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Jesus, the Christian Myth

Arthur Garcia

New Member
I am disappointed that CNN is promoting their TV docu-drama, Finding Jesus: Faith Fact Forgery as a documentary. CNN as a responsible source of trustworthy news should be careful to be academically accurate in his portrayal of Jesus as if he were historically verifiable person. This series is a blatant pandering to the fundamentalist Christians and is no more truthful than a Sunday morning ministry TV program. I challenge CNN to research the academic treatment of the gospels and epistles and consider the academically historical possibility that Jesus was not a real individual. He is more likely a myth and a composite of several folk heroes of his time at the end of the first century. Eventually, he was deified in the fifth century by the Nicene Council assembled by Emperor Constantine to incorporate the growing Christian movement into the Roman Empire. In particular, refer to the book Who Wrote the New Testament? The Making of the Christian Myth by Burton L. Mack (copyrighted in 1995 and published by HarperCollins, NY, NY). Dr. Mack is Professor Emeritus in early Christianity at the Claremont School of Theology in Claremont, California. What Dr. Mack’s book explores is the source of the Scriptures of the New Testament. Then he carefully analyzes the chronology of events in the Bible using verifiable references. Dr. Mack is one of many academic historians who dispute the verifiability of the stories of the New Testament. Among his findings are:


· Paul of Tarsus wrote his epistles 12 years after the time of [1] Pilate when the crucifixion of Jesus allegedly occurred in Jerusalem. Paul had been exiled from Jerusalem is a religious radical by the Temple priests. Paul may have written his Epistles, in Greek, from a scriptorium in Ephesus or Corinth on the Aegean Sea about 200 miles from Jerusalem. He then sent copies of his epistles to Greek speaking Jewish congregations in the vicinity of the Aegean Sea. Paul's Jesus could have been anyone of a number of other crucified victims of the Romans in Achaea (Greece) or any part of the Roman Empire.


· The first Gospel, the Gospel of Mark, was written after the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 CE, about 60 years after the time of Pontius Pilate and the crucifixion of Jesus of Galilee. This first Gospel and all subsequent Gospels were written in Greek by Greek speaking Jewish scribes. Jesus from Galilee spoke Aramaic. Whatever Jesus may have said in Galilee in Aramaic early in the first century was somehow transcribed in Greek 60 years later. The Gospels were the transcriptions of oral traditions about a martyred Jewish rabbi that were ancient at the time they were written. These stories were not documented by any other Roman or Greek historians or chroniclers of the time. Almost nothing in the Gospels is historically accurate by the standards of academic historians.


· The Acts of the Apostles scripture was written at the very end of the first century or about 85 years after the crucifixion and about 40 years after the death of Paul of Tarsus. Given that a lifespan in that era was about 40 years, probably no one from the time of Paul of Tarsus was alive to recount Paul’s activities. Paul's travels to spread his messages throughout the Roman Empire were likely fabrications to revive the legend of Jesus. Without this scriptural revival, the legend of Jesus would have been lost to antiquity.


· The New Testament books were not organized in accordance with the time they were written. They were organized as if they were a history of the life of Jesus. The Gospel of Matthew was written after the Gospel of Mark although Matthew precedes Mark in the sequence of the Gospels. Because Matthew includes the story of the birth of Jesus, it was given prominence. All of the Gospels were poetically contrived late in the first century over 80 years after the time Jesus. The Epistles were written by Paul of Tarsus at least 10 years before the Gospels were written but were placed after the Gospels in the organization of the New Testament in the fifth century because the Epistles were primarily about the death of Jesus. Paul’s Epistles were about the martyrdom of Jesus and the theological meaning of his death as envisioned by Paul. Although Paul’s portrayal of Jesus preceded the Gospels, neither Paul nor his themes from his Epistles are mentioned in the Gospels. The scribes of the Gospels apparently did not know Paul or his Epistles.


