The Three-Headed "Jesus" Problem

[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.