It’s amazing to me how many people seem to just gloss over the idea of “faith.”
faith - firm belief in something for which there is no proof.
Belief in Jesus and his divinity is an act of faith - to try to “prove” anything about him is really a misunderstanding of how the whole thing works.
Faith is all that is needed and why do they need to prove Jesus was real?
If you don’t believe then you aren’t being forced to
Because we really only have one gospel – either Mark or Q (and there’s some doubt that Q ever existed). Everything else, AFAWK, was derived from that. The tale grew with the telling. The gospels are not eyewitness, independent observers; they are dependent, fanciful, uncorroborated, pious scribes.
Shirley, you can’t be serious. The Ossuary is highly suspect as to authenticity, and the graffito is subject to wide interpretation (is the raised hand one of worship or saying bye-bye?) and can’t be dated early enough anyway.
Moderator Action
I doubt that you will find any factual cites to answer this. I don’t know if there’s enough of a debate here to justify GD, but let’s give it a shot there and see what happens.
Moving thread from General Questions to Great Debates.
Interestingly, Wikipedia overwhelmingly supports a historical Jesus, but I think this is just because the field is so dominated by Christian scholars. While most (not all) non-religious Biblical scholars accept Jesus, I think this is due to bias more than anything else.
I will agree that there is a possibility, even a slight probability that Jesus was a real person, albeit a conglomeration of people weaved into one person, but some historical figure(s) begins this tapestry. But parallels to numerous pagan gods are legion. Romulus was said to have had the nearly exact same conversation with a few men heading out of Rome as the conversation the risen Christ had with his two disciples heading out of Jerusalem. The similarities are too numerous to mention. Dionysius/Bacchus changing water into wine—all these stories came before the Jesus legend was weaved.
For Champion, do your research. I’ve run into too many Christians who demand proof and then when I go through the trouble to provide it they don’t even bother to read it. It’s there on google. If you really want to know google it yourself.
Merged two very similar threads.
This is flatly untrue. Q and Mark are separate sources. (Q is a hypothetical document, but the argument that it existed is quite strong.) Most scholars believe that Matthew and Luke used Mark and Q as sources, but they must have had other sources as well, given that they both contain a great deal of unique material. John is, most likely, a source entirely separate from the others.
For most ancient figures, even kings and emperors, no one wrote anything about them until centuries after their death. In the case of Jesus, four separate people wrote biographies within 30 to 60 years of his earthly life, plus we have the Epistles. It could be argued that the events evidence for the existence of Jesus is stronger than for any other ancient person.
You are aware, that the largest Christian established denominations – including Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and Anglican Communion – are *not fundamentalist-dominated and do NOT subscribe to Biblical Literalism, so they accept a whole lot of the narratives were embellished for the sake of driving home the moral of the story, or are allegories altogether, and the point is the religious/morality lesson contained in the tale, which is what’s inspired Truth ().
(*OK so I like the ones where the lesson is that if I’m God’s favored I can invade someone’s land, slay his sons and take his women… huh…? Whaddya mean that part got amended by Jesus?!?!? *Now *I have to let them take my cloak and turn the other cheek? Aw, man, timing’s everything! 
)
Good use of the passive voice to avoid making a specific claim. “Romulus was said…” Was said by whom? Who exactly said that Romulus had such a conversation?
What is your source for this claim?
I have already done a great deal of research about the life of Jesus. I’ve read hundreds of scholarly books and articles about the topic and have yet to find an iota of evidence for the claim that anything in the gospels originated from pagan mythology. That’s why I asked you to provide some evidence. You failed to do so. I’ll give you a second chance. Can you name any up-to-date scholarship which supports your claims?
Interestingly enough, I’ve encountered scores of people making the same claims you’re making. I’ve asked all of them to back up the claims with reliable sources. None have ever done so. Why do you suppose that is?
That sounds like the words of a man who doesn’t have any evidence to offer.
Telling somebody to look on Google when they ask for a citation is weak tea. I do my research in libraries, reading books and articles by scholars. But I decided to indulge you and searched on Google for “Jesus Dionysius Bacchus”. Everything that Google returned, other than one new age/astrology type website, contained a thorough debunking of your claim. (The astrology website agreed with you.) Here’s what I found by following your instruction to search on Google:
http://www.philvaz.com/apologetics/JesusEvidenceCrucifiedSaviors.htm
http://www.kingdavid8.com/_full_article.php?id=57f312b2-666f-11e1-a0e0-bb2583253082
So now that you’ve proved yourself wrong, it would probably be smart to admit that what you said was entirely untrue.
If you’re going to claim that Jesus never existed, you’re going to have to find some alternative explanation for the existence of the early Christian community, which pre-dated Paul’s conversion (and was the object of his persecution).
Protoboard’s comment reminds me of something I saw in a Little Audrey comic more than 50 years ago. An invisible Melvin says “There’s nothing but what I draw!”
