RE: Did Jesus Die On The Cross
September 1, 2014 at 1:52 pm
(This post was last modified: September 1, 2014 at 2:35 pm by Anomalocaris.)
The Romans had quite a long time and many recorded instances of motivation to offhandedly crucify Jews. So there must have been lots of crucified Jews. The name Jesus, or Joshua, and Joseph, were pretty common. So it seems entirely probably that the Romans crucified a quite few Jesus Ben Josephs.
So it seems very difficult to me at this remove to ascertain whether there had been a specific Jesus Ben Joseph at the origin of the Jesus cult, and whether if such a Jesus existed, he was one of those Jesus Ben Joseph's the Romans undoubtedly had nailed up to leave to die.
Keep in mind while it is perhaps possible to debunk some particular favored scenarios of how a specific Jesus may have become the origin of the Jesus cult, the vagaries of human self deception, wish thinking and outright lying makes possible an virtually infinite number of ways to make a particular Jesus ben Joseph become the the grain around which the myth coalesced. It would seem quite improbable to debunk them all. One would have to debunk almost all of them to say there never was any particular Jesus at the origin of the myth. So I see no real reason why it is particularly improbable that there should have been a single real person who became the grain around which the Jesus myth arose. No one seem to doubt there was a singular, particular Mohammed.
So I think while it is fairly safe, based on contemporary understanding of the operation of reality and of human psychology, to say there actually was never a Jesus son of god, but it seem impossible for now to argue convincingly based on more than vaguest inferences from dodgy circumstantial evidence either way about whether there ever had been a specific Jesus Ben Joseph who had a more than trivial connection with the beginning of the Jesus cult, and how he met his end.
So it seems very difficult to me at this remove to ascertain whether there had been a specific Jesus Ben Joseph at the origin of the Jesus cult, and whether if such a Jesus existed, he was one of those Jesus Ben Joseph's the Romans undoubtedly had nailed up to leave to die.
Keep in mind while it is perhaps possible to debunk some particular favored scenarios of how a specific Jesus may have become the origin of the Jesus cult, the vagaries of human self deception, wish thinking and outright lying makes possible an virtually infinite number of ways to make a particular Jesus ben Joseph become the the grain around which the myth coalesced. It would seem quite improbable to debunk them all. One would have to debunk almost all of them to say there never was any particular Jesus at the origin of the myth. So I see no real reason why it is particularly improbable that there should have been a single real person who became the grain around which the Jesus myth arose. No one seem to doubt there was a singular, particular Mohammed.
So I think while it is fairly safe, based on contemporary understanding of the operation of reality and of human psychology, to say there actually was never a Jesus son of god, but it seem impossible for now to argue convincingly based on more than vaguest inferences from dodgy circumstantial evidence either way about whether there ever had been a specific Jesus Ben Joseph who had a more than trivial connection with the beginning of the Jesus cult, and how he met his end.
