The Three-Headed "Jesus" Problem

[Randy Carson]

I'm sure they think you are a good little sheep.

[Brakeman]

I'm sure they think you are a good little sheep.

Yep that's jesus with his 1st century version of a "Fleshlight."

[Aractus]

Have just started reading There Was No Jesus, There Is No God  by Rafael Lataster...a former evangelical who saw the light.   He has jumped into the HJ-MJ debate by adding a 3d category.  The BJ.  (No...not what you'd think....enjoyable as that would be.)  The BJ is the Biblical Jesus...the jesus that dumbfucks like G-C and Drippy maintain is real.  As he says in this article the BJ is easily dismissed.  The HJ is the product of various scholars who look at the gospels and think there just HAD to be a real person and the MJ is the realization that "jesus" is no more necessary to the myth than a historical Osiris was to his.

Why do you need multiple threads on the same goddamn topic, which you refuse to talk about when challenged with evidence?

I have already said on many occasions Min that sensationalised books sold to the masses are a useless source for academic content. I haven't yet found a single credible scholar who holds that view. All you are doing is trolling. You know full well that respected scholars say that certain New Testament texts are hard evidence for the existence of Jesus and furthermore that they constitute Primary Evidence. Your selectiveness when defining these things is telling. Did you get that definition from scholarship or from some sensationalised book with zero scholarly value?

As I said in your last thread, you are setting the standard extremely low. You don't get to pick and choose - if you only want to listen to quacks on NT history then you should be getting all of your historical information from equally misinformed nut-cases. Although I bet when you want to talk about the Exodus you'll chose to quote from Finklestein and not Ron Wyatt. You know very well your argument is just a variation on "Dachau didn't have an operational gas chamber therefore the systematic extermination of Jews didn't happen".

And I reiterate - you already have several goddamn threads on this exact topic, all you're doing is trolling. Why not participate in the discussion - or are you unable to sustain your position when it's questioned?

But there are facts.

1- No Roman writer prior to Celsus in 185 mentions anyone named "jesus."

2- There apparently was a group called "Chrestians" in Rome itself in the early part of the first century.  Suetonius mentions them and your pal Tacitus' only surviving manuscript shows that the word he used was Chrestianos (followers of Chrestus) not "Christianos" followers of christ until it was edited by some helpful scribe probably in the 9th century. 

3- The most prolific mid second century xtian writer, Justin, never mentions any of those so-called gospels not does he seem to know anything about any "paul."  He does know about Marcion, however.

4- There are no first-century xtian burial catacombs in Rome.

5-  There is an inscription about the manumission of a slave by Antonia Minor which names Jucundus Chrestiani.  Antonia Minor died in 37 AD which is a terminus ad quem for her doing much of anything!  There are numerous inscriptions about Chrestians throughout the Roman Empire and we can't be certain when the proto-orthodox xtians decided to adopt the chrestians as the same thing....although the 4th century xtian writer Lactantius was still troubled by it.

I'll let you chew on those for a while.  I have some stuff to do.

You are not entitled to your own facts. Josephus for one (he also mentions James and John) - and before you start spouting your BS: HISTORIANS AGREE THAT ANT., 20.9 AND ANT. 18.5 ARE GENUINE as I have explained to you countless times. The Gospels, Paul's letters, and some of the other books are mentioned in documents written in the early 2nd century by church fathers. So don't go saying no one knew about them as you know that's BS. Some of the letters disputed as inauthentic (Peter and deutero-Pauline) are not mentioned in those documents. Nothing else in your little list disproves or even lends credible evidence against the existence of the historical Jesus.

As for your argument about when the texts were written: YOU'RE WRONG. There are specific theories for the Gospels, Acts, The book of James, Jude, 1-2 Peter and the writings of Paul (and deutero-Paul), Hebrews, Revelation and 1-3 John. With the exception of the undisputed Pauline epistles (and to a lesser-extent Revelation and 1-2Peter) there is no consensus on authorship dates there are just different theories. So you cannot come here and claim that any were written late, all have the possibility of being written at different times.

