Nailed: 10 Christian myths that show Jesus never existed

[Nick Peters]

Well Nick, I want to make clear that there is very little about early Christianity that I am certain about anything other than the general worthlessness of modern Christians. Faith is based on habit and an inherited prejudice. When it manifests itself in serious thinkers it should be questioned if not held in contempt. It is not worthy of respect.

Oh it's so nice to start off on a good note. Well I'm first off wondering what your definition of faith is. Is it a definition the ancients would have or the modern changing of it?

The fact you seem so certain about Jesus and his historicity is interesting.

No. It's just in line with modern scholarship. Liberal, conservative, atheist, Christian, Jew, etc. Scholarship does not debate that Jesus existed.

I don't subscribe to the 'Jesus myth' hypothesis (whatever that is) because I mistrust groups and moreover feel that a lot of the people who attach themselves to this hypothesis do so as part of an effort to prove Jesus doesn't exist.

The Christ-myth hypothesis is the idea that there is NO historical Jesus. It is not saying Jesus existed but did not do miracles or was not the messiah or did not rise from the dead. It is saying that He did not exist at all.

I think we have to be agnostic about the whole matter of who or what Jesus was.

Why? Why can't we use historiography and find out who He was?

I am not convinced that the earliest Christians venerated him as a man born of a woman. That this view existed in early times is clear but I am not sure that it was the original one. But again I am not certain nor do I think any certainty is possible about who or what Jesus was.

Let's be clear. Are you referring to the virgin birth since everyone technically is born of a woman.

Could the whole thing have been a myth? I don't know. It seems more likely to me that there must have been a historical person at the heart of the Christian tradition. But probability isn't certainty.

I recommend just reading the best scholarship you can find on the issue. Those who profess the Christ-myth as supposed NT scholars do not hold academic positions, they have no tenure, and that claim does not pass peer-review.

[Nick Peters]

...I find Christ-mythers to be amusing ....

.... Sometimes when I meant to touch him [Jesus], I met with a material and solid body;
but at other times when I felt him, his substance was immaterial and incorporeal, as if it did not exist at all ...

And I often wished, as I walked with him, to see his footprint, whether it appeared on the ground
(for I saw him as it were raised up from the earth), and I never saw it. (§ 93)

......., although granted after a few days they become tiresome.

Isn't it marvellous how the gnostic and docetic heretics were pronounced upon in very unfavourable terms by the canonical "believers"?

Oh. I must be mistaken. I thought we were supposed to talk about how we know a work is a forgery and discuss our methods of historiography and determining authorship.

Looks like you're more concerned with talking about personal feelings on historical issues.

Okay. I'll go get Oprah and we can talk.

[spin]

Well Nick, I want to make clear that there is very little about early Christianity that I am certain about anything other than the general worthlessness of modern Christians. Faith is based on habit and an inherited prejudice. When it manifests itself in serious thinkers it should be questioned if not held in contempt. It is not worthy of respect.

Oh it's so nice to start off on a good note. Well I'm first off wondering what your definition of faith is. Is it a definition the ancients would have or the modern changing of it?

The fact you seem so certain about Jesus and his historicity is interesting.

No. It's just in line with modern scholarship. Liberal, conservative, atheist, Christian, Jew, etc. Scholarship does not debate that Jesus existed.

It is interesting here. Most modern scholarship actual shuts up about the historicity of Jesus. For example, I had to deal with a couple of archaeologists who worked an important site in Syria a while back and they both held the view that you couldn't trust anything that came from biblical scholars. I had at the time expressed my interest in the DSS and you could see them thinking "oh-oh, looney alert". It wasn't me: it was the subject, dominated by biblical studies. You can't talk about "modern scholarship" as though one should be impressed from afar here. We have to face the fact that the vast majority of biblical scholars exempt themselves from objectivity by being adherents of the faith whose literature they study.

It is of little significance that Liberal, conservative, atheist, Christian, Jew, etc. toe the scholarly line. They are generally in no position to meaningfully do other.

I don't subscribe to the 'Jesus myth' hypothesis (whatever that is) because I mistrust groups and moreover feel that a lot of the people who attach themselves to this hypothesis do so as part of an effort to prove Jesus doesn't exist.

The Christ-myth hypothesis is the idea that there is NO historical Jesus. It is not saying Jesus existed but did not do miracles or was not the messiah or did not rise from the dead. It is saying that He did not exist at all.

