Did Jesus exist?

Wow thats a really good argument, I never thought of that one, thanks.

Iasion and d60* and others are having a great discussion of fact and evidence and the interpretation of the evidence - in a most scholarly way. I'm enjoying the reading of it.

Others seem eager to interject their faith. I'm a strong supporter of people having faith and beliefs. It's just that faith and beliefs don't really add to scholarly discussions of facts and evidence.

Scholars, please continue. I am learning quite a bit and I thank you.

Kudos to WhiteRabbit for bringing that up. Its quite hard to believe that all those people willingly sacrificed themselves for nothing. And as for the Romans, I admit that they were a cruel and unusual people, but they would never commit genocide against the early Christians if they didn't have a reason for it. And the reason, was that Jesus Christ stirred up rebellion and formed a group of extremely devout followers willing to sacrifice themselves.

Originally posted by Elron
Hiya I'm new on these forums and signed up just to help some of you guys realise the truth, so lets start here, yes Jesus did exist, as someone has already stated in this discussion there is official documentation stating the details of his death, also the word 'did' is incorrect, Jesus does exist, He is our risen Saviour.

Sorry but personal opinion is no basis for truth!

Now I know that comment is going to raise all sorts of arguments but lets knock some of them on the head right now, I know Jesus is risen because not only is it written in the bible but, if He hadn't come back to life then when the Disciples first started preaching about his resurrection the Jews would have just ignored them because the body would still be in the tomb, no one stole the body it was under Guard and in the personal tomb of a well known merchant. The Romans did not remove it, they had no interest in the body of Jesus, neither did the disciples take it, that's why the tomb was Guarded.

Well in that case I know that Dracula exists as why would bram stoker write about him and why else would there be people claiming to be vampires. Your opinion is flawed as the existance of anything cannot be disproven.

I don't see the importance of Clements letter, it is written by a man, and what a man writes can be true or false, my argument is that the Bible was dictated by God and is therefore true.

Well your god must be a bit mad because the bible stories are quite contradictory with each other.


G

Originally posted by whiterabbit
I'm not a Christian, but I don't how anyone could actually doubt that there was a real historical Jesus. True, we have almost nothing, other than the Gospels, that even mentions Jesus.

What we do have, though, is concrete evidence that the Christian movement sprang up out of nowhere in the holy land and people promptly started getting themselves martyred for it. I find it hard to believe that a movement like that, with people as dedicated as that, could form like that and fool so many people without there at least having been an actual Jesus founding it.

Another piece of flawed thinking - what about every other god, godman, deity???? By your thinking everyone of them should exist or why would people die for them??? There are many thousands of religions, are you saying that they are all right??

Edit to add:- People will die for whatever they PERCEIVE to be the truth whether its true or not.

Fickle things us humans!!

G

[edit on 29-3-2007 by shihulud]

Originally posted by shihulud
Another piece of flawed thinking - what about every other god, godman, deity???? By your thinking everyone of them should exist or why would people die for them??? There are many thousands of religions, are you saying that they are all right??

Edit to add:- People will die for whatever they PERCEIVE to be the truth whether its true or not.

Fickle things us humans!!

Who said I believed he was a god or that I believed Christianity was true? I never said that AT ALL.

All I'm saying is, we know a movement sprung up out of the Holy Land calling themselves "Christians" and claiming to follow a guy named Jesus that ticked off the Jewish establishment and brought down the wrath of the Romans. People got themselves killed for that movement very, very quickly--not hundreds of years later (although they did then, too).

It just doesn't seem logical to think that you could form a large movement of people willing to die for ONE GUY, just years after he supposedly existed, if NO ONE ever actually laid eyes on the guy.

That just doesn't seem logical.

Again, not saying he was a god, that Christianity is true, or any of that.

I'm just saying, it's illogical to think there wasn't an ACTUAL MAN named Jesus who started the Christian movement.

Now, if the first Christians had claimed to believe in a savior that had lived hundreds of years before them? That would be one thing.

But they were claiming to believe in a guy that lived in their lifetimes, that thousands of people saw. It seems illogical to think so many people would've bought into that so devoutly if nobody ever saw this guy walking around.

People may be stupid creatures like you said, but THAT many people aren't THAT stupid.