As you well know I don't agree that the synoptics were written after AD70. As for John it's much harder to tell and it wouldn't surprise me if it was written around the same time as the synoptics, but it could have been written later in the first century. Now that's my view - I'm not a scholar - scholars are divided on it. Some favour a later date, some favour an earlier date.

As for Paul's undisputed epistles they are not late - they are all early starting around 45AD. The epistle of James is also early, for reasons I've already explained to you. The writer of Acts was a contemporary for the events from Acts 13 on and this has been pointed out to you on numerous occasions. We won't count Jude or 1-3 John simply because they're so short that they don't really matter - so that's 9 books (7 Paul + Acts + James) who were all writing about contemporary events. So stop lying and saying that there are no contemporary writings.

[Minimalist]

Danny, until you are willing to move out of your comfort zone of pious blather you will never learn anything.  I'm so sick of the shit you assholes pull wherein anyone who does not tell you what you want to hear is not a "real scholar."  Grow the fuck up.  Your fairy tales are not true.

[Randy Carson]

Have just started reading There Was No Jesus, There Is No God  by Rafael Lataster...a former evangelical who saw the light.   He has jumped into the HJ-MJ debate by adding a 3d category.  The BJ.  (No...not what you'd think....enjoyable as that would be.)  The BJ is the Biblical Jesus...the jesus that dumbfucks like G-C and Drippy maintain is real.  As he says in this article the BJ is easily dismissed.  The HJ is the product of various scholars who look at the gospels and think there just HAD to be a real person and the MJ is the realization that "jesus" is no more necessary to the myth than a historical Osiris was to his.

Why do you need multiple threads on the same goddamn topic, which you refuse to talk about when challenged with evidence?

I have already said on many occasions Min that sensationalised books sold to the masses are a useless source for academic content. I haven't yet found a single credible scholar who holds that view. All you are doing is trolling. You know full well that respected scholars say that certain New Testament texts are hard evidence for the existence of Jesus and furthermore that they constitute Primary Evidence. Your selectiveness when defining these things is telling. Did you get that definition from scholarship or from some sensationalised book with zero scholarly value?

As I said in your last thread, you are setting the standard extremely low. You don't get to pick and choose - if you only want to listen to quacks on NT history then you should be getting all of your historical information from equally misinformed nut-cases. Although I bet when you want to talk about the Exodus you'll chose to quote from Finklestein and not Ron Wyatt. You know very well your argument is just a variation on "Dachau didn't have an operational gas chamber therefore the systematic extermination of Jews didn't happen".

And I reiterate - you already have several goddamn threads on this exact topic, all you're doing is trolling. Why not participate in the discussion - or are you unable to sustain your position when it's questioned?

But there are facts.

1- No Roman writer prior to Celsus in 185 mentions anyone named "jesus."

2- There apparently was a group called "Chrestians" in Rome itself in the early part of the first century.  Suetonius mentions them and your pal Tacitus' only surviving manuscript shows that the word he used was Chrestianos (followers of Chrestus) not "Christianos" followers of christ until it was edited by some helpful scribe probably in the 9th century. 

3- The most prolific mid second century xtian writer, Justin, never mentions any of those so-called gospels not does he seem to know anything about any "paul."  He does know about Marcion, however.

4- There are no first-century xtian burial catacombs in Rome.

5-  There is an inscription about the manumission of a slave by Antonia Minor which names Jucundus Chrestiani.  Antonia Minor died in 37 AD which is a terminus ad quem for her doing much of anything!  There are numerous inscriptions about Chrestians throughout the Roman Empire and we can't be certain when the proto-orthodox xtians decided to adopt the chrestians as the same thing....although the 4th century xtian writer Lactantius was still troubled by it.

I'll let you chew on those for a while.  I have some stuff to do.

