Did Christ really exist ?

[blü 2]

If they were persecuted as the Bible tells, then I think it is reasonable assumption. Do you think they were not persecuted?

The question is whether the Jews of Judea in the 1st century CE were accustomed to destroying the documents of people they didn't like. The only documents earlier than Paul's letters (usually dated between 51 and 58 CE) are implied by apparent quotations eg the 'Kenosis hymn' Philippians 2:5-11 and possibly the fictional and incompatible genealogies which the authors of Matthew and of Luke reproduce. I'd expect they were in private circulation among a small group whom history didn't otherwise notice until later.

I know of no early Christian complaint that Jews had destroyed their texts.

 

[Skywalker]

The question is whether the Jews of Judea in the 1st century CE were accustomed to destroying the documents of people they didn't like. The only documents earlier than Paul's letters (usually dated between 51 and 58 CE) are implied by apparent quotations eg the 'Kenosis hymn' Philippians 2:5-11 and possibly the fictional and incompatible genealogies which the authors of Matthew and of Luke reproduce. I'd expect they were in private circulation among a small group whom history didn't otherwise notice until later.

I know of no early Christian complaint that Jews had destroyed their texts.

Because of the way ancient texts were copied, it's known that the New Testament has not been corrupted. The manuscripts were not destroyed.

 

[blü 2]

Because of the way ancient texts were copied, it's known that the New Testament has not been corrupted. The manuscripts were not destroyed.

We have no originals, and the only very old parts are fragments. After that we multiple copies and translations. They don't form a single sweet accord ─ it's generally agreed that the ending of Mark (16:9-20) is added later, that Paul is not the author of Hebrews, 1 or 2 Timothy, Colossians, Ephesians, or Titus and probably not of 2 Thessalonians, Peter did not write 1 or 2 Peter, and so on, but expert opinion is that, whoever actually wrote the various books, what we have is substantially what was written. As you may know, Bart Ehrman has written usefully on the subject eg Misquoting Jesus.

 

[Brian2]

In other words, if you were unburdened by faith and forced to rely on other criteria you "may have" dated the gospels later that those who were so encumbered.

I would really recommend that you at least scan Schnelle's The History and Theology of the New Testament Writings.

I would put it the other way round. When the documents were treated as just documents whose age of writing needed to be obtained, the available evidence was examined and probably ages determined. I don't think it needed faith that the prophecy of the destruction was a true prophecy to achieve the earlier dating, before 70 AD.
When the newer critical methods of examination were brought in, which included the idea that prophecy is not true, then dates after or possibly a little before the destruction of the temple were achieved.
So it was the burden of non belief which necessitated the later dating.
The synoptic gospels could have been written after 70 AD and still recorded a true prophecy. It seems however that it is things mentioned and not mentioned in Acts (written by Luke) which date the writing of that document to pre 70AD and internal evidence tells us that the Gospel Luke wrote was written before Acts.
It seems also that the Lukan Gospel was quoted in one of the epistles to Timothy.

 

[Brian2]

That seems to be a weird way of phrasing it. Normally, when a written work makes reference to a historical event, this is evidence that the work was written after the event.

Not if the reference is a prophecy imo. But of course the assumption if that prophecy is not real in by more modern historical dating methods, so that is why later dating is seen by more modern historians.
Without that assumption earlier dates are obtained from the evidence.

Again: what evidence?

And it's not just a matter of prophecies and miracle claims. There are other aspects of the Gospels that, IMO, make more sense if they're written after the destruction of the Temple. Take Mark 11:15-19: it works as a commentary on why the Temple was destroyed. OTOH, what the purpose of that passage if it was written before the destruction of the Temple?

I don't see Mark 11:15-19 as a commentary on why the Temple was destroyed at all. It just tells us what Jesus did and why. However things like that are picked out to justify a later dating even when there is no justification there at all except in imagination imo.
There is some good evidence for early dating of the synoptic gospels in the article below.
13 Good Historical Reasons For The Early Dating of The Gospels | Is Jesus Alive?

 

[Brian2]

This dating is wrong.

