That’s a fictional novel written in 1928.
Okay.
Can I extract from you a promise never to say “The earlier in documentation that you go, the closer you get to a non-magical, plain ol’ boring human” again?
(Another wrong detail–the standard idea is that Paul had this experience for the first time before the Christian man took care of him, not during this care.)
These are not sources–we do not have any of their writings.
By coincidence there’s another, great, novel, started in 1928 but not published until 1967, with Pontius Pilate as one of the characters … or rather a character in the novel-within-the-novel, by Margarita’s lover…
[QUOTE=The Master and Margarita, by Mikhail Bulgakov]
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Never Talk to Strangers
…
Berlioz however wanted to prove to the poet that the main object was not who Jesus was, whether he was bad or good, but that as a person Jesus had never existed at all and that all the stories about him were mere invention, pure myth.
The editor was a well-read man and able to make skilful reference to the ancient historians, such as the famous Philo of Alexandria and the brilliantly educated Josephus Flavius, neither of whom mentioned a word of Jesus’ existence. With a display of solid erudition, Mikhail Alexandrovich informed the poet that incidentally, the passage in Chapter 44 of the fifteenth book of Tacitus’ Annals, where he describes the execution of Jesus, was nothing but a later forgery… -
Pontius Pilate
Early in the morning on the fourteenth of the spring month of Nisan the Procurator of Judaea, Pontius Pilate, in a white cloak lined with blood-red, emerged with his shuffling cavalryman’s walk into the arcade connecting the two wings of the palace of Herod the Great.
More than anything else in the world the Procurator hated the smell of attar of roses. The omens for the day were bad, as this scent had been haunting him since dawn.
It seemed to the Procurator that the very cypresses and palms in the garden were exuding the smell of roses, that this damned stench of roses was even mingling with the smell of leather tackle and sweat from his mounted bodyguard.
A haze of smoke was drifting towards the arcade across the upper courtyard of the garden, coming from the wing at the rear of the palace, the quarters of the first cohort of the XII Legion ; known as the ’ Lightning’, it had been stationed in Jerusalem since the Procurator’s arrival. The same oily perfume of roses was mixed with the acrid smoke that showed that the centuries’ cooks had started to prepare breakfast.
'Oh gods, what are you punishing me for? . . . No, there’s no doubt, I have it again, this terrible incurable pain . . . hemicrania, when half the head aches . . . there’s no cure for it, nothing helps. … I must try not to move my head. . . . ’
…
[/QUOTE]
According to whom? Having read more than a few exceptionally detailed works of fiction, I would love to see you reference a couple of respected historiographers who make this claim.
If someone made a scene on Easter (a better analogy than Christmas) during the Vatican service, I would think that would be quite memorable - claiming it happened when it didn’t would ne noticed by people who were there.
Also, the “thirty years later” refers to the writing down of the gospels. It is odd to imagine that the cult itself sprang into existence at that time. A more natural interpretation is that the cult pre-existed the writing down of the gospels, which had been orally transmitted for longer than that.
To my mind, the more natural and probable course of events is as follows:
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Jesus, a real preacher, caused a very public ruckus in Jerusalem and was miserably executed for it, leaving a small group of followers behind.
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The followers invent a theology which transforms this complete failure into a sort of spiritual success (he died it is true but that redeems us. Plus he rose from the dead).
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The failure excuse works. Those followers grew in number, passing along orally tales of the preacher. Whose miracles, as they say, grew in the telling.
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Decades later, those stories were written down. Because there was no such thing as a uniform early church, they often differed one from the other. However, they appeared to have some sort of common source - the disruptive preacher in Jerusalem.
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As time went on, the memory of the actual events became highly mythologized and increasingly improbable and impressive miracles were attributed to this preacher. Signs and portents surrounded his life, as with other mythological figures.
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Attempts were then made over centuries to beat the tales into some sort of conformity with each other. Some were discarded as outside the emerging mainstream.
Compare with:
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At some point, for reasons unknown, a group of Jews got together and decided to invent out of whole cloth a tale about a disruptive miraculous preacher.
