challenge to skeptics: Explain why the early christians believed in a historical Jesus
Posted on: September 26, 2008 - 7:40pm
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challenge to skeptics: Explain why the early christians believed in a historical Jesus
my contention is that skeptics cannot adequately explain away the belief of 1st and 2nd century christiansin a historical Jesus without a historical Jesus.
"If you can make any religion of the world look ridiculous, chances are you haven't understood it"-Ravi Zacharias
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Well, since the story starts with: "Saul, Saul, why dost thou persecute me?" spoken by a ghost... you tell me.
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There is a difference between a history of claims being made, and those same claims being factually provable.
For over 3 thousand years Egyptians claimed that the sun was a thinking entity, just because they recorded that claim in stone didnt make the sun a being.
So you claim that a man named Jesus existed? BIG DEAL, my name is Brian but that doesn't mean I can fart a Lamborginni out of my ass.
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
Check out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under Brian James Rational Poet, @Brianrrs37 on Twitter and my blog at www.brianjamesrationalpoet.blog
"If you can make any religion of the world look ridiculous, chances are you haven't understood it"-Ravi Zacharias
however, your comparison between the historicity of Jesus and "farting a lambo out of my ass" made me laugh and at the same time made me want to punch in my computer screen.
"If you can make any religion of the world look ridiculous, chances are you haven't understood it"-Ravi Zacharias
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"I guess it's time to ask if you live under high voltage power transmission lines which have been shown to cause stimulation of the fantasy centers of the brain due to electromagnetic waves?" - Me
"God is omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent, - it says so right here on the label. If you have a mind capable of believing all three of these divine attributes simultaneously, I have a wonderful bargain for you. No checks please. Cash and in small bills." - Robert A Heinlein.
Do you preach to the lost or the saved? Duh!
You have answered your own question. "No evidence that non-christians believed"
I find it rather humorous that you have asked us to combat ignorance in the 'atheist community' when there is so much sitting in the chair at your computer.
Put down the crack pipe and re-read your assertion.
Is that the christian thing to do?
Bear the fruit of the spirit through longsuffering or else you chance the sins of the flesh entering into thy pure self.
Atheist Books, purchases on Amazon support the Rational Response Squad server, which houses Celebrity Atheists.
What? Ok, So if RRS battles claims of Thor and Vampires and Ouji Boards, thats ok? If they Battle Uri Geller and Scientology, that's Ok? But pick on Jesus then we are automatically wrong?
Could it be that Jesus was RETROFITED after the fact, that a splinter sect of a Jewish sect didn't like the current belief and marketed their own motif? Was there a man or group that inspired the Jesus myth? YES, otherwise it wouldn't exist.
But how anyone would conclude that a disimbodied being knocking up 9-14 year old girls and human flesh surviving rigor mortis is as as absurd as if I claimed I could fart a Lamborginni out of my ass.
Ignorance is incerting whims and magic where none exist.
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
Check out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under Brian James Rational Poet, @Brianrrs37 on Twitter and my blog at www.brianjamesrationalpoet.blog
I am still confused on what you are asking and I have written 3 responses, only to erase them because I reread your posts and get a different thought about what your point is!
To ask someone to explain away a historical Jesus, when that is part of the description, when that defines what I am trying to explain away, creates a circular response.
EX: Prove that the green grass is not really green!
Is that what you mean? AGain still confused!
You really haven't read many threads if you are of the opinion that RRS posters even if atheist are not shown the errors of their positions when posting erroneous information.
No writing supporting or refuting Jesus by pagan writers in the first century does nothing to support or refute the position that Jesus was real or not real. You cannot make a claim that lack of information criticizing Jesus shows he was real or not real. It may be he was so insignificant no one even noticed him or it may be he was a fictional character and there was no need to criticize.
Your desire to punch in your computer screen over Brian's farting a car out of his ass shows little progress in the violent nature of Christianity has occurred since the Inquisition. Jesus told you to turn the other cheek not to force conversions, murder those who don't accept, or kill those who leave the fold. In fact he specifically says that God is the judge not man.
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"I guess it's time to ask if you live under high voltage power transmission lines which have been shown to cause stimulation of the fantasy centers of the brain due to electromagnetic waves?" - Me
"God is omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent, - it says so right here on the label. If you have a mind capable of believing all three of these divine attributes simultaneously, I have a wonderful bargain for you. No checks please. Cash and in small bills." - Robert A Heinlein.
