# Alternatives to miracles performed by Jesus **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [November 29, 2009, 4:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alternatives-to-miracles-performed-by-jesus/519342 "2009-11-29T16:35:22Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Musicat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/musicat/32/20189_2.png) [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2009, 5:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alternatives-to-miracles-performed-by-jesus/519342/41 "2009-12-03T17:41:31Z")
> [@Mangetout](#): > > This explanation does not address the leftovers. Which, if it’s anything like our last Thanksgiving dinner, they are still sharing. ---
**Author:** ![kidneyfailure](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/9f8e36/32.png) [@kidneyfailure](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kidneyfailure)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2009, 11:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alternatives-to-miracles-performed-by-jesus/519342/42 "2009-12-03T23:59:01Z")
> [@AHunter3](#): > > George Washington was a genuinely existent person. He really did lead the American troops in the US War of Independence, really did do a pretty impressive job at it, and did indeed serve as 1st US President. It is, however, unlikely that he pitched a dollar coin across the Potomac River, **and it is unlikely that, as a fundamental aspect of his character, he was incapable of telling a lie and never did so during his entire life**. Slight tangent, but basically that exact same story about Washington and the cherry tree and the “I cannot tell a lie” thing is also told in China about Lenin and a broken flower vase. For anyone who can read Chinese: [http://www.dsb.gd.gov.cn/ruizheng/Article/ShowArticle.asp?ArticleID=1356](http://www.dsb.gd.gov.cn/ruizheng/Article/ShowArticle.asp?ArticleID=1356) I’m pretty sure it came to China by way of the USSR. Just goes to show, as the quote mentions, how apt people are to make morally-perfect heroes out of normal (albeit more remarkable than most) people like Washington, Lenin, or Jesus. ---
**Author:** ![Dick\_Dastardly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c4cdca/32.png) [@Dick\_Dastardly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dick_Dastardly)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2009, 1:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alternatives-to-miracles-performed-by-jesus/519342/43 "2009-12-04T01:49:02Z")
> [@JThunder](#): > > That is not accurate. For example, 1 Corinthians (which attests to the Resurrection) is generally considered to have been written at around AD 53 to 57, which places it within 25 years or so of the crucifixion. What’s more, 1 Corinthians 15 contains early creedal material that mentions the Resurrection, and it is almost unanimously considered to have predated Paul’s writings – possibly within 5-7 years, a very short period by standards of ancient history. Galatians and Philippians are also assigned very early dates, and while they do not mention the Resurrection explicitly, they do corroborate Paul’s conversion claim, as documented by both Luke and Paul himself. > > As for the Gospels, liberal scholars will tend to date them at AD 70 or later, whereas more conservative scholars assign earlier dates. Even if we completely disregard the conservative estimates, the point remains that some liberal scholars will date them to within 50 years, and some will assign later dates. (One notable exception is John’s Gospel, which is generally agreed to have been authored after the other gospels.) OK, so one small part of the NT only gave religious fanatics a quarter of a century to manufacture and embellish a bunch of fairy stories. The rest of it gave them half a century. ---
**Author:** ![ambushed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3bc359/32.png) [@ambushed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ambushed)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2009, 9:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alternatives-to-miracles-performed-by-jesus/519342/44 "2009-12-04T09:39:12Z")
> [@astorian](#): > > Paul also refers repeatedly to people who DID know Jesus- like James (Jesus’ brother) and Peter. The letters indicate that his readers knew (or knew of) James and Peter. Truly, thank you for raising this issue. It is an excellent point for bringing out some of the still complex but more readily grasped aspects of the historicity of Jesus debate. It is ideal because it does not depend very much at all on the very complex and highly interlinked web of the historicist vs ahistoricist evidence and argument. What your and a great many others’ pro-historicist arguments depend on is the English translations of the New Testament. Not _one_ of the original documents have survived (even the oldest have been transcribed from earlier ones), which is not infrequently a much more serious problem than most people imagine (see, for just one example, a layman’s level book on the subject: [_Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why_](http://www.amazon.com/Misquoting-Jesus-Story-Behind-Changed/dp/0060859512/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books)) In any case, if you look at the closest we have to the original documents and compare them with the various English translations, one can easily see that some extremely important distinctions, such as those between shades of meaning within the array of the terms’ synonyms, have been, as they say, “lost in translation”. But we’ll just stick with the issue before us for now. In the earliest copies we have of Paul’s writings, he frequently uses the Greek word _“adelphos”_. This is translated into English as “brother”, but, alas, that’s one of those things lost in translation, for _“adelphos”_ was the very same word Paul (and a great many other members of the early Christian community) used every time to refer to _any_ member of a Christian group. So, while Paul in Galatians refers to James as the Lord’s _“adelphos”_, only in English translation can Paul’s personal usage of this 1’st century Greek term be conflated with a biological sibling. Another vital element to proper understanding of Paul’s usage of the term _“adelphos”_ is that Paul was arguably the most brilliant philosophical, theological, and literary synthesizer of the era. Few greater such geniuses ever lived. It is quite impossible to believe that Christianity would still exist if it were not for Paul’s extraordinary philo-theo-literary skills and talents. One of Paul’s many goals was (in the ahistoricist view) to synthesize the Qumanian Jesus legends in with the best of the mind-bogglingly diverse philosophical and religious beliefs of the astonishingly cosmopolitan Jewish, Greek, Roman and other communities merged together in many of the cities in Paul’s world. One of these, the so-called “Mystery Cults” (the gnostics and so on) of the day, had already adopted the term _“adelphos”_ to refer to initiates of those gnostic and other mystery cults. So Paul brought that meaning of the word into his writings, too. In 1 Corinthians 1:1, Sosthenes is called _adelphos_, and in Colossians 1:1, so is Timothy. And in Corinthians 15:6, 500 _adelphos_ receive a spiritual vision of the Christ. Are they biological siblings of Jesus? Of course not. So when we encounter the English phrase “James, the brother of the Lord” in Galatians 1:19 and recognize that Paul once again used the term _“adelphos”_, it is foolish to contend that Paul meant that James was Jesus’ biological sibling. Some will object: “Paul _does_ put special emphasis on James and his relationship to the Lord. How do you explain _that?