How Historians Know Jesus Did Not Exist

[Rhythmcs]

I think the larger problem is that so do the historicists...what with magic book being the only source for the notion there was such a character in the first place.

[Paleophyte]

As far as a historical Jesus goes, I'm apagnostic. I neither know nor care. It doesn't matter greatly since the myths that have been built around any such individual(s) have utterly obscured any historicity. Looking at what little we can tease out of history it feels to me a lot like the origins of some of the more recent religions for which we do have historical records. Simply put, if I were going to invent a religion from whole cloth I'd have done a better job of it. Early Christianity feels like the sort of horrible organic mess that you get when you let badly misunderstood mythology go septic and fester under a hot sun. But that's just my gut feeling.

[Paleophyte]

  Okay then.  We agree historians won't find the Jesus of the magic book. 

[Minimalist]

Write this down....it doesn't happen all that often...but Jerry get's it.

The search for the "historical Jesus" is a valid pursuit, not because we're going to confirm historically that a guy walked on water and rose from the dead, but because historians try to piece together an accurate portrait of the human experience and how it came to be.

Valid...but fruitless.  If no one in the early first century could even be bothered noting the activities of a miracle-working godboy who was supposedly walking around doing magic tricks what chance does some shlepper who happened to bear the very common name "Yeshua" have of being noticed?  Answer?  Zero.  Perhaps more to the point the well-known xtian author, John Dominic Crossan, once noted that the plethora of historical jesuses which emerged from the pursuit of the historical jesus was an embarassment.  Of course then he proceeded to invent yet another variant of HJ to throw into the mix.

These gospels are like a Rohrschach test for jesus freaks.  They see in them whatever they want to see, write it down and SWEAR TO FUCKING GOD that his version is the truth.  Well...it isn't.  It's later concocted, amended, expanded story telling in an age where telling stories was a principal form of entertainment.

Keep going Jerry.

[Cavebear]

Write this down....it doesn't happen all that often...but Jerry get's it.

The search for the "historical Jesus" is a valid pursuit, not because we're going to confirm historically that a guy walked on water and rose from the dead, but because historians try to piece together an accurate portrait of the human experience and how it came to be.

Valid...but fruitless.  If no one in the early first century could even be bothered noting the activities of a miracle-working godboy who was supposedly walking around doing magic tricks what chance does some shlepper who happened to bear the very common name "Yeshua" have of being noticed?  Answer?  Zero.  Perhaps more to the point the well-known xtian author, John Dominic Crossan, once noted that the plethora of historical jesuses which emerged from the pursuit of the historical jesus was an embarassment.  Of course then he proceeded to invent yet another variant of HJ to throw into the mix.

These gospels are like a Rohrschach test for jesus freaks.  They see in them whatever they want to see, write it down and SWEAR TO FUCKING GOD that his version is the truth.  Well...it isn't.  It's later concocted, amended, expanded story telling in an age where telling stories was a principal form of entertainment.

Keep going Jerry.

My version is that an itinerant preacher among many espoused some obvious ideas about how people actually lived and some later guys made a religion from the obvious.  Specifically to make their religion seem a bit kinder than the existing "God will kill you all" one.

[Rhythmcs]

Which obvious ideas, kinder than what religion? I mean, the thing about christianity.... as it emerged ......was it's remarkable cruelty and incomprehensible doctrines. The existing religion in rome was no such religion..and christianity borrowed it's obvious ideas from them, centuries after the purported fact of the matter. That would continue for centuries more. No itenerant preacher ever mattered to that, and that is how we got the stories about the purported man that we have today.

Jesus the itenerant preacher is a negotiation with reality in which the historicists still have no leverage. There were uncountable "jesus"..in that sense. We know about some of them..but, for whatever reason, no one ever wrote about the man himself..even in that case.

[Minimalist]

Completely possible, Cavebear.

But there is no actual evidence for it.   Aye, And there is the rub.

You know, some years back I was reading one of Ehrman's books and he was discussing his vision for prior variants of the gospels which served as "sources" for the crap we have now.  [We do not have any such sources or even references to such sources.] At one point he said something like....'well, unless you think they made it all up there must have been some sort of source material...."  words to that effect.

It struck me that he simply cannot get over the idea that his boy jesus is "special."  Humanity has invented roughly 10,000 gods/goddesses over the centuries.  Would Ehrman think that there was a "historical" basis for them or would he think that someone made them up?  I'll let you guess which option I'd pick.

