Proof of Jesus?

Great Debates
241

Sorry, but I simply must react to this one.

  1. Hercules was not a God but half god/half man.
  2. A Hercules like figure can be found in other Indo-european religions besides Greek mythology.
  3. Rome was tolerant towards other religions, the interpretatio was an equation for Roman understanding. ‘Oh look this God looks just like Mars, so we’ll call him Mars-something’. The other people weren’t forced to worship Mars from then on.
  4. Where did you get that you could not have a supreme God?
  5. Rome was not ok with Jewish belief, they wouldn’t pay hommage to the Emperor as divine. That’s one of the main reasons the Jews rebelled.
242

Did Christianity borrow its doctrines from Mithraism? I think that the evidence is rather flimsy, and that the proponents of this idea are really straining at gnats.

243

Actually, I don’t think it’s either one. After all, Mary was not impregnated by God. Similarly, Hercules did not perform miracles to demonstrate that he was the son of Zeus. He performed feats of heroism, and he performed his twelve labors as atonement for having accidentally killed his first wife (Megara) and their children. That is certainly not the same as proving himself to be Zeus’ son.

Also, as Lib pointed out, your summary does not accurately characterize Herc’s death. It was certainly treacherous, but it would be a stretch to call it “violent,” and it bears no resemblance to the death of Christ.

I think this is a classic example of seizing on drawing a tenuous analogy by seizing on superficial similarities.

244

I see. Do you mind if I ask you a few questions, then?

How did you determine that there was indeed “a lot of editing”?

What constitutes “editing” in this viewpoint?

What was the nature of this editing, and how did you determine that?

245

That is what we are trying to establish in the above.
How far was Christian doctrine influenced by other religions.
Either by copying, editing Jesus’s message or by leaving things out.

246

Polycarp

“Rather, the Virgin Birth (which is, granted, orthodox doctrine, but not believed in as a literal event by many people who consider themselves Christian) suggests, rather, that the conception of a new human by the combined work of man and woman (having intercourse) and God (making their intercourse fruitful, in that they conceive a child, was in this case, as perhaps in other alleged parthenogenetic cases, shortcircuited by the absence of a human father – the ovum becoming a viable zygote, embryo, fetus, and baby without fertilization by male semen.”

First of all I don’t buy the statement many Christians disagree with the Virgin Birth story. From one survey, said to have been taken recently, 91% of Christians believed in the Virgin Birth story. Virgin Birth and Resurrection are the foundations of Christianity. Without them Christ is just and Hebrew mortal running around screaming he’s the Messiah. According to Josephus there were plenty of them in Jesus’ time.

The second part about fertilization without semen is pure fantasy.

The Bible is very explicit about the Virgin Birth in two of its Gospels. There is nothing allegorical about it. Jesus had to compete against Hercules.

Hercules was not a second-rate god. He was one of the more popular gods in the Roman Army because of his strength and courage. Hercules was a protective deity over individuals and the community as a whole. In Rome Hercules act as a god of merchants and agricultural fertility. He hates all kinds of evil. He was an ideal patron deity. Temples to Hercules were very common in the Roman world and several were built in Rome. Ara Maxima on Palatine hill is the earliest temple to Hercules. The most complete intact one is the round Temple of Hercules Victor in the Forum Boarium.

This is what Jesus had to compete against in the Roman world. Jesus had to be made into a god in order to be accepted by the general public. The Romans would never accept a Hebrew sect leader that was a mere human.

Something else to consider. The Virgin Birth story does not appear to have been around during the time of Paul. Paul never mentions it. When Paul speaks of Christ’s Birth he has Joseph being his mortal father. The Virgin Birth stories appear in the Gospels, and in only two of them, Matthew and Luke. Of the four Gospels it is thought that Mark was the first, written between 70 and 75 A.D. Next came Matthew (75 to 85), Luke (80 to 95) and lastly John (about 95). This story was made up after the time of Paul or around the time of his death. It may be possible that Paul never heard it.