_” Like this: James was the head of a Christian community in Jerusalem which focused exclusively on the spiritual Christ, as opposed to Jesus the man. That fact _alone_ should give us great pause in considering James to be the biological sibling of Jesus! In any case, this group called themselves the “_Adelphos_ of (or “in”) the Lord”. The leader of this group, whomever he or she was at any specific time (early Christians saw no problem with women leaders, to their great credit), was given the official title that was translated into English as “_ **The** _ brother of the Lord”. It was an honorary title, not a description of a biological sibling relationship to Jesus the man. That last is also made clear by the references to “the Lord” rather than to “Jesus”. But what of the writings of others beside Paul? What are we to make of their references to James? Let’s look at epistle named for him. While no knowledgeable biblical scholar still believes that this is a genuine Pauline (or even Jamesian (sorry, can’t remember the proper term)) epistle, it is instructive to look at the opening line, which reads in English: “James, a Servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ…” If James was thought by the author to be in fact the biological brother of Jesus the man, why is he referred to there as the Lord Jesus Christ’s “servant” and not even his brother or _adelphos_ at all? And then let’s look at the epistle of Jude. That opens by describing Jude as “a servant of Jesus Christ, and a brother of James”. While the Gospel of Mark, chapter 6, identifies Jude as the “brother” of Jesus (implying that both Jude and James are the biological siblings of Jesus), had they been thought to be so in Paul’s day 20 years or so before Mark was written, _ **why not describe them as such?** _. There were great differences in the beliefs and teachings of Christ, the Lord, among the early Christian communities (as Paul’s genuine epistles abundantly documents), and there would be no better way to bring more order to all the massive disorder than for a true biological sibling of Jesus the man to be clearly identified as a primary authority. No such figure is _ever_ identified by _anyone_ in the early Christian world. Even if such a person was reluctant to exert any authority or even receive praise, he or she would have been identified anyway, since someone else would claim authority by proxy by dint of his friendship with Jesus or with one or more of Jesus’ biological siblings. Never happened. This is one of the many things we _ **would** _ see if Jesus were ever a historical, biological figure. The fact that we _ **don’t** _ speaks volumes! Which bring us to **astorian** ’s reference to Peter/Cephas. Again, we must turn to Paul, for Paul is the single earliest New Testament writer, predating by two decades even the first Gospel to be written, which the largest scholarly consensus identifies as Mark and dates to 70 AD. Paul refers to Cephas as an “apostle” (though only once), as do the canonical Gospels. But the Gospel’s “apostles” are a group of twelve men, and that Cephas/Peter was one of them. How does Paul refer to the “apostle” Cephas? He refers in 1 Corinthians 15:5-7 to a group who had a vision of The Christ (not Jesus the man), and writes that “… he was seen by Cephas, and afterward by the Twelve … then he was seen by James and afterward by all the apostles”. This tells us that although the vision was reportedly seen by Cephas, he was _ **not** _ one of “the Twelve”, and further that there were more “apostles” than just “the Twelve”. Bottom line, Cephas was not one of a group of twelve apostles but was instead just one of a large group of many apostles. Thus, to paraphrase Douglas Adams, “Cephas was just this guy, you know?” There’s no credible reason at all to think that Cephas ever knew Jesus the man. So the fact that Cephas is, _ **at least 30 years later** _, referred to in the Gospel of Matthew as the “rock” upon which Christ will build “His Church”, it’s abundantly clear that either this Cephas is fictional (as is Jesus) or Matthew’s Cephas and **astorian** ’s Peter are not the same guy. This is further revealed by all the bitter disputes between Paul and Cephus and many of the rest of the “apostles”, including “the Twelve”, the title given to a more “special” group of the many “apostles” (note that Paul insists that _he_ was an apostle, too, though he never knew Jesus either). Both the title “apostle” and the title “the Twelve” are, again, honorary titles rather than descriptive ones (think of them in light of the special group of twelve Mormon “apostles”, for example). Because if “the Twelve” were actually the direct followers of a biological Jesus (as a literal reading of the Gospels would have it), who would dare argue with such holy personages and criticize them as forcefully as Paul so often did? I’ve gone on so long already that I won’t go further down this explanatory pathway unless asked, but suffice to say that if any of the apostles or “the Twelve” were the direct followers of a biological man, we’d have strong evidence of their biological/biographical existence, too. And we don’t. Conclusion: References to James or to Peter/Cephas provide no evidentiary support for the existence of a historical, biological Jesus. - - ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2009, 10:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alternatives-to-miracles-performed-by-jesus/519342/45 "2009-12-04T10:16:55Z")
