The Historical Christ

[chatpilot]

Dagda most scholars agree that the gospels were anonymous works and that the names appended to them were later additions.In fact one of the requirements for a work to be considered canonical was that it be written by an apostle of Christ or one of their disciples.That my friend is the only reason that those names were added on to those works.

The Christ myth is as old as time but christianity is also a derivative of the Old Testament prophecies regarding a coming messiah that was going to destroy all the enemies of the Jewish nation and restore them to their place of Gods "chosen people" so that they may rule the Earth.I believe that Jesus was trying to carry out these prophecies,and obviously he failed in his mission.He told his followers:Mark 13:26,30 "And then shall they see the Son of man coming in the clouds with great power and glory. and then in verse 30 he states "Verily I say unto you,that this generation shall not pass,till all these things be done".

It has been two thousand plus years and none of his prophecy about his return have come true.Of course he said further down that of the hour nor the day no man knoweth.But the point is that he said it would happen during his generation.

For someone with such great influence who the scriptures claimed at one time had as many as 5000 people listening to him whom he later fed.It strikes me odd that hardly anything is said of him outside of the scriptures,not only that when he was being crucified where were the multitude of his followers?Nowhere to be found even his apostles abandoned him.

Christ was a myth in the making way before the advent of Christianity and the Old Testament and later the dead sea scrolls which by the way never mention Christ by name but only perpetuate the myth of a coming messiah attest to this.

[dagda]

Now chatpilot, I must ask you before we go any further, are you saying that not only Christ is complete fiction, but his followers are as well? Also, how do you think the 'legend' of Christ arose?

You seem to be mixing two arguments together. In this thread I am arguing for the existence of Christ on a purely secular context. His divinity or otherwise are not factors in this discussion, but his existence is. As such I do not accept arguments against his god-like powers as evidence for his non-existence. In using another example, some people thought that Vlad the Impaler was a vampire (in the original Eastern European sense of the word). He probably was not, but that does not mean I dismiss good old Vlad as a fancy created by nationalistic Slavs looking for a hero.

[Kyuuketsuki]

Now chatpilot, I must ask you before we go any further, are you saying that not only Christ is complete fiction, but his followers are as well? Also, how do you think the 'legend' of Christ arose?

How do you think Aztec, Norse, Mesopotamian, Roman and Egyptian myths arose?

The simple truth Dagda is that you believe in one more myth than most of us and, as someone else said, when you truly understand why you dismiss those other myths you will understand why we dismiss yours.

Kyu

[LEDO]

"I DID see an interesting documentary about an ossuary possibly containing the bones of Jesus' family."

Padraic they dont put entire families in an ossuary it is just a cement box that is used after someone dies.Traditionally after about a year they disenter the body and collect the bones and put them in the ossuary.

Ledo I agree with Padraic I dont like the idea of using the gospels as historical evidence for serious archealogical studies since I too beleive they are nothing more than myths and totally unreliable.

Here is a decent article on the Jesus family tomb:
http://benwitherington.blogspot.com/2007...heory.html

There were 9 ossuaries in one tomb. There was a spot for a tenth one. It is believed the James ossuary was the tenth one from that same tomb.

There are elements of cosmic myths in the gospel texts, although Mark, the oldest gosepel has the least mythic elements. There are other writings besides gospels, and a whole religion sprang from something.

Dilmun was specifically mentioned in ancient Babylon as the name of their "Eden." Dilmun was Eden, you can bank on it.

The mythical aspect of Christ was based on the constellations seen right before sunrise during his birth and crucifixion celebrated dates. Hence Jesus was solar. YHWH was lunar.

[dagda]

Now chatpilot, I must ask you before we go any further, are you saying that not only Christ is complete fiction, but his followers are as well? Also, how do you think the 'legend' of Christ arose?

How do you think Aztec, Norse, Mesopotamian, Roman and Egyptian myths arose?

The simple truth Dagda is that you believe in one more myth than most of us and, as someone else said, when you truly understand why you dismiss those other myths you will understand why we dismiss yours.

Kyu

Perhaps you are not aware of the original meaning of myth; they were stories which held a grain of truth. Some myths hold more truth than others. I dismiss no myths because each one of them may give a glimpse at a long forgotten past. For instance it is unlikely in the extreme that one man (Gilgamesh) built the walls of Ur. However, the myth is thought to mean that Gilgamesh was the architect or patron of the project. The mistake many on this forum seem to be making is dismissing myths outright. Even if myths held no historical fact, they would still be usefully to study the psychology of the people who wrote them. As it stands, most myths do hold historical fact to varying degrees and, as such, are all the more valuable.

Dismissing Christ as fable hinders a true understanding of the Christian movement, and, I think, trying to understand the underlaying fact hidden in the New Testament would be a far more productive (and maybe more beneficial to atheism!). If Christ is based on a real man (which I think he is) then far more interesting questions develop which are far more uncomfortable to mainstream Christianity.


'I far as I know, the Romans were scrupulous record keepers and documented practically everything. It seems strange then that the only record of Jesus appears in the Bible.'


Yes, the Romans were great bureaucrats. However, were you aware that-unlike the common stereotype-they wrote on papyri and worse? Out with Egypt very little Roman records have survived because the paper they kept the majority of there records on tended to be such poor quality. The records which have survived, however, do seem to indicate that Christ was a cult leader in Judea.

We must also look at other factors when considering the climate Christ taught in. At the time Judea was not a full province in the Empire. Before 70AD Rome allowed the Sanhedrin and local tribal leaders to govern most of what is Israel. The Roman presence was a small auxiliary (e.g. not even citizens) force which had little authority out with Jerusalem and a few of the larger sea ports. In comparison to provinces such as Egypt or Greece, the record keeping was not extensive. And there violent expulsion in the 70'AD did not do wonders for there records either.

