Why do atheists even bother about debating Jesus?

[Confused Ape]

Here's another one you might find interesting. A bit long but very in-depth and well worth the time:

Refuting Missionaries – The Myth of the Historical Jesus by Hayyim ben Yehoshua

Thanks for the link. The author, Hayyim ben Yehoshua, is being quoted all over the internet but nobody seems to know who he is. One criticism is that his scholarly article doesn't have a footnote giving a list of actual references - there's only a list of seven books for further reading. If it was put on wikipedia there would be endless bracketed comments of 'citation needed'.

I wondered if anyone had written an article about him on wikipedia and I was directed to this page where there's a Hayyim ben and a Yehoshua - Hayyim ben Joeseph Vital

In 1570 Vital became a student of Rabbi Isaac Luria, the Arizal, the foremost kabbalist of the day.

During this illness Rabbi Yehoshua, his closest follower, who had accompanied Vital on nearly every journey, ...

By sheer coincidence Hayyim ben Yehoshua's name references two 16th century Kabbalists. Or could it be the pseudonym of someone who is interested in the Kabbalah? If anyone manages to find out who Hayyim ben Yehoshua is and what his qualifications are, please post the information in this topic.

I then found something interesting about one of the books on the reading list - J. Allegro, The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Christian Myth.

Allegro argued that the word Essenes signified "healers". They had inherited a lore of healing with plants and stones that had been passed down from the "fallen angels" that arrived on Mount Hermon mentioned in the Book of Enoch. He presumed their establishment of Qumran complex by the Dead Sea was related to the interpretation and anticipation of a prophecy about the Teacher of Righteousness, a "man whose appearance was like the appearance of bronze, with a line of flax and a measuring rod in his hand" (Ezekiel 40:3) who was to somehow create lifegiving waters to flow into the Dead sea from a temple in some northern location (Ezekiel 47:1-12).[2]

Allegro later published The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross, with even more bizarre theories about Jesus. Allegro was heavily criticized by many scholars, including his own mentor at Oxford, and the publisher had to issue an apology.[1] Allegro's scholary reputation was destroyed, and he had to resign from his academic position.[1

Now to The Sacred Mushroom And The Cross

The book relates the development of language to the development of myths, religions, and cultic practices in world cultures. Allegro believed he could prove, through etymology, that the roots of Christianity, as of many other religions, lay in fertility cults, and that cult practices, such as ingesting visionary plants (or "psychedelics") to perceive the mind of God, persisted into the early Christian era, and to some unspecified extent into the 13th century with reoccurrences in the 18th century and mid-20th century, as he interprets the Plaincourault chapel's fresco to be an accurate depiction of the ritual ingestion of Amanita muscaria as the Eucharist. Allegro argued that Jesus never existed and was a mythological creation of early Christians under the influence of psychoactive mushroom extracts such as psylocibin.[1]

It appears that he now has three supporters for his psychedelic Jesus idea.

Recent studies of Allegro's work have given new supporting linguistic evidence and led to calls for his theories to be re-evaluated by the mainstream.[8][9] In November 2009 The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross was reprinted in a 40th anniversary edition with a preface by Jan Irvin, a foreword by Judith Anne Brown, and a 30-page addendum by Prof. Carl A. P. Ruck of Boston University.[10]

Anyway, on to some quotes from Hayyim ben Yehoshua's article.

We know very little about Yeishu ha-Notzri. All modern works that mention him are based on information taken from the Tosefta and the Baraitas – writings made at the same time as the Mishna but not contained in it.

The skimpy information contained in the Baraitas is as follows: Rabbi Yehoshua ben Perachyah once repelled Yeishu with both hands. People believed that Yeishu was a sorcerer and they considered him to be a person who had led the Jews astray. As a result of charges brought against him (the details of which are not known, but which probably involved high treason) Yeishu was stoned and his body hung up on the eve of Passover. Before this he was paraded around for forty days with a herald going in front of him announcing that he would be stoned and calling for people to come forward to plead for him. Nothing was brought forward in his favor however. Yeishu had five disciples: Mattai, Naqai, Neitzer, Buni, and Todah.

So far so good.