[edit on 29-3-2007 by whiterabbit]

Originally posted by shihulud
Another piece of flawed thinking - what about every other god, godman, deity????

P.S.

I actually do think, for most religions, there probably was an actual, historical person. Were they a god? I doubt it very much. But it's illogical to think they didn't exist.

I'm sure that lots of religions' characters existed (Muhammad, Abraham, Jesus, Sri Krishna, etc.) and were real historical people who had movements based around them. I think it's illogical to think they never existed.

But that doesn't mean everything ever said about them was true.

Originally posted by whiterabbit

It just doesn't seem logical to think that you could form a large movement of people willing to die for ONE GUY, just years after he supposedly existed, if NO ONE ever actually laid eyes on the guy.

That just doesn't seem logical.

So its logical then to think that Osirus, Isis, Horus existed?? or Enki, Enlil and Innana existed??? What about Quetzelcoatl?? or even the mythical monsters of the Romans and Greeks. Its not logical to state that jesus existed because christianity exists as you then must state that all others existed as well.

Now, if the first Christians had claimed to believe in a savior that had lived hundreds of years before them? That would be one thing.

But they were claiming to believe in a guy that lived in their lifetimes, that thousands of people saw. It seems illogical to think so many people would've bought into that so devoutly if nobody ever saw this guy walking around.

People may be stupid creatures like you said, but THAT many people aren't THAT stupid.

If jesus was this super guy that everyone knew of, why then is there no contempory evidence for him? Supposedly over 500 people seen him resurrected but we have only ONE account - wouldnt you think that there would be more people writing about things like that?? After all there is a lot of written evidence from the time but no mention of jesus.


G

Originally posted by shihulud
Its not logical to state that jesus existed because christianity exists as you then must state that all others existed as well.

Not necessarily. While there might have very well been a historical Osirus or Isis, it entirely depends on which religion you're talking about to whether or not you can conclude it, but you could apply it to many different religions.

Take Muhammad, for example. This is a religion that was based on a man, that sprang up out of nowhere, and that we have evidence of his followers. It would be illogical to think that movement sprang up without there having been an actual physical man, even if the claims about him are embellished.

It applies to Jesus as well.

Now Osirus? Not so much. We don't know how exactly that religion began. We don't know that a movement sprang up all at once around a supposedly-real person. We just don't know. If we did, we might be able to conclude the same.

If jesus was this super guy that everyone knew of, why then is there no contempory evidence for him? Supposedly over 500 people seen him resurrected but we have only ONE account

Well, we have four accounts, actually. And he is mentioned in a couple sources outside the Bible (Flavius Josephus for example).

But the church tended to bury any first-hand information about Jesus that was deemed apocryphal. We know they did this with several books, like the Gospel of Thomas. Most likely, if there were any writings that spoke of Jesus just as a man, they were destroyed by the church as heretical.


I mean, look at this way. We know Christianity sprang up out of the holy land out of nowhere, so there's really only two possible scenarios:

Either the apostles, who we do know historically existed, just decided to make up some story about a guy named Jesus that EVERYONE bought without question and began immediately believing and getting themselves killed over even though no one had ever actually seen this guy...

Or there was a historical man named Jesus who stirred up a big hornet's nest with the despised Jewish and Roman authorities and gained a big following for it and got himself killed.

Really, I think it's obvious which one is more likely.

[edit on 29-3-2007 by whiterabbit]

Greetings Elron,

Welcome :-)

Originally posted by Elron
I know Jesus is risen because not only is it written in the bible

You mean you BELIEVE he is risen.
Do you believe all ancient religious works?
Do you believe what the Gita says about Krishna?
Do you believe what the Greek tales says about Hercules?
Do you believe what the Quran says about Mohamed?
Nope.
You just believe ONE ancient myth and reject the others.
Just like Muslims reject them all except their own.
Just like all believers.

But,
there is no EVIDENCE for Jesus existing at all, nor for the Gospels events, nor most of the people in it.
Just BELIEFS from long afterwards.

Originally posted by Elron
if He hadn't come back to life then when the Disciples first started preaching about his resurrection the Jews would have just ignored them because the body would still be in the tomb,

Preaching about Jesus beliefs started long long after the alleged events.
No Christian writer mentions the Gospels or their events until mid 2nd century - a CENTURY after the alleged events. After two wars had destroyed Jerusalem and it's people and the records:
qdj.50megs.com...