Given the life long time gaps and the language barriers that intervened between the time that Jesus preached in Galilee and the time the Scriptures were written, the New Testament is not a historical document but a poetical legend. No independent Roman or Greek historians of the first century wrote any validation of the stories of the New Testament.


In summary, your new series about Jesus belongs with the Sunday morning ministry shows. To portray your series on Jesus as a documentary is a gross misrepresentation of academically historical truth. To be honest, you should qualify your series as a theological review and not as a documentary. I would also challenge CNN to produce a critical review of the New Testament from an academically accurate perspective for the growing number of "nones" in our nation that reject the unfounded dogma of Christianity.
 
Last edited by a moderator:

Nietzsche

The Last Prussian
Premium Member
Errr. I'm a Norse pagan, so I don't have a horse in this race, but historically speaking Jesus may be the single most well-documented person to ever live. There is more(and closer in time) about Jesus than there are Greek philosophers, Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, etc. The question is not "did Jesus exist", it is "was he of divine origin". Clearly for me the answer to the latter is an emphatic "no".

Yes, there is a bit of a gap between when Jesus was supposed to have lived and the oldest documents about his life. But that gap is only a hundred years. Compared to any other historical figure until relatively recently, Jesus has the most evidence.
 

David T

Well-Known Member
Premium Member
I am disappointed that CNN is promoting their TV docu-drama, Finding Jesus: Faith Fact Forgery as a documentary. CNN as a responsible source of trustworthy news should be careful to be academically accurate in his portrayal of Jesus as if he were historically verifiable person. This series is a blatant pandering to the fundamentalist Christians and is no more truthful than a Sunday morning ministry TV program. I challenge CNN to research the academic treatment of the gospels and epistles and consider the academically historical possibility that Jesus was not a real individual. He is more likely a myth and a composite of several folk heroes of his time at the end of the first century. Eventually, he was deified in the fifth century by the Nicene Council assembled by Emperor Constantine to incorporate the growing Christian movement into the Roman Empire. In particular, refer to the book Who Wrote the New Testament? The Making of the Christian Myth by Burton L. Mack (copyrighted in 1995 and published by HarperCollins, NY, NY). Dr. Mack is Professor Emeritus in early Christianity at the Claremont School of Theology in Claremont, California. What Dr. Mack’s book explores is the source of the Scriptures of the New Testament. Then he carefully analyzes the chronology of events in the Bible using verifiable references. Dr. Mack is one of many academic historians who dispute the verifiability of the stories of the New Testament. Among his findings are:


· Paul of Tarsus wrote his epistles 12 years after the time of [1] Pilate when the crucifixion of Jesus allegedly occurred in Jerusalem. Paul had been exiled from Jerusalem is a religious radical by the Temple priests. Paul may have written his Epistles, in Greek, from a scriptorium in Ephesus or Corinth on the Aegean Sea about 200 miles from Jerusalem. He then sent copies of his epistles to Greek speaking Jewish congregations in the vicinity of the Aegean Sea. Paul's Jesus could have been anyone of a number of other crucified victims of the Romans in Achaea (Greece) or any part of the Roman Empire.


· The first Gospel, the Gospel of Mark, was written after the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 CE, about 60 years after the time of Pontius Pilate and the crucifixion of Jesus of Galilee. This first Gospel and all subsequent Gospels were written in Greek by Greek speaking Jewish scribes. Jesus from Galilee spoke Aramaic. Whatever Jesus may have said in Galilee in Aramaic early in the first century was somehow transcribed in Greek 60 years later. The Gospels were the transcriptions of oral traditions about a martyred Jewish rabbi that were ancient at the time they were written. These stories were not documented by any other Roman or Greek historians or chroniclers of the time. Almost nothing in the Gospels is historically accurate by the standards of academic historians.


