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I lean that way, though not with great enthusiasm. It's a pointless side show IMO. My lack of belief in Fabulist Miracle Working God Man Jesus isn't related to or dependent on disbelieving in Historical Jesus as a basis for same. I've just grown increasingly unimpressed with the historicity of much of the NT figures and narratives and less trustful of the scholarly consensus on the dating of the NT books, etc.
I do not think it is a pointless side show, it is simply doing history. It is when it is used as an agenda (if it is), or when it is one of the more bizarre theories, such as Atwill's.
For me, if there was a historical Jesus, he is lost behind all the mythology.
So your claim is what? That since Jesus wasn't buried (thrown in a pit) that this somehow proves that Jesus was a myth? What kind of 'proof is that'? Many Jewish families were able to bury their dead in a tomb carved out of soft rock on the side of a hill. Nothing unusual about that. And that Joseph of Arimathea was willing to have Jesus buried in his tomb which was NOT a holy sepulcher . . .it was a tomb, is certainly plausible. And were all or most of the mythical characters you mentioned entombed in a tomb carved out of rock? Do you have original source material to prove that?
Furthermore, the disciples, which you claim didn't exist, but did, didn't invent a myth based on earlier mythical heroes or gods. Historians, including critical historians who do Jesus studies recognize that the disciples really believed they saw the risen Jesus.
Take a look at my list again:
Mother is a royal virgin(Jesus' mother Mary was a descendant of David)
Father is a king
Father often a near relative to mother (Joseph was 2nd cousin to Mary)
Unusual conception (Jesus' mother, Mary impregnated by the Holy Spirit)
Hero reputed to be son of god(Jesus was the son of God)
Attempt to kill hero as an infant, often by father or maternal grandfather (Herod tried to kill Jesus when he was a baby)
Hero spirited away as a child (Jesus, Mary and Joseph flee to Egypt)
Reared by foster parents in a far country (Jesus reared in Egypt until Herod dies)
No details of childhood (Jesus' childhood is a complete blank)
Returns or goes to future kingdom (Jesus goes to temple and proclaims himself fulfillment of Isaiah prophecy)
Is victor over king, giant, dragon or wild beast (Jesus defeats Satan)
Marries a princess (often daughter of predecessor)
Becomes king (“This is Jesus, King of the Jews”)
For a time he reigns uneventfully
He prescribes laws (Jesus' teachings on how one should live)
Later loses favor with gods or his subjects (Jews deliver Jesus up to be crucified)
Driven from throne and city
Meets with mysterious death (Jesus, declared by Pilate to be innocent, is still crucified)
Often at the top of a hill (Jesus on Golgatha)
His children, if any, do not succeedhim
His body is not buried (Jesus not thrown in a pit as per custom)
Has one or more holy sepulchers or tombs (Jesus buried in Joseph of Arimathea's tomb)
Do you see me making a claim based on one solitary point? My claim that the Jesus of the gospels is a myth is based on 17 of these points. When Jesus shares 17 common traits with a dozen other mythical dying-rising god-men then it has to be more than a coincidence:
Oedipus (22) Krishna (21), Moses (20), Romulus (19), Perseus (18), Jesus (18), Heracles (17), Buddha (15), Zeus (14), Samson (13), Achilles (10), Odysseus (8)
Put that together with the fact that Jesus simply doesn't appear in the secular historical record the way other historical figures do. Christians try to defend Jesus' lack of historical evidence by claiming there's no historical evidence for Alexander the Great but that is simply not true. We have coins with Alexander's face on them:
To analyze how Jesus got invented is a massive cultural and historical endeavor involving thousands of details, some major like the destruction of Jerusalem and loss of the sacrificial altar in the Temple and some minor like the Hellenization of the Jewish religion during the 1st century and the emergence of the Gnostics and Essenes while under Roman rule. These thousands of details intersected with each other in innumerable ways that can nevertheless be laid out in several volumes for someone who's willing to undertake the job. I have read enough of the period to get a good idea of how the Jesus myth came about and that is why I can be confident that the Jesus of the gospels never existed.
As for the apostles there not a single secular historical record that mentions them. 1st Clement only mentions Peter and Paul in passing. Strange that the earliest document that can be traced to the 1st century says nothing about any of the other apostles by name. Within the church hierarchy I'm sure presbyters were passing around documents to each other mentioning Peter and Paul though none have survived, but outside of the church nothing is known of them. National Geographic has an interesting article on someone's quest for the apostles but it is behind a paywall.
