# Why is the "Jesus Myth" theory universally disregarded? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [May 28, 2012, 11:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-jesus-myth-theory-universally-disregarded/623392 "2012-05-28T23:09:18Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2012, 7:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-jesus-myth-theory-universally-disregarded/623392/61 "2012-05-29T19:01:25Z")
> [@Capt\_Kirk](#): > > I do think that this is also a good argument for an actual person named Jesus, if it was an invention it seems that Paul was very busy and persuasive :rolleyes: > > Capt Kirk I too believe Jesus existed, but one of the “Jesus is a myth” theories argues that what came first was a belief in an “Angelos Christos”, a spiritual Messiah (as opposed to the flesh and blood one expected in Judaism) who would have been only later “fleshed out” and made into a living, breathing person. Apparently there are some evidences that such a “spiritual messiah” concept/belief has existed, but more to the point, this theory argues that nowhere in the epistles most likely written by him Paul shows any knowledge of Christ being a real blood and flesh individual. So, the theory goes that Paul never taught that there had been a Christ living on Earth but rather that he believed in and taught about a spiritual Messiah. Also, I’m not sure if some of the theories about Jesus err..not being Jesus but another otherwise known person (The “master of justice” of the Essenians was often mentionned at some point in the past, but I also read about a 1st century BC Jewish scholar going by the name Jesus bar Simon) count as “Jesus didn’t exist” or not. ETA : also there is a difference between thinking that Chritian beliefs were Borrowed/derived from other religions, like mystery cults, and believing that it might have been tainted/influenced by them. You could very weel have a real Jesus and then peculiar elements coming from, say, Mithraism, reused in the narrative. ---
**Author:** ![Meatros](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b4bc9f/32.png) [@Meatros](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Meatros)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2012, 7:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-jesus-myth-theory-universally-disregarded/623392/62 "2012-05-29T19:21:51Z")
> [@septimus](#): > > I’ve just wasted half-an-hour searching unsuccessfully through my bookcases for the book I have which summarizes why manuscripts before about 200 AD are rare. ☹ (I suspect it fell behind my bed. One of these [del]days[/del] years I’m going to have to get organized. :smack: ) > > But [this webpage](http://debate.org.uk/topics/history/bib-qur/bibmanu.htm) may make a similar point another way. It mentions a copy of Matthew Chapter 26 dated to 60 AD or earlier. I find that incredibly difficult to believe. Most scholars put Matthew in the [80-100 range](http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/matthew.html). I haven’t read that page, but I did look at [the wiki](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magdalene_Manuscript): > [@](#): > > Comparative paleographical analysis has remained the methodological key for dating the manuscript: the consensus is ca AD 200. ---
**Author:** ![Meatros](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b4bc9f/32.png) [@Meatros](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Meatros)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2012, 7:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-jesus-myth-theory-universally-disregarded/623392/63 "2012-05-29T19:25:33Z")
> [@septimus](#): > > BTW, Rome, which probably had records of Pontius Pilate’s activities in Judaea, tried to suppress Christianity. Uhhhh … don’t you think they might have pointed out that the crucifixion was fictional if it were fictional? Why would the Romans have cared about the Christians? They first came to their attention, IIRC, with Nero blaming them for the fire around 70 AD and by that time, why would they have even suspected the crucifixion was fictional? There were Christians, that’s what would matter. The Romans didn’t have a ‘skeptical crew’ out there going around debunking claims. > [@Latro](#): > > Given how rare it is for _any_ ancient writing (that hadn’t to do with the Church) to have survived at all, what do you figure of the chances of anti=christian writings to survive? Very true, in fact, the one that I can think of off the bat (celsus) survives because it is able to be pieced together from Origen’s response to it. He quoted it extensively, IIRC. ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2012, 7:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-jesus-myth-theory-universally-disregarded/623392/64 "2012-05-29T19:26:41Z")
