Historical Jesus

[Lumpenproletariat]

Further confirmation that
Jesus did nothing noteworthy in history

I have given my view on why Jesus became prevalent several times. It has nothing to do with anything he said or did.

Right. You're agreeing with me. Though I believe Jesus did do something noteworthy (the miracle acts described in the accounts) and you believe he did not. But otherwise we agree. I.e., assuming he did not do the noteworthy acts he is said to have done, then he is a nobody who did nothing special in history. And yet he has been made into a somebody in the historical record. What's another example of this? of someone noted in the historical record who really did nothing noteworthy? You can't offer any other example of this.

How about Zoroaster as a possible case. The historical record tells us very little about him that is definite. Maybe he comes close to being similar?

No, not even Zoroaster is an example. He is recognized by all as a religious founder who originated the Persian religious traditions of the period from around 500-1000 BC and later. He's famous enough to be called a "somebody" in the written record, being credited by everyone as a founder of a new religion of Persia, with virtually no dispute of this among scholars. So he is distinguished as someone who did something no one else did. I.e., he's by far the most well-recognized founder of a new religion in Persia during that period. Nothing like this can be said of Jesus, who maybe is recognized by some as a "founder" of sorts, but definitely not by most scholars, who are divided as to what he really did, though they place him in the 1st century and have much more writings concerning him than they have about the Zoroaster person historically.

So even an obscure figure like Zoroaster was a somebody who is distinguished in history as having accomplished something identified and making him unique in history, to explain why he is in the historical record. But we have nothing about Jesus to distinguish him from all the other prophets and sages and messiahs etc.

It is about cultural processes that have existed since the first human civilizations.

2000 years ago illiteracy and superstition were the norm. Superstitious people glomed onto a myth created as fiction.

Of course there are fictions. But no more 2000 years ago than 2100 or 2200 or 2300 years ago. No more in the period of Jesus (or just before him) than any other period.

And though obviously there are fictions then and at every other time, the writings of that time also contain facts. It's a fact that Jesus existed as a real 1st-century person, as Zoroaster existed, more obscurely, as a person probably back in the period of 1000-500 BC (possibly earlier) in Persia. Both these are historical persons about whom we don't know much. But they are fact, and we know what distinguishes Zoroaster as a factual person in history, while we do not know what distinguishes Jesus as a person in history, i.e., what is noteworthy about him.

I said above what distinguishes Zoroaster, though there's much that's unknown about him. But in the case of Jesus we do NOT know what distinguishes him historically if he did not do the miracle acts. I.e., there's NO AGREEMENT as to what he did, as there is agreement about what Zoroaster did.

Nothing you're saying here answers the question: Who is another person in the historical record who was really a NOBODY? who did nothing noteworthy that we can agree on? Jesus is such a person, a nobody, if he did not do the miracle acts described in the 1st-century accounts we have.

The question again: Is there any other such case, of someone made into someone noteworthy in the accounts, and yet who was really a NOBODY? i.e., was really so minor in importance that you cannot name anything that distinguishes him from anyone else, such as we can name what distinguishes Zoroaster?

As has been covered on the forum, Christianity . . .

Much has been covered. I'm not claiming nothing has been covered. I'm just asking this question which has not been answered. And the question, again, is:

Assuming Jesus did not do the miracle acts and therefore is not distinguished in history as having done anything noteworthy, is there any other example of such a person, noted in the written record from history, who did nothing noteworthy to distinguish him from anyone else?

And by offering no example, you are acknowledging there is no other such case. Jesus is the only person in the written record of history who did nothing noteworthy. You're agreeing that he is the only such case of this.

Christianity evolved from a heretic group of Jews to a gentile Christianity as a syncretic mix of multiple pagan practices and views.

But the Galilean Jesus of about 30 AD who was crucified is not recognized as the founder of Christianity, by a significant number of people, especially scholars. He is not recognized as having done that or anything else noteworthy which distinguishes him from others.

It had little to do with a Jew named Jesus who lived as a Jew. What you call Christianity should be called Paulism.

Yes, there's another example of a person in the historical record who we can identify as to his noteworthiness. He is the one who popularized Christianity among Gentiles, or rather, he is the only one we know of, who left a "paper trail" behind him, to identify him as a promoter of Christianity among Gentiles early, beginning in the 30s AD or by 50 AD at the latest.

So Paul is recognized for what he did that is noteworthy. But the historical Jesus is not recognized for anything noteworthy in history by any significant number, outside believers who all explain him differently, giving only theological explanations, not historical facts, to distinguish him (other than the miracle acts).

Christianity became political and about power. The RCC was Christianity until the Reformation.

As at the beginning today in the USA Christianity is all about political power.

Hinduism is the oldest system and exists today. Taoism dates to the 3rd or 4th century BCE.

People still talk about and study Roman leaders, Greek philosophers and literature, and Egypt.

You may think Jesus is special and unique, but it is not really true. One of many mythologies.

Yes, you're agreeing with me. That's close to what I said.

He was a nobody (assuming he didn't do the miracle acts) who did nothing to distinguish him historically. You're agreeing that he's the only case of someone included in the historical record as if he did something noteworthy and yet really did nothing noteworthy (if he did not do the miracle acts).

So you're agreeing that he's the only case of someone in the historical written record who actually did NOTHING noteworthy. You can't name anything he did that distinguishes him, and even emphasize vehemently that he did nothing to deserve any mention in the written record, such as Zoroaster and all the others did do something noteworthy.

Thanks for helping me to make my point. Possibly even saying it better than I did.

 

[bilby]

Don't you know any history at all?

I am confident that I have forgotten more history than you will ever know.

I didn't read most of your post, just skimmed it, as usual; My experience tells me that if you had anything to say, you would be succinct, and that walls of text are your way of admitting you are wrong (but never to yourself, of course).

 

[Lumpenproletariat]

Still further confirmation that
Jesus did nothing noteworthy
(if he didn't do the miracle acts).

Don't you know any history at all?

I am confident that I have forgotten more history than you will ever know.

I didn't read most of your post, just skimmed it, as usual; My experience tells me that if you had anything to say, you would be succinct, and that walls of text are your way of admitting you are wrong (but never to yourself, of course).

translation: Yes, the historical Jesus is the only case of someone mentioned in the (ancient) history written record who actually did NOTHING noteworthy. In all other cases of someone in the written record we can identify what they did that distinguishes them historically, but Jesus is the only one who did nothing noteworthy (assuming he did not do the miracle acts).

 

[bilby]

Still further confirmation that
Jesus did nothing noteworthy
(if he didn't do the miracle acts).

Don't you know any history at all?

I am confident that I have forgotten more history than you will ever know.