See, do you know who you are quoting Brian? You are quoting a pseudo scholar who believes Jesus was a completely fabricated story.

I knew those dates were at variance with the dating I believe and with even later dating that some scholars give. I was just showing ranges of dating that scholars can come up with and I indicated in the last sentence of the post you were replying to,(post 99) that even later dates are said to be true, eg 130 AD.
Once the post 70 AD assumption is accepted then that leaves it wide open for scholars to imagine justifications from what is written in the gospels for very late dates.

 

[Skywalker]

We have no originals, and the only very old parts are fragments. After that we multiple copies and translations. They don't form a single sweet accord ─ it's generally agreed that the ending of Mark (16:9-20) is added later, that Paul is not the author of Hebrews, 1 or 2 Timothy, Colossians, Ephesians, or Titus and probably not of 2 Thessalonians, Peter did not write 1 or 2 Peter, and so on, but expert opinion is that, whoever actually wrote the various books, what we have is substantially what was written. As you may know, Bart Ehrman has written usefully on the subject eg Misquoting Jesus.

What we have is an accurate reflection of the original writers work even though the existent only exist in the form of copies.

 

[Brian2]

YOu are talking about the gospels as if they are something they are not. Fundamentalists say what whatever will support their beliefs. I am interested in what historians in the field have to say.

Historians can be fundamentalists or skeptics or everything in between. They do come up with different conclusions however and I don't think it is all because of fundamentalist lies.

To that effect the gospels are anonymous, not eyewitnesses, and the up to 90% of verbatim Greek copied into other gospels (the synoptic problem) we know the source gospel was Mark. So that's just one source.
The model for dying/rising savior demigods was already created and being used in most religions in the region. The author of Mark was highly educated and uses all literary styles and narratives that writers use when composing fiction. There was already a prophecy in the OT to follow and write a story that fulfills it.
Triadic ring structure and other devices are used, that is only used in fiction. The author also is taking narratives from the OT and transforming them into new stories about Jesus. Clearly fiction.

The tradition of the early Church and acceptance and use of the gospels points to the early composition of the synoptics and the authors as being known by the Church even if the names of the authors are not in the gospel stories themselves. Probable authorship has been determined by internal evidence from the gospels and other early Christian writings.
The dying and rising demigods of other religions are not really similar to the dying and rising Jesus of the gospels.
Writing styles can be imagined by people why want to justify their existence and make some money, and they do not really indicate fiction.
The source of what Jesus did certainly can be seen in OT prophecies and since the source cannot historically be seen in the other religions of the day the next thing that skeptics do is to not see the OT prophecies as that, prophecies, but as source material for a fictional gospel story.

The idea that it's a "conspiracy of lies" isn't accurate. You know Lord Krishna, the Mormon angel Moroni or the Islamic angel Gabrielle or countless other religions are not conspiracy of lies. They are myth, using made-up divinities to explain wisdom, laws and teach lessons. They are all obviously not real but to say they are a conspiracy of lies would be to say every singe myth from every nation across all humanity was a conspiracy of lies. What it is, is that Christianity is just like all the others, made up by people. With intention of modernizing a religion that needs upgrading.

I'm not really sure exactly what happened with Krishna, Moroni, Gabriel in Islam, but they are not all obviously mythical imo.

This blog post explains some of the ways we know it's myth writing:
The Gospels as Allegorical Myth, Part I of 4: Mark

"Only a few verses later, we read about the rest of the crucifixion narrative and find a link (a literary source) with the Book of Psalms in the Old Testament (OT):

Mark 15.24: “They part his garments among them, casting lots upon them.”

Psalm 22:18: “They part my garments among them, and cast lots upon them.”

