Where did the Jesus myth come from?

[Lion IRC]

No evidence for Jesus of Nazareth?

Evidence? Plenty. CREDIBLE evidence and proof? No,none.

See Minimalist? Thats all you have to do. Learn how to say credible, persuasive, believable...these are personal statements of opinion about the evidence.

Thanks padraic!
1 kudos point coming up shortly.

...However, I am confident that is most likely that the Jesus of the New Testament is myth,with little if any connection to any historical person.

See that Minimalist?
"...I am confident..."

From the Latin : Con-fide
With faith!

And that is something no apologist can refute. padraic is completely entitled to assert that he finds the evidence unpersuasive and he isnt embarrassed to admit that it is subjectively a matter of confidence/likelihood.

[FallentoReason]

Vague opinions is the only way apologetics floats. When it comes to the hard facts there's none for Jesus.

[greneknight]

It's the..."THATS NOT EVIDENCE" part which you guys have gotten down to an automatic on-cue reply.

Credible evidence
- Can't be anyone who thinks it's true. (Evangelical motive)
- Cant be anyone who corroborates the exact same story (collusion/plagiarism)
- Cant be anyone who tells a slightly different version (bible errancy)
- Cant be anonymous (Because Julian Assange publishes names and addresses for all his sources.)

Ahem. Here's a list a former forum member constructed in order to get across the gravity of the problem, namely, that Jesus was nowhere to be found in history.

These are the silent 40.

1. Josephus
2. Philo
3. Seneca
4. Pliny the Elder
5. Suetonius
6. Juvenal
7. Martial
8. Persius
9. Plutarch
10. Justus of Tiberias
11. Apollonius
12. Pliny the Younger
13. Tacitus
14. Quintilian
15. Lucanus
16. Epictetus
17. Silius Italicus
18. Statius
19. Ptolemy
20. Valerius Maximus
21. Arrian
22. Petronius
23. Dion Pruseus
24. Paterculus
25. Appian
26. Theon of Smyrna
27. Phlegon
28. Pomponius Mela
29. Quintius Curtius
30. Lucian
31. Pausanias
32. Valerius Flaccus
33. Florus Lucius
34. Favorinius
35. Phaedrus
36. Damis
37. Aulus Gellius
38. Columella
39. Dio Chrysostom
40. Appion of Alexandria

Suetonius and Pliny the Younger do mention Jesus (if they are authentic and not Christian interpolations) but fact is they are both much to late to distinguish between Christ and Christianity.

On Tacitus:

1. There are no quotes of this passage by any of the church fathers.
2. Tertullian was familar with all the writings of Tactius and if this passage existed it would have been cited as an answer to his arguments (Chapter 5 of Tertullian's Apology and Chapter 21 of the same).
3. In the beginning of the 3rd century Clement of Alexandria compiled a list of all references from Pagan writers to Jesus and Tactius is missing from it.
4. Origen in his arguments with Celsus would have referred to it had it existed.
5. Eusibius in the 4th century did the same as Clement of Alexandria and once again, no mention of Tactius.
6. The first quotation of it by a Christian writer was in the 15th century.
7. At the time of the quotation it was said only one copy of the Annals existed and it was made 600 years after Tactius died.
8. Conveniently, this single existing copy was in the possession of a Christian so insertion of a forged passage would have been extremely easy.
9. The story about the orgies of Nero do not read anything like the writing of Tactius.
10. This story is almost word for word in the writing of Sulpicus Severus who was a Christian in the 5th century but there were no references to Jesus.
11. Suetonius, a Roman historian, who condemned Nero heavily even tells us Nero took care not to sacrifice a human life, not even of a convicted criminal.
12. Tactius even claims at the time of the fire that Nero was not in Rome but in Antium.

These are just a few reasons that scholars see this passage from Annals as nothing to be reckoned with as it most probably is a forgery in the same vein as Josephus' Testimonium and at best it is nothing more than heresay.

On Josephus:

The Testimonium was not written by Josephus and there are many reasons in the text itself. One example is that in the text Jesus is called the messiah yet Josephus remained an observant Jew and never became a Christian therefore he could not have called Jesus the messiah. Secondly, there are 3 different manuscript of the Testimonium and as expected, the later manuscripts have more details than the earlier ones as if the story evolved with time. Third and EXTREMELY DAMNING is that there were no references to it nor was it even mentioned in any writing until the 4th century when Constantine appointed Eueibius official church historian (Eusebius is the suspected author of the Testimonium) Fourth and a final nail in the Testimonium's coffin is textual analysis of the text with Josephus known writing shows certain phrase and words that were not used by Josephus but were found in the writing of only one church historian by the name of Eusebius.

Jesus simply wasn't a part of human history.

OK, thanks. I'm saving this for future reference.

[Oldandeasilyconfused]

Lion,I think you may have mistaken my cautious skepticism for support.

I'm agnostic about the existence of an historical Jesus, which I consider to be irrelevant to the religion of Christianity.

