Why not?
Why couldn’t the apostles, in their grief or through wishful thinking, have essentially lied about the resurrection? They had given up everything they owned and their loved ones to follow a guy who just let himself get killed.
More plausible than a god incarnate crucified, buried and rose again.
Occam’s Razor.
I think someone, somewhere in the chain, from Paul to apostles, made something up. Whether it was a deliberate lie or a psychological defect that made them have visions or, hell, drugs, I can’t say.
Do we have evidence of who actually met who, let alone who could testify to what? Let’s face it: We can either accept that Paul saw the Risen Christ, which would definitely point to his divinity, or Paul did not see a Risen Chirst…which means that either he is deluded, or an outright liar.
We have no idea what the apostles ever said to Paul. Paul says he got his Gospel directly from Jesus and “not from any man.”
Now, I think Jesus probably existed, but there’s no smoking gun. The best evidence is probably Paul reference to James as “the brother of the Lord,” but a lot of mythicists like Robert Price argue that this could have been a symbolic title, not a literal one.
As to the “40 years is not enough time,” argument - 40 years from what? If there was no real crucifixion event, then its dating becomes meaningless.
I say again, I DO think there was most likely a real Jesus and a real crucifixion event, but these things are not that easy to nail down unequivocally. We don’t have smoking gun.
I’m not sure what you mean with respect to Johnny Appleseed. There was such a person, John Chapman, and he did plant apple trees nurseries. The legends that have accrued to him are neither more nor less fantastic than the accounts of Jim Bowie besting multiple assassins with his knife or most all of what people think they know about Daniel Boone. Yet underneath all the stories, there were real people.
Paul Bunyan, as we know him, is the product of an advertising agency and it all comes down to money. Given their ill-treatment at the hands of the Romans, I don’t see the profit accruing to the Apostles and Paul from a made-up Jesus.
You’re arguing that just because Jesus wasn’t divine, no historical figure or even semblance of a figure could have existed. To bring back the Paul Bunyan analogy, there probably wasn’t even a larger-than-usual lumberjack and even if there was I’d like to see documentation from multiple sources regarding the color and name of his ox.
I think there’s few here that believes you’ll find Jesus as he’s biblically portrayed if you jump into the time machine. However, just by acknowledging that there was “a guy who let himself get killed” isn’t that answering the OP of the type of Jesus you’d think you’d find?
To completely deny this guy would mean the occam’s razor of what happened is that a group of 12 came together and rewrote all sorts of sacred scripture (including the Talmud) and created the single most influential historical figure completely out of nothing. The name. The teachings. The historical records of “Cristos, king of the Jews” found in a wide array of both religious and non-religious texts… none of which points to a person who existed. Scratch that. Not even points to - even RESEMBLES a person who existed.
That’s the implication of the “tooth fairy” accusation.
Let me be sure I have this right.
We have people who believe Jesus was a real person.
My theory to explain this is that Jesus was a real person.
Your theory to explain this is that there was a secret conspiracy of people who invented Jesus and somehow convinced everyone he was a real person.
And you’re saying my theory is ridiculous?
None of the “twelve” left any writings and we don’t know what they believed. We don’t even know that there really were twelve of them. Whoever they were, they had no hand in the creation of the New Testament or the development of Pauline Christianity.
Well, sure. But you just acknowledged a historical Jesus. That’s what as issue - whether the guy even existed.
As I remember, Paul only heard Christ’s disembodied voice. But I may be mis-recalling.
I think ‘deluded’ is fine for these purposes -that’s what I keep arguing. “Paul as lifelong internet troll” seems less likely to me than “Paul as sincere.” Paul for some reason came to believe that this cult had it right, and it was worth upending his life for.
Either that cult was started by a historical Jesus, or Paul stumbled upon the one cult (out of hundreds at that time that had ‘messiahs’) that was started out of nothing.
Your theory is circular reasoning at best. The alternate theory is that people are gullible.
I never said I didn’t believe that there may have been an itinerant preacher who travelled the lands around Jerusalem with a bunch of guys.
My argument is solely, that just because something is believed by a lot of people, doesn’t make it true, which is what the original point I was arguing, see my comment about aliens.
I found the implication that the choices were either, Jesus was god or grand conspiracy of sneaky Jews to be ridiculous, and instead chose to offer alternatives that were if not more likely, than just as likely.
I did not attempt to state my actual position.
I never denied a historical Jesus, I just found your “historical Jesus therefore god” argument patently ridiculous and your leaps of “logic” equally flawed.
You keep stating a false dichotomy, and I was presenting alternatives.
It’s almost as if you’re desperately trying to defend something you have a stake in.
You’ve got me confused with someone else. Are you sure it was me? Are you sure it wasn’t…nobody?
Nah the logic errors are yours, I may have made a mistake in the god bit though, I’ll put my hands up to that.
But still you loves the false dichotomy.
“Paul was either sincere or lying” is a false dichotomy? Or what?
[QUOTE=bup]
Again I say if you believe Paul was historical, you either believe Jesus was a historical figure, or Paul was willfully and knowingly orchestrating a huge conspiracy.
[/QUOTE]
There’s your false dichotomy.
What does “sincere” mean? Just because he may have believed something doesn’t speak as to whether or not he was telling the truth. Try to remember that his big conversion came not because of a series of philosophical discussions, but because he saw(or maybe just heard) a ghost.
So I went back and tried to better catalogue the arguments.
Szlater never did offer a stance but merely snipe (which I am guilty of as well) pointing out that Paul’s legitimacy/earnestness/etc. doesn’t necessitate Jesus being divine/real.
Czarcasm does the same.
the only person that the pro-jesus-ers should be yelling at is Tripolar (which they have in the previous page) who is claiming that Jesus, Buddha, and a host of other people who lived long long ago never really existed.
My personal opinion, as I’ve stated in this thread, is that Jesus was a real person but not divine.
Claiming that Jesus is a divine or supernatural figure is an extraordinary claim which should require extraordinary proof.
But claiming that Jesus was a person is not an extraordinary claim. It’s a lot more plausible than the alternative theory that Jesus was invented by a conspiracy - that’s the extraordinary claim in that debate.
You’re misstating the potential alternatives, and by doing so hope to prove yourself right. There are alternatives other than real or conspiracy.
These include, but are not limited to (none of which I hang my hat on, but offer merely to prove that there are indeed other “alternatives” which require varying degrees of evidence):
Aliens
An amalgamation of messianic preachers
Wishful thinking by an oppressed people (the Jews of Palestine)
A conspiracy of sneaky Jews
The wishful thinking of an oppressed people (early “Christians”)
The delusions of a mentally disturbed individual (Saul/Paul)
A subversion of an Eygyptian sect
A subversion of a Roman sect
A tall tale told in a pub
Chinese whispers
A messianic preacher who was crucified by a Roman official for rabble rousing
A messianic preacher who truly was the son of god, crucified, died, buried, rose again
A messianic preacher who died during a pansexual orgy whose demise was covered up by his embarrassed followers
An April fools day prank that has just gone a little too far
The wishful thinking of individuals (prophesy believing Jews)
And I’m spent…for now.