Ask a Catholic

[Randy Carson]

You..do know they simply could've been wrong, right?  They could've genuinely and honestly believed in this stuff, believed that what the stories they were telling and writing down later were true.  I don't think the claim here is that they consciously sat down and said "Let's lie to people."

Lay off the strawmen, Randy, it's unfitting for someone as articulate as you.

Not according to pocaracas. He says the story of Yeshu existed long before Jesus was born...invented...aggrandized...whatever.

If the apostles knew of this story and simply used it as a basis for their own...then they knew they were lying.

Of course, one has to wonder why the other Jews who also knew of that story didn't point to Yeshu when the disciples of Jesus first started to circulate. Instead, they claimed that the disciples stole the body, or dogs dug it up...any number of explanations were given EXCEPT that Jesus was just the repackaged myth of Yeshu.

The Jesus Myth is modern folly.

[FatAndFaithless]

Still not seeing where Poc said "the disciples lied to everyone". More like "they could've been influenced by these pre-existing ideas, but we don't know for sure."

[Randy Carson]

Still not seeing where Poc said "the disciples lied to everyone".  More like "they could've been influenced by these pre-existing ideas, but we don't know for sure."

How else did the death of Yeshu in what? 110 BC? become conflated with the story of Jesus of Nazareth in AD 30?

[FatAndFaithless]

Elements of old stories get incorporated into newer ones over centuries. Cultural shit happens like that all the time. That doesn't mean they wre consciously lying; the older elements simply might've persisted and influenced newer stories. I think you'll be hard pressed to find where Poc says "the disciples were consciously lying". Do you think it's impossible for older cultural stories and legends and traditions to influence newer ones?

[Cyberman]

Feeling ignored... not a worthwhile question, huh?

Not really.

I thought the thread was called "Ask a Catholic", not "Ask a Catholic but only questions the Catholic considers worthwhile"?

[Cyberman]

Yep.

The eleven disciples sat around one night shortly after the death of Jesus (and Judas) trying to figure out what to do next. While fishing and tax collecting were obvious choices, there was no general agreement. 

As the night wore on and more wine was consumed, someone starting talking about the legend of Yeshu...one thing led to another...and they all swore a blood oath to never reveal the secret of how they invented the Legend of Jesus of Nazareth.

Argument from ridicule is a sign of desperation, not a strong position.

[Cato]

The Jesus Myth is modern folly.

Yeah, unlike the mental giants that think they are actually eating Jesus every weekend.

[pocaracas]

I saw your late edit to the previous post where you mention the EWTN site and the article DEAD SEA SCROLLS: THREAT TO CHRISTIANITY? by Fr. William Most (a friar? completely unbiased, huh?)

It is an interesting read, I admit. But I was dismayed by the good friar's comments on the "attacks on christianity":
1)

Yes, there are similarities between 4Q521 and the Gospel. But what of it?
Both draw on a common source, namely Isaiah 61:1. The fact that both draw on it does not prove any connection whatsoever between the Qumran text and Christianity. (Cf. also Biblical Archaeology Review Nov-Dec. 1992, pp. 60-65).

What of it, indeed... correlation does not imply causation. But it's a good hint, specially, when one comes well after the other.
And both draw on yet another text... what on earth does that mean? The gospel is inspired by Isaiah? Shouldn't it be somewhat independent so as to provide attestation of the prediction?

2)

No matter which way one reads the text, piercing or pierced, there is no problem for Christianity. A belief that a leader, probably the messiah, was killed or killed another—neither one—would not be so significant. We wonder what scholarship it is to rest a case against Christianity on so slender a reed. Geza Vermes (Biblical Archaeology Review Nov. Dec. 1992, p. 59) comments that the view of Eisenman and Wise along with Tabor, "would lead to an interpretation otherwise unparalleled at Qumran" We comment: What of it in any case? No problem at all for the origin of Christianity.

What of it, again?... odd... huh?

