I don’t think I understand what you’re asking. Are you asking whether we really know that people bought Scientology’s stories? Of course we know that–there are millions of Scientologists. But if that’s not what you’re asking, what are you asking?
ETA On googling it comes to seem unclear how many Scienologists there are. But anyway, the ones that exist, believe the stories.
As pointed out, the Gospel of Mark is clearly presented as a historical biography of a person named Jesus Christ. Mark clearly knew that Jesus was person who lived in Palestine and Galilee around 30 A.D. and clearly knew that his audience knew that. To pretend that Mark and the community he lived in didn’t believe in an earthly Jesus is simply wrong.
I was asking if they actually bought the Xenu, space alien-gensis rap. Or whatever that was about. I don’t know when all that was revealed. Maybe it was all ancient history and for some reason I just think it was some later revelation. IDK. But I had the very definite impression that people didn’t go in being presented with these ideas - quite the opposite.
Yes. It wasn’t like Mark, even on the margins of the dating envelope, would be so far removed that there wouldn’t be some pretty direct links to people who knew Jesus and/or his disciples.
Hell, even today it isn’t hard to create someone many people believe to be a real person. General Mills gets calls all the time looking for Betty Crocker - who people are sure is a real person. Carolyne Keene, writer of Nancy Drew, is a collection of ghostwriters. Erin Hunter, writer of the children’s Warriors series (about a society of feral cats) is five people writing under one name (I’ve always thought that would be harder than just writing a book by yourself). We have the research tools at our fingertips to prove that these “people” are not “people” - but it isn’t hard to find people who firmly believe that the person exists. Loose the ample 20th and 21st century records (first century records weren’t ample before they were lost) and it would be pretty easy to believe that Carolyn Keene was a real person - after all, my mother’s generation grew up on her books.
If memory serves - the ‘Gospel of Thomas’ (puportedly written first hand by Thomas) is Gnostic in nature and it reads as though Jesus was only spiritual in nature.
Looking at my comments on Mark/Homer in this thread, I think I sound a bit more irrationally exuberant about the possibility than I actually am. Let me clarify. It’s not that I’m convinced Mark imitated Homer. It’s that I know this is an idea that’s taken seriously among mainstream scholars. Not that they all believe it, but that when one of them proposed it, some said “no way,” others said “meh, maybe” and others said “I’m not convinced but this is really insightful and may be right.” And from my point of view here on the non-expert ground, what that means is at best I ought to withhold judgment. MacDonald is making arguments that look good to me, and other scholars of his caliber don’t dismiss him out of hand. So for all I know, he’s right. (And for all I know, he’s not, but that’s not relevant to my reasoning here.)
If for all I know, Mark imitates Homer (and also, for all I know, Mark also retells OT stories), then for all I can tell, Mark is intentional fiction. This adds to the impetus to “stop thinking” Jesus was real. Again–not to start thinking Jesus wasn’t real, but to stop thinking he was. I hope you see the distinction.
I could be wrong about this, but I think the argument for an early date for Thomas was the fact that it was just a collection of sayings with no structure or narrative. But otherwise I think it’s solidly gnostic.
If IIRC the gnostic movement developed in Egypt, or at least that was the area where it seemed to have the strongest base. The point is that I don’t think there are many scholars that would argue for an early date for the gnostic movement and by ‘early’ I mean something nearly contemporaneous with the original disciples.
These were credulous times. If only 1% of the population was literate at the time, why waste time writing rare and expensive manuscripts for such a story back then? What would be gained from that, and who would desire to read about such a story? When writing about Homer, Thor, Zeus, and a long list of gods, I can’t imagine manuscripts being found during this time that would have made an effort to write about how any of these were made up either.
At some point, as Christianity started to gain more and more steam, throughout a good part of its history it was probably best to keep to keep your doubts to yourself.
Prester John was real - or at least, the name was identified with and partly inspired by real people 
- Nestorian Christian Central Asian leaders.
Later, the term was associated with Ghengis Khan’s foster-father (and then his enemy), Toghrul.
No prob - this sort of thing is rife when talking about the writings of early Rabbis.
Well, your entire argument hinges on the assumption that virtually all New Testament scholars are wrong about virtually everything. It’s rather odd, then, that you’d appeal to a majority of such scholars. In your OP, you said that you formed your opinions by actually reading the New Testament, so let’s look at the passage in question.
