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Your presence here is okay, everyone's is, the corrections come when the religion of record (the board we are on) is outright contradicted or slammed.
What is the actual evidence for the existence of Jesus?
- Thread starter Kylie
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Aupmanyav
Be your own guru.
That is OK but I tend to fly off at a tangent, so I deffer.
Longfellow
Well-Known Member
I agree. None of the arguments that I've seen online or from authors, including in this thread, would be enough to convince me that he existed, if I didn't have reasons of my own..
Longfellow
Well-Known Member
I think that the emergence of the Christian community and the New Testament is a good reason for thinking that the stories are about a real person, but maybe not in the way that others are thinking. What makes it significant to me is the absence of any other origin story in any Christian writings, any story that any Christians have ever told about the origin of Christianity that does not include the Jesus in the gospels as a real person, as part of the story. If nothing in the gospels is about a real person, then why is there no historical trace in any Christian writings of any other story about how Christianity started?
(later) For me, it isn't that there's no other plausible explanation for the emergence of Christianity and the New Testament. There are explanations that seem plausible to me. What's convincing to me is that there is no historical trace in the first centuries of Christianity ever being explained in any other way than growing out of the life and teachings of a real person. Finding other possible explanations for the emergence of Christianity and the New Testament, no matter how plausible they are, means nothing if there's no trace in the first centuries of anyone explaining it in any of those ways, or in any other way at all without Jesus as a real person as part of the explanation.
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Why would there be?
If there were though, those items would have been lost or destroyed. All kinds of materials that were condemned as so-called "heresies" were destroyed by the institutional church.
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If you were looking for something like that, the mystery religions / secret cults of the era would probably be the resource.
Longfellow
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And yet we know that there were such materials. We know no such thing about any Christians telling any story about their origins that did not include Jesus as a real person. There was no heresy that said that there was no such person as a person named Jesus who lived a human life in human form.
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Again, why would they?
Even if it weren't based on a real person, they would be likely to believe it were, or say it were.
I don't think all that many people say "this is fiction" about their beliefs.
The only thing that remotely comes to mind anything like that would be modern day people claiming Jedi as their religion.
AFAIK they are not claiming the fictional source is biographical. They find it inspirational in a philosophical way.
But most historical religions self-report their founders and early leaders as historically real, at least AFAIK.
I am not sure what if anything that proves, but it is pretty common.
Maybe there are exceptions?
Longfellow
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Have you ever seen or heard of any of those having a story about the origin of Christianity that does not include Jesus as a real person?
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I haven't delved into it looking for that type of information. If you wanted to find something like that you could look into scholars who have documented the mystery religions, is what I am suggesting.
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OR maybe what you are looking for are the contemporary scholars who go against the grain and are considered "mythcists" is that what you mean?
Here's a link with some articles that talk about such ideas.
However, only having skimmed the site, I do not believe they come down unequivocally on the side of mythicists. I think they just engage those ideas.
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Longfellow
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Actually my point was that the best reason that I can think of for thinking that the stories of Christianity grew out of the life and teachings of a real person is an argument that I've never seen in online discussions or from authors: the absence of any origin stories for Christianity from anyone Christian or non-Christian, from that time, that do not include Jesus as a real person. Saying that all such stories were erased is not realistic, and is contradicted by the survival of stories about heresies.
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Um... there's probably a lot to pick apart there, but for diminishing returns.
You probably already know that the old saying "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence"
That observation can be used on both sides of this particular topic.
Saying that contradicting stories were erased is absolutely realistic, as it definitely occurred, as indicated by the stories about heresies.
What we generally don't have are the works of the so called "heretics" in much volume. What you do have is the reports written later by the church theologians criticizing the heresies but not having the "heretics" own words to check them against. You've probably already heard the term "the victors write history"
And you probably already know that historical evidence is rarely blatant and cut and dried, but has to be examined and interpreted. People in historical documents did not always blatantly write out the information we are looking for.
Anyway, if you are really interested in the arguments made by those who claim Jesus was mythical instead of real, and where they derive their evidence, you could look at this book Did Jesus Exist ? Now, Bart Ehrman is a mainstream scholar. He is no longer religious himself but once was. In this book he engages the arguments of people who make the mythicist claim. He concludes they are wrong. But at least his book would have some of the information that I THINK you might be looking for.