Simple. Vampires have been claimed for hundred of years and never been proven to exist. People have also claimed that Bigfoot and Loc Ness exist. A history of claims doesn't make a myth real, it just means that humans have a history of believing a myth. Just like humans for milinia believed that the earth was flat.
Jesus is most likely a conglomeration of multiple regional sacrifical motifs and merely a name that the movement incorperated to draw people away from the old mysticism and polytheism.
But in any case, even if atheists were to concede that an individual named Jesus lead a new Jewish movement, the claims of magic would be no more believable than the first Egyptian to claim that Isis fucked the severd penis of Osirus to concieve Horus.
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
Check out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under Brian James Rational Poet, @Brianrrs37 on Twitter and my blog at www.brianjamesrationalpoet.blog
Do you believe in Psychic abilities? I will assume, for the sake of argument that you don't.
Now, I have met people who believed about someone else that they were psychic. That is, someone they had actually met in person, they believed something supernatural about.
Now let's start moving from first person, to second person accounts.
Imagine that I would tell you: "I have an friend who once went to a psychic called Frank, and he told him so and so."
Now you too believe in the Frank the psychic.
You tell the story to someone, maybe you forget some of the details, and maybe call him Fran because you have a cold, and aren't pronouncing Frank correctly.
The person you told it to tells the story to someone else, describing Frank as a women called Fran, and also with minor details of what was told by the psychic to my friend changed, because the person forgets or adds some details for effect.
And so on and so on.
Now, transport all of this back 2000 years, were people generally had a completely different understanding of reality (they thought the Earth was flat for one), and imagine how warped a story can become when the first written records of Jesus show up over 70 years after his death, far away from Palestine. Add to that the point that Paul saw a ghost, not Jesus, and he's now telling stories too, that he combines with not firsthand, not secondhand, but maybe fortieth-hand or hundreth-hand accounts, and others do the same, and it's all going on 1900 years ago, covering a large geographical area, many different cultures and languages, and involves thousands of people.
So was there a guy called Jesus? Maybe.
Or maybe there was a girl caled Jesse, a guy called Jim, a guy called Yusef, and many others.
Jesse stood on a plank that floated over a lake and some people saw it. They told the story to some that told it to some that picked up on it, and Jesse's gender and name had since been warped, so when the followers of Yusef hear it, they believe that it is their profet Yusef that is being talked about, because they have some amazing stories about him too, so walking on water? That must be him.
Now, I remain skeptical when people I know personally gives me firsthand accounts of psychics they have themselves met, so you can imagine how I feel about a gigantic game of chinese whispers going on thousands of years ago. Especially when there is a huge political, emotional, and cultural stake in all of it from the very beginning.
The Catholic church were in charge of all the accounts of Jesus throughout the middle ages, and they had a huge political interest in those stories, and that alone is enough to make the bible a less than trustworthy source of history.
But even so, the Catholic Church's political interest in how Christianity was conveyed is still just one of thousands and thousands of links in a huge chain of Chinese Whispers, a chain that becomes increasingly less credible as hard, immutable fact the further you move along it.
And that makes the current form of the accounts of Jesus something that any reasonable person ought to stay very skeptical about, regardless of wether they believe in God or not.
Or, alternatively, they ought to believe in many many many things that they are told, lest they be very inconsistent in what they are naturally skeptical about, and what they aren't.
For example, my ex-girlfriend met a psychic once, that told her she would one day fall in love with a red-headed guy. I could call up my ex now and ask about the psychic, so that I could even seek out this person myself. Now, are you going to believe my second-hand account of a psychic with real supernatural powers?
If not, then you'll forgive me if I remain skeptical of millionth-hand accounts of Jesus' reserection and similar stories.
P.S: I just made up the fortiesh-hand and millionth-hand expressions. I'm not sure you can actually say that, but I pressume you know what I mean, regardless.
Well I was born an original sinner
I was spawned from original sin
And if I had a dollar bill for all the things I've done
There'd be a mountain of money piled up to my chin
historical Jesus
Makes zero difference to me , as all earth life is simply carbon based life, as we are all so the same. Do aliens exist ?
