Shit. What The Hell. Jesus Never Existed

[Minimalist]

You're as bad as Danny... and the late, unlamented Randy.  Try to open your mind.  You'll look less like a fundie.

[Mudhammam]

You're as bad as Danny... and the late, unlamented Randy.  Try to open your mind.  You'll look less like a fundie.

This coming from the guy who stomps his feet like a child while turning red in the face and ushering insults at all who disagree with his fringe beliefs.

It's a good thing you were never in a position of authority, Min. That would have been a bloody age.

[Redbeard The Pink]

The evidence is:

1. The Gospels and Book of Acts.
2. The Writings of Paul.
3. The other New Testament writings with clear multiple authors from the first century.
4. The so-called heretical writings about Jesus.
5. Other non-church writings from the likes of Josephus, Pliny the Younger, Tacitus, Suetonius, etc.
6. Modern academic publications including peer-review publications, and academic books and chapters.

No, Danny.  You don't get it...and probably never will.

There is one original story.  Mark.  The others are fanfics... extensions of the original by later authors writing for different audiences. 

"Paul" if he is real speaks of a non-earthly jesus.  "Paul" knows nothing of Pilate, Nazareth, Mary, Joseph, Caiaphas, etc.  That wasn't part of his story. He does not describe Jesus as a miracle worker, healer or teacher. Paul blames Jesus' death on Satan and demons, rather than the Roman government.  That wasn't part of his story, either.  Somewhere along the lines somebody noticed so when they forged the pastoral epistles they had someone write in 2 Timothy that Pilate and the Jews were involved...but only the dumbest of fundies thinks that 2 Timothy is written by whoever wrote the so-called authentic epistles of "Paul."

There are NO clear first century texts.  Much is wishful thinking or, worse, later forgery by the eventual winners.  We have no evidence that any Greco-Roman writer heard of Jesus until c 185.

The heretical writings are exactly that.  We know even less about them than we do of the canonical shit.

Don't start with Josephus, Pliny, Tacitus and Suetonius.  We've been down that road before.  If you wish to accept that shit, go ahead.  Don't pretend to be a rational human being while doing it.

Modern peer-reviewed publications are fine as long as they agree with you.  If they don't you pull the No True Scotsman routine and claim they are not "real scholars."  That disqualifies you.  You are too invested in believing in your bullshit.

And yet we're the crackpots.

I also like how, when he mentioned the books by Ehrman and Carrier (I guess that's what he was talking about), he made a point of calling them academically questionable, but when he listed his own sources makes sure to throw the term "peer-review" in there. He started with argument from popularity and then turned around to dump poison down the well.

In the absence of any hard evidence, all we have is what's written, and there are mythicist interpretations that are about as likely as historicist ones, if not more so. The fact that you side with the consensus claim is up to you, but don't act like your position is better or more likely just because more people agree with you. Unless they're agreeing with you for really good reasons (which, considering the level of evidence, they basically can't be), the number of people who believe the same thing you do technically does not matter. For a long time Galileo was virtually the only person who believed the Earth orbits the Sun, and look what happened there.

[Homeless Nutter]

[...]For a long time Galileo was virtually the only person who believed the Earth orbits the Sun, and look what happened there.

Not strictly true. Copernicus published "De revolutionibus orbium coelestium" in 1543. It just took 70 years for the Catholics to sit up, take notice and - naturally - over-react, drawing general public's attention to the issue.

[smsavage32]

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

I did a video on this.

It simply puts a timeline on a chart.

But, since I am not allowed to post links until I have been here for 30 days ...
if anyone wants to see it they will have to search YouTube for:

"Was Jesus a myth" by Scott Savage.

[Redbeard The Pink]

[...]For a long time Galileo was virtually the only person who believed the Earth orbits the Sun, and look what happened there.

Not strictly true. Copernicus published "De revolutionibus orbium coelestium" in 1543. It just took 70 years for the Catholics to sit up, take notice and - naturally - over-react, drawing general public's attention to the issue.