I didn't read most of your post, just skimmed it, as usual; My experience tells me that if you had anything to say, you would be succinct, and that walls of text are your way of admitting you are wrong (but never to yourself, of course).

translation: Yes, the historical Jesus is the only case of someone mentioned in the (ancient) history written record who actually did NOTHING noteworthy. In all other cases of someone in the written record we can identify what they did that distinguishes them historically, but Jesus is the only one who did nothing noteworthy (assuming he did not do the miracle acts).

Your ability to "translate" is as woeful as your undertanding of how history works.

I completely and wholeheartedly disagree with, and have not said anything remotely like, your alleged "translation", and I would thank you to not attribute your nonsensical drivel to me - if you must write this not-even-wrong horseshit, the least you could do is refrain from the pretense that others agree with it, or worse still have endorsed it.

The only part of your previous post worthy of a response from me was your incompetent assessment of my knowledge of history, which any reader who is familiar with my posts on the topic elsewhere on these boards would know was a totaly groundless slur, apparently motivated by your being butthurt at my pointing out (with a clear example) that you apparently don't even know what history is.

 

[steve_bank]

Lumpy may be demonstrating how Christianity took root.

Murky fantastical facts repeated over and over until one becomes totally emerged in it. It becomes a personal cause and facts are irrelevant. It becomes truth and a conditioned response.

His verbose posts read like repetitious propaganda messaging. A falsehood repeated becomes truth.

His arguments despite the word counts are simple and seen before on the forum.

1. A lot of people believe it so it must be true.
2. The gospels are first hand accounts witnessed by many. Supernatural events.

I read several books on Tibetan Buddhism, imbued with the supernatural and paranormal. A Tibetan saint Milarepa was reported historically to levitate, flying through the air 'as fast as an arrow'.

Taoism has superntral el;emys [redating Jesus.

Lie Jesus the popula stories of Miarepa through today is bsed in oral tradition with little basis in facts.

Milarepa - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Milarepa's life-story is famous in Tibetan culture, and retold many times. The best-known biography, The Life of Milarepa, written by Tsangnyön Heruka (1452–1507) in the fifteenth century and drawing from older biographies, is still very popular.[1][2][3] Most of the present-day stories on Milarepa come from this single source, with oral lineage predominating as well as relics including his bearskin coat.[3] While "very little [is known] about him as a historical person at all," Milarepa is venerated by all Tibetan schools "as an exemplar of religious dedication and mastery," and his life story established the lineage of the Kagyu sect and its key figures.[3]

The rise of the Jesus myth is not unique.

 

[Lumpenproletariat]

Further confirmation that
Jesus (30 AD) is the only documented miracle-worker.

Lumpy may be demonstrating how Christianity took root.

Murky fantastical facts repeated over and over until one becomes totally emerged in it. It becomes a personal cause and facts are irrelevant. It becomes truth and a conditioned response.

His verbose posts read like repetitious propaganda messaging. A falsehood repeated becomes truth.

His arguments despite the word counts are simple and seen before on the forum.

1. A lot of people believe it so it must be true.
2. The gospels are first hand accounts witnessed by many. Supernatural events.

If I said any of the above I should be taken out and shot.

I read several books on Tibetan Buddhism, imbued with the supernatural and paranormal. A Tibetan saint Milarepa was reported historically to levitate, flying through the air 'as fast as an arrow'.

Taoism has superntral el;emys [redating Jesus.

Lie Jesus the popula stories of Miarepa through today is bsed in oral tradition with little basis in facts.

Milarepa - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Milarepa's life-story is famous in Tibetan culture, and retold many times. The best-known biography, The Life of Milarepa, written by Tsangnyön Heruka (1452–1507) in the fifteenth century and drawing from older biographies, is still very popular.[1][2][3] Most of the present-day stories on Milarepa come from this single source, with oral lineage predominating as well as relics including his bearskin coat.[3] While "very little [is known] about him as a historical person at all," Milarepa is venerated by all Tibetan schools "as an exemplar of religious dedication and mastery," and his life story established the lineage of the Kagyu sect and its key figures.[3]

The rise of the Jesus myth is not unique.

Thanks once again for making my point. You neglected to tell us when Milarepa lived:

Jetsun Milarepa (Tibetan: རྗེ་བཙུན་མི་ལ་རས་པ, Wylie: rje btsun mi la ras pa, 1028/40–1111/23)[1] was a Tibetan siddha, who was famously known as a murderer when he was a young man, before turning to Buddhism and becoming a highly accomplished Buddhist disciple.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milarepa

1028-1111 AD. And our only source for him is about 1500 AD.

So our source for this famous Buddhist is 400 years later than he reportedly did the miracle acts being claimed.

Do you understand what DATING means? when something happened in history? and when the first source is dated telling us about him?

Why do you ignore the DATE when the events happened?
When?

WHEN? Do you know what "when" means?

WHEN did it happened? And WHEN did the writer/source report this to us? Don't you care? Don't you understand what dating means? Don't you understand that 400 years later makes it less credible? Why are you having trouble figuring this out?

This example is similar to King Arthur, for whom we have no information until several centuries later. And it's mostly for this reason that we cannot trust the stories, especially reports about miracles, or about Divine Intervention in their lives, saying this or that Divine Event happened.

Why can't you understand this? The dates do matter. They are facts. Your example has merit ONLY if we disregard the facts. As soon as we check the facts, we see that this example has no similarity to that of Jesus in 30 AD.

How many times do I have to repeat this:

We have 4 (5) written sources, in the 1st century, which tell us of the miracle acts of Jesus. They date about 20-70 years later than Jesus lived. (Maybe -80 or -90 or -100 years by some accounts). This is relatively good evidence for any ancient history events, most of which are not reported to us by contemporary sources but by writers 50-100-200 years later. So 20-70 years is a relatively short gap between when the events reportedly happened and when they are written by our source.

And yet this example -- Milarepa in the 11th century -- is not available to us in any source before about 1500, i.e. 400 years later.

in one source only at that time.

Do you understand the difference between 1 source and 4 sources (or 5 sources)?

Do you understand the difference between 20-70 years and 400 years? Which is more -- 50 or 400? Can you answer that? Do you understand that? Do you know what NUMBERS are?

That's all the I.Q. you need in order to understand that for the historical Jesus we do have sources, making him an historical figure, while we do NOT have sources for the historical Milarepa.


Once again you are proving my point. You are proving that there are no other cases in history where a reported miracle-worker is part of the historical record, reported in multiple sources near to his time. The Jesus of Galilee in about 30 AD is the only case that is known. You are proving this is the case by your repeated failure to name any other example, by your inability to come up with any others, and instead only giving us examples which fail to qualify as historical figures for whom we have historical evidence (i.e., evidence for anything like miracle acts).