ON EXTRATERRESTRIAL INTELLIGENCE:
"There are some hundred billion (1011) galaxies, each with, on the average, a hundred billion stars. In all the galaxies, there are perhaps as many planets as stars, 1011 x 1011 = 1022, ten billion trillion. In the face of such overpowering numbers, what is the likelihood that only one ordinary star, the Sun, is accompanied by an inhabited planet? Why should we, tucked away in some forgotten corner of the Cosmos, be so fortunate? To me, it seems far more likely that the universe is
brimming over with life. But we humans do not yet know. We are just beginning our explorations. The only planet we are sure is inhabited is a tiny speck of rock and metal, shining feebly by reflected sunlight, and at this distance utterly lost." ~ Carl Sagan
Jesus is me .....
Atheism Books.
I can simply respond to ALL points made by everyone on this board, and that is that all of you commit one giant false dichotomy. I am not saying "explain this without God existing" but rather "explain this without Jesus existing".
However, my point was that all the Christians (including the heretical sects) believed in a historical jesus, and pagan and Jewish critics of Christianity (Celsus, Trypho) all accepted that Jesus existed. There is no evidence that any critics of Christianity used this argument (That Jesus never existed) against christianity when this should have been one giant ace up their sleeve.
"If you can make any religion of the world look ridiculous, chances are you haven't understood it"-Ravi Zacharias
The ancients thought many wrong things .... and today we still do ....
"If you can make any religion of the world look ridiculous, chances are you haven't understood it"-Ravi Zacharias
If you'll notice, I say I remain very skeptical about the supernatural claims about Jesus, but there is also good reasons to believe that a non-supernatural Jesus never existed (but rather that a non-supernatural Jesse, Jim, John, Jamie and Jack existed).
You see, I don't say: "there couldn't possibly have been a non-supernatural historical Jesus", I am quite willing to accept that it might be the case, I'm just saying, noone can know that for sure.
If I read a text from 1800 where someone said they had seen a wolf in the forests of Judland (a part of Denmark), then I would remain skeptical, because wolfes have been extinct in Denmark alot longer than that.
Sure it is not at all impossible that there were a few wolves left in 1800. I mean, it's not exactly a supernatural claim, it's just a claim that the wolves stuck around longer than is generally believed.
But it would be prudent to remain skeptical, because not every single claim that people in the past have made is completely certain.
So to a historical non-supernatural Jesus I remain skeptical, but really I remain completely agnostic, and don't care much either way. Prophets were a dime a dusin back then, and the possibility that Jesus was real just proves that one of them got alot more famous than most. We all know fame has as much to do with being at the right place at the right time as with there being something special about you.
Well I was born an original sinner
I was spawned from original sin
And if I had a dollar bill for all the things I've done
There'd be a mountain of money piled up to my chin
Umm, I'm not a historian, but today wrong creationism ideas exist ....
"If you can make any religion of the world look ridiculous, chances are you haven't understood it"- Ravi Zacharias
Umm, All traditional religion is rediculous as it implies a master, a beginning, and says I am not 100% god. Religion is the antichrist, to the principle of Oneness .....
Atheism Books.
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How about basic human stupidity? In modern times people have swallowed whole obvious nonsense as mormonism, scientology, the people's temple (jim jones), branch davidian-ism (david koresh) and the hale-bopp cult.
This was all in modern times. Just think how much more ignorant and gullible people were 2,000 years ago.
There are no theists on operating tables.
again, we simply should not find such a universal agreement that Jesus existed in the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd centuriesif Jesus didn't exist, but rather we should either see droves of heretics saying that he existed in a heavenly realm (which would make orthodox christians the real heretics BTW), or droves of Jewish and pagan critics responding to the apologists like Justin Martyr or Origen by telling them "Jesus was your messiah? HA! he never even existed!".
so once again, I ask the skeptics here to give a plausible explanation as to the rise of belief in the historical Jesus in spite of the non-historicity of Jesus.
"If you can make any religion of the world look ridiculous, chances are you haven't understood it"-Ravi Zacharias
Why not? Your life is ruled by groping at insufficient data.
In the case of Trypho the information is from the works by Justin Martyr in around 150. Justin Martyr clearly was biased in his position and that is the written information we have, not anything by Trypho. I do not know of books written by Trypho, do you? Then of course Trypho could be just an invented character Justin used couldn't he?
What of the following in Dialogue with Trypho in chapter 8? "But Christ—if He has indeed been born, and exists anywhere—is unknown, and does not even know Himself, and has no power until Elias come to anoint Him, and make Him manifest to all. And you, having accepted a groundless report, invent a Christ for yourselves, and for his sake are inconsiderately perishing."
