Jesus Christ of the Gospels Never Existed. He's a Myth and I Can Prove It (Part 1). (protestants, Catholics)
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If you're obsessed with the idea that Jesus was a myth, then you should get outside and get some fresh air. Have a laugh. Pour a drink. Get a life. Your obsession only impacts and ruins your own life. Most of us here have a sense of humor, and have been chuckling at the fever and fervor of the self-deluded Anti-Jesus Myth-Buster.
I already said awhile back in this thread that if you want me to agree with you that he is a myth, then I'll go ahead and say you're right. You can have your victory. You can tally that on your feeble little chalkboard. It doesn't mean it's true, but if you need that to feel good about yourself, and make it through another day, then score your "win". Since you're stuck in the game, and a sore loser, I'll let you win (and get a good laugh in the process). LOL
Do you have any concept of how bitter your post sounds?
IDK that I agree with Erhman on that one, or at least as you're taking his meaning.
Harry Potter novels can be regarded as containing historical information by that logic, despite being 100% fantasy, because they reference London and aspects of British private boarding educational institutions and so forth. If we didn't have much better sources of such info, we could infer that many of those references are fairly accurate depictions of British life in the era of the book, but it would be hard, especially 2,000 years hence, to determine how much the author exaggerated certain things, or tweaked them to suit the fictional narrative, or simply got her research wrong. For example, there's been some debate over on the Christianity forum how familiar the gospel authors actually were with the geography of ancient Palestine, because their mention of Jesus going from point A to B via C sometimes don't make sense, kind of like going from Boston to Miami via Chicago. Or the mentioned distances are way off.
There is nothing in the gospels that informs us about aspects of history that can't be found elsewhere.
But your last sentence acknowledges that the Gospels can be taken as historical sources.
Quote:
We don't know more about the Roman Empire or the Jewish feast days or anything else I can think of because only the gospels attest to them. The ONLY thing the NT books uniquely inform us about is the life and ministry of Jesus and the very earliest days of the church. This makes them uncorroborated fan fiction as far as I'm concerned.
We do know that Pontius Pilate was actually the procurator during the time of Jesus because of a stele found somewhere that says so, and because of Tacitus referring to it. But Harry Potter novels reference real persons and locations too. So it doesn't mean all that much in terms of validating the NT.
I'd be more inclined to endorse that Jesus was at least based on a real person if there were a stele someplace mentioning him, or (for example) secular, no-skin-in-the-game corroborating accounts of the fantastic events surrounding the crucifixion and resurrection (darkness at noon, dead people resurrected, earthquakes, the inner veil of the temple being torn in two, etc).
My inclination is to say there's nothing much in the gospels inconsistent with historicity, IF you ignore all the fabulist accounts of miracles and so forth. But that is a big IF.
But you can isolate the historical information from the accounts of miracles and such. A. N. Sherwin-White (1911-1993) was a British academic and ancient historian. . .a Classicist Roman historian. He was Fellow and Tutor at St. John's College, Oxford from 1936 to 1979. I have his book Roman Society and Roman Law in the New Testament which was based on the Sarum Lectures (1960-61).
In the last chapter of the book, The historicity of the gospels and Graeco-Roman historiography White compares the internal synoptic divergences, such as in the trial of Jesus, with the internal divergences that exist in the four historical accounts that we have of a contemporary of Jesus . . .Tiberius Caesar. Those four sources are the Annals of Tacitus, the biography of Suetonius, a brief contemporary record of Velleius Paterculus, and the third century history of Cassius Daio. White notes that these four sources disagree with each other in the wildest possible way in both major and minor ways. These disagreements, says White, do not prevent the belief that the material of Tacitus, the best of the sources, can be used to write a history of Tiberius. White goes on to say that the divergences between the synoptic gospels, or between them and John are no worse than the contradictions in the Tiberius material.
Concerning the book of Acts, White states,
For Acts the confirmation of historicity is overwhelming. Yet Acts is, in simple terms and judged externally, no less of a propaganda narrative than the Gospels, liable to similar distortions. But any attempt to reject its basic historicity even in matters of detail must now appear absurd. Roman historians have long taken it for granted. p.189
Now, I'll say again that the point I'm making is that Jesus' disciples did not follow a mythical character but someone that they believed because they saw something, whether rightly or wrongly, led them to believe that Jesus had risen from the grave. If they had not been convinced that they saw Jesus alive again after having been executed, the movement that Jesus started would have died just as all the other movements of those who made themselves out to be messiahs died when their leaders were executed. But Christianity did not die. It grew. And this invalidates thrillobyte's argument because the disciples followed, not a mythical character that was a copy of other mythical characters but someone they believed had risen from the dead.
Legitimate historians don't disregard the NT documents as sources of actual history. Bart Ehrman even has stated that the Gospels can't be ignored.
''At the same time, there is historical information in the Gospels'' . . .''However else the Gospels are used---for example, in communities of faith---they can and must be considered historical sources of information''.
Did Jesus Exist, Bart D. Ehrman, p. 71
Christianity never would have gotten off the ground if the followers of Jesus didn't believe that they saw the risen Jesus. Why is that you may ask? Because Jesus' earliest followers were Jews and with the exception of Jesus the movements started by every other Jewish wannabe Messiah died with them when they were executed. Christianity didn't die but grew and grew.
