Unraveling the Jesus myth

[The Duke of Vandals]

So, yeah... New to your site and didn't catch that a debate topic has to be explicitly specified. So here it is:

The gospel Jesus never existed. This is demonstrable by examining the evidene beyond the bible.


I. Josephus.

Apologists often like to point to Josephus as an "extra-biblical source" for the existence of Jesus. Setting aside the argument of how much of Josephus' testimony was his own and how much was entered in by the church aside, Josephus tells us of more than a half dozen Jews by the name of Jesus whose deeds and actions closely mirror the accounts of the gospel Jesus. Many of them predate the alleged time of the gospel Jesus. This is significant because it sets the stage for "Jesus cults" which existed before 1 ce.

Add to this early pagan cults and we have the beginnings for a formula that leads to Christianity.

II. Philo of Alexandria

Philo of Alexandria was a philosopher who associated with the early Essenes (individuals who would later be thought of as some of the first Christians). Philo was a hellenized Jew who was terribly interested in Jewish and Greek religion. He lived at the same time the gospel Jesus was alive and we know he visited Jerusalim at least once. That this writer would miss an incarnate Jewish godman is inconceivable. It would be like a civil rights movement writer living in Memphis during the 60's yet failing to speak a word about Martin Luther King... neither mentioning him directly ("I saw MLK / Jesus") or indirectly ("People keep talking about MLK / Jesus").

Understand that Jesus showed up in the equivalent of the blogger community of the era. With a written & read religion (Judaism) and Pax Romana ensuring safe travel, there was no conspiracy or campaign of persecution that could have stopped writers from chronicling the godman.

Yet history is utterly silent. Where we expect to see volumes we hear crickets.

III. The Gospels

Most apologists are convinced that the gospels existed as recently as two decades after Jesus' death. There's simply no evidence of this. The apologist claim is based on so-called "internal evidence"... meaning because so-and-so said such and such within the context of a specific date, they're guessing it happened then.

Thus, if an apologist were to read, "I'm eager to go to New York and climb to the top of both buildings of the World Trade Center", they'd have no choice but to conclude the statement was written before 9/11... which it wasn't. I wrote it just now, years after the fact.

The first gospel to be written was the gospel of Mark. We have no evidence of who actully wrote it or when, but the evidence we do have indicates it was written around 70 ce. Mark hsa nearly no miracles in it and depicts a nearly human Jesus. Mark, like Paul, when read alone is woefully ignorant of Key life events in Jesus alleged life... like the virgin birth.

The other gospels were collections of myths borrowed from earlier religions and invented outright by early church fathers. Each new gospel adding slightly to the tale, they don't come into Christian consciousness in any meaningful way until 180 ce where they're mentioned by a third party. We have no copies or originals of gospels from before the second century nor any writings which specifically mention them.

IV. The personhood of Jesus

In the early second century Athenagoras, a Christian philosopher, writes an explanation of Christianity to the Alexandrian church. In his 37 chapter "A plea for the Christians" he makes no mention of Jesus as an actual person. The closest he comes is to imply that Jesus is the son of god, but in this same sentiment he also intertwines Jesus with the logos or word of god. Athenagoras later writes another essay on how a resurrection should be possible, but this makes no mention of Jesus nor of any key life events of Jesus. Reading between the lines, it makes it sound as though he's speaking metaphorically and doing little more than musing.

It establishes that the gospels and notions that Jesus was an actual person was NOT in all Christian consciousness in the second century.

V. The Disciples and the Sales Pitch

At the core of Christian argumentation is a VERY strong appeal to emotion (guilt). We are told of Jesus (a re-telling of Mithras who's more accessable) who's everyhing to everyone: king and pauper, righteous and meek, etc. We are told that he died for our... specifically our sins. We are given a story that's very obviously impossible that demands additional evidence. After all, people don't just come back from the dead nor does water spontaneously become wine, etc.

Instead of evidence, we are given the emotionally charged claim of the disciples; those brave martyrs who believed so strongly in the Jesus story that they died for it. This is the REAL argument that apologists use. As human beings, we're naturally inclined to be motivated by guilt. We're SUPPOSED to feel guilty for questioning the bravery of people who sacrificed their lives for what they believed.

The problem is the disciples are as fictional as their mythical creator.

Nearly all of them are attributed multiple different deaths in multiple places in multiple manners.

Peter, for example is beheaded by Nero according to Anicetus, given a 25 year pontificate as bishop of Rome in the Clementines (making it impossible for him to be murdered by Nero) and was crucified upside down by the imaginings of Origen. Bartholemew (Nathaniel) travels to India, Persia, Armenia and somewhere in Africa before being beheaded in Armenia... AND Persia. The list goes on and on.

It's an ingeneous argument: Unsupported claims (Jesus) being evidenced by more unsupported claims (the disciples) with a powerful guilt trip and an exaltation of those who believe WITHOUT evidence. It's the perfect way to get people to believe in something they'd normally scoff at.

