The Christ Myth Theory

[dbz]

It's very possible that Yeshu Ben Stada won the game of musical Messiahs, the last one to get immortalized as sitting in that chair and inheriting all the stories of the earlier ones and being back-dated to the first.
LoL, Josh...

Yes, it is theoretically possible that there might have been some other movement of people following a Yeshua who was executed while meanwhile Christianity arose from a mythical Yeshua/Jesus.

And it is naive to expect extant documentation of this occurring. After all,

How many Romans mention Hillel or Shammai, the two most famous Jews of the day? And people wonder why they don't mention a scruffy rebel from up-country?

 

[bilby]

Yet Philo says not a word about jesus, christianity nor any of the events described in the new testament. In all this work, Philo makes not a single reference to his alleged contemporary "jesus christ", the godman who supposedly was perambulating up and down the Levant, exorcising demons, raising the dead and causing earthquake and darkness at his death.

A rather disingenuous argument when you know full well, or would had you read up to this point, that none of your interlocutors are arguing for the historicity of miracles and so forth. And irrelevant in any case, as you still haven't explained why Philo would be expected to write about such things even had he heard about them, to the point that his not mentioning them is proof that they didn't happen. It would not serve any of his interests to repeat such rumors even if he believed them to be true, and he would have had no more reason to assume that said rumors were true than you do. He wasn't there, so all he could have known is the same thing you do: that some people said they had, and others said they hadn't. Why would he voluntarily bring up the matter, when it could only possibly hurt his cause of lessening ethnic tensions in Alexandria?

If Jesus actually healed lots of people, why did he do it? If he did it because he cared about them, why did he only heal a very small fraction of the sick people in the world? If he did it in order to demonstrate his power, why did he restrict demonstrating his power to a very small geographic region in the world? If you rose from the dead, and wanted people to know that you rose from the dead, you would not limit your appearances to just a few people in one small geographic region in the world. There do not seem to be sensible motives for many of the things that JC did, which suggest that he did not do many of the things that the New Testament attributes to him.

Your post here is more or less an admission that you're arguing theology, not history. Didn't you read the manual? Mythicists are supposed to pretend that they're just "following the evidence" of history and coming to the only natural conclusion, not seeking out evidence that supports their religious convictions.

There is only theology to argue.

As this thread ably demonstrates, the historical certainties about Jesus are an empty set. We can guess, speculate, and try to assign relevances to the surviving tall tales after their 1500+ years of corruption by both accidental errors and deliberate politically motivated alterations, but ultimately it is not, and never will be, possible to say for sure whether a real Jesus ever lived.

And, more importantly, it doesn’t matter one iota either way, to anything other than the entirely self referential mythology. The only real effects Jesus and the stories about Jesus have had on anything non-fictional are themselves fictions. Christians behaving in ways that are predicated on their beliefs in the myths.

Jesus the historical person has no more influence on reality than Marx had on the Holodomor - People being total cunts to each other (or being unaccountably kind, for that matter) because they interpret a bunch of writings as saying something that they wanted to say anyway, and as providing some kind of authoritative backing for their actions, is utterly unremarkable human behaviour. It wasn’t Karl Marx who starved millions of Ukrainian peasants, nor do we have any reason to imagine that he would have approved of their deaths - and that we have plenty of evidence that Marx was a real person doesn’t change these facts.

If Jesus didn’t exist, we would have to invent him. If he wasn’t a God, or at the very least a prophet, then he was just one of millions of irrelevant people of his time. And Gods and prophets are solely theological in scope.

Take the theology away, and what are people left wasting their lives on here? Debating a meaningless question for which no evidence will ever exist might be entertaining, but it’s not worth shit beyond what little entertainment we extract from participating in the debate. It’s of no more value to humanity than any other light entertainment.

If the scientific and technological development of humanity had been held back by a millennium of diverting almost all scholarly effort, and the minds of almost every literate person, into analysis of a different light entertainment - the minute study of every aspect of Ross from the TV show Friends, for example - it would be no less stupid and futile.

Jesus is an irrelevant bit of mindless entertainment. There’s nothing wrong with mindless entertainment, but when people take it seriously, other people get hurt - just ask anyone who’s been caught up in football hooliganism. We shouldn’t encourage that.

The entire and complete discussion of the non-theological history of Jesus is simple:

Might have existed. Doesn’t matter in any way whether he did or not. We will never know anyway.

Anything and everything else is theology.