Early Christianity was not a monolithic creed.  It was scattered into an unknown number of small sects scattered across the Eastern Roman Empire and generally not in contact with one another.  The Greek philosopher, Celsus, tells us that when they did come into contact they tried to beat the shit out of each other.  

[Dexta]

Here's how I know Jesus didn't exist: miracles don't happen.

[possibletarian]

I had to listen to, rather than watch it, for the very reasons already mentioned.
It contained nothing I hadn't heard before, but it was useful to have them all in one place. It could be useful to listen to it with someone while pausing it to look at the points raised.

Though finding a Christian to methodically go through their beliefs is like trying to nail Jello to a wall.

[Minimalist]

Quite.  That would only work with someone who is already at the "Doubting Stage."  True believers are a hopeless waste of energy.

[Paleophyte]

Though finding a Christian to methodically go through their beliefs is like trying to nail Jello to a wall.

I've eaten cafeteria Jello that could have been nailed to a wall and in some cases had to be tacked down to keep it from preying on the other desserts.

[Kim]

Well, I for one adore the origionals. Do I love all the characters in the stories? Fuck yes!  Of all the interpretations & versions to come later, I hold the origional stories & characters to be the one true binding faith that there may be a hopeful future we can build together.  

Show ContentSpoiler:

Yep. Give me the 1960s STAR TREK.
The rest - meh - those can be someone else's bullshit arguments.
And yes, none of it is true, not even the origional.
As far as ... as far as the mind's eye.
   

     

[Rhythmcs]

It's amusing to think about why we don't know basic details about any jesus-the-man. We don't know where any jesus the man was born, for example, because the details proto christians and later catholic authorities chose were selected for explicitly ideological purposes. Jesus, they believed, had to satisfy prophetic expectations. We don't understand the family tree because, out of an abundance of caution, the authors themselves decided to include alternate paths to prophetic realities. He would have to have been born somewhere, though. Have to have had a family.

The hj of scholarly consensus was some guy who was baptized and crucified. These details of jesus-the-man we might want to know, completely absent, and completely absent by explicit and explicitly christian insistence.

[Minimalist]

That's a good point but it is even worse.

Xtians cannot even agree on when he was allegedly born. Only two of their 4 canonical gospels deal with the birth narrative at all and they disagree by 10-12 years. This suggests to me that initially the question of was of no importance and it was only after he had been created as a human that someone felt compelled to provide an answer to the question.

Xtians also cannot agree on when he died.  We are told only that Pilate was prefect of Judaea which covers a period from 26-36/7 CE.  They also can't agree on the day.  The synoptics say it was on Passover while John says it was on the Day of Preparation before Passover.  

The contradictions betwen the gospel accounts suggest that these were doctrines which developed independently over the years to suit the particular sect they were serving.  The church made only minimal effort to harmonize them.  Mainly what they did was tell people not to read the fucking things  and the priests would tell them what they needed to know....after they finished molesting the children!

[pattylt]

When Richard Carrier told the story of Betty Crocker, that finalized in my head that it’s very possible Jesus never existed.

She was introduced as the face of General Mills bakery products. At first, that all she was…a face. Then, they added a family, a history, enough that in another 100 years, if one didn’t know about her, they’d think she was an actual person that represented the baker of cookies. But, she never existed, either.

And the gospels read similarly, from an abbreviated story in Mark all the way to a god-man in John. Each added their gloss…Matthew wanted a Moses character that fulfilled biblical prophecy, Luke wanted an example of human compassion and self sacrifice. Even the reason Jesus died is different in Luke from the others. And they all seem to be speaking to their own group of worshippers, not telling some historical tale. It’s a manual for preaching more than for worshipping.

Oh, if only they’d died a proper death in Jerusalem instead of hooking Romans into the cult…mostly by Paul. Funny how Paul never met Jesus and doesn’t mention a damn thing Jesus did on earth! It’s like there wasn’t someone to actually remember!

[Minimalist]

Precisely why Carrier recounted the story, Patty.

But there are other examples.....William Tell for one.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/i...l-2198511/

In Search of William Tell

Seven hundred years ago, William Tell shot an arrow through an apple on his son’s head and launched the struggle for Swiss independence. Or did he?

There is just one small problem: many historians doubt that Tell ever made those two famous arrow shots in 1307, and many are convinced that no such person as William Tell ever existed.

