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Goodbye Jesus

Did Jesus Really Exist?


JadedAtheist

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I'm wondering what everyone's view is here after reading about a discussion of Philo and the divine Logos in another thread :) I'm inclined to believe that he existed but I've found some of Robert Price's material quite convincing. I'd take a view somewhat similar to Ehrman's in that Jesus was an apocalyptic prophet. As with other people that are idolized in that era; he was eventually deified. I guess the main reason I'd differ with Price is that I'd consider the Pauline epistles to be genuine rather than pseudepigraphal. With those as a base and the Synoptic gospels to follow I think there is a convincing case for a historical Jesus.

 

Anyways, let's see what y'all think.

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Another one of these threads?

 

mwc

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Yep. I notice there was one recently but interested to hear from people especially if they are familiar with Price, Ehrman et al. Though all perspectives are welcome. Anyways..

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My answer was the "maybe." I tend to think a guy named Jesus existed at that time and had some sort of preaching, itinerant ministry with a following. But, I also think next to nothing can be known about that Jesus. I think there is a great fog of ignorance from that time to the time the gospels began to be written, with the stories and legends of other teachers and mythic figures being overlaid onto the Jesus story. I also believe figures like Paul and still more unknown figures projected their "visions" of spiritual reality onto the narrative.

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Guest danny64

my answer is no. i mean, what does the question "did jesus exist?" really mean? doesnt it imply "did the jesus of the new testament exist?" otherwise, its just a quesiton about whether the name "jesus" was ever given to some random guy in first century palistine. the stories in the new testament are about horus and dionysus and mithra etc. they are savior sons of god myth stories borrowed from around the middle east and applied to the then latest version. the teachings like the sermon on the mount etc are also plagerized from other older sources. once you go off into looking at whether some guy existed named jesus that didnt do all the stuff the bible talks about but was some sort of rabbi or rebel leader....are you really talking about jeusus anymore?

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The biblical Jesus? No way, absolutely not.

 

Some Jesus whom the bible stories were very loosely based on? Possibly; I'm not convinced either way.

 

So I'm not sure if I should select "No" or "Maybe," but I guess "Maybe" would be closest.

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The "Jesus" of the Bible could not possibly be a real person. The Jesus of the Bible, if he were a legitimate Jewish rabbi who worked miracles and preached like he did, would be in the annals of Jewish history. The history of the Jewish people is chock-full of dissenting opinions, embarrassing stories and failed attempts to fulfill prophecy. If Yahushua ben Yoseph ben YHWH really existed, believe me, there'd be plenty evidence. That evidence would exist and be completely free of Gentile/Christian hagiography.

 

The "Jesus" that the so-called New Testament writers allude to could not literally have existed, either. Again, no other evidence exists for this person, and there are WAY too many remarkable, history-altering events surrounding his life for that to be possible.

 

Of course, the only proof I need that "Jesus" doesn't exist is the total lack of any of the alleged supernatural love, power, forgiveness, peace and so on displayed by his sheeple.

 

I'm a martial artist... Believe me, I've seen and heard of dozens or even hundreds of people who claim to have "teh deadly ninjer deth touch" or some shit. NEVER works.

 

That printing-press thing really fucked things up for the church. Once dissenters started publishing their own writings, all the "man behind the curtain" shit was effectively over.

 

Kind of like some professional wrestler getting a book deal that's NOT drafted by his organization's PR guys... that's when you find out that all the lights and arenas and crowds are a smokescreen to hide the vacuity and total bullshit of it all.

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It is most likely that the Jesus lie developed from the historical figure of Apollonius.

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Guest wasachristian

Maybe sounds too good to be true. I wish I had realised that 35 years ago biggrin.gif

 

Quite frankly, I couldn't care less these days. I think irrelevant is probably the best word.

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I think irrelevant is probably the best word.

 

I have to wholeheartedly agree. I've gotten to the point where it really doesn't matter to me. Not that it's not interesting to discuss at times, but in the overall scheme of things it's rather irrelevant.

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  • 2 weeks later...
Guest ephymeris

I haven't put much time or effort into looking for evidence for or against the reality of a historical jesus because it's irrelevant to me. Whether there was a warm blooded meat sack calling himself jesus, faking his way through "miracles" and getting his buddies to lie for him a few thousand years ago means nothing to me. It has no influence on my rejection of christianity because the dogma is obviously a pack of lies. For all I care, they could dig up his petrefied carcass and do conclusive DNA testing to prove he exists and it wouldn't affect me (other than having to stomach huzzahs from christians over their perceived victory). However, based on my apathy and ignorance of the "evidence" out there, I chose "Maybe" :shrug:

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Guest Valk0010

To me questions like did a jesus person rise is more important then if there was a guy that existed. While I think there was a historical jesus, to the question in the grand scheme seems rather irrelevant unless your really really interested in bible scholarship which my interest level varies on.

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For all I care, they could dig up his petrefied carcass and do conclusive DNA testing to prove he exists and it wouldn't affect me (other than having to stomach huzzahs from christians over their perceived victory).