 

[dbz]

[It] is not, and never will be, possible to say for sure whether a real Jesus ever lived.

And, more importantly, it doesn’t matter one iota either way, to anything other than the entirely self referential mythology. The only real effects Jesus and the stories about Jesus have had on anything non-fictional are themselves fictions. Christians behaving in ways that are predicated on their beliefs in the myths.

[. . .]

Jesus is an irrelevant bit of mindless entertainment. There’s nothing wrong with mindless entertainment, but when people take it seriously, other people get hurt - just ask anyone who’s been caught up in football hooliganism. We shouldn’t encourage that.

Had there been no imaginary Jesus, there would have been no Christianity. Thus, the historicity hypothesis doesn’t really do all that much work to explain the origins of Christianity: we all agree it originated from the teachings of a non-existent Jesus, so why do we need to cling so desperately to a real Jesus, who didn’t even invent the religion?

—Richard Carrier[5]

 

[No Robots]

I resent the use being of my statement about how little interest Romans had in any Jewish figures. I made the statement in order to put paid to the chronic whining mythicists have about the Romans not mentioning Jesus. Member dbz now seems to think that Roman lack of interest somehow bolsters the mythicist case, which shows that if you cut off one head of the mythicist Hydra, ten more sprout forth. I'll just say that the whole "amalgamist" fantasy is just that, a fantasy. And dbz's quotations from his favourite mythicists carry no weight. Carrier, Price and all the rest are complete nutters when it comes to this subject. As I said earlier, it is hilarious that our esteemed academics have been forced to deal with them. Chronic absurd scepticism and anti-Jewish prejudice have forced academe to reject the Jewish Jesus, leaving only the mythical Christ.

 

[Politesse]

There is only theology to argue.

As this thread ably demonstrates, the historical certainties about Jesus are an empty set. We can guess, speculate, and try to assign relevances to the surviving tall tales after their 1500+ years of corruption by both accidental errors and deliberate politically motivated alterations, but ultimately it is not, and never will be, possible to say for sure whether a real Jesus ever lived.

And, more importantly, it doesn’t matter one iota either way, to anything other than the entirely self referential mythology. The only real effects Jesus and the stories about Jesus have had on anything non-fictional are themselves fictions. Christians behaving in ways that are predicated on their beliefs in the myths.

Jesus the historical person has no more influence on reality than Marx had on the Holodomor - People being total cunts to each other (or being unaccountably kind, for that matter) because they interpret a bunch of writings as saying something that they wanted to say anyway, and as providing some kind of authoritative backing for their actions, is utterly unremarkable human behaviour.

If Jesus didn’t exist, we would have to invent him. If he wasn’t a God, or at the very least a prophet, then he was just one of millions of irrelevant people of his time. And Gods and prophets are solely theological in scope.

Take the theology away, and what are people left wasting their lives on here? Debating a meaningless question for which no evidence will ever exist might be entertaining, but it’s not worth shit beyond what little entertainment we extract from participating in the debate. It’s of no more value to humanity than any other light entertainment.

If the scientific and technological development of humanity had been held back by a millennium of diverting almost all scholarly effort, and the minds of almost every literate person, into analysis of a different light entertainment - the minute study of every aspect of Ross from the TV show Friends, for example - it would be no less stupid and futile.

Jesus is an irrelevant bit of mindless entertainment. There’s nothing wrong with mindless entertainment, but when people take it seriously, other people get hurt - just ask anyone who’s been caught up in football hooliganism. We shouldn’t encourage that.

The entire and complete discussion of the non-theological history of Jesus is simple:

Might have existed. Doesn’t matter in any way whether he did or not. We will never know anyway.

Anything and everything else is theology.

Is this your view about historical study in general, or just Jesus in particular? I don't find such questions meaningless; humanity is nothing of interest if it is not a conversation about itself, and the conversation stretches across the millennia. I think it matters greatly what stories we tell about our history, and why, and on what basis. Or if it does not matter, it matters as much as most anything else. The thing that offends me most about conspiracy theories is the disdain they engender for the power of evidence and the value of learning, and I think societies that come to champion anti-intellectual attitudes generally come around to a very sticky end - as history has shown us many times.

 

[dbz]

[T]here have always been scholars who either wondered whether or positively doubted that Jesus of Nazareth, the man toward whom Christ-following orients itself, actually existed. Such doubts and propositions are all welcome in historical research, along with every other hypothesis about the nature (thoughts, intentions, actions, teaching) of this Jesus, if he did exist.... History is not religion, and its practitioners cannot be preachers, advocates, or polemicists.