Hence the use of the word "virtually." "Virtually" is one of those marketing words like "practically." It's only in there to keep the statement from being absolute.

[Mudhammam]

In the absence of any hard evidence, all we have is what's written, and there are mythicist interpretations that are about as likely as historicist ones, if not more so. The fact that you side with the consensus claim is up to you, but don't act like your position is better or more likely just because more people agree with you. Unless they're agreeing with you for really good reasons (which, considering the level of evidence, they basically can't be), the number of people who believe the same thing you do technically does not matter. For a long time Galileo was virtually the only person who believed the Earth orbits the Sun, and look what happened there.

The point is that there is quite a bit written, and enough to establish reasonable certainty that a historical Jesus was - as all of the earliest writings related to Christianity, both religious and secular, attest - at the head and center of a budding theology. The mythicist interpretation is only equally as likely if you want to believe that there is a special criteria for reading ancient Christian writings and a separate criteria for reading everything else, rather than understanding the genre a particular work assumes and analysing it as the author intended it to be read, per his explicit words or the subtle clues experts are trained to detect. The original apostles, per Paul and the early church fathers, believed that Jesus was a human being who died on a cross. Why? (I hear a choir of mythicist morons insisting that the apostle Paul was a fictional creation too). Even the groups that denied Jesus was flesh and blood didn't dispute his human appearance. The problem with mythicism, apart from its dubious ad hoc methodology which is inherently biased against all texts affirming Jesus' historicity (including Josephus and Tacitus, who remain two extremely powerful witnesses after Paul and Mark's Gospel) is that it has nothing substantial to offer as an alternative explanation for the birth and growth of Christianity. Contrarily, the historicists possess a number of plausible scenarios for how the faith came to take the form it did, and none of them require special pleading and outlandish speculation.

[Aractus]

No, Danny.  You don't get it...and probably never will.

There is one original story.  Mark.  The others are fanfics... extensions of the original by later authors writing for different audiences.

Incorrect, Mark didn't come first according to scholar Larry Hurtado:

Steven,
Corrections to your comment: (1) Luke-Acts doesn’t have a list of names of Jesus’ brothers from which he could have removed James; (2) Luke-Acts (with the other Gospels) refers to Jesus physical mother and brothers (e.g., Luke 8:19); (3) Mark isn’t the earliest source for a brother of Jesus named James, it’s Paul (Gal. 1:19; and see also 1 Cor 9:5 “brothers of the Lord”); (4) the scenes in the Synoptics where Jesus’ mother and brothers come for him and he refuses them in favor of his disciples presuppose that he had a family to reject!
Again, I say, let’s get the data straight before we start drawing (wild!) inferences.

And I see, as usual, you provided no evidence for your claim.

"Paul" if he is real speaks of a non-earthly jesus.  "Paul" knows nothing of Pilate, Nazareth, Mary, Joseph, Caiaphas, etc.  That wasn't part of his story. He does not describe Jesus as a miracle worker, healer or teacher. Paul blames Jesus' death on Satan and demons, rather than the Roman government.  That wasn't part of his story, either.  Somewhere along the lines somebody noticed so when they forged the pastoral epistles they had someone write in 2 Timothy that Pilate and the Jews were involved...but only the dumbest of fundies thinks that 2 Timothy is written by whoever wrote the so-called authentic epistles of "Paul."

There are NO clear first century texts.  Much is wishful thinking or, worse, later forgery by the eventual winners.  We have no evidence that any Greco-Roman writer heard of Jesus until c 185.

The heretical writings are exactly that.  We know even less about them than we do of the canonical shit.

Don't start with Josephus, Pliny, Tacitus and Suetonius.  We've been down that road before.  If you wish to accept that shit, go ahead.  Don't pretend to be a rational human being while doing it.

Modern peer-reviewed publications are fine as long as they agree with you.  If they don't you pull the No True Scotsman routine and claim they are not "real scholars."  That disqualifies you.  You are too invested in believing in your bullshit.