It's not unreasonable to assume only that Milarepa probably existed, like many other legends for whom there is little evidence, but probably enough to conclude that some such guy did exist. But obviously there's no evidence for anything unusual, like miracle events. Over a period of 400 years (or even 200 years), we cannot rely on the ancient legend alone for such claims of historical events.

That this is all you can come up with just gives further confirmation to my point: Jesus is the only historical case of a documented miracle-worker. (You can add "ancient" historical case, i.e., before 1500 AD or so.)

If there were any other examples you would give them to us, rather than pathetic examples like this one. Your post here represents largely why I am becoming a more convinced believer in Jesus the miracle-worker of 30 AD. Everything being posted here, by those insisting that he never existed, proves further that he did exist and demonstrated the power described in the Gospel accounts.

Why can't anyone come up with facts/evidence to show otherwise?



Won't someone help out steve_bank on this? Doesn't anyone posting here understand what dates mean, i.e., dating the source, when it was written? and also the date that the reported event(s) happened? Does everyone posting here have a blank about what the word "when" means?

That's "WHEN"

W - H - E - N ----- you know, like the year, a century earlier, 2 centuries later, a few decades from now, a generation ago -- that sort of thing.

 

[Swammerdami]

Lumpenproletariat does ask, if only indirectly, an important question: WHY was it at about the time of Jesus that conditions were ripe for a minor healer, preacher, or insurrectionist to become a mythologized cult hero?

I've already given some answers up-thread. But I'm re-reading Jaynes' book and I find in it some guidance on this question.

PLEASE Remember that Jaynes' writing is extremely dense, with an abundance of details and evidence. Read the book itself; any summary is likely to be very misleading. But I will give terse excerpts from Chapter III.3 (Poetry and Music) to make my point. Briefly there was a major change in the nature of narratives, beginning about the time of Plato in Greece, or a few centuries later in neighboring areas.

The evidence is ... that all of those individuals who remained bicameral into the conscious age, when speaking of or from the divine side of their minds, spoke in poetry. ... Oracles spoke poetry. From time to time, their utterances from Delphi and elsewhere were written down, and every one of them that survives as more than a simple phrase is in dactylic hexameter, just as were the epics. The Hebrew prophets also, when relaying the hallucinated utterance of Yahweh, were often poets, though their scribes did not in every case preserve such speech in verse.

As the bicameral mind recedes further into history ... there are exceptions. Poetic utterance by the oracles breaks down here and there. The oracle at Delphi, for example, in the first century A.D. evidently spoke in both verse and prose ...
Poetry then was divine knowledge. And after the breakdown of the bicameral mind, poetry was the sound and tenor of authorization. Poetry commanded where prose could only ask. It felt good. In the wanderings of the Hebrews after the exodus from Egypt ... it was the poetry of Moses that determined when they would start and when stop, where they would go and where stay. ... Even glossolalia today, as we have seen in III.2, wherever it is practiced, tends to fall into metrical patterns, particularly dactyls.

... early poetry was song. ...
Modern poetry is a hybrid. It has the metrical feet of song with the pitch glissandos of speech. But ancient poetry is much closer to song. ...
Now how does all this relate to the bicameral mind? Speech, as has long been known, is a function primarily of the left cerebral hemisphere. But song, as we are presently discovering, is primarily a function of the right cerebral hemisphere. The evidence is various but consistent:
... The answer is that your topic is `in' Wernicke's area on your left hemisphere, while your song is `in' what corresponds to Wernicke's area on your right hemisphere. ...
... It is thus no idle happenstance of history that the very name of music comes from the sacred goddesses called Muses. For music too begins in the bicameral mind.
This change in musical accompaniment is also reflected in the way poetry is referred to, although a large amount of historical overlap makes the case not quite so clear. But more early poetry is referred to as song (as in the Iliad and the Theogony, for example), while later poetry is often referred to as spoken or told....

... Poets then, around 400 B.C., were comparable in mentality to the oracles of the same period, and went through similar psychological transformation when they performed.
... And then in the fourth century B.C., the mad possessed poet "out of his senses" that Plato and I have already described. Just as the oracles had changed from the prophet who heard his hallucinations to the possessed person in a wild trance, so also had the poet.
Was this dramatic change because the collective cognitive imperative had made the Muses less believable as real external entities? Or was it because the neurological reorganization of hemispheric relations brought on by developing consciousness prohibited such givenness; so that consciousness had to be out of the way to let poetry happen? Or was it Wernicke's area on the right hemisphere using Broca's area on the left, thus shortcircuiting (as it were) normal consciousness? Or are these three hypotheses the same (as of course I presently think they are) ?
For whatever reasons, decline continues decline in the ensuing centuries. Just as the oracles sputtered out through their latter terms until possession was partial and erratic, so, I suggest, poets slowly changed until the fury and possession by the Muses was also partial and erratic. And then the Muses hush and freeze into myths. Nymphs and shepherds, dance no more. Consciousness is a witch beneath whose charms pure inspiration gasps and dies into invention. The oral becomes written by the poet himself, and written, it should be added, by his right hand, worked by his left hemisphere. The Muses have become imaginary and invoked in their silence as a part of man's nostalgia for the bicameral mind.

... Then, as the bicameral mind shrinks back from its impulsiveness, and as perhaps a certain reticence falls upon the right hemisphere, poets who are to obtain this same state must learn to do it. As this becomes more difficult, the state becomes a fury, and then ecstatic possession, just as happened in the oracles. And then indeed toward the end of the first millennium B.C., just as the oracles began to become prosaic and their statements versified consciously, so poetry also. Its givenness by the unison Muses has vanished. And conscious men now wrote and crossed out and careted and rewrote their compositions in laborious mimesis of the older divine utterances.

In summary, mythologized narratives until the Early Iron Age, were sung by the right hemisphere -- the bicameral mind. It was about the 1st century AD when narratives were developed in prose by the left hemisphere. This transilience in the craft of story-telling facilitated the development of a new type of cult, and writings like the Pauline letters, the Gospels and Acts.

ETA: Note that conscious left-hemisphere narrators were capable of deceit, while right-hemisphere poet-narrators in effect just reported their hallucinations.

 

[Swammerdami]

Chapter III.1 (The Quest for Authorization) makes the point more explicitly:

... the attempted reformation of Judaism by Jesus can be construed as a necessarily new religion for conscious men rather than bicameral men. Behavior now must be changed from within the new consciousness rather than from Mosaic laws carving behavior from without. Sin and penance are now within conscious desire and conscious contrition, rather than in the external behaviors of the decalogue and the penances of temple sacrifice and community punishment. The divine kingdom to be regained is psychological not physical. It is metaphorical not literal. It is 'within' not in extenso.