—Steve Mason [114]

Carrier, Price and all the rest are complete nutters when it comes to this subject. As I said earlier, it is hilarious that our esteemed academics have been forced to deal with them. Chronic absurd scepticism and anti-Jewish prejudice have forced academe to reject the Jewish Jesus, leaving only the mythical Christ.

James Crossley writes:

[Instead] of more polemical reactions on all sides of these debates about the historicity of Jesus, perhaps it would be more worthwhile to see what can be learned. In the case of Lataster’s book and the position it represents, scepticism about historicity is worth thinking about seriously—and, in light of demographic changes, it might even feed into a dominant position in the near future.[234]

 

[bilby]

Yet Philo says not a word about jesus, christianity nor any of the events described in the new testament. In all this work, Philo makes not a single reference to his alleged contemporary "jesus christ", the godman who supposedly was perambulating up and down the Levant, exorcising demons, raising the dead and causing earthquake and darkness at his death.

A rather disingenuous argument when you know full well, or would had you read up to this point, that none of your interlocutors are arguing for the historicity of miracles and so forth. And irrelevant in any case, as you still haven't explained why Philo would be expected to write about such things even had he heard about them, to the point that his not mentioning them is proof that they didn't happen. It would not serve any of his interests to repeat such rumors even if he believed them to be true, and he would have had no more reason to assume that said rumors were true than you do. He wasn't there, so all he could have known is the same thing you do: that some people said they had, and others said they hadn't. Why would he voluntarily bring up the matter, when it could only possibly hurt his cause of lessening ethnic tensions in Alexandria?

If Jesus actually healed lots of people, why did he do it? If he did it because he cared about them, why did he only heal a very small fraction of the sick people in the world? If he did it in order to demonstrate his power, why did he restrict demonstrating his power to a very small geographic region in the world? If you rose from the dead, and wanted people to know that you rose from the dead, you would not limit your appearances to just a few people in one small geographic region in the world. There do not seem to be sensible motives for many of the things that JC did, which suggest that he did not do many of the things that the New Testament attributes to him.

Your post here is more or less an admission that you're arguing theology, not history. Didn't you read the manual? Mythicists are supposed to pretend that they're just "following the evidence" of history and coming to the only natural conclusion, not seeking out evidence that supports their religious convictions.

There is only theology to argue.

As this thread ably demonstrates, the historical certainties about Jesus are an empty set. We can guess, speculate, and try to assign relevances to the surviving tall tales after their 1500+ years of corruption by both accidental errors and deliberate politically motivated alterations, but ultimately it is not, and never will be, possible to say for sure whether a real Jesus ever lived.

And, more importantly, it doesn’t matter one iota either way, to anything other than the entirely self referential mythology. The only real effects Jesus and the stories about Jesus have had on anything non-fictional are themselves fictions. Christians behaving in ways that are predicated on their beliefs in the myths.

Jesus the historical person has no more influence on reality than Marx had on the Holodomor - People being total cunts to each other (or being unaccountably kind, for that matter) because they interpret a bunch of writings as saying something that they wanted to say anyway, and as providing some kind of authoritative backing for their actions, is utterly unremarkable human behaviour.

If Jesus didn’t exist, we would have to invent him. If he wasn’t a God, or at the very least a prophet, then he was just one of millions of irrelevant people of his time. And Gods and prophets are solely theological in scope.

Take the theology away, and what are people left wasting their lives on here? Debating a meaningless question for which no evidence will ever exist might be entertaining, but it’s not worth shit beyond what little entertainment we extract from participating in the debate. It’s of no more value to humanity than any other light entertainment.

If the scientific and technological development of humanity had been held back by a millennium of diverting almost all scholarly effort, and the minds of almost every literate person, into analysis of a different light entertainment - the minute study of every aspect of Ross from the TV show Friends, for example - it would be no less stupid and futile.

Jesus is an irrelevant bit of mindless entertainment. There’s nothing wrong with mindless entertainment, but when people take it seriously, other people get hurt - just ask anyone who’s been caught up in football hooliganism. We shouldn’t encourage that.

The entire and complete discussion of the non-theological history of Jesus is simple:

Might have existed. Doesn’t matter in any way whether he did or not. We will never know anyway.

Anything and everything else is theology.

