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Goodbye Jesus

Was There A Historical Jesus?


ShackledNoMore

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If anyone wants acceptable evidence of Jesus' existence, they'll have to manufacture it.

 

I agree, which is why I lean toward the mythical christ perspective. However, lots of people have existed whom we wouldn't be able to find a shred of evidence for, so the lack of any solid evidence for a Jesus guy doesn't automatically prove he didn't exist. I just don't see how we, two millennia removed, can ever know exactly what happened at the outset of christianity.

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If anyone wants acceptable evidence of Jesus' existence, they'll have to manufacture it.

 

I agree, which is why I lean toward the mythical christ perspective. However, lots of people have existed whom we wouldn't be able to find a shred of evidence for, so the lack of any solid evidence for a Jesus guy doesn't automatically prove he didn't exist. I just don't see how we, two millennia removed, can ever know exactly what happened at the outset of christianity.

 

I guess it could be like Schodinger's cat, he might be alive in their, he might not, but fucked if I know.

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The two contemporary Jewish historians, Philo Judeaus (aka Philo of Alexandria) and Justus of Tiberia make no mention of Jesus, his disciples, his ministry or his miracles. Philo was adopted by the Christ Cult because of his concept (borrowed from Pagan sources) of the Logos and his writings that attempted the Hellenization of the Jewish religion. He wrote extensively on the various sects of Judaism, but not once mentions the Christ Cult or any sect with similar beliefs. Justus' works have been lost but comments by later Christians showed that he " Strangely did not know of the Lord". I think that J.Q. reads too much into the dating of the Synopic Gospels and fails to realize that the writings of the Gnostics and the Ebionites are probably as ancient, if not more so. There is a school of thought that Paul and his letters was entirely a creation of Marcion, not something that I personally lend much credance to, but do recognize the possibility of. Was there an actual Jesus, maybe...was he the guy in the NT...No way...the NT synopic Gospels are too contradictory to be true creations of the "one true god", they can't even agree which century this tin plated godling was born in. LOL - Heimdall :yellow:

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That's right. There are no contemporary (living at the same time) writers who talked about Jesus.

 

And I keep coming back to this, I find it very strange that Philo from Alexandria, who was a contemporary to Jesus, didn't take any interest at all in Jesus. He was a new-thinker in Jewish faith, and supposedly he visited Jerusalem at least once, but he didn't mention Jesus or the Christians at all.

 

And what is even more strange is that Philo's writings were preserved... by the early Christians... (at least so I've heard, but who knows)

 

 

But don't forget when Jesus was alive, Christianity was just another sect of Judaism and had not become a distinct religion, so would Philo have cared enough to write about another schism in Judaism? Christianity didn't take off as its own separate movement until after Jesus' death.
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The two contemporary Jewish historians, Philo Judeaus (aka Philo of Alexandria) and Justus of Tiberia make no mention of Jesus, his disciples, his ministry or his miracles. Philo was adopted by the Christ Cult because of his concept (borrowed from Pagan sources) of the Logos and his writings that attempted the Hellenization of the Jewish religion. He wrote extensively on the various sects of Judaism, but not once mentions the Christ Cult or any sect with similar beliefs. Justus' works have been lost but comments by later Christians showed that he " Strangely did not know of the Lord". I think that J.Q. reads too much into the dating of the Synopic Gospels and fails to realize that the writings of the Gnostics and the Ebionites are probably as ancient, if not more so. There is a school of thought that Paul and his letters was entirely a creation of Marcion, not something that I personally lend much credance to, but do recognize the possibility of. Was there an actual Jesus, maybe...was he the guy in the NT...No way...the NT synopic Gospels are too contradictory to be true creations of the "one true god", they can't even agree which century this tin plated godling was born in. LOL - Heimdall :yellow:

QFT.

 

Heimdall hits the all the details, as usual. :grin:

 

 

That's right. There are no contemporary (living at the same time) writers who talked about Jesus.

 

And I keep coming back to this, I find it very strange that Philo from Alexandria, who was a contemporary to Jesus, didn't take any interest at all in Jesus. He was a new-thinker in Jewish faith, and supposedly he visited Jerusalem at least once, but he didn't mention Jesus or the Christians at all.

 

And what is even more strange is that Philo's writings were preserved... by the early Christians... (at least so I've heard, but who knows)

 

 

But don't forget when Jesus was alive, Christianity was just another sect of Judaism and had not become a distinct religion, so would Philo have cared enough to write about another schism in Judaism? Christianity didn't take off as its own separate movement until after Jesus' death.

True. Why would he care about Jesus and the Christians? But a question still remains, why were the first Christians interested in Philo's work? If his views were so important for the Christians, then why wasn't the growing Christianity important to Philo? After all, he lived until 50 CE, so Christianity was full on its way by then (supposedly). But it's true, perhaps he knew about them but didn't care to write about them. Yet they found his writings very important, possibly even before Paul's writings had made its way.