But even the history of Christianity does not and cannot remain true to its originator. The development of the Christian Church returns again and again to this same longing for bicameral absolutes, away from the difficult inner kingdoms of agape to an external hierarchy reaching through a cloud of miracle and infallibility to an archaic authorization in an extended heaven. In previous chapters I have often paused to point out various parallels between ancient bicameral practices and modern religious ones, and I shall not labor such comparisons here.

 

[bilby]

Note that conscious left-hemisphere narrators were capable of deceit, while right-hemisphere poet-narrators in effect just reported their hallucinations.

Note that the entire hypothesis of the bicameral brain is now known to be false, and persists only as metaphor at best, and pseudoscience at worst.

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0071275

... our data are not consistent with a whole-brain phenotype of greater “left-brained” or greater “right-brained” network strength across individuals.

 

[Swammerdami]

Note that conscious left-hemisphere narrators were capable of deceit, while right-hemisphere poet-narrators in effect just reported their hallucinations.

Note that the entire hypothesis of the bicameral brain is now known to be false, and persists only as metaphor at best, and pseudoscience at worst.

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0071275

... our data are not consistent with a whole-brain phenotype of greater “left-brained” or greater “right-brained” network strength across individuals.

It looks to me like their result has little to do with Jaynes' hypothesis. In Jaynes' hypothesis all normal individuals have strong activity in both hemispheres; it's just the functions of Wernicke's area and its complement which differ, e.g. speech vs song.

Yet our analyses suggest that an individual brain is not “left-brained” or “right-brained” as a global property, but that asymmetric lateralization is a property of individual nodes or local subnetworks, and that different aspects of the left-dominant network and right-dominant network may show relatively greater or lesser lateralization within an individual.

 

[No Robots]

Jaynes on Jesus:

A full discussion here would specify how the attempted reformation of Judaism by Jesus can be construed as a necessarily new religion for conscious men rather than bicameral men. Behavior now must be changed from within the new consciousness rather than from Mosaic laws carving behavior from without. Sin and penance are now within conscious desire and conscious contrition, rather than in the external behaviors of the decalogue and the penances of temple sacrifice and community punishment. The divine kingdom to be regained is psychological not physical. It is metaphorical not literal. It is ‘within’ not in extenso.

The barking mad hyper-atheists, clinging desperately to their bicamerality, will of course reject this.

 

[steve_bank]

The conditions were intense Jewish nationalism, the ling threat of Rome destroying Israel, armed resistance, and the Jewish combination of state and religion.

If Jesus was preaching the end of the world, it likely meant the destruction of Jerusalem and Israel which did happen. Jews became stateless.

That Jesus was made mythical by gentiles is just human nature and imagination.

Jesus became mythical and Christianity arose in the same way Mormonism arose. An angel angel appeared giving golden tablets to the founder.

Or Islam. Or Sikhs. Scientology was started by a jack scifi writer L Ron Hubbard. He clainmed his E-Meter had all sorts of powers, eventually the FDA banned Scientology wa It is a sip,e skin us banned from promoting it by the FDA as a fraud. Yet today believers still use it as part of a ritual. It is a simple galvanic skin resistance meter that Hubbard copied form the old lie detector devices.

Lumpy and his fellow Christians put on blinders and see only the gospels, ignorant of the history of mythology and religion.

 

[Lumpenproletariat]

I have given my view on why Jesus became prevalent several times.

"became prevalent"?

The question is: Why do we know about him today? or rather, Why did anyone write about him? which then causes us later to know about him and believe or disbelieve things about him? They didn't write about others, i.e., the writers ignored 99.9999% of people --- so, why write anything about Jesus? Didn't there have to be something about him, to distinguish him from others, so that several educated persons saw a need to write about him? What was it about him that made him different than others so that someone wrote about him? Didn't there have to be something?

It has nothing to do with anything he said or did.

Obviously you're wrong to say this, because anyone who is written about in history and made famous, so that later generations read about him and learn about him, must have said or done something which drew attention, or something that was noteworthy.

If he said or did nothing, then you must mean that something peculiar happened to him, and only to him, which pushed him forth into someone's attention, so they were moved to write about him and influence readers later to think about him. And it's only a coincidence that he happened to get this attention, without actually doing or saying anything to cause this to happen. If you could name another such person in history who was made famous even though he did and said nothing noteworthy, maybe you could be taken seriously. But you aren't naming any other example of this. You're saying that this one person, Jesus in the 1st century, is the only person in history who was made famous because writers said things about him even though he did nothing and said nothing significant, nothing noteworthy.

Can you explain how someone who did absolutely nothing noteworthy was singled out for this attention? why only this one person, from among the millions of others who did nothing noteworthy and were all ignored by the writers of the time? The normal response toward someone who did and said nothing noteworthy is to ignore him and write nothing about him. But you're saying there's this one-only exception, one person in history, Jesus in about 30 AD, who was written about by several writers of the time who saw nothing noteworthy about him and yet wrote about him as if he was noteworthy, like writers wrote about many others in history who did something noteworthy.

Why should anyone believe you that this one person in the 1st century received this attention by writers, and by later generations, by history, even though he said or did nothing at all that had any importance or significance? And he's the only person in history who said and did nothing at all that was important, nothing of any kind, and yet was made famous because several writers said things about him. What strange event are you claiming happened to him and to no one else? What strange coincidence happened to him to cause him to be singled out to the writers to motivate them to write about him even though he said and did nothing noteworthy at all? Why do you expect anyone to believe you?

It is about cultural processes that have existed since the first human civilizations.

2000 years ago illiteracy and superstition were the norm.

No more so than at any other time. There was no more superstition in the 1st century AD than in the 1st century BC, or 2nd or 3rd or 4th or 5th century BC. Or in the 2nd century AD. The evidence is that miracle stories or stories about miracle-workers were more common from the 2nd century and later into the Dark Ages. So superstition was "the norm" later, after 200 AD, more than in the time of Jesus. And also illiteracy probably increased overall after the 1st century AD.

Why is it that you pretend to be telling us something about Jesus, why he "became prevalent," and yet you can't tell us any facts about the 1st century? You pretend to be saying something about "2000 years ago" and yet aren't telling us any facts about that time. Do you know what "2000 years ago" means? This term is supposed to refer to the 1st century AD.

Superstitious people glomed onto a myth created as fiction.

Whatever you mean by this, you're saying nothing about the 1st century, or the time of Jesus. There were just as many myths at other times and places. You're not explaining why we have written accounts of the time reporting that Jesus did miracle acts, and we don't have any such written accounts about others doing such acts. Why is this? If these are "fiction" stories, why don't we have such fiction stories about anyone else? Why only about this one 1st-century person and no one else? at any other time?

