Atheists being asked about the existence of Jesus

[Acrobat]

You did not have the goods you claimed to possess, and possession of those goods....which you don't have, would not speak to the article of contention to which they were leveraged.

You have folklore.  Not firsthand accounts.  The specific bit of folklore you're referring to concerns the formation of a movement - not the historic status of life of any jesus or christ (or even the historical status of the narrative participants.."paul"..and "james"...).

Pauls writing of his encounters with the disciples, and Jesus's brother James is not folklore, it's a first hand account.
This is the definition of folklore:

folk·lore
/ˈfōklôr/Submit
noun
the traditional beliefs, customs, and stories of a community, passed through the generations by word of mouth..

This is not a folklore, it's from his own letters, writings of his own encounters with them, as well as the disputes he had with them.

first·hand
/ˌfərstˈhand/Submit
adjective & adverb
adjective: first-hand; adverb: first-hand
(of information or experience) from the original source or personal experience; direct.

You can keep repeating that it's folklore till you're blue in the face, but it doesn't even pass the basic definition of folklore, while it does constitute as first hand, by definition.

[The Grand Nudger]

Make up your mind, either you're trying to certify mythology by reference to folklore..or you aren't. If you are..then you have a list of issues to explain. If you're not, as you've deferred to rather than tackling those issues..then you'll need to supply something else.

[Acrobat]

Make up your mind, either you're trying to certify mythology by reference to folklore..or you aren't. If you are..then you have a list of issues to explain. If you're not, as you've deferred to rather than tackling those issues..then you'll need to supply something else.

What mythology? The only thing I have ever argued was the standard position among historians that Jesus was a historical person, that the gospels were inspired by him.

[The Grand Nudger]

That's not the standard position at all.  Is this the terminus of your knowledge on the subject? Empty sloganeering. 

Can you answer any of the questions posed to you, or respond to the content of any of the comments made?

[Acrobat]

That's not the standard position at all.  Is this the terminus of your knowledge on the subject? Empty sloganeering. 

Yes it is, even Wikipedia knows this:

“Virtually all New Testament scholars and Near East historians, applying the standard criteria of historical investigation, find that the historicity of Jesus is effectively certain”

Can you answer any of the questions posed to you, or respond to the content of any of the comments made?

Are they related to any arguement that I’ve made? Because I fail to see it, but that could be because most of your questions are incoherent.

You’ve barely been able to defend a single one of your suggestions, like Paul’s first hand account of meeting Jesus brother and disciples being folklore.

[The Grand Nudger]

That is the subject of folklore regardless of whatever else it may be.  The James of gospel is not a historical character.  Either a real Paul met an imaginary man...or one imaginary man met another.  ..

If james..instead... is taken to be the real boy, and his contribution to new magic book credible..it makes no mention of the death, resurrection, or divinity of jesus.

If we insist beyond all reason that both are real boys in relation to each other, and that both make credible additions..than we have a confused mess of competing ideologies we call "christian" for novelty.

The literary explanation for this relationships appearance in the corpus is staring us in the face....but still, we like to believe that there was..you know..Some Guy. We imagine that the consensus of scholarship is Our Guy, no less. There wasn't...it isn't.

[Acrobat]

That is the subject of folklore regardless of whatever else it may be.  James is not a historical character. 

Uhm we have a first hand account of someone who met him, we also have Josephus writing of his death, so why should we assumed he’s not a historical person, other than it’s inconvenient for the narrative you want to sell?

Is that the expectation here, if someone isn’t a historical person, we should expect to find first accounts of someone meeting him, and an entry in the historical record of the time, detailing his death?

[EgoDeath]

Christ, you're worse off than I thought.

"Paul" isn't any more a real person than jesus was, lol. You referred to a character in a work of fiction as a firsthand account of another character in the same work of fiction....

Hercules and zues said a bunch of things too, also "well attested."

This is so far off from fact and irrelevant to the rise of christianity that I refuse to go down the rabbit hole. Let's take them in order from the top. We'll get here eventually, maybe.


You have no firsthand accounts. You are trying to certify mythology by referring to folklore.

And you wonder why Ahistoricist get categorized with flat earthers and holocaust, unsurprisingly there’s even a zeitgeist film promoting this idea.

Apparently non-existing people can write letters, and we can’t trust anything from Josephus.

The problem is, no one wrote about Jesus during the time when Jesus existed. All historical writings about Jesus are posthumous; they were written long after he was dead. I'd have to imagine that such an insanely influential figure would've been written about during his life, while he was still alive, by a multitude of people. Instead, we have a small handful of writings about him, some which don't even actually mention him by name (references to Chrestos in some writings), that were all written well after the man was supposedly killed.

Obviously, no serious historian considers the Bible a reliable, historical sourcework. There may be bits and pieces of true information sprinkled throughout the Bible - maybe - but it is mostly a pile of poorly written nonsense. The fact is, despite the "consensus" that exists among historians, the evidence for the existence of Jesus is truly lackluster and doesn't do much to convince me, personally. Hell, if it convinces you, I got some beachfront property to sell you in Idaho. The beautiful thing is that facts, if thought to be incorrect, can be questioned by anyone using logic and research. I don't have to be a historian to understand that the evidence of a historical Jesus is underwhelming, at best. Your characterization of people who deny the historicity of Jesus as being akin to flat-earthers or Holocaust-deniers is totally unfounded and completely off-base.

I think prominent atheist figures avoid debate on this topic because the real answer is mostly inconsequential. The consensus that exists that simply accepts Jesus as a real man, may very well exist simply because Western society has quite a religious bent, and I think most people, even atheists, figure, "Hell, if the historians say he was real, I guess he was real." And maybe it's not questioned so much because the existence of Jesus would do nothing to prove the case for Christianity as a religion. The fantastical claims made by the Bible wouldn't be rectified if we suddenly learned that Jesus was, in fact, real. It kind of doesn't even matter.