· The Acts of the Apostles scripture was written at the very end of the first century or about 85 years after the crucifixion and about 40 years after the death of Paul of Tarsus. Given that a lifespan in that era was about 40 years, probably no one from the time of Paul of Tarsus was alive to recount Paul’s activities. Paul's travels to spread his messages throughout the Roman Empire were likely fabrications to revive the legend of Jesus. Without this scriptural revival, the legend of Jesus would have been lost to antiquity.


· The New Testament books were not organized in accordance with the time they were written. They were organized as if they were a history of the life of Jesus. The Gospel of Matthew was written after the Gospel of Mark although Matthew precedes Mark in the sequence of the Gospels. Because Matthew includes the story of the birth of Jesus, it was given prominence. All of the Gospels were poetically contrived late in the first century over 80 years after the time Jesus. The Epistles were written by Paul of Tarsus at least 10 years before the Gospels were written but were placed after the Gospels in the organization of the New Testament in the fifth century because the Epistles were primarily about the death of Jesus. Paul’s Epistles were about the martyrdom of Jesus and the theological meaning of his death as envisioned by Paul. Although Paul’s portrayal of Jesus preceded the Gospels, neither Paul nor his themes from his Epistles are mentioned in the Gospels. The scribes of the Gospels apparently did not know Paul or his Epistles.


Given the life long time gaps and the language barriers that intervened between the time that Jesus preached in Galilee and the time the Scriptures were written, the New Testament is not a historical document but a poetical legend. No independent Roman or Greek historians of the first century wrote any validation of the stories of the New Testament.


In summary, your new series about Jesus belongs with the Sunday morning ministry shows. To portray your series on Jesus as a documentary is a gross misrepresentation of academically historical truth. To be honest, you should qualify your series as a theological review and not as a documentary. I would also challenge CNN to produce a critical review of the New Testament from an academically accurate perspective for the growing number of "nones" in our nation that reject the unfounded dogma of Christianity.


Arthur F. Garcia, Jr., author of A Skeptic’s God: The Irrelevance of Religion in a Modern World

[1]
Me thinks that sperm is tiny people that expand into larger people. There is strong accedemic scholarly thinking in regards to this topic DAMN it!!!!! Ok 1780 so what!!! There is also strong scholarly evidence that homo sexuality is a mental illness!!! Ok 1974. But, but, but, 2017 that is scholarly accedemic reality done right!!! Bwaaah..... .
 

Seven headed beast

Awaited One
He was a real person but was not divine or the son of god.

There is one thing the "experts" seem to overlook. The fact that jesus was the house of jesher and the son of god has to be house of david. No ifs, and, or buts.
 

illykitty

RF's pet cat
Errr. I'm a Norse pagan, so I don't have a horse in this race, but historically speaking Jesus may be the single most well-documented person to ever live. There is more(and closer in time) about Jesus than there are Greek philosophers, Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, etc. The question is not "did Jesus exist", it is "was he of divine origin". Clearly for me the answer to the latter is an emphatic "no".

Yes, there is a bit of a gap between when Jesus was supposed to have lived and the oldest documents about his life. But that gap is only a hundred years. Compared to any other historical figure until relatively recently, Jesus has the most evidence.

Really? I've heard this is debatable at least to some. I'd recommend to look into the works of David Fitzgerald and Richard Carrier, to name a couple. There's some good videos on YouTube summarising their points, which are quite compelling.
 

Rival

Si m'ait Dieus
Staff member
Premium Member
Errr. I'm a Norse pagan, so I don't have a horse in this race, but historically speaking Jesus may be the single most well-documented person to ever live. There is more(and closer in time) about Jesus than there are Greek philosophers, Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, etc. The question is not "did Jesus exist", it is "was he of divine origin". Clearly for me the answer to the latter is an emphatic "no".

Yes, there is a bit of a gap between when Jesus was supposed to have lived and the oldest documents about his life. But that gap is only a hundred years. Compared to any other historical figure until relatively recently, Jesus has the most evidence.
But this is only if you take the Gospel writers at their word. For all we know, the Jesus figure could have lived 100 years prior to when we think.
 