As has been covered on the forum, Christianity evolved from a heretic group of Jews to a gentile Christianity as a synchretic mix of multiple pagan practices and views.

This doesn't explain why we have these written accounts about Jesus performing miracle acts and yet we have no other written accounts about anyone doing such acts. Pagan practices and views went back 2000 or 3000 years earlier and continued on into 200 and 300 and 400 AD. Throughout all this time there is no other reported miracle worker -- outside of a few stories about powerful and famous widely-popular celebrities (e.g. Alexander the Great etc.) and a few folk heroes who became published and popularized through a process of several centuries of mythologizing -- in all the writings of the pagans and others who were writing religious stories. Whereas in the case of Jesus only we have reported miracle acts in multiple writings, multiple sources, from the period = normal evidence (but more than usual) for ancient history events and such as we do not have for any of the pagan myths.

So, what "has been covered" has nothing to do with Jesus in the 1st century. Nothing in the forum from you or others has answered why we have writings about the 1st-century Jesus telling us that he did these miracle acts, and why we have no such writings telling about any other such person in history.

 

[steve_bank]

As I posted we do have a general knowledge about the 1st century in general.

We know there was an armed Jewish rebellion. The archeological evidence at Masada are clear. Jewish miltantss on a mountain top were laid siege to by Romans and they commuted suicide rather than surrender. Writings on pottery. The siege ramp Rmans built is still there.

We know there were claimants to the Jewish prophesy of a new leader. They were looking for a new king who would return them to power.

We know from Roman writings that they viewed the first Jesus followers as Jewish heretics, and that afforded some degree of protection. When the Jewish sect became Pagan-ized with an identity separate from Jews conflict began within Christians and with Rome.

Gentiles co opted the Jewish scripture and the Jewish Jesus as their own. The Christian enmity to Jews began.

The Christianity you culturally inherited today has nothing to do with the followers followers of a Jish unknown character who became known as Jesus. I suspect the osipsel Jesus is a composite character representing a group of messianic Jews.

What yuo have as Christianity today began with a new theology reached as a compromise arond the time of Nicaea. There were violent comfclts between Christian sects over beliefs.

Whether Jesus was divne was an open question. The spiirt and the Trainity. All open for debate.

The Nicaean Creed that resulted was essentialy a loyalty oath to the new synthesis, and that evoved into the domnate RCC.

Comstantine needed to end the confict, so he promoted a unified Chrtianty and used it polically.

First Council of Nicaea - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

The First Council of Nicaea was the first ecumenical council of the church. Most significantly, it resulted in the first uniform Christian doctrine, called the Nicene Creed. With the creation of the creed, a precedent was established for subsequent local and regional councils of bishops (synods) to create statements of belief and canons of doctrinal orthodoxy—the intent being to define unity of beliefs for the whole of Christendom.[8]

Derived from Greek (Ancient Greek: οἰκουμένη, romanized: oikouménē, lit. 'the inhabited one'), "ecumenical" means "worldwide" but generally is assumed to be limited to the known inhabited Earth,[9] and at this time in history is nearly synonymous with the Roman Empire; the earliest extant uses of the term for a council are Eusebius' Life of Constantine[10] around 338, which states "he convoked an ecumenical council" (σύνοδον οἰκουμενικὴν συνεκρότει, sýnodon oikoumenikḕn synekrótei)[11] and a letter in 382 to Pope Damasus I and the Latin bishops from the First Council of Constantinople.[12]

One purpose of the Council was to resolve disagreements arising from within the Church of Alexandria over the nature of Jesus in his relationship to the Father: in particular, whether the Son had been 'begotten' by the Father from his own being, and therefore having no beginning, or else created out of nothing, and therefore having a beginning.[13] St. Alexander of Alexandria and Athanasius took the first position; the popular presbyter Arius, from whom the term Arianism comes, took the second. The Council decided against the Arians overwhelmingly (of the estimated 250–318 attendees, all but two agreed to sign the creed, and these two, along with Arius, were banished to Illyria).[8][14]

So you see Lumpy, the debate over what it meant to be a Christian and what or who Jesus really was began from the start of Gentile Chrtianity. Gentile Chrtianity had nothing to do with who a wnadering Jewish prohet may have been.

The books of the Chistian New Testament were selected to be cosnsistent with the new theolgy.

As to how it spread I thik the term meme apploes. A social idea spread through mimicry.

 

[Lumpenproletariat]

I have given my view on why Jesus became prevalent several times. It has nothing to do with anything he said or did. . . .

It had little to do with a Jew named Jesus who lived as a Jew. What you call Christianity should be called Paulism.

So then, what did Paul say and do which caused Jesus to become "prevalent"?

There are two ideas you're promoting here which are not compatible: 1) Paul gets the main credit for spreading the Christ-belief, by his evangelism among Gentiles; and 2) Jesus was mainly an anti-Roman King of the Jews (pretender/claimant) within the Jewish nationalistic Messiah tradition.

You have to choose between these 2, but you can't combine both into one theory to explain what made Jesus noteworthy. Gentiles were not attracted to an anti-Roman Jewish Messianic rebellion to expel Roman rule. If that's what Jesus was about, then Paul could not have been attracted to Jesus, nor converted Gentiles with any success. Expelling Romans from Israel was not a message Gentiles could have responded to, not being part of the anti-Roman Jewish Messianic movement, and also Paul was not anti-Roman or part of any such rebel cause. Even if he partly sympathized with the Jewish nationalistic sentiment, he would not have promoted a politically anti-Roman rebel movement.

Paul was probably at least as pro-Roman as Josephus, who was really against the militant anti-Roman Jews and turned against them at the opportune moment. Paul's chronology belongs prior to the climax of the Jews vs Romans war (70 AD), unlike the Gospels which are later. In the Gospels you can possibly find some pro-Roman sentiment, in a trend to cooperate with Rome rather than rebel against the Empire. But not in Paul's epistles, where we should see some anti-Roman sentiment if Paul had any such sentiment. But all his talk about the "kingdom" was not about a war to expel the Romans, even if there might have been such sentiment somewhere else. His "kingdom" was a different kind of vision than that of expelling the imperialists. He preached about a "kingdom" similar to that of John -- "My kingdom is not of this world" -- John 18:36.

So to make Paul the main factor why Jesus became important means that the original Jesus movement was not basically an anti-Roman rebel movement, and so Jesus could not have been an anti-Roman militant.

If Paul was looking for a "Messiah" figure for his vision, he would not have identified with a Jesus messiah hero who was anti-Roman. Back in the early 30s, when Paul converted, Jesus could not have been an anti-Roman rebel, because Paul would have rejected anyone like that. If Paul was the real force who made the new cult succeed, then he had the option to choose a messiah who would reflect his own sentiment, who would not be an anti-Roman rebel.

