Shit. What The Hell. Jesus Never Existed

[Aractus]

Unless they're dealing with the existence of an ancient character, and then the paradigm seems to be to assume someone existed as long as someone wrote about them as if they existed. When the question is then raised as to whether that's a good way to determine if an ancient person existed, the cry immediately becomes, "What, are you just gonna deny ALL historical evidence for EVERYTHING? Do you think Hitler escaped and the Holocaust didn't happen, too? Are you just some conspiracy theorist quack? ARE YOU STUPID?!" That is some apologist, ad hominem, well-poisoning bullshit. If I wanted to listen to that, I'd track down Brother Micah's Open Air Campus Ministry and try to have a logical discussion with that loud-ass mother fucker.

Um, do a Google search. Every man and his dog is claiming they think Hitler escaped - everyone is saying it all over the internet - everyone except the actual credible WWII historians that is. By comparison there is hardly anyone who's supporting the multiple-Jesus or Jesus-myth hypothesis... and all the credible historians are saying there was a single historical Jesus.

I already said that my evidence is at least partly the same evidence that you're giving me. You have already seen my evidence, and you are accepting the consensus interpretation of that evidence mostly (from what I can tell) because it's the consensus claim. If the consensus claim were arrived at through anything resembling actual science (and if historicist atheists didn't instantly morph into apologists when the question of Jesus' historicity is raised), then I would have no problem with that. In this instance, that is not the case.

There isn't a consensus on ancient history, and I don't think I ever used that word in this thread. There are however accepted facts. Things that historians feel have been demonstrated beyond doubt and on which most if not all of their peers agree upon. There are not very many facts that historians do agree upon - and even concerning the New Testament there are not very many things they agree upon. They agree that Jesus existed, that he was baptised by John, that he called disciples, and that he died by crucifixion. They also agree that Paul lived in the first century, that he knew the family of Jesus and that he wrote at least 6 letters.

You seem to claim that Scholars have a more specific scenario in mind, upon which to reach their consensus. And of course many do, however as it stands there isn't a consensus on much beyond the existence of Jesus and Paul, and a few other things as I mentioned above.

The historicity of Jesus fits within the broader domain of the historicity of the New Testament. To answer that question scholars consider the internal and external contiguity and consistency of the texts as well as determining (usually through textual criticism) whether the text was likely to have been written in the first century or not, and who could have written them. As you well know a handful of the 27 NT books are believed to have been written later in the second century. The example of Luke-Acts for instances demonstrates a two volume work by a single author - we don't know for certain that it's Luke, but it's a single author and written in the first century. From Acts 15 on the story switches to a contemporary narrative - the language changes and causes scholars to believe the author was indeed a contemporary to the events and probably a witness to many of them. In terms of historicity that would make Acts 15-28 more likely to be more accurate. But me the interesting thing is that Acts 28 ends in c. 62AD. It doesn't record a single interesting event that happens after 62AD. It has nothing to say about the siege of Jerusalem in 70AD. It doesn't say anything about the deaths of Paul, Peter, or James. As I mentioned before, Josephus does tell us that James is stoned to death right around 62AD - but Acts leaves it out. By no means is there a consensus on when Acts was written, other than to say it was certainly a fist century work.

Jesus of Nazareth, as written in the Bible, very obviously did not exist and could not exist in a Universe governed by the physics we know. His magical powers preclude him from it. Because of this, he has to be either an original, fictional composition, or he must be based on a character that came before himself. There are roughly equivalent levels of evidence for the claims that he was based on an earlier fictional character, that he was based on one guy, and (maybe, again haven't looked deeply into it) that he was based on a handful of guys or a type of apocalyptic preacher. Until historicists have better evidence than any I've seen, it is perfectly reasonable for me to hold a position of non-belief concerning the historical existence of the Jesus of Nazareth character, just as it's perfectly reasonable for me to hold a position of non-belief concerning his invisible sky-daddy.

I don't really count books or journals as evidence. Those are presentations of and conclusions drawn from evidence, but they themselves are evidence only of the fact that the consensus among historians is for historicity, and as I've already stated for reasons I've already stated, I do not accept the consensus claim. Jesus doesn't get to hang with Julius Caesar and Socrates just because he was passed off as history during a time period when it was much easier to do that.

That's a false argument. Just because he was said to have legendary abilities doesn't mean he himself as a human being didn't exist. As for your thing about "I don't really count books or journals as evidence." Good for you. Everyone else counts academic publications as evidence, which is why there was the controversy there was when the Wakefield et. al. 1998 article was published - since it became evidence for other researches to cite from. Of course it was fraudulent and 12 years later was retracted by the Journal, and anyone in the field worth their salt would know that - but anyone accessing the original Journal article out of ignorance would still think that it's credible evidence. FYI Dr Wakefield defends his position to this day:

http://youtu.be/RNPSP3K8X34

And note you just proved my point by saying that:


This is the evidence that you have:

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.
6. Books published of questionable academic quality.