> [@Martin\_Hyde](#): > > It’s generally impossible to know what Jesus actually taught versus what Paul marketed when he spread the religion, but we can generally assume Paul didn’t make up all the beliefs and philosophical teachings himself (or otherwise why wouldn’t he have tried to take more credit for it?) I can think of three core beliefs that might not have come from a real Jesus : -the idea that the Jewish Law was superceded by a new covenant (in the Gospels, Jesus is quoted as saying that not a single dot in the Law will change till the end of times) -the idea that whatever he was teaching was intended to be an universal religion, as opposed to a reformation of Judaism (although he does himself convert Samaritans in the Gospels, he also explicitely tells his disciples not to preach to Samaritans or gentiles, but only to Jews). -the very idea that Jesus is god. It’s not extremely obvious to me that he believed/taught that himself. Also, according to muslim sources there still was a Jewish Christian sect in existence around the 8th century or so, that purpotedly followed the teachings of Peter (and had them in written form) along with the Jewish law, and considered Paul as having betrayed the meaning of the teachings of Jesus in a fundamental way. ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2012, 7:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-jesus-myth-theory-universally-disregarded/623392/65 "2012-05-29T19:57:56Z")
> [@septimus](#): > > BTW, Rome, which probably had records of Pontius Pilate’s activities in Judaea, tried to suppress Christianity. Uhhhh … don’t you think they might have pointed out that the crucifixion was fictional if it were fictional? I’m not sure that the actual existence of Jesus was in any way relevant for Romans. What mattered was the consequence of Christians’ beliefs (like refusing to take part in official cult and sacrifices). Also, it’s very unobvious to me that Rome would have been able to tell whether or not Jesus had existed/had been executed so long after the facts. I strongly doubt they would have kept a precise record of whom had been executed for what reason in every part of the empire during the last century or so. Anyway, assuming that Romans (or Jews from Jerusalem, or whoever) actually had argued that the crucifixion was fictional, how would we know? It’s not like every early anti-Christian writing has been piously preserved for future generations. All we have are some quotes by late Christian authors at a time when Christianism was firmly implanted in their “refutatios” of contradictory arguments. Again, this revolves around the same issue : we have essentially no first hand material, not only about Jesus, but not even about his early followers or early opponents (or the early followers who also had been early opponents of what would become mainstream Chritianism, i.e. “Paulism”). So, we can’t tell what people said or thought about Jesus and Christianism early on. ---
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2012, 8:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-jesus-myth-theory-universally-disregarded/623392/66 "2012-05-29T20:35:33Z")
We will never know either way, and in a sense it does not matter. Whether a “historical” Jesus existed or not (and I’m inclined to thing one did - simply because there is nothing improbable about a trouble-making rabbi in that time & place) has absolutely no bearing on the religious attributes and miracles assigned to him. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2012, 8:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-jesus-myth-theory-universally-disregarded/623392/67 "2012-05-29T20:55:01Z")
> [@septimus](#): > > I’ve just wasted half-an-hour searching unsuccessfully through my bookcases for the book I have which summarizes why manuscripts before about 200 AD are rare. ☹ (I suspect it fell behind my bed. One of these [del]days[/del] years I’m going to have to get organized. :smack: ) Obviously the manuscripts fell behind someone’s bed. > [@](#): > > But [this webpage](http://debate.org.uk/topics/history/bib-qur/bibmanu.htm) may make a similar point another way. It mentions a copy of Matthew Chapter 26 dated to 60 AD or earlier. > It also mentions that the earliest extant copies of the writings of Herodotus, Thucydides, Aristotle, and Julius Caesar all date to 900 AD or later! Were these writers mythical? You are confusing the existence of manuscripts from that time today with accepted evidence of the existence of those manuscripts. No one is disputing that the Gospels precede our earliest copies of them, just like Aristotle. BTW, a while back I read that it is not clear if Caesar wrote Caesar. > [@](#): > > BTW, Rome, which probably had records of Pontius Pilate’s activities in Judaea, tried to suppress Christianity. Uhhhh … don’t you think they might have pointed out that the crucifixion was fictional if it were fictional? As mentioned, Rome wouldn’t have cared. In any case, we don’t know that Jesus even got crucified. (I accept he lived.) Perhaps he got run over by a chariot, and a crucifixion worked better in the martyrdom approach. Remember, that Jesus, even according to the Bible, was not even a minor threat to Rome or Roman rule in Judea. ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2012, 9:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-jesus-myth-theory-universally-disregarded/623392/68 "2012-05-29T21:05:04Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > Jesus, even according to the Bible, was not even a minor threat to Rome Well he didn’t smoke and he didn’t fuck. I don’t remember if he drank or not though. ---