Nietzsche

The Last Prussian
Premium Member
Really? I've heard this is debatable at least to some. I'd recommend to look into the works of David Fitzgerald and Richard Carrier, to name a couple. There's some good videos on YouTube summarising their points, which are quite compelling.


But this is only if you take the Gospel writers at their word. For all we know, the Jesus figure could have lived 100 years prior to when we think.
While these are valid points, they fall apart when you look into the things the NT gets right. The names found in the NT show up almost one for one based on their popularity of the era(which we know thanks to Roman census information). There's too much detail for it to be whole-cloth fabricated, because there's no way the writers of the NT would've had access to the information taken by the Roman government. Either the NT is mostly accurate(when one ignores the supernatural) or it is the most impressive coincidence possible that they'd get names, practices and other minutiae right.

Again, there is(rightly) no debate on whether Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Plato, Aristotle, Socrates so on and so forth existed, despite the fact we have far, far less to go on, and what we do have was written significantly later.

Once more, not a Christian. I just dislike it when people try to distort the historical record to fit their agenda. Which is, again, why I also argue against Jesus being divine. Historical record just doesn't back it up(and common sense simply doesn't allow it). There was a Jesus of Nazareth, son of Mary, who was crucified and he either died on the cross or he went unconscious and his breathing, pulse and such were too low to be detected by the people of the era. Then when he came to, it would seem like he rose from the dead. And without our modern ability to detect even shallow signs of life, to the people of that time would have no way to know he didn't.
 

Rival

Si m'ait Dieus
Staff member
Premium Member
While these are valid points, they fall apart when you look into the things the NT gets right. The names found in the NT show up almost one for one based on their popularity of the era(which we know thanks to Roman census information). There's too much detail for it to be whole-cloth fabricated, because there's no way the writers of the NT would've had access to the information taken by the Roman government. Either the NT is mostly accurate(when one ignores the supernatural) or it is the most impressive coincidence possible that they'd get names, practices and other minutiae right.

Again, there is(rightly) no debate on whether Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Plato, Aristotle, Socrates so on and so forth existed, despite the fact we have far, far less to go on, and what we do have was written significantly later.

Once more, not a Christian. I just dislike it when people try to distort the historical record to fit their agenda. Which is, again, why I also argue against Jesus being divine. Historical record just doesn't back it up(and common sense simply doesn't allow it). There was a Jesus of Nazareth, son of Mary, who was crucified and he either died on the cross or he went unconscious and his breathing, pulse and such were too low to be detected by the people of the era. Then when he came to, it would seem like he rose from the dead. And without our modern ability to detect even shallow signs of life, to the people of that time would have no way to know he didn't.
I think you misunderstand me. I mean they may take a figure from 100 years ago and plant him in their time. Like taking Queen Vicky and putting her in the 20th century instead of her original 19th century. If no first hand records were written about the Jesus figure then, it would be easy to fabricate. Especially as we know Paul was the first to write and he even claims he never met Jesus and he's preaching to goyim who have probably never even visited Israel and spent their entire lives in Greece.
 

Nietzsche

The Last Prussian
Premium Member
Jesus was not divine.

He was not there to begin with. He did live but never got past Pilates warning.

There are evidences in both mark and Luke that refer to the notion that his being resurrected is called the "second deception" in the end of their respective synoptic Gospels.
I wasn't saying he was divine. I'm a pagan. Can you read?

The fact of the matter is I have access to "all seeing all knowing" and that is something that trumps speculation every time.
So you're delusional. Understood.
 

Evangelicalhumanist

"Truth" isn't a thing...
Premium Member
Errr. I'm a Norse pagan, so I don't have a horse in this race, but historically speaking Jesus may be the single most well-documented person to ever live. There is more(and closer in time) about Jesus than there are Greek philosophers, Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, etc.
I don't think so! Jesus is "well-documented" ONLY in the New Testament, and nowhere else. On that view, Jesus is no better documented than Frodo Baggins.
 