You are not entitled to your own facts. Josephus for one (he also mentions James and John) - and before you start spouting your BS: HISTORIANS AGREE THAT ANT., 20.9 AND ANT. 18.5 ARE GENUINE as I have explained to you countless times. The Gospels, Paul's letters, and some of the other books are mentioned in documents written in the early 2nd century by church fathers. So don't go saying no one knew about them as you know that's BS. Some of the letters disputed as inauthentic (Peter and deutero-Pauline) are not mentioned in those documents. Nothing else in your little list disproves or even lends credible evidence against the existence of the historical Jesus.

As for your argument about when the texts were written: YOU'RE WRONG. There are specific theories for the Gospels, Acts, The book of James, Jude, 1-2 Peter and the writings of Paul (and deutero-Paul), Hebrews, Revelation and 1-3 John. With the exception of the undisputed Pauline epistles (and to a lesser-extent Revelation and 1-2Peter) there is no consensus on authorship dates there are just different theories. So you cannot come here and claim that any were written late, all have the possibility of being written at different times.

As you well know I don't agree that the synoptics were written after AD70. As for John it's much harder to tell and it wouldn't surprise me if it was written around the same time as the synoptics, but it could have been written later in the first century. Now that's my view - I'm not a scholar - scholars are divided on it. Some favour a later date, some favour an earlier date.

As for Paul's undisputed epistles they are not late - they are all early starting around 45AD. The epistle of James is also early, for reasons I've already explained to you. The writer of Acts was a contemporary for the events from Acts 13 on and this has been pointed out to you on numerous occasions. We won't count Jude or 1-3 John simply because they're so short that they don't really matter - so that's 9 books (7 Paul + Acts + James) who were all writing about contemporary events. So stop lying and saying that there are no contemporary writings.

[Randy Carson]

But there are facts.

3- The most prolific mid second century xtian writer, Justin, never mentions any of those so-called gospels not does he seem to know anything about any "paul."  He does know about Marcion, however.

Facts, Min? Really? You're sure?

"Justin serves, moreover, as a crucial witness to the status of the 2nd-century New Testament corpus, mentioning the first three Gospels and quoting and paraphrasing the letters of Paul and 1 Peter; he was the first known writer to quote from the Acts of the Apostles." [Source.]

"He knew and quoted especially the Gospels of Matthew and Luke; he must have known the Gospel of Mark as well, though there is only one explicit reference to this Gospel (Dial. 106.3); he apparently had no knowledge of the Gospel of John." In footnote #2, Kester notes: "The only possible reference to the Gospel of John is the quotation of a saying in 1 Apol. 61.4.." (Helmut Koester (1990) Ancient Christian Gospels, pp. 360–361; p. 360)



We can learn more about Justin Martyr's use of scripture from this Wikipedia article which states in part:

Gospels

Justin uses material from the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) in the composition of the First Apology and the Dialogue, either directly, as in the case of Matthew,[40] or indirectly through the use of a gospel harmony, which may have been composed by Justin or his school.[41] However, his use, or even knowledge, of the Gospel of John is uncertain. One possible reference to John is a saying that is quoted in the context of a description of Christian baptism (1 Apol. 61.4 – "Unless you are reborn, you cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven."). However, Koester contends that Justin obtained this saying from a baptismal liturgy rather than a written gospel.[42] Justins knowledge of John's gospel however is further substantiated in that he adds a clear allusion to John 3:4 directly after quoting verse 3 about the new birth ("Now, that it is impossible for those who have once been born to enter their mother's womb is manifest to all"). There are also other quotes from John, such as John 1:20 and John 1:28. Furthermore, by employing the term "memoirs of the apostles" and distinguishing them from the writings of their "followers", Justin must have been aware of at least two gospels written by actual apostles. Since one of these must be Matthew, the other can be inferred as John's.[citation needed]