Sorry, Nick, but you are confusing generic brand Jesus mythicism with the 'Jesus myth' hypothesis. The latter is the view that the Jesus religion is founded on a complex mythos, for example, the views of Earl Doherty who advocated that the earliest believers held to the notion that Jesus was crucified in the lowest of the heavens. The generic brand Jesus mythicism is not mythicism per se, but the simple view that Jesus did not exist. Consiracy theories concerning a Roman invention of the Jesus religion also hold that Jesus did not exist, but they are not mythicism. True mythicism may imply Jesus did not exist, but that is not its focus. It's interest is the myth seen to be at the heart of the cult.

I think we have to be agnostic about the whole matter of who or what Jesus was.

Why? Why can't we use historiography and find out who He was?

First we have to establish existence. I personally am agnostic on the subject. The past is full of entities whose existence has not been established, but cannot be excluded. If you strip away all the later traditions from Arthur, can you say whether he existed or not? History is full of black holes from which little or no certain evidence can be derived. A tradition based on a figure may or may not be derived from a real figure. If the indications of that tradition leads you into a black hole then you have no way of corroborating the veracity of the tradition.

I am not convinced that the earliest Christians venerated him as a man born of a woman. That this view existed in early times is clear but I am not sure that it was the original one. But again I am not certain nor do I think any certainty is possible about who or what Jesus was.

Let's be clear. Are you referring to the virgin birth since everyone technically is born of a woman.

I'm pretty certain he is not talking of the virgin birth, but the possibility of Jesus having in the mythos come down from heaven as Marcion indicates. Tertullian spends a lot of time looking at the implications of Marcion's gospel having Jesus come down to Capernaum. (See Contra Marcion, ref will be dredged up if needed.) It would seem that Marcion's Jesus wasn't born of a woman.

Could the whole thing have been a myth? I don't know. It seems more likely to me that there must have been a historical person at the heart of the Christian tradition. But probability isn't certainty.

I recommend just reading the best scholarship you can find on the issue. Those who profess the Christ-myth as supposed NT scholars do not hold academic positions, they have no tenure, and that claim does not pass peer-review.

I recommend that you start thinking that some people here have read "the best scholarship you can find on the issue" and have found it not as hot as you might hope. We don't advocate the position that Jesus did not exist (though some people on this forum seem to hold that view), but that using stringent historical methodology does not yield a historical Jesus. He may or may not have been real, but the evidence is insufficient. Scholarship in the field has to stop being blindly maximalist and re-find what it can of an objective approach to the subject.

We come from a historical context in which the existence of Jesus was accepted a priori and a humonguous apologetic apparatus has defended Jesus over nearly two millenia. The context we have inherited didn't need history until a bit over 200 years ago, but the impact of humanism followed by the enlightenment has forced christian religious studies to quickly adapt to wearing historical trappings. Obviously christian scholars found Jesus historical. It was just a short step back from the credent position, but we cannot accept an inherited Jesus. We cannot accept on a literal basis a body of literature preserved by christian scribes, whose efforts in the distant past include the production of non-historical works, of pseudonymous works including several by Paul, of interplations such as the ending of Mark, the adulterous woman in John, the trinitarian lemma in 1 John 5, the Testimonium Flavianum and who knows what else. The task of anyone advocating a historical Jesus requires substantive evidence and so far all those scholars who advocate a historical Jesus have failed to do anything other than literary criticism and applied hermeneutics.

[stephan happy huller]

I have nothing to add to what spin just wrote other than to say that agnosticism is the proper starting point for any scientific investigation. I mean imagine if people studying whether tobacco smoke is harmful began with a certain set of assumptions and then 'interpreted' the evidence to fit their presuppositions. This actually has happened in that field and it certainly happens all the time in the field of Biblical studies.

Let me give another example off the subject (but which illustrates how much religious scholars get away with). Recently there has been a controversy surrounding the 'Jesus Wife fragment.' I don't know whether it is authentic. But a great number of experts (Goodacre, Hurtado etc) have come down and already declared it to be a phoney AND - and this is the kicker - that the 'silence' from King and the owner of the fragment regarding the testing 'must be a result' of the guilt of all parties involved.