There's other evidence we can get into later, such as the non-existence of Nazareth in the first century, but that's enough for now.

By the by, I'm The Duke of Vandals and I look forward to your responses.

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Sources:

http://www.jesuspuzzle.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_and_textual_evidence

http://www.bidstrup.com/bible.htm

http://www.bibleorigins.net/

http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~humm/Topics/JewishJesus/

http://www.christianorigins.com/

http://blue.butler.edu/~jfmcgrat/jesus/

http://members.aol.com/fljosephus/testhist.htm

http://jesusneverexisted.com/

http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/ ... chap5.html

[Lotan]

Judas the Galilean is not "jesus of nazareth".

Hi goat. I wasn't being serious, just pulling Cathar's chain...

[Cathar1950]

Judas the Galilean is not "jesus of nazareth".

Hi goat. I wasn't being serious, just pulling Cathar's chain...

I need a longer chain.
I was only repeating theories. I didn't read it on the bathroom walls.
I prefer to call him Jesus the Nazarite like his brother.

According to the stories Jesus did have some Zealots in his group, if he wasn't one himself. If you look at the Temple story that might just be a story taken from the OT used as filler in the Jesus stories, he might have been a rebel considering how he was suppose to have been executed. It would not surprise me being from Galilee, if he was related.
Actually Judas the Betrayer might be a composite of Judas the Galilean. Eisenman likes to imagine the two thieves (rebels) killed with Jesus may have been a memory of the two sons of Judas. I tend to think they used Josephus and given the garbled history the gospels present it is hard to tell who is who sometimes. I think there is a cover-up and that they where doing what Josephus claims, vilifying the Jews and kissing Roman butt, besides using stories in the Hebrew writings to fill in unknown details of Jesus’ life.
If we take Paul at his word it is unlikely it was the Jesus that warned of the destruction of the Temple that was killed by a projectile hitting him in the head. But Paul does not give us much information and I don’t trust him personally. Also we don’t know how much of his writing was reworked. He does complain those from Jerusalem are running around giving another Jesus and another gospel (correcting him?) but it seems like the New covenant was already in place during Jesus’ life if we read the Dead Sea documents correctly. Like I was saying there are some that think “Jesus”(savor) was a title.

[Easyrider]

Cathar wrote: If we take Paul at his word it is unlikely it was the Jesus that warned of the destruction of the Temple that was killed by a projectile hitting him in the head.

Can you clarify what this is all about and provide the scriptural references / evidence? Or is this just another invented theory? Who got killed by a projectile (verse / attribution)?

[Cathar1950]

Cathar wrote: If we take Paul at his word it is unlikely it was the Jesus that warned of the destruction of the Temple that was killed by a projectile hitting him in the head.

Can you clarify what this is all about and provide the scriptural references / evidence? Or is this just another invented theory? Who got killed by a projectile (verse / attribution)?

Eisenman mentions the Jesus. It isn't in the bible I believe it is in Josephus' work.
Look it up.

[Cathar1950]

The stuff I have read seems to think the person thought of as Jesus, if he existed, could be a composite of leaders from before Judas the Galilean all the way to James, “The Egyptian” and others.

Well, Cathar, tell me who was Judas the Galilean a composite of? .[/quote]

Lotan you don't give me enough credit. There are many more reasons then that to not take me seriously.
But you got me thinking.
It seems there are many Messianic figures as well as destructions deportations and restorations. Most ancient cultures borrowed from and influenced each other.
We have ancient tales of Savors dying and rising from the dead and becoming god or taking the gods throne. I think much of the OT stories are about gods of many cultures.
So who is this Jesus, if he lived?
I like Goat’s

Messianic claimants (7) The Samaritan prophet (36 CE)

http://www.livius.org/men-mh/messiah/me ... nts06.html
But there were man stories to draw from and much seems to be a retelling of OT stories written into the quasi-life of Jesus stories.
But you do ask a good question “who was Judas the Galilean a composite of?”
Why isn’t he a composite of someone? What makes the stories of him different then the stories of Jesus? What do we even know about Judas or the Samaritan? How are the different and how are they the same?

Who and where was this posted?
I just finished a book he was using “Jesus 200 years before Christ”.


Who read this?
http://www.christianorigins.com/qumran.html

Qumran and Early Christianity
A sort of detective story, and a personal view of Christian origins.
by Sid Green (Revised October 23, 2001)

Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls

[Cathar1950]

Given Paul does not give us a time when Jesus died. Judas does not seem so far fetched. James is suppose to have died when he was in his 90's while he was killed in the 60's. This but him at around 30 when his older brother Judas the saviour(title) revolted in 6 CE. He may have even been the teacher of Righteousness(do right) as he was very learned man. Given it seem that much of what we know of Jeus life is from the OT stories it all makes some sense at least as much as the gospels written decades later then Paul.