The Bible Fraud

[Badger]

Earliest stories we have of Alexander the Great were written by over 400 years afer his death. How can myth build a city? Of course it can't. So-called "real archaeological evidence" is made-up to deceive people.

[Guest]

So, badger, when are you going to list these references instead of just talking about them. I'd like to study them myself. You didn't answer my question in post 85, you just said evidence exists. My question is could you please provide a link to the independent evidence that suggests the jesus myth was based on a real person?

[Guest]

The reason why you reject Jesus as myth is that we have no contemporary evidence (outside the Bible) for him. Don't you realize that using this principle you must, for the sake of consistency, regard Alexander the Great, Rabban Gamaliel, Apollonius of Tyana, just to name some, as myth as well? Do you?

 

 

Do I? Are any of the other people you mentioned said to have lived lives exactly as lots of other gods, and was killed and then rose from the dead, just like lots of other gods from the time and place? How many dead people got up and walked around town preaching the gospel when Alexander the Great died? If jesus existed and his mission was so important, how come he didn't write anything down? History tells me the people you listed did normal, human things, so I have no reason to doubt they existed.

 

The fact that the only documents we have of jesus include these mythological motifs preclude me from taking them seriously, and jesus as a real character. If we had anything that was reliable and not from a religious source with an agenda, I'd be much more likely to accept that jesus was based on a real man. But that is not what we have.

 

By every account that we do have, jesus was a remarkable person. Probably the most remarkable to ever live. And if we are to believe what the bible claims about him, he is the most important person in the human race to ever have lived or to live. Yet we have nothing about him except for myths. I find this absence of evidence quite telling. It might not say much to me if we are talking about some mundane thing, but when we are talking about the savior of humanity, and the fact that an omnipotent god would know that this would keep me from believing and sentence me to hell for eternity, I say there should be gobs more evidence that he existed.

 

Either that, or god created me specifically to fill up a seat in hell.

[Ouroboros]

Earliest stories we have of Alexander the Great were written by over 400 years afer his death. How can myth build a city? Of course it can't. So-called "real archaeological evidence" is made-up to deceive people.

I've heard that argument before, comparing the evidence of Jesus with the evidence of Alexander the Great, and it's a very poor comparison. If you had compared with, lets say, one of the Greek historians or philosophers, I actually would have agreed. But the problem with Alexander the Great is that there are literally thousands of artifacts as coins, statues, inscriptions, dated from his time, with his name and depiction. It's true the documents telling us about Alexander are a lot later, but there are "things" we can find which points to his existence. It would be like finding the tomb of Jesus and his parents, with the osuaries inscribed with their names, but that would be ludicrous if we did. (Oh, yeah, they did, but the Christians deny it belongs to Jesus and his family... so bummer.)

 

 

Minting in those days had the principle that the regents head, and sometimes their name, would be on the coin to guarantee its value. So it is impossible that the regents name was "Bob" and they minted them with "Alexander" spelled out on them.

 

So if you had compared the evidence for Jesus with the evidence for Socrates... I would have been with you. Because they compare really well. We don't have any writings personally by Socrates, but only through Plato's work. And even more, we don't have any originals or early copies of Plato's work either. But then we also know (or can safely infer) that even if Socrates did exist, it seems like Plato wrote things Socrates never said, but used him as a tool to tell his own ideas. The early Plato seems to be more accurate to Socrates words, while the mid and late Plato does not.

[Badger]

So, badger, when are you going to list these references instead of just talking about them. I'd like to study them myself. You didn't answer my question in post 85, you just said evidence exists. My question is could you please provide a link to the independent evidence that suggests the jesus myth was based on a real person?

And I gave passages from Josephus and Tacitus.

[Badger]

Do I? Are any of the other people you mentioned said to have lived lives exactly as lots of other gods, and was killed and then rose from the dead, just like lots of other gods from the time and place? How many dead people got up and walked around town preaching the gospel when Alexander the Great died? If jesus existed and his mission was so important, how come he didn't write anything down? History tells me the people you listed did normal, human things, so I have no reason to doubt they existed.