> [@ambushed](#): > > Conclusion: References to James or to Peter/Cephas provide no evidentiary support for the existence of a historical, biological Jesus. I’m not sure that a debate on the historicity of Jesus is quite germane to this thread. Moreover, I think that probably only **Diogenes the Cynic** is actually qualified to argue the topic in terms of ancient languages and so on (besides perhaps you). Personally, it seems improbable that there wasn’t _some_ cult leader in Jerusalem who started the sect of Judaism that became Christianity. If you deny that, I think you’re getting a little too carried away with the lack of any sort of factual data about that person. There may be zero evidence for him, but there is evidence of semi-separate Jewish and Gentile camps, and it’s unlikely that a group of Gentiles would have chosen to create a Jewish messiah and then taught that back to the Jews. And any new cult has to have a leader. 100% of everything we might think we know about Jesus may be 100% false. But we still might as well call the original Jewish cultists’ dude “Jesus”. In that sense, there almost certainly was a Jesus. ---
**Author:** ![ambushed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3bc359/32.png) [@ambushed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ambushed)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2009, 12:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alternatives-to-miracles-performed-by-jesus/519342/46 "2009-12-04T12:05:35Z")
> [@JThunder](#): > > … For example, 1 Corinthians (which attests to the Resurrection) is generally considered to have been written at around AD 53 to 57, which places it within 25 years or so of the crucifixion. What’s more, 1 Corinthians 15 contains early creedal material that mentions the Resurrection, and it is almost unanimously considered to have predated Paul’s writings – possibly within 5-7 years, a very short period by standards of ancient history. Galatians and Philippians are also assigned very early dates, and while they do not mention the Resurrection explicitly, they do corroborate Paul’s conversion claim, as documented by both Luke and Paul himself. I must take exception to all of what you write here. I will certainly grant that what you describe represents the views of the most respected traditionalist school, but this scholarship has always had apologetics as it’s primary and most aggressively sought goal. Doubts and conflicting evidence and interpretation are far too easily overlooked, overridden, or outright ignored in the pursuit of that goal. Let’s start with the easy stuff. Luke’s/Acts’ description of Paul’s conversion differ _ **considerably** _ from Paul’s own! To scholars with a goal of more objective analysis or indeed anything other than apologetics, this great discrepancy is compelling evidence that the Gospels and Acts simply cannot and _must_ not be trusted as anything even _approaching_ reliable sources! Fiction is clearly at work in every work in the New Testament other than the genuine Pauline epistles. I understand that it does not necessarily follow that _all_ of the rest are _entirely_ fictional, but that doesn’t get you far at all. Pure fiction throughout the ages have often included references to actual historical persons and events, but that doesn’t make them any less fictional. Even the entire Hebrew Bible book of Exodus is now widely considered complete fiction, even by many rabbis. As for your description of 1 Corinthians such that it “attests to the Resurrection” (presumably you mean the bodily Resurrection of a physically human historical Jesus) as well as your description of 1 Corinthians 15 containing “early creedal material”, these views are also primarily held only by traditionalists and apologists. They are seldom held by, shall we say, “unaligned” scholars such as the highly respected Burton Mack and a great many other respected biblical scholars, who doubt the provenance of _all_ the non-Pauline New Testament works. So when it comes to 1 Corinthians, which is universally held to be Paul’s work, and its references to a “Resurrection” and the ostensibly “creedal” material, what are some of the competing interpretations held by the non-apologetic scholarly community? Consider this part of 1 Corinthians 15:12 **“how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?”**. The importance of this _cannot be overstated_ if we are to understand just how dubious the grotesque distortions and usurpations of Pauline theology are in the Gospels. For in this chapter, Paul is arguing one thing only: That the Lord’s “Resurrection” shouldn’t be doubted at the church in Corinth or anywhere else **because** other people have _also_ been resurrected! Consider the implications! Paul’s saying that Jesus/The Lord/The Christ is NOT unique because he was “Resurrected”, as opposed to modern Christianity’s overwhelming emphasis on that claim! Modern Christians simply do not much credit the idea from the Gospels that Lazarus and others were _actually_ brought back to life; their resurrections are pretty much viewed quite skeptically by this group and thus are effectively shoved under the rug to make more room for Jesus’ alleged uniqueness. In any event, this question regards resurrections of people _other_ than Paul’s mystical Christ’s Resurrection, and all he would have had to have done is to cite people who were brought back to life other than Christ. To end this troubling skepticism once and for all, Paul could have pointed to the resurrection of Jairus’ daughter (Mark 5:21-43) or to that of Lazarus (John 11:1-44). Or Paul could have cited what Luke claims was _Jesus’ own words_ in Luke 14:14, “You will be repaid on the day that good men rise from the dead”. But Paul does none of that because he _can’t_ do any of that! Why not? **Paul, writing _just 20 years_ after the alleged events described in the Gospels and who was in regular contact with “the apostles” and “the Twelve” (see my previous post), has never heard of any of that!** He can’t cite what he doesn’t know, but if he _had_ known, he most emphatically _would_ have straightened out the Corinthians toot sweet by citing the best authorities on the matter who ostensibly ever lived! (This very same type of Paul’s _utterly inconceivable_ lack of familiarity with Jesus’ and the Apostle’s biographies (even though he was in contact with them all) and of the Gospel stories, completely demolishes the credibility of the traditionalists’ and the apologists’ arguments, over and over again). How can that possibly be if the Gospels were anything even remotely _like_ historical reportage? Short answer: It can’t. So they’re not. I just can’t allow myself to spend much more time in this thread today, but I’ll conclude by just briefly explaining that what **JThunder** refers to as “creedal material” that is “almost unanimously considered to have predated Paul’s writings”, is far more likely part of the Qumranian Teacher/Jesus legend begun 100 years prior to the first century AD that had been adapted by Paul himself into his astonishingly brilliant philo-theo-literary mystical Christ, whose “life” and “death” took place in a mystical realm between earth and Heaven. - - - - ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2009, 12:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alternatives-to-miracles-performed-by-jesus/519342/47 "2009-12-04T12:33:47Z")
