What were Jesus and early Christians like?

[DeistPaladin]

They writers were not interested in preserving a chronology of Christ's life and the writings show this. They were interested in getting His message across and the perfect life He lived. They were not historians nor did they claim to be properly educated writers. So yes it is so a chronologically historic detailed recording of Christ's life wasn't their purpose.

Excuses, excuses, excuses. The Gospels do make references to time and order of events. But you go on believing your favorite excuse for Gospel errancy.

Christ's ministry started before John was imprisoned, it started when He was baptized. This was His announcement by John to the Jews.

Bold emphasis mine:

Mark 1:14 Now after that John was put in prison, Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God,

Matt 4:12 Now when Jesus had heard that John was cast into prison, he departed into Galilee;
...
4:17 From that time Jesus began to preach, and to say, Repent: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

Luke 4:14-15 And Jesus returned [from the Wilderness] in the power of the Spirit into Galilee: and there went out a fame of him through all the region round about. And he taught in their synagogues, being glorified of all.

The Synoptic Gospels all make it clear that JtB was imprisoned first. At that point in the telling of the story, JtB was still a big enough force that he had to exit the drama before Jesus could take center stage. The Gospel of John would escalate the propaganda by having Jesus eclipse JtB, making a point that he was running a more successful ministry even before JtB was put in prison.

You are now trying to deflect by using something you can't prove, you're stating your feelings and calling them absolute, shame on you.

What are you babbling about?

I want disagree with this, yet most all things even a song holds bits of truth.

...and historians sort through folklore, parcing what we can be confident in vs. what is fanciful addition. This is why they are confident that there was a Troy which was apparently destroyed in a war, as archaeological evidence indicates, but they don't use the Iliad to claim to know certain details.

Even with what you've stated there is no evidence the gospels are not correct reporting of events and ect. in Christ's life.

In your bizzaro world where skepticism is an agenda to reject the Truth with a capital "T", it's up to a skeptic to prove that a given claim is not true.

This is not how logic works in the world the rest of us live in. You don't have to prove Mohammad didn't receive his revelation from the angel Gabriel. You don't have to prove that "theatens" aren't attached to your soul as Scientology asserts. You don't have to prove Athena didn't spring from the brain of Zeus. The burden of proof always rests upon the one who asserts that a religion or some other claim is true.

The stories were written by individuals with no thought of conspiring to make a story better or more exciting.

Prove it.

You can start by explaining how we know who these individuals even were, let alone what their true motive was.

Now prove these stories were written in that given order

This is not disputed by Christian scholars.

and the intent of Christ and John the Baptist were as you say

This is the story as it is presented.

What I do believe I see is that these very gospels offend you and, you have a desire to make them into a myth so you do not have to concern yourself with their living truth.

That's what you need to believe about skeptics of your religion. You need to believe that skepticism is an agenda to deny the Truth with a capital "T" for any variety of reasons you like to attribute. You need to at least make it a clash of "worldviews" so you can feel justified in your faith in assertions you can't otherwise defend.

In reality, it is not equally rationally valid to choose faith over skepticism. Faith is belief without reason and against all reason. Skepticism is simply a critical evaluation of claims and whether or not they've met the burden of proof. You share my skepticism of other religions. The difference between us is I believe in one less holy book than you.

The red dots are removed text by me, they're offensive in my view

The depiction of JtB in John's Gospel as little more than Jesus' bitch-boy was doubtlessly equally offensive to the followers of John the Baptist.

Nonetheless, I shall repeat my question with the ridicule removed. Do you consider it believable that a cult leader would tell all his followers to follow another, on terms so certain that it was the very purpose of his ministry, reinforced with such displays as prostrating himself before Jesus in the manner he did in John's Gospel, and his followers would ignore their leader and his cult would continue to revere him instead?

When you understand why you don't believe Muslim assertions about Jesus, you understand why I don't believe Christian assertions about John the Baptist. Neither depiction is consistent with the behavior of his followers.

Those cults you listed have died out most extremely quickly and none had the following of Christ, billions, none lasting and growing over 2000 years, none effecting the world in such a profound way. Throwing up a few cults in no way explains why Christianity has grown the way it has, nor does it dismiss it's truth. Truth is why Christianity has accomplished what it has, people recognize truth, well most do.

You can assert what you like. At the end of your speech, the success of Christianity doesn't require a supernatural explanation. By Occam's Razor, it's not necessary to invoke a supernatural explanation when a natural one will do.

This [special pleading] would more accurately describe your attempts at dismissing the gospels and there truths.

How?

How is skepticism "special pleading"?

Code:

Um, yes. See I can dismiss you with a couple words also.

True but my dismissal of you was correct.

Critical thinking is not denial of claims where the burden of proof has been met. Critical thinking is evaluating with an open mind whether a claim has met its burden of proof.

There are those who have never read the scriptures and claim to be atheist, how is that possible.

The same way it is possible for you to not be a Hindu even if you have not read the Baghavad Gihta. The same way it is possible for you to not be a Muslim even if you have not read the Koran. The same way it is possible for you to not believe in Zeus even if you have not read the Iliad and the Odyssey. Lack of belief in a religion does not require you to read the scriptures of that religion.

That's what every argument here comes down to, Christians want give up the truth they know and atheist want accept the truth we know.

It is not that we won't accept the truth. It's that you can't meet your burden of proof and want to complain that we're just being unfairly closed minded. Yet you apply this same skepticism to other religious claims. You understand how the burden of proof works with other religions. You just want special treatment for yours.