I will ask readers to notice one critical detail about Jesus and I want readers to carefully consider this: in the early gospels Jesus NEVER makes the demand that people need to believe in him in order to be saved. It is only at the very last gospel of John that this demand finally comes out. If belief in Jesus was critical to one's salvation wouldn't Jesus have insisted on this from the very start in Mark? Why wait until John unless the growth of the Jesus legend was an organic thing that evolved over decades of ebbs and flows of historical development of Christianity.
Last edited by thrillobyte; 10-17-2022 at 09:34 AM..
The fruit from the tree of life produces living seed. The sin produced dying seed inside mankind.
When Adam chose to blame God and the Woman, rather than own it himself, he was given over to the fruit he chose to partake of and was put out of the Garden of Eden.
The heritage that Adam passed on produces dying seed.
You can look to the dying seed that man produces or the eternal living seed that God shares and has given.
Mother is a royal virgin(Jesus' mother Mary was a descendant of David)
Father is a king
Father often a near relative to mother (Joseph was 2nd cousin to Mary)
Unusual conception (Jesus' mother, Mary impregnated by the Holy Spirit)
Hero reputed to be son of god(Jesus was the son of God)
Attempt to kill hero as an infant, often by father or maternal grandfather (Herod tried to kill Jesus when he was a baby)
Hero spirited away as a child (Jesus, Mary and Joseph flee to Egypt)
Reared by foster parents in a far country (Jesus reared in Egypt until Herod dies)
No details of childhood (Jesus' childhood is a complete blank)
Returns or goes to future kingdom (Jesus goes to temple and proclaims himself fulfillment of Isaiah prophecy)
Is victor over king, giant, dragon or wild beast (Jesus defeats Satan)
Marries a princess (often daughter of predecessor)
Becomes king (“This is Jesus, King of the Jews”)
For a time he reigns uneventfully
He prescribes laws (Jesus' teachings on how one should live)
Later loses favor with gods or his subjects (Jews deliver Jesus up to be crucified)
Driven from throne and city
Meets with mysterious death (Jesus, declared by Pilate to be innocent, is still crucified)
Often at the top of a hill (Jesus on Golgatha)
His children, if any, do not succeedhim
His body is not buried (Jesus not thrown in a pit as per custom)
Has one or more holy sepulchers or tombs (Jesus buried in Joseph of Arimathea's tomb)
Do you see me making a claim based on one solitary point? My claim that the Jesus of the gospels is a myth is based on 17 of these points. When Jesus shares 17 common traits with a dozen other mythical dying-rising god-men then it has to be more than a coincidence:
Oedipus (22) Krishna (21), Moses (20), Romulus (19), Perseus (18), Jesus (18), Heracles (17), Buddha (15), Zeus (14), Samson (13), Achilles (10), Odysseus (8)
Put that together with the fact that Jesus simply doesn't appear in the secular historical record the way other historical figures do. Christians try to defend Jesus' lack of historical evidence by claiming there's no historical evidence for Alexander the Great but that is simply not true. We have coins with Alexander's face on them:
To analyze how Jesus got invented is a massive cultural and historical endeavor involving thousands of details, some major like the destruction of Jerusalem and loss of the sacrificial altar in the Temple and some minor like the Hellenization of the Jewish religion during the 1st century and the emergence of the Gnostics and Essenes while under Roman rule. These thousands of details intersected with each other in innumerable ways that can nevertheless be laid out in several volumes for someone who's willing to undertake the job. I have read enough of the period to get a good idea of how the Jesus myth came about and that is why I can be confident that the Jesus of the gospels never existed.
As for the apostles there not a single secular historical record that mentions them. 1st Clement only mentions Peter and Paul in passing. Strange that the earliest document that can be traced to the 1st century says nothing about any of the other apostles by name. Within the church hierarchy I'm sure presbyters were passing around documents to each other mentioning Peter and Paul though none have survived, but outside of the church nothing is known of them. National Geographic has an interesting article on someone's quest for the apostles but it is behind a paywall.
I will ask readers to notice one critical detail about Jesus and I want readers to carefully consider this: in the early gospels Jesus NEVER makes the demand that people need to believe in him in order to be saved. It is only at the very last gospel of John that this demand finally comes out. If belief in Jesus was critical to one's salvation wouldn't Jesus have insisted on this from the very start in Mark? Why wait until John unless the growth of the Jesus legend was an organic thing that evolved over decades of ebbs and flows of historical development of Christianity.
Well...since your argument assumes a literal Bible, and thus a Omnimax Powered God Entity that knows everything and can do anything....that has thoughts and ways that are above ours...we should just defer to God while recognizing our lower/inferior understanding, as commanded.
