The Historical Jesus Question 2
This begins with a theist attacking mythicism, I respond in order to point out the flaws in said attack.
YoYo
Listen everyone,
Whats up with the Easter Challenge and the "denouncing of Christ" because of a few variations of text. Come on, any of the analytical thinkers here can easily determine the falsehoods of this article. I actually remeber someone posting something about this and I looked into it. So what, whats the big deal about the fact that there is a variance in text or "story". I do have a very black and white answer to this absurdity. Its called common sense. Now, before everyone starts ranting and raving and "declaring" that Im preaching, please think about the context of the Bible, the authors, the different spectrums of time that these documents were written. I have veiwed the concepts of this "preacher Dan" before on an antiChrist site. I do however have a few questions in regards to this Easter Challenge. To answer any questions, Yes I have taken this challenge and yes there is a variance in "events told".
ME
The problem Yoyo is you fail to grasp what this is about. Right now certain scholars are ripping the gospels a new one, and it's a question of whether your faith has anything left to call it's own. My research isn’t over but I’d gladly give you a preview, maybe Dan’s tactics are limited but they point to a serious problem you xtians have, your bible is full of holes. Its not just the gospel’s contradictions, but the total lack of evidence for any of the events or mythological figures described, not to mention the proof of colossal plagiarism we can level at the hacks who perpetrated this hoax.
The OT has been debunked my archaeology, and although you (like all xtians) don’t care about facts, or truth, the gospels fare no better. Although we cannot disprove them using only archaeology (as the events are too small to show up on the scale they don’t with the OT), the contemporary accounts of the gospel era are numerous. None tell the story you’d expect if there was even a word of truth to Mark and his follow ups. There is no account or proof Jesus did not exist, however as with the lack of proof for the exodus which destroys Moses as a real person, the lack of proof for the miracles or major events in the gospels also show that at least the Jesus of the gospels is an invention. You won’t get direct proof or Judean document saying “there was no Jesus” because of course of there wasn’t then there wont be any evidence of any kind. Same with the rest of the bible characters. You use reason, evidence and logic, and you infer and deduce the truth, there are however some smoking guns that although don’t dispove your Nazerene jesus do show the gospels are the work of uninspired hacks, presenting re-writes of OT myths as recent history, plagerised Josephus accounts as parables and ancient pagan motives as new and unique truths. I’d hate to base a world-view on their word.
All that leaves you with is Paul’s vague saviour, and that is just a pagan archetype, not historical reality. The gospels all do agree on the basics, the crucifixion, resurrection (except Mark) etc, but these are just story elements they all had to include as they where well established bits of xtian folklore. If they where real events, (that happened at the time alleged) they’d have been reported sooner, Josephus managed to cover the entire Jewish rebellion in two translations within two years, but well over 50 years pass before the gospels start to come out. They work so as to not contradict Paul’s rants and the oral traditions, but use different ones and end up disagreeing with each other, that’s what happens with fiction based on fiction. All they agree on without errors are the basic religious tenants the faith needed to remain a personality cult based on fear and greed. Articles of faith is what you have, not historical events. These are not eye witness accounts, that is proven beyond a reasonable doubt, these errors don’t show a corruption of a witness statement, but that none was taken. So go ahead, claim there was a Jesus, and he rose form the dead, but don’t claim you have any reliable proof, as the gospels aren’t it.
It's not just that there are errors, yes some are small, some however are so huge as to cast doubt on whether the gospels where written by people who had even been to Judea let alone during 1st century and witnessed these events. If the story of Jesus was made up and simply set in Judea, which looks like the most likely probability, then these errors don't pose a threat to inerrancy but to the very existance of jesus. As far as I'm concerned the gospel writers had a myth and a set of basic motifs found in Paul and rigged a "historical" account by combining pagan and messianic stories, contemporary accounts of the areas and people mentioned and then ripped each other off for the rest. If you can show me a section that cannot be found in a non-xtian source, then your naive claim that these errors are innocent and don’t damage their credibility might be taken for seriously.
(Yoyo then gives more poor arguments)
ME
Here's a dissection of your response to my post.
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I respect your writting of the Gospels and Im sure that it will be of good craftsmanship. I do although want to say that for every single paragraph that is in your writtings, there will be someone waiting to disprove the logic and try to discredit it.
Of course there will, using reasoning so weak and logic so flawed that only desperate and deluded theists will find them convincing. I know it’s hopeless to change the minds of the xtians who are really damaged goods, but at least the facts will be out.
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This in retrospect to the veiws that are being discredited on the other side.
No, each sides sees each other being discredited, but only one side is really losing, the other is lying, cheating, and self deceiving, so they think they have a case. By the standards of logic and evidence the bible is bunk, by the standards of faith and fallacy, it is true, the later opinion is invalid by the methods it relies upon to remain true in the minds of believers. This is objective fact, but the subjective will never agree, as long as the I remain true the objective reality then all the lies in the world will not change anything, this is not a matter of opinion but who respect facts, and who runs away from them.
