5 Reasons To Suspect Jesus Never Existed (Alternet)

[onager]

I suspect everyone in here already knows these. But maybe not, and it's a nice concise summary.

Not posted in The Other Group because I don't want to get pneumonia from all the frantic hand-waving...


http://www.alternet.org/belief/5-reasons-suspect-jesus-never-existed?paging=off&current_page=1#bookmark

[edhopper]

1. I tend towards

there being some preacher or maybe a couple, which they hung this mythology on.
But to me the real issue is the bible is no more accurate than Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter.

[mr blur]

2. "Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter" - that's not TRUE? (nt)

[edhopper]

3. I can't tell you for sure

I mean who can prove anything one way or another.
But they didn't mention the Vampires when I took a tour of Gettysburg.
But what's the harm if people want to believe the Civil War was fought over Vampires and not slavery?

[Arugula Latte]

14. I just feel in my heart that it IS true.

[edhopper]

15. That's all that counts

so much more persuasive than facts or evidence.

[mr blur]

4. "Nailed" is an excellent read (nt)

[Arkansas Granny]

5. I think there's a good possibility that Jesus was an itinerant, charismatic preacher who gained a

following and the myth grew around that, not unlike Johnny Appleseed. He might have even believed that he was the son of God. Those he preached to were likely poor, uneducated and superstitious and might have believed that he could perform miracles. When stories like this spread, they are usually embellished. Since no written history has been found to date (other than the new testament) there may never be a way to prove it, one way or another.

[onager]

6. That part is historically accurate.

According to the Xians' favorite historian, Flavius Josephus. But they read Josephus the same way they read the Buy-bull: cherry-picking the parts that seem to support the existence of Jesus (even when they're blatant forgeries), and ignoring every damn thing else.

Josephus mentions a butt-load of charismatic preachers, rabbis and general religious fanatics whooping it up in First Century Jerusalem. That's one of the things that make his descriptions of Jerusalem under siege such a great read.

He doesn't treat any of them as the potential Messiah, for a very good reason. Josephus was a Pharisee until the end of his life. Recognizing anybody as the Messiah would have been the worst kind of blasphemy to him.

[edhopper]

16. And he was not contemporary

so he was writing about things he was told about. And by then there was a cult of Yeshua, so grain of salt.

[onager]

19. A grain of salt, the size of Mrs. Lot...

Unless we're expected to believe Josephus saw a miracle-worker named Eleazar pull a demon out of a man thru his nostrils. An event supposedly witnessed by Vespasian and his son Titus, and all the assembled Roman legions in Jerusalem.

Along with some other miracles and magic tricks that Josephus claimed to witness, and seemed to accept uncritically.

You're right about the contemporary part, though. Josephus was born around 37 CE, AFAIK.

He was contemporary with the siege of Jerusalem and its aftermath, in which he pretty much behaved like a First Century Benedict Arnold. And that's from his own Autobiography.

[stopbush]

32. Why would you believe that Jesus is based on a real person?

The fact is that every aspect of his life story is based on an archetype that was as common as dirt in that area of the world. Julius Caesar was said to have been born of a virgin - while he was alive, no less. Resurrection, miracle workings, etc - a common trait of god and godmen.

Occam's Razor - the easiest explanation for the Jesus myth is that it is a repackaging of existing myths. It's "new Coke," so to speak, but it's still soda and it still comes in a can. The ancients created their gods by first defining WHAT traits constitute a god. Everybody knew who was a god because they knew what gods were - basically, super-humans, eternal but with all the foibles of normal humans. They had magical powers, the kind of powers most humans wished they could have.

So you see, there was no reason to identify some unknown itinerant preacher (Jesus) to elevate to the status of god or godman. No need to pile the god traits onto the life story of an obscure person who is never even mentioned in more-reliable histories of the time. In fact, if you were going to take that route, why not slather the god traits onto some known personality, like Julius Caesar? After all, gods do great and mighty things while they are dwelling among we mere mortals. It wouldn't make sense to people living in that time that such a person would be totally unknown by his contemporaries. If such a person didn't exhibit greatness to the extent that his name was generally known while he was among the mortals, how could he possibly have been a god?

On the other hand, it makes perfect sense to create a new god (Jesus) based on traits that people would immediately identify as being the traits held by a god. It matters not if any person named Jesus really existed. What's important is that the being is easily identified as a god.

