Let's cut through the chase: Jesus didn't exist.

[SnakeLord]

Isaiah propheied the virgin birth 800 years before Christ was born

Even is he had have done, there is a distinct and obvious issue that needs to be addressed. Would the people that wrote about the birth of jesus had knowledge of prior prophecies? If so, and they intended to create a new belief, would it not be normal for them to use old prophecies and make it appear that they had been fulfilled? It seems unlikely that they checked Mary's fanny to ensure she was a virgin.

 

[Iasion]

Greetings,

Isaiah said; "A Virgin shall conceive",

No he didn't.
Isaiah said "a young woman would conceive" (almah, not bethulah.)
But of course, you never checked the facts.

thats one of the easiest prophecies to see in the scriptures

Wrong.
It's not a prophecy at all.
Isaiah said "a young woman would conceive", and later in the story, she DID.

Isaiah SPECIFICALLY says it was a sign for THOSE TIMES.
The woman had a child in THOSE times.
It was nothing to do with Jesus.

So,
the Christians FAKED a prophecy by falsely changing and twisting a tiny phrase out of context.

Thus, nowadays we see ignorant apologists quote "a virgin shall conceive" as a prophecy without any idea how false the claim is.

Sad really.


Iasion

 

[Silas]

It seems unlikely that they checked Mary's fanny to ensure she was a virgin.

Cue some very puzzled Americans!

I'm not sure why you (or anybody for that matter) continues to argue with TheVisitor. His/her statements are all faith based, and despite thanking me for clarifying the nature of this discussion, (s)he still butts in with dogma which is not germaine to a discussion about facts alone.

However, Iasion, since you are very fond of accusing people of not checking their facts, lets check yours.

No he didn't.
Isaiah said "a young woman would conceive" (almah, not bethulah.)
But of course, you never checked the facts.

The Bible the Evangelists knew was not the Hebrew bible, but the Greek Septuagint, and in the Septuagint the word is "parthenos" which definitely means virgin (we still use the word parthenogenesis to indicate asexual reproduction). Jesus was given the attribute of a virgin birth because their bible said "virgin", not "young woman".

For the rest, you keep piling on all the arguments about the mythologising of Jesus. Please let me make it absolutely clear - I have no argument with the fact that Jesus's life was mythologised! But in my view there is sufficient consistency between the gospels (and the sayings gospels of Thomas and Q) to be able to state that there was a living, breathing human being that the stories were being told about - whether all the stories are true or not is irrelevant.

Even is he had have done, there is a distinct and obvious issue that needs to be addressed. Would the people that wrote about the birth of jesus had knowledge of prior prophecies? If so, and they intended to create a new belief, would it not be normal for them to use old prophecies and make it appear that they had been fulfilled?

I've actually had a Christian argue that it's simply a strange characteristic of Biblical prophecies that you could only recognise it had been fulfilled after the fact. I pointed out this was the strongest point against taking any biblical prophecy seriously, and furthermore that he might as well believe in Drosnin's "Bible Code", since that came under the exact same stricture.

 

[Silas]

Greetings all,

Sorry, I thought your thesis was that Jesus was a made-up person.

My apologies for being unclear - the phrase "made up out of whole cloth" is ambiguous.

I meant :

* Yes, Jesus is made-up, crafted, fictional, myth

* No, Jesus was not made up from NOTHING, from THIN AIR.

Jesus was made-up, crafted, created as midrash, mythologised from the Tanakh - based on the OT.

Well, I was the one being ambiguous. I'm trying to keep my eye on the ball - of the physical reality of a human being who did and said things. Almost everything said about Jesus in the Gospels is undoubtedly fictional, but that he came from Galilee is not one of them, neither is the fact that he was arrested and executed in Jerusalem. Mythological heroes tend to live long lives and to succeed in their aims, something Jesus certainly never did.

No point in mangling the prophecy if your having it fulfilled by a fictional person. You only need to mangle the prophecy when the real person you are describing didn't quite match the prophecy.

Or to create new stories about a new myth.

Many of the "prophecies" about Jesus do not stand up at all (e.g. born of a virgin), but are merely attempts to create a prophecy to bolster the new myth.

We are talking about religious mythology - the Gospel writers were quite happy to change the original "prophecy" to make their new mythical character fit their religious views - the sign of myth-making, not history.

Later Gospels even made changes to earlier ones - a clear sign of MYTH-MAKING.

Nothing fake about the prophecy in Micah

Well, I meant that it originally refers to a clan "Bethlehem-Ephrata", but in the Gospels its the town Bethlehem.

