders who as I have shown would have and did lie through their teeth to deceive people into believing whatever they wanted the people to believe about Jesus.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.

Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.


Reply
Please update this thread with any new information or opinions. This open thread is still read by thousands of people, so we encourage all additional points of view.

Quick Reply
Message:

Over $104,000 in prizes was already given out to active posters on our forum and additional giveaways are planned!

Go Back   City-Data Forum > General Forums > Religion and Spirituality

All times are GMT -6.

© 2005-2024, Advameg, Inc. · Please obey Forum Rules · Terms of Use and Privacy Policy · Bug Bounty

City-Data.com - Contact Us - Archive 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37 - Top