Again, I don't know whether the fragment is authentic. I thought the evidence was pretty strong against authenticity based on the opinion of 'experts.' However the one thing I know for a fact is that 'tests' have been conducted on the fragment. I can't say how I know this to be true, but it's money in the bank. I also know that the Harvard Review is publishing two articles that were held up because of the controversy asking the author of the 'against authenticity' paper to check his article again.

I can't say more about the testing. I have no solid information about what the results of the testing will show. But some additional pieces of information I can't reveal make it and the bit about the Harvard Review make it seem to me that authenticity is a distinct possibility - not a certainty - but a rather surprising result of the tests which I assumed would come back proving forgery based on the testimony of experts.

However beyond all this speculation - and even if all the circumstantial evidence proves to be a mirage - the recent claims and innuendo of Hurtado and Goodacre that the 'silence' about the testing proves the guilt of the original parties involved is completely off base. I can't say more than that. But I know for a fact this is not why there is silence here.

The point here - other than catching 'experts' engaging in arguments from silence and getting burned - is that probability is never the same as certainty.

[Peter Kirby]

Scholarship does not debate that Jesus existed.

Sad.

[Peter Kirby]

they have no tenure

And petty too. Why not just say Richard Carrier (et al) is a poo poo head? It's the same fallacy. He's a big giant poo poo head because he doesn't have tenure. And if someone had tenure, he's a poo poo head for some other reason. Because attacking personalities is really the best way to discuss this.

[avi]

Yes it´s true, but I think it´s not so easy to judge a concret case. Maybe you know William Tell, the great folk hero of Switzerland. It seems that the legend of William Tell has at first glance a historical background, but apparantly not. In contrast it´s very unlikely that the myth of the holy grail have it, but then we learn that a lot of details has a close link to historical persons and places.

So, in your view, Kunigunde, the Jesus story is more plausible, regarding Jesus as a genuine human, rather than as a purely fictional character, because of a link to a "lot of details" concerning historical persons and places, with said details apparently found in the various texts of the Bible.

I am wondering whether you would then argue, for the historical reality of Prince Andrei Bolkonsky, friend of Pierre Bezukhov, given the former's involvement with Marshall Mikhail Kutuzov, to whom he served as aide de camp? Was he not, in fact, the fiance of Natasha Rostova, who had been born, as everyone knows, in 1792?

I deny that any of the details of persons, places, or dates, described in any of the texts of the bible, confirm the historicity of Jesus of Capernaum. What, you believe that Krypton truly exists, because you read about it in a Superman comic strip?

I noticed that you have avoided (well, so has everyone else, for that matter) answering my earlier question about Herakles wrestling with Aνταῖος . Given the extensive and elaborate description of that episode, are you not persuaded in the divinity of Herakles? Is the story of Herakles' adventures, not even more believable, than those preposterous fables of Jesus' supposed accomplishments, given that the famous Jewish scholar, Philo of Alexandria, described Herakles' accomplishments in such glowing terms?

[Kunigunde Kreuzerin]

I noticed that you have avoided (well, so has everyone else, for that matter) answering my earlier question about Herakles wrestling with Aνταῖος . Given the extensive and elaborate description of that episode, are you not persuaded in the divinity of Herakles? Is the story of Herakles' adventures, not even more believable, than those preposterous fables of Jesus' supposed accomplishments, given that the famous Jewish scholar, Philo of Alexandria, described Herakles' accomplishments in such glowing terms?

No, no

Why not a historical (not divine) Herakles ? It seems not impossible to me. Okay, 7 out of 10 of these guys are myths. But how do we know which one of them. If there was a gospel of Theudas and not the notice by Josephus then we would argue that Theudas is a myth. Cause he is so fictitious

[stephan happy huller]

and then there's the old woody allen question - how much biography is there in "fiction"? Even make believe comes from real experience

[Peter Kirby]

I hear you, Stephan. All that talk about the blogosphere accelerating collaboration and promoting keener inquiry kind of goes into the crapper when we get the non sequitur on display that a blogger can send an email, not get an immediate reply, and make a conclusion about anything from that (except that, perhaps, he's got his own ax to grind and now he wants to play executioner over the internet). Notice that nobody is standing in front of that train to point out the obvious disconnect here because we all suspect that the fragment is forged (so we don't want to be tainted by association for "defending" Karen King and, by extension, the apparent forgery). And, really, if it takes one year or three or five for someone to realize that their pet project might have been in vain... who can cast that first stone? Some people spend their whole lives without giving up their delusions.