Here Trypho does not seem to know that Christ exists does he? He also suggests he is invented.
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"I guess it's time to ask if you live under high voltage power transmission lines which have been shown to cause stimulation of the fantasy centers of the brain due to electromagnetic waves?" - Me
"God is omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent, - it says so right here on the label. If you have a mind capable of believing all three of these divine attributes simultaneously, I have a wonderful bargain for you. No checks please. Cash and in small bills." - Robert A Heinlein.
The hate of life , fear
Neale Donald Walsch - Who is God - 5 min
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCeSlAvzvCQ
Neale Donald Walsch Discusses The Emotion Of Fear - 8 min.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aA4HwFHiYyA&feature=related
HEY you christians, I AM JESUS, I AM ATHEIST, i am god ....
Atheism Books.
"If you can make any religion of the world look ridiculous, chances are you haven't understood it"-Ravi Zacharias
Folklore is real, so jesus is real , but folklore is full of bull shit .... so traditional jesus is bull shit ...
Atheism Books.
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"I guess it's time to ask if you live under high voltage power transmission lines which have been shown to cause stimulation of the fantasy centers of the brain due to electromagnetic waves?" - Me
"God is omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent, - it says so right here on the label. If you have a mind capable of believing all three of these divine attributes simultaneously, I have a wonderful bargain for you. No checks please. Cash and in small bills." - Robert A Heinlein.
Where did you ever get the idea that I was referring to a period prior to the Catholic Christian control of the Roman Empire? Of course it happened after the Empire made Christianity the state religion.
See the following excerpts from : christianityandhumanrights.com
"Constantine absolutely prohibits the assemblies of the heretics and confiscates their public property to the use either of the revenue or of the catholic church. The sects against whom the Imperial severity was directed appear to have been the adherents of Paul of Samosata; the Montanists of Phrygia, who maintained an enthusiastic succession of prophesy; the Novatians, who sternly rejected the temporal efficacy of repentance; the Marcionites and Valentinians, under whose leading banners the various Gnostics of Asia and Egypt had insensibly rallied; and perhaps the Manichæans who had recently imported from Persia a more artful composition of oriental and Christian theology."
"Further laws against heresy appeared in 380 AD under the Christian Emperor Theodosius I, who laid down the new rule:
We command that those persons who follow this rule shall embrace the name of Catholic Christians. The rest, however, whom we adjudge demented and insane, shall sustain the infamy of heretical dogmas, their meeting places shall not receive the name of churches, and they shall be smitten first by divine vengeance and secondly by the retribution of our own initiative, which we shall assume in accordance with divine judgement."
"The Christian Emperor Justinian issued severe laws against heretics in AD 527 and 528. Henceforth those who dissented from the authorised line were debarred from public office, forbidden to practice certain professions, prohibited from holding meetings, and denied the civil rights of a Roman Citizen. For them, said Justinian "to exist is sufficient" - for the time being. In the middle of the fifth century Pope Leo the Great commended the Emperor for torturing and executing heretics on behalf of the Church."
Do you really think that writings by heretics supporting a world where Jesus never existed had any chance of survival?
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"I guess it's time to ask if you live under high voltage power transmission lines which have been shown to cause stimulation of the fantasy centers of the brain due to electromagnetic waves?" - Me
"God is omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent, - it says so right here on the label. If you have a mind capable of believing all three of these divine attributes simultaneously, I have a wonderful bargain for you. No checks please. Cash and in small bills." - Robert A Heinlein.
No. As should have been clear to you with the examples provided, people are capable of ignorance even in modern times, and people were all the more ignorant 2 millennia ago. If it makes sense to be skeptical of modern superstitions (unless, of course, you aren't skeptical of the aforementioned beliefs) despite the presence of believers, it makes as much (if not more) sense to be skeptical of ancient superstitions -- ancient believers notwithstanding.
If you're too lazy, too ignorant or too christian to appreciate the flaw in your argument when applied to something other than christianity, let me walk you through it:
Do the beliefs of early mormons render historical the angel moroni and joe smith's golden plates?
Do the beliefs of early scientologists render historical the warlord xenu (or even ron hubbard's visit to a neighboring galaxy)?
Do the beliefs of the heaven's gaters render historical the spaceship in the Hale-Bopp comet?