We are not talking about Jesus the Son of God who did supernatural miracles and was raised from the death, as stated in the first page (post 15)

[Badger]

I've heard that argument before, comparing the evidence of Jesus with the evidence of Alexander the Great, and it's a very poor comparison. If you had compared with, lets say, one of the Greek historians or philosophers, I actually would have agreed. But the problem with Alexander the Great is that there are literally thousands of artifacts as coins, statues, inscriptions, dated from his time, with his name and depiction. It's true the documents telling us about Alexander are a lot later, but there are "things" we can find which points to his existence.

Good point. So I admit I was careless.

 

It would be like finding the tomb of Jesus and his parents, with the osuaries inscribed with their names, but that would be ludicrous if we did. (Oh, yeah, they did, but the Christians deny it belongs to Jesus and his family... so bummer.)

Does only Christians deny that?

[Ouroboros]

Good point. So I admit I was careless.

Happens to all of us.

 

It would be like finding the tomb of Jesus and his parents, with the osuaries inscribed with their names, but that would be ludicrous if we did. (Oh, yeah, they did, but the Christians deny it belongs to Jesus and his family... so bummer.)

Does only Christians deny that?

True. There are non-Christians who deny it too, and I'm not sure exactly what the critique is, because we can't really be sure that it is *not* the family tomb, can we? Maybe non-Christians don't want the tomb to be true, because it would validate a historical man Jesus, while the Christians can't accept it because it would invalidate the Godly Jesus. It's a catch-22.

[Antlerman]

Nor I was saying Jesus' miracles were "historical fact." I said Jesus performed deeds that were viewed as miracles.

I'm just going to jump into this conversation I wasn't following so forgive me if I go over things said already.

 

I want to point out something here in how you said this. You are assuming that the stories of miracles were about eye-witness accounts about some "deeds" Jesus actually did. That would be an unsupportable assumption. The miracle story traditions in my opinion were likely tales created to elevate the status of the founder figure of their movement to the level of say Moses and Elijah. They are not "eye-witness" accounts of any actual historical "deed" at all, but traditions with a mythological theme, placing Jesus in the class of Moses and Elijah for the purpose of illustration of his importance. It's a vehicle of mythology, not an historical record-keeping or elaboration of any "deeds" performed. It's highly unlikely any of them actually even knew the real Jesus fellow.

 

Now that Matthew and Luke and even John incorporated these traditions is understandable, as it was part of the many Jesus movement traditions they were blending together using Mark's narrative tale of the Christ, who did something similar. Are they independent accounts of Jesus? No, not likely. They are miracle traditions that were created as part of the mythology of one group of "kingdom" followers. Reality is rarely as colorful as myth. Honestly, I doubt understanding the facts of history was even an important factor to any of them. What was important was the way of imaging Jesus. They needed to justify themselves with their own tradition of a great leader. They created the myth of Jesus in the traditions of the myth of Moses and Elijah. This is not an independent corroboration of the actual person of Jesus. It's the story of the Miracle Tradition community. It's their story, their history, and their deeds. Not Jesus'.

 

The mistake you seem to make is that it all began with Jesus coming on the scene, cutting a hole into space and time with his stupendous, larger than life personality, making disciples who took his teachings and became like mini-gods themselves at Pentecost and carried his message to the world. Therefore the presence of these miracle tales must have had historical fact as their cause! Well that whole story is a myth itself.

 

It all most likely began as a somewhat novel social movement that spread to various regions with each creating a supporting mythology depending on their environment and social situation for the purpose of validating themselves and to embody their message in. These all were much later blended and merged into some "narrative" tale of the Christ in Mark. Which then served as a text for Matthew in his community drawing off other traditions to support his community's world view. The same is true with Luke. And Luke then created the myth of the apostles which gives you this myth of the church's origins, of Jesus appearing on the scene, making disciples, filling them with his Spirit and power who brought his truth to the world. That's mythology. None of this makes sense in light of what we can see in texts like Q, or in Paul's early writings. An evolved social myth does.

 

I believe a Jesus existed. But the movements spawned in his name were not about him and his personality. It was about a social message, a philosophy of "the kingdom of God". It was only later that a founding figure developed and interest was shown in his person. This is the creation of a founder-figure. It's only after that that you have the martyrology myths, miracles traditions, and all that that sprung up.