So you have to give up the idea that Jesus was an anti-Roman messianist dissident, or you have to give up the idea that Paul gets credit for making Jesus famous. Both of these could not be the case.

The truth is that Jesus was not an anti-Roman dissident, and his "kingdom" was not a political goal requiring to drive out the Romans, as was the vision of the anti-Roman Jewish messianist militants. This anti-Roman militant movement among some (less than half) the Jewish population is not the explanation for what happened, i.e., for why Jesus became popular with some Jews (e.g. Paul, Peter, etc.), why some educated ones wrote about him, why some were attracted to him and thought he was important or had some connection to God or might be the Messiah, etc. Some other explanation for this must be found than the claim that he was active within the militant anti-Roman Jewish nationalists.

On the other hand, if he actually did perform the miracle acts, including the Resurrection, this explains why some of the militants were attracted to Jesus and hoped he would promote their cause. And it answers all the other difficult questions about what made the historical Jesus important in history.

Christianity became political and about power. The RCC was Christianity until the Reformation.

That's all about events centuries later, not about Jesus in the 1st century. "The Historical Jesus" is a reported person or event of about 30 AD. This is not about 300 AD and later. Why don't you start a new topic/thread on the topic "Christianity After 300 AD" -- which is the real topic you have anything to say about?

As at the beginning today in the USA Christianity is all about political power.

No, in the 1st century ("the beginning") it was not about that. Had it been about rebellion against Rome, Paul would not have joined and become a missionary to the Gentiles. The anti-Roman politics you're trying to force Jesus into contradicts your theory that Paul became the real founder of Christianity. He could not have founded a movement which was politically anti-Roman. You can hang on to your Paul as founder theory only if you give up the contradictory theory that Jesus was part of the anti-Roman rebel movement.

Hinduism is the oldest system and exists today. Taoism dates to the 3rd or 4th century BCE.

People still talk about and study Roman leaders, Greek philosophers and literature, and Egypt.

All of them wonderful people. Let's hear it for the wonderful Hindus, Taoists, Romans, Greeks, Egyptians! Wonderful wonderful wonderful folks, all of them. Of course there's no evidence that their gods or heroes performed any miracle acts (though some of them like Hercules etc. maybe did something impressive). But none of those wonderful folks performed miracle acts, like resurrecting from the dead, etc., such as we have 1st-century evidence that Jesus performed the miracle healings and resurrected after he was killed.

But those were all wonderful folks.

You may think Jesus is special and unique, but it is not really true. One of many mythologies.

Every individual creature, even every individual object, every rock, every tree stump, every leaf -- every entity imaginable is each "special and unique" -- and all of them are wonderful wonderful folks, wonderful rocks, wonderful objects or whatever, absolutely.

But facts are facts. And the evidence of history is that Jesus did the miracle healing acts and resurrected from the grave after he was killed. This does not deprive other entities of their "special and unique" status, each one, individually, whatever you feel a need to recognize them for. That Jesus in history about 30 AD showed acts of power, which we know based on historical evidence, like other historical facts (not mythology), does not deprive anyone or anything of its individual uniqueness and specialness and wonderfulness.

 

[steve_bank]

Yes, Paul took the Jewish out of Jesus. No diet restrictions and no circumcision required. Paraphrasing Paul. What makes a Jew a Jews is in his heart not circumcision or diet.

Paul-ism not the Jewish Jesus. Paul made his own version.

With Nicaea Certainty became a part of the Roman political power structure. That along with social forces established Christianity in the west. We see the toxic mix of religion and politics right now. t

Christianity thinks it has a bible based mandate to convert the world, to proselytize.

Lumpy, you proselytize here in BOLD CAPITAL LETTERS to proclaim what you think is truth. When us atheists here dispute your claims you get bent out o shape and post more BOLD CAPITAL LETTERS.

That is the Christianity we have all come to know and love...not.

 

[Lumpenproletariat]

Was Paul pro-Roman? or anti-Roman?
Was Jesus pro-Roman? or anti-Roman?

Yes, Paul took the Jewish out of Jesus. No diet restrictions and no circumcision required. Paraphrasing Paul. What makes a Jew a Jews is in his heart not circumcision or diet.

Paul-ism not the Jewish Jesus. Paul made his own version.

His own version of what? Your hypothesis of what Paul did contradicts your insistence that Jesus was an anti-Roman Jewish militant, and that the conflict of Jews vs. Rome is what explains the role of Jesus in those events, or in the 1st-century written record of the events.

Can't you figure out that Paul was NOT an anti-Roman Jewish militant? as you insist that Jesus was? Paul was among many Jews who sympathized with Rome as being the legitimate authority, in power over Galilee-Judea and the entire eastern Mediterranean nations. Just because he was a Jew and had Jewish beliefs does not make him automatically anti-Roman, because a large percent of Jews were pro-Roman or at least favorable or tolerant toward Roman rule.

That being the case, how can you presume that Paul would identify with an anti-Roman Jewish militant claiming to be the "King of the Jews," and amplify this anti-Roman rebel into a resurrected divine miracle savior? Why would Paul win converts to someone he fundamentally disagreed with? even make a god out of him? That's like you, or Bernie Sanders, taking up the banner of Donald Trump, becoming a Trump-Believer, creating your own version of Trump and starting a new religion claiming that Trump rose from the dead. Your notion that Paul created his own version of Jesus to sell to the Gentiles is like saying (or even worse than saying) Bernie Sanders creates his own version of Donald Trump to preach to the masses.

Your hypothesis is even worse, because you also say Jesus was a nobody, did and said nothing of any importance. At least choosing Trump as your god has the sense that he's a somebody, someone who has said and done something significant, unlike Jesus in 30 AD who you think said and did nothing. (And it's true he was a nobody if he did not do the miracle acts and did not resurrect back to life.) If you're going to take someone to use as a hero for your new religion, you'll take someone who has some recognition, some status, not a nobody who has done nothing.

How could anyone choose to make a miracle god out of someone whose political agenda sharply conflicts with his own, and also is a nobody, who has done nothing and has no recognition or status?

The fact that you cannot and will not answer this question is virtual proof that Jesus was not what you're claiming, but rather that his "Gospel" was about something different than politics or the militant anti-Roman Jewish factions which you pretend were all that mattered in the 1st-century. 1st-century Jews were not the monolithic goose-stepping automatons you're making them to be when you say they were incapable of thinking any thought other than hating the Romans, and killing Romans, and also killing wayward Jews who did not join them in their Roman-bashing crusade.

 

[steve_bank]

Paul was one of several. He refereed to others as false, imp[lying he was truth.