Is this your view about historical study in general, or just Jesus in particular? I don't find such questions meaningless; humanity is nothing of interest if it is not a conversation, and the conversation stretches across the millennia. I think it matters greatly what stories we tell about our history, and why, and on what basis.

It’s my view of study in general.

Not just historical study - any study, of anything.

The higher the ratio of speculation to fact, the less valuable the study, and the less of our collective effort it is worth.

Theology, (and in the post-Roman world specifically Christian theology), is particularly guilty of diverting vastly more of humankind’s intellectual resources into its study than the availability of facts justifies. It took a thousand years after the establishment of Christian domination in that region for people to stop wasting their entire lives on this one utterly pathetic field of intellectual and industrial endeavour, and as soon as we diverted even a small fraction of that intelligence into the study of something else, our quality of life took a massive and dramatic turn for the better.

That people still demand we waste further time on this one utterly minuscule and trivial area of intellectual stagnation is seriously fucking perverse.

We can start doing other things now.

Your objection here: “Is this your view about historical study in general, or just Jesus in particular?” reminds me of the response an addict might give to the suggestion that he should give up his harmful behaviour. “Is this your view about everything people enjoy, or just Alcohol in particular?” you might ask. Well, there’s nothing particularly wrong with a small amount of alcohol as a source of pleasure; But when it dominates everything you do, it’s not unreasonable to suggest you start doing other things.

We need to rehabilitate our intellectual efforts from the impact of a millennium of Jesus abuse to the point of exclusion of everything else.

We can have a little bit of Jesus, if it makes us happy, but only if we’re able to be responsible about it - and as that’s yet to be demonstrated, it’s probably best to abstain completely for a little while.

 

[No Robots]

^Yeah, Crossley is the guy I have in mind. Forced by a general anti-Jewish sentiment to play footsie with the mythicists. Did you hear about his "next quest"? The first part of the conference took place yesterday. There is a bit of a discussion and summary over at Peter Kirby's site.

I have no real problem with mythicists as people. My dad was one. However, I have no patience at all with phony scholasticism, whether mythicist or other.

 

[Politesse]

We need to rehabilitate our intellectual efforts from the impact of a millennium of Jesus abuse to the point of exclusion of everything else.

We can have a little bit of Jesus, if it makes us happy, but only if we’re able to be responsible about it - and as that’s yet to be demonstrated, it’s probably best to abstain completely for a little while.

I mean, it's not like I run Jesus-agnosticism website. Or published a serious of books on how Jesus might exist, for which I accepted actual money. I mean, you are also posting in the very same threads, so I don't see how we're even all that different from one another.

But when I see mythicists using profoundly anti-historical and anti-intellectual arguments on the forum, I'm going to say something. I don't see that as obsession. Honestly, there are a lot of fringe benefits even to this specific discussion. I enjoy classical studies and textual studies, and to feel that no matter what position a person takes, the historicist/mythicist argument tends to result in people reading and thinking about texts and subjects they wouldn't have otherwise. If they haven't given up entirely, uzersuperman is probably frantically reading Quintillian and Flaccus right now (or at least frantically looking up who they were and what they wrote on Wikipedia), and is that such a bad thing? If you take this whole thread into account and think that all we've talked about is Jesus, I don't know what to tell you, because you have been scrolling past post after post on: Judaism and its impact on European culture, the historical legacy of Julius Caesar, how to balance the textual and archaeological records as sources for understanding history, the lingering impact of Platonic thought on Western philosophy, and dozens of other interesting and worthwhile topics. Jesus himself has barely been involved - how could he be, when the texts that purport to communicate his deeds and teachings are the very objects of contention? But sometimes the journey is at least as interesting as the destination.

 

[dbz]

Yeah, Crossley is the guy I have in mind. Forced by a general anti-Jewish sentiment to play footsie with the mythicists.

Crossley, James (2005). "Against the Historical Plausibility of the Empty Tomb Story and the Bodily Resurrection of Jesus: A Response to N.T. Wright". Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus. 3 (2): 171–186. doi:10.1177/1476869005058194.

Per the "post-criteria world", 21 August 2014 :

1) post-criteria world. Like most academic terms, there’s an element of rhetorical flourish. But I think it is possible that the dominance of the criteria in historical Jesus research could be over. Yes, some uses remain to make general cases but I can’t see how they can be applied as strictly and systematically as they have been. Or, indeed as off-hand, as they have been (e.g. here’s my argument and look how my texts are also multiply attested therefore…).