Apocalypse

Justin does not quote from the Book of Revelation directly, yet he clearly refers to it, naming John as its author (Dial. 81.4 "Moreover also among us a man named John, one of the apostles of Christ, prophesied in a revelation made to him that those who have believed on our Christ will spend a thousand years in Jerusalem; and that hereafter the general and, in short, the eternal resurrection and judgment of all will likewise take place"). Scholar Brooke Westcott notes that this reference to the author of the single prophetic book of the New Testament illustrates the distinction Justin made between the role of prophecy and fulfillment quotations from the gospels, as Justin does not mention any of the individual canonical gospels by name.[43]

Letters

Reflecting his opposition to Marcion, Justin's attitude toward the Pauline epistles generally corresponds to that of the later Church. In Justin's works, distinct references are found to Romans, 1 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Colossians, and 2 Thessalonians, and possible ones to Philippians, Titus, and 1 Timothy. It seems likely that he also knew Hebrews and 1 John. The apologetic character of Justin's habit of thought appears again in the Acts of his martyrdom, the genuineness of which is attested by internal evidence.[44]

I'll let you chew on those for a while.  I have some stuff to do.

We're done chewing on that...and spitting it out.

[Randy Carson]

But there are facts.

1- No Roman writer prior to Celsus in 185 mentions anyone named "jesus."

Pretty weasely, Min, given that at least one Jewish historian working for the Roman government mentioned him by name along with several Jewish writers. And then there are the reference to Christus or Chrestus which appear in other places...LOOOOOONG before AD 185.

2- There apparently was a group called "Chrestians" in Rome itself in the early part of the first century.  Suetonius mentions them and your pal Tacitus' only surviving manuscript shows that the word he used was Chrestianos (followers of Chrestus) not "Christianos" followers of christ until it was edited by some helpful scribe probably in the 9th century. 

Which seems to be a big deal to absolutely no one, but you and your fellow mythers. Why it's almost as if you expect standardization of spelling in an age that did not even have printing presses.

Yeah...I'd put this on par with someone in 1980 writing the name of Bill Gates' company as Micro-soft instead of MicroSoft.

4- There are no first-century xtian burial catacombs in Rome.

Perhaps, but you can take a virtual tour of the first century necropolis where St. Peter is buried beneath the main altar in St. Peter's Basilica here:

http://www.vatican.va/various/basiliche/...glish.html

Here's a diagram:



And a photo of the underground street leading to Peter's tomb:

[Aractus]

Danny, until you are willing to move out of your comfort zone of pious blather you will never learn anything.  I'm so sick of the shit you assholes pull wherein anyone who does not tell you what you want to hear is not a "real scholar."  Grow the fuck up.  Your fairy tales are not true.

Once again Min, it's not me who's saying they aren't real scholars - it's other scholars who say that:

Rich Griese

David,

I think that before we can begin to decide what “the historical jesus” might have said, we have to determine if we can demonstrate that such a character ever existed. I have not seen that done to date.

Cheers! RichGriese.NET

    larryhurtado

    Rich, I’ve engaged your repeatedly stated views before. No one. No one in scholarly circles dealing with ancient Judaism and early Christianity, of any religious or non-religious persuasion holds the view that Jesus never existed. You’re entitled to your own opinion, but not to your own truth.
    Let’s move on.

This has been pointed out to you numerous times. Your argument is disingenuous. You are selectively choosing which "historians" to take your selective beliefs from. This is no different to Holocaust denialism. And then you expect that the quacks who you quote from can stand alongside actual experts to complete your rather narrow world-view. You're the one that has blind beliefs and refuses to shift them when presented with evidence - not me. Why not surprise all of us and actually learn something of tangible value?

You start thread after thread on this same topic and you can't even discuss it. All you can do is quote from your book. You then make up facts that support your hypothesis and claim that you have tangible evidence - when we all know that you don't. Any time I or someone else presents you with a real problem to your mysticism you have a cry and start calling people names. I have less and less a belief that you're an intellectual of any kind, since you display a complete lack of appreciation of how to select an academic source of information to quote and babble on about. Any time we challenge you you call us a bunch of names and refuse to discuss the points put to you.