So your argument is that Paul made it all up and the proof that he made it all up is that he wasn’t aware of all the stuff that he didn’t make up which was based on what he did make up and existed before he made it up? Hmmm. ---
**Author:** ![ambushed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3bc359/32.png) [@ambushed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ambushed)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2009, 12:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alternatives-to-miracles-performed-by-jesus/519342/48 "2009-12-04T12:52:05Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > I’m not sure that a debate on the historicity of Jesus is quite germane to this thread. I can’t agree at all. The ostensible “miracles” of Jesus _need_ no explanation if Jesus never existed in the first place. That was what my first sentence of that post was alluding to (which in turn alluded to my post before that). > [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > Moreover, I think that probably only **Diogenes the Cynic** is actually qualified to argue the topic in terms of ancient languages and so on (besides perhaps you). Thanks, but I’m actually extremely far from being in **Diogenes** ’s or anyone else’s league when it comes to personal understanding of the original languages of the Bible. No, I’m an English-only sort, much to my shame. So I rely primarily on the work of biblical scholars instead. But I do correspond with two people who claim (and apparently truthfully) to be such experts, and I’ve learned from them and debated them when they differed from the biblical scholars on various translations and interpretations. They both have one serious flaw, though: They insist on always using formal definitions of terms, while I contend (based on my readings of others) that the Greeks and Romans and Hebrews and the surrounding land’s peoples were no less likely to use idiom and slang as we are today. **Diogenes** and **tomndebb** and I think a few others have debated the historicity of Jesus years ago, and at that time, **Dio** was very close but wasn’t _quite_ on board, while **tomndebb** was, understandably, much more skeptical of we skeptics. Perhaps **Diogenes** has reconsidered since then. > [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > Personally, it seems improbable that there wasn’t _some_ cult leader in Jerusalem who started the sect of Judaism that became Christianity. If you deny that, I think you’re getting a little too carried away with the lack of any sort of factual data about that person. There may be zero evidence for him, but there is evidence of semi-separate Jewish and Gentile camps, and it’s unlikely that a group of Gentiles would have chosen to create a Jewish messiah and then taught that back to the Jews. And any new cult has to have a leader. How can one get “_too_” carried away with the utter absence of evidence for someone’s existence where at least _some_ such evidence **must** exist had that person actually been a historical figure? Many like to parrot the old saw that “absence of evidence is not evidence of absence”, but in some cases, that’s _exactly_ what it is! We’re not talking about some anonymous slave toiling under the Roman whip here, we’re talking about a guy who, for but one example, allegedly made an utterly unique ruckus among the money changers in the highest Jewish Temple, something the Jewish historian Josephus – who heard _everything_ and knew just about _everyone_, even slaves and ordinary criminals – couldn’t _possibly_ have neglected to report. And speaking of Josephus and the founders of cults and sects, he writes of scores and scores of them, as well as of more than 40 (I can’t recall the exact number) guys named “Jesus” (Yeshua or other variants), yet it is quite obvious that not _one_ of them could be “Jesus of Nazareth” (even if Nazareth actually existed, which it didn’t), no matter how far you stretch things. As for the matter of the Gentile Christians, **not _one_ of them** ever existed until Paul himself deliberately went far out of his way (after vicious disputes with Peter and the other “apostles”) to recruit them into Christianity, long after Jesus’ alleged death. You see, Christianity was an exclusively Jewish sect, and if you wanted to join, you had to be circumcised and follow the purity laws. This, for some reason, seemed to deter Gentiles from joining. So it was not until Paul got extremely grudging permission to recruit them was there the kind of Gentile following you mention. There’s no two way about it: The complete and total lack of contemporary references to this supposed individual is overwhelmingly compelling evidence that this person never existed. - - ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2009, 1:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alternatives-to-miracles-performed-by-jesus/519342/49 "2009-12-04T13:08:32Z")
> [@ambushed](#): > > You see, Christianity was an exclusively Jewish sect Which was created by who? ---
**Author:** ![ambushed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3bc359/32.png) [@ambushed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ambushed)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2009, 10:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alternatives-to-miracles-performed-by-jesus/519342/50 "2009-12-05T10:05:28Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > So your argument is that Paul made it all up and the proof that he made it all up is that he wasn’t aware of all the stuff that he didn’t make up which was based on what he did make up and existed before he made it up? > > Hmmm. I’m not at all sure it’s possible to misrepresent what I wrote any more severely than that! Your question does not appear to have been phrased as an intellectually honest query, but rather as a deliberately mocking attack based _not_ on anything I actually wrote in any intellectually honest context, but rather as a ludicrous straw man of your own design that you could then knock over for your own self-gratification. This is from my first post in this thread on the historicity question: > [@ambushed](#): > > The issue is **extremely** complex and difficult, and a tremendous amount of highly detailed and esoteric knowledge is required to even _begin_ to understand the arguments and counter-arguments… And later in that same post, I wrote: > [@ambushed](#): > > **I’m not saying Paul _invented_ Jesus, though; I think it most likely that Jesus was invented by the Qumran community about 100 years earlier, and that the legend of Jesus grew and accumulated more historical-seeming attributes as the legend evolved.