No early Christian writer mentions the empty tomb story AT ALL until mid 2nd century.
No early Christian showed any interest in where the tomb was.
None of the NT epistle writers mentions the empty tomb ONCE.
How do you explain that?

And, if you claim the Gospels did - how come no early writer mentions the Gospels, OR their contents, until early-mid 2nd century?

(And did you know an emtpy tomb scene as the climax to a story was known in other myths and literature of the day? Such as Chariton's novel Chareas and Caillihoe.)

The Gospels appeared in Christian history starting from the early 2nd century when we see some early forms of Gospels, they develop and change and grow over the mid 2nd century, and finally get numbered and named only in the LATE 2nd century.

Beliefs about the tomb started so late, no-one even knew where the tomb was. The first Christian interest in an actual tomb dates from the FOURTH century. Nowadays there are FOUR tombs of Jesus - 2 in Jerusalem, 1 in Japan, 1 in Sri Lanka as I recall.

There is no contemporary evidence for Jesus, or the Gospel events at all.
Even where it is expected - e.g. Philo, Justus, Seneca and more:
qdj.50megs.com...

Originally posted by Elronno one stole the body it was under Guard and in the personal tomb of a well known merchant. The Romans did not remove it, they had no interest in the body of Jesus, neither did the disciples take it, that's why the tomb was Guarded.

This event never happened - it's just part of the myth.
You cannot use one part of the myth to prove the rest.
There is no records or evidence for ANY of this.
Just myths from long long afterwards.


Iasion

There was a conventional "JEsus" ...at the begining of it all. But there was a "Traveling Jesus" that had to live 35 yr's longer than christianities beliefs" and there was the the time that "Jesus" fed bread and fish to the multitude's, (It was a full moon, it was dark and probably Luedifisc)

You people have so much more potential than this argument of "NO Answer!!" Leave it alone , and move on.

Greetings

Originally posted by whiterabbit
I'm not a Christian, but I don't how anyone could actually doubt that there was a real historical Jesus.

Many writers and historians doubt that Jesus ever existed, here is a brief list :
C.F. Dupuis, 1791, Abrege De L'Origine Des Cultes
Robert Taylor, 1829, Diegesis
Bruno Bauer, 1841, Criticism of the Gospel History of the Synoptics
Mitchell Logan, 1842, Christian Mythology Unveiled
David Friedrich Strauss, 1860, The Life of Jesus Critically Examined
Kersey Graves, 1875, The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviours
T.W. Doane, 1882, Bible Myths and their Parallels in Other Religions
Gerald Massey, 1886, Historical Jesus and Mythical Christ
Thomas Whittaker, 1904, The Origins of Christianity
William Benjamin Smith, 1906, Der vorchristliche Jesus
Albert Kalthoff, 1907, The Rise of Christianity
M.M. Mangasarian, 1909, The Truth About Jesus ? Is He a Myth?
Arthur Drews, 1910, The Christ Myth
John M. Robertson, 1917, The Jesus Problem
Georg Brandes, 1926, Jesus – A Myth
Joseph Wheless, 1930, Forgery in Christianity
L.Gordon Rylands, 1935, Did Jesus Ever Live?
Edouard Dujardin, 1938, Ancient History of the God Jesus
P.L. Couchoud, 1939, The Creation of Christ
Alvin Boyd Kuhn, 1944, Who is this King of Glory?
Karl Kautsky, 1953, The Foundations of Christianity
Herbert Cutner, 1950, Jesus: God, Man, or Myth?
Guy Fau, 1967, Le Fable de Jesus Christ

Originally posted by whiterabbitTrue, we have almost nothing, other than the Gospels, that even mentions Jesus.

Indeed.
There is no contemporary evidence for Jesus or the Gospel events at all.
And, the Gospels are clear derived from the OT, and other literature of the day.

Originally posted by whiterabbitWhat we do have, though, is concrete evidence that the Christian movement sprang up out of nowhere in the holy land

It did not start out of "nowhere" at all.
The origins of Christian belief can clearly be seen in :
* the Tanakh
* pagan mystery religions
* literature and writings of the time

Originally posted by whiterabbitand people promptly started getting themselves martyred for it.