There were multiple factions ns as I pointed out there were disputes over the alleged divinity of Jesys.


The bottom line is your reasoning is based on a small set of writings written well after the the alleged Jesus by unknown authors And no contemporaneous corroboration.

You are welcome to your beliefs, but tey are based on little more than a myth from 4 gospels that do not agree.

 

[Lumpenproletariat]

Are the gospel stories facts?

All I can do is continue giving you specific facts in response to your non-facts.

An example of Christian 'evidence based' reasoning, the gospel stories are facts.

Obviously the gospel stories contain fact mixed with fiction.

The Gospels are sources for the facts just as all other written accounts which tell us what happened. The gospels and ALL the ancient writings contain both fact and fiction. The only argument against using the gospel accounts as sources would be that NO ancient written accounts can be used as sources for the events, in which case we have NO evidence for anything happening 1000 or 2000 or 3000 years ago, about any historical facts. How can the Gospel accounts be excluded as sources for the events of that time? It makes sense to read them critically, doubting the parts which contradict some other source, but in general they should be accepted as credible sources for what happened in the 1st century when they were written.

It's fine to say we should be more skeptical of these or certain other particular sources, but even so they are sources for what happened in the 1st century. ALL the ancient sources contain bias and propaganda, but that doesn't disqualify them as sources to determine the facts. We can figure out the erroneous parts -- usually.

That the Jesus miracle acts are reported in 4 (5) different sources is good evidence that those events did happen, even though there is bias. No one has given any argument why this is not good evidence, compared to the evidence we have for all the other facts of ancient history. It's this fact, the multiple attestation in written accounts of the period, which makes these claims (or any ancient history claims) credible, or probably true.

This is a wonderful statement of double speak! It does a great job at implying being critical, without an ounce of criticality at all.

Isn't it "being critical" to admit that your sources are partly correct and partly incorrect? Some of the Gospel reports are probably not true, but others true. The true parts are those where there's agreement of them, with each other and with any other evidence. If there are contradictions to other evidence, then it's less likely to be true. What's not "critical" about that?

Where the reported events are not contradicted by any other evidence, and are also corroborated by a different source, why isn't that good evidence that the reports are true? Why is that not "being critical"? to give more credibility to that which is confirmed by another source and not contradicted by another source? or by any other evidence?

Where is the evidence contradicting the Resurrection event, e.g.? All the sources we have say it happened, and there's no source saying it did not happen. No source condemns this as a hoax, or a trick by the disciples, or something foisted by charlatans misleading someone -- As Josephus and some others condemned or ridiculed certain charlatans. It was normal to condemn an outlandish claim as a hoax, or tell the truth and cast doubt on such claims or expose them as false. But no writers of the period condemned the "Gospel" claims as a hoax. It's only centuries later that some writers started ridiculing the Jesus miracles as "magic" etc. That no one near the time did so indicates that there was no evidence or facts to show anything fraudulent or deceptive about these claims, such as we have written sources casting doubt on certain miracle-worker hoaxes of those times.

Why is it not "being critical" to consider the written record of the period of the events?

Some fact, some fiction, but because there are multiple versions that makes the claim "credible" or "probably true".

Doesn't it make the claim more probable or credible if there are extra sources saying it happened? Isn't this an important method of separating fact from fiction? Doesn't a court and jury give more credibility to a claim if there's more than one witness saying it? Aren't there many cases where a claim is rejected because there's one witness only, whereas if there were 2 or 3 it would be more credible?

These two claims are not adjacent. Credible implies that the claim being made is a reasonable one to believe. Rising from the dead isn't usually a "credible" claim.

It is if there are extra witnesses reporting it. There are many claims of someone coming "back to life" who had been pronounced dead. These are documented, and believed because there were multiple witnesses to it. Even after several hours of death in some cases. ALL of them are made more credible because of the extra witnesses. Because a claim becomes more "credible" as a result of the extra witnesses reporting it.

In the case of 2 or 3 days there's reason to be very skeptical. But even so, the extra witnesses, extra reports from multiple sources, all does add to the evidence and makes the claim more believable than if there were only one source.

You cannot insist that in this one case only the extra testimony from multiple sources adds nothing to the credibility. The extra sources always increases the evidence. You cannot single out the one case of the Jesus Resurrection only, as the only case ever in history or science where we ought to disregard the extra witnesses or testimony. All the claims of anything unusual should be judged by the same critical standards of reason and evidence, without exception for a certain select case which must be judged differently out of prejudice.

If a statement is not credible, it requires more evidence.

But it becomes more "credible" if there's extra evidence.

A better way to put it is: If a claim is more difficult to believe, or more unusual, more contrary to the norm, then it requires more evidence.

Doesn't that say it correctly? And in the case of the Resurrection (or healing miracles) of Jesus, there is the extra evidence, or extra sources from the time, such as we have for other events in history which would be doubted if we did not have extra evidence.

Pointing back to the claim is not "more evidence".

"Pointing back"? It is more evidence. But if it's only quoting an earlier source, then it's not as strong as giving a new version which says the same claim. But still, an additional source repeating the same claim is more evidence than only the one source, regardless what kind of "pointing back" this means. Extra sources near the time in question, saying it happened, increases the evidence.

Each of the 5 sources for the Resurrection says it differently, with much confirmation of some details, but also some discrepancies, and likely inaccuracies in the details. And it's likely there was some dependency of one source on another. But even if one quotes from another, there are still some differences as well, so it's clear there's not total dependency on the earlier source, and we're getting one writer's version vs. another's. This makes the details more difficult, but re-enforces the claim both make that the basic event happened, i.e. the rising back to life from death. That one source refers back to or repeats what the earlier source said does increase the credibility.

Then the above jumps straight from "credible" (it's not) to "probably true", when . . .

It is more credible, and more probable, because of the extra source. It's a judgment call how much extra evidence is needed to make it believable. "More credible" or "more probable" doesn't have to mean that all doubt is finally eliminated and the claim is now absolutely established for all time as a proven fact beyond dispute. There can still be doubt and yet belief at the same time. And the extra evidence, or extra sources, or extra attestation from those at the time in history all add up to increased credibility and decreased doubt.

. . . when all this time, you've been arguing that there is virtually no doubt as to the veracity of the claims, because the claim is repeated.

It's no different than with other historical facts for which there can be an increase or decrease in the evidence. If the claim is highly unusual, then maybe there's never a point of "virtually no doubt" about it. Some doubt is more than "virtually no doubt," but still that extra evidence, or that repetition in another source, etc. is extra evidence, making the claim more credible than if we had only one source. And for many facts of history there is ONE SOURCE ONLY, and yet still it's believed because the claim is normal enough that we just trust that one writer. But for something more unusual, like a miracle claim, we need 1 or 2 extra sources saying it. And everyone individually has to decide how much extra evidence is needed. But it's not unreasonable to believe it if there are extra sources.