** > > This is, as I interpret the evidence, the same legendary figure that the Gospel authors based their stories on, and it is this, more than any alleged human-sociological alternative explanation, that explains the clear inconsistencies in Jesus’ “biographical” details in the four different Gospels. > > Now, I understand that what I’ve written is highly controversial, but ordinary counter-arguments based on biblical or historical citations simply will not pass muster given the extremely complex and intricate nature of the ahistoricist arguments and the historicist counter-arguments. And I don’t have the time to go into them in any real depth here (although I’ve debated the topic here at the SDMB in the past). Still, I’ll _try_ to find the time to answer comments and criticisms in this thread in the coming days, but no promises… If you wish to ask a sincere, intellectually honest question or criticism based on what I’ve _actually written_, **in context** , then I will respond in kind. Otherwise, I would be grateful if you spent your time on another topic. Thank you. - - ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2009, 10:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alternatives-to-miracles-performed-by-jesus/519342/51 "2009-12-05T10:51:53Z")
Looks like I missed your bit about the Qumran community. Sorry. But I’d have to say that that seems far more speculative than accepting that there was a cult leader who James and Peter new in Jerusalem. It’s certain that Paul never physically met this man, but there’s little reason to think that he doesn’t exist at all. Jerusalem may have been destroyed wiping out that branch of knowledge so that most of the Christian mythos came to us via the Gentiles at Antioch and Paul, but Peter was in Rome. You’d expect that there’d be some rumor from his side of things that would have survived and been picked up by people like Celsus if there was never a cult leader at all. ---
**Author:** ![ambushed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3bc359/32.png) [@ambushed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ambushed)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2009, 12:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alternatives-to-miracles-performed-by-jesus/519342/52 "2009-12-05T12:23:45Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > > [@ambushed](#): > > > > As for the matter of the Gentile Christians, not one of them ever existed until Paul himself deliberately went far out of his way (after vicious disputes with Peter and the other “apostles”) to recruit them into Christianity, long after Jesus’ alleged death. You see, Christianity was an exclusively Jewish sect, and if you wanted to join, you had to be circumcised and follow the purity laws. This, for some reason, seemed to deter Gentiles from joining. So it was not until Paul got extremely grudging permission to recruit them was there the kind of Gentile following you mention. > > [**Sage Rat** excerpted only the blue section and then asked]: Which was created by who? I’ll first pose a rhetorical question for you: Who created/founded The Sherlock Holmes Society? And who lived at 221b Baker Street in London in the late 19’th century? Was it Sherlock Holmes? “Of course not!”, you’ll likely reply, and then add: “but Holmes was _based_ on a real person!” Yes, yes he was, [Dr. Joseph Bell](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Bell). So what do Holmes and Bell have in common? Actually, very little. Besides the fact that the two shared an emphasis on keen observations and logical deduction, there’s not much there. For example, was Bell the world’s first private consulting criminal detective? Did Bell investigate criminal Mormon practices in the surrounds of Utah for his first published case? Did Bell do battle at the Reichenbach Falls with the greatest criminal mastermind of the age? Middle-era Mormons _did_ travel to Utah and established essentially theocratic and polygamous communities there, so _that’s_ not fictional. The Reichenbach Falls _is_ a real-world locale. And most of Holmes’ stories _did_ take place in London, another real-world locale. In short, there’s a fair amount of valid historical information in the Holmes’ stories. But do these genuinely historical persons and locations make the Holmes’s stories legitimate history? _ **We** _ know better than that. Yet if future – perhaps post-apocalyptic – humans found such accounts on scrolls tucked away in desert caves from 2000 years before their age and they lacked the word “FICTION” stamped on each page, would they not very likely be deemed genuine historical accounts? So, getting back to your question of “who founded Christianity”, why on earth should anyone give much, if any, weight to the claim that a historical person named Jesus or Jesus the Christ founded it? Any more than the claim that the Knights of Columbus was created/founded by Christopher Columbus? Any more than the claim that the Mickey Mouse Club was founded by Mickey Mouse or that an ancient American Jew named Mormon played a key role in the Book of Mormon? You also highlight the fact that I wrote that Christianity was exclusively a Jewish cult in the temporal neighborhood of the first century AD in your question. Let’s examine that fact a bit, shall we? Have you ever wondered why nearly all Jews, even back in the first centuries AD, rejected this alleged Jesus’ guy as their long-awaited Messiah? One main reason, of course, is that Jesus failed to match the specifications laid out in their Hebrew scripture. Didn’t fit well at all. But there was another reason, too, which is quite important. The early Christian apologist Justin Martyr engaged in a lengthy debate with a prominent Jewish thinker and rabbi of the time that Justin referred to as “Trypho”. Trypho was adamant that the Christians had made up Jesus out of whole cloth, and Justin could cite _ **no evidence at all** _ to rebut him! I won’t go into the details here, but Justin’s apologetic book on their debates, titled _Dialogue with Trypho_, includes the following: Trypho: **You have made him up, he is a mere invention on your part!** To which Justin, apparently quite flummoxed, can only reply… Justin: “You do not understand the Scriptures.” (this to a rabbi), and “We do not give heed to vain and idle stories”._ **That’s all!** _ Justin cannot cite anything at all to argue that Jesus was, in fact, a real historical figure, even though there would have been much more biographical evidence for a historical Jesus then than now! - - ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2009, 5:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alternatives-to-miracles-performed-by-jesus/519342/53 "2009-12-05T17:20:20Z")
Might I ask what chapter your paraphrase comes from? ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2009, 5:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alternatives-to-miracles-performed-by-jesus/519342/54 "2009-12-05T17:55:48Z")