 

How would finding Jesus' remains be perceived as a "victory" by those who believe that he rose from the dead, ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of "the Father"?

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For all I care, they could dig up his petrefied carcass and do conclusive DNA testing to prove he exists and it wouldn't affect me (other than having to stomach huzzahs from christians over their perceived victory).

 

How would finding Jesus' remains be perceived as a "victory" by those who believe that he rose from the dead, ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of "the Father"?

I still wonder what kind of DNA Jesus would have.

 

Would he have all the non-coding DNA? Or would his DNA only be coding DNA? Would he have the complete L-gulanolactone oxidase gene? Would his hox genes be made up such that his laryngeal nerve would go directly from the brain to the larynx? Which kind of Y-chromosome would he have? Would Jesus also share Neanderthal genes like most of us do? Questions we can never get the answer to. Why doesn't the Bible tell us? I want to know!

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Another one of these threads?

 

mwc

 

mwc is always cranky.

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I haven't put much time or effort into looking for evidence for or against the reality of a historical jesus because it's irrelevant to me. Whether there was a warm blooded meat sack calling himself jesus, faking his way through "miracles" and getting his buddies to lie for him a few thousand years ago means nothing to me. It has no influence on my rejection of christianity because the dogma is obviously a pack of lies. For all I care, they could dig up his petrefied carcass and do conclusive DNA testing to prove he exists and it wouldn't affect me (other than having to stomach huzzahs from christians over their perceived victory). However, based on my apathy and ignorance of the "evidence" out there, I chose "Maybe" :shrug:

 

I like your answer :)

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Sometimes I wonder if I really exist....

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For all I care, they could dig up his petrefied carcass and do conclusive DNA testing to prove he exists and it wouldn't affect me (other than having to stomach huzzahs from christians over their perceived victory).

 

How would finding Jesus' remains be perceived as a "victory" by those who believe that he rose from the dead, ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of "the Father"?

I still wonder what kind of DNA Jesus would have.

 

Would he have all the non-coding DNA? Or would his DNA only be coding DNA? Would he have the complete L-gulanolactone oxidase gene? Would his hox genes be made up such that his laryngeal nerve would go directly from the brain to the larynx? Which kind of Y-chromosome would he have? Would Jesus also share Neanderthal genes like most of us do? Questions we can never get the answer to. Why doesn't the Bible tell us? I want to know!

 

 

With all the samples taken to find "scientific adam" I wonder If he would be his own line or one of the 4 presently identified non-related male lines. 3 million samples and still no common ancestor. :shrug:

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mwc is always cranky.

Grrrr. Get off my virtual lawn.

 

:HaHa:

 

mwc

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With all the samples taken to find "scientific adam" I wonder If he would be his own line or one of the 4 presently identified non-related male lines. 3 million samples and still no common ancestor. :shrug:

 

I thought there was one male line found called "Y chromosomal Adam", then again it could have been a theoretical person. I just heard about it, never did look into it.

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I believe there was a historical Jesus. For one thing, most of the comparisons between Christianity and paganism are exaggerations and not accepted by mainstream biblical and Egyptian scholars. Secondly, even putting aside the authenticity of extra-biblical sources of the historical Jesus, the origins of Christianity make no sense if there was no historical Jesus and I think it is the contradictions of the bible that actually lend evidence to his existence. If Jesus was just a purely mythological character made up from scratch, why would Matthew and Luke go through the trouble of inventing a made up town of Nazareth and come up with a historically inaccurate nonsensical tale to get a fictional Jesus from a fictional Nazareth to a real Bethlehem? If Jesus was made up, the biblical authors could have just skipped that whole pointless Nazareth subplot and have Jesus be born from Bethlehem from the start. It seems more likely to me that there was a historical Jesus behind the myths who failed to fulfill the prophecy and the biblical authors are clearly making up mythological propaganda to make the historical Jesus fit their prophecies better rather than being invented out of whole cloth. It's like how the prophecies in Harry Potter fitting neatly doesn't prove Harry Potter is real but they fit neatly because Harry Potter is a made up character and JK Rowling is just making up a story from scratch. But the "prophecies" of Nostradamus are all over the place and a big mess because people in later times are trying to take a real life person and make their prophecies fit their propaganda.

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How do i know that anyone who lived outside my lifetime lived? Because someone told me they did. Makes no differnce whether its Jesus or anyone else. Don't we just take all this stuff on trust?

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How do i know that anyone who lived outside my lifetime lived? Because someone told me they did. Makes no differnce whether its Jesus or anyone else. Don't we just take all this stuff on trust?

 

To a degree but believing Hitler lived to believing Buddha or Jesus or whoever else lived is a different story. At least with Hitler you have photographic evidence, eyewitness testimonies and so forth to go off. The further back you go the harder it becomes to prove whether someone was a real person or not.

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But for all we know, Socrates could be a made up character invented by Plato since the only evidence we have for Socrates is the writings of Plato.

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