The Three-Headed "Jesus" Problem

[Salacious B. Crumb]

Yeah, no big deal, but I don't know exactly where these "facts" are coming from. I was talking about what your primary sources of these facts would be.. the gospels, the writers you've mentioned, not sure what else there is.. But, we can mosey on over to that thread... IF WE MUST

[Minimalist]

And yet here is Apollo in the Iliad....

So he prayed, and Phoebus Apollo heard him. Down he came, in fury, from the heights of Olympus, with his bow and inlaid quiver at his back. The arrows rattled at his shoulder as the god descended like the night, in anger. He set down by the ships, and fired a shaft, with a fearful twang of his silver bow. First he attacked the mules, and the swift hounds, then loosed his vicious darts at the men; so the dense pyres for the dead burned endlessly.

Book I

Striding down from Mount Olympus and taking pot shots at the Greeks.  A god and his deeds being depicted in an old book.  I realize that you are deeply invested in your mythology but it is the same stuff.  Just like Athena and Hera and Zeus and all the rest who happened to live in lands which had attained a degree of literacy.

We have the same kind of pious nonsense for all gods...including yours.  But actual history?  No where to be seen. 

Now, I am not saying that there was no one named Yeshua bar Yosef in first century Palestine.  There had to be a shitload of them because both names were exceedingly ordinary.  But you would have a devil of a time tracking one down based on the gospel stories or the even more vague paul stuff. 

But there are facts.

1- No Roman writer prior to Celsus in 185 mentions anyone named "jesus."

2- There apparently was a group called "Chrestians" in Rome itself in the early part of the first century.  Suetonius mentions them and your pal Tacitus' only surviving manuscript shows that the word he used was Chrestianos (followers of Chrestus) not "Christianos" followers of christ until it was edited by some helpful scribe probably in the 9th century. 

3- The most prolific mid second century xtian writer, Justin, never mentions any of those so-called gospels not does he seem to know anything about any "paul."  He does know about Marcion, however.

4- There are no first-century xtian burial catacombs in Rome.

5-  There is an inscription about the manumission of a slave by Antonia Minor which names Jucundus Chrestiani.  Antonia Minor died in 37 AD which is a terminus ad quem for her doing much of anything!  There are numerous inscriptions about Chrestians throughout the Roman Empire and we can't be certain when the proto-orthodox xtians decided to adopt the chrestians as the same thing....although the 4th century xtian writer Lactantius was still troubled by it.

I'll let you chew on those for a while.  I have some stuff to do.

[robvalue]

The fact that the gospels include a bunch of supernatural nonsense certainly detracts from their credibility, but they have almost no credibility in the first place.

Of course there were loads of people around that time who the story could be said to be roughly based on, with a correlation of about 1-5%. The point is, highlighting a single one of those and calling him "the historical Jesus" is rather arbitrary. Even the gospel authors did not know who they were writing about, so how can we know who they were writing about?

[Neo-Scholastic]

Is it solely because of the supernatural claims made (his miracles and resurrection) that people dismiss his existence in history?  

That seems to be the criteria of the atheists. As part of your list you forgot Socrates. No one doubts that he existed, but there's much less evidence for his existence than Jesus.

[Pyrrho]

Is it solely because of the supernatural claims made (his miracles and resurrection) that people dismiss his existence in history?  

That seems to be the criteria of the atheists. As part of your list you forgot Socrates. No one doubts that he existed, but there's much less evidence for his existence than Jesus.

What nonsense.  I have posted on this before at:

http://atheistforums.org/thread-34720-po...#pid993540

Here is some of it copied over:

Generally speaking, the more recent the person, the more evidence that there should be.  And generally speaking, the more important the person, the more evidence there should be.

In the case of Homer, I would not be confident that he was as described, but we can be sure that someone wrote The Illiad and someone wrote The Odyssey, or some group of people did.  But whether they were written by someone named "Homer" or not is not really known.  We don't have any proper documentation on that, but given the era in which he lived, that is hardly surprising.  So Homer is, at best, semi-mythical.  There is no real confidence that he actually existed, but he might have.  I am nearly a pure agnostic on Homer.

In the case of Socrates, we have the testimony of three contemporaries (Plato, Xenophon, and Aristophanes), which puts him in an entirely different class than Homer.  We can be reasonably sure that he existed, and lived in Athens, and was a philosopher who inspired a play by one (which is not complimentary, and makes fun of him), and many of the writings of the others, and Socrates likely said some of the things in some of their writings (though not all of things which Plato puts into the mouth of Socrates).  What adds to the value of the testimony is that they do not attribute miraculous properties to Socrates.  So we have a rough idea about him, and can be reasonably certain he existed.