Nevermind, I found it. It comes from the end of Chapter 8 and start of 9: [http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf01.viii.iv.viii.html](http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf01.viii.iv.viii.html) [http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf01.viii.iv.ix.html](http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf01.viii.iv.ix.html) I’ll agree that it is stated in a way that treats Jesus as being of questionable existence. I wouldn’t call that slam dunk though. There’s a couple dozen further chapters where Trypho continues the debate on the assumption that there was a guy who purported to be the Christ, for instance, arguing whether it makes sense for a person to be the living persona of God. It seems just as plausible that Trypho has no idea. He’s heard of some new religion spreading, skimmed through their gospels, and has come over to chat with one of their people. He’s never heard of “Jesus” before this point, and everything written in the gospels sounds made-up. In a situation like this, you would expect an offhand skepticism about the actual existence of such a person right at the start, followed by a implicit acceptance that there is just for the sake of debate. Which is exactly what we see here. I don’t see continued and strong emphasis of the non-existence of such a person, just that the story _as told_ is silly. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2009, 6:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alternatives-to-miracles-performed-by-jesus/519342/55 "2009-12-05T18:09:36Z")
> [@ambushed](#): > > I’ll first pose a rhetorical question for you: > > Who created/founded The Sherlock Holmes Society? And who lived at 221b Baker Street in London in the late 19’th century? Was it Sherlock Holmes? > > “Of course not!”, you’ll likely reply, and then add: “but Holmes was _based_ on a real person!” > > Yes, yes he was, [Dr. Joseph Bell](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Bell). So what do Holmes and Bell have in common? Actually, very little. Besides the fact that the two shared an emphasis on keen observations and logical deduction, there’s not much there. For example, was Bell the world’s first private consulting criminal detective? Did Bell investigate criminal Mormon practices in the surrounds of Utah for his first published case? Did Bell do battle at the Reichenbach Falls with the greatest criminal mastermind of the age? But if we didn’t know Bell’s name but we did have reason to believe that Doyle had had some real person in mind when he had written, I don’t see any reason why you wouldn’t call that person “the real Holmes”. What other name are you supposed to call this theoretical person? > [@](#): > > So, getting back to your question of “who founded Christianity”, why on earth should anyone give much, if any, weight to the claim that a historical person named Jesus or Jesus the Christ founded it? At what point did I or anyone give you the impression that anything thinks it necessary that the historic Jesus have actually been named “Jesus”? What his name was is irrelevant and beside the point. There almost certainly was a guy who was leading the cult that became the Jewish Christians in Jerusalem. He was almost certainly crucified, leaving the local church to Peter, James, and John. Whether he was named Jesus or not doesn’t matter. But the word “Jesus” is commonly used to refer to this guy, so you might as well call him that until decent evidence for another name come up. > [@](#): > > Have you ever wondered why nearly all Jews, even back in the first centuries AD, rejected this alleged Jesus’ guy as their long-awaited Messiah? One main reason, of course, is that Jesus failed to match the specifications laid out in their Hebrew scripture. Didn’t fit well at all. But there was another reason, too, which is quite important. > > […] > > Justin cannot cite anything at all to argue that Jesus was, in fact, a real historical figure, even though there would have been much more biographical evidence for a historical Jesus then than now! Why is that a more plausible explanation for the disbelief in Christianity by the Jews than because Christianity was a wacky cult lead by some nutball? You seem to be arguing that if there really was a historic Jesus (regardless of whether he was magical or not) that the Jews would have converted in droves. ---
**Author:** ![ambushed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3bc359/32.png) [@ambushed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ambushed)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2009, 8:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alternatives-to-miracles-performed-by-jesus/519342/56 "2009-12-06T08:36:17Z")
I’m taking this out of order… > [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > But if we didn’t know Bell’s name but we _did_ have reason to believe that Doyle had had some real person in mind… That’s the main point! We’d have absolutely no reason to ever suspect that Holmes _wasn’t_ a historical person, whatever name the scrolls gave. The future readers I described would have no reason to doubt the private consulting detective’s historicity, but they would be as wrong as we are to consider your version of Christianity’s founder to be historical! > [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > At what point did I or anyone give you the impression that anything thinks it necessary that the historic Jesus have actually been named “Jesus”? What his name was is irrelevant and beside the point. I certainly agree that the name doesn’t matter; I wasn’t trying to be excessively precise in that area. The molehill is not important, but the lack of a mountain surely _is_. I’ll deal with you comment that begins “There almost certainly was a guy who was leading the cult…” below. But I’ll deal with your Justin and Trypho counter-argument here… > [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > > [@ambushed](#): > > > > Have you ever wondered why nearly all Jews, even back in the first centuries AD, rejected this alleged Jesus’ guy as their long-awaited Messiah? One main reason, of course, is that Jesus failed to match the specifications laid out in their Hebrew scripture. Didn’t fit well at all. But there was another reason, too, which is quite important. > > > > The early Christian apologist Justin Martyr engaged in a lengthy debate with a prominent Jewish thinker and rabbi of the time that Justin referred to as “Trypho”. Trypho was adamant that the Christians had made up Jesus out of whole cloth, and Justin could cite _ **no evidence at all** _ to rebut him! > > > > I won’t go into the details here, but Justin’s apologetic book on their debates, titled _Dialogue with Trypho_, includes the following: > > Trypho: **You have made him up, he is a mere invention on your part!** > > > > To which Justin, apparently quite flummoxed, can only reply… > > > > Justin: “You do not understand the Scriptures.” (this to a rabbi), and “We do not give heed to vain and idle stories”._ **That’s all!