Mark 15.29-31: “And those who passed by blasphemed him, shaking their heads and saying, ‘…Save yourself…’ and mocked him, saying ‘He who saved others cannot save himself!’ ”

Psalm 22.7-8: “All those who see me mock me and give me lip, shaking their head, saying ‘He expected the lord to protect him, so let the lord save him if he likes.’ ”

Mark 15.34: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

Psalm 22.1: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

On top of these links, Mark also appears to have used Psalm 69, Amos 8.9, and some elements of Isaiah 53, Zechariah 9-14, and Wisdom 2 as sources for his narratives. So we can see yet a few more elements of myth in the latter part of this Gospel, with Mark using other scriptural sources as needed for his story, whether to “fulfill” what he believed to be prophecy or for some other reason."

It is an interesting turn around to use OT prophecies as the source material for a fiction. It is better than using the other religions of the time as source material since they are not like the Jesus story at all.
If you look at Psalm 22 it would certainly not be easy to see it as a description of what happened at a crucifixion even if it could be a prophecy of the Messiah and a Psalm about what He would do, and seen in the life of Jesus and what He did and what happened to Him.
But of course prophecies of the Messiah do not show source material for a fiction unless your opinion from the beginning is that it is a fiction.

 

[YoursTrue]

Yeah, this is not a new story. We hear that often from theists in forums. With me, it happened the other way. My faith decreased as the time went on till I abandoned Gods, Goddesses, soul, heaven, hell, etc. Atheism grew like a mustard seed.

I understand. Also because I declared myself to not believe in God. Where was he, I wondered as time went on. But! I found Him. Seek and you shall find. But there was a preamble. I prayed to God, asking if He was there, let me know Him. And He did.
QUOTE="Aupmanyav, post: 6918949, member: 11823"]

And the scriptures of Judaism influenced Christianity. Perhaps Zoroastrianism, Mithraism, European paganism too. So what is new? But you do believe that Jesus walked on water and raised Lazarus from death or that he resurrected. That does not make any sense, whatsoever, to me.Who knows if Paul himself was an imposter. Scholars say that Pauline Christianity differs from what Jesus taught.[/QUOTE]
I understand. Obviously religions claiming to believe in Jesus cannot all be right if they disagree or clash with one another. So what Paul wrote and taught is not necessarily what all religions claiming to believe in Christ and the Bible teach. Take Christmas, for instance. Did Jesus tell his followers to celebrate his birthday? Did Paul?

 

[YoursTrue]

What we have is an accurate reflection of the original writers work even though the existent only exist in the form of copies.

To a large extent that's true.

 

[YoursTrue]

YOu are talking about the gospels as if they are something they are not. Fundamentalists say what whatever will support their beliefs. I am interested in what historians in the field have to say.
To that effect the gospels are anonymous, not eyewitnesses, and the up to 90% of verbatim Greek copied into other gospels (the synoptic problem) we know the source gospel was Mark. So that's just one source.
The model for dying/rising savior demigods was already created and being used in most religions in the region. The author of Mark was highly educated and uses all literary styles and narratives that writers use when composing fiction. There was already a prophecy in the OT to follow and write a story that fulfills it.
Triadic ring structure and other devices are used, that is only used in fiction. The author also is taking narratives from the OT and transforming them into new stories about Jesus. Clearly fiction.

The idea that it's a "conspiracy of lies" isn't accurate. You know Lord Krishna, the Mormon angel Moroni or the Islamic angel Gabrielle or countless other religions are not conspiracy of lies. They are myth, using made-up divinities to explain wisdom, laws and teach lessons. They are all obviously not real but to say they are a conspiracy of lies would be to say every singe myth from every nation across all humanity was a conspiracy of lies. What it is, is that Christianity is just like all the others, made up by people. With intention of modernizing a religion that needs upgrading.

This blog post explains some of the ways we know it's myth writing:
The Gospels as Allegorical Myth, Part I of 4: Mark

"Only a few verses later, we read about the rest of the crucifixion narrative and find a link (a literary source) with the Book of Psalms in the Old Testament (OT):

Mark 15.24: “They part his garments among them, casting lots upon them.”

Psalm 22:18: “They part my garments among them, and cast lots upon them.”