If you're going to believe that the Jesus myth was somehow based on a real person, then you need to also believe that all of the other gods created in that era - Apollo, Zeus, Isis, Horace, Mars, etc - were based on people who actually lived, rather than being created in the minds of men, based on archetypes that had no need of a connection to a real person for them to exert their power over the minds of men. No one believes such a thing to be true of those ancient gods, so why the special carve-out for Jesus? Answer: indoctrination, coupled to some extent with lingering fear and guilt.

[Arkansas Granny]

34. I think it's most likely that the believers needed a Messiah figure to complete the prophecy.

They had been told a Messiah was coming, so they were looking for someone that fit their expectations.

[AtheistCrusader]

7. Some dude named Jesus, or the biblical character of Jesus?

Even as a firm atheist, I will allow the possibility, unproven, but possibility, that some dude name Jesus or whatever of the many names he goes by in the bible, may have actually existed in flesh and blood, maybe. And he may have even managed to piss off, on some level, the roman government and gotten nailed to a stick for it.


Beyond the scant and questionable evidence for a physical meat popsicle, that may or may not have come to the Roman's attention, that is a great list of reasons why the biblical character of jesus is laughable.

[Lordquinton]

9. I'm picturing in a thousand years or so

Atheists and Agnostics of the time on the Internet foruns of the time arguing wether or not Harry Potter was a real person, citing the prophet Josephus Rowling and pointing out that he also had some smutty work published that the ministry left out of the series when they included the apostle Ginsberg.

[AtheistCrusader]

10. Add in the existence of buckets and buckets of Harry Potter slashfic...

[AlbertCat]

11. Harry Potter was a real person,

Then they fuse it together with the "Dune" books and you get a confusing mishmash of contradictory stories and philosophies about "Paul Potter Atreites, called Harry"

[edhopper]

17. I don't know about that

but his relative in Bedford Falls gave George Bailey a hard time.

[AtheistCrusader]

20. If you walk without rhythm, you won't attract the dementors...

[LiberalAndProud]

21. Not crucified. Jesus was taken to heaven alive like Elijah before him.

http://guardianlv.com/2014/05/1500-year-old-bible-claims-jesus-was-never-crucified/

The shapers of the myth rejected this alternate account. Pulp fiction, I think. All of it.

[starroute]

8. My own suspicion is that it was originally fanfic

Some skinny Jewish teenager living in a village somewhere out in the boondocks began writing stories about someone a lot like himself but older and more impressive and capable of out-arguing a bunch of rabbis when he was only 13 and of leaving John the Baptist (who was a real historical figure with an extensive following) saying he was unworthy to tie his shoelaces.

And because fanfic is very good at expressing the wish-fulfillment fantasies of the moment, the stories caught on and began sweeping up all the best anecdotes and parables and wisdom teachings that were floating around.

And eventually people began taking them seriously.

[Simeon Salus]

12. When H.G Wells wrote his "Outline of History"

...he made a point of covering a number of great spiritual leaders (Asoka, Buddha, Jesus, Mohammad and others) from a secular perspective.

As someone writing a history, he had no desire to insult or disparage believers of any figure, but his general theme was to be state his honest amazement and admiration of each figure's perspective, philosophy and message, especially in the context of the "unsophisticated" (my word) societies in which each lived.

But he consistently balked at the miracles, and suggested that the insertion of miracles in the record always came from the followers who came after, and almost never from anyone who actually met the figure. He suggested that the insertion of miracles into the story had the effect of lessening the value of the forward-thinking messages of each of those figures.

He had a lot of nice things to say about Jesus, for example, but didn't have very much good to say about Saul of Tarsus, who, in Wells's view really mucked up the Kingdom of God concept Jesus was preaching about.

How much more amazing would the story be, Wells pondered, if Jesus was NOT the son of God, but the son of a carpenter in Judea who had the opportunity to read and learn extensively about the faiths of his time? How much more interesting and meaningful would it be if in spite of his handicaps of birth and privilege, Jesus developed the concepts of brotherly love, forgiveness, and pro-active community of faith on his own, without divine inspiration?

Would his message be less profound because he was NOT sacrificed to save all men from hellfire? Would his message be as powerful if he was NOT born of a virgin? These are the sorts of questions Wells poses.

I've always thought Wells' telling of religious history as secular development of the fields of philosophy and ethics as novel.

[Warren DeMontague]

13. Yeah. I think early Christianity was a mystery cult typical of the time

Or it may have even grown out of an amalgam of a few similar movements. With Christ as a wholly spiritual redemptive figure.

I think around 100-200 the historical "life of jesus" story was put together, retroactively. It may also have incorporated bits of the life of John the Baptist, a figure for whom (unlike Jesus) there is some historical evidence of the existence of, AFAIUI.