All that in your list (or anything else) is easy for God to accomplish...but impossible for you/mortals to comprehend.
That is where you have always been messing up.
I do not think it is a pointless side show, it is simply doing history. It is when it is used as an agenda (if it is), or when it is one of the more bizarre theories, such as Atwill's.
For me, if there was a historical Jesus, he is lost behind all the mythology.
Well it's an enjoyable topic to discuss but it has no bearing on my unbelief either way. I suppose that a believer "needs" Jesus to be historical whereas I don't "need" him to be ahistorical. But there's not enough evidence either way, just circumstantial and indirect evidence that is going to look different to people with different assumptions and needs. Bible Jesus COULD be based on a discrete historical individual. If it is, it's no help in validating the Amazing Miracle-Working God-Man (tm) other than foreclosing that he's TOTALLY made up in every respect.
So what ends up happening is we get bogged down in arguing history (and historians dealing in ancient history, compared to scientists, have a pretty low bar to what is accepted consensus -- almost "what is the least unlikely explanation, even if not conclusively evidenced"). I am more inclined to throw theists a bone and let them have their historical Jesus for the sake of argument so that we can actually focus on something. But I am a mythicist and do get drawn into these discussions in spite of myself sometimes.
Well...since your argument assumes a literal Bible, and thus a Omnimax Powered God Entity that knows everything and can do anything....that has thoughts and ways that are above ours...we should just defer to God while recognizing our lower/inferior understanding, as commanded.
All that in your list (or anything else) is easy for God to accomplish...but impossible for you/mortals to comprehend.
That is where you have always been messing up.
It would not be logical for God to deliberately set up Jesus to look like a dozen or more other mythical men-gods. If you're going to use the argument that God's ways are higher than ours then go ahead, but the fact that more and more Christians leave Jesus for the very reasons I describe in the OP means that God is deliberately shooting himself in the foot if he chooses to drive people away rather than find a way to bring them to Jesus.
Well it's an enjoyable topic to discuss but it has no bearing on my unbelief either way. I suppose that a believer "needs" Jesus to be historical whereas I don't "need" him to be ahistorical. But there's not enough evidence either way, just circumstantial and indirect evidence that is going to look different to people with different assumptions and needs. Bible Jesus COULD be based on a discrete historical individual. If it is, it's no help in validating the Amazing Miracle-Working God-Man (tm) other than foreclosing that he's TOTALLY made up in every respect.
So what ends up happening is we get bogged down in arguing history (and historians dealing in ancient history, compared to scientists, have a pretty low bar to what is accepted consensus -- almost "what is the least unlikely explanation, even if not conclusively evidenced"). I am more inclined to throw theists a bone and let them have their historical Jesus for the sake of argument so that we can actually focus on something. But I am a mythicist and do get drawn into these discussions in spite of myself sometimes.
If Christians want to carry a 350-lb millstone named Jesus around their neck that's certainly their choice. I certainly wouldn't want to if I had this info that Jesus was nothing but a made-up myth.
It would not be logical for God to deliberately set up Jesus to look like a dozen or more other mythical men-gods. If you're going to use the argument that God's ways are higher than ours then go ahead, but the fact that more and more Christians leave Jesus for the very reasons I describe in the OP means that God is deliberately shooting himself in the foot if he chooses to drive people away rather than find a way to bring them to Jesus.
There you go again...judging God, with your inferior thoughts & ways and trying to declare what "would not be logical for God to do".
But you have never explained, on what basis you have determined that you would be in any way qualified to render any kind of critique of a Entity that had the ability and power to create the Universe?
Oh, and, Abrahamic Religion is growing in this world.
It would not be logical for God to deliberately set up Jesus to look like a dozen or more other mythical men-gods. If you're going to use the argument that God's ways are higher than ours then go ahead, but the fact that more and more Christians leave Jesus for the very reasons I describe in the OP means that God is deliberately shooting himself in the foot if he chooses to drive people away rather than find a way to bring them to Jesus.
What you don't seem to understand is that the purpose of mythology in human history has always been to express some deeper idea about humanity, spirituality, and the universe.
It's not that Jesus was "deliberately set up" to look like anything. Jesus is what He is. The ancients understood things about humanity and the universe that were expressed in their various mythologies. They understood that certain things would be fitting of divinity, just as certain things are fitting of man. Jesus was the fulfillment of these mythologies. He became the "True Myth" as C.S. Lewis expressed it in his essay, Myth Became Fact.
Jesus was the fulfillment of these mythologies. He became the "True Myth" as C.S. Lewis expressed it in his essay, Myth Became Fact.
Thank you so much for these links...to me CS Lewis was brilliant.
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