 

Here are some interesting things I just read in the Encyclopedia of Philosophy about Philo, he considered Moses to be the teacher of Pythagoras, and Philo was most definitely a strong influence in the early church. He is considered to be the father of religious philosophy, in particular Christianity.

 

In another post I talked about how Pythagoreans were some form of mystical/philosophical/religioius group, who put a lot of importance into numbers and their mystical powers. The link between the Pythagoreans and the fish symbol is there, even though it's kind of circumstantial.

 

I'm starting to strongly suspect Philo's literature and philosophy influenced the first Christians a lot more than I previously thought.

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I'm not an expert on Philo, but from my layman's perspective, maybe the early Christians had an interest in Philo because he was a Hellenistic Jew who was inspired by Plato? If I'm remembering correctly, new religions were treated with suspicion, so maybe they thought if they drew inspiration from someone who was both a Jew and someone influenced by Greek teachings, they would have cross-cultural appeal with the Jews and the gentiles? But again, I'm just guessing here as I'm not a Philo expert.

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I'm not an expert on Philo, but from my layman's perspective, maybe the early Christians had an interest in Philo because he was a Hellenistic Jew who was inspired by Plato? If I'm remembering correctly, new religions were treated with suspicion, so maybe they thought if they drew inspiration from someone who was both a Jew and someone influenced by Greek teachings, they would have cross-cultural appeal with the Jews and the gentiles? But again, I'm just guessing here as I'm not a Philo expert.

 

That emboldened part is what Bart Ehrman argues in Lost Christianities is likely the reason that the version of christianity that won out (dubbed "orthodox") was able to win out, because they portrayed their christianity as an outgrowth of Judaism rather than something primarily new (like the other early versions of christianity).

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That's where I got that info from which brings up a point that if new religions were treated with suspicions but the early Christians were stealing their myths from the pagans and the early Christians were perfectly A-OK with it, why were they treated with suspicion by the pagans? If it was so clear their myths ripped off paganism and Jesus was assumed to be a made up character, why weren't the pagans ok with Christianity?

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I think we can confirm through archeology that *a* Jesus did exist. I think I even read an article once which said archeology found a tombstone or something of the like which belonged to "James, brother of Jesus". The inscription was to prove Jesus really did exist. Whether Jesus and James were common names, I don't know. I think Jesus was (not the 'evangelicalized' version, but his actual name). I'm guessing James was, too. That the two names would appear together as being brothers doesn't necessarily confirm the biblical Jesus. And even if it could be proved that the biblical Jesus did indeed exist during the time and in the place the bible says he existed, it doesn't prove any stories concerning him. We could start rumors that Criss Angel is a god. Proving he is a real person doesn't prove our claims of him.

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No we cannot confirm that Jesus existed through archeology. There has been no evidence that he ever existed even with archeology. I have to ask where do you get your information from Ionelee?

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I think we can confirm through archeology that *a* Jesus did exist. I think I even read an article once which said archeology found a tombstone or something of the like which belonged to "James, brother of Jesus".

 

The so called "James Ossuary" has been proven to be a forgery. The perpetrator is currently in an Israeli prison. Yeshua, Joshua,etc, was a common name during the first century. None of them rose from the dead or ascended to Heaven. The Gospel Jesus is mythical. A first century carpenter who did little and accomplished nothing would explain why none of his contemporaries mentioned him.

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In my opinion, Jesus was almost certainly a mythical character. Why do I say this? Because many early Christians said so. It was widely accepted among Christian gnostics that Jesus was simply a mythical figure whose stories were to be interpreted metaphorically. It is inconceivable to me that Christians would deny the physical existence of their Lord and saviour.

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I figure the stories about Jesus are about as historically reliable as the Mormon stories about Joseph Smith. There was probably a guy who drew followers to himself and was blown out of proportion until he became identified with various myths of the time about a virgin birth and a son of a god. There are guys today that people think are the son of God. An ex Seventh Day pastor in New Mexico has followers that worship him. The guys in the group even let him screw their wives. They call it "consummating their marriage with the Lamb of God". Apparently people haven't changed a bit in their willingness to be sheeplike.

 

I used to think so too, but that was before I learned there were many different Christianities back in the early days. Did you know many Christians denied Jesus' historical existence? The Gnostics claimed Jesus was simply a mythical figure whose stories were meant to be taken as symbolic literature. Why would Christians deny Jesus' historical existence? Paul's own writings appear to treat Jesus not as a physical character.

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There were also early Christians who saw Jesus as a real person and most scholars are in agreement that the earliest followers of Jesus were Jews given that Jesus himself was a Jew.