Nietzsche

The Last Prussian
Premium Member
I don't think so! Jesus is "well-documented" ONLY in the New Testament, and nowhere else. On that view, Jesus is no better documented than Frodo Baggins.
Right, because they managed to accurately depict Palestine's naming conventions, layout and other tiny insignificant details by...chance? Also, your Frodo comparison would be apt if the NT were written by one person. It clearly isn't. The NT(well, the Bible as a whole honestly) is a collection of texts by many different authors. And yet the NT retains a remarkable amount of internal consistency when regarding the culture of the region. This was something written obviously by people who lived there.
 

Evangelicalhumanist

"Truth" isn't a thing...
Premium Member
Right, because they managed to accurately depict Palestine's naming conventions, layout and other tiny insignificant details by...chance? Also, your Frodo comparison would be apt if the NT were written by one person. It clearly isn't. The NT(well, the Bible as a whole honestly) is a collection of texts by many different authors. And yet the NT retains a remarkable amount of internal consistency when regarding the culture of the region. This was something written obviously by people who lived there.
Why is this always so convincing when it involves "the Holy Land?" Why is it less convincing from Homer (and remember, Schliemann found Troy based on Homer alone), or Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Apuleius? Don't they all likewise "attest" to the Greek and Roman pantheons?

But by the same token, think what is mentioned in the book you think so well-attested -- for example, the ground opening up and the dead walking, or the veil in the temple being torn from bottom to top. Nobody else ever mentioned these things, and they would have been considered stupendously important. Silence.

Even now, the most notorious and ridiculous fiction is written by people describing the world the live in. They set their stories in places that they know, and that's as natural as can be. Even Joseph Smith put Jesus in places that he knew -- not in some completely fictional "NoPlace."
 

Nietzsche

The Last Prussian
Premium Member
Why is this always so convincing when it involves "the Holy Land?" Why is it less convincing from Homer (and remember, Schliemann found Troy based on Homer alone), or Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Apuleius? Don't they all likewise "attest" to the Greek and Roman pantheons?

But by the same token, think what is mentioned in the book you think so well-attested -- for example, the ground opening up and the dead walking, or the veil in the temple being torn from bottom to top. Nobody else ever mentioned these things, and they would have been considered stupendously important. Silence.
Because those things clearly never happened? The divine and supernatural bits are clearly bull****. However, the notion that there was a heretical rabbi from Nazareth with a mother named Mary, a father named Joseph, and a group of social outcasts who garnered the ire of other religious leaders and the Roman state..? Not unlikely. Probable, even. I am not claiming Jesus is special. I'm just claiming the majority opinion of most historians.

Even now, the most notorious and ridiculous fiction is written by people describing the world the live in. They set their stories in places that they know, and that's as natural as can be. Even Joseph Smith put Jesus in places that he knew -- not in some completely fictional "NoPlace."
What? Joseph Smith knew nothing about pre-Columbian America.
 

Evangelicalhumanist

"Truth" isn't a thing...
Premium Member
Because those things clearly never happened? The divine and supernatural bits are clearly bull****. However, the notion that there was a heretical rabbi from Nazareth with a mother named Mary, a father named Joseph, and a group of social outcasts who garnered the ire of other religious leaders and the Roman state..? Not unlikely. Probable, even. I am not claiming Jesus is special. I'm just claiming the majority opinion of most historians.
And yet, I can study the many other -- very similar -- myths circulating at just about the same time, and I don't think it would be too bizarre of me to think that they got conflated with some possible "truth" about one or more heretical Jews at the time -- there were lots of them, actually. And if the "supernatural bits are clearly bull****," as you put it, well then that puts paid to the angels at the tomb, the resurrection and some other stuff as well. And those -- one might have thought -- were among the more important bits of the story. So, if the important bits are likely false, on what basis should credit the less-important bits?
What? Joseph Smith knew nothing about pre-Columbian America.
No idea, and don't care. But I don't recall Smith putting Jesus in pre-Columbian America. But I seem to recall they claim he visited the US shortly after his resurrection, and still believe that when he finally returns, he will go first to Jerusalem -- and then to Missouri. Nothing about Tenochtitlan that I can find.
 