2) This may be a semantic issue but I think I would say that we can make some educated guesses about general themes associated with Jesus e.g. eschatology. And that it may well be that we do have a lot of sayings and deeds that go back to Jesus but in most cases (perhaps all) I don’t know how we can ultimately prove it. Maybe ‘very difficult’ would be a better phrase but I’m content with knowing that we can work with early material (which may or may not have come from Jesus) to make arguments because I am not confident of sifting the material at this pre-Gospel stage.

Crossley, James (10 August 2021). "The Next Quest for the Historical Jesus". Medium.

Historical Method. The emphasis in understanding history in the Next Quest must shift towards explanation. It should engage with arguments that have been taking place about the varied social factors that explain how the Jesus movement emerged when and where it did and how it survived and spread. Implying that the movement did so because it was better is not good enough. The Next Quest will look beyond the speculative establishing of “facts” about Jesus to how ideas would have been understood in Galilee and Judea at the time of Jesus. More work is needed on imagining how the words and deeds attributed to Jesus ended up in the Gospels. This is not simply a repackaging of the old form critical arguments. The recent trend in memory studies has now shown that we need a more expansive understanding of this process that is not simply about handing down “tradition.” The discussion of scribalism in relation to (il)literacy and survival of the Jesus movement needs more analysis.

 

[No Robots]

We can have a little bit of Jesus, if it makes us happy, but only if we’re able to be responsible about it - and as that’s yet to be demonstrated, it’s probably best to abstain completely for a little while.

Our society is grievously ill. A cure can only come from understanding how we got here. Christianity is the place to look. There is profound sickness in Christianity that contaminates us all. Even the rejection of Christianity entails sickness. But no one was ever healed by ignoring an illness. We simply must get to the bottom of this thing called Christianity. We may not like what we find, but who knows? Maybe we’ll find something wonderful.
My doctor told me I needed to quit drinking. I didn’t want to do that. I resisted. In the end, I did go along with it. But I resolved to get to the bottom of the whole question of drinking, especially with regard to my own well-being. I got good results, and I have resumed light drinking. But the experience taught me many things, primarily that I don’t absolutely need alcohol. I learned to make non- and low-alcohol beverages that are just as pleasing in their own way as any alcoholic drink. The main point is that we must thoroughly engage with our problems if we hope to solve them.

 

[Copernicus]

However, historians did argue about other cult movements that were internal to Palestine.

What are you referring to?

What are you asking about?

Which historians argued about what cult movements "internal to Palestine"? What contemporary documents are you referring to that discussed the religious politics of 1st Judea in any detail whatsoever? I am only aware of a single book by a single author that did so.

Actually, my bad. The fact is that there were few, if any, bona fide historians that were contemporary at the time of Christ's life that we know of. I should have said that there were record keepers in the Roman Empire at the time that would have recorded his presence and that would have been preserved especially by Christians after the cult rose to become the state religion in the Empire. Philo was one example of someone who wasn't a historian, but who wrote about events in Palestine at the time. Josephus was basically a propagandist for Rome decades after Jesus passed, but Tacitus was the first bona fide historian to write of those times several decades later. I mention him, because he used Roman records to back up the events he wrote about. I have read his Annals of Imperial Rome, and he was quite thorough. But he wasn't interested in the arcana of Jewish rebels. It is just that his work is testimony to the prodigious records that Romans kept of goings on in their Empire. There were likely other records in Greek, especially in Egypt that would have preserved information from those times that would have been preserved for the historical record by the Christian copy machine to be passed on to progeny, just as the scriptures were. There probably would have been some record somewhere of the situation in Palestine under Pontius Pilate's rule that would have been of interest to Christian historians, IMO.

 

[bilby]

I don't see how we're even all that different from one another.

I don’t see where I suggested we were all that different from one another.

 

[uzersuperman]

Yet Philo says not a word about jesus, christianity nor any of the events described in the new testament. In all this work, Philo makes not a single reference to his alleged contemporary "jesus christ", the godman who supposedly was perambulating up and down the Levant, exorcising demons, raising the dead and causing earthquake and darkness at his death.

A rather disingenuous argument when you know full well, or would had you read up to this point, that none of your interlocutors are arguing for the historicity of miracles and so forth. And irrelevant in any case, as you still haven't explained why Philo would be expected to write about such things even had he heard about them, to the point that his not mentioning them is proof that they didn't happen. It would not serve any of his interests to repeat such rumors even if he believed them to be true, and he would have had no more reason to assume that said rumors were true than you do. He wasn't there, so all he could have known is the same thing you do: that some people said they had, and others said they hadn't. Why would he voluntarily bring up the matter, when it could only possibly hurt his cause of lessening ethnic tensions in Alexandria?

