Jesus and Historicity: The Apostles?

[Clueless Morgan]

Jesus historicity is a big question mark for me and I fully admit that I don't know much about the evidence for or against a historical Jesus - I have the audiobook Nailed by David Fitzgerald which argues the mythicist side but I have yet to get around to a book arguing for a historical Jesus and David didn't touch on what I'm wondering about here.

So Paul only ever saw a ghosty Jesus, right? Not a real flesh and blood one, just a mirage or a vision so he's not an eye-witness to Jesus. It's also pretty certain that he existed, right? No one disputes that. And Paul was supposedly in contact with apostles who claim to have lived with Jesus, witnessed his "miracles," saw him crucified (Peter, for instance).

I don't believe for a second that there was a magical dude who was born of a virgin and healed sick people and conjured bread and fish, but I'm willing to entertain the idea that there was a regular, charismatic guy who became the real-life basis for the Jesus myth. What I'm wondering about here is how mythicists treat the relationship between Paul and the apostles who claimed to be first hand witnesses of an actual Jesus. Were they lying? Did they, too, only witness a vision or mirage of Jesus just like Paul? Did they actually know a Jesus-figure and they simply embellished the stories over time?

Thoughts?

[Minimalist]

Fictional sidekicks for the fictional godboy.

[Captain Colostomy]

When I was on the 'Holy Land'™ tour, circa 1993, I was struck by the sheer repetition of statements like 'supposedly', 'likely the place of', 'best guess estimates are...', etc. etc. Our tour guide was doing his job, and not pandering. I respected him for it, and shitcanned the religion right there.

Yeah, precise information may be an unrealistic expectation, but nothing could bear the scrutiny of honest inquiry, it seemed. So much for god and his clear plan for us.

Jesus? Fuhgedaboudit.

[Minimalist]

http://www.jesusneverexisted.com/apostles.html

The apostles should be twelve of the most famous people in history. We're told they were hand picked by Jesus to witness his wondrous deeds, learn his sublime teachings, and take the good news of his kingdom to the ends of the earth.

Which makes it all the more surprising that we know next to nothing about them. We can't even be sure of their names: the gospels list a collection of more than twenty names for the so-called twelve disciples – with Bartholomew sometimes showing up as Nathanael, Matthew as Levi and Jude as Thaddeus, Lebbaeus, or Daddaeus!

It should be apparent that if the twelve were actual historical figures, with such an important role in the foundation and growth of the Church, it would be impossible to have such wild confusion over the basic question of who they really were.

But what do we know about any of them?

[Clueless Morgan]

http://www.jesusneverexisted.com/apostles.html

Okay, from now on whenever I have a question I'm just going to PM Min, he's got all the answers.

... Wait.

Does that mean Min is God?

[Minimalist]

Google is god.

[JesusHChrist]

As for Paul, some guy wrote those letters, but nonetheless no evidence for "Paul" outside of the Bible.

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Paul_of_Tarsus

There is no evidence for Paul outside the Bible. That said, seven of the documents attributed to Paul do appear from textual analysis to be written by the same person. This is considered reasonable evidence that some single individual performed the role, and we may as well call him Paul, as does the author of Acts, thought by scholars to have also written the Gospel According to Luke.

Paul never met a physical Jesus; he just ate some bad shrooms and had a "vision".

[Minimalist]

do appear from textual analysis to be written by the same person.

Marcion seems the likely culprit.

[JesusHChrist]

Marcion seems the likely culprit.

Isn't Marcion too late though? I thought some of Paul's letters were dated to the mid-1st century and Marcion was 2nd century.

Correct?

Does the theology match up as well?

[Minimalist]

Try dismissing the "theology" which is nothing but self-serving bullshit.

The church has concocted a whole story but the question remains as to whether or not the story ever happened.

We know that in the 160s AD the xtian apologist, Justin, wrote an apologia to Antoninus Pius. In it, he never heard of anybody named "paul" ( nor did he know the names of the supposed gospels ) but he did know of Marcion. How reasonable is it that he would not know of the man who supposedly brought jesus' teachings to the gentiles a century earlier?

By the way, we have no first century manuscripts or even fragments of manuscripts.

http://vridar.org/2013/03/08/new-date-fo...pyrus-p52/

In conclusion, Orsine and Clarysse chastise biblical scholars for embracing unsupportably early dates for their manuscripts:

There are no first century New Testament papyri and only very few can be attributed to the second century (P52, P90, P104, probably all the second half of the century) or somewhere between the late second and early third centuries (P30, P64+67+4, 0171, 0212).

Pretending this heavenly horseshit is real is a cottage industry for theologians. If it isn't true, who needs those scumbags, eh? So the whole story needs to be dismissed because the xtian fuckwads who concocted it were pushing an expansionist agenda for their new religion.

See here.

http://www.jesusneverexisted.com/epistles2.htm

We know, of course, that the Catholics prevailed over their opponents. In the formulation of a single, universal, Catholic dogma, Paul, the erstwhile hero of the heretics, was written into the yarn called Acts of the Apostles, shorn of much of his self-proclaimed superiority and now with the Holy Spirit guiding his hand. When an approved canon was finally determined, the Pauline letters, assembled for lack of any known chronology by length, were tucked in behind Acts, implying an historical sequence utterly unsupported by any reality.


In short, the claims for a 1st century superstar of missionary tours and Christological discourse, are fraudulent – or are, as they say, "inauthentic". Paul, like his divine guide and mentor Jesus, never existed.

and/or

http://www.jesusneverexisted.com/saul-paul.htm

A Catholicised sainthood was the ultimate fate of our hero Paul but from where did the super-apostle arise? If, as seems likely, Marcion created what would become the New Testament Paul as a messenger for his own ideas, he almost certainly used biographical material from his own life, particularly the power struggle he waged with the collective in Rome. Marcion, like "Paul", alone knew the truth, a mystery made manifest to him by revelation.

As a shipping magnate from Sinope (a Black Sea port, a hundred miles north of Galatia) Marcion enjoyed financial independence and was able to travel extensively. At one point he even financed the church in Rome before being excommunicated and returning to the east. He would have been familiar with the sea lanes and attendant dangers that figure so prominently in the Pauline story. To give his theology added "authority" it had to be back projected into an earlier "apostolic age". He may have chosen the name Paul (meaning "small" or "humble") as reflective of his own position.