Galatians was most likely written around 45AD. You well know this. You can't exclude dates you don't like just because you don't like them and then claim that everything was written in the time-frame that would suite your hypothesis - that isn't academic it's called junk science.

Here's some info from real scholars (critical/sceptical ones not evangelicals and apologists):

"As for its date, all one can say with certainty is that Luke wrote this account after Mark composed his Gospel. The typical suggestion that Luke wrote around 85 ce is plausible, though the Gospel could have been completed five to fifteen years earlier or even five to ten years later."

"Although there is reason to doubt the identification of Luke as a companion of Paul, it cannot be denied that Luke admired Paul and viewed his missionary career as decisive for the establishment of Christianity in Asia Minor and Greece."

"The date of (Galatians)’s composition is not given. It was written some time between the late 40s and mid 50s ce. Paul would develop his views on the law further in the Letter to the Romans. Paul’s authorship is generally accepted by modern scholars."

(Source: New Oxford Annotated Bible 4th Ed.)

Just because these quacks have swindled you out of your hard-earned and sold you a pile of manure doesn't mean the rest of us are stupid enough to not to smell the shit you've covered yourself in.

[Wyrd of Gawd]

---

Have just started reading There Was No Jesus, There Is No God  by Rafael Lataster...a former evangelical who saw the light.   He has jumped into the HJ-MJ debate by adding a 3d category.  The BJ.  (No...not what you'd think....enjoyable as that would be.)  The BJ is the Biblical Jesus...the jesus that dumbfucks like G-C and Drippy maintain is real.  As he says in this article the BJ is easily dismissed.  The HJ is the product of various scholars who look at the gospels and think there just HAD to be a real person and the MJ is the realization that "jesus" is no more necessary to the myth than a historical Osiris was to his.

Why do you need multiple threads on the same goddamn topic, which you refuse to talk about when challenged with evidence?

I have already said on many occasions Min that sensationalised books sold to the masses are a useless source for academic content. I haven't yet found a single credible scholar who holds that view. All you are doing is trolling. You know full well that respected scholars say that certain New Testament texts are hard evidence for the existence of Jesus and furthermore that they constitute Primary Evidence. Your selectiveness when defining these things is telling. Did you get that definition from scholarship or from some sensationalised book with zero scholarly value?

As I said in your last thread, you are setting the standard extremely low. You don't get to pick and choose - if you only want to listen to quacks on NT history then you should be getting all of your historical information from equally misinformed nut-cases. Although I bet when you want to talk about the Exodus you'll chose to quote from Finklestein and not Ron Wyatt. You know very well your argument is just a variation on "Dachau didn't have an operational gas chamber therefore the systematic extermination of Jews didn't happen".

And I reiterate - you already have several goddamn threads on this exact topic, all you're doing is trolling. Why not participate in the discussion - or are you unable to sustain your position when it's questioned?

But there are facts.

1- No Roman writer prior to Celsus in 185 mentions anyone named "jesus."

2- There apparently was a group called "Chrestians" in Rome itself in the early part of the first century.  Suetonius mentions them and your pal Tacitus' only surviving manuscript shows that the word he used was Chrestianos (followers of Chrestus) not "Christianos" followers of christ until it was edited by some helpful scribe probably in the 9th century. 

3- The most prolific mid second century xtian writer, Justin, never mentions any of those so-called gospels not does he seem to know anything about any "paul."  He does know about Marcion, however.

4- There are no first-century xtian burial catacombs in Rome.

5-  There is an inscription about the manumission of a slave by Antonia Minor which names Jucundus Chrestiani.  Antonia Minor died in 37 AD which is a terminus ad quem for her doing much of anything!  There are numerous inscriptions about Chrestians throughout the Roman Empire and we can't be certain when the proto-orthodox xtians decided to adopt the chrestians as the same thing....although the 4th century xtian writer Lactantius was still troubled by it.