The Gospels themselves, and Paul's writings provide historical documentation that Jesus' earliest disciples believed they saw the risen Jesus. And legitimate historians recognize this.
And I'm not the least bit desperate. Your claim that I am is a poor debate tactic.
If you're going to quote Ehrman as a source to support your spurious claim that the gospels provide solid historical evidence for Jesus, then you're going to have to answer for the other thing that Ehrman said about Jesus:
“In the entire Christian century, Jesus is not mentioned by a single Greek or Roman historian, religious scholar, politician, philosopher or poet. His name never occurs in a single inscription, and it is never found in a single piece of private correspondence. Zero! Zip references!â€
— Bart Ehrman (c.2012)
Christianity would have never gotten as far as it did if Constantine hadn't made Christianity the official religion of his Holy Roman Empire.When he handed Christians that power he put a sword in their hand which they have used to murder millions of people in cold blood, not in the least the larger part of the Inca civilization:
"Back in the 1400s, if you weren’t a Christian, it meant you were against them. So when Pizarro saw Atahualpa's reject the holy book and throw it to the ground, Pizarro used that as the reason to start the attack because that meant they rejected Christianity and Pizarro did not like that. You only had one choice, Christianity or Death.
In the Incan Empire, the Spanish destroyed a culture because they rejected Christianity..."
To really understand why Christianity "got off the ground" one would have to take a university course and even then this would only scrape the surface. Suffice to say the most famous name in the Western world doesn't have a single credible historic reference to support his existence. That's quite an achievement.
If you're going to quote Ehrman as a source to support your spurious claim that the gospels provide solid historical evidence for Jesus, then you're going to have to answer for the other thing that Ehrman said about Jesus:
“In the entire Christian century, Jesus is not mentioned by a single Greek or Roman historian, religious scholar, politician, philosopher or poet. His name never occurs in a single inscription, and it is never found in a single piece of private correspondence. Zero! Zip references!â€
— Bart Ehrman (c.2012)
Christianity would have never gotten as far as it did if Constantine hadn't made Christianity the official religion of his Holy Roman Empire.When he handed Christians that power he put a sword in their hand which they have used to murder millions of people in cold blood, not in the least the larger part of the Inca civilization:
"Back in the 1400s, if you weren’t a Christian, it meant you were against them. So when Pizarro saw Atahualpa's reject the holy book and throw it to the ground, Pizarro used that as the reason to start the attack because that meant they rejected Christianity and Pizarro did not like that. You only had one choice, Christianity or Death.
In the Incan Empire, the Spanish destroyed a culture because they rejected Christianity..."
To really understand why Christianity "got off the ground" one would have to take a university course and even then this would only scrape the surface. Suffice to say the most famous name in the Western world doesn't have a single credible historic reference to support his existence. That's quite an achievement.
You've managed to divorce yourself from reality concerning the matter. The disciples believed that they saw the risen Jesus. Whether or not they actually did, they believed they did and that is what and who they followed. Not a mythical character copied from other mythical characters. Your argument fails. Get over it. Except that you can't because you have issues.
And I have said enough and have spent more than enough time on this thread. You bore the hell out of me, thrillobyte.
You've managed to divorce yourself from reality concerning the matter. The disciples believed that they saw the risen Jesus. Whether or not they actually did, they believed they did and that is what and who they followed. Not a mythical character copied from other mythical characters. Your argument fails. Get over it. Except that you can't because you have issues.
And I have said enough and have spent more than enough time on this thread. You bore the hell out of me, thrillobyte.
Oh heavens, Mike, when you get something new to say--like a little real historical evidence and not suppositions-- give me a call.
Oh heavens, Mike, when you get something new to say--like a little real historical evidence and not suppositions-- give me a call.
Since Mike Way has said he is divorcing himself from the thread I'll go ahead and address this to you...
One of the more reasonable non supernatural explanations to the idea that the apostles saw the risen Jesus is one that indicates that Jesus (as a real person) was some sort of Social Justice Warrior who was executed by the Romans/Jews (or both).
The resurrection was symbolic in that it allowed Jesus to continue to be the leader of the movement and allowed the movement to continue on `despite the loss of its leader.
Apologists would argue that the apostles would not have allowed themselves to be martyred if Jesus really hadn't physically risen from the grave. However, that notion is somewhat simplistic.
Dying for a cause is not unusual or infrequent. If they indeed were martyred, it could have been that they died for Jesus' "cause"...
The other thing is that apologists act like these apostles would have simply been let go if they said..."no, Jesus didn't rise from the dead." Like the Romans would have said. "Ok, you can go now. Everything is good." That is a fanciful notion. Especially after Nero started the persecutions.
It stands to reason that along the way the figurative resurrection became interpreted as being literal as the movement grew more remote in time from Jesus' actual death. In fact it is possible that there was enough time between his death and the writing of the gospels for this to have occurred.
Surely this transformation of figurative to literal resurrection would have naturally occurred with converts far away from the events in Judea in both distance and time.
I guess since they're fictional it doesn't really matter, but several sources I found said 66. Probably a sort of code for 666.
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The disciples believed that they saw the risen Jesus. Whether or not they actually did, they believed they did and that is what and who they followed. Not a mythical character copied from other mythical characters. Your argument fails. Get over it. Except that you can't because you have issues.
