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Was Jesus Real?
- Thread starter Jesus from the Ghetto
- Start date
Dell
Asteroid insurance?
Seeing his alma mater its understandable why he is a mythisist. Haha.. I've heard some of his debates and like a lot of people get annoyed by his creepy ranting... though one should look through his personality and past to see if he's saying anything that could be accurate historically.
Anyways a link to Erhmans responses to Carrier flaming...
Fuller Reply to Richard Carrier
I'll have to lean with the opinion of Bath Ehrman on this topic and the view most historians and scholars seem to support.
Kelly of the Phoenix
Well-Known Member
Since Jesus doesn't match, I don't see how this helps your argument.
They could've confused Nazarene with a guy from Nazareth. It's not like we don't have people in the US demanding to see passports for someone from New Mexico.
Rich people oppress poor people all the time despite the fact rich people can't wipe their own behinds without a servant's help.
Look at what's going on with the government shutdown: the GOP constantly bewail the unnecessary government and yet it appears as though nothing gets done if you get rid of it.
Won't stop them from not admitting government is necessary, though.
It wasn't just "the poor". It was "We, the rich Romans coming for your money and property, need you to be okay with that. Here's a 'Jewish' guy who says to pay your taxes and don't rebel against the state."
It's not much different from Cyrus and his decrees to let people worship the way they want ... as long as they pay up.
Romans improved infrastructure such as good roads, many of which still exist to this day, which allows ideas and plagues to spread much faster.
I worked at a rehab hospital. We made the lame walk all the time.
I think he was on a submerged structure of some sort and Peter didn't see this and that's why he sank.
It's like how Jesus predicted the locations of fish. If he came from an elevated position, he could see what the people in the boat could not, kind of like those drone photos of sharks right underneath kayaks and stuff. Just being on a rooftop or a hill would've provided him with the information he needed.
Jesus hated his family, so he wouldn't be doing Mary's dishes. He wouldn't even help with housework when visiting the other Mary.
I think the story of the Prodigal Son is a misinterpreted parable. I think Christians weren't aware this was a criticism of Jesus and instead spun it as from Jesus about others.
Prodigal Son leaves his family after an I Want Song and ends up a homeless mess. Jesus leaves his family and publicly disowns them and ends up a homeless mess relying on the kindness of strangers. Prodigal Son ends up living with pigs. Jesus ends up being killed by unclean pagans.
I did. He told me He didn't say half the stuff in the bible and I shouldn't trust it over reality, which would show us what He really wants.
Kind of like taking Moses and Elijah, sticking them in a blender, and out comes Jesus.
Actually, I'm shocked such a furor is so poorly documented outside of the bible. Where are the Roman or Jewish versions of these events?
I don't. Seems pretty cut and dry to me. You have a Jew who is also a Roman citizen who sees the Romans are gearing up for turning Judea into a parking lot, so he changes his name to something more Hellenized, abandons Judaism in favor of his Hellenized version, and is sure to trot out his Roman citizenship when he's about to be executed.
Kelly of the Phoenix
Well-Known Member
Actually, this pretty much talks about my point about Paul:
lukethethird
unknown member
Far be it from me to try and convince you of anything, I was merely pointing out a credentialed historian that comes to conclusions that differ from that of theologians such as Ehrman.
GoldenThread
Member
This is really saying: I didn't want to obey God, so I decided to obey do my own thing and say that I am.
Your thoughts on the prodigal son are very flawed. What happened with the Father forgiving the son?
In peace
GoldenThread
Member
There isn't a problem with having help with the greek to know what words mean. Still, what it says in greek should be what we do. What I mean my interpretation is this: Reading scripture and saying," it doesn't mean what it says, it actually means something else."
What do you think about when you think of Paul's conversion?
In peace
Augustus
…
My argument is that no one would invent such a bad match then have to make convoluted stories to pretend that he actually was a good fit. They would just invent someone who was a good match in the first place.
The fact that he is such a bad match is clear evidence that they are basing this around a real person from Nazareth. If he wasn't known to be from Nazareth then they would have just said he was from Bethlehem where he was supposed to be from, rather than linking him with some obscure backwater a long way from where he was supposedly from
Were it real, it would be the most hare-brained ruse in history; the political equivalent of believing putting on roller-skates and attaching a giant firework to your back would help you to catch a fleet-footed avian.
