Five Strikes Against Jesus

[Minimalist]

http://www.rawstory.com/2016/12/here-are...existed-2/

Here are 5 reasons to suspect Jesus never existed

Most antiquities scholars think that the New Testament gospels are “mythologized history.”

By contrast, other scholars believe that the gospel stories are actually “historicized mythology.”  In this view, those ancient mythic templates are themselves the kernel. They got filled in with names, places and other real world details as early sects of Jesus worship attempted to understand and defend the devotional traditions they had received.

[robvalue]

Nice.

I predict that the mythicist position will eventually become the norm, among non-Christian scholars. As noted, you can't take seriously the opinion of someone who already believes in Super Jesus before they write the first letter. I mean, if they had great evidence to present it wouldn't matter what their beliefs are, but they don't. It's laughable trash.

Historical Jesus arguments, all of which suck:

1. Trying to make out the bible is better evidence than just a bunch of anecdotes
2. Referring to much later, often very suspicious works
3. Trying to drag other historical figures down to Jesus' level
4. No True Historian / appeal to popularity (you're not a real historian if you don't agree with me)
5. Appeals to motivations of authors, often anonymous ones (embarrassing stories etc.)
6. Getting very angry and throwing insults

[Minimalist]

About 20 years ago a man named Thomas Thompson wrote a book called The Mythic Past.  In it he argued:

The Jewish people's historical claims to a small area of land bordering the eastern Mediterranean are not only the foundation for the modern state of Israel, they are also at the very heart of Judeo-Christian belief. Yet in The Mythic Past, Thomas Thompson argues that such claims are grounded in literary myth, not history. Among the author's startling conclusions are these:• There never was a "united monarch" of Israel in biblical times• We can no longer talk about a time of the Patriarchs• The entire notion of "Israel" and its history is a literary fiction.

The book, which was an expansion of his doctoral dissertation, led to Thompson being villified by nutty jesus freaks, led in a large degree by Der Popenfuhrer, Herr von Ratzinger...later pope Benedict.  Yet today, with the assistance of archaeology, Thompson's position regarding the bullshit stories of the OT is now the mainstream view.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Innit funny how the historical Jesus contingent never seem to apply their standards of historicity to Zeus or Ba'al or Ganesh or Amaterasu or any of the myriad of other deities? People claim to have spoken with Wotan, wrote stories about him, people all throughout the geography of his culture believed in him - but these things are only historically valid when applied to Jesus.

Special plead, much?

Boru

[Minimalist]

Well that's exactly right, Brian.  The mantra is:  "Your god is false but MY god is real."

And no.  They can never see themselves.

[vorlon13]

and I might raise a point of order, so to speak, about the source article on this matter;

which Jesus is being refuted?

the Jesus crucified on Thursday, or the Friday one?

the Jesus that Matthew inerrantly reports wants us to follow the Law, or the Jesus Paul asserts doesn't ?

the chatty, engaging confident Jesus that was crucified, or the dark and despairing Jesus that went to the cross ?

See, if they only refute one of them, the Christians will still have a backup Jesus.

[Cyberman]

Two martyrs for the price of one.

[Minimalist]

which Jesus is being refuted?

That's only a problem for the historicists, V.  To the mythicists it doesn't much matter since none of it ever happened.

[vorlon13]

funny to contemplate the christers debating which Christ figure they can do with out . . .

[Minimalist]

J. D. Crossan calls the surfeit of historical jesuses...(jesusi?) an "academic embarrassment."