** _ Justin cannot cite anything at all to argue that Jesus was, in fact, a real historical figure, even though there would have been much more biographical evidence for a historical Jesus then than now! > > Why is that a more plausible explanation for the disbelief in Christianity by the Jews than because Christianity was a wacky cult lead by some nutball? You seem to be arguing that if there really was a historic Jesus (regardless of whether he was magical or not) that the Jews would have converted in droves. I restored more of my words than you quoted, not because I’m accusing you of anything untoward, but rather because my reply to your challenge requires the full context wherein my emphasis was on Justin’s reply rather than the rest. So forget about Trypho for now and focus instead on the fact that _ **not even the famous 2’nd century apologist Justin Martyr can provide any evidence at all of Jesus’ biological, historical existence!** _ That is utterly inexplicable if he had known of any such evidence. So what I was getting at is that one key reason the mainstream Jews of the day rejected this alleged Messiah is because no one could provide any persuasive evidence that such a man ever existed! - - ---
**Author:** ![ambushed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3bc359/32.png) [@ambushed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ambushed)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2009, 8:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alternatives-to-miracles-performed-by-jesus/519342/57 "2009-12-06T08:42:02Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > Looks like I missed your bit about the Qumran community. Sorry. > > But I’d have to say that that seems far more speculative than accepting that there was a cult leader who James and Peter new in Jerusalem. It’s certain that Paul never physically met this man, but there’s little reason to think that he doesn’t exist at all. Jerusalem may have been destroyed wiping out that branch of knowledge so that most of the Christian mythos came to us via the Gentiles at Antioch and Paul, but Peter was in Rome… You later write: > [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > There almost certainly was a guy who was leading the cult that became the Jewish Christians in Jerusalem. He was almost certainly crucified, leaving the local church to Peter, James, and John. There is a great deal which is flawed in your reasoning here, but this is the point at which my initial comment on the topic comes into play, to wit: > [@ambushed](#): > > The issue is **extremely** complex and difficult, and a tremendous amount of highly detailed and esoteric knowledge is required to even _begin_ to understand the arguments and counter-arguments… The problem is that to defend this ahistorical theory (as in “explanatory structure” as opposed to the common understanding of the word as “speculative guesswork”) sufficiently well to answer your objections in this thread, I’d have to bring in a tremendous amount of evidence and argument, which is something I’m sure neither of us has time for. Without that, I don’t think I could persuade you that the objections you raise have little merit after all. But I’ll do what I can within those limitations… You argue that it is less speculative that “there was a cult leader who James and Peter new in Jerusalem”. Here are just a few of the reasons that doesn’t hold water: (1): Josephus writes a surprisingly great deal about Jerusalem’s cult leaders (they were a bit of an obsession for him), but none of them bear any similarity to a cult leader that would fit the description in question to any significant degree. (2): Given, for example, the lack of family names or other unambiguous identifiers of the people and alleged people in question, there is no persuasive evidence that the James and Peter and John you mention have any relationship to the Gospels’ James and Peter and John. The individuals by those names in Paul’s work never say or write anything even _remotely_ about a biological, historical Jesus. Paul even insists that he never learned anything about Jesus/The Christ from **ANY** human source:Galatians 1:11-12: \*\*For I would have you know, brethren, that the gospel which was preached by me is not according to man. For I neither received it from man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ.\*\* (3): It’s impossible to believe that Paul’s James and Peter and John (and others) in question, were they familiar with the biological person of Jesus, would never have informed Paul and the others of the holy places and events that their founder was associated with, or even everyday life and biographical details. But they clearly didn’t, or Paul would have learned those details from them. You maintain that this leader was crucified, for instance. Why no mention from any of them of the Most Holy Site of all, the place of their leader’s horrific crucifixion? When Paul comes to visit them in Holy Jerusalem, for example, why **no** mention of any Holy Sites or of any Special People at all? Paul was no less verbose than I am, yet he writes not a single word of any of that! And again, why no genuine, non-dubious\* reference to such a person in all of Josephus, who was obsessed with writing about cult leaders, _especially_ those who irked him by being associated with criticism of his friends and sponsors, the Romans? The biblical Jesus himself never criticized them, but that’s most probably a product of redaction of the fictional fables, and in any case, his fictional followers were not silent in their criticisms of Rome or else the Sanhedrin would have no grounds to appease them by fictionally handing him over to the authorities. (4): You only _believe_ that the ahistoricist theory is “far more speculative” because you were raised in a culture which deeply and thoroughly _assumed_ that Jesus was a biological, historical figure! If you could intellectually separate yourself from those fundamental cultural assumptions, you would likely be substantially more skeptical of those ancient fables. You write: > [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > You’d expect that there’d be some rumor from his side of things that would have survived and been picked up by people like Celsus if there was never a cult leader at all. Look at it this way: Say you’re living in Jerusalem in the first century and someone relates the story of this guy Jesus and all the wonderful (even if we leave out miracles) and amazing things he did. You ask for proof. What evidence can this person possibly provide you? First-hand witnessing? No, he admits he didn’t see these things himself, but perhaps he claims that he was informed by someone who was. You know, a FOAF? Starting to see the picture? The two of you would be in exactly the same boat had Jesus been invented in the Qumran community 100 years before! It’s not as if people had Google or