**Author:** ![appleciders](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85f322/32.png) [@appleciders](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/appleciders)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2012, 10:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-jesus-myth-theory-universally-disregarded/623392/69 "2012-05-29T22:48:08Z")
> [@New\_Deal\_Democrat](#): > > Anything written before this revolt is likely to be more accurate than anything written afterwards. Slightly more than half of the New Testament consist of epistles written by St. Paul before the revolt. Unfortunately, St. Paul writes little of the life of Jesus. Nevertheless, it is doubtful that he would write so much about a man who never lived. Uh, well, kinda. Only about half of the Epistles are reliably agreed to be written by Paul. (Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, 1 Thessalonians, Phillipians, and Philemon.) Three more still receive vigorous scholarly debate (2 Thessalonians, Ephesians, and Colossians) and four are commonly agreed to be pseudipigraphal, or more bluntly, forgeries. (1 and 2 Timothy, Titus, and Hebrews.) > [@](#): > > Acts seems to have been written when St. Paul was still alive. It ends with him experiencing a comfortable house arrest in Rome… > > If Acts was written before 60 AD, Luke was written sooner, and Mark sooner still. Luke and Mark would be written when eye witnesses to the ministry of Jesus still lived, and when written records still existed. Sure, but there’s no reason to think that Acts was written anytime like 60 A.D. Scholars pretty much agree that Luke was writing between 70 and 100 A.D. You can say “if”, but it’s just speculative, and flies directly in the face of modern scholarship. > [@Martin\_Hyde](#): > > Yeah, I don’t believe we know the “real history” behind how Paul became a Christian. The biblical history is that he saw resurrected Jesus in a vision and became a convert. The reality is he probably met some early Christian leaders in the region and dug their teachings. Because obviously it’s highly unlikely there was any actual vision or resurrected Jesus at all. But it’s probably historical fact Paul never met historical Jesus, because I think otherwise their earthly meeting would factor heavily into the New Testament if they had. Instead Paul is said to have only seen Jesus in a post-death miraculous vision. > > But Paul’s age would not have been very much younger than historical Jesus, so in Paul’s time there would have been some people who had learned from historical Jesus in the region first hand. I think we can say pretty darn confidently that Paul never met Jesus (in the flesh, at least). In Luke-Acts, Paul doesn’t appear until well after Jesus’ death, and he’s enthusiastically persecuting the nascent Jesus cult at the time. After his conversion on the road to Damascus, he spends lots of time palling around with the disciples, preaching and doing mission work around the Eastern Mediterranean. In Galatians (one of the letters that scholars confidently agree is authentically Pauline) Paul confidently smacks down the notion that his authority came from mere repetition of what the apostles had taught him, but rather claims divine revelation. In both of the sources that discuss Paul’s relationship to the apostles, it’s clear that he spent lots of time around people who knew Jesus before Easter, and that he never met Jesus directly. If he had met Jesus directly, I’m fairly sure he’d have used it to support his arguments instead of denying it. Denying it doesn’t make any sense as a lie, and it makes a lot of sense if it’s true. ---
**Author:** ![appleciders](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85f322/32.png) [@appleciders](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/appleciders)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2012, 11:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-jesus-myth-theory-universally-disregarded/623392/70 "2012-05-29T23:11:43Z")
> [@septimus](#): > > I’ve just wasted half-an-hour searching unsuccessfully through my bookcases for the book I have which summarizes why manuscripts before about 200 AD are rare. ☹ (I suspect it fell behind my bed. One of these [del]days[/del] years I’m going to have to get organized. :smack: ) > > But [this webpage](http://debate.org.uk/topics/history/bib-qur/bibmanu.htm) may make a similar point another way. It mentions a copy of Matthew Chapter 26 dated to 60 AD or