stevevw

Member
I am disappointed that CNN is promoting their TV docu-drama, Finding Jesus: Faith Fact Forgery as a documentary. CNN as a responsible source of trustworthy news should be careful to be academically accurate in his portrayal of Jesus as if he were historically verifiable person. This series is a blatant pandering to the fundamentalist Christians and is no more truthful than a Sunday morning ministry TV program. I challenge CNN to research the academic treatment of the gospels and epistles and consider the academically historical possibility that Jesus was not a real individual. He is more likely a myth and a composite of several folk heroes of his time at the end of the first century. Eventually, he was deified in the fifth century by the Nicene Council assembled by Emperor Constantine to incorporate the growing Christian movement into the Roman Empire. In particular, refer to the book Who Wrote the New Testament? The Making of the Christian Myth by Burton L. Mack (copyrighted in 1995 and published by HarperCollins, NY, NY). Dr. Mack is Professor Emeritus in early Christianity at the Claremont School of Theology in Claremont, California. What Dr. Mack’s book explores is the source of the Scriptures of the New Testament. Then he carefully analyzes the chronology of events in the Bible using verifiable references. Dr. Mack is one of many academic historians who dispute the verifiability of the stories of the New Testament. Among his findings are:


· Paul of Tarsus wrote his epistles 12 years after the time of [1] Pilate when the crucifixion of Jesus allegedly occurred in Jerusalem. Paul had been exiled from Jerusalem is a religious radical by the Temple priests. Paul may have written his Epistles, in Greek, from a scriptorium in Ephesus or Corinth on the Aegean Sea about 200 miles from Jerusalem. He then sent copies of his epistles to Greek speaking Jewish congregations in the vicinity of the Aegean Sea. Paul's Jesus could have been anyone of a number of other crucified victims of the Romans in Achaea (Greece) or any part of the Roman Empire.


· The first Gospel, the Gospel of Mark, was written after the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 CE, about 60 years after the time of Pontius Pilate and the crucifixion of Jesus of Galilee. This first Gospel and all subsequent Gospels were written in Greek by Greek speaking Jewish scribes. Jesus from Galilee spoke Aramaic. Whatever Jesus may have said in Galilee in Aramaic early in the first century was somehow transcribed in Greek 60 years later. The Gospels were the transcriptions of oral traditions about a martyred Jewish rabbi that were ancient at the time they were written. These stories were not documented by any other Roman or Greek historians or chroniclers of the time. Almost nothing in the Gospels is historically accurate by the standards of academic historians.


· The Acts of the Apostles scripture was written at the very end of the first century or about 85 years after the crucifixion and about 40 years after the death of Paul of Tarsus. Given that a lifespan in that era was about 40 years, probably no one from the time of Paul of Tarsus was alive to recount Paul’s activities. Paul's travels to spread his messages throughout the Roman Empire were likely fabrications to revive the legend of Jesus. Without this scriptural revival, the legend of Jesus would have been lost to antiquity.


· The New Testament books were not organized in accordance with the time they were written. They were organized as if they were a history of the life of Jesus. The Gospel of Matthew was written after the Gospel of Mark although Matthew precedes Mark in the sequence of the Gospels. Because Matthew includes the story of the birth of Jesus, it was given prominence. All of the Gospels were poetically contrived late in the first century over 80 years after the time Jesus. The Epistles were written by Paul of Tarsus at least 10 years before the Gospels were written but were placed after the Gospels in the organization of the New Testament in the fifth century because the Epistles were primarily about the death of Jesus. Paul’s Epistles were about the martyrdom of Jesus and the theological meaning of his death as envisioned by Paul. Although Paul’s portrayal of Jesus preceded the Gospels, neither Paul nor his themes from his Epistles are mentioned in the Gospels. The scribes of the Gospels apparently did not know Paul or his Epistles.