"As a skeptic", I avoid truth claims if I can,preferring to opine. Even science does not make absolute truth claims, only dogmatic theists and ideologues do that.

When I assert "I do not believe X Y or Z due to a lack of credible evidence", I am not suggesting my position is purely subjective. Rather,it is based on the best evidence I have been able to find.

[DeistPaladin]

Like I have said, one half of America ought to be locked up in a mental home.

It would be not only the best thing that could happen for our country but perhaps for the world as well.

[Atom]

Ahem. Here's a list a former forum member constructed in order to get across the gravity of the problem, namely, that Jesus was nowhere to be found in history.

Finally, we have something to discuss; a derivative of John Remsberg's list from The Christ. This list has been repeated without understanding in other books and on the internet. The way this list is used is severely flawed; even Remsberg didn't conclude that Jesus was a myth. There are a lot of problems with the list such as:

1) Some of the writers do mention Jesus.
2) Most of these writers clearly wouldn't be expected to write about Jesus
3) Many of the writers never mentioned Jews.
4) Many never mentioned Christians, though they are known to have been around.

If you've only read one side on this topic and blindly believe what you read without also reading the other side try:

Holding, James Patrick, Shattering the Christ Myth - This book fully addresses the "silence" argument mentioned here, and a variety of copycat religion ideas, some of which I've seen mentioned here, and Hollywood's myth mistakes.

If you have limited time to read on this topic try the following link, which includes a discussion of Philo:
http://www.tektonics.org/qt/remslist.html

The post that went along with the list below stated a lot of things as "facts" but those "facts" are highly disputed and amount to cherry picking ideas that are dubious at best to make an argument rather than applying good historical methodology and weighing the evidence. Each of the ideas presented has a moderate to low likelihood of accuracy, but for them all to be correct makes the probability for the accuracy of the conclusion very small.

These are the silent 40.

1. Josephus
2. Philo
3. Seneca
4. Pliny the Elder
5. Suetonius
6. Juvenal
7. Martial
8. Persius
9. Plutarch
10. Justus of Tiberias
11. Apollonius
12. Pliny the Younger
13. Tacitus
14. Quintilian
15. Lucanus
16. Epictetus
17. Silius Italicus
18. Statius
19. Ptolemy
20. Valerius Maximus
21. Arrian
22. Petronius
23. Dion Pruseus
24. Paterculus
25. Appian
26. Theon of Smyrna
27. Phlegon
28. Pomponius Mela
29. Quintius Curtius
30. Lucian
31. Pausanias
32. Valerius Flaccus
33. Florus Lucius
34. Favorinius
35. Phaedrus
36. Damis
37. Aulus Gellius
38. Columella
39. Dio Chrysostom
40. Appion of Alexandria

[FallentoReason]

I'm having a look at the link. The list is actually quite shocking. Thanks for showing me that Atom!

[Atom]

Here is a video version of the rebuttal.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRTkXbQPn...ded#t=530s

[Minimalist]

Suetonius and Pliny the Younger do mention Jesus

No. Suetonius and Pliny mention "christians" ( or chrestians. in Suetonius' case). None of them ever heard of fucking jesus.


Idiot apologists like Holding - one of the worst of the lot - are doing what apologists always do. Make excuses for the fact that your silly godboy does not appear in history. In no way does it change the fact that writers such as Seneca, Philo, and Pliny the Elder not only never heard of fucking jesus ( in Philo's case, this in spite of writing a letter to Caligula about the activities of Pontius Pilate without ever mentioning that one of his "crimes" was to kill the messiah!) nor in Pliny's case a book which recounted every silly yarn he knew never mentions some jew coming back to life after being fucking crucified!

So, xtian asswipes, you can jump up and down until your knees ache but the fact remains that the dearth of references to your godboy was so complete that later xtian writers felt obliged to forge some in order to have his absence from the record not be so embarrassing.

But then, it takes very little to convince true believers. To quote Caesar: "Men willingly believe what they wish to be true."

[greneknight]

Suetonius and Pliny the Younger do mention Jesus

No. Suetonius and Pliny mention "christians" ( or chrestians. in Suetonius' case). None of them ever heard of fucking jesus.


Idiot apologists like Holding - one of the worst of the lot - are doing what apologists always do. Make excuses for the fact that your silly godboy does not appear in history. In no way does it change the fact that writers such as Seneca, Philo, and Pliny the Elder not only never heard of fucking jesus ( in Philo's case, this in spite of writing a letter to Caligula about the activities of Pontius Pilate without ever mentioning that one of his "crimes" was to kill the messiah!) nor in Pliny's case a book which recounted every silly yarn he knew never mentions some jew coming back to life after being fucking crucified!

So, xtian asswipes, you can jump up and down until your knees ache but the fact remains that the dearth of references to your godboy was so complete that later xtian writers felt obliged to forge some in order to have his absence from the record not be so embarrassing.

But then, it takes very little to convince true believers. To quote Caesar: "Men willingly believe what they wish to be true."

Thanks. I'm saving this for future reference.