Paul talks about Jesus having a brother, being a descendent of David etc.
"He meant a regular “Brother of the Lord,” an ordinary non-apostolic Christian. But a Christian all the same—which was important for Paul to mention, since he had to list every Christian he met on that visit, lest he be accused of concealing his contacts with anyone who knew the gospel at that time."
There is a decent amount of peer-reviewed literature on this phrase that agrees.
We cannot know for sure so it isn't evidence.
The Gospels seem to be trying to backfit a narrative onto a human Jesus, which is why it is so convoluted and contradictory and doesn't make for a very good messiah.
I don't know why you say that? Mark is using several sources and prophecies to construct his story, it doesn't seem to be about an actual person?
The contradictions come from other Gospels which used Mark as a source but in re-writing their own version misses many details. The other Gospels were not likely being written to be add-ons but rather were each supposed to be "the Gospel", so contradictions didn't matter in that way.
When Rome put the modern Bible together the most popular 4 churches may have combined the Gospel each was using.
Cults about purely mythical gods tend not to appear in real time, at around the same time as that god lived a normal human life with a few embellishments.
The growth rate of Christianity is the same as Mormonism and the Cargo Cults.
Purely mythical gods tend to clearly be gods, not just humans with a small number of miracles added on.
Jesus was a Hellenistic demigod, son/daughter of a supreme God. Supreme father who impregnates a mortal woman. I don't understand why so many people claim Jesus was so different than Greek demigods when we have writings of Justin Martyr saying he is the same?
Justin is saying the devil made these Greek gods to look like Jesus to fool people into thinking Jesus was just another demigod.
I guess it worked back then. Now apologists just use denial.
Justin Martyr, The Dialogue with Trypho,
Chapter 69. The devil, since he emulates the truth, has invented fables about Bacchus, Hercules, and Æsculapius
Justin: Be well assured, then, Trypho, that I am established in the knowledge of and faith in the Scriptures by those counterfeits which he who is called the devil is said to have performed among the Greeks; just as some were wrought by the Magi in Egypt, and others by the false prophets in Elijah's days. For when they tell that Bacchus, son of Jupiter, was begotten by [Jupiter's] intercourse with Semele, and that he was the discoverer of the vine; and when they relate, that being torn in pieces, and having died, he rose again, and ascended to heaven; and when they introduce wine into his mysteries, do I not perceive that [the devil] has imitated the prophecy announced by the patriarch Jacob, and recorded by Moses? And when they tell that Hercules was strong, and travelled over all the world, and was begotten by Jove of Alcmene, and ascended to heaven when he died, do I not perceive that the Scripture which speaks of Christ, 'strong as a giant to run his race,' has been in like manner imitated? And when he [the devil] brings forward Æsculapius as the raiser of the dead and healer of all diseases, may I not say that in this matter likewise he has imitated the prophecies about Christ?
Can always say things like "but maybe it's not a real brother" and "in theory there's nothing to stop people making up human type gods in real time" and "maybe he used a cosmic sperm bank", but there are always ways of disputing ancient evidence as it is never definitive.
That isn't what I'm saying. I'm saying when Paul says “Brothers of the Lord,” he never says which kind he means; and had he known that there were two different kinds of such brothers, the cultic and the biological, he would need to clarify which he meant. That he never clarifies which he meant, means he only knew of one kind. And the only kind of such brother we can clearly establish he knew, was the cultic.
Yet despite all of this massive division and inability to agree, some unknown agent for some unknown reason was able to turn a celestial Jesus into a real life one without anyone pushing back on this.
We have evidence of all kinds of factionalism, but not mythicist sects
That period is almost completely blacked out, erased from history once the Church became all powerful. The Dead Sea Scrolls shed a small light on Gnostic sects as well as the letters of Irenaeus.
The celestial version would only be the original sect and possibly Paul. The Gospels would have
euhemerized Jesus just as many other originally celestial beings were done to at that time. There were many levels to the celestial realms, Ascension of Isaiah talks about 7 levels, one where the devil lives, one for angels and passions often happen in these realms.
As am I. I just don't find the convoluted narratives necessary to make mythicism probable to be persuasive.
It's not impossible that a compounding series of improbable thing are all true, but for me at least, it's not probable.
What do you find convoluted about Carriers On the Historicity of Jesus or Lataster's follow up? You haven't presented anything that is convoluted?
The vast majority of people who lived an embellished human life and were written about in near contemporary sources actually existed.
100% of all other dying/rising savior demigods added to religions that Hellenistic Greeks invaded did not exist. The Greeks occupied Judea in 167 BC. There was a known Hellenistic Judaism and Christianity is a Hellenistic religion.
whttps://www.worldhistory.org/article/94/the-hellenistic-world-the-world-of-alexander-the-g/
Hellenistic thought is evident in the narratives which make up the books of the Bible as the Hebrew Scriptures were revised and canonized during the Second Temple Period (c.515 BCE-70 CE), the latter part of which was during the
Hellenic Period of the region.
The gospels and epistles of the Christian New Testament were written in Greek and draw on
Greek philosophy and religion as, for example, in the first chapter of the Gospel of John in which the word becomes flesh, a Platonic concept.
The vast majority of leaders of movements that emerged concurrent with their purported lifetimes and were believed to have existed actually existed.
Etc.
Osiris,
Dionysus, Zalmoxis, Inanna,
Adonis, Romulus, Asclepius, Hercules , dying/rising (some saviors) demigods were all fictive.
Those are more comparable to Jesus.
If you read David Litwa's latest book he makes a strong case Jesus is exactly another Greek deity. He isn't a leader of a movement. He's a character used to incorporate Greek theology with Judaism. You need a savior deity to do this.
" The book manages to overcome the scholarly apologetic segregation of early Christian beliefs about Jesus Christ from Greek and Roman dominated Mediterranean culture and to demonstrate the fit of these beliefs in that Hellenistic context. A great deal of writing about the ‘purely Jewish’ Christ crumbles with this book.”
Creating gnosis in mind and heart.
mdavidlitwa.wordpress.com
Paul knew nothing about his ministry, life, family, birth? Mark is writing fiction and re-working older sources. He rewrites 2 Kings, uses Psalms for the crucifixion...
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.
He rewrites many Epistles, and much more. There isn't room for a real life persons story.
Like most things in ancient history, we can't ever be 100% confident. A lot of things are possible, folk have to make their own minds up.
Given the evidence is pretty easily explainable around a human preacher of the kind that would be unremarkable, and this matches better with numerous other bits of evidence, that seems far more parsimonious to me.
Well the PhD who looked over ALL of the available evidence gives 3 to 1 in favor of mythicism.
You haven't presented one single piece of evidence that suggests a human preacher was the framework the stories were built around.
This is exactly what Carrier is saying, it's based on assumptions that don't hold up.