Finally

When the first scrolls were released around 1950, irresponsible claims were made the Jesus was just the same as the Teacher of Righteousness in the scrolls, and so would be not be original. Now in this major text, MMT, we find according to Shanks, that the authors of the work on MMT, Qimron and Strugnell conclude we do not really know who is speaking or who is being spoken too. So much for the dreadful threat to Christianity! There are other texts that mention the Teacher of Righteousness, but nothing that would make one think Jesus was the same.

Indeed... did I ever say they were the same?
I said that parts of the Jesus myth are included in the description of the life of the teacher. I couldn't care less if the teacher himself was a myth, what is plain is that there are common elements... and apparently the friar missed it, or wasn't aware at the time he wrote this article, there's that detail about a resurrection of the teacher after his crucifixion...

First up: I've searched for it and it seems there's a great controversy over who the teacher of righteousness may have been... however, the names "Yeshu" and "Jesus the pharisee" are never even candidates: http://www.ida.net/graphics/shirtail/deadsea.htm https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jso...19666.html I could also not find a reference to that "Jesus the pharisee" anywhere, in the 10 minutes I spent googling that guy and Alexander Jannaeus. This later dude does seem to have crucified or hung some 800 pharisees... if one of them was called Jesus... well.... why not? So, it seems that, once more, Tim O'Neil is not aware of the teacher of righteousness... Oh, but he is! http://www.rationalskepticism.org/christ...-2560.html Which brings us back to the similarities in the extraordinary details of both tales. That's how, Tim. WUT?! Both guys resurrect after 3 days?! Second up: I agree.... Why set up the stories some 100 years after the fact? Indeed, it needs explaining... but if the tale is told a few decades after the real fact, where no fact-checking is possible, it could have happened 10, 20, 100 years before... no one would know.... and no one who maybe could fact-check it was interested in the story (the pharisee priests? the romans?). Maybe (and here I go into pointless speculation) the person telling the tale just didn't know... and used some elements from memory - some roman guy that was the big boss when the storyteller was a kid... or something. I'd like to know how things happened back then, but, except for the use of a time machine, there's no way we can find out, is there?

Yep. The eleven disciples sat around one night shortly after the death of Jesus (and Judas) trying to figure out what to do next. While fishing and tax collecting were obvious choices, there was no general agreement. As the night wore on and more wine was consumed, someone starting talking about the legend of Yeshu...one thing led to another...and they all swore a blood oath to never reveal the secret of how they invented the Legend of Jesus of Nazareth. I'll close with this: before I ventured into this forum, I knew that Christianity has its lunatic fringes. Now, I see that atheism does, too. As Bart Ehrman wrote in response to Richard Carrier, "My view is that there is no reason to take seriously people who cannot be taken seriously: a few indications of general incompetence is good enough."

Really?
The eleven disciples?
If a story like this was to be invented and passed on, then it would have been concocted by someone with more power over the people than the eleven disciples who, even after witnessing miracle after miracle, were still astonished with each one as if it was the first. Someone with a real intent... but no... such is not required.
In an oral tradition society, stories evolve with each generation. Such evolution can come by deliberate addition, or lack of memory, or memory misplacement where a person remembers something as associated with something else that has nothing to do with it... At this distance in time, we cannot tell how much of each of these elements is in the jesus myth... we can tell that it is an evolution of the jewish Yahweh myth, that was itself an evolution of the canaanite El myth, which was an evolution of the Sumerian Anu myth... and we have no records of any older myth, so we cannot keep tracking them further back in time.
Stories evolve, myths evolve. Is it not possible that such a man as the teacher lived, challenging the established clergy, drawing up a following and getting killed for it? The resurrection part, I think, goes beyond what we see happening to people, so I see it as a mythological addition... possibly inspired by Isaiah, like the friar said.
The disciples themselves may have been a storytelling artifact... who knows? They may have been real disciples... of the teacher? of someone else? of some Jesus guy that really existed around 30AD?