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They cobbled together a number of stories about other miraculous preachers, rather than actually using an existing preacher - again, for some unknown reason.
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Rather than triumphing in any way, this miraculous preacher is condemned to a shameful death and actually executed.
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They set the story in Jerusalem (the center of the Pilgrimage), even though it would have been easy to contradict - as thousands of Jews from across Judea would have been personally present and able to contradict it.
To my mind, the more probable version is that it was a mythologizing of real events, rather than simply made up or cobbled together.
Of course the events were highly mythologized, to make the life of the hero Jesus out to be more significant than it was, an to surround it with classical signs and portents. That happens to quite real people all the time.
Naturally, details like accuracy don’t matter to “true believers”. But that’s not the target of the stories. If they only appealed to “true believers”, the Jesus cult would never have grown from its original tiny group. They had to appeal to people who were not yet true believers.
Basing their entire story on a guy who never existed, claiming he did stuff that would have been easily disproved because a large percentage of the Jewish population was there to personally witness his non-appearance, would not have helped.
Isn’t it far more probable that the stories were based on someone who did exist?
Please quote where “someone is demanding that because Josephus mentions something he heard, Jesus must be real.”
The “shoddy reasoning” and adolescent outburst appears to be yours alone.
Let’s look again at your previous comment …
First, your tepid ad hominem (“one thing I know about religious people, is they state their beliefs as fact”) is a bit amusing given the ease with with which you promote your belief as fact, i.e.,
[ul][li]“He was told that by someone. Like maybe a follower of Christ.”[*]“Josephus spoke to an early Christian at some point”[/ul]Of course, Josephus could have just as easily gotten his information about James from some Roman (or even Jewish) source, but you prefer to manufacture/proclaim those ‘facts’ that suite you.[/li]
But none of this speaks to the importance of the Antiquities 20.9.1. Here Josephus, writing for Imperial Rome and to a primarily Flavian audience, clearly believes that a reference to Jesus is more than adequate to disambiguate ‘James.’ This, in turn, suggests an awareness of the nascent Christian sect and its narrative among circles ethnically, culturally, and geographically far removed from Palestine.
Is this proof that “Jesus must be real”? Of course not. But, taken along with the works of Paul and Acts, it serves as modest evidence for the historicity of a Jerusalem sect whose early leader would later be proclaimed the Christ.
Quite honestly, when one side has listened, for 2 days now? to a position that has no factual basis whatsoever and we are still implored to be patient and think it over/talk it out… it is easy for one to loose patience with such requests.
Your premise has been given it’s due consideration, on this board, and in general terms in the academic/intellectual world at large.
For example, take either the moon walk of the JFK assassination, it does not really matter in either case what the “majority opinion” is. All that matter are the facts. In terms of “did it really happen”. Consensus is fine, it really is, and probably in almost all of these situations, consensus - is - the actual, valid, correct answer.
But it is still not proof.
Hence, my comments from post 153:
There is no rock hard evidence Socrates existed. We think he did, but there is no proof, conclusive proof, as far as I know. And there doesn’t need to be. People are not being forced to drink hemlock for teaching the wrong thing. If, this did become the case, then the question of whether or not Socrates actually existed becomes much much more important.
With “Jesus” you have a whole society/culture built around him. People have been burned or hanged for being the wrong kind of christian. It’s kind of an important question, then, did he exist.
There are no facts which say he did.
So, I ask, quite respectfully, why it is you (and your fellow debaters) are still discussing this… 2 days later?
BTW- I know you said you were Jewish. My comments are not directed at you per se but to the overall topic. From post 145:
If you can’t prove that he - actually - existed, then not one single word or parable or deed that has been attributed to him can be taken with any sense of validity - at all. Not if you can’t even prove he existed. Maybe half the stuff attributed was true, 25% was innocently misreported, and 25% was purposefully misreported or exaggerated. Well if you can’t even prove he lived, how are you supposed to sort out what he did and did not actually say/do???
Out of curiosity, do you mythicists here believe that the references to the Jerusalem sect in Paul and Acts are complete fabrications?