With Jesus, we are in a different situation still.  He is supposed to be supremely important, and yet we have nothing written during his lifetime.  And unlike the case of Socrates, the earliest writings are all propaganda pieces for a religion, in which miraculous things are attributed to him, which detracts from their value as testimony.  And we also have known cases of fraud, in which Christians have tried to alter texts to support the claim that Jesus existed, which further detracts from any trust one might have otherwise had in writings purporting to support his existence.  Some of the stories (in the Bible) seem like they are adapted from seeing magicians, but this does not tell us whether they are based on a particular one, or on having seen various magicians and making Jesus fit the type.  So we really have no good reason to believe that the stories of Jesus are really based on a particular person, and is, at the very best, semi-mythical, though given his supposed importance, one would expect better documentation if he were real.  I am inclined to think he did not exist at all, but, of course, such a thing isn't likely to ever be provable.  He might have existed, though certainly not as described, and we really don't have any good reason to believe he existed at all.

As for the fact that most people, who have addressed the question, believe Jesus existed, most who enter into the question do not do so without bias, as they generally start out with the belief he existed and conclude, after looking at the evidence, what they already believed before looking at the evidence.  I find this very unconvincing, and am not inclined to alter my opinion based on the opinions of others.


So, I would say that one of the three existed, and the others are uncertain at best, and likely did not exist at all.  Of course, one cannot prove they did not exist, at least not based on any evidence I have seen.


Edited to add:

I forgot to mention the fact that the oldest writings of Christianity are the most vague, and the later ones are more detailed, which strongly suggests that the details are all fiction.  This is obscured to many readers of the Bible, who falsely assume that the books of the New Testament appear in the order in which they are written.  But even most Christian scholars say that that is wrong, and that the earliest writings are ones that lack detail, just as I say.

[Cato]

Is it solely because of the supernatural claims made (his miracles and resurrection) that people dismiss his existence in history?  

That seems to be the criteria of the atheists. As part of your list you forgot Socrates. No one doubts that he existed, but there's much less evidence for his existence than Jesus.

Ignorant? Or lying for Jesus? I have to ask because your statement is patently false and is a common canard lobbed into the discussion by the faithful. There is plenty written about Socrates, most notably by Aristophanes, Plato and Xenophon. All of them knew Socrates, Xenophon and Plato when Socrates was older, and Aristophanes when he was younger. These are just three and I'm pretty sure count as contemporary.

What you may be mistaken by is what's known as 'the Socratic problem'. The problem isn't whether or not Socrates existed, but the inability to separate myth from historical fact. Unlike with Jesus, there's no misapprehension about the problem; it's openly recognized and discussed.

[Minimalist]

Is it solely because of the supernatural claims made (his miracles and resurrection) that people dismiss his existence in history?  

That seems to be the criteria of the atheists. As part of your list you forgot Socrates. No one doubts that he existed, but there's much less evidence for his existence than Jesus.

Your capacity for self-delusion is truly mind-boggling Chad.

[robvalue]

Talking about other historical figures is a tu quoque fallacy of sorts, coupled with an appeal to authority. Even if historians generally accept someone else existed based on weak evidence, that doesn't make their decision correct. It would just mean they are being similarly too eager to believe without good reason. Historians are an authority, but when it comes to interpretation of events, they can only offer their best estimate.

If we're simply going to accept what "most historians think" without question, then there is no discussion to be had. Historians are there to gather the evidence, evaluate authenticity and so on, and then present a case for their interpretation of events. It is perfectly valid to analyse their arguments, they don't get to just announce what happened. It's a far softer science than most.

This is a deflection to hide the weakness of the evidence.

[Cato]

Let's not forget the fourth, and perhaps most sinister, head of the beast: AJ - American Jesus.

[Pizza]

Talking about other historical figures is a tu quoque fallacy of sorts, coupled with an appeal to authority. Even if historians generally accept someone else existed based on weak evidence, that doesn't make their decision correct. It would just mean they are being similarly too eager to believe without good reason. Historians are an authority, but when it comes to interpretation of events, they can only offer their best estimate.

If we're simply going to accept what "most historians think" without question, then there is no discussion to be had. Historians are there to gather the evidence, evaluate authenticity and so on, and then present a case for their interpretation of events. It is perfectly valid to analyse their arguments, they don't get to just announce what happened. It's a far softer science than most.

This is a deflection to hide the weakness of the evidence.

Please don't conflate "biblical scholars" with historians. Historians are usually more cautious than "biblical scholars."