The Hebrew name for Christians has always been Notzrim. This name is derived from the Hebrew wordneitzer, which means a shoot or sprout–an obvious Messianic symbol. There were already people called Notzrim at the time of Rabbi Yehoshua ben Perachyah (c. 100 B.C.E.). Although modern Christians claim that Christianity only started in the first century C.E., it is clear that the first century Christians in Israel considered themselves to be a continuation of the Notzri movement which had been in existence for about 150 years. One of the most notorious Notzrim was Yeishu ben Pandeira, also known as Yeishu ha-Notzri. Talmudic scholars have always maintained that the story of Jesus began with Yeishu. The Hebrew name for Jesus has always been Yeishu and the Hebrew for “Jesus the Nazarene” has always been “Yeishu ha-Notzri.” (The name Yeishu is a shortened form of the name Yeishua, not Yehoshua.)

So what was this Notzri movement? I've come across various opinions ranging from an offshoot of the Essenes, Jewish Gnostics and a false Messianic movement. Theosophy also comes into it on occasion. It's difficult to find an article which doesn't quote Hayyim ben Yehoshua so I was relieved to come across one by Scott Bidstrup, an ex Mormon whose education is all related to telecommunications. He does supply a short list of sources, though.

The Bible And Christianity

The Notzrim, or Jesus Movements, as modern scholars refer to these groups, appeared as isolated groups in widely separated towns and villages throughout the region. What they had in common was that they were a social reform movement, and often refered to a 'Jesus' or 'Jeshua' or 'Yeishu' or 'Yeshua' as their inspiration, but we know from contemporary descriptions that they were clearly not a religion, even though they incorporated many religious values.

Each of these Jesus Movement groups had its own ideas, often networking with others of a like mind, often disputing with others of conflicting ideas. While we have no writings from them directly, we have many references to them by contemporary historians, so we have some awareness of what they believed and practiced, if filtered by others. By the time of Paul, the Jesus Movements had become extraordinarily diverse and widespread. Some were bands of iternant preachers, others were guilds of settled craftspeople. Some were simple study groups, others were formal schools of scholastic research. As mentioned, there was philosophical ferment in first century Palestine, and the Jesus movements were not immune. Rather, they were very much a part of it. While none of what they wrote has survived intact, scholars are reasonably certain of a "Sayings Gospel Q" (subsequently revised at least three times), which is lost to us except where Mark quoted from it much later in "his" gospel, and one of the gospels of "Thomas," which has survived to the modern era in at least two versions, contain if not the pristine writings of Jesus Movements, at least quotations from them.

But the Jesus myth's widespread popularity among the Gnostics by the first third of the first century leads to the suggestion that, unless a wholesale and dramatic conversion took place (for which there is no evidence whatever), the Jesus myth was already widespread among the Gnostics by the time Jesus was supposed to have lived and died, and he died a long time ago. He wasn't a contemporary divine Messiah-figure. At least not yet.

Does this mean that the Notzrim movements were inspired by brief references to a long dead sorcerer who was stoned after forty days because nobody wanted to plead for him?

So how did this all turn into Christianity?

In about 50 C.E., a remarkable event occurred, which ultimately changed the course of human history. In Antioch, the local Jesus Movement suddenly and quickly transformed itself from a social and political reform movement into a full-blown religion. As this occurred, a remarkable conversion happened - or maybe the transformation occurred because Saul of Tarsus was "converted" to a new religious vision of his own and evangelized the group as Paul the Apostle. Whichever way it happened, we will probably never know. But secular scholars are pretty much agreed that this group included the first true Christians and that Paul, a Gnostic, was one of the first if not the first convert. And the Antioch Jesus Movement became the first of what modern scholars now refer to as the Christ Cults, the variety of Pauline-inspired cults prior to their consolidation under a single authority centuries later into the Catholic church.

But is there any concrete evidence that Paul existed?

So here's my own bit of fun speculation which isn't to be taken seriously. To quote Anne Elk from a Monty Python sketch - "My theory, which belongs to me, is mine"

The historical Jesus (Yeshua) was a preacher from the Notzri movement who annoyed the Romans and got crucified like many other Jews. His close friends had grief hallucinations so stories were going round that he'd been seen after his death. (He was the Elvis of his day, so to speak.) Paul, who suffered from temporal lobe epilepsy, had a bizarre experience which he interpreted as Jesus speaking to him and he started a new religion. Historical Yeshua eventually got mixed up with Yeishu ha-Notzri because the names were similar.

On the other hand, maybe Paul's vision was inspired by psylocibin.

Seriously, though, I'd be grateful if anyone could find further sources of information which don't quote Hayyim ben Yehoshua or refer to Madame Blavatsky and Theosophy.