Martyred?
The legends of martyrs are from long afterwards.
Just more legends supporting earlier legends.

Anyway - people die for false beliefs all the time - so what?

The Cathars died for their beliefs (against the Church's beliefs) do you think that makes the Cathars right, and the Church wrong?
No.

Muslims died for their beliefs to this day (such as suicide bombers) - do you claim that make Islam right?
No.

The Heaven's Gate cult all died for their beliefs - do you argue they were right about hitching a soul-ride on a hidden space-ship?
No.

So why claim a myth about Christian martyrs means anything?

Originally posted by whiterabbitI find it hard to believe that a movement like that, with people as dedicated as that, could form like that and fool so many people without there at least having been an actual Jesus founding it.

Why not?
The vast majority of Christians never met Jesus anyway - they simply believed in what others told them - that proves nothing.

How could Scientology grow unless Xenu was real?
How could Hindusim succeed unless Krishna etc. were real?
How could the Greek religions succeed unless their myths were true?

Belief means nothing.
Many people believe many things about religion.

You reject all other beliefs, and accept your own - just like they do.
It proves nothing at all about Jesus.


Iasion

Greetings,

Originally posted by TheB1ueSoldier
Kudos to WhiteRabbit for bringing that up. Its quite hard to believe that all those people willingly sacrificed themselves for nothing.

Who said it was for nothing?
People die for their beliefs all the time - so what?
Of course, most of the martyr stories are myths too.

But some Christians no doubt did die for their belief,
but so do people from other religions -

Muslims suicide bombers die for their beliefs - do you think their beliefs are true?
No.

The Cathars died for their heretical anti-Catholic beliefs - do you think their beliefs were right?
No.

The Heaven's Gate cult died for their crazy beliefs - do you agree their souls caught a ride on a space-ship hiding behind Hale-Bopp comet?
Of course you don't.

Just because someone dies for a belief, does NOT prove in any way that the belief is true.

This argument is a tired ol' chestnut that has been dis-proved a million times before.

Originally posted by TheB1ueSoldierAnd as for the Romans, I admit that they were a cruel and unusual people, but they would never commit genocide against the early Christians if they didn't have a reason for it.

I beg your pardon?
Are you claiming the Romans declared "genocide" on the Christians?
That is not so (apart from the fact that genocide is not he right word in this context.)

The Romans NEVER declared all Christians should be killed, and never threw anyone to the lions just for being a Christian, that's simply another urban legend.

Roman reponses to Christianity varied greatly - there were indeed some periods of persecutions - but what really mattered to the Romans was whether a person (of ANY religion) was prepared to pay fealty to the Roman gods. Most of the time, Rome was very tolerant and didn't ask more than lip service to a few superstitions. It was mostly "don't ask, don't tell", as long as "harm ye none". Generally, people simply bought a forged manuscript, (cheap and common, everyone did it), which declared they had "sacrificed to the Roman gods". Sort of a Roman citizenship paper.

But SOMETIMES, when a cult (Roman "superstitio") disrupted the workings of the state and it's religion (R. "religio"), then people could come under pressure. Sure enough, the Christians (rather like their cousins, The Jews) could be be a bit stiff-necked about their beliefs.

Indeed - a few times under a few different Caesars relations with the Romans got SO bad, formal state Persecutions occured. Under those extremes, a Christian MIGHT face the life and death choice :

Either :
Acknowledge the Roman Gods
Or
face the lions in the Colliseum

In practice, this meant formally, ritually bowing down to the Roman standard - a Golden Eagle, some flags, and "S.P.Q.R." (Senatus Populusque Romanus) on a big pole - in front of the Roman officials, and some of your peers, your people.

A few wouldn't do it, sometimes Christians, Sometimes Jews, sometimes other believers.

Then,
they faced the lions.

Originally posted by TheB1ueSoldier
And the reason, was that Jesus Christ stirred up rebellion and formed a group of extremely devout followers willing to sacrifice themselves.

No it wasn't.

Think about it - all those hordes of devout Christians, are mostly from later times - so they never MET Jesus, all they had was the word and writings of other MEN.

They believed without ever meeting Jesus - therefore it's not proof for Jesus himself - it's only proof for the BELIEF in Jesus.

We know Christians BELIEVE.
We know other religions BELIEVE.
We know people BELIEVE.
So?