And don't worry, we don't need to weed out the fiction from the fact.

Yes we do, but we can't resolve every discrepancy in the details. In some cases we leave it in the doubtful category, unresolved, whether a particular detail is accurate or not. Some gets resolved, but some not.

One can reasonably believe the general description of Jesus doing the healing miracle acts and also the resurrection after he was killed. But there is also much else in the details where we can't easily separate the fact from fiction. It's good to try to sort it all out, but there's too much there to expect that we can figure out every discrepancy and determine exactly what happened in each case. The major mistake is the case of believers who insist that every detail in "the Bible" must be the precise truth, infallible, inerrant, etc. And then also debunkers who insist that it's "all a bunch of bullshit someone made up" and should all be rejected as "fiction." That's equally unreasonable, and uncritical. Instead we should try to "weed out the fiction from the fact" as much as possible.

That is just to handwave away inconvenient incongruencies of the gospels.

No one here has noted "incongruencies" which make the gospels wrong in their general depiction of Jesus as having done the miracle acts. What has been shown many times is that there are some discrepancies in the details, and probably the miracle stories are not all completely true, but do contain some inaccuracies, plus there is some of the same mythologizing as with all or most reporting of history events which get mixed in with the religious and political ideas of the times. This is what makes it necessary to separate fact from fiction, because the point about mythologizing does not then debunk or refute all the beliefs, as the main points of belief might still be true despite the mixing in with some superstition or propaganda and mythologizing which also happens and causes the fiction element. There are many historical characters who have been mythologized (fictional elements added), and yet still there are plenty of known facts about them, including unusual facts we might doubt if we didn't have some extra evidence, like more than one source.

Are the gospels true?

That the specific details of the supernatural . . . may have never been claimed before does not make the gospels true.

What makes "the gospels true" is not the point.

It is quite the point, because . . .

No, because the basic claim is not that the gospels are true but rather that they contain some truth or facts along with some part that's not true. So if it's partly true and partly fiction, then it's incorrect to say that it's all "true" or it's all "fiction." So the point is not that the gospels are true -- but rather, that they report some true history events, and we must try to identify these. I.e., basically the same as with other sources for history events. They are trustworthy up to a point, but like with all other sources they are to be considered critically and not automatically believed on every claim being made. And maybe in some cases we have to put that source in a very doubtful category, leaving much or most of it as unresolved -- i.e., we don't know. It's fine to just say "we don't know" in many cases.

. . . because you are arguing that their mere existence in multiple form, makes the claims of them "credible", wait no "probably true".

Yes, in some cases. Just as with any other written account in history which claims this or that happened. If some other sources also say it, that makes it probable -- some history is based exactly on that. Why not the same rule applied to the Gospel accounts as with any other ancient written documents which claim to report what happened? The mere existence of that document, or those documents, is exactly what determines it and makes it go into the historical category as something that really did happen. That's probably most of how we know history, or at least ancient history.

You don't actually reference any other sources to justify this, just the religious ones, which, as you note, have a bias.

No, ALL the ancient written record contains bias, ALL the ancient writings, written accounts, from the historians, the poets, the philosophers, religionists -- ALL contain bias, and yet we accept them as sources for what happened and believe them as long as we have ways to check for confirmation, look to other sources and not only this one, etc. As long as we can read them critically we can believe the parts which pass the test -- being confirmed by other sources, or not being contradicted by them. Each particular claim being made is judged critically by many standards for accuracy.

We cannot limit our search or reference to any one source and exclude others. If there are any other sources which contradict the Gospels or Apostle Paul, they must all be considered and used as comparison to judge them as to the claims made. What other sources do you have in mind, for comparison, as a guide to criticizing the 1st-century accounts we have of Jesus, to cast doubt on any claims about him which are made? All those sources have to be taken into consideration -- none is excluded.

So you admit at least part is fiction, you admit they are biased accounts... and then you pretend that it doesn't matter.

No, it all matters, all the written accounts of history events matter and have to be judged according to the bias they contain. The accounts about Jesus have to be judged the same as all the others. It matters. But the fiction element which is there does not negate the factual part, which is also there. The same as with all the other ancient written sources we rely on for history, containing both fact and fiction. It's OK to believe the factual part, which is credible, regardless that some other part is fiction.

They're both true and false -- they're normal human writings which contain fact and fiction. They are written accounts claiming some events happened, and we have no reason to reject them as sources for those events, because they qualify as legitimate sources just as any other ancient writings are sources for the events happening near the time they were written. And we can believe them insofar as they agree on what happened. They're not 100% "true" because there are discrepancies. But they agree that Jesus did the miracle acts, being multiple sources for this, and the only disagreement is on minor details, which is normal for multiple sources reporting the same events.

And the Gospels are confirmed by a 5th source, the epistles of Paul, as to the Resurrection of Jesus. So this is good evidence for this event, and so what is "true" here is the report of Jesus doing the miracle acts including the Resurrection after he was killed. So in a sense this does "make the gospels true," but only insofar as there is the agreement, or corroboration between the sources, the same as for any other reported events, such as normal history events.

And as long as we ignore that the later gospels are written implying Jesus's significance as being godly has an earlier and earlier origin, we can neglect that the writers were trying to cover something up.

Whatever that means, let's look at each example. In some cases we can find a mistake the writer made, maybe a misinterpretation, or distortion. We should not read any of it, not any writing, as infallible, no matter how revered it might be to some believer or disbeliever on a crusade to prove this or that.

The interpretation of Jesus -- the "Trinity" e.g. -- is based on this or that theologian's theory, which could be mistaken. Probably the exact Truth for all time cannot be determined scientifically and objectively, so it doesn't matter that all believers don't see it exactly the same. The understanding or theology developed and evolved over the centuries. The established Doctrine might be partly true, even if it contains a "nonsense" element along with it. Even established facts of science, or "Laws of Nature" established by scientists might be confused by having certain ambiguous words in them which cause a mistake in someone's understanding of it. Probably each established "Doctrine" or "Law" has its true part, if it passed through a good critical process of questioning, or critique. While it also has some imperfect part which could be made more correct.

And we can also forgive and forget that Jesus is fulfilling an unwritten prophecy over saving the people over an event of no significance.

Huh? lost me.

It's significant if he had the power to heal physical afflictions as described in the accounts. Including power to raise back to life someone who died (or was thought to be dead).

And also it's significant if he rose back to life after being killed.

We have evidence that this happened, just as we have evidence for other events in history.

 

[steve_bank]

NO THE GOSPEL STORIES ARE NOT FACTS WITH EVIDENCE OR CORROBORATION