Mark 15.29-31: “And those who passed by blasphemed him, shaking their heads and saying, ‘…Save yourself…’ and mocked him, saying ‘He who saved others cannot save himself!’ ”

Psalm 22.7-8: “All those who see me mock me and give me lip, shaking their head, saying ‘He expected the lord to protect him, so let the lord save him if he likes.’ ”

Mark 15.34: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

Psalm 22.1: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

On top of these links, Mark also appears to have used Psalm 69, Amos 8.9, and some elements of Isaiah 53, Zechariah 9-14, and Wisdom 2 as sources for his narratives. So we can see yet a few more elements of myth in the latter part of this Gospel, with Mark using other scriptural sources as needed for his story, whether to “fulfill” what he believed to be prophecy or for some other reason."

It is possible that an angel spoke to these people. After all, Eve believed what was told to her by means of the serpent. She really believed she would be "like God," her Creator, if she ate from the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

 

[YoursTrue]

None were, they are all myths founded by men. Moses is considered a myth in scholarship but a story that was needed by those people, as explained by Carol Myers:

"We can understand how mnemohistory works by looking at how it operates in more recent periods. We see this, for instance, in legends about figures in American history—George Washington is a wonderful example. Legends have something historic in them but yet are developed and expanded. I think that some of the accounts of the ancestors in the book of Genesis are similar. They are exciting, important, attention-grabbing, message-bearing narratives that are developed around characters who may have played an important role in the lives of the pre-Israelite ancestors.

The Moses of the Bible is larger than life. The Moses of the Bible is a diplomat negotiating with the pharaoh; he is a lawgiver bringing the Ten Commandments, the Covenant, down from Sinai. The Moses of the Bible is a military man leading the Israelites in battles. He's the one who organizes Israel's judiciary. He's also the prophet par excellence and a quasi-priestly figure involved in offering sacrifices and setting up the priestly complex, the tabernacle. There's virtually nothing in terms of national leadership that Moses doesn't do. And, of course, he's also a person, a family man.

Now, no one individual could possibly have done all that. So the tales are a kind of aggrandizement. He is also associated with miracles—the memorable story of being found in a basket in the Nile and being saved, miraculously, to grow up in the pharaoh's household. And he dies somewhere in the mountains of Moab. Only God knows where he's buried; God is said to have buried him. This is highly unusual and, again, accords him a special place.
NOVA | The Bible's Buried Secrets | Moses and the Exodus | PBS
Of course the Israelite stories/religion would say their God gave them the rules and they were special and so on? And would put down competing nations.

Nevertheless, no other group than the Jews long-standing has made the claim that God gave THEM the Ten Commandments, have they?

 

[Skywalker]

Nevertheless, no other group than the Jews long-standing has made the claim that God gave THEM the Ten Commandments, have they?

The Ten commandments support Jesus rising from the dead and because they were given to people so that they would know that they are sinners who need a Savior.

 

[blü 2]

What we have is an accurate reflection of the original writers work even though the existent only exist in the form of copies.

Yes, I think that's how it looks.

 

[Heyo]

The Apostle Paul saw Jesus after He rose from the dead.

Nope. At least not according to his own writings. He had a hallucination (vision), probably due to an epileptic episode.

 

[Aupmanyav]

I prayed to God, asking if He was there, let me know Him. And He did.

And the scriptures of Judaism influenced Christianity. Perhaps Zoroastrianism, Mithraism, European paganism too. So what is new?

I understand. Obviously religions claiming to believe in Jesus cannot all be right if they disagree or clash with one another. So what Paul wrote and taught is not necessarily what all religions claiming to believe in Christ and the Bible teach. Take Christmas, for instance. Did Jesus tell his followers to celebrate his birthday? Did Paul?

I found what I was seeking without praying to any God.
That is not what I was saying. I was saying that Christianity is a rehash of Judaism with flavors of Zoroastrianism, Mithraism, European paganism. There is nothing new there. Actually even Christmas is the IE New Year day, the vernal equinox, as it was 6000 years ago; which now has slipped by three months due to precession of equinox. That is why it was 'Dies Natalis Solis Invicti' (Day of the Victorious sun) in pagan times. That was the day when sun appeared when the IE were living in their homeland in Arctic Circle after a long two-month night and a month-long dawn. Indians Aryans kept correcting it roughly about every 2000 years. Jesus' resurrection is plagiarized from there.