 

To me this is evidence a Jesus really existed, but only because of myths created using him as a founding figure for their communities. I could be wrong, but that makes sense to me. No Jesus-the-flying-messiah-who-died-for-us historical person though. That's only historical in the sense of understanding the communities who created those myths. It was not a single effort, but an evolved myth of many independent myth traditions that became traditional Christianity, all cast against a mythological backdrop of "history". Thanks be to Luke and the bishops of Rome!

 

Nope, miracle stories are only evidence of a community creating a myth, like the Jews who created the myth of Moses.

[Evolution_beyond]

Earliest stories we have of Alexander the Great were written by over 400 years afer his death. How can myth build a city? Of course it can't. So-called "real archaeological evidence" is made-up to deceive people.

 

Skepticism is the correct attitude to take towards history. I've often asked myself how and whether we know what we think we know about the past. This probably shows I'm a good historian in the making. A good philosopher too.

 

So these kind of arguments - they're not going to make me less skeptical about Jesus, they're going to make me more skeptical about other historical events and people.

 

Which is cool, maybe in asking those difficult questions I'll uncover some really interesting knowledge

[Badger]

You are assuming that the stories of miracles were about eye-witness accounts about some "deeds" Jesus actually did. That would be an unsupportable assumption.

That's not true.

[Badger]

I just noticed my last pot is ambiguous. What I meant is that I'm not assuming such a thing.

[Guest]

We are not talking about Jesus the Son of God who did supernatural miracles and was raised from the death, as stated in the first page (post 15)

 

I know. But the only documents we have concerning jesus contain all the mythological motifs, so how can you separate them? We have nothing that points to a real, non-supernatural human that can reliably confirm there is a man behind the myth. Everything we have about him concerns his miraculous nature. I do allow for the possibility that jesus may be an amalgam of several different end time prophets from the time, but that still means there was no "original" jesus, thus myth.

 

So, badger, when are you going to list these references instead of just talking about them. I'd like to study them myself. You didn't answer my question in post 85, you just said evidence exists. My question is could you please provide a link to the independent evidence that suggests the jesus myth was based on a real person?

And I gave passages from Josephus and Tacitus.

 

And one is an interpolation at best and forgery at worst and the other gives an account completely contradictory to what we find in the gospels, not to mention only confirms that xtians existed at the time of writing. Anything else? The son of god comes during a very well documented time in history and only shows up in 2 documents? I thought the evidence was overwhelming...

 

 

 

So if you had compared the evidence for Jesus with the evidence for Socrates... I would have been with you. Because they compare really well. We don't have any writings personally by Socrates, but only through Plato's work. And even more, we don't have any originals or early copies of Plato's work either. But then we also know (or can safely infer) that even if Socrates did exist, it seems like Plato wrote things Socrates never said, but used him as a tool to tell his own ideas. The early Plato seems to be more accurate to Socrates words, while the mid and late Plato does not.

 

I was not aware of this about Plato...interesting!

[Ouroboros]

So if you had compared the evidence for Jesus with the evidence for Socrates... I would have been with you. Because they compare really well. We don't have any writings personally by Socrates, but only through Plato's work. And even more, we don't have any originals or early copies of Plato's work either. But then we also know (or can safely infer) that even if Socrates did exist, it seems like Plato wrote things Socrates never said, but used him as a tool to tell his own ideas. The early Plato seems to be more accurate to Socrates words, while the mid and late Plato does not.

 

I was not aware of this about Plato...interesting!

I realized I overstated one thing... it was not only Plato who wrote about Socrates, but there are just a couple of writers: Plato, Aristotle, Xenophon, and Aristophanes. The knowledge about Socrates is very limited, and it is considered a problem to figure out what Socrates really said, and how he really was. And furthermore, the authenticity of some of the works ascribed to Plato has been questioned as well (just like Gospel authors). Socrates was condemned to death for his beliefs, and took the hemlock willingly. But his influence was so strong that he basically got the disciples passionate about Philosophy and starting the schools. So in a sense, Socrates is very much like Jesus.

[Antlerman]

You are assuming that the stories of miracles were about eye-witness accounts about some "deeds" Jesus actually did. That would be an unsupportable assumption.

That's not true.

Yes it is.

 

Exhibit A:

 

Nor I was saying Jesus' miracles were "historical fact."