If Jesus actually healed lots of people, why did he do it? If he did it because he cared about them, why did he only heal a very small fraction of the sick people in the world? If he did it in order to demonstrate his power, why did he restrict demonstrating his power to a very small geographic region in the world? If you rose from the dead, and wanted people to know that you rose from the dead, you would not limit your appearances to just a few people in one small geographic region in the world. There do not seem to be sensible motives for many of the things that JC did, which suggest that he did not do many of the things that the New Testament attributes to him.

Your post here is more or less an admission that you're arguing theology, not history. Didn't you read the manual? Mythicists are supposed to pretend that they're just "following the evidence" of history and coming to the only natural conclusion, not seeking out evidence that supports their religious convictions.

You are not here to judge my understanding and belief.

Then don't present them as evidence. What do your thoughts on theology have to do with what is or isn't there in the historical record?

We are talking about a specific topic, which is that no contemporary history of jesus has proven that this person exists, do not talk outside the scope of the topic. I mentioned many historians who were present at the time and did not document the existence of this so-called jesus.You left all the historians I mentioned, and started talking about Philo of Alexandria only! I don't understand, have you heard about others or are you deliberately ignoring them?!

You mentioned one historian, two philosophers, and a bunch of poets, actually. I attempted to address the question of the only historian on the list (Valerius Maximus), and you changed the subject to Philo. So I asked some pretty basic questions about Philo, and you responded with a bunch of theological nonsense about the Jesus story. If you want to be taken seriously, defend your evidence rather than changing the subject whenever it is questioned.

Yet Philo says not a word about jesus, christianity nor any of the events described in the new testament. In all this work, Philo makes not a single reference to his alleged contemporary "jesus christ", the godman who supposedly was perambulating up and down the Levant, exorcising demons, raising the dead and causing earthquake and darkness at his death.

A rather disingenuous argument when you know full well, or would had you read up to this point, that none of your interlocutors are arguing for the historicity of miracles and so forth. And irrelevant in any case, as you still haven't explained why Philo would be expected to write about such things even had he heard about them, to the point that his not mentioning them is proof that they didn't happen. It would not serve any of his interests to repeat such rumors even if he believed them to be true, and he would have had no more reason to assume that said rumors were true than you do. He wasn't there, so all he could have known is the same thing you do: that some people said they had, and others said they hadn't. Why would he voluntarily bring up the matter, when it could only possibly hurt his cause of lessening ethnic tensions in Alexandria?

If Jesus actually healed lots of people, why did he do it? If he did it because he cared about them, why did he only heal a very small fraction of the sick people in the world? If he did it in order to demonstrate his power, why did he restrict demonstrating his power to a very small geographic region in the world? If you rose from the dead, and wanted people to know that you rose from the dead, you would not limit your appearances to just a few people in one small geographic region in the world. There do not seem to be sensible motives for many of the things that JC did, which suggest that he did not do many of the things that the New Testament attributes to him.

Your post here is more or less an admission that you're arguing theology, not history. Didn't you read the manual? Mythicists are supposed to pretend that they're just "following the evidence" of history and coming to the only natural conclusion, not seeking out evidence that supports their religious convictions.

You are not here to judge my understanding and belief. We are talking about a specific topic, which is that no contemporary history of jesus has proven that this person exists, do not talk outside the scope of the topic. I mentioned many historians who were present at the time and did not document the existence of this so-called jesus.You left all the historians I mentioned, and started talking about Philo of Alexandria only! I don't understand, have you heard about others or are you deliberately ignoring them?!

It almost seems like there is a persistent misunderstanding of what is meant by "this person doesn't exist", insofar as it's understated and lost in the din often enough that this doesn't mean no people named Jesus existed across the time, but rather that none of these persons actually matches the account given in GMark, but that it does match pieces of all of them, with a lot of more fantastical shit sprinkled in.

Considering jesus a fictitious person is something that has historical backing, and I mentioned, for example, the number of historians who were contemporary to him or who came immediately after him, and they did not mention his story, even casually.

There were three Jesuses discussed by various sources. There is Chrestus, the Yeshu whose followers apparently caused the fires, thereis Ananus who got stoned by a catapult after going on a tear in the 130's, and then Yeshu 'Bin Stada', who came after Ananus.