The connection is that Protoboard, like so many others, rudely dismisses Jesus from the historical record as a topic he can’t accept. Just another Fahrenheit 451 as far as I’m concerned. :mad:
Asking that some 100-150 years ago the same question about literalism, and see what the results would have been for the great majority of believers then, as compared to now.
It used to be that general consensus considered many of the biblical characters as actual historical people, even among what many considered scholars. In 1901, Pope Leo XIII set up the Pontifical Biblical Commission which Cardinals guided by their great experts still voted in the literal meaning of Genesis 1-3, and concluded that Adam and Eve were actual real historical figures. Commission met again in 1948, and decided it was no longer necessary to teach that Adam and Even were historical after all.(Thomas Brodie, Beyond the Quest of a Historical Jesus, pages 18-19.)
Going back this far in time, it’s difficult to ascertain with a great deal of confidence of which side is most correct concerning if there ever was any historical Jesus that many believers accept today, and certainly no supernatural Jesus. Many theories abound, there are plenty far out ones on the mythical side, and just as many on the historical nature of Jesus.
Although Richard Carrier is now in the mythical camp with greater odds that he didn’t exist at all, he still puts the odds of the possibility of some kind of a historical Jesus at 1/3.
It’s the conservative Christian apologists which I’m more leery of, they are much more cock-sure of what happened some 2,000 years ago, and will not waiver, and have the most at stake, after all their lives as well as loved ones eternity depend on it.
Lots of responses to make since the threads got merged:
#55 I don’t say EVERYTHING from the OT; a LOT did, but there were other sources as well; dying/rising gods which contrary to what you claim there are dozens of scholars who have written on the topic of Jesus’ life as depicted in the gospels having been heavily derived from innumerable legends of gods floating around at the time. I already cited Carrier “On the Historicity of Jesus” and Price “Deconstructing Jesus” and Doherty “The Jesus Puzzle” They all deal with the Christ myth theory. How many more do I have to cite? These guys are not slouches or hacks; they’re well respected historians in the scholarly community. Your only problem with their work is that it isn’t Christian propaganda.
It was one of the early church fathers–Jerome, or Tertullian or Eusebius, can’t remember which.
#56 Precisely because people are devoting their whole lives and basing their entire belief system on a figure who is so unsubstantiated he could not hold a feather in a soaking wet paper bag.
The question has to be asked, “Would people throw their lives away on legends of King Arthur because books and legends abound about Camelot and the Knights of the Round Tale?” Yet that’s exactly what 1/5 of the human population does in following Jesus. Now a large percentage of that number vary widely in how literal they take the Bible but Jesus’ resurrection, the most unsubstantiated event in history in terms of its impact, takes center stage in this mess as does this insane belief that Jesus died for our sins and that we have to believe in him if we are to be saved from eternal damnation. The whole thing is so obviously contrived to
I mean in the final analysis it always boils down to money, power and influence, doesn’t it?
Do you not understand the difference between “Was King Arthur a real person?” and “Were Camelot and the Knights of the Round Table real?”
Actually, I’ve always thought that the faith vs. works debate was pretty sterile. But that’s for another thread.
John Mace gave you a number of links. Let me note that there are 3 prongs to consider:
Did Christ exist? I say yes, but I no longer characterize the alternative as ludicrous, just improbable. (Debated in another link.)
Assuming he existed, was he divine? And is the bible inerrant? This board is mostly anti-fundamentalist so biblical inerrancy hasn’t faired very well here. We do have a couple of respectable fundamentalists here though.
Assuming he existed, was he divine? Mainline Christians reject biblical literalism, but they generally agree on Christ’s divinity. I’m only saying this because a fair number of new posters (and heck some old posters) seem to think that American fundamentalist Christianity is representative of the broader faith. It really isn’t though. In fact, it’s a recent innovation. (That last sentence is highly contentious and was debated here last year).
I dunno: your link is US-centric and most of its points seem to pre-date the internet in my view. The question of whether Christianity is in decline is not central to this thread, but it might be worth visiting in another thread in a few weeks. Treating the question seriously would involve weighing mixed evidence. Generally speaking, it’s tempting though silly to pretend that all evidence points in the same direction. Usually, at least.
This was about the time these denominations decided to meld evolution science with the Bible–a kind of “hiker ’ s grog” which would be popular with a materialistic society. ( If you ask I’ll tell you what goes in hiker’s grog.) This was only ten years after Neville Chamberlain decided to appease Hitler, with the goal of “peace in our time”–and in 1948 the churches decided to appease the evolutionists. :rolleyes:
Dude, no.
Carrier is actually extremely critical of the whole Higgins / Graves / Zeitgeist school of “the Jesus story was based on earlier god myths lol.”
Don’t know about Price and Doherty.
Then re-check your source, and then come back to us.
Equating those who practice or respect science with Hitler is grossly offensive.