But, you know, I asked what is your take on the information regarding the teacher of righteousness... and you pointed me to Tim O'Neill, then to EWTN... I'd like to hear your thoughts on the matter. After all, 10 years of apologetics should have provided you with a way to dismiss the teacher as just another priest who, like Tim said, lived under similar circumstances and resulted in a similar life... and death. I find the extraordinary elements of the teacher's story a bit too close to Jesus's to dismiss the whole story as Tim did.
But I admit I didn't read the scrolls, I'm relying on what's in the wiki. I think your best course in refuting this whole debacle would be to find that the scrolls never mention that the teacher was crucified, nor that he was resurrected. It may be possible to claim that Wise was lying... Like House said, Everybody lies.


PS: And no, this is not my go-to argument to dismiss christianity. This is just the last one I found and no one has managed to provide an answer to this.
My go-to argument is: I see no magic in the real world.
It works for any religion, any mythology.
But feel free to show me some actual real magic.



EDIT: OK, I've been re-reading a few things and it seems that the Teacher is never resurrected.... his followers expect his return within the 40 years after his death, but he never comes. The 40 years wait for the return of the "messiah" does appear a bit like a similar promise of a return before the witnesses would die by Jesus (a bit more careful with predictions, I see...).
Anyway, I apologize for adding that piece of information that wasn't true. My mind must have slipped into it and incorporated it into the tale... I can't explain it... but it is an example of what I was telling earlier that people can make additions to a story and not be consciously lying.

[JuliaL]

Pretty amazing that you agree a demon could cloud your mind with one breath and in the next paragraph state that you could not be deceived.  
A and not A in the same post.
Magic and logic don't go together.

You have a deficient understanding of God.

What part of ineffible don't you understand?  If God is beyond human understanding, EVERYBODY has a deficient understanding of God.

While I do not claim to be infallible nor to have a comprehensive understanding, what I can say is this:

In the Western Philosophical tradition, God is a being that is necessary (cannot fail to exist), eternal (not bound by time), immaterial (not bound be space), all-powerful, and all knowing. Most Western philosophers and theologians agree that God is all-good, or he is the perfect embodiment of the virtues of love, justice, and every other good we know. As St. Anselm of Canterbury said, God is the being "than which no greater can be thought."

Yada yada.  And because something that exists is greater than something that does not, God, as the greatest, must exist.
By that argument, the greatest anything you can mention must exist.  Look up Gaunilo's Island.
And you'd best fall back to, maximally knowing and maximally powerful because all-knowing and all-powerful are incoherent concepts.

Now, let's deal with your demons.

You suggest that I may be deceived by a demon and that if this is true, I would not even know it. Well, how is that working out? Christians believe that the greatest commandments are to love God and our neighbor. If a demon is deceiving me into thinking that I must love the Creator of all things  and to care for those around me, how is this demon advancing his own agenda which, presumably, is to have Christians do something other than those two things? IOW, if Christianity is actually a demonic plot to mislead all of its adherents, the demon who devised it has done his job too well - billions of Christians have given their lives to follow NOT the demon who sought to fool us, but the God of the myth that the demon created.

How has this demon benefited from the ruse?

And precisely who or what is the demon attempting to mislead us from? Another demon? The true God? You've not been clear on this point. If believing that Jesus is God is a deception, then what do you posit to be the truth? Who should we be worshiping instead?

Jesus said, "If Satan is divided against himself, how will his kingdom stand?" (Luke 11:18)

So, if I'm deceived by a demon into believing that there is a loving creator God who died upon the cross so that I might live with Him forever in heaven, what is the truth from which I am being diverted by this evil demon?

And what's in it for Him? We spend a lifetime doing good as much as possible...that must be unbearable for him to watch. A purely evil God would rather see evil - not good - being done. And as has been pointed out quite forcefully in the "Why Be Good?" thread, even non-believers do good to others. Wow. That must suck for our evil demon. If he is deceiving Christians by a false gospel which tells them that they must do good, then by what mechanism has the demon also deceived atheists that they must do good, also?