A better example of a fake prophecy would be the "virgin" birth - not prophetic at all, not even about a virgin.

I don't accept that definition of "fake prophecy". Even if Matthew and Luke were mistaken as to the original hebrew, they made use of a real prophecy and real words in the scriptures. Same with Micah. Of course I don't believe the prophecies and know that the original writings have been taken out of context, but that doesn't make the use of scripture as prophecy as "fake". A Fake Prophecy is to state something is a prophecy which isn't in the scriptures. The "virgin" birth is not one of these because they are quoting a version of Scripture that had the word "virgin" in it.

Sometimes you seem to argue from rational grounds but then attribute the same kind of rationality to the undoubtedly religious people you are talking about. Quoting out of context has a logic of its own. It's not something I would do (at least I would strive not to do it), but I don't presume to judge those that do what they did in the context of their own times and beliefs.

Again, you make up fictional life details to match the existing scripture (born in Bethlehem), you do not make up scripture to match a fictional life, only a real one (Galilean).

You seem to be saying both no and yes here.
Fiction CAN be added to real stories.
Fiction CAN be added to fictional stories.

No, I'm saying the scripture is fixed, and can be referred to by anybody. A biography of a person designed to match the scripture is obviously going to be twisted to fit that, with fictional events inserted, ie born in Bethlehem. But if you're going to pretend there's a scripture that matches the reality when there really isn't ("he shall be called a Nazarene"), there has to be a reality for it to match, do you see?

What about the scripture made up about :
* Krishna ?
* Dionysus?

Does that make them real?

I don't know the stories of Krishna or Dionysius, but if they purported to be about real people, were they written about people who were supposed to have been alive only 20 or 30 years ago?

Fiction, myth, midrash - these are all attributes of mythical characters. But apart from the myth-making, there is no hard historical core to the Jesus story - none.

Jesus was a myth.


Iasion

And there you finish with a last bit of almost desperate sounding special pleading.

One other point, it seems to me (maybe I've misunderstood) that you're painting Mark as almost the "mythologiser in chief". If you accept the letters of Paul as genuine (which seemed so from the links you provided) - and I'm only referring to the ones that are recognised across the board as genuine, not the deutero-pauline letters such as Hebrews - then, as a man who knew and spoke to Peter and James, the myth must originate with them, not with the later evangelists whom themselves might have been misled as to the actual existence of a real Jesus bar-Joseph.

 

[Silas]

but if you describe things that anybody could have done,

Such as revive people from the dead?
Bring the saints back to life?
You claim anybody can do that?

Well, duh! It's easy to bring people back to life.... when they were never dead!

As to the revival of the saints, I imagine even Christians find it hard to take Matthew seriously about the "Night of the Living Dead" scenario described upon the death of Jesus, not least because it's not mentioned in any other gospel.

chances are there's a real somebody being talked about.

Such as,
say James Bond, Sherlock Holmes, Rhett Butler?

I think you've missed my point. James Bond, Sherlock Holmes and Rhett Butler are not being held up as Gods or other people with magical powers. If you instead talked about Harry Potter then we are clearly dealing with a fictional character because the things that he and his friends do (transmogrify animals, fly on a broomstick, attack people with a word from a distance, repair spectacles) are not things that can be reproduced, exactly as described, in front of witnesses. The miracles of Jesus, however, can be, up to and including the Death and Resurrection itself. They are conjurors tricks, not the powers of the Son of God.

 

[TheVisitor]

If "carnal" minds can't understand "spiritual" things it is because the spiritual things make no sense, logically.

Not so, I just said it won't make since to you until you have a spiritual mind to comprehend it.
You must put on the mind of Christ to understand His words.
You must be born again by the spirit of God to "see" or understand...the kingdom of God.
You are "quickened"by the spirit to understand things on a higher level.
It is logical and makes perfect since...you don't lose your logic to do that...
But logic alone won't "crack" the code.(not Bible code nonsense)
God has hidden the meaning of His word in a sealed vision..wrote in words by the spirit...only the same spirit that gave the vision can properly interpret it.
God is His own interpreter.

 

[Silas]

Sup Sorry, well overslept..

Hardly anything to worry about, given my dilatoriness in responding to this!

The crucial difference between these (forgive the oxymoron) authentically mythological characters and Jesus is that the stories of these people predate their having been written down by many centuries. The stories themselves invariably contain statements that the tale dates from "hundreds of years ago" at the time of writing.

I'm afraid I don't recall any of the stories concerning the listed people as stating the tale dates from hundreds of years ago. Maybe I just misunderstand your statement, (or have by and large forgotten the stories ), but to be honest would still fail to see a connection between style of writing and the existence or non-existence of a certain person.