This book - Amazon.com: The Case Against The Case For Christ: A New Testament Scholar Refutes the Reverend Lee Strobel: 9781578840052: Robert M Price, Frank R. Zindler: Books It was written by one of the prominent Mythicist scholars, Robert Price.
This book On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt: Carrier, Richard: 0884967420701: Amazon.com: Books by Richard Carrier, another prominent mythicist.
There's this book, by Thomas Thompson, another mythicist https://www.amazon.com/Mythic-Past-Biblical-Archaeology-Israel/dp/0465006493
And somebody named Earl Doherty, who wrote this The Jesus Puzzle: Did Christianity Begin with a Mythical Christ? Challenging the Existence of an Historical Jesus by Earl Doherty (2005-01-01): unknown author: Amazon.com: Books
and has or is affiliated with these websites THE JESUS PUZZLE - Earl Doherty https://www.earlychristianwritings.com/jesus/earldoherty.html
To the point of your question, I guess IF anybody would have found some origin stories that don't seem to lead to a real person, I suppose it would be these mythicist scholars (though mainstream scholars generally do not agree with their conclusions)
That is, IF you are, as I think you are, looking to see what material contemporary to the early Christians would lead to a mythicist interpretation, well, our few modern day scholars that are mythicists would point you in the right direction. They would have looked that stuff up. Problem with all that is, most normal scholars just do not agree with their interpretations of the evidence.
Longfellow
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I'm not sure if you're understanding my point. My point is that the church did not erase all memories about heresies, it wrote extensively about them, to warn against them. There is no such warning about some group or other calling themselves Christians without thinking that Jesus was a real person.
And yet we know about them, and we know a lot about the era.
What we do know about ideas is the little beggars are hard to get rid of. And orders that everything be burned were often discreetly ignored, or circumvented. What we actually have is a paucity of all materials, because the process was expensive and the product fragile.
And we have a vast record of lost Christian works, Papias, Origen, so it's no surprise that stuff deemed of little value was lost.
Yes, a telling point, because he would be pre-disposed to the mythic idea if there was any support for it.
The minimalist position is largely dismissed by academia for all manner of reasons.
There are a number of wonder-workers from the era, such as Rabbi Hanina ben Dossa, or Rabbi Pinchas ben Yair. They were real people, to whom wonders and miracles were attrubuted.
I tend to regard the mythicist position as a step too far – yes, there are mythical elements to the stories, but that does not necessarily mean the man himself is also mythological.
Longfellow
Well-Known Member
I haven't studied all the theories about Jesus being purely fictional, but the two that I have, Carrier's and Brodie's, don't actually exclude the possibility of the gospels being about a real person.
Longfellow
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I've had some new thoughts about this from thinking about your question. As I said, none of the arguments that I've seen online or from authors look convincing to me at all, but I see some other reasons for thinking that the gospel stories are about a real person. It seems likely to me that there was some real person, some sort of figurehead at the center of Christianity in its beginnings, Looking at Christian denominations for example, for each of them we see one real person that they look back to as the founder. The beliefs might have been circulating already, but there was one person who stood up for them and became a figurehead for them, a rallying point. It seems likely to me that Christianity started the same way, and that there would be stories about that person. If that person was not the one in the gospel stories, then there would be traces or hints of stories about some other person, but there aren't, not even in warnings against heresies. If the person in the gospel stories was purely fictional, then there would have been stories about some other person as the first leader of Christianity, and those would have been denounced as heresies, but there is nothing like that in writings about heresies. Now that I think of it, heresies were sometimes labeled with the name of some leading person. If Christianity started with some leader who was not the one in the gospel stories, people who told that story would have been denounced as heretics, and that person would have been named as their leader. Leaders of heretics are named, but none of them claimed to be the first leader of Christianity. There isn't any trace of hint of any story about a first leader that isn't the one in the gospels. Even the gnostics called the first leader of Christianity "Jesus," and identified him with the one in the gospels.
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Then the problem, for you, is twofold, in that the evidence against is lacking and unconvincing.
The question being, how do you explain the emergence of Christianity?
By the same token, any number of historical personages could be dismissed for the lack of verified contemporary evidence, so I think the issue here is asking for this kind of 'proof' in the first place – it's simply not there.