Are you saying that an evil God would fool Christians into believing that there is a heaven just so he can pull the rug out from under us in the end? That seems sort of anti-climatic, doesn't it? People spend their lifetimes running soup kitchens and discovering vaccines to prevent illnesses and so forth...doing all kinds of GOOD things because of their mistaken belief that "God" wants us to do them...and then he gets to say "Gotcha" when we learn that heaven is a lie after we die? Really? He has to endure watching us do good for years so that he gets a momentary thrill?

Sounds kinda silly, doesn't it? And truly beneath a Being who has that kind of power.

Bolded detail text extracted for individual treatment.

I must love the Creator of all things  and to care for those around me, how is this demon advancing his own agenda which, presumably, is to have Christians do something other than those two things?

In the hypothetical, the Creator of all things does not exist.  He was made up by the demon.
The agenda of the demon is UNKNOWN to you.  There is no reason to presume it intends anything other than exactly what happens.

then what do you posit to be the truth? Who should we be worshiping instead?

I'm not arrogant enough to claim I know truth.  You may think you are the crown of creation but you're perched on a thin film on a tiny rock. If you're all that, then God made a lot more universe than he had to.  
Why worship somebody who won't show himself? Somebody you can't trust?  Why worship anybody?

what is the truth from which I am being diverted by this evil demon?

What part of UNKNOWN do you not understand?  The demon acts by its own standards.  To you they are hidden in their entirety.

And what's in it for Him?

The victory conditions for the demon are UNKNOWN to you.

We spend a lifetime doing good as much as possible...that must be unbearable for him to watch.

Good and evil as judged by the demon are UNKNOWN to you as are its reactions to us and our circumstances.  
Perhaps the situation which results, including your delusion of infalliblity is exactly what the demon wants.

A purely evil God would rather see evil - not good - being done.

True, but in the scenario in question, there is no God.

then by what mechanism has the demon also deceived atheists that they must do good, also?

Good and evil as social norms for atheists have little to do with this scenario.  
Personally, I believe that good and evil are concepts which have allowed societies which posess them to prosper and eliminate
   societies that did not.  They do not require the existence of a transcendent being to work and so would work equally well with or without
   the demon and with or without God.
In the context of the scenario in question, the demon as a source of argument for good and evil is UNKNOWN to you.

Are you saying that an evil God would fool Christians into believing that there is a heaven just so he can pull the rug out from under us in the end?

The motivations and of the demon and the outcomes it intends are UNKNOWN to you.

and then he gets to say "Gotcha" when we learn that heaven is a lie after we die?

The point is, that when you have a putative transcendent being behind a veil of ignorance, all bets are off with respect to claims about its nature,
   intentions or actions.  Particularly if that transcendent being posesses stupendous cosmic powers beyond your comprehension.

And truly beneath a Being who has that kind of power.

Once again, you are judging the worth of a being UNKNOWN to you.  

You are consistently and inappropriately applying human expectations to an UNKNOWN being which refuses to show itself.  If it has the powers you propose, it is alien beyond comprehension.  
It must be nice to think of a sky daddy who will make all your dreams come true and mete retribution to all the baaaad people who hurt your feelings in life.  

[robvalue]

If there is a being of huge power who actually interacts with us, the best I thing I could call it was some sort of trickster God. Not good or evil exactly, but one who enjoys screwing around for the sake of it.

That's being generous, more likely I would refer to it as evil, by our standards, mainly by its inaction. If indeed its plans are too complicated for me to understand, which is quite likely, then guess what? I can't understand them. That doesn't automatically make them good.

I know I'm not being fooled by a demon, because I got an app on my phone that would tell me if I was. Those people without this app seem rather overconfident they can't be fooled. The phrase, "That's just what the demon wants you to think" is the rebuttal to anything you say, and you must be dealing with a novice demon if you think you can brush that aside. Everyone thinks they can't be fooled, or "I could be fooled but I'm not being fooled" while pointing the finger at others for being fooled.