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This is an ongoing war of whos right and whos wrong. In all honesty, we cant prove anything, other than variation,
You are wrong, variation is only the beginning, we can show the gospels “borrow” elements, names, locations and events off Josephus and other sources, and piece together the likely motives from the historical context that go far further in explaining the gospel’s content then any apologist. Its called explanatory power, we have the greater amount, making our position more likely to be true. Passages that have confused xtians for centuries we can explain as being a product of a theological agenda mixed with other work of the period, work that provided the details to everything from Paul’s prison visitors in Acts to Jesus’s miracles. Our explanations cover the facts, the theistic ones will rely entirely of faith, we will be right, but disbelieved due to bias. We can prove beyond a reasonable doubt a great deal, as the plagiarism of the gospels can be shown categorically, but no amount of proof with change a believer’s delusions. Both within a realm of logic and reason we will succeed, that there will be those who still disagree is irrelevant as there opinions are not based on anything reasonable but pure blind desperation.
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and the POV for me is that even if the scripture was in complete alliance with each other, there would be a different route of disproof.
That does not negate the fact that they are not, ignoring the problem because there are others does not change the fact that the degree of disagreement is more than enough to rule out the possibility that the gospels are either divinely inspired or eye witness accounts.
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For example, I have heard many againist the proclaims of the Bible say that the religious leaders in early 300-400AD's to have "revised the Bible and picked the Books, stories, and passages for there satisfaction" in ultimate decievment of the true word.
That they did that is a matter of historical record, however the changes where trivial, the origin of the gospels is the main proof against them. You believe the council of Nicea’s voting pattern was a product of divine will? Just study that period, don’t just dismiss what we say about it, see for yourself.
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Either way it goes there will always be a debate.
Only because there are people who will never except facts, not because there is anything to really debate about. We can prove the gospel writers where not Jewish, we can prove they were never in Judea, we can prove they where writing after 74 AD, and that they stole their material from other sources, the evidence is un-surmountable, but xtians simply ignore it.
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My purpose of this is to bring forth a different veiw(similar to finding the truth proclaimed often to me) of ones open minded,
What you are is not open-minded but gullible, you use the term open minded to describe the fact that you are prepared to believe xtian dogma but nothing else, that is close minded.
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more common sense,
What the hell is common sense? Science has shown it is completely unreliable when dealing with things we have no common experience for, (Quantum etc) and as you weren’t around in 1st century Judea, and know nothing of theological and pseudopigraphical methodology of the 1st to 2nd century you have no basis for any “sense”. You just have faith, which leads you to twist everything to your liking, that is not common-sense, if it where your opinions would be self evidently valid, instead anyone with a brain can rip them apart.
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out side the box thinking.
You are so in the box it’s freaky.
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If I strike out, then Oh well, I still enjoy the conversation and knowledge that I receive
Jolly good, I imagine you strike out quite a lot, you know there my be a good reason for that.
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and administer to others, possibly.
“Administer”? Even your choice of words betray your sheepish culture.
Kryten (quoting a certain Zoe Grace)
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No historian at the supposed time of Jesus EVER mentioned the existence of jesus...not even the romans...there were no roman records of his cruxifiction. THe ONLY contemporary source that mentions a man named jesus is josephus...which has been proven to be a forgery by euseubius...and not just cause it mentions jesus but for many reasons which I'm not going to go into here...but i can give you links to people who can explain it better than I. EVEN HONEST christian scholars have conceded this point.
Actually, Josephus was born years after Gospel Jesus supposedly died, so he is NOT his contemporary. Nobody that lived during that time ever wrote about him, except for Paul, who appears to know nothing of his life.
ME
Actually that's not half the story, the reason the fraud was put into Josephus was not just to make the Jesus character look historical but to draw attention to his accounts of 1st century Judea, as they are regarded as accurate, and were used to prove the accuracy of the gospels, as they share certain details. However that is because the gospels rip off Josephus! Luke especially used whole sections of his Jewish War and Antiquities to produce believable background details and even plagiarised his writing style in order to impress educated Romans. We know all the gospels (and Acts) took details from Josephus which means they all had to have been written after 74 C.E (for War) and even 93 C.E (for Antiquities) after they were published. This proves they were not contemporary accounts, or even written by Jews, if in order to set the story in Judea they had to look up what it was like in a popular Roman history book. The word is fiction, (badly researched, certain well known errors in Luke/Acts can now be explained as deriving from a misunderstanding of Josephus' accounts.).