The Greek word archon quite definitely means ‘king’ or ‘ruler’. It is used throughout the New Testament to refer to various authority figures, and used similarly by contemporary writers. It could also be used to refer to “the prince [archon] of demons”, but if used without the modifier, the default assumption is that it refers to a human ruler. I know of no instance where any author simply said archon and assumed, by itself, that readers would interpret it as a demon. The burden of proof is clearly on those who argue that it refers to a non-human.
Then put the verse in its context. If we read 1 Corinthians, we see that after a standard greeting, Paul starts a lengthy comparison between the wisdom possessed by Christians which is regarded as foolishness by the world, and the false wisdom of worldy humans. (His use of phrases such as toutou aion and anthropinos makes it clear that the false wisdom being criticized is that of human beings.) As part of this criticism, he attacks the “princes of this world” in 2:6, then reminds us in 2:8 that those same “princes of this world” were the ones who crucified Jesus. Demons are not mentioned anywhere in this passage; it is entirely about a contrast between two groups of human beings. So to me, the argument that 2:8 is referring to demons looks like clutching at straws.
There is another passage in which Paul mentions that Jesus was killed by humans as well: 1 Thess 2:14-5. (Doherty and Carrier have to argue that this passage is inauthentic, being inserted into the text by a later scribe. But there’s no manuscript that lacks these verses and no serious textual reason to accept this claim.)
For what it’s worth, I looked up the 1 Cor 2 passage in my copy of The Oxford Annotated Bible, which is as mainstream as it gets. It interprets the passage straightforwardly as referring to human rulers.
The second. That if one does not believe that Jesus existed because we only have a few surviving sources, then to be consistent one should take the same view on almost everyone else we know of from Greco-Roman history.
In addition, you would have to hypothesize some other founder.
My own opinion is that, stripped of the miracles, there is nothing particularly unusual about the life-story of Jesus as a historical figure. Preachers on millenial themes were not unknown in his day and age, and that one would fall afoul of the Romans and get excecuted after causing a disturbance in Jerusalem - a notorious hot-spot - is hardly remarkable. The Romans probably executed troublesome Jewish preachers for causing disturbances reasonably regularly.
So why not a historical Jesus?
This statement is false.
I’m not aware of anyone in this thread making that argument.
The relevance of these observations is unclear, as none of the arguments I’ve related in this thread have relied on an idea that the mainstream position posits anything unusual.
Occam’s Razor.
We have a situation where there is no direct evidence for the existence of someone named Jesus who is alleged to be the inspiration for this religion.
However, he’s not unique in that. There is very little evidence for the existence of anyone living at that time,even guys who, in their own day, were significantly powerful (for example, Pontus Pilate - there is one contemporary inscription that refers to him ant that is it).
So, on the balance of probabilities, do we believe or disbelieve he really existed?
Factors in favour of belief that he did:
Someone or something inspired the religion. If not someone named Jesus, then what?
Stripped of the miraculous, the story of Jesus “fits” reasonably well with its time and place.
Whether he really existed or not, you would be very unlikely to have any tangible evidence of this. So absence of evidence is really not evidence of absence in this case.
The phrase is “rulers of this age.” That term “age” is fraught with spiritualized connotations.
Focus in on 2:5 and 2:6. At 2:5 he’s dispensing with “human wisdom.” It reads to me as an end to a rhetorical unit–the last part of a passage in which he’s saying human wisdom is bad. This is not unrelated to what comes next, but at 2:6 he seems to be moving on to something else. If this isn’t so, then he’s being strangely repetitive, and the change of phrasing is unaccounted for. He seems at 2:6 to be relating “human wisdom” to something else, namely, the “wisdom of the age.” And as I said above, that word “age” is fraught with cosmic connotations. That the next verse begins to talk about things foreordained and hidden before time began (or whatever it exactly says) seems to confirm this impression–that from 2:5 to 2:6, the subject has been changed. (To something related, to be sure. But changed nonetheless–in the direction of things more cosmic. My immediate impression is that he’s now trying to talk about the realities “behind” the “human wisdom” spoken of before.)
I have the impression that calling this an interpolation is not particularly controversial. I’ve had that impression about this passage since long before reading the stuff I’ve mentioned in this thread. I’ll have to look it up again though.
You are giving an argument against an argument from silence, but not a positive argument for Jesus’s existence. I don’t think what I’ve said in this thread amounts to an argument for silence. (I do think there are arguments from silence in this area that are worth talking about, but I don’t think I’ve given any of them in this thread.) Since I haven’t given an argument from silence, yet you’re refuting an argument from silence, your remarks still seem irrelevant tbh.