Given the life long time gaps and the language barriers that intervened between the time that Jesus preached in Galilee and the time the Scriptures were written, the New Testament is not a historical document but a poetical legend. No independent Roman or Greek historians of the first century wrote any validation of the stories of the New Testament.


In summary, your new series about Jesus belongs with the Sunday morning ministry shows. To portray your series on Jesus as a documentary is a gross misrepresentation of academically historical truth. To be honest, you should qualify your series as a theological review and not as a documentary. I would also challenge CNN to produce a critical review of the New Testament from an academically accurate perspective for the growing number of "nones" in our nation that reject the unfounded dogma of Christianity.


Arthur F. Garcia, Jr., author of A Skeptic’s God: The Irrelevance of Religion in a Modern World

[1]
So from what I understand your saying the Jesus Paul was talking about was another Jesus to that of the 12 disciples. So when Paul met Peter and Jesus's brother James they didn't realise that they were talking about a different Jesus. I can just imagine the conversation, do you mean that Jesus or the other Jesus, No I was talking abut the other Jesus, not your brother James. But it sounds like the other Jesus is remarkably like my brother. Paul replies, no,no,no my Jesus did 12 miracles your brother Jesus did many more, I,ll admit that, your Jesus is a little better than my Jesus.

Yet James and Peter mentions Paul and they seem to be talking about the same Jesus. If James and Peter are making it up then they have chosen the same wrong Jesus as Paul. Yet the Jesus that Paul and James are referring to is the same Jesus that the other disciples are referring to. In fact Peter in his letter to the church mentions Paul and how it was important to keep to the truth and not be deluded by myths.

2 Peter 3:14-16

14 Therefore, beloved, since you look for these things, be diligent to be found by Him in peace, spotless and blameless, 15 and regard the patience of our Lord to be salvation; just as also our beloved brother Paul, according to the wisdom given him, wrote to you, 16 as also in all his letters, speaking in them of these things, in which are some things hard to understand, which the untaught and unstable distort, as they do also the rest of the Scriptures, to their own destruction. 17 You therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand, be on your guard lest, being carried away by the error of unprincipled men, you fall from your own steadfastness, 18 but grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To Him be the glory, both now and to the day of eternity. Amen.

Stories of ancient figures take a long time to become myths because the eye witnesses and those who knew them need to not be around to dispute the stories. Yet Paul's letters were written soon after Jesus and it is said that at least one of the Gospels Matthew was written not too long after Christ. Some say all the gospels were written soon after Christs and at least before 70 AD. If they were made up and written after 70 AD then you would think the writer would have included the one event, the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple that was a major event that Jesus referred to and was part of the prophesy he mentions. That's like an Jewish historian after the second WW not mentioning the Jewish holocaust when writing about the events of that time. But even so if they were written after the first century that still is not enough time to formulate a myth. There is a stack more evidence that shows Jesus was a real person and the one the gospels and Paul refer to. Most scholars and middle eastern historians believe the Jesus in the bible is historically true.

Eusebius (a bishop of Caesarea and known as the father of church history) reported that Matthew wrote his Gospel before he left Israel to preach in other lands, which Eusebius says happened about 12 years after the death of Christ. Some scholars believe that this would place the writing of Matthew as early as A.D. 40-45 and as late as A.D. 55.
When were the Gospels written?
 
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RabbiO

הרב יונה בן זכריה
I am disappointed that CNN is promoting their TV docu-drama, Finding Jesus: Faith Fact Forgery as a documentary. CNN as a responsible source of trustworthy news should be careful to be academically accurate in his portrayal of Jesus as if he were historically verifiable person............

Arthur F. Garcia, Jr., author of A Skeptic’s God: The Irrelevance of Religion in a Modern World

Is this what is known as an infommercial?
 
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