The governing Jewish body, on the other hand, were educated men. They would have kept records (they were in charge of tax collecting etc). However, these tended to be stored in the Temple and other such buildings in Jerusalem. After the Jewish revolt in 70AD and again in the 120'sAD the province of Judea and Jerusalem in particular were completely torched along with any records they held (Roman or otherwise).

What is more, in the Roman Empire only 10% of the population could read or write. With no printing presses, everything had to be copied by hand. This meant that bureaucratic documents were not wildly copied in the home provinces, never mind a semi-provincial backwater like Judea.

When we put together these factors and the fact that we do not know Christ's real name, is it any wonder we have little record of him? What records that have survived may contradict on many events in Christ's life (e.g. is he divine or a fraud?) none even hint that he is a fable (that includes the extra-biblical ones such as the Nag Hammadi scrolls and Tacticus.)

[chatpilot]

I am not stating that Jesus followers were fictional that is rediculous.I am stating that the gospels were not written by those people whose names were appended to them.Lets go your route Dagda and assume that Jesus was a real historical figure.With that in mind I ask you where is the secular evidence of his existence?Outside of the church fathers whose opinion in my view does not count or the biblical records the evidence of Christ and his ministry is scant.

Everyone cries out what about Josephus or Tacitus?Well both of them spoke of Jesus and my argument is that for a man of such great influence what they did say about him was very little as if he were an after thought.In fact most scholars have come to the conclusion that Josephus did not in fact write that little comment about Christ and beleive that the document was tampered with and that was a later insertion to the text.This is because within the text those comments are completely out of place.

"The mythical aspect of Christ was based on the constellations seen right before sunrise during his birth and crucifixion celebrated dates. Hence Jesus was solar. YHWH was lunar".

I agree Ledo,there are many pre-christian myths that we could tie Christianity to but this one makes the most sense.The dominant religion in Rome at the time was that of Sol Invictus which was also backed by Constantine himself.So I too believe that christianity is a derivative of sun worship.

[dagda]

Now why do you not think the Church Fathers and the Bible (plus the non-biblical gospels) are not worth anything?

[chatpilot]

My first contention with the bible is that it is riddled with mythological tales and characters.There is some valid history in there but not much.As far as the church fathers their opinions dont matter to me because in my opinion no one promotes christianity better than a christian.

[dagda]

Fair enough. I will refrain from using Biblical sources as anything more than back-up (e.g. Circumstantial evidence).

First off I would like to say that I think you are getting the wrong end of the stick when it comes to the wittings of Josephus. Yes many scholars agree that 'At about this lived Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one might call him a man...' was a latter tampering with the text by Christian copyists-the operative word being 'tampering'. There is no evidence that I can find which suggests that this passage was complete invention. In fact it is far more likely to be Christians changing an existing passage which does not agree with their world view.

Why is this more likely? Well latter on in the text, Josephus says 'James the brother of Jesus, called the Christ'. We know that this (and other passages) is probably not the work of Christian copyists because it questions Christ's Messiahship. As you said yourself, no-one promotes like a Christian hence it is extremely unlikely that pro-Christians doctored this type of passage. That Josephus questions Jesus' divinity rather than his existence suggests that he had access to earlier sources which have since been lost.

If there was any remaining doubt that Josephus wrote about Jesus as an historical figure, then please welcome Origen. He wrote in a time when Christianity was yet to be institutionalized and hence pre-dates Christian copyists (all the manuscripts were written by slaves at the time-very few of which would have been pro-Christian). He complains about Josephus' attempt to discredit Christ by arguing against his Messiahship. Clearly the latter Christian monks doctored the book, but changed the words of an existing passage rather than invented a new one.

Now that Josephus is taken care off, I can move on to the Mishnah, Baraitha and Tosefta. These are Jewish works from around the first and second centuries AD, and make reference to Jesus (although the Mishnah does not mention him by name) several times. Any threat of them being doctored by Christians is throwen out the window if you read the passages. They paint Christians and Christ in a less that favorable light (again an unlikely characteristic of a Catholic monk), but clearly confirm his existence. The fact that they are written for use by Jews further aids their authenticity as they tended to be ignored by Christian scholars, so Jews did most of the copying. These Jewish Rabbi-so strongly anti-Christian-are unlikely to doctor a document in favour of Christianity.

One of the biggest problems with the myth senario is brought up by the critics of Christianity. If there had been even a small chance that Jesus was not real, they would have jumped upon it. As it stands all the critics of antiquity question that Christ was sent by God, not his existence. This suggests (as it does in Josephus' work) that, when they were writing, his existence was undeniable. The burning of anti-Nicene documents after Constantine means that this evidence for his existence has since vanished, but, in the works mentioned, it leaves a deep trace.

However, the last nail in the coffin for the myth theory is the disciples themselves. Chatpilot, you said yourself that the disciples where real historical figures, and yet they said that they saw Jesus, the real man. You are left with two choices: they are lying or Christ existed. Which will it be?

Is this enough secular evidence or should I continue?

[Kyuuketsuki]

First off I would like to say that I think you are getting the wrong end of the stick when it comes to the wittings of Josephus. Yes many scholars agree that 'At about this lived Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one might call him a man...' was a latter tampering with the text by Christian copyists-the operative word being 'tampering'. There is no evidence that I can find which suggests that this passage was complete invention. In fact it is far more likely to be Christians changing an existing passage which does not agree with their world view.

I disagree for two simple reasons ...

1. Historians like Josephus wrote with precision and style, the interpolation sounds like something out of a "Wish You Were Here" holiday guide.

2. The passages read better WITHOUT the interpolation (as if they were originally intended without it).

Kyu