That's not proof of the beliefs being true - otherwise ALL religions would be true.


Here's a thought - step right of the Christian box ask your - were THESE people real :

* Lao Tzu
* Socrates
* Zoroaster
* Gautama Buddha (THE Buddha)
* Krishna
* Mohamed
?

How does your answer(s) affect the challenge of questioning, REALLY questioning whether Jesus existed?

In truth NONE of those people can be said to have CERTAINLY existed.

Incredibly, even Mohamed is not 100% certain - his life story comes to us through corrupt evidence much like Buddha's and Jesus' -
* about a century or more AFTER his life
* in varying different versions
* from people whose own existence is problematical (we really do NOT know who actually wrote the Gospels)
* later smoothed into an official version by strong leadership long after the events

The Gospel of Mark is a masterpiece of spiritual literature - a wonderful myth in the deepest sense. Jesus is not a person, but a divine something, found in all humans.

Such an idea does not detract from Jesus at all, in my view.


Anyway -
Thanks for throwing me a bone, Al :-)
I appreciate your kind words,
Always nice to know there are those who like what I write - I like to WRITE it.


Iasion

Greetings again,

I'd like to make it clear that I don't denigrate, or reject Jesus at all.

I just have a different view, one I think was rather like Paul's

Whilst I believe Jesus did not exist in history, nonetheless, I am a believer - I believe in God, I believe in Iesous Christos, I am a Christian.

I believe in the wonder of HUMANITY,
in HUMANS...
well I have faith in MAN :-)
(pardon me ladies, hard to get that to all sound right without gender)

In what we can create, in out ability to believe, to visualise, to see, to make, to craft, to write...

Paul travelled out of body to the 3rd heaven and wanted desperately to TELL us something of that great secret he learned thgere.

Paul preaches about the mystery of the Christos "Christos in you, the hope of DOXA".

Paul made that rare journey and came back with an idea - in each of us we have an image, a reflection, a spark, or piece of God - our soul, which gives us life - it's an offshoot of God, the son-of-God.

Paul called it IESOUS CHRISTOS.

This soul, an actual part of the immortal divine is said to DIE our life, It (Iesous) is crucified on the cross of physical matter - nailed to our body by the passions, as Plato said. This soul (Iesous) is freed at our death, it lives again - it is RAISED.

I don't think Paul for one moment even HEARD of the concept of a person Jesus of Nazareth.
He was talking a different language.

(Read Paul as if you had never read the Gospels - Jesus of Nazareth cannot be found - except for a tiny handful of controversial snippets, nothing definite in Paul. The creed - inserted; born of woman - WHICH woman? in Paul the woman is the heavenly church; all the so-called historical references are as weak as water; and Paul never quotes Jesus explicitly and directly, never mentions the trial, the triumphal entry)

LATER,
a nother Great Visionary mind, one of the great writers of that age, crafted a grand new book.
He crafted several threads together -
* the characters in Paul
* the mileiu and figures and dramas of the Old Testament
* the key spiritual themes of the day (the son-of-god)
* themes from literature (e.g. the empty tomb scene)
* Homer (of course)
into a book about a magnificent new hero, a new hero for his times, the human he wanted to be, the person that all persons could aspire to.

He called him Iesus Christos

LATER still, after
* TWO wars lost to the Roman juggernaut
* which erased Judea from the map
* and razed Jerusalem - till it was knee high, some say
* and totally destroyed the Temple and it's records
* and foreably dispersed the Jews from Jerusalem
* that's the few Jews who were left alive
we start to see other people liked the Jesus book so much, they COPIED it - soon, there were a dozen or more Gospels, with a handful of main favourites.

LATER
we start to see a few people (from Jewish circles mostly) claim
"Jesus, oh yes he was real"
(a Jewish hero set in the Jewish world, set just before the Jews lost everything - no surprise there.)

Meanwhile elsewhere, all sorts of other Jews Christians are developing all sorts of other beliefs -
* black magician Jesus
* supernatural Jesus
* phantom Jesus
* illusion Jesus
* magic mushroom Jesus

Finally,
CENTURIES later after many huge arguments, some consensus develops, a strong leadership takes charge, they get the stories straight, eject anyone who rejects the new story, and of course burn the books of their opponents.

