The clarion cry of the naive.
Quick point. There are a number of serious scholars that do take the Christ Myth theory seriously. It’s certainly on the table as a live possibility, it’s just that it’s a minority position within the community of biblical scholars, and shouldn’t be considered as dogma. If you think you can demonstrate that Jesus definitely didn’t exist then you’re probably woefully misinformed.
Personally I think it’s likely, but I can see why it’s the minority viewpoint among experts.
It’s not particularly deep or sophisticated in comparison to other religious works of the time. The problem is that you seem to have no familiarity with the time period or the literary genre of the Bible. Quite a lot of the NT had various meanings, and this includes the texts NOT included in the NT Canon.
I would, roughly, agree with you that it’s a bunch of junk, but you still have to take in the context to actually understand it.
You seem to take the view that we should either toss it into the dustbin or accept it all - but why do either?
I don’t see any reason to charge ITR Champion with such motives - these standards are often brought up in discussions of this sort.
As to the dearth - you seem to be very unfamiliar with the field. Jesus Mythicism was popular a few hundred years ago, as were some of the arguments for plagiarism and the other assortment of things that get tossed around in these discussions.
As to Josephus and Tacitus, you are bouncing all over the place - you were just discussing the dearth of academia and now you jump to Josephus?
Have you read Josephus or Tacitus? I ask because if you have no clue of the context of their day A LOT of their references are going to be lost on you.
I’m fairly certian your wrong.
You concede later in this post that you are uninformed on the Bible, yet you’re making a lot of assertions here about what is actually contained in the Bible. Even if I were to agree that Christianity is false, and that all of the stories uncorraborated by secular stories were questionable, I’d still argue that the Bible is worth studying and understanding. At the very least, the Bible is a historical story not unlike the works of Homer or the Epics of Gilgamesh or Beowulf. They give us insight into the culture, their world views, a perspective on their history. I have read and studied all of those works believing full-well that none of them is at all historically accurate. But beyond those tales, the Bible has had a larger effect on Western history than any other work. It played an integral part in the last couple of thousand years of history and it’s a valuable view into what those people believed and how they viewed the world. Even today, in an increasingly secular society, there’s still Billions of people who describe themselves as Christians and Billions more that describe themselves as Jewish, Muslim, or some other Abrahamic faith, and insight can be gained into ALL of those faiths and cultures with parts of the Bible or similar and derivative works.
So, actually, I’d argue there’s a good case to argue that the Bible is quite possibly the single most important work of literature to study, even if we ignore all of the assertions to the divine. Even if you don’t agree that it’s the single most important, I think it’s difficult to argue that it isn’t among the most important. And, of course, for those who are Christians have obvious incentive to study it. So, frankly, I’m puzzled that you’re puzzled about why people would take the time to study it thoroughly.
I’ve never seen anyone dispute that “scholarly” and “academic” are meaningfully different enough as to be confusing. Regardless, I think ITR Champion’s point about the website is that it is long on assertions and conjectures and short on cites or other evidence.
Moreso, it’s perfectly fine that you disagree with the general concensus that Jesus was a real historical figure. However, I think your indictment of the Western academic community is misplaced. A concensus like that isn’t reached lightly, it’s reached through years of research and countless peer-reviewed papers. Of course, like any concensus, it’s possible that they’re wrong, but also like any concensus, the body of evidence supporting that position is well established and the onus is on those who disagree to support their own positions with evidence.
Even on this forum, where the number of atheists is considerably higher than normal, we’re short on those who argue against that concensus. Really, all a historical Jesus means is that there was some Rabbi by that name preaching at that time who may have done some of the things Jesus did. That he likely did exist, doesn’t say anything about his divinity or the veracity of Christianity. So, honestly, it comes across as bizarre to me when people argue that he did not for non-academic reasons. That is, the whole thing just seems like a red herring.
I couldn’t disagree more with your last sentence there. This is exactly the sort of reading that creates more problems than it solves. For example, there’s a verse in Leviticus 11 that refers to bats as birds. I’ve seen it used as proof that the Bible is scientifically inaccurate. However, in realizing that modern taxonomy is thousands of years newer than that verse and to those people it made sense to just call anything that flew a bird. There’s plenty of examples of scientific inaccuracies in the Bible, but that isn’t one, but it appears taht way to someone who is uninformed and unaware of that context.
Yes, there are countless apologist commentaries and interpretations of the Bible out there, and reading the Bible in that context is probably going to not give an unbiased view. However, there’s also plenty of scholarly and secular commentaries that will help to give culture context, cross-referencing other parts of the Bible or other works that people of the time would be familiar with, tradition, etc. It’s just absolutely naive to expect that reading a modern translation of an ancient religious text without any real information about that culture is going to be the best way of getting to the truth of the matter. You HAVE to control for all of those variables, along with your clearly biased opinion going in, or you’re quite likely to get the nonsense you expect, fairly or not.
Nothing like the pure joy of argumentum ad ignorantiam.
If your purpose is not to step on toes, why GD and not IMHO, where you could put your opinions about what you read, we could voice out own opinions that disagreed, and no one would need to prove to the other that they were right?
I mean, I would actually ordinarily subscribe to a blog on this topic, if I thought the reader was actually doing a good job of keeping an open mind. But, to do that, you have to at least temporarily entertain the idea that you might be wrong. You have to try as hard as you can to prove yourself wrong.
Please, if your intention is just to give us a play-by-play of your reactions, try doing that. And don’t get sidetracked arguing (aka “debating” around here) with people.
I don’t see how anyone can reach adulthood without realizing that the origins of religions is a cult leader cornering the “proclamaitions of god” market for fun and profit. In a lot of cases, for successful cults like Christianity and Islam, also as means of rallying disenfranchised and fractured peoples to fight some enemy like Rome.
Look how easy it is. “And then God didst descend upon the clouds, riding a golden Mercedez Benz, and lo, with Him were also 7 golden Harleys, and upon each Harley seven hot babes. And the hot babes, in a single angelic chorus, didst proclaim that Tuesdays were the day of dancing in the street, and so on.” Mix in relevent and practical group behaviors and attitudes against those of the current political elites, and start babbling it everywhere, get some disciples, some theatrics, etc, and a few hundred years later people will be fighting over whether the Harleys ran on gold fossil fuel or gold fuel cells.
It seems that some babbling scribbled down and called holy, magically, shrouded in the mysts of time and mystery,becomes some unassailable legitimization for mass institutionalized idiocy.
My IP address was banned, and many of the latest replies seem to be taking great liberties with the truth, the intentions of my words, and my apparent level of knowledge. As regards that last one, I’ll just say this: I am a wise man, if it be lawful to call me a man ;). For these reasons, my enthusiasm for debating on this forum has waned, and I’ll just finish off my gospel commentary for those who appreciate it, and leave discussion to others.
Chapters 11-16:
This is tedious shit.
See ya.
Imagine my surprise.
Regards,
Shodan
Nice mangling of Josephus.
That said, one of the hallmarks of being reasonable is being able to discuss disagreements, not run from them.
Smug, self-satisfied and ignorant is no way to go through life, son. Leave that to us professionals.
If you want to go around claiming to be smarter than others, you should probably learn to use correct spelling, grammar, and capitalization. You should also get your facts straight. Early Christianity did not rally anyone to fight against Rome, while Islam did not exist until after the fall of the Roman Empire.
It seems the only babbling here is your own post.