If I understand you correctly, you're arguing that a lack of numerous outright denials of jesus' historicity in the 1st through 3rd centuries proves his historicity. This argument from absence cuts both ways: christianity started with Paul (as the result of a bad migraine on the way to Damascus). If jesus did exist, we should see multiple references to jesus' historical life in Paul's epistles, and yet we have none.
Justin Martyr for his part found it necessary to confront existing myths to which the jesus story bore a striking resemblance. If the historical jesus was so well attested in these early centuries, Justin would have responded to his interlocutors by telling them "You think jesus is just like Dionysus? HA! We have sound historical evidence for jesus, and here it is..."
Instead, the best defense this fearless early church father could mount was that satan foresaw the coming of jesus, and deliberately perpetrated the pre-christian myths to deceive us.
There are no theists on operating tables.
And there is no evidence that any non-Christians believed the god/man Jesus DID exist, this despite the supposed fame of the 'saving acts' of Jesus, the miracles and dramatic natural occurrences as portrayed in the gospels........and nowhere else.
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"Humanity has the stars in its future, and that future is too important to be lost under the burden of juvenile folly and ignorant superstition". - Isaac Asimov
oh and you are aware that we have 2 independent traditions in the Gospels right?
"If you can make any religion of the world look ridiculous, chances are you haven't understood it"-Ravi Zacharias
In the book "The Jesus Mysteries" Timothy Freke suggests that the historical Jesus was invented during the Jewish Roman War, when the Jews were extremely distressed because of the Romans destroying their temple. He suggests that they did this because they needed something more concrete than the cosmic jesus they had previously believed in.
Alternately, there were lots of different sects of early Christians: The Gnostics, The Marcionites,The Ebionites (who disbelieved the virgin birth and physical resurrection) and so on. Obviously, all these christianities share a common origin and were modified unconsciously (by faulty memories or misunderstandings by those who repeated the myths) or consciously (to fit the group's or the evangelist's own philosophies and preconceptions). With this knowledge, it is not hard to imagine Jesus starting out as a mythical, platonic figure and evolving into an historical one.
BTW, sometime in the future I intend to address the historical references to jesus. Anyway, this site may answer a lot of your concerns about Jesus mythicism:
http://www.jesuspuzzle.com/
If you are curious about atheism, please check out my site here:
http://godriddance.com
http://aigbusted.blogspot.com
Celsus? Do you mean the late 2nd century writer against the Christian religion?? And Trypho? Are you referring to the mid 2nd century discourse composed by Justin Martyr?? Such late examples are not convincing. They are 2nd century Christian gossip, not eye-witness accounts. Where's the contemporary stuff?
Given the alleged fame of Jesus in the gospels one would naturally expect to see frequent references to him in contemporary histories as well as in other official documents and writings of that time. There are no such references. Two Jewish historians, Philo Judaeus of Alexandria and Justus of Tiberius, lived during Jesus' alleged lifetime and wrote histories of the Jewish people covering this period. Although the work of Justus of Tiberius is now lost, a 9th century Christian scholar, Photius, Patriarch of Constantinople, had read it and wrote: "He (Justus of Tiberius) makes not one mention of Jesus, of what happened to him, or of the wonderful works that he did." This is interesting because Tiberius was a native of Galilee from whence Jesus allegedly came.
The work of Philo Judaeus is still available. It contains not a single reference to Jesus or to any of the astounding events so vividly described throughout the gospels. This is strange indeed considering that he and his family had close connections with Jerusalem where according to scripture, Jesus had his triumphant procession, drove the moneychangers out of the temple, was tried and crucified, and rose from the dead. Also, Philo Judaeus makes neither mention of an earthquake, unnatural darkness from noon to 3 pm nor the resurrection of the long dead saints.
Really! And in what way are they non-Christian accounts that Jesus existed?
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"Humanity has the stars in its future, and that future is too important to be lost under the burden of juvenile folly and ignorant superstition". - Isaac Asimov
Myth is not all a bad thing , but idol worship is wrong, unless the idol is peace and love. Yeah , I am an old ancient hippie .... stardust I am. ... Here's a hippie Song,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3SjqGfe-yM
Atheism Books.
Brilliant song IAGAY!
Woodstock was so fucking great. Why? Because it showed that people could do things differently. Not perfectly, not at all, but differently.
And better!!!
Well I was born an original sinner
I was spawned from original sin
And if I had a dollar bill for all the things I've done
There'd be a mountain of money piled up to my chin