earlier. I’m, uh, _really_ skeptical of that cite. That writer has a clear axe to grind (i.e., that the entire NT other than Revelation and John’s epistles were written before 70 A.D.) and his reasoning for dating the manuscript you refer to are as follows: “The most significant find, however, is a manuscript fragment from the book of Matthew (chapt.26) called the Magdalene Manuscript which has been analysed by Dr. Carsten Thiede, and also written up in his book The Jesus Papyrus. Using a sophisticated analysis of the handwriting of the fragment by employing a special state-of-the-art microscope, he differentiated between 20 separate micrometer layers of the papyrus, measuring the height and depth of the ink as well as the angle of the stylus used by the scribe. After this analysis Thiede was able to compare it with other papyri from that period; notably manuscripts found at Qumran (dated to 58 AD), another at Herculaneum (dated prior to 79 AD), a further one from the fortress of Masada (dated to between 73/74 AD), and finally a papyrus from the Egyptian town of Oxyrynchus. The Magdalene Manuscript fragments matches all four, and in fact is almost a twin to the papyrus found in Oxyrynchus, which bears the date of 65/66 AD Thiede concludes that these papyrus fragments of St. Matthew’s Gospel were written no later than this date and probably earlier. That suggests that we either have a portion of the original gospel of Matthew, or an immediate copy which was written while Matthew and the other disciples and eyewitnesses to the events were still alive. This would be the oldest manuscript portion of our Bible in existence today, one which co-exists with the original writers!” If that’s more than you want to read, here’s the short version: he’s used handwriting analysis to link this fragment with a couple other fragments found in Italy, Egypt, and Israel that have dates around 70 A.D., and therefore believes that this fragment is from the same time. I’m skeptical of both his identification of this particular scribe and the idea that since these other documents are from 70 A.D., so must this other one be (presumably the scribe had a career lasting longer than ten years). > [@Voyager](#): > > As mentioned, Rome wouldn’t have cared. In any case, we don’t know that Jesus even got crucified. (I accept he lived.) Perhaps he got run over by a chariot, and a crucifixion worked better in the martyrdom approach. > Remember, that Jesus, even according to the Bible, was not even a minor threat to Rome or Roman rule in Judea. Well, maybe. It’s possible that Jesus died in some other manner, but since the crucifixion was so foreign to the Jewish expectations for the Messiah at the time (a conquering King who arrived from the clouds and freed the Jews from servitude), it makes little sense to give Jesus a death normally associated with murderers and thieves. (It would be implausible to make it up, is what I’m saying.) Besides, nearly every early source acknowledges that he was crucified, and I’m not aware of any early sources, canonical or otherwise, that contradict it. Considering how universally the early sources agree on this point, I think we can say with some confidence that being crucified is the one thing of which we are most certain about Jesus. ---
**Author:** ![TonySinclair](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/49beb7/32.png) [@TonySinclair](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TonySinclair)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2012, 1:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-jesus-myth-theory-universally-disregarded/623392/71 "2012-05-30T01:15:30Z")
> [@septimus](#): > > With John the Baptist and other historic “Messiahs” to choose from, why would Gospel writers have invented a new one, especially since their writings were early enough that some older people would have recognized such an invention as fiction? I’ve never understood why people advance this argument. If the gospels are true, then aside from various “personal” miracles seen by a small group of eye-witnesses, there were many “public” miracles or remarkable events directly connected with Jesus, which should have generated relatively widespread comment and notoriety. To name a few: the Star of Bethlehem, and the Magi inquiring of Herod about the new King of the Jews; the subsequent Slaughter of the Innocents; the proclamation of the Messiah by various holy people in the Temple of Jerusalem following the presentation of the infant Jesus (which directly contradicts Matthew, who has Joseph not only fleeing Herod at that time, but staying away from Jerusalem for the next ten years); the precocity of the adolescent Jesus debating Temple theologians; feeding the 5000 and 4000; and to skip ahead, all the miracles at the time of Jesus’s death — the rending of the veil, the darkening of the sun, the earthquake, and last but not least, the invasion of Jerusalem by zombie saints. So it wasn’t just stories about Jesus