 

[joelr]

@joelr , I'm so pleased that you found Carrier but being a Carrier groupie is not the same as being informed.

Your lowbrow attempt at making a point is one big fail. Besides the recent Jesus historicity work Carrier has done everything else he's saying is just current information in the field. Which I know because I follow many others.
In fact in the post below the one you are responding to I sourced William Denver, Thomas Thompson and Francesca Stavrakopoulou - currently Professor of Hebrew Bible and Ancient Religion at the University of Exeter.
Only in religion and politics will you actually see people try and put down others for following scholarship.
I've yet to hear "you are such an Einstein groupie or a RIchard Feynman groupie"? Because it would be a complete fail of a thing to say.

Whenever one attacks a PhD biblical historian with vague all-or-nothing statements then it's a dead giveaway of some amount of butt-hurt because historicity scholarship generally views religions as myth in terms of the supernatural claims.

I've been aware of Richard Carrier since my early days at iidb. He is a smart guy. He may even be correct. But he is also a strong proponent of a minority opinion. Rather than demonstrating an awareness of this fact you quote him as received truth. I'll leave you to your dogmatism.

Maybe you could look up what dogmatism means? That might help you?
The blog I linked to contained a 2nd article by G.J. Goldberg on the subject as well.
SAGE Journals: Your gateway to world-class research journals



Here a panel of experts in related fields, including a pastor, review all extra-biblical evidence for Jesus and come to a similar conclusion.

Wait, are you are a person who believes a religion is true but thinks it's "dogmatism" to source 2 scholars along with a panel of related experts who all agree on one specific topic? How is that even possible?

 

[oldbadger]

Some made the claim that Jesus never existed. Even many antiquities scholars think that the New Testament gospels are mythologized history.

The Baptist, Jesus and their friends all existed. For sure, but 'Christ' was the spin from that ......

God himself commanded: "Listen to him".
Why would we want to listen to anyone else ?

If you say so. ......
In which case Jesus is not God, so at least we've got that out of the way.

 

[joelr]

The tradition of the early Church and acceptance and use of the gospels points to the early composition of the synoptics and the authors as being known by the Church even if the names of the authors are not in the gospel stories themselves. Probable authorship has been determined by internal evidence from the gospels and other early Christian writings.

No, the gospels are considered anonymous, the names added later and the others were sourced from Mark:

", is known as the synoptic problem,[61] and most scholars believe that the best solution to the problem is that Mark was the first gospel to be written and served as the source for the other two["
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_reliability_of_the_Gospels

"All four were anonymous (the modern names were added in the 2nd century), almost certainly none were by eyewitnesses,"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Histo...Gospels#cite_note-FOOTNOTEReddish201127,29-64

The source of what Jesus did certainly can be seen in OT prophecies and since the source cannot historically be seen in the other religions of the day the next thing that skeptics dos to not see the OT prophecies as that, prophecies, but as source material for a fictional gospel story.

No, that is not true, the "world savior messiah" came from the Zarathushtra (Zoroaster) in 6BCE. If you go to scholar Mary Boyce's book online and scroll down to page 42 she explains the world savior, virgin born and so on,,
https://books.google.com/books?id=a6gbxVfjtUEC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false
OT Professor F Stravapopoulou explains the period when Judaism became monotheistic during the Persian invasion and took many of the Persian beliefs into their own including messianic ideas, apoctalyptic concepts, God vs Satan, world ends in fire, good people get resurrected...

3:18

The dying and rising demigods of other religions are not really similar to the dying and rising Jesus of the gospels.
Writing styles can be imagined by people why want to justify their existence and make some money, and they do not really indicate fiction.