Interesting what Paul says about Christ’ resurrection. The Jehovah’s Witness say the same thing.

“and if Christ was not raised, then our Gospel is null and void, and so is your faith;” 1 Corin 14

Where do I “get that assurance of what is and is not present “in the dimension of the Supreme Being”?”

From those who have had Near Death Experiences (NDE). What they experienced and say makes more sense than anything found in the Bible.

I can’t say that this positive proof of what will happen to us after death but then no one can say anything in the Bible is true, at least spiritually and even historically, in some cases. If what is said by those who have had experienced NDE is true then the story of Jesus’ body in the flesh going to be with God is a lie.

“and we turn out to be lying witness for God, because we bore witness that he raised Christ to life, whereas, if the dead were not raised, he did not raise him. For if the dead are not raised, it follows that Christ was not raised; and if Christ was not raised, your faith has nothing in it and you are still in your old state of sin.” 1 Corin 15-17

I sometimes wonder if the foundation of the Christian belief is the ability to make everyone believe they are not worth spit in God’s eyes……unless they accept Christ.

It’s hared for me to believe that a deity of pure love would ever feel that way about any human.

247

Can you elaborate, please? Are you saying that this would have been scientifically impossible? Are you saying that this miracle could not have occured because it would have violated the laws of science?

248

You didn’t answer my questions.

How did you determine that there was indeed “a lot of editing”? If you say that this is what we are “trying to establish,” then why do you present it as fact – as a foregone conclusion?

Similarly, what constitutes “editing” in that viewpoint? What is its nature, and how did you determine that? Are these questions not critical in establishing your claim?

You claim that there was “a lot of editing,” in a manner that would make the New Testament accounts unreliable. It seems to me that if one is to make such a claim, then one should be able to explain how one arrived at that conclusion.

249

What I am saying is to attribute this to Jesus’ birth is pure fantasy. There is no proof what so ever that anything like this happened to Jesus’ mother.

There is no evidence that any miracle was involved in the birth of Christ. As a matter of fact, one of the great controversies of the early Christians was the question of the divinity of Christ. Was he divine or not? Those who were closest to Jesus knew him for what he was, a mere human. The Virgin Birth story was created after his death, possibly after Paul’s death.

Christ’ divinity was not resolved until some 300 years after his birth. Once the dogma of Divinity and Virgin Birth was established (Council of Nicea 325 CE) and set in place all other options were considered heretical. It was reaffirmed in the Council of Constantinople in 381 CE.

Today Christians accept, without question, what was established by a contentious council of bishops 1700 years ago.

While I’m on the subject, the Council of Nicea is interesting. In those days there wasn’t any one person who spoke for the church. Councils of all available bishops established matters of belief and authority. The council of Nicea was attended by 318 bishops. There were, at that time, about 1800 bishops. The most profound decision that would affect Christianity was decided by only 18% of Christendom’s bishops.

This council was to determine if Christ was divine or not. There were two schools of thought.

Athanasius- said Jesus was divine. If Jesus was not then he couldn’t be the Savior.

Arius- said Jesus was a man with no prior existence. Jesus was not a god. Arius said any attempt to make Jesus a god would bring Christianity closer to paganism (Hercules and Jesus??)

This was not an easy decision. The emotions were high and the numbers for each side was about equal. The conflict was so bad that the Emperor Constantine had to step in and demand that a decision be made. In the end those who favored Athanasius won. Those who believed the Arian way were given a choice; convert or be exiled. From this council came the Nicen Creed. It states that Christ was “of one substance with the Father.”

Christianity evolved and changed. It went from a human Hebrew sect leader to making that human sect leader into a God and the savior of all mankind. There were many steps to this end result. In the end a new Christ emerged, one very different from the real one.

250

Okay. In the absence of any Monophysites on this board, I’m prepared to say that on the presumption that Jesus existed at all, there’s unanimous consensus that Jesus was a man.

What more He may have been – avatar, Incarnate Person of the Trinity, religious nut, or whatever – can be debated.