that old-timers had to deny, it was public miracles. And yet, they did deny them, to the point that Christianity never became more than a small cult in Israel. Jesus said that a prophet is without honor in his own country, but that wasn’t true of Muhammad, or Buddha, or Zoroaster. Those men inspired large followings in their native lands, but only a handful of Jews took up belief in Jesus. If it hadn’t been for Paul, who someone above noted was a contemporary, but failed to note that he never met Jesus, and didn’t believe a word of the tales about him until his “conversion” gave him a career, probably Jesus would have faded into obscurity like the other alleged Messiahs of the time. It was only when Paul took his message outside of Israel, to people who had no knowledge of Jewish prophecy, and no means to check his miracle tales, that Christianity caught on. So why would anyone argue that there were people in Israel in a position to deny the truth of the Gospels, when the overwhelming majority of them did exactly that? ---
**Author:** ![Martin\_Hyde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@Martin\_Hyde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martin_Hyde)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2012, 2:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-jesus-myth-theory-universally-disregarded/623392/72 "2012-05-30T02:01:34Z")
I’m definitely not a biblical scholar, but I think a lot of the miracles you’re saying were denied by the Israelites of the time probably were not part of the Jesus story from the beginning. Some of the miracles you’ve mentioned have clear analogues in pagan or other mythologies and most likely were added to the Jesus legend somewhere between Iudaea and the more Hellenistic parts of the Eastern Roman Empire. I may be misreading your point, but I don’t know that we actually have any clear evidence **any** of Jesus followers were pushing these miracle stories in the contemporary period. In fact, it seems most likely to me they weren’t. There also isn’t to my knowledge a super clear cut picture of how widespread adoption of Jesus teachings were by Jews, but there were definitely Jewish Christians (followers of the law of Moses and in every way Jewish with the exception that they viewed Jesus as the Messiah) in decent numbers before the Great Revolt and still some by the time of the later Bar Kokhba revolt–although they were heavily persecuted by the Sanhedrin (as best as we can tell.) Once the Great Revolt happened you literally saw almost a depopulation of the Jews, with some estimates suggesting 500,000+ killed by the Romans or a reduction of their population by some 90% (less reliable ancient sources claim 1m+ dead.) That happened in 70 AD and aside from some very small communities Jews who viewed Jesus as the Messiah were probably mostly destroyed along with the rest of the Jews and the ones who survived had some really good reasons at that point to move away from being Jews at all since that wasn’t exactly a great thing to be at that time. But additionally, it seems really likely to me historical Jesus did not intend to start a new religion and in fact wanted people to continue following Mosaic Law. So it seems likely to me that Jews in Iudaea would be much more likely to adopt Jesus teachings without becoming “Pauline Christians” because Paul’s brand of Christianity was specifically un-Jewish and very obviously was being marketed to people of Greek and Roman culture. So you could have had a lot of Jews accepting Jesus philosophy to varying degrees and some even accepting him as the Messiah, without them forsaking Judaism at all (since it seems likely Jesus himself always viewed himself as a Jewish religious leader and not a founder of a new religion.) That’s obviously speculation. But I don’t really think there were many miracles for Jews to refute, most of the really far out there myth and miracle stuff was clearly adopted from pagan mythology and probably wasn’t heavily disseminated in Iudaea at least initially. I guess many years later when Christianity became more mainstream in the rest of the Empire it may have “came back” that way to a degree, but by then would have been pretty foreign to the remaining Jews there. ---