This last one has the closest story as far as the origin; the first one was contemporary to 0ce events and I'm pretty sure was executed; the middle one was well known.

I understand it as a peasant lore phenomena. First, a guy starts an insurrectionist cult, people stop using their name because people like Paul exist to deal with such, Paul breaths some new life... As new Jesuses come along people start to confuse them.

Eventually someone from outside of or the edge of the culture, Steve's "Roman", "Mark" comes along, does digging on all the sources, and makes an amalgam based on the intersection of a number of historical persons.

The whole thing is plausible that the Jesus cult scene circa 190-250 would lap that shit up. And let's be clear, no less than three people liable to pick up followers and generate cultists.

Pline Le jeune (and he was the ruler of the region of Bithynia in northwestern Turkey) wrote about the year 106 AD a letter to the emperor "Trajan" in which he mentioned "Christians" and their meeting every night to perform prayers and their sanctification of "Christ" as a god, and "Pline" mentioned that they are peaceful and not dangerous.

This text confirms the existence of a “group” that believes in a person called “Christ” and performs prayers for him at the beginning of the second century AD, but it does not mention anything about Jesus in the Gospels, so this text does not help us in building the historical image of Jesus or even proving his existence. There is a difference between "Christ" as an idea or belief and Jesus as a historical figure.

 

[uzersuperman]

Yet Philo says not a word about jesus, christianity nor any of the events described in the new testament. In all this work, Philo makes not a single reference to his alleged contemporary "jesus christ", the godman who supposedly was perambulating up and down the Levant, exorcising demons, raising the dead and causing earthquake and darkness at his death.

A rather disingenuous argument when you know full well, or would had you read up to this point, that none of your interlocutors are arguing for the historicity of miracles and so forth. And irrelevant in any case, as you still haven't explained why Philo would be expected to write about such things even had he heard about them, to the point that his not mentioning them is proof that they didn't happen. It would not serve any of his interests to repeat such rumors even if he believed them to be true, and he would have had no more reason to assume that said rumors were true than you do. He wasn't there, so all he could have known is the same thing you do: that some people said they had, and others said they hadn't. Why would he voluntarily bring up the matter, when it could only possibly hurt his cause of lessening ethnic tensions in Alexandria?

If Jesus actually healed lots of people, why did he do it? If he did it because he cared about them, why did he only heal a very small fraction of the sick people in the world? If he did it in order to demonstrate his power, why did he restrict demonstrating his power to a very small geographic region in the world? If you rose from the dead, and wanted people to know that you rose from the dead, you would not limit your appearances to just a few people in one small geographic region in the world. There do not seem to be sensible motives for many of the things that JC did, which suggest that he did not do many of the things that the New Testament attributes to him.

Your post here is more or less an admission that you're arguing theology, not history. Didn't you read the manual? Mythicists are supposed to pretend that they're just "following the evidence" of history and coming to the only natural conclusion, not seeking out evidence that supports their religious convictions.

You are not here to judge my understanding and belief. We are talking about a specific topic, which is that no contemporary history of jesus has proven that this person exists, do not talk outside the scope of the topic. I mentioned many historians who were present at the time and did not document the existence of this so-called jesus.You left all the historians I mentioned, and started talking about Philo of Alexandria only! I don't understand, have you heard about others or are you deliberately ignoring them?!

It almost seems like there is a persistent misunderstanding of what is meant by "this person doesn't exist", insofar as it's understated and lost in the din often enough that this doesn't mean no people named Jesus existed across the time, but rather that none of these persons actually matches the account given in GMark, but that it does match pieces of all of them, with a lot of more fantastical shit sprinkled in.

Considering jesus a fictitious person is something that has historical backing, and I mentioned, for example, the number of historians who were contemporary to him or who came immediately after him, and they did not mention his story, even casually.

There were three Jesuses discussed by various sources. There is Chrestus, the Yeshu whose followers apparently caused the fires, thereis Ananus who got stoned by a catapult after going on a tear in the 130's, and then Yeshu 'Bin Stada', who came after Ananus.

This last one has the closest story as far as the origin; the first one was contemporary to 0ce events and I'm pretty sure was executed; the middle one was well known.

I understand it as a peasant lore phenomena. First, a guy starts an insurrectionist cult, people stop using their name because people like Paul exist to deal with such, Paul breaths some new life... As new Jesuses come along people start to confuse them.