Then, they had the biggest stroke of luck in history -
Rome picks Christianity as the new state religio,
and shortly after Rome collapses in ruins.

The rest, as they say, is history - a millenium and a half of stagnation.
The West has barely progressed spiritually since Roman times,
now we seek to the East, or poke among the ash of the Qabalah

Finally in the last century our two we saw some light, but
only in recent decades has some of the West shaken off that dead hand.

Now we race ahead as we need, our children are astonishingly bright and healthy and wise and humane (well, at least for some, I am blessed to be living amongst one of the highest standard of living ever achieved by humankind.)
I went to my daughter's school (a Quintilian school, lovely place) once to watch the school play. One of the children was a disabled Iraqi boy, he had his part in the play (a small part, he could not talk or walk like most of the other children) just like all the other children. No-one laughed, he got clapped as much as the other children. He was accepted as much as any.
A disabled Iraqi boy.
I cried.
With a handful of parents from various cultures, all with slightly embarassed little tears of joy -
We saw the future that day - we humans CAN do it, we CAN get it right.

I saw the Golden Age that day.
Doxa.

THAT is what I believe in -

Humanity


But sadly -
how would that Iraqi boy and his parents fare today in most US schools?


Iasion

Greetings,

Originally posted by whiterabbit
All I'm saying is, we know a movement sprung up out of the Holy Land calling themselves "Christians" and claiming to follow a guy named Jesus that ticked off the Jewish establishment and brought down the wrath of the Romans. People got themselves killed for that movement very, very quickly--not hundreds of years later (although they did then, too).

The early martyrdoms are part of the STORY.
One part of the story doesn't prove the rest true.
There is no evidence for them.

Originally posted by whiterabbit
It just doesn't seem logical to think that you could form a large movement of people willing to die for ONE GUY, just years after he supposedly existed, if NO ONE ever actually laid eyes on the guy.

But most Christians believed without ever laying eyes on Jesus. They believed on the say so of others. This proves Christians WILL believe without seeing Jesus.

Originally posted by whiterabbit
I'm just saying, it's illogical to think there wasn't an ACTUAL MAN named Jesus who started the Christian movement.

There WAS an actual man - PAUL, he wrote about Jesus.
And another actual man - Mark, wrote a great story about Jesus.
Other person wrote Gospels too (one MAY have been by a woman.)
Then other people wrote epistles in the names found in the Gospels.
Then other people spread this Gospel.
Then other persons made it the official religion.

All done by people, none of it requiring an Jesus at all.

Just BELIEF in Jesus.

Originally posted by whiterabbit
But they were claiming to believe in a guy that lived in their lifetimes,

None of the Christian writings claim to have met Jesus.
Not one.

Modern NT scholars agree that NOT ONE SINGLE book of the NT was written by a person who actually met a Jesus.

Originally posted by whiterabbit
that thousands of people saw.

That's what they CLAIMED, yeah.
Long after the events, after the wars.
But history has NO of any Jesus doing anything.

All we have is records of CHRISTIANS and their beliefs.
No history OF Jesus at all.

Originally posted by whiterabbit
It seems illogical to think so many people would've bought into that so devoutly if nobody ever saw this guy walking around.

Come on - THINK about it.
Millions of later Christians DID believe in Jesus without ever seeing him, because so many others did - so what? All the people talking about Jesus were from LONG long afterwards - none of them met Jesus.

That proves people WILL believe in things without seeing them,
not the other way round.


Iasion


[edit on 30-3-2007 by Iasion]

Greetings,

Originally posted by whiterabbit
Well, we have four accounts, actually. And he is mentioned in a couple sources outside the Bible (Flavius Josephus for example).

A passage that is 60 years AFTER Jesus, and which has been tampered with by Christians.

Yup,
that's the BEST historical evidnce for Jesus -
* not contemporary
* tampered with

After that, the "evidence" is even worse.
So much for Jesus in history.

Originally posted by whiterabbitBut the church tended to bury any first-hand information about Jesus that was deemed apocryphal. We know they did this with several books, like the Gospel of Thomas.

No they didn't.
There is no evidence they supressed this.
There is no evidence of ANY "first-hand" information about Jesus anywhere - it's all from unknown sources.
The Gospel of Thomas is not first hand material - it has NO personal details about Jesus at all. It's a series of sayings.