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No we cannot confirm that Jesus existed through archeology. There has been no evidence that he ever existed even with archeology. I have to ask where do you get your information from Ionelee?

I think I read it in a Time magazine article a number of years ago. But as qadeshet pointed out, it was a fraud.

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Christians have been desperately searching for evidence supporting the Gospel story for 2000 years. Everytime something new is supposedly discovered, it turns out to be a fraud. And every few years Noah's Ark is discovered. The Gospel story is sheer myth, and once all the mythical elements are removed, no room is left for a historical Jesus. That being said, G.R.S. Mead made a good case that Jesus lived ca 100 BC.

 

Did Jesus Live 100 B.C.?

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That's where I got that info from which brings up a point that if new religions were treated with suspicions but the early Christians were stealing their myths from the pagans and the early Christians were perfectly A-OK with it, why were they treated with suspicion by the pagans? If it was so clear their myths ripped off paganism and Jesus was assumed to be a made up character, why weren't the pagans ok with Christianity?

 

Because it was a new religion, whether or not they ripped the pagans off for some of their stuff doesn't change that.

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And here's another myth: Jesus is alive today, and will take up residence in your heart if you simply say a pre-packaged prayer and fill out a membership slip for our church. Seems as if our Saviour was just as much a trumped-up myth back then as He is now.

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In my opinion, Jesus was almost certainly a mythical character. Why do I say this? Because many early Christians said so. It was widely accepted among Christian gnostics that Jesus was simply a mythical figure whose stories were to be interpreted metaphorically. It is inconceivable to me that Christians would deny the physical existence of their Lord and saviour.

 

Um, what if they were just gnostics who stumbled on the Christian religion, thought that was interesting, decided to merge Christianity into their current religion, but that he couldn't have been physichal because the physichal is evil?

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There were also early Christians who saw Jesus as a real person and most scholars are in agreement that the earliest followers of Jesus were Jews given that Jesus himself was a Jew.

 

Isn't this somewhat circular? Jesus was a real person because his earliest followers were Jews, because Jesus was a real Jewish person. What if Christianity originated with gentiles who were enamored of the Jewish religion, who wanted a means of getting in, which hopefully didn't involve skinning their willy.

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In my opinion, Jesus was almost certainly a mythical character. Why do I say this? Because many early Christians said so. It was widely accepted among Christian gnostics that Jesus was simply a mythical figure whose stories were to be interpreted metaphorically. It is inconceivable to me that Christians would deny the physical existence of their Lord and saviour.

 

Um, what if they were just gnostics who stumbled on the Christian religion, thought that was interesting, decided to merge Christianity into their current religion, but that he couldn't have been physichal because the physichal is evil?

Actually this is the most likely to have been true. And those gnostics were called the Essene Jews who were living out at Qumran near the Dead Sea (exiled from mainstream Judaism in Jerusalem). In rebellion to the actual high priest (or Jeshua) they called their leader by that esteemed title (Jeshua) and went about in pairs trying to win Gentiles over to the Faith (also in rebellion to Jewish practice). There are your gnostics - and the source of all the shit that followed.

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That's where I got that info from which brings up a point that if new religions were treated with suspicions but the early Christians were stealing their myths from the pagans and the early Christians were perfectly A-OK with it, why were they treated with suspicion by the pagans? If it was so clear their myths ripped off paganism and Jesus was assumed to be a made up character, why weren't the pagans ok with Christianity?

 

Because it was a new religion, whether or not they ripped the pagans off for some of their stuff doesn't change that.

 

Right. The christians didn't claim that their religion was an outgrowth of the pagan religions, they just borrowed concepts from those other religions in their new religion.

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Right. The christians didn't claim that their religion was an outgrowth of the pagan religions, they just borrowed concepts from those other religions in their new religion.

They borrowed from both Judaism and pagan religions (mostly Mithranism) and made the claim that their leader was actually the Jewish Messiah - very badly done with glaring contradictions and gaps in their "new" theology. It took a huge amount of gullibility to establish this new religion, as well as the assistance of a few Roman emperors, but they did it. After many attempts by various key Romans, paganism was finally outlawed, and Christianity nationalized, in 415 CE (by Honorius) which, incidentally, was also the beginning of the Dark Ages. Coincidence?

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Isn't this somewhat circular? Jesus was a real person because his earliest followers were Jews, because Jesus was a real Jewish person. What if Christianity originated with gentiles who were enamored of the Jewish religion, who wanted a means of getting in, which hopefully didn't involve skinning their willy.

You are missing my point. My point is that there is no evidence I'm aware of for the argument that the early Christians were Gnostics who had no problems believing in a mythical Jesus and Jesus was therefore mythical. The earliest followers of Jesus were Jews and please present your evidence that Christianity was originally a Gentile faith and not a Jewish faith.
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