Official Debate: Are the Gospels based on a true story?

[Rayaan]

[chi pan]

[DeistPaladin]

[DeistPaladin]

[chi pan]

[DeistPaladin]

[DeistPaladin]

Well, it looks like we've officially lost my opponent in this debate. I thought Christmas Eve would be as good a time as any to wrap it up with my conclusion.

Perhaps we lost him because he thought he was signing up for a different debate, despite how I made the topic and terms clear. Judging by his posts, I think he was hoping to go for the usual tactic of shrinking Jesus down into some obscure religious teacher who falls into the gaps of our knowledge of the time and place. I'm sorry if he felt confused but I made it clear that this debate was over not just "some-guy-named-Yeshua" but whether or not the Gospels were based on a true story.

Some Christians who had PMed me about this debate challenge before immediately ran away when they realized the usual escape routes were sealed off. One accused me of trying to "rig the debate". Far from it. The terms were, I thought, quite generous to a defender of the faith. I allowed them to gloss over the miracles and we'd be using the Bible, their own Holy Book, as my primary source material. All the rules of this debate did was nail down the believer as to what the term "historical Jesus" even means. To debate anything, step 1 is to define in exact terms the thing being debated.

Put bluntly, I could not possibly care less if there was "some-guy-named-Yeshua-who-was-a-religious-teacher". Yeshua was a common name in that time and place and doom crier/messiah wannabe were common professions. If your definition of "The Historical Jesus" is this vague, you can likely find several in 1st century Judea that fit that description.

This is why the oblique references in the Annals of Tacitus and the Jamesian Reference in Josephus, even if we can be so charitable as to overlook the problems with both, do not avail the apologist in this debate. There are insufficient details in both to assert that the Gospels are at least based on a true story. Now the Testimonium Flavianum, if it WERE authentic, WOULD be the kind of evidence the apologist would need. I've already reviewed why it is not.

To break it down, a discussion of the "Historical Jesus", defined in terms of the Gospel character, should be over three aspects of his alleged life:
1. His miracles
2. His successful ministry
3. His teachings

His Miracles
The glossing over of miracles as described in the Gospels is a generous concession in this debate to the apologist. The reason is that if a man were going about healing the masses of their diseases and disabilities, such events should have gotten the attention of authorities or historians of the time.

His Ministry
The same could be said for a religious leader of such a controversial ministry, preached in such a volatile Roman province where authorities were always watchful of any potential insurrection. The Bible leads us to believe that Jesus shook the political and religious foundations of the time, that priests were always trying to trick him and eventually they met on Passover Eve in an elaborate conspiracy to get rid of him. It was not just peasants who sought him out but the wealthy and powerful. At the height of his ministry, he had his triumphant entry into Jerusalem with crowds waving palm leaves and crying "Hosanna" (Mark 11:7-11). This was no insignificant ministry.

Christians, aware of the oddity that such a ministry wouldn't even merit a mention from any non-Christian testimony until the second century, try to minimize Jesus. His ministry was only for the poor and the general masses, not something any notables would notice. This assertion, bare as it is, does not fit the Gospel accounts of a ministry that spread like wildfire to the surrounding provinces and got the attention of great notables like Herod Antipas and others.

His Teachings
What were they again? He wrote nothing down so already establishing what his teachings were is problematic. And what we have from other so-called "witnesses" and early theologians is contradictory. Did Jesus tell us to keep the OT laws, as Matthew would suggest or abolish them as Paul would suggest? Did Jesus teach he was a separate being from and subordinate servant to God, as the synoptic Gospels teach, or was he God incarnate, as John would suggest? Even the Gospels can't keep their own story straight, never mind the plethora of early heterodox Christians who had such radically different ideas of what Jesus was and what he stood for as to make the differences between modern Christians and Muslims look like petty hair-splitting in comparison.

Modern Christians like to summarily dismiss all the heterodox Christians, the Ebionites, Marcionites and Docetics, as minor schismatic groups but clearly they were a big problem for the early church. They warranted mention in two out of three of the canonical epistles of John as well as an entire council to hammer it all out three centuries after Jesus' ministry. If he did exist, he certainly failed to make anything clear to the followers he would leave behind. Good luck to anyone who wants to sort it all out now.

Conclusion
If there was a historical Jesus, we'll never know anything about him or be able to sort the real story away from all the myths and folklore. We simply do not have any reliable, detailed information to go on. The Gospels are NOT based on a true story. They can't even get their own story straight.

[side note to the moderators]
Chipan is welcome to post his rebuttle and conclusion as he likes. Unless he can dig up some heretofore undiscovered evidence, I already know he has nothing else to offer.