Of course they are similar? Each version combines new elements of their religion (religious syncretism) but features common to all would be:

• They are personal salvation cults (often evolved from prior agricultural cults).
• They guarantee the individual a good place in the afterlife (a concern not present in most prior forms of religion).
• They are cults you join membership with (as opposed to just being open communal religions).
• They enact a fictive kin group (members are now all brothers and sisters).
• They are joined through baptism (the use of water-contact rituals to effect an initiation).
• They are maintained through communion (regular sacred meals enacting the presence of the god).
• They involved secret teachings reserved only to members (and some only to members of certain rank).
• They used a common vocabulary to identify all these concepts and their role.
• They are syncretistic (they modify this common package of ideas with concepts distinctive of the adopting culture).
• They are mono- or henotheistic (they preach a supreme god by whom and to whom all other divinities are created and subordinate).
• They are individualistic (they relate primarily to salvation of the individual, not the community).
• And they are cosmopolitan (they intentionally cross social borders of race, culture, nation, wealth, or even gender).

• They are all “savior gods” (literally so-named and so-called).
• They are usually the “son” of a supreme God (or occasionally “daughter”).
• They all undergo a “passion” (a “suffering” or “struggle,” literally the same word in Greek, patheôn).
• That passion is often, but not always, a death (followed by a resurrection and triumph).
• By which “passion” (of whatever kind) they obtain victory over death.
• Which victory they then share with their followers (typically through baptism and communion).
• They also all have stories about them set in human history on earth.
• Yet so far as we can tell, none of them ever actually existed.

"Not in ancient Asia. Or anywhere else. Only the West, from Mesopotamia to North Africa and Europe. There was a very common and popular mytheme that had arisen in the Hellenistic period—from at least the death of Alexander the Great in the 300s B.C. through the Roman period, until at least Constantine in the 300s A.D. Nearly every culture created and popularized one: the Egyptians had one, the Thracians had one, the Syrians had one, the Persians had one, and so on. The Jews were actually late to the party in building one of their own, in the form of Jesus Christ. It just didn’t become popular among the Jews, and thus ended up a Gentile religion. But if any erudite religious scholar in 1 B.C. had been asked “If the Jews invented one of these gods, what would it look like?” they would have described the entire Christian religion to a T. Before it even existed. That can’t be a coincidence."

PhD Carrier

It is an interesting turn around to use OT prophecies as the source material for a fiction. It is better than using the other religions of the time as source material since they are not like the Jesus story at all.
If you look at Psalm 22 it would certainly not be easy to see it as a description of what happened at a crucifixion even if it could be a prophecy of the Messiah and a Psalm about what He would do, and seen in the life of Jesus and what He did and what happened to Him.
But of course prophecies of the Messiah do not show source material for a fiction unless your opinion from the beginning is that it is a fiction.

Yes the Judahites took messianic ideas from the Persians. They are all myth. The Persians had a messiah figure prophecized in 6BCE and the dying/rising demigods were a Hellenistic idea that was being combined with religions all across the region. The Jewish version was the last of them.

I'm not really sure exactly what happened with Krishna, Moroni, Gabriel in Islam, but they are not all obviously mythical imo.

There is no evidence that shows otherwise.

 

[joelr]

It is possible that an angel spoke to these people. After all, Eve believed what was told to her by means of the serpent. She really believed she would be "like God," her Creator, if she ate from the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

Adam and Eve/Garden of Eden is a myth found in many different and older religions. Each with their own version. These are definitely shared stories that exist to teach lessons and have deep metaphors, not to take literal.

"Like the Genesis flood narrative, the Genesis creation narrative and the account of the Tower of Babel, the story of Eden echoes the Mesopotamian myth of a king, as a primordial man, who is placed in a divine garden to guard the Tree of Life.[10] The Hebrew Bible depicts Adam and Eve as walking around the Garden of Eden naked due to their sinlessness.[11]

The Garden of Eden is considered to be mythological by most scholars."
Garden of Eden - Wikipedia

The human fossil line shows millions of years of slow evolution from an ape that began walking more than climbing, to slowly growing larger brains, losing body hair, using basic tools and basic language and eventually basic language and about 70,000 years ago, modern humans. All in Africa. Eden is a story first made up in Mesopotamia or possible Summer as humans began creating more elaborate stories with inner meaning.