Where did the Jesus myth come from?

[michaelsherlock]

You have just made a positive claim.IE "Jesus was not a real person". That attracts the burden of proof;let's see yours.

I agree.

My position; I'm agnostic about the existence of an historical Jesus. I think it's possible, even likely he existed and began a small,orthodox Jewish sect.

I do not think his sect was classified as Orthodox, at any point. If you look at the end of the first century edicts, which banished the Nazarenes from the Synagogues, and also the heretical teachings regarding; no Sabbath, Pork, no circumcision, etc, I think it would be a stretch to prove that his (if he in fact existed) sect was 'Orthodox'.

However, I also think the Jesus of the New Testament is almost certainly myth.

So then, upon what records do you rely for an historical Jesus? Josephus, Tacitus, Seutonius, Pliny (Younger)?

Christianity as it is today was invented more by Saul of Tarsus* than any other person.

Not to pick on you, but before making this positive claim, I am sure you would agree, you need to provide proof, or at least reliable evidence re; the following two points:

1. Paul existed; and
2. He was the originator of what we now refer to as, Pauline Christianity.

I appreciate that the 2nd limb seems to be a given, but is it? How do we know that he was the inventor of this more Gentile friendly form of Christianity. Again, we must rely on somewhat spurious Christian records for this assertion to survive.

The religion contains NO new ideas,moral code or theology. Of course some basic ideas were lifted from the Torah,including an emasculated version of Mosaic Law. Other ideas,such as the resurrecting god and hell are found in other religions, so who knows from which ones they were taken,or indeed if they were invented independently?

I pretty much agree with you here, although I see it as highly unlikely, given the cultural associations in the regions, in which Pauline Christianity first spread, that it could have been invented in its own right.


Interesting Stuff.

---

I think you are probably referring to this particular bullshit story in Luke 4:

Jesus Rejected at Nazareth

14 Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit, and news about him spread through the whole countryside. 15 He was teaching in their synagogues, and everyone praised him.

16 He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. He stood up to read, 17 and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written:

18 “The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,
19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”[a]

20 Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him. 21 He began by saying to them, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”

22 All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his lips. “Isn’t this Joseph’s son?” they asked.

23 Jesus said to them, “Surely you will quote this proverb to me: ‘Physician, heal yourself!’ And you will tell me, ‘Do here in your hometown what we have heard that you did in Capernaum.’”

24 “Truly I tell you,” he continued, “no prophet is accepted in his hometown. 25 I assure you that there were many widows in Israel in Elijah’s time, when the sky was shut for three and a half years and there was a severe famine throughout the land. 26 Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them, but to a widow in Zarephath in the region of Sidon. 27 And there were many in Israel with leprosy[b] in the time of Elisha the prophet, yet not one of them was cleansed—only Naaman the Syrian.”

28 All the people in the synagogue were furious when they heard this. 29 They got up, drove him out of the town, and took him to the brow of the hill on which the town was built, in order to throw him off the cliff. 30 But he walked right through the crowd and went on his way.

Whoever wrote Luke assumed that "Nazareth" was an actual city, complete with a good-sized population and a "synagogue." In short, the author knew fuck all about early first century Galilee. Perhaps by the time this nonsense was written there was a town on the spot but archaeological evidence from the site shows no sign of any sort of actual "town" when xtians claim their godboy was there. At best, the noted xtian scholar Stephen Pfann has found a single-family farm. After the bar Kochba revolt when Jews were thrown out of Judaea we have evidence that some settled at Nazareth in the mid 2d century. Prior to that, we have only tombs and some pottery shards and it is fairly easy to see that the tombs could have belonged to the upper classes of the nearby city of Sepphoris.

In recent years xtians have tried to get around the findings of archaeology and history (the name Nazareth appears no where in the OT or in Josephus in spite of his detailed travelogue of the area over which he led his army) by making "Nazareth" smaller and smaller. "It's not a "city" just a small hamlet." Well, a small hamlet would not have a fucking synagogue for their godboy to visit and it would also have a population which was all interrelated to the point that no one would ask “Isn’t this Joseph’s son?” He would have been related to most of them yet they expect us to believe that they were going to throw a kinsmen off a cliff - there are no cliffs at the site -
because they were so angry.

Just a silly story to serve as a backdrop for whatever the author was trying to say.....like so much of the fucking bible.

---

Take a peek at this.

http://www.jesusneverexisted.com/syncretism.html

Excellent comments.