Where did the Jesus myth come from?

[FallentoReason]

Hey Atom, why do the epistles consistently reject the idea of a physical Christ?

Because at the time of their writing Jesus had already been crucified. I'm not sure why this would seem odd to you. Can you clarify what you think is significant about the verses you quoted.

Sure, Jesus had been crucified. What makes you think this crucifixion happened in an earthly setting though? There's nothing that seems to suggest that in the epistles.

The verses I quoted tell us about how things have been made known about Jesus, but they omit any sort of earthly messiah being the one responsible for this. I mean, just have a look at Ephesians!

When you read this, you can perceive my insight into the mystery of Christ, which was not made known to the sons of men in other generations as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit.

How can they possibly say the mysteries have recently been revealed through the OT and Spirit? Doesn't the Creator himself as a human count for anything??? There's no mention of that ever!

This question doesn't make sense in terms of the biblical chronology. They didn't have to turn a blind eye.

Please explain.

Where did you get the idea that Jesus' ministry could have been 1 year? That's a rather unique assessment.

It's a theory some people propose. It's a trivial point that doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things.

What do you regard as ignorant in these verses?

Saying that these apostles have had these revelations but never once acknowledging that Jesus walked on earth, which I'm sure would greatly aid people in getting an understanding of things. This suggests it didn't take an earthly messiah to trigger what we now call Christianity. This also suggests that the Gospels aren't literal history.

The thing is though, that it actually isn't ignorant of these early Christians to not refer to any earthly messiah. We owe them for starting up this religion which means THEY are the ones that define what Christianity is. Therefore they're not ignorant, WE'RE the ones that are not understanding something. The problem with this though, is that once people put this idea forward of an earthly messiah without any real reason, it's hard to then shake off the wrong interpretation, the reason being that this baseless assertion of an earthly messiah produces a mountain of arguments from silence that play against it. Arguments from silence aren't particularly strong, but when the silence/gap in evidence for an earthly messiah is this big, it just begs the question of why you would think Jesus was a human in the first place.

Jesus said some pretty mysterious things such as predicting his resurrection, that the Pharisees were wrong about all their rules (such as how many steps a person could walk on the Sabbath), that he was speaking for God, and that the Holy Spirit would guide his followers.

Except we can't factor these things in when considering what the mystery was, because no epistle writer ever mentions events found in the Gospels. The only thing that gets spoken about the the crucifixion and resurrection.

The Jews believed that the Christ would be a military leader. Instead, they found that he was much more than that. The references to the Profits are talking about prophecies such as Isiahi 53. Paul's letters spend a tremendous amount of time talking about Jesus and his ministry.

Please show me where Paul acknowledges Jesus' earthly ministry.

You seem confident that you understand. Are you a credentialed scholar of higher criticism?

I am not. I'm simply a free thinker that hasn't found any solid reasons for thinking the Christ of the Bible ever set foot on earth.

On a side note, let me explain why the early Christians can refer to a crucifixion while still making it possible for Jesus not to be human. It all comes back to an understanding of the mentality of the era. There were many mystery cults that all believed in their own form of a saviour god. The one that I know the most about is Mithraism, which we know had the same rituals as modern-day Catholics (eating the body and blood of the saviour god, putting oil on the forehead..) as described by the Christian Justin Martyr in the 2nd century. These people believed that Mithra had killed a bull and they made shrines which depicted this act. Along with these depictions there's usually an inscription which reads 'Us too you have saved by shedding blood which grants eternity'. Now as if that isn't 'devastating' enough for Christianity, it was also believed by these people that this act was done somewhere in the cosmos. This is evident because the depiction consisted of the bull, a scorpion, a raven on Mithra's shoulder, a serpent and a dog lapping at the fatal wound. This is clearly a map of the heavens where each animal represents its respective constellation (Taurus, Scorpio, Canis Major/Minor, Hydra and Corvus). What this translates to is that it was perfectly normal to believe that some human-like god did some sort of act somewhere in the heavens for us. Well... what do we gather from the epistles? The mystery of Christ Jesus was revealed to the apostles through scripture and the Spirit, that Christ was crucified & resurrected therefore granting eternal life for whoever believes. Did this happen on earth? Well, going by the early Christians themselves, I don't think so.