Most Trinitarians would say that He was the person through whom one sees God acting in human form – an idealized humanity that we should strive to emulate in our own lives. Many would go a step further and place Him on a pedestal of “God the Incarnate Son” – but our preconceptions are such that in doing so we effectively deny His humanity, equally true and equally orthodox in Christian thought.

However, let me examine your assertions about the Virgin Birth. To be sure, for a woman to have a male child without having been fertilized is unlikely to the extreme – there is a possible but never-proven means whereby a woman might have her identical clone daughter, as this parthenogenesis does occur in other animals though no definite case of human parthenogenesis has been documented.

However, the assertion that it was made up is an argument from silence and an assumption that there was mythopoeia going on, not borne out by the evidence either.

While I have absolutely no interest in “proving” the Virgin Birth, I’m inclined to accept it as a mysterious fact, for this reason: It’s clear from the two Gospel narratives that Mary and Joseph were quite well aware of how babies come into being, and are surprised by the angelic announcement that Mary’s going to be pregnant even though they haven’t taken step A to make her so.

Now, it’s quite possible that this could be a case of mythmaking – but the one Gospel whose author states emphatically that there’s a lot of Jesus glurge around and he’s taken the time to separate fact and fiction is Luke (cf. 1:1-4). And early tradition indicates that Luke befriended Mary and was close to her. In short, the one bit of evidence one way or the other on the question is that a man who says he employed the best of First Century historiography and who was personally acquainted with the woman in question is the one who did the most to promulgate the story.

I grant that there are a lot of mythological elements in the story as we read it. But we are dealing with a man who is claimed to have been the agent of God in one of the key moments of human history, from a Christian perspective. Were it not for the fact that I was alive at the time and heard the story firsthand, what Rosey Greer did at RFK’s assassination would sound to me very much like a later add-on: famous football star who supports the martyred politician tackles the assassin? Clearly a tacked-on story to convey what RFK meant to people! Except it’s true.

So, though I know it’s a strongly unpopular stance to take, I’d have to say that Luke provided the truth as he knew it, and that he got it from the horse’s mouth, so to speak.

Very nice summary of the history involved. (I corrected one minor typo in the quote.) My personal opinion is that the overwhelming majority of Greek theologians of the 3rd-8th Centuries could have used a Gaudere or a MEBuckner to keep them in line. Their expressed attitudes and weapons were about as unChristlike as it is possible to be within the context of church behavior.

251

Don’t forget there were two distinct Simons who were among the 12 apostles of Jesus. One was Simon Barjona (Peter), brother of Andrew. The other was Simon the Zealot. The Zealots were a political party who advocated the overthrow of Roman rule.

252

What happened to Simon Bar Sinister?

253

Polycarp:

Even if we grant the general point of Jesus’ existence, all details of his infancy and childhood are extremely poorly attested. This certainly includes the Virgin Birth–even the Resurrection is more widely attested to, since at least all of the major New Testament sources (all four Gospels, the Epistles) agree on a tradition of Jesus having risen from the dead after crucifixion.

Only Matthew and Luke mention details of Jesus’ infancy, and wherever one gives practically any concrete item of information, the other either doesn’t mention that particular point or detail, or flatly contradicts the other Evangelist’s account. They do agree that there was a Virgin Birth, and that Jesus was born in Bethlehem, indicating a general “Virgin Birth in Bethlehem” tradition–or, as we might say nowadays, Urban Legend–but diverge on just about everything else. There are the infamous dueling genealogies. Luke mentions the census; Matthew does not–according to Luke, the census (quite improbably) is why a Galilean family wound up in Bethlehem. Matthew doesn’t feel any need to specially account for Mary and Joseph’s presence in Bethlehem at all. Matthew mentions the star and the wise men from the east; Luke does not. In Luke is found the birth in the manger and the shepherds, unmentioned in Matthew. Matthew tells the story of Herod’s slaughter of the infants, something no one else in the world seems to have heard of. In a flat contradiction, Luke has Mary and Joseph taking their newborn son directly to Jerusalem to the Temple, then returning without incident to Nazareth; in Matthew they must flee from Bethlehem (to escape the aforementioned otherwise historically unrecorded mass infanticide in Bethlehem) to Egypt, where they evidently reside for some time before returning to Nazareth.