It's a bit like worrying you are getting sunburnt in the park and deciding the best way to prevent this is to plant an acorn because in 30 years time there is a small chance it will provide a bit of shade for someone else.
Spreading a religion to a sizeable proportion of the population is a little bit more challenging than delivering a letter. It took 400 years for Islam to become the majority religion in the Islamic Empire even though conversion was incentivised for much of this.
The Romans also detested new religions and dismissed them as superstitio. This is why Roman Mithraism appropriated an ancient tradition on which to piggyback.
You are welcome to have faith in whatever takes your fancy.
You have evidence of god? Or corroborating evidence for bible miracles?
Thought not, so thats why you say you think it happened... You have faith.
While i have the knowledge that 5 loaves and 2 fishes would not sate the hunger of 5000 people, perhaps 10 or 15 if they were big fish.
And i know that man standing on water is too heavy for the meniscus.
And that dead people are not known to regenerate decaying brain matter.
Without god magic of course and thats where even the most tenuous of evidence falls over
With Celsus all you can have are christian biased opinions.
As i said, wikipedia is not a scholarly document, it is open to biased opinion by anyone without qualification. That opinion may be edited by someone else or it may not. It can be handy as a guide only if you take note of the references at the end of the page.
Nowhere does he employ the term "brothers of the Lord" to refer to disciples. Brothers and sisters in relation to one another in the unity of the church but never 'of the Lord'.
It is clear from the text that the Greek is saying these men were his actual bros. Carrier jumps through proverbial hoops of circular reasoning to evade this basic factoid and it is unfortunately lethal to his thesis.
The attempt to allegorize or spiritualize this phrase is a cop-out.
You must remember that Paul was not writing a biography of Jesus, nor was he interested in doing so. He was writing letters to churches he had founded in an attempt to ensure that they overcame factionalism, were thriving and growing, by pushing his understanding of the Jesus movement.
What's fascinating, is that in spite of this agenda we find scattered references to various elements of Jesus's life and preaching in his letters, which indicates that Paul knew a lot more than he wrote down:
1 Corinthians 15:1-8. Paul tells us he received the tradition (paredōka = “I delivered”; parelabon = “I received”), of Christ’s death on a Roman execution stake and burial. He reiterates this in 1 Cor. 2:2, Gal. 3:1, 2 Cor. 13:4, and many more occasions.
1 Corinthians 11:23-26 Paul tells us that he received the tradition that Jesus had a last supper with his disciples before dying, quotes his alleged words and then notes that he was betrayed.
1 Corinthians 15:3-8 Paul tells us that Jesus had a core of inner disciples called "the Twelve"
Romans 1:3 Paul tells us that in "his earthly life [Jesus] was a descendant of David". That is, he tells us about Jesus's flesh and blood ancestry (this could only have come from a family tradition i.e. "do you know, our family is supposedly descended from King David").
1 Thessalonians. 2:14–15 Paul tells us that Jewish leaders participated in the killing of Jesus
And, of course, the fact that Jesus had brothers which I've already noted.
Then we have quotations of Jesus in Paul's epistles. In answering the Corinthians' questions about marriage, Paul cites Jesus' ruling on divorce as binding on his followers. "To the married I say, not I but the Lord, that the wife should not separate from her husband but if she does, let her remain single or else be reconciled to her husband and that the husband should not divorce his wife" (1 Corinthians vii. 10 f.).
Paul's tells the Corinthians that "the Lord commanded that those who proclaim the gospel should get their living by the gospel" (1 Corinthians ix. 14). This "command" appears in our gospel tradition in the Matthaean commission to the twelve (Matthew x. 10), "the labourer deserves his food", and in the Lukan commission to the seventy (Luke x. 7).
Do you imagine that he derived this information - which he explicitly tells the reader was passed onto him by other people i.e. James and Peter - by psychic osmosis?
It's a clincher because Josephus was a 25 year old man from Jerusalem when Jesus's brother James was executed, which Josephus describes. He was a contemporary of Jesus's brother James.
His brother therefore existed and Josephus explicitly describes him as the brother of the one known as 'Christ'.
Not spiritual brother (which would have meant zilch to Josephus) but his actual brother.
Are you really supposing that James was going around claiming to be the brother of a mythical person in a city with a relatively small population that would have known about the Jesus family and the fact that James suffered a tragic death not unlike his brother before him?