For one thing, his story wasn’t set down fully until 1569- 70, some 250 years after the events it describes, by historian Aegidius Tschudi, who, among other things, got his dates wrong.

In that respect the Tell Tale and the jesus tales have that in common.  Both were written long after the events they claimed to describe.  Then there is the story of King Harold Bluetooth who demanded the same act from a boastful archer some 400 years earlier and a still earlier tale along the same lines from England...albeit the Viking-controlled part.

But at least these guys actually had a skill.  Unlike this jesus character.

BTW, for the record Harald Bluetooth gave his name to the silly little device that people today walk around with stuck in their ear!

[jerry mcmasters]

Min you are the only person I know of that treats the belief that there might be a historical Jesus with the belief that the earth is flat.

[Minimalist]

No, Jerry.....we have photos of the earth and it is a sphere.


But we have fuckall on this jesus asshole.

[Rhythmcs]

Precisely why Carrier recounted the story, Patty.

But there are other examples.....William Tell for one.

Paul Bunyan, another.  The red river lumber company and two seattle authors can be mostly credited with taking a nebulous workplace tall tale and turning it into a legendary personality.  They even added a superpowered partner! Still, people will float Some Guy..or..in the case of pual bunyon, much more specifically than jesus, some definitely real guy named fabian fournier.  Just like jesus, though, if the stories were ever really about him..or even a combo character between him and another historical paul bunyan candidate...Bon Jean... at some point in the past... that point is long past and was already long past before the two parties I lead with started fleshing out the character as we know it.  

We know more about the historical paul bunyans..even if there really weren't any, than we do about the historical jesus, flat out assuming there were one.

[jerry mcmasters]

If it were completely cut from whole cloth they wouldn't have had the somewhat human looking character of the NT wandering around the small towns of Galilee seeking attention as cult leaders always have. It has all the messy, sloppy fingerprints of an actual person around which later it was convenient to manipulate to their advantage through deification. Most likely there was a historical Jesus.

[Minimalist]

You can't say that.  We simply don't know.

First off, do you understand the difference between Historical Jesus and Biblical Jesus.  This is a crucial point.

The Mythical Jesus is simple.  He is as phony as EVERY OTHER GOD INVENTED BY THE HUMAN IMAGINATION.  But religitards have a unique talent to say that all other gods are phony but THEIR god is real.

It's horseshit of course.

[Thumpalumpacus]

Why in the world should I care. Dude got nailed up, dude got stripped down and plopped in a ditch. Dude got badass writeups from the then-current version of Lester Bangs, with about all the realism of a Bangs tour write-up.

Who gives a shit?

[Minimalist]

It's just an intellectual exercise.  There are people who think they get to tell everyone else how to live because they believe in some silly fairy tale.

[Paleophyte]

When Richard Carrier told the story of Betty Crocker, that finalized in my head that it’s very possible Jesus never existed.

She was introduced as the face of General Mills bakery products.  At first, that all she was…a face.  Then, they added a family, a history, enough that in another 100 years, if one didn’t know about her, they’d think she was an actual person that represented the baker of cookies.  But, she never existed, either.

To me this highlights the big difference between Jesus and the obvious fictions. Betty Crocker is much more believable, largely because she was properly thought out and designed by reasonably consistent editors. By contrast, the Gospels aren't even consistent within any single one of them, much less between them. The biblical story of Jesus is painfully organic. If it had been made up it would have read so much better.

The evangelicals don't hate Harry Poter because there's magic in it. They hate it because it shows children what good fiction should look like.

[jerry mcmasters]

You can't say that.  We simply don't know.

Of course, Min.  This whole conversation takes place under the umbrella of "We don't know for certain, I could be wrong."  Including everything you write.

First off, do you understand the difference between Historical Jesus and Biblical Jesus.  This is a crucial point.

The Mythical Jesus is simple.  He is as phony as EVERY OTHER GOD INVENTED BY THE HUMAN IMAGINATION.  But religitards have a unique talent to say that all other gods are phony but THEIR god is real.

It's horseshit of course.

I don't know why you're heading off in that direction, there is no confusion here.  We've only been talking (hundreds of pages on the other thread) about the quest for the Historical Jesus.  None of us atheists believe in a "Biblical Jesus" or in whatever "Mythical Jesus" is.  (Isn't a "Mythical Jesus" by definition not real??)