Originally posted by whiterabbitEither the apostles, who we do know historically existed,

No we don't.
Most are just myths.
Paul existed.
There was a James or two.
Peter and/or Cephas existed.

The 12 apostles?
Myth - no evidence for them.

The books of the NT were all written by unknown people who never met any Jesus.

The idea that followers of Jesus wrote the Gospels is just part of the myth - scholars do not agree.

We have no writing from ANY person who saw Jesus.

None.

Iasion

well im a believer i cant say nothin for sure or take side but think of this very interesting theory...
we have people with "abilities" now do we?
what about in the old times?
could be person that is able to heal and do unatural stuff?
well one thing is for sure he can but if those powers are from god or there is something else i dont know

according to scriptures (a prejudiced source)
a Jewish person was crucified during a Passover observace
when a Pontius Pilate was in charge of the Jerusalem area

~there are no records, only hearsay exists)

the Jewish person cruicified seems to have riled up the
established Jewish Priesthood for a number of reasons
including blsphemy, assuming the title of Rabbi, and
confronting the Priesthood corruption of the Temple rites...

~again, unsubstantiated claims, hearsay found in redundant 'Gospels' ~

the person crucified, was either rebellious or notorious as the Roman
soldiers assigned the crucifixion duties that day, parted his clothing
as 'keepsakes' of the occasion
(or this act was added to give credibility to the story, as the casting lots for his clothes was a prophecy from old)
[explaination of citations]
----://www.bueletterbible.org/tsk_b/Jhn/19/23.html

the story is given depth & pausibility by these little embellishments
like the 'robe' he wore was a single piece of woven fabric & couldn't be divided among the detail of 4 Roman soldiers...so they rolled dice or cast stones/runes to see who would walk off with the 'Robe'

PS: just what were the 4 garments that were claimed by the 4 guards?
sandals ? tunic ? shawl ? undergarment ??
with the 'Robe' (5th item) as the bonus?

? Why wasn't the 'Robe' stripped from the Jesus & kept by the local procurator as a souvenior, when he was flogged before the crucifixion...
if he was so Infamous, or rabble-rouser or rebel & insurrectionist??

?why weren't the guards approached by Jesus' family/followers
to give up the raimnant, for a few shiekels? the items culd have
been relics of the Jesus ministry & evidence





imho:

just too much hearsay, not any evidence of a singular, physical person;
but just like a Sherlock Holmes character, a person who is 'fleshed out'
but is only an Archtype personnified-ideal

[edit on 30-3-2007 by St Udio]

Originally posted by shihulud

Originally posted by whiterabbit

It just doesn't seem logical to think that you could form a large movement of people willing to die for ONE GUY, just years after he supposedly existed, if NO ONE ever actually laid eyes on the guy.

That just doesn't seem logical.

So its logical then to think that Osirus, Isis, Horus existed?? or Enki, Enlil and Innana existed??? What about Quetzelcoatl?? or even the mythical monsters of the Romans and Greeks. Its not logical to state that jesus existed because christianity exists as you then must state that all others existed as well.

There are some problems at the heart of the argument that Jesus is just another retelling of a godman-cornking. The first is that the story of Jesus is located specifically within historical time and events. Which is very unlike the stories of Osirus, Isis, Horus, Enki, Enlil, Innana, Quetzelcoatl, etc.: they are set in the mythic past (similar to the mythic past of some of the earlier Old Testament too), and I know of no source that claims otherwise. But the times and events of the Jesus story are extremely recent in terms of their dissemination. The thing is that myths do not spring into being fully-formed, developed, extended and mature (in full plumage as it were). They develop over times and places, and slowly. The Christianity of today may be said to have undergone such a process (I don't want to argue that or not, as it's contentious and quite beside the point). But the people of the few generations after the posited existence of Jesus would not have formed such a mythology as is found in the Gospel writings.

In fact, the study of the development of writings is one of the keys in the positing of lost documents such as "Q" from earlier in the 1st century. But again the implication of this document does not undermine the historicity of eyewitness, it backs it up, by being located at the right sort of period for it.