I said Jesus performed

deeds that were viewed as miracles

.

 

Objections?

[Badger]

But the only documents we have concerning jesus contain all the mythological motifs, so how can you separate them? We have nothing that points to a real, non-supernatural human that can reliably confirm there is a man behind the myth. Everything we have about him concerns his miraculous nature. I do allow for the possibility that jesus may be an amalgam of several different end time prophets from the time, but that still means there was no "original" jesus, thus myth.

 

And one is an interpolation at best and forgery at worst and the other gives an account completely contradictory to what we find in the gospels, not to mention only confirms that xtians existed at the time of writing. Anything else? The son of god comes during a very well documented time in history and only shows up in 2 documents? I thought the evidence was overwhelming...

 

I reommend to read Encyclopædia Britannica's entry on Jesus Christ (especifically the section "Sources for the life of Jesus"). The writer seems to agree with your view about Josephus and Tacitus, btw.

 

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/...91/Jesus-Christ

[Badger]

Objections?

Yes. I have not assumed those miracle stories are based on eyewitness accounts. This is simply your assumption about me, and false one.

[Guest]

So if you had compared the evidence for Jesus with the evidence for Socrates... I would have been with you. Because they compare really well. We don't have any writings personally by Socrates, but only through Plato's work. And even more, we don't have any originals or early copies of Plato's work either. But then we also know (or can safely infer) that even if Socrates did exist, it seems like Plato wrote things Socrates never said, but used him as a tool to tell his own ideas. The early Plato seems to be more accurate to Socrates words, while the mid and late Plato does not.

 

I was not aware of this about Plato...interesting!

I realized I overstated one thing... it was not only Plato who wrote about Socrates, but there are just a couple of writers: Plato, Aristotle, Xenophon, and Aristophanes. The knowledge about Socrates is very limited, and it is considered a problem to figure out what Socrates really said, and how he really was. And furthermore, the authenticity of some of the works ascribed to Plato has been questioned as well (just like Gospel authors). Socrates was condemned to death for his beliefs, and took the hemlock willingly. But his influence was so strong that he basically got the disciples passionate about Philosophy and starting the schools. So in a sense, Socrates is very much like Jesus.

 

I wonder if parts of the Socrates story found it's way into the jesus myth somehow? Doesn't seem so far fetched, being the NT was written in Greek, and the Jewish culture was pretty Greek at that time.

[Guest]

But the only documents we have concerning jesus contain all the mythological motifs, so how can you separate them? We have nothing that points to a real, non-supernatural human that can reliably confirm there is a man behind the myth. Everything we have about him concerns his miraculous nature. I do allow for the possibility that jesus may be an amalgam of several different end time prophets from the time, but that still means there was no "original" jesus, thus myth.

 

And one is an interpolation at best and forgery at worst and the other gives an account completely contradictory to what we find in the gospels, not to mention only confirms that xtians existed at the time of writing. Anything else? The son of god comes during a very well documented time in history and only shows up in 2 documents? I thought the evidence was overwhelming...

 

I reommend to read Encyclopædia Britannica's entry on Jesus Christ (especifically the section "Sources for the life of Jesus"). The writer seems to agree with your view about Josephus and Tacitus, btw.

 

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/...91/Jesus-Christ

 

That was an interesting read. I have one question though, and I have to admit I forget if it is Han or mwc that is the expert on this (maybe it's both of you ).

 

Documents indicate that within a few years of Jesus’ death, Romans were aware that someone named Chrestus (a slight misspelling of Christus) had been responsible for disturbances in the Jewish community in Rome (Suetonius, The Life of the Deified Claudius 25.4). Twenty years later, according to Tacitus, Christians in Rome were prominent enough to be persecuted by Nero, and it was known that they were devoted to Christus, whom Pilate had executed (Annals 15.44). This knowledge of Jesus, however, was dependent on familiarity with early Christianity and does not provide independent evidence about Jesus. Josephus wrote a paragraph about Jesus (The Antiquities of the Jews 18.63ff.), as he did about Theudas, the Egyptian, and other charismatic leaders (History of the Jewish War 2.258–263; The Antiquities of the Jews 20.97–99, 167–172), but it has been heavily revised by Christian scribes, and Josephus’s original remarks cannot be discerned.