**Author:** ![New\_Deal\_Democrat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/9d8465/32.png) [@New\_Deal\_Democrat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/New_Deal_Democrat)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2012, 12:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-jesus-myth-theory-universally-disregarded/623392/73 "2012-05-30T12:40:48Z")
> [@appleciders](#): > > Sure, but there’s no reason to think that Acts was written anytime like 60 A.D. Scholars pretty much agree that Luke was writing between 70 and 100 A.D. You can say “if”, but it’s just speculative, and flies directly in the face of modern scholarship. When it comes to Biblical scholarship just about everything is speculative. Despite a scientific study of the New Testament that has gone on for at least a century and a half there is still no agreement about when the gospels were written, where they were written, and who wrote them. There is a slight consensus, even among non Fundamentalist scholars, that the Gospel of St. Luke and Acts were written by St. Luke, who was a traveling companion of St. Paul during his latter ministry. Even if he wrote after the martyrdom of St. Paul in about 65 AD, he would not have had the insensitive to wait a generation later to start writing his Gospel. ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2012, 1:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-jesus-myth-theory-universally-disregarded/623392/74 "2012-05-30T13:20:06Z")
> [@clairobscur](#): > > Apparently there are some evidences that such a “spiritual messiah” concept/belief has existed, but more to the point, this theory argues that nowhere in the epistles most likely written by him Paul shows any knowledge of Christ being a real blood and flesh individual. > > So, the theory goes that Paul never taught that there had been a Christ living on Earth but rather that he believed in and taught about a spiritual Messiah. The theory that Paul didn’t believe that Jesus was a flesh-and-blood human being is one of the most goofy theories out there. Paul referred to Jesus as a human being and related facts about Jesus’ life often. For instance, the first sentence in the Bible written by Paul is this: Paul, a bondservant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated to the gospel of God which He promised before through His prophets in the Holy Scriptures, concerning His Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who was born of the seed of David according to the flesh, and declared to be the Son of God with power according to the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead. [Romans 1:1-4 NKJV] ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2012, 8:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-jesus-myth-theory-universally-disregarded/623392/75 "2012-05-30T20:25:15Z")
> [@Meatros](#): > > While this is all correct to a point, there is no evidence that Christianity was relayed to the scholars or the upper class either during or directly after Jesus’s time. In fact, the first scholarly Christians (aside from Paul) were 100 + years after the life of Jesus (Justin Martyr). > > Jesus’s direct followers were not the upper crust nor were they scholars. > [@septimus](#): > > I’ve just wasted half-an-hour searching unsuccessfully through my bookcases for the book I have which summarizes why manuscripts before about 200 AD are rare. ☹ (I suspect it fell behind my bed. One of these [del]days[/del] years I’m going to have to get organized. :smack: ) > > But [this webpage](http://debate.org.uk/topics/history/bib-qur/bibmanu.htm) may make a similar point another way. It mentions a copy of Matthew Chapter 26 dated to 60 AD or earlier. > > It also mentions that the earliest extant copies of the writings of Herodotus, Thucydides, Aristotle, and Julius Caesar all date to 900 AD or later! Were these writers mythical? > > BTW, Rome, which probably had records of Pontius Pilate’s activities in Judaea, tried to suppress Christianity. Uhhhh … don’t you think they might have pointed out that the crucifixion was fictional if it were fictional? Of course, records from that time are rare. I don’t think we know, for example, who Herod’s number 2 in command was; we see no evidence of Paul or his trial in the record of Rome that I have heard of. so, a lot detail is missing… no surprise. Wat detail do we have of the cult of Isis or Mithraism? So what is the record for any mention of Christianity or Christians at the earliest? OTOH, the variety and detail of the religious writings of the time are pretty complex and detailed. While miracles and stars in the east and such are obvious embellishments, it’s a bit more difficult to completely fabricate a complete set of Epistles, Lettes, and Acts that are even as roughly coherent as the existing record. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2012, 12:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-jesus-myth-theory-universally-disregarded/623392/76 "2012-05-31T00:32:00Z")
> [@New\_Deal\_Democrat](#): > > When it comes to Biblical scholarship just about everything is speculative. Despite a scientific study of the New Testament that has gone on for at least a century and a half there is still no agreement about when the gospels were written, where they were written, and who wrote them. > > There is a slight consensus, even among non Fundamentalist scholars, that the Gospel of St. Luke and Acts were written by St. Luke, who was a traveling companion of St. Paul during his latter ministry. Even if he wrote after the martyrdom of St. Paul in about 65 AD, he would not have had the insensitive to wait a generation later to start writing his Gospel. There’s also a consensus that John was the originator of the Gospel by that name. Mind you, if so it was likely dictated to a scribe and almost doubtless was edited after John’s death by John’s own disciples. One other thing of note- at no time did the Romans ever try to cast doubt upon the reality of a man called Jesus. Doubts as to the historic Jesus are a very recent thing. If Paul had made Jesus up out of whole cloth, why didn’t the Romans or the Sanhedrin call him on it? ---