But good luck having this debate or discussion- there's just no point. And, tautology-style, you will be told that "most historians believe jesus existed"- uh, no.. Most Biblical historians (who have a vested interest in the bible as a historical source, for obvious reasons) believe that, most non-biblical historians dont have "jesus" on their radar at all, because outside of the bible, historically, he's NOT THERE.

But they probably avoid the debate for the same reasons i do... Why bother.

[onager]

24. Here's somebody who agrees with you.

From "The Ancient Engineers" by L. Sprague de Camp. He's writing about the fall of science and the rise of mystery cults in Ancient Rome:

The great intellectual achievement of the classical world under the Principate was toward supernaturalism; that is, religion, mysticism and magic. There was nothing new about these. All went back to primitive times. Mystery cults had flourished in Greece from -500 on and probably earlier if the record was complete...

Of all the mass religions, Christianity made the most effective use of these principles. Possessed of the tightest organization, the most bewildering logic, the most impressive sacred literature and the most fanatical spirit of any, it captured the Principate while Christians were still a small minority in the Empire.

Then, armed with the terrifying doctrines of exclusive salvation, eternal damnation and the imminent end of the world - and backed by the Emperor's executioners - it soon swept its rivals from the board.

[edhopper]

18. "The most important person in human history"

and yet almost twenty years of his life is completely unknown.
But the minutia of his birth is accounted for, even the stuff that contradicts history and other Gospels.

[mr blur]

22. It's . . . almost as if. . . somebody made him up! (nt)

[edhopper]

23. Or there was someone

People new about for a few years, and made up the stuff about his childhood to fit some prophecies.

[Warren Stupidity]

30. That claim is really taking credit for the roman empire consolidated under Augustus

that shaped European civilization, and later global civilization to the present day. That the late empire adopted Christianity as its state religion is not, in my opinion, critical, and if anything it can be blamed in part for the subsequent 1000 years of stagnation and decline, a decline that was reversed with the revival of the greek philosophical tradition in the renaissance and the protestant reformation's destruction of the smothering cultural control of the RCC, out of which emerged the enlightenment and the era of cultural, economic, political, technological, scientific, and intellectual revolution that we are still in the midst of

[Cartoonist]

25. As H.G. said.

or implied, or whatever. For some reason, his followers had to turn him into a deity. It wasn't good enough to be a wise man.

[stopbush]

26. It's so obvious that Jesus never existed that I'm surprised people are shocked when they hear it.

There's nothing original about his story. It's recycled archetypes.

Plus, Jesus is a really loathsome creature. Ever read his supposed words? Disgusting stuff most of the time.

BTW - the Gospels get all kinds of things wrong - history, geography, etc. Yet, somehow, they get the words of Jesus down verbatim! It's amazin'! They even report what he said in Gethsemane when he was praying BY HIMSELF. All of the disciples were asleep, yet we have jesus' verbatim words in the Gospels. So, who heard him to write down the words? Er, that would be, no one.

[A HERETIC I AM]

27. I read somewhere a while ago that all of the travels of Jesus....

If you amalgamate all the gospel stories of all his travels and everything he did from 30 years to 33, it could all be accomplished in 2 weeks... ON FOOT

I agree 100%. It is clearly an allegorical tale - a play, and the motif is a latecomer to an already crowded pantheon of savior god-men.

If one is to believe Jesus was real then they should give the same credence to Apollo and all the rest.

[cleanhippie]

28. That's a great point.

If one is to believe Jesus was real then they should give the same credence to Apollo and all the rest.

I find it curious how believers of modern gods look upon the ancient ones as mythology and fairy tales.

[A HERETIC I AM]

29. One line I have used in the past;

(Spoken as a Christian)

"All those other gods and all their fantastic stories and miracles, THEY are all false , but MY god and all HIS stories and
Miracles, they are all TRUE."

[stopbush]

31. The distance traveled by the Jews in the Exodus can be covered on foot in two weeks.

Yet the Jews supposedly wandered in the desert for 40 years.

[mr blur]

33. That's the trouble with misogynistic religions -

Being a typical male, Moses refused to stop and ask someone for directions.

[onager]

35. No kidding. Crossing THIS took 40 years?

I used to ponder that a lot when I lived in Egypt. I spent a lot of my work time looking at maps of the Egypt/Sinai/Israel area (usually on computer monitors, though, not on paper).

That often made me remember Baptist Sunday School lessons, when the Exodus story was repeatedly hammered into my thick little skull. FORTY YEARS?

And don't forget...the freed Egyptian slaves took their own slaves with them on the Exodus. Has there ever, in human history, been another slave society that also owned slaves?