Another point to notice is that the Gospels do not present themselves as mythic writing at all. We have very many examples of mythic writing from antiquity (some of the Old Testament in fact). The Gospels are almost painfully narrative in a way that is incredibly untypical. As CS Lewis points out, merely by way of illustratation:

As a literary historian, I am perfectly convinced that whatever else the Gospels are they are not legends. I have read a great deal of legend and I am quite clear that they are not the same sort of thing. They are not artistic enough to be legends. From an imaginative point of view they are clumsy, they don't work up to things properly. Most of the life of Jesus is totally unknown to us, as is the life of anyone else who lived at that time, and no people building up a legend would allow that to be so... There is nothing , even in modern literature, until abount a hundred years ago when the realistic novel came into existence. In the story of the woman taken in adultery we are told Christ bent down and scribbled in the dust with His finger. Nothing comes of this. No one has ever based any doctrine on it. And the art of inventing little irrelevant details to make an imaginary scene more convining is a purely modern art. Surely the only interpretation of this passage is that it actually happened? (1950).

It is also worth noting how utterly alien were ideas of deaths and resurrections of semi-mythical gods were in Judaic beliefs.

Preaching about Jesus beliefs started long long after the alleged events.
No Christian writer mentions the Gospels or their events until mid 2nd century - a CENTURY after the alleged events. After two wars had destroyed Jerusalem and it's people and the records:
qdj.50megs.com...

Well, this is again you putting up a straw man to tear down. You are saying that we should demand such documents exist, as actual written-down documents. I maintain that we should not expect such documents to exist at all. What little we do have tells us that a story that people went and preached their message. They did not sit down and prepare a serious pamphleting or a spam-mail campaign. Why on earth would these people write it all down immediately? Their aim was to tell everyone about it. A mostly illiterate apostolate and a mostly illiterate population. They did the blindingly obvious and sensible thing which was to tel everyone with their mouths. The letters of Paul, Clement, various "quasi-apostles" (and others as we get later) are not letters meant to be used for conversion. They are letters of exhortation to a community already converted.

No early Christian writer mentions the empty tomb story AT ALL until mid 2nd century.
No early Christian showed any interest in where the tomb was.
None of the NT epistle writers mentions the empty tomb ONCE.
How do you explain that?

You should instead be telling us why you think that the early writers should have been writing such documents. And what possible function they would hve served them. Because to me the claim that they should have produced such documents is the more unusual.

However, most importantly in this, you are denying the prevailing academic opinion about the dates of the formation of the written Gospels. The usual view is: Mk 60s-70s, Matt & Lk 80s-c.100AD, Jn c.100 (but arguments for later are vociferous).

One of the points I was getting to make earlier is that Clement tells us that Peter and Paul were in Rome. Given that Peter allegedly knew a historical Jesus, how do you explain the idea that Paul was inventing a mythological one? They worked together. Do you think perhaps Peter was a mute?

It is worth noting that many previous authors who have argued that the Gospels were fiction have pointed to the fact that no historical events or people in them can be corroborated. Not much has changed but to take some of the blast out of their work, in 1961 we found the archaeological proof for the existence of Pontius Pilate. Which sets the Gospels firmly into a historical framework.

Finally, Paul DOES seem to talk about a historical Jesus. There are examples here: en.wikipedia.org...

Eg.
1Cor2:8 says he was killed by rulers of "this age"
1Cor15:3-8 says he lived within eyewitness times
Gal - generally talking about the apostles and "brother" of Jesus

Cheers.

Originally posted by Iasion
You reject all other beliefs, and accept your own - just like they do.
It proves nothing at all about Jesus.

Okay, apparently I'm going to have to preface every single post I make about this subject so people will stop assuming. But I'll say it again:

I am not a Christian, and I do not believe in Christianity.

I just think it's illogical to think a movement could spring up about a man just years after he supposedly existed if that man never even existed.

Is it possible there was no Jesus and one or more of the apostles just cooked up a good story to rile everyone up against the Roman empire? Absolutely. It's hard to swallow that they could fool that many people in that short a time, but it's certainly possible.

But it's far more likely that there was a real Jew named Jesus who stood up to the Jewish and Roman authorities, got himself killed for it, and made himself a legend among the people--which snowballed from there.

Perhaps Paul and the others later made up the story of his divinity. Maybe that came even after them. I don't know.

But we know (approximately) when the Christian movement started, and I just don't think it's logical to think it could've come about (in the way that it did) without their having actually been a founder named Jesus.