Christians - What would you do if it were discovered Jesus never existed?

[Darwinian]

You cannot convince a believer of anything they don't want to accept as their belief is not based on evidence, but a deep seated need to believe.

[Alex K]

I've read in mythicist writings that possibly in the very early church, Jesus was not supposed to be an actual human being who walked the earth, but was rather thought to exist in a spiritual realm. Does anyone recall details of how that worked? Anyways, maybe the Christians could simply go back to such an "abstract" notion of Jesus.

[robvalue]

Celestial Jesus, yeah. I remember Richard Carrier talking about that. I think it's a good possibility. It was in this video, let's see...

You're right, they'd probably hide Jesus away. The whole bible would be metaphorical by then, anyhow.

Yeah have a look at this. This is a super interesting video, he begins by beating up on popular misconceptions, then starts with the celestial stuff at around 6:20

Christians with any interest in challenging their faith should watch this also.

http://youtu.be/79Lmmy2jfeo

[Pyrrho]

What nonsense.  There is not a single document mentioning Jesus that was originally written in his lifetime.  But there are documents mentioning important people of that era written during the time they were alive.  So the evidence for them is far greater than the evidence for Jesus.  Yet you ignore such facts now, so we can be pretty sure you will ignore facts in the future as well.

On a related note:

---

---

I see a lot of empty and unsupported assertions concerning Christ and the historical paper trail surrounding him. Do you have anything to go on besides your word? You by not providing any citations or any other proof of any kinda means, that because you have access to anti Christian commentary we are supposed to simply take you at your 'expert' word. Maybe this is how it works where you are from, but for those who genuinely think for themselves you need to be able to provide some primary or secondary source material to support those otherwise empty words.

Are you so seriously ignorant of Christian scholarship that you need me to tell you when the books of the Bible were supposed to be written?  Just do a search for the words "New Testament dates written" (without the quotation marks) and you will get plenty of links to sites, many of which are run by Christians, giving you dates of composition.  You will there see that the entire New Testament was written many years after Jesus was supposed to have lived.  But since you are either an idiot or dishonest in your approach to this, here are some links for you, some of which are to sites run by religious people:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Testam...omposition

http://www.biblestudytools.com/resources...ament.html

http://www.beginningcatholic.com/when-wa...itten.html

https://carm.org/wasnt-new-testament-wri...ter-christ

Basically, all reputable scholars say that all of the books of the New Testament were written years after Jesus supposedly lived.  Even the religious ones, as you can see from a couple of the links above.  The exact dates of composition are generally not known, so there is some range commonly given, but no respectable scholar tells us that any of it was written during Jesus' lifetime.  Some, of course, try to push the dates closer to Jesus' lifetime to try to make them seem more authoritative, but most of them are not so dishonest as to try to pretend that they were actually written during Jesus' lifetime.

If you need me to tell you this, you obviously do not take Christianity very seriously.

[robvalue]

Carrier's arguments in that video I just posted seem really solid to me. He's making a pretty fine case for Jesus actually not existing at all. In comparison, the historical Jesus arguments I have heard are pretty shit and sound just like Christian apologist arguments. They also seem to like throwing insults at Carrier without actually explaining why he is wrong.

[Spooky]

They'll shake their heads and say:

"Good try Satan, but the bible cannot be wrong because it is the word of God".

Beat me too it. 

My first thought was something to this effect.

Well done sir. 

[Pyrrho]

Carrier's arguments in that video I just posted seem really solid to me. He's making a pretty fine case for Jesus actually not existing at all. In comparison, the historical Jesus arguments I have heard are pretty shit and sound just like Christian apologist arguments. They also seem to like throwing insults at Carrier without actually explaining why he is wrong.

His beginning reminds me of my take on this.  Before considering the matter, I thought that Jesus must have existed, because that was the general consensus.  But when I started looking at the matter, I was shocked at how poor the evidence was in favor of him.  And now I am inclined to believe he did not exist (though I honestly do not care if there was some goat fucker upon whom the story was based).  Of course, I have not looked into the matter as deeply as Carrier has.  In part because I do not really care if Jesus existed or not.

By the way, it is a great video you posted before, though given its length, there will probably only be two or three of us who actually watch it.

[vorlon13]

Unlike Jesus, we actually have an arrest record for Joseph Smith.

[Redbeard The Pink]

I've read in mythicist writings that possibly in the very early church, Jesus was not supposed to be an actual human being who walked the earth, but was rather thought to exist in a spiritual realm. Does anyone recall details of how that worked? Anyways, maybe the Christians could simply go back to such an "abstract" notion of Jesus.

As Rob put forward, Richard Carrier is the foremost expert that utilizes this line of reasoning, and his ideas pretty much took the last few puffs of wind out of my faith.


I didn't see the exact video Rob posted, but I'm sure his is similar; Carrier uses religious trends of the time, language from the few undisputed Epistles, and non-Biblical Christian text (namely very early redactions of "The Ascension of Isaiah") to demonstrate that the original Jesus was likely created as a heavenly figure to be the Messiah that could no longer come from the line of David (because that actually died off long before Jesus is supposed to have been born). Because no human messiah could be born, some authors might have created a deified one and placed his struggles in the heavenly realms where nobody could adequately dispute them.


In this early version of the story, Jesus is supposed to have descended through the various levels of Heaven and Hell, disguising himself as denizens of each level as he goes. When he reaches the lowest level of Hell, the Devil and his demons think Jesus is just another demonic soul to be tortured, punished, and destroyed, so they abuse and kill him not realizing that his death will bring about salvation for humans. He is resurrected, appears to various mortals in visions or whatever, and then ascends back to heaven to sight at the right hand of the throne of blah blah blah...


Carrier posits that later on, a humanized version of the character was written as a parable designed to make sense to followers but not to outsiders; outsiders were meant to think they were talking about a real person, but insiders would have known that this was not the original version of the character, but a humanized super-parable full of other parables designed to teach them blahdy blahdy blah blah blah...


Somewhere along the way, the church allegedly decided to go with the story of the human Jesus and decided that was what everything hinged on, so they kind of tried to sweep ghost Jesus under the carpet since he was a lesser-known insider mystery to begin with.


Like I said, this is what kicked the last few pegs out from under my faith. I realize lots of people (some of whom are atheists) dispute this line of reasoning pretty vehemently, but I've since realized that even on the unlikely off-chance that even if Jesus of Nazareth was based on a single, historical human with the same name, that dude wasn't magic and he wasn't the son of anything but a random Jewish couple somewhere on the ass of the Roman empire.

[robvalue]

That's a very good summary I think Carrier makes an excellent case that Jesus the man is at best a rewrite pinned on some random guy, and at worst totally fictional. I don't see it getting much stronger than this. It's great how this beat up your Christian beliefs, obviously you had the scepticism to actually care about your beliefs being true. Sadly most Christians could watch this video and then just pretend they never heard any of it.

Unless his assessment of what is and isn't a forgery are off, his arguments are very tight in my opinion. It seems the church "lost" plenty of other material in order to go with the human version of the story, to pretend it was always that way. But due to the lack of any editing skills, the proof is still in there.

When they did decide to humanise him, they may have tried to pin it on some vague stories about a guy who actually existed. But the gospel authors, even if they did do this, wouldn't have been sure it was actually a real person. The stories would have been cocked up by then really badly, and doesn't alter the fact that it wasn't the original story (according to Carrier). It's very interesting how he claims the gospels are intended to be metaphorical in the first place, not meant to be taken literally. You have to wonder at the power of the church that they managed to convince everyone of the exact opposite.