**Author:** ![Bartman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/779978/32.png) [@Bartman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bartman)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2012, 1:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-jesus-myth-theory-universally-disregarded/623392/77 "2012-05-31T01:02:42Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > There’s also a consensus that John was the originator of the Gospel by that name. Mind you, if so it was likely dictated to a scribe and almost doubtless was edited after John’s death by John’s own disciples. Huh? A quick look at all my sources about John say the exact opposite. John was almost certainly not the author of the Gospel in any way shape or form, except that possibly he either penned a prior book or started oral traditions that came to be included in John. Where are you getting the idea that there is a consensus for a Johannine authorship? There are certainly scholars that hold he was or could be, but they seem to be in the minority. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2012, 1:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-jesus-myth-theory-universally-disregarded/623392/78 "2012-05-31T01:20:09Z")
> [@Bartman](#): > > Huh? A quick look at all my sources about John say the exact opposite. John was almost certainly not the author of the Gospel in any way shape or form, except that possibly he either penned a prior book or started oral traditions that came to be included in John. > > Where are you getting the idea that there is a consensus for a Johannine authorship? There are certainly scholars that hold he was or could be, but they seem to be in the minority. I am away from my desk for a day or two, so I’ll have to come back with cites, but the Oxford guide sez as much. Mind you “_authorship_” is a strong term here, and I used “_originator_” not “author”. Few think John put pen to parchment and wrote the Gospel himself. But few dudes did that back in those days anyway (Ceasar was considered almost unique in doing so himself,). The consensus seems to be that John dictated his thoughts and the stories in his Gospel to his disciples. How many of the actual words are his is another matter, and no doubt the Gospel came to it’s final form after John’s death. At worst you could say it’s “Inspired By”. ---
**Author:** ![Bartman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/779978/32.png) [@Bartman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bartman)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2012, 3:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-jesus-myth-theory-universally-disregarded/623392/79 "2012-05-31T03:05:54Z")
OK, I read that as more of an authorship claim. But even using origin or “inspired by,” I’m not sure I can agree that there is consensus as to the origin of the Gospel. For every scholar like Brown, who claims it was drawn from either an earlier work by John, or even an oral tradition started by him, there are other scholars like Bauckham who make arguments for other authors. Bauckham even draws a number of pretty specific conclusions about the evangelist. Not that Bauckham’s is a majority opinion either. Ehrman would functionally disagree with everything Bauckham says, and the traditional view. Ehrman argues for an author who is wholly unfamiliar with Judea and had no first or even second hand contact with any eyewitness, let alone John in particular. I don’t think you can claim consensus… because if there is one I certainly haven’t seen one. ---
**Author:** ![TonySinclair](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/49beb7/32.png) [@TonySinclair](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TonySinclair)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2012, 3:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-jesus-myth-theory-universally-disregarded/623392/80 "2012-05-31T03:17:16Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > If Paul had made Jesus up out of whole cloth, why didn’t the Romans or the Sanhedrin call him on it? Why would they? Some obviously crazy guy was ranting about how a ghost he met had told him things. All the Romans would care about is whether he was causing trouble, not whether his imaginary friend had actually been alive at one time. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-jesus-myth-theory-universally-disregarded/623392.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-jesus-myth-theory-universally-disregarded/623392.md?page=5)