some other way of verifying these claims, so you either believe it and tell all your friends (who tell their FOAFs, etc), or you reject it and don’t pester your friends, Amway-like, to spread the word. As with the concept of “memes”, what prevails into our time depends on popularity and all the rest of the hideous complexities of life, the universe, and everything. In the end, there’s nothing really _there_ there. No, by far the most adroit, sensible, and parsimonious explanation for: the utterly inexplicable silence of Paul and the early epistle writers about a historical, biological Jesus and ministry; the total absence of contemporary, extra-biblical references to Jesus or any of even the major events of his alleged life; the absence of any knowledge of the historical Jesus of the early Church Fathers and their complete inability to empirically defend his historicity; along with the shocking incongruity and irreconcilable discrepancies of the Gospels, even the canonical ones (and one must count all of them or none of them if one wants to be intellectually honest); must be that the story of a first century Jesus is a pious myth. A myth that was never intended by its pious creators to ever be considered to represent a biological, historical personage. * * * \*: Nearly all scholars, skeptics and believers alike, reject the mention of “Jesus the Christ” in the remaining copy we have in one work of Josephus. It is almost universally held to have been a later Christian interpolation (or “fraudulent fudge”) added to make Josephus _look_ like he knew of a historical person who fit the description. Why? _ **Because that forger knew perfectly well that the glaring absence of any such mention in the most respected historian of the day would look plenty bad to future readers!** _ - - ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2009, 12:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alternatives-to-miracles-performed-by-jesus/519342/58 "2009-12-06T12:16:18Z")
All you’re pointing out is a lack of reliable evidence. Sure, every single individual item of evidence is questionable. If you had to throw out everything that was doubtful then yes, you would have to throw out _everything_. But this really isn’t a question of evidence, it’s a question of common sense. Why make up the existence of a dirty hippie with a dozen followers who gets himself into trouble with the law, is turned on by his own people, and gets executed? **If you’re going to make shit up, why not do better than that?** The very first criticisms of Christianity that you see consistently point out how if you skim off all the tales of magic, the guy you’re left with sounds like a grubby cultist of dubious moral character and connections. Every other cult attests its data as coming from aliens, angels, directly from God, or from an ancient peoples. Why would Paul or the other church founders make up some suspicious character and attest the data to _him_? The simple truth is that it’s more plausible for there to have been such a guy. Yeah 99% of everything about him was almost certainly fiction, but why disbelieve in a grungy cultist when every cult ever started that we know of had a grungy cult leader to start it? Why does it sound like Paul never met Jesus? Because he didn’t. He says as much. Why does it sound like he’s making up stuff when he talks about Jesus? Because he never met the man, and because he probably _didn’t_ want to authenticate his data with the people who really had. Serving Paul was Paul’s #1 deal, and knowing more factual data about the real person could only have gotten in his way. It would make it harder to make up stuff about him in good conscience. Why didn’t Josephus write about Jesus? Maybe he did. Your assertion that he didn’t is an assertion, not fact. Many people think he did. But even if you’re right, Jesus probably died before Josephus was even born. His group of followers was probably nothing more than one tiny splinter faction of John the Baptist’s following, and altogether unimportant within Jerusalem or among all cults as a total at that time. Your assertion that Josephus went out and found every single cult group in all the land is speculative and assumes that to even be feasible. If there’s thousands of possible groups that could have been listed, why is it impossible that he missed one or two? ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2009, 3:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alternatives-to-miracles-performed-by-jesus/519342/59 "2009-12-06T15:09:49Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > All you’re pointing out is a lack of reliable evidence. Sure, every single individual item of evidence is questionable. If you had to throw out everything that was doubtful then yes, you would have to throw out _everything_. But this really isn’t a question of evidence, it’s a question of common sense. Why make up the existence of a dirty hippie with a dozen followers who gets himself into trouble with the law, is turned on by his own people, and gets executed? It’s not that good a story, so it must be true? And if it’s a poor story with no evidence, it _really_ must be true? ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2009, 3:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alternatives-to-miracles-performed-by-jesus/519342/60 "2009-12-06T15:36:22Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > It’s not that good a story, so it must be true? > And if it’s a poor story with no evidence, it _really_ must be true? Moreso, if when you strip away everything that seems implausible what is left is the 99th percentile cult leader, and the person whose existence you are hypothesizing _is_ a cult leader, the why _prefer_ to assume that he was made up? In that case, why is it unreasonable to assume that the lack of rigor in the original documentation is because of the original latency in the record taking, lack of interest in creating an accurate record, lack of ability to collect accurate and comprehensive information at that time, and 2000 years of time for data degradation and loss. What is implausible about the existence of a cult leader who matches everything we know about cult leaders? Why is it implausible that 2000 year old records by a bunch of religious nuts talking about 2nd or 3rd hand information would have a poor ability at creating documentation of _anything_ that wasn’t of questionable veracity? Sure, it’s questionable. But if there’s stuff in there that is beyond plausible and is in fact exactly what you would expect to find, it just seems more reasonable to assume that even 2nd or 3rd hand information can still contain nuggets of truth. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alternatives-to-miracles-performed-by-jesus/519342.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alternatives-to-miracles-performed-by-jesus/519342.md?page=4)