None of this is found in Mark or John. John twice matter-of-factly refers to Jesus as the son of Joseph (John 1:45 and 6:42), without even a parenthetical “as was supposed” or “or so they thought”. Neither Mark nor John mentions the Virgin Birth. (John does talk of the Word being made flesh, but doesn’t get into any details of how the word was made flesh.) Paul and the other epistles don’t mention the Virgin Birth–or Mary. Mark does at one point refer to the mother of Jesus as being named Mary; John mentions Jesus’ mother several times, but never actually names her. John does agree with Matthew and Luke in naming Joseph as Jesus’ father–except that John seems to regard him simply as his natural father.

What’s the source of that tradition? And how well-attested to is it?

254

This may answer your question:

http://www.unclemelon.com/simon_morph_final.html

255

While I would never hold the idea that the Virgin Birth is something physically attestable to be any sort of dogmatic requirement for being Christian, I do have the hunch that there is some truth behind it, simply because of the reasons brought out in this thread. (One can find a parallel to almost every action attributed to Jesus in the myths attributed to one or another hero, demigod, or minor deity in an area running roughly from Naples to Ezfahan; this does not prove, or even suggest, that Christianity borrowed the Scourging of the Temple, for example, from something Zagreus is reputed to have done in a minor Cretan sect of the Olympian/Idaean myth-system.)

I completely concur with your incisive notes on the “Jesus Origin Story,” MEB, but offer the following for your contemplation:

  1. “The Gospel According to St. Matthew” in no way resembles the document which Papias refers to as having been written by Matthew. The latter was a collection of logia – sayings or oracles – of Jesus; the former is an account in virtually the same terms as Mark, for the most part, with an Infancy Narrative prepended and five main and a few minor collections of sayings of Jesus inserted and claimed to have been what He said at a particular time and place. (This was a totally legitimate practice in historical narrative from Classical times, for those not aware of it – to place words or ideas traditionally associated with a historical figure into his mouth through writing a speech supposed to have been delivered by him at a particular point in your narrative where showing him putting forth those ideas advances your plot line.) Matthew also seems intent on “proving” Jesus to be “the fulfillment of O.T. prophecy” by selectively quoting from the prophets out of context and showing how a given utterance by one of the prophets fits some incident that he writes into his life of Jesus. Most obvious of this are the Slaughter of the Innocents and Descent into Egypt, where Herod orders the killing of all male infants (only Shaka is a historical parallel to such an unlikely event, and one would think that Roman chroniclers would at least allude to it) and to save Jesus from this, Mary and Joseph boogie off for Egypt until after Herod’s death. All this seems done in order that Matthew can quote two lines, completely out of the context they were written in, from one prophet or another: “A voice is heard in Ramah, Rachel weeping for her children” and “Out of Egypt have I called My Son.”

On the other hand, Luke seems intent on showing the human, compassionate side of Jesus, and his dedication to Theophilus is to my eyes at least a strong indication that he is doing his best to separate fact from the fiction that has sprung up in the 40 years or so since the events he’s chronicling. As for his relationship to Mary, I do not know the origin or provenance of the story, but I’d suggest that the sheer improbability of it on its face is an indication of its probable accuracy – why would the single major Gentile among the early Christian leaders, a doctor who is known to have been part of Paul’s faction among the groups of the time, be singled out as friends with Jesus’s mother? If there were a tradition that he healed Barnabas of a fatal heart attack by laying hands on him, I’d be skeptical – but the unlikelihood of Mary and Luke happening to get to know each other and hit it off is such that a tradition associating them with each other seems more likely to be genuine, IMHO.