Historian explains why Jesus ''mythers'' aren't taken seriously by most Historians

[TheMessiah]

Wow, you've got it in for us huh? It seems you are the one with the emotional attachment to be honest. Why is it so upsetting if we aren't convinced by the evidence that you accept?

I don't have it in for anyone - if I have it in for people, it's when I get enraged at religious people's arguments.

However - while I am part of the Atheist community, I just really do think there is an ideological desire to undermine religion, and I have to ask, when does this stop becoming skepticism and when does it start becoming an ideology?

P.S, what evidence of a poor Jewish preacher dying a horrible death would be good enough for you? I just want a rough standard of what you would consider acceptable evidence for someone as insignificant as Jesus?

[robvalue]

No one is denying there wasn't anyone he could have been based on. It's just a level of how much he was based on someone. Not very much is the answer, somewhere between 0 and 1%, and we're splitting the hairs about where exactly between those limits.

Err... apparently when you say it is. I'm just evaluating the evidence to the best of my ability.

Poor Jewish preacher? Horrible death? You're trying to emotionally manipulate me into agreement? I've had enough I think.

[TheMessiah]

Can we even be fairly sure he isn't 2 or more historical figures intertwined? The seemingly dual nature he has would seriously suggest that to a bumrash like me.

Debunked on previous page.

3. "Jesus began as an allegorical, symbolic figure of the Messiah who got 'historicised' into an actual person despite the fact he never really existed"

This idea has been presented in most detail by another amateur theorist in yet another self-published book: R.G. Price's Jesus - A Very Jewish Myth (2007). Unlike "Acharya S" and, to a lesser extent Doherty, Price at least takes account of the fact that the Jesus stories and the first members of the Jesus sect are completely and fundamentally Jewish, so fantasies about Egyptian myths or Greek Middle Platonic philosophy are not going to work as points of origin for them. According to this version of Jesus Mythicism, Jesus was an idealisation of what the Messiah was to be like who got turned into a historical figure largely by mistake and misunderstanding.

Several of the same objections to Doherty's thesis can be made about this one - if this was the case, why are there no remnants of debates with or condemnations of those who believed the earlier version and maintained there was no historical Jesus at all? And why don't any of Christianity's enemies use the fact that the original Jesus sect didn't believe in a historical Jesus as an argument against the new version of the sect? Did everyone just forget?

More tellingly, if the Jesus stories arose out of ideas about and expectations of the Messiah, it is very odd that Jesus doesn't fit those expectations better. Despite Christian claims to the contrary, the first Christians had to work very hard to convince fellow Jews that Jesus was the Messiah precisely because he didn't conform to these expectations. Most importantly, there was absolutely no tradition or Messianic expectation that told of the Messiah being executed and then rising from the dead - this first appears with Christianity and has no Jewish precedent at all. Far from evolving from established Messianic prophecies and known elements in the scripture, the first Christians had to scramble to find anything at all which looked vaguely like a "prophecy" of this unexpected and highly unMessianic event.

That the centre and climax of the story of Jesus would be based on his shameful execution and death makes no sense if it evolved out of Jewish expectations about the Messiah, since they contained nothing about any such idea. This climax to the story only makes sense if it actually happened, and then his followers had to find totally new and largely strained and contrived "scriptures" which they then claimed "predicted" this outcome, against all previous expectation. Price's thesis fails because Jesus' story doesn't conform to Jewish myths enough.

4. "Jesus was not a Jewish preacher at all but was someone else or an amalgam of people combined into one figure in the Christian tradition"

This is the least popular of the Jesus Myth hypotheses, but versions of it are argued by Italian amateur theorist Francesco Carotta (Jesus was Caesar: On the Julian Origin of Christianity. An Investigative Report - 2005)), computer programmer Joseph Atwill (Caesar's Messiah: The Roman Conspiracy to Invent Jesus - 2005) and accountant Daniel Unterbrink (Judas the Galilean: The Flesh and Blood Jesus - 2004). Carotta claims Jesus was actually Julius Caesar and imposed on Jewish tradition as part of the cult of the Divius Julius. Atwill claims Jesus was actually the deliberate creation of the Emperor Titus, imposed on Judaism in the same way. Neither do a very good job of substantiating these claims or of explaining why the Romans then turned around, as early as 64 AD (fifteen years before Titus became emperor) and began persecuting the cult they supposedly created. No scholar takes these theories or that of Unterbrink seriously.

No scholar also argues that Jesus was an amalgam of various Jewish preachers or other figures of the time. That is because there is nothing in the evidence to indicate this. This ideas has never been argued in any detailed form by anyone at all, scholar or Jesus myth amateur theorist, but it is something some who don't want to subscribe to the idea that "Jesus Christ" was based on a real person resorts to so that they can put some sceptical distance between the Christian claims and anything or anyone historical. It seems to be a purely rhetorically-based idea, with no substance and no argument behind it.

[TheMessiah]

No one is denying there wasn't anyone he could have been based on. It's just a level of how much he was based on someone. Not very much is the answer, somewhere between 0 and 1%, and we're splitting the hairs about where exactly between those limits.