 

That first sentence; which documents indicate that it was within a few years? The next sentence says Tactius writes 20 years later, but is how do we know the Romans were aware of xtians a few years after jesus' death? I mean, we don't even know when jesus died, so what kind of a statement is that?

[Ouroboros]

I wonder if parts of the Socrates story found it's way into the jesus myth somehow? Doesn't seem so far fetched, being the NT was written in Greek, and the Jewish culture was pretty Greek at that time.

I do think that some of the ideas of the misunderstood underdog, martyr for the cause, and hero of beyond human proportions did influence the whole religious thought that went into the Christian cult. If it was the story of Socrates, or if it was some other, or perhaps a mix of many, I can't say, but I'm quite certain the whole myth-story was a build-up from pre-existing stories and ideas.

 

(If my sentences don't make much sense right now, I blame the beer... )

[Badger]

That was an interesting read.

It is. In spite of Sanders's opinion about the passages of Josephus and Tacitus, he doesn't regard Jesus as a myth.

 

That first sentence; which documents indicate that it was within a few years? The next sentence says Tactius writes 20 years later, but is how do we know the Romans were aware of xtians a few years after jesus' death? I mean, we don't even know when jesus died, so what kind of a statement is that?

Author refers to Suetonius' The Life of the Deified Claudius known as Lives of the Twelve Caesars.

[Ouroboros]

That was an interesting read.

It is. In spite of Sanders's opinion about the passages of Josephus and Tacitus, he doesn't regard Jesus as a myth.

I have to lean towards a different idea of mythology here and claim that Jesus was historical AND a myth. Meaning: Jesus, a man in history, nothing but a cult-leader, while made into myth as God's son, healing people miraculously and doing supernatural things. Two views, which both can be true at the same time. (And I think Antlerman will support me on this. )

[Badger]

I would say that's the best we can end up here.

[Guest]

That was an interesting read.

It is. In spite of Sanders's opinion about the passages of Josephus and Tacitus, he doesn't regard Jesus as a myth.

 

That first sentence; which documents indicate that it was within a few years? The next sentence says Tactius writes 20 years later, but is how do we know the Romans were aware of xtians a few years after jesus' death? I mean, we don't even know when jesus died, so what kind of a statement is that?

Author refers to Suetonius' The Life of the Deified Claudius known as Lives of the Twelve Caesars.

 

OK, so I re-read the Britannica article and saw the Suetonius reference staring me right in the face! However, when I clicked on that link to read up on him, I had to enter a credit card in order to view the "premium page". Bullshit. So I looked him up on Wiki:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suetonius

 

Suetonius was born circa 70 C.E. That's roughly 40 years after the supposed death of jesus, and let's just assume he didn't start writing anything until he was 20, that means his work which was quoted as being "with a few years of jesus' death" was written about 60 years after his death. I wouldn't call that "a few years", that seems much closer to the start of the NT books. Am I understanding this correctly? Wiki states that the De vita Caesarum was written during the reign of Hadrian (76 C.E.-138 C.E.) which seems pretty much in line with Suetonius' life span.

 

This still does not seem like contemporary evidence...am I missing something? I thought that Britannica article, although informative, seemed slightly slanted toward the xtian position, and this stretch seems to verify that to me now...

[Guest]

That was an interesting read.

It is. In spite of Sanders's opinion about the passages of Josephus and Tacitus, he doesn't regard Jesus as a myth.

I have to lean towards a different idea of mythology here and claim that Jesus was historical AND a myth. Meaning: Jesus, a man in history, nothing but a cult-leader, while made into myth as God's son, healing people miraculously and doing supernatural things. Two views, which both can be true at the same time. (And I think Antlerman will support me on this. )

 

Han, do you think the man behind jesus was a single person, or a combination of many similar characters? We know there were lots of would be messiah's walking around at the time. Since the books of the NT start to appear shortly before and then immediately after the destruction of the temple in 70 C.E., I've always viewed the early church fathers as adopting an off shoot cult of Judaism (the Essenes, for example) as a way to explain why they can not have temple sacrifice anymore, because the ultimate sacrifice was made. Even with Suetonius in the above post, it seems like information on jesus does not exist until very close to the destruction of the temple.