And once again you show your ignorance Min. I'll just address the question of are some of the New Testament texts first century or not - what evidence do you have that would rule out any of the 29 books of the NT as being written in the first century? You have not presented any - all you say is "nu-uh". You know, it's fine to say "we don't know for certain whether these books were written in the first century"; however it seems likely to most scholars that a number of books were written in the first century and it appears certain that Paul's writings are from the first century.

---

And yet we're the crackpots.

I also like how, when he mentioned the books by Ehrman and Carrier (I guess that's what he was talking about), he made a point of calling them academically questionable, but when he listed his own sources makes sure to throw the term "peer-review" in there. He started with argument from popularity and then turned around to dump poison down the well.

Yes the books intended for the public written by Ehrman are of little academic quality, you're better off going straight to the sources that he purports to base his books on, for example as you can see above he makes reference to some of Larry Hurtado's publications, and Hurtado is critical of the way in which he perhaps miscategorised the academics he was quoting from in one particular book. If however you want to quote from Ehrman's academic publications I have no issue at all with that. I quoted it because he vindicates what I've been saying about Ehrman for a while - and that is you have to take things that he has an opinion on but aren't his area of expertise with a grain of salt. There are plenty of other scholars who specialise in those matters to go to.

[Redbeard The Pink]

The point is that there is quite a bit written, and enough to establish reasonable certainty that a historical Jesus was - as all of the earliest writings related to Christianity, both religious and secular, attest - at the head and center of a budding theology. The mythicist interpretation is only equally as likely if you want to believe that there is a special criteria for reading ancient Christian writings and a separate criteria for reading everything else, rather than understanding the genre a particular work assumes and analysing it as the author intended it to be read, per his explicit words or the subtle clues experts are trained to detect. The original apostles, per Paul and the early church fathers, believed that Jesus was a human being who died on a cross. Why? (I hear a choir of mythicist morons insisting that the apostle Paul was a fictional creation too). Even the groups that denied Jesus was flesh and blood didn't dispute his human appearance. The problem with mythicism, apart from its dubious ad hoc methodology which is inherently biased against all texts affirming Jesus' historicity (including Josephus and Tacitus, who remain two extremely powerful witnesses after Paul and Mark's Gospel) is that it has nothing substantial to offer as an alternative explanation for the birth and growth of Christianity. Contrarily, the historicists possess a number of plausible scenarios for how the faith came to take the form it did, and none of them require special pleading and outlandish speculation.

(Emphasis mine)

Ok, that is simply not true. Christianity comes along at a time in history when Hellenistic Mystery Cults were extremely common in the Roman Empire, and these cults had several things in common:

• They generally blended Hellenistic figures and principles with figures and principles from other cultures
  
• They tended to denote a shift from community religion to a more personal and individual salvation
  
• They tended to center around stories of struggling and/or dying-and-rising gods who originally represented the changing of the seasons in some capacity
  

Considering the religious climate of the time, there is no reason to believe that a Jewish-flavored Mystery Cult wouldn't have sprung up in a form much like the others. Furthermore, there are ample reasons for one or more sects of Jews to invent a fictional messiah character, the foremost of which is that the line of David died out before producing the Messiah it was supposed to. Creating a heavenly Messiah that could be made in the celestial realms out of David's cosmic sperm was a perfect way to solve that problem because there did not have to be a historical story for the visions and scriptures of that story to be accepted.

Another fun fact...rewriting the gods into historical fictions with extant human characters was also extremely common during this period, hence the version of the gospel story that survives today.

The bottom line is that, in the context of history, it is not that difficult to explain the rise of Christianity under the Christ Myth, even without resorting to conspiracy theories. Christianity is not unique among the religions of the time, and the historicity of Christ has virtually no impact on whether a Jewish Mystery Cult was likely to form. Plenty of the day's religions formed around extant god characters with no historicity.

[Aractus]

Ok, that is simply not true. Christianity comes along at a time in history when Hellenistic Mystery Cults were extremely common in the Roman Empire

Where's your academic evidence for that assertion?