Err... apparently when you say it is. I'm just evaluating the evidence to the best of my ability.

Poor Jewish preacher? Horrible death? You're trying to emotionally manipulate me into agreement? I've had enough I think.

I'm not trying to ''emotionally manipulate'' - I've used that as an example, Jesus died a criminal's death - which was, a horrible death. This death was given out routinely in the day to Jews.

My question, is what do you consider reliable for someone to have died such a death? Because what you consider reliable isn't necessarily what historians consider reliable.

Also, I have no idea why you think it was 0.1% to 1% based on him --- it wasn't ''based on him'' --- it was more so attempting to reconcile his death that lead to Christianity; the death of Jesus, actually forced his followers to change the religion; hence;

But probably the best example of an element in the story which was so awkward for the early Christians that it simply has to be historical is the crucifixion. The idea of a Messiah who dies was totally unheard of and utterly alien to any Jewish tradition prior to the beginning of Christianity, but the idea of a Messiah who was crucified was not only bizarre, it was absurd. According to Jewish tradition, anyone who was "hanged on a tree" was to be considered accursed by Yahweh and this was one of the reasons crucifixion was considered particularly abhorrent to Jews. The concept of a crucified Messiah, therefore, was totally bizarre and absurd.

It was equally weird to non-Jews. Crucifixion was considered the most shameful and abhorrent of deaths, so much so that one of the privileges of Roman citizenship is that citizens could never be crucified. The idea of a crucified god, therefore, was absurd and bizarre. This was so much the case that the early Christians avoided any depictions of Jesus on the cross - the first depictions of the Crucifixion appear in the Fourth Century, after Christian emperors banned crucifixion and it began to lose its stigma. It's significant that the earliest depiction of the crucifixion of Jesus that we have is a graffito from Rome showing a man worshipping a crucified figure with the head of a donkey with the mocking caption "Alexamenos worships his god". The idea of a crucified god was, quite literally, ridiculous. Paul acknowledges how absurd the idea of a crucified Messiah was in 1Cor 1:23, where he says it "is a stumbling block to the Jews and an absurdity to the gentiles".

The accounts of Jesus' crucifixion in the gospels also show how awkward the nature of their Messiah's death was for the earliest Christians. They are all full of references to texts in the Old Testament as ways of demonstrating that, far from being an absurdity, this was what was supposed to happen to the Messiah. But none of the texts used were considered prophecies of the Messiah before Christianity came along and some of them are highly forced. The "suffering servant" passages in Isaiah 53 are pressed into service as "prophecies" of the crucifixion, since they depict a figure being falsely accused, rejected and given up to be "pierced .... as a guilt offering". But the gospels don't reference other parts of the same passage which don't fit their story at all, such as where it is said this figure will "prolong his days and look upon his offspring".

Clearly the gospel writers were going to some effort to find some kind of scriptural basis for this rather awkward death for their group's leader, one that let them maintain their belief that he was the Messiah. Again, this makes most sense if there was a historical Jesus and he was crucified, leaving his followers with this awkward problem. If there was no historical Jesus at all, it becomes very difficult to explain where this bizarre, unprecedented and awkwardly inconvenient element in the story comes from. It's hard to see why anyone would invent the idea of a crucified Messiah and create these problems. And given that there was no precedent for a crucified Messiah, it's almost impossible to see this idea evolving out of earlier Jewish traditions. The most logical explanation is that it's in the story, despite its vast awkwardness, because it happened.

[robvalue]

Erm yes, that was blatant manipulation. Adding those adjectives was utterly irrelevant to the amount of evidence needed.

You seem to have ignored most of what I've said, I'm not a "mythicist". I'll leave you to your conclusions.

[jesus_wept]

So, I think we have concluded that what I said wasnt the point you were trying to get across.

[TheMessiah]

Erm yes, that was blatant manipulation. Adding those adjectives was utterly irrelevant to the amount of evidence needed.

You seem to have ignored most of what I've said, I'm not a "mythicist". I'll leave you to your conclusions.

That was not ''manipulation'' - I'm illustrating that death via Cross was routinely handed out, that was, in itself, a horrible death. So I am asking of you, what evidence do you consider reliable for the Cruxification to have not happened?

I'm using that as an attempt to stress how insignifcant Jesus was - people expect masses of evidence for him, yet fail to realize that all he was, was a poor Jewish preacher who died a criminal death; the evidence needed to prove such a man lived is really minimal.

[TheMessiah]

So, I think we have concluded that what I said wasnt the point you were trying to get across.

Actually, that was the point I was getting across.

[jesus_wept]

So, I think we have concluded that what I said wasnt the point you were trying to get across.

Actually, that was the point I was getting across.

If you insist. I don't see the.point in arguing this any further.

[robvalue]

I just told you I'm not a mythicist, and I didn't deny the possibility that some Jewish preacher got crucified. I'm not debating someone who tells me what my position is, so we're done.