The reason they plagiarise so much of his work is because his was the only account to make it past the Flavian censors, and the only source on an area and era the gentile Greek or Roman evangelists were unfamiliar with, and was all they had to work from when researching their novels. Hence all the ridiculously inaccurate details concerning Jewish practices and Judean Geography, what they could not get from Josephus they simply made up, gentiles writing for gentiles, relying on the ignorance of their audience like xtian apologists and creationists do today. Hence also the anti-Semitic and anti intellectual tone of the N.T. as they had to keep the flock away from those with the information that debunked their lies. (The first stage was to twist Jewish scripture to their own nefarious ends, then demonise Jews so they couldn’t object in front on xtians, classic cult tactic, seperate the followers from those best placed to counter the lies).
Even if the Josephus quote was genuine it's very poor evidence as it's simply a later report on what xtians believed, showing no extra biblical evidence or research on Joe's part at all. "He" just spouts this stuff out of nowhere, and is no independent corroboration, why xtians who believe in this quote (through faith not scholarship) think this (and similar non-contemporary and contested passages) constituted "overwhelming" evidence is beyond me.
Euthyphro
WOW! I have never heard anything like this before. I've only read debates in forums about the Testimonium Flavianum and "the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James" reference. Er...also early christian writings website. I never heard anyone mention the bible ripping off josephus. How long have scholars held this theory of the bible writers ripping off josephus? Damn. Anymore info given on this would be greatly appreciated! Thanks AUB!
ME
Euthyphro, I was as surprised as you are, all this time we've been hearing about Josephus as the "testamonium flaveus" and have gone through the fraud over and over again, and never has anyone pointed out the fact that he was the source for the gospels in the first place! Why has it been kept under wraps? Well it's anti-xtian dynamite for a start, and they don't what to refute it as that would draw attention to it, but the evidence is conclusive as far as I'm concerned, but you may have to do your own research, as very little has been done. There are very few sources for this, even jesusneverexisted haven’t really caught this one yet, it took me a hell of a lot of digging, infidels have only one article.
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/ric...ndjosephus.html
And the Pascal lot do a brief bit on it.
http://www.geocities.com/paulntobin/lukejosephus.html
The point I’d like to add here is the connection between Luke/Acts and jospehus is the obvious one, however as all the synoptics include the Gaderene swine miracle they must all have had Josephus as their source, including mark. It really is a horrible idea, making an anti-Semitic satire out of a Jewish holocaust, sic and evil are what the gospels writers where, and now we have them red handed. (It also supports my “xtianity as Sophic gentile cult” hypothesis.)
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Atrium/3678/
This guy goes into more detail than any other I've found online, he's a "flavian conspiracy" guy, but on the josephus issue he's really done his homework.
This when added to all the pagan sources covers the entire gospels, there is now nothing we cannot trace to another source. Maybe if the gospel hacks weren’t such plagiarists they’d have gotten away with it longer, but the evidence is overwhelming, a comprehensive debunking it called for, which is what I’m working on right now, hence my absence from the forums. (You may recall it was to be just Matthew, then Luke, now I’ve got to do the whole lot, as this ties them all together in the same lie) This is not simply a matter of faith anymore, you have to positively and willingly ignore the data to maintain the gospels as truth. I’ll write more but there’s still a hell of a lot more research I’ve got to do. If I find any more sources on this I’ll post them here.
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How long have scholars held this theory of the bible writers ripping off josephus?
That’s the question, so few dare to go that far, most don’t want to rock the boat, look at the Jesus seminar and their 84% untrue figure, they still assume he was real, yet they still get heat for it, and back away, spineless, like scientists unwilling to admit their work debunks superstition. This is cutting edge bible destruction, not your SAB or “Acharya S” stuff, and what annoys me is that it’s been staring me in a face for years, I kicked myself for not seeing it earlier, as I’ve been studying Jospehus for a while. Research is all I’m doing from now on.
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Could one infer then, or make the connection that the "testamonium flaveus" is the alledged Q ("the Quelle") that Luke and Mark draw from?
No, the testamonium flaveus is a much later interpolation put into Josephus by xtians, and is irrelevant to this issue. Joe was the source for the following...
Historical details, kings, events, certain rebels and geography.
Some of the really bad parables are re-worked accounts of events Joe described, turned into moral or religious tracts, and as such don't hold together in their new context.
Some of the miracles, (such as the infamous Gaderene swine itself) where re-worked from Joe's accounts, and were turned from pro-Jewish to anti-Jewish, pro-Jesus nonsense.
The purpose of Joe's histories was reversed, (a common tactic otherwise known as literary inversion) by using the names and events to prove the opposite point.
And finally the overall linguistic style was ripped off to give the impression "Luke" was a legitimate historian.
Q is a hypothetical, and I wouldn’t take it too seriously, I follow the direct hypotheses, Mark-Mathew-Luke-John, with the remaining elements taken from contemporary Jewish and Pagan sources. The 2 reasons the gospels ever agree is due to either a common doctrinal position they need to expand on or because they copy from each other. "Q" mentions no gospel details, and is just an anonymous collection of sayings, later accredited to Jesus, after he was made historical,