Historian explains why Jesus ''mythers'' aren't taken seriously by most Historians

[TheMessiah]

[Napoléon]

TL: DR

[TheMessiah]

TL: DR

Sorry, but there can't be a TLDR.

It's very in-depth and completely tackles every single Jesus myth argument - the guy who wrote it is a Historian (Atheist) who has studied for 25 years. The detail is quite extrodinary.

[Minimalist]

Agreed....and all that to get to "I Want To Believe In My Fairy GodBoy."

[TheMessiah]

Agreed....and all that to get to "I Want To Believe In My Fairy GodBoy."

The author isn't religious.

I couldn't post the conclusion in the OP because it was too long; but here it is.


The question asked if historians regarded the existence of Jesus to be "historical fact".  The answer is that they do as much as any scholar can do so for the existence of an obscure peasant preacher in the ancient world.  There is as much, if not slightly more, evidence for the existence of Yeshua ben Yusef as there is for other comparable Jewish preachers, prophets and Messianic claimants, even without looking at the gospel material.  Additionally, that material contains elements which only make sense if their stories are about a historical figure.  


The arguments of the Jesus Mythicists, on the other hand, require contortions and suppositions that simply do not stand up to Occam's Razor  and continually rest on positions that are not accepted by the majority of even non-Christian and Jewish scholars.  The proponents of the Jesus Myth hypothesis are almost exclusively amateurs with an ideological axe to grind and their position is and will almost certainly remain on the outer fringe of theories about the origins of Christianity.

[robvalue]

Maybe splitting up the OP into sections with reveals would make it more accessible. That post is just gigantic!

The code is

[hide]
Text for section 1
[/hide]

And so on through the post.

[Minimalist]

Pg. 344 - "On the Historicity of Jesus"  Richard Carrier.

They key line here is 'Christ, the author of this name, was executed by

the procurator Pontius Pilate in the reign of Tiberius'. This is the first-ever
reference to a historical Jesus outside the NT, dating to around 116 CE (very
near our cut-off date for usable evidence). 100
If the passage is authentic. I elsewhere demonstrate (following the arguments
of scholars before me who have argued the same) that this line is
probably an interpolation, and that Tacitus in fact originally described
not the Christians being scapegoated for the fire, but followers of the Jew- ·
ish instigator Chrestus first suppressed under Claudius (as reported by
Suetonius: see §1 1). The line about Christ being executed by Pilate was
added sometime after the mid-fourth century. Before then, no one, Christian
or non-Christian, ever heard of this persecution event under Nero,
or of any reference to Christians in Tacitus; this event is not mentioned
even when second-century Christians told stories of Nero persecuting
Christians!

We have one manuscript of Annales and it uses the word "Chrestianos" and ultraviolet scanning shows that some helpful scribe in the Middle Ages clumsily altered it to Christianos.
Xtians were not above writing bullshit stories for their boy.

Speaking only for myself, I can't take seriously anyone who proposes a "Historical Jesus" because they cannot seem to even agree among themselves what is meant by the term.

Whereas, I know what an MJ is.  He's bullshit.  Just like all the other gods, goddesses and demons that primitive men concocted.

[Thumpalumpacus]

"Even without looking at the Gospel material"?

How can the Gospels be counted as evidence of Jesus? They are the claim.

[Minimalist]

"Even without looking at the Gospel material"?

How can the Gospels be counted as evidence of Jesus? They are the claim.

Time to trot out the Tax Fraud analogy, again.


http://atheistforums.org/thread-31832-po...#pid895894

[Minimalist]

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