I'll let you chew on those for a while.  I have some stuff to do.

---

You are not entitled to your own facts. Josephus for one (he also mentions James and John) - and before you start spouting your BS: HISTORIANS AGREE THAT ANT., 20.9 AND ANT. 18.5 ARE GENUINE as I have explained to you countless times. The Gospels, Paul's letters, and some of the other books are mentioned in documents written in the early 2nd century by church fathers. So don't go saying no one knew about them as you know that's BS. Some of the letters disputed as inauthentic (Peter and deutero-Pauline) are not mentioned in those documents. Nothing else in your little list disproves or even lends credible evidence against the existence of the historical Jesus.

As for your argument about when the texts were written: YOU'RE WRONG. There are specific theories for the Gospels, Acts, The book of James, Jude, 1-2 Peter and the writings of Paul (and deutero-Paul), Hebrews, Revelation and 1-3 John. With the exception of the undisputed Pauline epistles (and to a lesser-extent Revelation and 1-2Peter) there is no consensus on authorship dates there are just different theories. So you cannot come here and claim that any were written late, all have the possibility of being written at different times.

As you well know I don't agree that the synoptics were written after AD70. As for John it's much harder to tell and it wouldn't surprise me if it was written around the same time as the synoptics, but it could have been written later in the first century. Now that's my view - I'm not a scholar - scholars are divided on it. Some favour a later date, some favour an earlier date.

As for Paul's undisputed epistles they are not late - they are all early starting around 45AD. The epistle of James is also early, for reasons I've already explained to you. The writer of Acts was a contemporary for the events from Acts 13 on and this has been pointed out to you on numerous occasions. We won't count Jude or 1-3 John simply because they're so short that they don't really matter - so that's 9 books (7 Paul + Acts + James) who were all writing about contemporary events. So stop lying and saying that there are no contemporary writings.

You've thrown a lot of crap at the wall but do you have any hard evidence?  Please produce links to your 1st & 2nd Century sources so that we can evaluate them.

[Randy Carson]

Danny, until you are willing to move out of your comfort zone of pious blather you will never learn anything.  I'm so sick of the shit you assholes pull wherein anyone who does not tell you what you want to hear is not a "real scholar."  Grow the fuck up.  Your fairy tales are not true.

Once again Min, it's not me who's saying they aren't real scholars - it's other scholars who say that:

O'Neill destroyed David Fitzgerald. Ehrman took down Richard Carrier. And you've pulled the rug out from under Minimalist. Good work!

This has been pointed out to you numerous times. Your argument is disingenuous. You are selectively choosing which "historians" to take your selective beliefs from. This is no different to Holocaust denialism. And then you expect that the quacks who you quote from can stand alongside actual experts to complete your rather narrow world-view. You're the one that has blind beliefs and refuses to shift them when presented with evidence - not me. Why not surprise all of us and actually learn something of tangible value?

You start thread after thread on this same topic and you can't even discuss it. All you can do is quote from your book. You then make up facts that support your hypothesis and claim that you have tangible evidence - when we all know that you don't. Any time I or someone else presents you with a real problem to your mysticism you have a cry and start calling people names. I have less and less a belief that you're an intellectual of any kind, since you display a complete lack of appreciation of how to select an academic source of information to quote and babble on about. Any time we challenge you you call us a bunch of names and refuse to discuss the points put to you.

Preach it, broth...er...um...state your views with great erudition, friend.

Galatians was most likely written around 45AD. You well know this. You can't exclude dates you don't like just because you don't like them and then claim that everything was written in the time-frame that would suite your hypothesis - that isn't academic it's called junk science.

<snip>

Just because these quacks have swindled you out of your hard-earned and sold you a pile of manure doesn't mean the rest of us are stupid enough to not to smell the shit you've covered yourself in.

I do hope a few other members of this forum are listening closely...what you've said applies no less to them.