Shit. What The Hell. Jesus Never Existed

[Minimalist]

I know Ken signed up.  Let's have some fun.

http://www.jesusneverexisted.com/surfeit.htm

A Surfeit of Jesuses!

– But No "Jesus of Nazareth"

[Cato]

To me, this 'some dude we will call Jesus actually walked the Earth' argument is the same as those believers who wish to philosophically define a creator god into existence; they both fail to prove the God or Jesus of the Bible. They wouldn't be so desperate in their six levels of Kevin Bacon type justification if they didn't already realize their sincerely held beliefs were built on a big pile of ignorant liquid shit.

[Mudhammam]

The name from which we in the English world derive "Jesus" was common in ancient Palestine... well, yeah, no shit.

"An impartial historian... is obliged to extract truth from satire, as well as from panegyric." - Edward Gibbon.

Unfortunately, the author of that site is clearly neither impartial, nor, by extension, reliable; the conclusion he wishes to reach does not logically follow from the historical curiosities he presents (of which, by the way, he forgets to express even the slightest doubt).

Same old amateurish mythicist apologetic as always.

[Faith No More]

Ken who?

[Minimalist]

Poor Nestor.  You aren't going to find a discussion of this kind of stuff on I_Sucked_Jesus'_Cock.com.  Having seen the holy shitheads in action this is merely "equal time."

[Mudhammam]

Poor Nestor.  You aren't going to find a discussion of this kind of stuff on I_Sucked_Jesus'_Cock.com.  Having seen the holy shitheads in action this is merely "equal time."

"Equal time" for irrational, fundamentalist, propaganda is not more irrational, fundamentalist, propaganda, though I know you have a deep fondness for such tripe.

But instead, it's well-reasoned, objective analysis that views any document and any figure of the ancient world using the same methodology and the same critical eye. At least someone like Carrier, - despite his many, many flaws - has earned that much credit. It's too bad that he's the only one ya'll got.

[Cato]

Same old amateurish mythicist apologetic as always.

Why the fuck is this so hard to understand. The 'Jesus' described by word and deed in the NT never fucking existed; his character is as much myth as Apollo. This is the Jesus Christians proclaim existed. The argument is that some first century rabble-rouser was put to death by crucifixion by a Roman prefect in a territory on the very edge of the empire in a time where a message between Rome and Jerusalem took at best weeks while accepting and adhering as much as possible to local custom; whoopdie fucking doo.

That strung-up Jesus asshole never raised Lazarus, walked on water, turned water into wine, fed a multitude with magic, nor presided over a herd of possessed cliff-diving pigs. Believing this dude Jesus did all this shit is the same as believing Abraham Lincoln really was a vampire slayer.

[vorlon13]

Same old amateurish mythicist apologetic as always.

Why the fuck is this so hard to understand. The 'Jesus' described by word and deed in the NT never fucking existed; his character is as much myth as Apollo. This is the Jesus Christians proclaim existed. The argument is that some first century rabble-rouser was put to death by crucifixion by a Roman prefect in a territory on the very edge of the empire in a time where a message between Rome and Jerusalem took at best weeks while accepting and adhering as much as possible to local custom; whoopdie fucking doo.

That strung-up Jesus asshole never raised Lazarus, walked on water, turned water into wine, fed a multitude with magic, nor presided over a herd of possessed cliff-diving pigs. Believing this dude Jesus did all this shit is the same as believing Abraham Lincoln really was a vampire slayer.

Could we compromise and agree He did exist to the limited extent he ordered his followers to drink poison and handle deadly serpents ??

[Lemonvariable72]

The name from which we in the English world derive "Jesus" was common in ancient Palestine... well, yeah, no shit.

"An impartial historian... is obliged to extract truth from satire, as well as from panegyric." - Edward Gibbon.

Unfortunately, the author of that site is clearly neither impartial, nor, by extension, reliable; the conclusion he wishes to reach does not logically follow from the historical curiosities he presents (of which, by the way, he forgets to express even the slightest doubt).

Same old amateurish mythicist apologetic as always.

Except the bible doesn't call him Jesus and leave it there, it names him as Jesus of Nazareth. Naming someones town like that in the ancient world was like giving a surname. The issue is we know from records was no town by the name of Nazareth, and the current site was uninhabited then. So no jesus of Nazareth and therefore no historical Jesus.

[Aractus]

I can't believe you idiots keep rattling on about such a fringe theory. Almost no serious scholar (historian), no matter how sceptical, believes that Jesus of Nazareth never existed. Jesus was, as everyone has said already, quite an ordinary common name. If you were going to invent a Messiah why give him such a common name? There have been some (a very tiny number) historians claiming for over 300 years now that crucifixion was never an execution method used by the Roman empire. You can find historians that claim the most ludicrous and ridiculous things. My favourite is when there was a consensus of opinion among Egyptologists that the pyramids were built by slaves - and that was based on just one piece of writing that dated to c. 450 BC written by Herodotus, a Greek, in GREEK!!

But oh please tell me that "we can't trust a single word of the Bible because ..." That's not how history works. Herodotus was a serious historian. Josephus was a serious historian. They both got some things right, and some things wrong. Any piece of ancient text needs to be approached with a healthy level of scepticism of course - because it's very unlikely everything contained within it is entirely accurate, especially for longer works, and especially works that talk about historical events. Hell even just 20 years after the death of Ned Kelly some historians got some of their facts wrong.

And I'll go one better. Hitchcock, Bernstein, and Bernstein directed a film called "German Concentration Camps Factual Survey" which I had the pleasure of seeing earlier this year. They went and saw first-hand what was going on in German concentration camps in 1945 at the time they were liberated by the Allied forces. They saw the camps first-hand and filmed there. They visited Dachau concentration camp and identified on film an extermination gas chamber where a lot of people were killed. Problem is that the gas chamber at Dachau had never been used. They went there first-hand and got it wrong; and they got a number of other facts wrong as well.

And if that's not enough, I'll go one better still. On 11/09/2001 reports said that the pentagon was hit by a second explosion (bomb/impact). Yet we now know it wasn't. They got their facts wrong on the very day it happened!

So all these arguments that get thrown about are completely frivolous. Some people claim the New Testament writings are written too long after the events to be accurate - yet we know for a fact that many of the NT books (around half in fact) were certainly written before the end of the first century. And if they were actual contemporary events then the criticism would be "oh well it was written too soon and so gave rise to confusion about what really happened just like how they thought Dachau had an operational gas chamber". The fact is it makes no difference to authenticity and accuracy whether the books were written in 30AD, in 50AD, in 70AD, or in 90AD. In 90AD they would still have an expected accuracy at least equal to 40AD.

"Jesus" is not a 16th century invented name - the letter "J" wasn't so much "added" to the English language as it was delineated from I. Originally there was delineation between I and J; I could represent a vowel or a consonant.

If you want to align yourself with crackpot idiots like Kenneth Humphreys - have at it. It just makes you guys look stupid, because you don't know what you're talking about, you can't defend the positions you hold when challenged with evidence, and you don't even understand the level of evidence or content or the composition of the texts which lead the vast majority of even critically-minded scholars to conclude that Jesus was a historical person. For example the fact that Paul - who wrote a number of letters - knew the family of Jesus personally.