So... Was Jesus a real man? Maybe. I'm not entirely convinced, but as others have said in this thread, it's certainly possible. It's also possible that King Arthur was real, or Beowulf. Who knows? Who cares?

[The Grand Nudger]

That is the subject of folklore regardless of whatever else it may be.  James is not a historical character. 

Uhm we have a first hand account of someone who met him, we also have Josephus writing of his death, so why should we assumed he’s not a historical person, other than it’s inconvenient  for the narrative you want to sell?

Is that the expectation here, if someone isn’t a historical person, we should expect to find first accounts of someone meeting him, and an entry in the historical record of the time, detailing his death?

We do not have a first hand account, lol.  Josephus writes about the beliefs of others.  

The expectation..here, is that you will eventually provide something more than "magic book says..."

[Acrobat]

And you wonder why Ahistoricist get categorized with flat earthers and holocaust, unsurprisingly there’s even a zeitgeist film promoting this idea.

Apparently non-existing people can write letters, and we can’t trust anything from Josephus.

The problem is, no one wrote about Jesus during the time when Jesus existed. All historical writings about Jesus are posthumous; they were written long after he was dead. I'd have to imagine that such an insanely influential figure would've been written about during his life, while he was still alive, by a multitude of people. Instead, we have a small handful of writings about him, some which don't even actually mention him by name (references to Chrestos in some writings), that were all written well after the man was supposedly killed.

Obviously, no serious historian considers the Bible a reliable, historical sourcework. There may be bits and pieces of true information sprinkled throughout the Bible - maybe - but it is mostly a pile of poorly written nonsense. The fact is, despite the "consensus" that exists among historians, the evidence for the existence of Jesus is truly lackluster and doesn't do much to convince me, personally. Hell, if it convinces you, I got some beachfront property to sell you in Idaho. The beautiful thing is that facts, if thought to be incorrect, can be questioned by anyone using logic and research. I don't have to be a historian to understand that the evidence of a historical Jesus is underwhelming, at best. Your characterization of people who deny the historicity of Jesus as being akin to flat-earthers or Holocaust-deniers is totally unfounded and completely off-base.

I think prominent atheist figures avoid debate on this topic because the real answer is mostly inconsequential. The consensus that exists that simply accepts Jesus as a real man, may very well exist simply because Western society has quite a religious bent, and I think most people, even atheists, figure, "Hell, if the historians say he was real, I guess he was real." And maybe it's not questioned so much because the existence of Jesus would do nothing to prove the case for Christianity as a religion. The fantastical claims made by the Bible wouldn't be rectified if we suddenly learned that Jesus was, in fact, real. It kind of doesn't even matter.

So... Was Jesus a real man? Maybe. I'm not entirely convinced, but as others have said in this thread, it's certainly possible. It's also possible that King Arthur was real, or Beowulf. Who knows? Who cares?

Like creationist, atheists generally making such arguments are all together clueless of history, in particular early history, it’s writing and contexts.

It’ll probably come as a surprise but people in the first century didn’t write that often, just like people didn’t really send email in the 1970s. Writing was a luxury, the primary method of convey things was through the oral tradition.

Such atheists also seem oblivious that writings we have of figures of early history, are almost exclusively written after these figures have died. The fact the we have writings about Jesus some 20-40 years after his death is pretty remarkable, in fact we have a first hand account on someone who met his disciples and brother. How many agreed up figures on ancient history, could we say that about, in comparison, let alone a religious figure?

On top of that the only historian writing of that entire period of Roman Palestine, that we still have is the works of Josephus.

Such atheists also seem incapable of reasoning, if the evidence for the historicity of Jesus was so lacklackuster, than you should be able to form a compelling ahistorical explanation, that’s close to as persuasive, contains a parallel degree of explanatory power as a historical explanations. The fact is you can’t without stretching credibility, as bad as creationist and holocaust deniers do, speaks volumes.

But such atheists are incapable of contemplating this. The historical method is about the pursuit of the best explanation, the strength of evidence is matter of explanatory power. No ahistoricist conclusions come even remotely close to a historical explanation in this regard, that folks here have yet to even offer one.

Atheists have perhaps been deluded by the idea of a lack of belief, think the real argument is between Jesus existing, and a lack of belief in Jesus existing, requiring some sort of super proof to resolve, when it’s an argument between Jesus existing, and not existing, the viability of historical explanation, over non historical ones.

Yet it seems that many atheists seem unable to get their head around this idea, perhaps deluded by the idea that lack of belief is an actual position, other than laziness in thought.

---

Uhm we have a first hand account of someone who met him, we also have Josephus writing of his death, so why should we assumed he’s not a historical person, other than it’s inconvenient  for the narrative you want to sell?

Is that the expectation here, if someone isn’t a historical person, we should expect to find first accounts of someone meeting him, and an entry in the historical record of the time, detailing his death?

We do not have a first hand account, lol.  Josephus writes about the beliefs of others.  

The expectation..here, is that you will eventually provide something more than "magic book says..."

You’re just a broken record buddy, when you get around to providing us a good explanation as to how a non historical figure, ended up having a first hand account of a person meeting his brother and disciples, as well as having his brothers death written about by Roman historians please let me know?

Was there some early secret Christian plot to fool the Romans and everyone else at the time that Jesus was a historical person? Is the mother of all conspiracy theories true, and they almost got away with it, until 2000 years later some atheist on the internet figured it out