Eventually someone from outside of or the edge of the culture, Steve's "Roman", "Mark" comes along, does digging on all the sources, and makes an amalgam based on the intersection of a number of historical persons.

The whole thing is plausible that the Jesus cult scene circa 190-250 would lap that shit up. And let's be clear, no less than three people liable to pick up followers and generate cultists.

We find a mention of jesus by name in the Talmud in various places as a “son of fornication” and that he was crucified on the night of Easter, and although this talk is against christian belief, we see christians cite it to prove the historicalness of jesus. son of god” and we do not believe the Talmud’s words about him being a “son of fornication”?

 

[uzersuperman]

The character called Paul in the NT is unknown by writers who mentioned events in the time of Tiberius and Claudius. Writings attributed to Philo, Plutarch, Josephus, Tacitus, Suetonius, Pliny the Younger show no historical evidence of a supposed Pharisee of the tribe of Benjamin who asked people in the Roman Empire to worship a dead Jew, a crucified criminal, as a God and the Creator.

 

[uzersuperman]

It must have been extremely plausible in antiquity that jesus was born of a Ghost because the very Romans and Greeks believed Ghosts were actual figures of history.
According to Plutarch the Romans believed Romulus was really born of a Ghost and a Virgin, and the Son of God.
jesus of Nazareth is a myth/fiction character like Romulus.

 

[dbz]

We find a mention of jesus by name in the Talmud in various places as a “son of fornication” and that he was crucified on the night of Easter, and although this talk is against christian belief, we see christians cite it to prove the historicalness of jesus. son of god” and we do not believe the Talmud’s words about him being a “son of fornication”?

Pantera may possibly have been the father of Jesus. The "Jesus son of Pantera" hypothesis has been promoted by James Tabor, who defends it primarily on textual grounds.[1]

In the 2nd century, Celsus, a Greek philosopher, wrote that Jesus's father was a Roman soldier named Panthera. The views of Celsus drew responses from Origen, who considered it a fabricated story. Celsus' claim is only known from Origen's reply.

Origen writes:

Let us return, however, to the words put into the mouth of the Jew, where "the mother of Jesus" is described as having been "turned out by the carpenter who was betrothed to her, as she had been convicted of adultery and had a child by a certain soldier named Panthera".[11][12]

Celsus' wide-ranging criticism of Christianity included the assertions that Christians had forsaken the laws of their fathers, that their minds had been held captive by Jesus and that the teachings of Jesus included nothing new and were simply a repetition of the sayings of the Greek philosophers.[13][14]

 

[dbz]

The character called Paul in the NT is unknown by writers who mentioned events in the time of Tiberius and Claudius. Writings attributed to Philo, Plutarch, Josephus, Tacitus, Suetonius, Pliny the Younger show no historical evidence of a supposed Pharisee of the tribe of Benjamin who asked people in the Roman Empire to worship a dead Jew, a crucified criminal, as a God and the Creator.

[A]ll the Pauline letters are in fact skillful falsifications from the second century.

—Hermann Detering [7]

Some scholars such as Hermann Detering and Robert M. Price

following the previous scholarship of the Dutch Radical School

have argued that the Pauline epistles are from a later date than usually assumed.[8] Willem Christiaan van Manen

of the Dutch Radical School saw various issues in the Pauline epistles. Van Manen claimed that they could not have been written earlier than the 2nd century. He argued that the canonical Pauline works de-emphasized the Gnostic aspects of early Christianity.[9]

 

[dbz]

There is a difference between "Christ" as an idea or belief and Jesus as a historical figure.

• "Christ" is an imaginary idea/ belief and "Jesus (Second-god)" is an imaginary idea/belief

Philo, a hellenized Jew,

wrote that this god had many names, but the only specific name that Philo ever mentioned is Anatole (Rising One).[1] However, Philo did attribute to Second-god elements that Paul (a later devotee) also attributed to this god:

• Firstborn son of First-god ← Romans 8:29
• Celestial image of First-god ← 2 Corinthians 4:4
• First-god's Agent of Creation ← 1 Corinthians 8:6

And from other of the earliest Christian documents:[2]

• First-god's celestial high priest ← Hebrews 2:17, Hebrews 4:14, etc.

Furthermore Philo interpreted the priest named Jesus featured in Zechariah 6 as second-god. Therefore Philo must also have believed that this god was not just named Anatole but also named Jesus.[1][3