A substantial consensus of scholars published on the subject take the passing comment in AJ 20:200 as authentic evidence of the following historical markers:
- that Jesus existed as a Jewish man
- that some people said Jesus was the Christ (that is, the Jewish Messiah)
- that Jesus had a brother called James
- that James lived into the 60s of the first century, and was stoned to death by a mob for allegedly breaking Torah
- that Josephus was a contemporary of James and they both lived in Jerusalem
- that Josephus knew of his contemporary James as being the brother of Jesus
The passing comment was known and quoted in antiquity i.e. it is found in the work of 3rd century writer Origen: six words about Jesus and his brother James, verbatim as in AJ Book 20, with comments that tie it to AJ 20.
So it hasn't undergone interpolation or revision, so far as most agree and there would have been no purpose for a scribe to do so anyway. Since there were no Jesus mythicists in ancient times, there would have been no apologetical reason for Christians to interpolate a tiny reference to Jesus in a passage where the focus is on his brother, in the context of a dense power struggle between the Roman governor Albinus and the Jewish High priest Ananus, whereas they had good reason to tamper with the fuller Josephus reference to Jesus to make it more complimentary in their efforts to proselytise Jews.
The evidence against the historicity of Jesus is incredibly weak when you actually get your teeth into it, which makes it clear why so many scholars and experts in the field unanimously concur that Jesus existed. The more pressing question is what the historical Jesus actually taught and did. The mythicist fringe debate is therefore a playful distraction from the real questions and the real scholarly debate.
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Indeed it's part of the 'yes' case but I don't find it decisive.
We can agree that his personal concept of Jesus came (as he in effect says at Galatians 1:11-12) only out of his own head. Yet if Jesus has brothers, then Jesus is an earthling and has a bio. Perhaps for that reason Paul is afraid of biography, but that's pure speculation.
But as he says in Galatians 1 above, he 'receives' these data from the horse's mouth, not from his fellow humans. Of course, given he indeed persecuted the early Christians, it'd be hard to see how he could avoid learning some of what they thought.
You're no doubt aware of arguments to date Paul to the 2nd century, and attribute him to eg Marcion or the Marcion group. My own view is that no one could invent a character as consistently ─ ahm ─ idiosyncratic as Paul so I accept him as historically real. However, I find it instructive to notice how much of our understanding of the origins of Christianity would be lost if the arguments were correct.
Sand Dancer
Crazy Cat Lady
There probably was a Jesus, as there were many miracle working, spiritual teachers around, but he may have just been a mix of many of those types. No one knows.
lukethethird
unknown member
He rose from the dead, how real is that?
Dell
Asteroid insurance?
Thanks your input. You are knocking on a relative future assessment whether you realize it or not. Time and discoveries will slowly consume all of Abrahamic religions to the "mythology" section of libraries eventually. So in a sense, I think you are making a valid argument, how all Christianity will be viewed as a myth in the future. Imagine how historians will write about how Christianity and its global impact and vanity. We are going seen as the enlightenment period, when humans start to understand the universe and themselves.
lukethethird
unknown member
Abrahamic religions are in the library's mythology section last time I checked some time ago.
aurisadhibeo
Member
I'm not sure if its recorded but appearantly he might have liked freshly ground red pepper in his scrambled eggs before he disappeared into the cave for a few days but after that he didn't really mind one way or the other and in fact his entire sense of taste was changed. Even eating the crackers after transmogrification he was just not feeling it. (I am just guessing based on what I have found, Nissan 12, Ford 4)
leroy
Well-Known Member
Kami,(from dragon ball z) born from a virgin, had 12 disciples, came to earth as a human, he died and resurrected, had supernatural powers, “was 3 persons in one”
Have you seen the cartoon? Would you say that the parallels are because the cartoon was inspired in the gospels? Or would you rather say that this parallels are just a result of “creative reading”
For example Horus was born from a woman who had sex with a dead man, who had a fish instead of a penis….perhaps that counts as “virgin birth” but it is in no way similar to the story that we find I the gospels.
Augustus
…
He actually had a solid gold wang because his original johnson was eaten by a catfish.
So a fish had his penis, rather than him having a fish for a penis.
I'm pretty sure that the "enlightenment" period when Christianity was deemed a myth by intellectuals has already happened, like, in the 18th century here in Europe.