The mythicist hypothesis I think is most plausible posits that Christianity started in Jerusalem with, probably, Peter James and John, and that Paul was a later addition to (and trouble-maker within) that sect.
The idea is that from the beginning Jesus was thought of as a cosmic figure, not a human one, and Paul was continuing with this, declaring he was having revelations of his own alongside those of James etc. Only later did people start imagining Jesus as having lived on Earth–and then probably only later still did people start believing he had been a human on Earth.
Yes, you are witnessing. Or rather, anti-witnessing. 
These considerations have nothing to do with the historical issue, though. For the purposes of this question, which I assume is the one in the OP, the standard of proof for Jesus ought to be the same as for Socrates or Caligula.
I don’t think the reason is unknown. People want to believe. People want assurance that things will be all right, and suddenly we have a proselytizing religion that says poor people are getting a raw deal, and it’ll get better. It’s a good story. And before the canon was fixed, of course there would be competing narratives.
And the preacher in the story can’t triumph, because the real world is still shit. Religions paint the future as perfect, not the present.
Also, I think you’re underestimating the game of telephone that would happen to stories of Koresh on Easter. Oral traditions change and morph over time. Shit, the stories I tell are different than when I told them 20 years ago, because I mentally edit them to produce more profound reception.
Paul clearly identifies James as “the lord’s brother” in his Epistle to the Galatians:
“Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem to visit Cephas and remained with him fifteen days. But I saw none of the other apostles except James the Lord’s brother.”
This would be very odd, if Jesus was a cosmic figure invented by James etc. It seems more natural that an actual human would be one’s brother.
So this /\ is you way of obfuscating: render obscure, unclear, or unintelligible, that your position has no facts, to tell me I am “anti-witnessing”…?
Obfuscate, evade, avoid, circumvent, elude, side step… (shall I list more synonyms for evade?)
One side witnesses, one side anti-witnesses. Which side has the facts?
Everytime this argument crops up, it ends up boiling down to the same thing for me.
What exaclty is the difference between this:
And saying he didn’t actually exist? Because that sure as hell isn’t the Jesus people associate with the guy form the Bible.
It’s like saying: King Arthur existed! Just 'cause some bum names Arcturus wrote his name on Hadrian’s wall once. He didn’t unify the Anglo Saxons, or have a cadre of knights, or hunt down the holy grail. He did, however, have a wife who cheated on him with his best buddy.
Does it matter? That’s not who anyone is talking about when they say: King Arthur. Even if his tale of marital woe somehow made it part of the myth, if 99% of the story is myth, then how would King Arthur NOT be mythical?
If 99% of the Jesus narrative did not happen, how is Jesus not mythical?
Stan Lee clearly identified spider man as “the web crawler” (or was it web slinger? or was it both?).
It seems very odd that a human can spin webs, crawl up walls, and lift cars over their head, but when you are making up a story you get to make up whatever you want… 1000 years from now the fact that Stan Lee and all his editors/writers call spider man “web crawler” doesn’t change the fact that it was a story.
Yes, and I believe that the academic world at large supports historicity. Wikipedia notes:
Also see here.
If you would be willing to replace “taken with any sense of validity” with “accepted with certainty” I would agree.
Stan Lee also clearly identifies Aunt May as his aunt, as Peter Parker’s aunt.
Is there any clear unimpeachable poof that James existed?
The notion of a savior who went away but will come back to save everyone in some perfect future isn’t at all unusual in mythology. In some types of Islam, the 12th Imam is said to have gone “into occlusion” but will return; Kind Arthur is said to be sleeping (but will awaken to drive out the Saxons), etc.
What is unusual, is to have one’s “savior” killed like a common criminal, with a humiliating public death.
To my mind, it makes more sense that the success of Christianity is basically an accident arising out of “damage control” from the traumatic - and very visible - failure of the cult’s leader to accomplish, well, anything (other than get himself killed).
The other possibility - that it was just all made up by a genius group of cult-inventors - strikes me as more improbable. Why have their savior come to Jerusalem, fail, and be executed? Would it not make more sense to have a leader who goes away after performing numerous miracles, without the failure and death?