RE: Do you think jesus christ existed
December 31, 2013 at 5:23 pm
(This post was last modified: December 31, 2013 at 5:26 pm by TudorGothicSerpent.)
(December 31, 2013 at 3:04 pm)là bạn điên Wrote:(December 31, 2013 at 2:34 pm)TudorGothicSerpent Wrote: I've never seen any convincing argument that Jesus didn't exist as a human being.
Onus isn't on us. I am unconvinced eitherway. It is really up to you to prove he existed
Given the facts that the overwhelming vast majority of jews did NOT consider him a messiah, that's pretty irrelevant
The existence of an early Christian community within a few decades of the time when Jesus would have died isn't irrelevant to the question of whether he existed. It is irrelevant to the question of whether or not he was the Jewish Messiah, but I'm not trying to argue that he was. I don't believe that there has ever been or will ever be a Messiah, because I believe that the entire concept was just a bit of hopeful mythology invented by a small civilization that kept getting kicked around by the larger middle eastern empires like the runt of a litter of puppies.
Given that the early Christian community starts to appear on the historical stage at a time when people who knew Jesus during his life would have still been alive (with the earliest extant Christian writings appearing in the middle of the first century, and with the Neronic persecution likely occurring at around the same time), the assumption that he actually existed is the easiest one by far. Most figures of very dubious historicity, like Orpheus, Arjuna, or Moses, don't appear to have had any following until centuries after they allegedly lived.
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We have no evidence as to who Paul of Tarsus is either. There is a reasonable doubt to whether he really existed.
As with Jesus, the easiest interpretation (and the one accepted by the majority of scholars) is that Paul actually existed and wrote around seven of the epistles generally attributed to him. The documents are consistent enough to have been written by one person who claimed, in all of them, to be Paul of Tarsus. They lack any of the theological debate and argument that already existed as early as the beginning of the second century, dealing instead with issues that apparently had already died down by that time instead (Christianity when they were written was still apparently one of the developing versions of Judaism, rather than a unique religion), and in fact, they're even less theologically sophisticated than the earliest gospel. With the earliest writings, including Mark and the Pauline epistles, there's no mention even of a virgin birth. The idea of the kind of intricate theology that would develop by the end of the 1st and beginning of the 2nd century, as presented in the Gospel of John, would have been entirely alien to the author.
They likely debate to the time when Paul would have still been alive, and they all bear his name. So, the easiest interpretation is that they were from him. Any alternative argument requires both evidence, and a reason why it's more likely.