Well, I wasn't talking about style particularly. But Moses is supposed to have lived between 2000BC and 1500BC iirc, and David around 1000BCE. The Pentateuch and Deuteronomistic History that tells the tales of Moses and of David date from no earlier than 800BCE, with most of it dating from much later, around the sixth century. Robin Hood is most recognisable a story of the Saxon Robin fighting the evil henchmen of wicked King John - a 13th Century tale, then, but which doesn't first appear even in it's pre-King John/Sherwood Forest incarnation until the 15th Century, but isn't given its full mythological trappings until Walter Scott's Ivanhoe in 1820. I was wrong to use quotes to surround the "hundreds of years" as if that phrase specifically was used , but the written forms of the tales invariably come at least two centuries after the time of the stories they purport to tell.

It would be probably be accurate to state that the earlier stories would have first been handed down verbally - and thus the texts are more likely to contain errors, but it's probably also accurate to state that by the time of the alleged jesus, people had a greater ability to write and get creative.

Unfortunately we still have a complete lack of evidence, and as such jesus is right there along with Robin Hood.

I'll talk about what constitutes valid evidence further down.

As such he has I believe cast doubt on Jesus's existence by pointing to parallels between Jesus and other mythological characters from the past. But finding parallels between one person and another is never going to be difficult, be they real or the protagonists of narrative tales.

Might I ask, if the stories are not later changes to existing stories, why you would find parallels, (to the degree seen with jesus and other stories/the OT and Sumerian text etc)?

But that's not what I've been arguing. I'm not denying that there have been considerable embellishments made to the actual events, even if they were true. What I've been arguing is that Jesus was a real person, and that this is shown by evidence within the New Testament that is, in fact, every bit as good as evidence to be found for other people in non-Biblical historical sources. There is too great a tendency to dismiss the New Testament as evidence. Even Iasion's lists of negative evidence do take the writings themselves seriously as things to assess when determining historicity.

It seems to me that Jesus's being considered mythological is completely precluded by the short period that intervenes between his ministry, trial and death, and the first writings about it - in the case of letters of Paul, probably less than thirty years.

A) Where did the 30 years come from?

Jesus died circa 29-31 CE. Paul's earliest letters, to the Thessalonians, are dated roughly 50-60 CE.

B) Is it not customary for an author to write a story from start to finish? (i.e a man was born, did some miracles, then got whacked). The later letters would come under story advertising.

The later letters do not concern me. For the purposes of this argument I'm really only interested in the very earliest New Testament writings, which are the Pauline letters, and the Synoptic Gospels which started to appear ten years after Paul's death. So in fact the letters come first, and the Gospels represent a codification of established oral tradition. (I regard G.John as a late work, along with the Peter letters (not the real Peter), James (not the real James) Hebrews (not Pauline), Jude and the works of John the Divine (1-3 Jn, Revelation).)

We still await evidence.

Well maybe we do, but there has been substantial scholarly work by people of all beliefs or none, over centuries but certainly not least the last hundred years, and no serious scholar doubts the existence of Jesus. The non-existence theory tends to be that of people trying to make a controversial splash.

Here we have a person of whom there are not one, but four full histories all of which were definitely written within a century of his death.

A) Let's not forget that those four histories do not agree with each other on most of the details - and if written up to 100 years after his supposed death, have no valid say on the matter. It would seem more likely that these people were familiar with the earlier jesus story and then did a later version of it. People are still doing it now. There's thousands of "christ books", written by people in the year 2006 attesting to the existence of jesus. What would they know?

I still attribute more knowledge and believability to people who would have been able to consult with living friends and followers of Jesus. I'm not disputing that those accounts may have been blurred, and that certainly Mark, Matthew and Luke were very far from the modern conception of biographers or historians. Nevertheless, those books, which were actually written within fifty years of his death, not a hundred, also contain a great deal that is consistent. Many sayings are common to all three synoptic gospels, as well as the Gospel of Thomas (which is a record only of Jesus's sayings, as Q is believed to be, also). Well, someone said those things, spoke those parables etc - why assume that they were put in the mouth of a fictional character?

It would perhaps help to explain the vast amount of differences in the stories.

The differences in the stories seem to me to emphasise his reality, not his fictionality. But I think arguments are possible in both directions on that one.

You don't create complete hoax characters when people around you are more than capable of saying "I was around in Jerusalem then, and I've never even heard of him". In other words, if they were creating a fictional character somewhere between 50 and 70CE, they would have fictionalised him to further back in time.

People still do it and still get away with it. Why, just the other day a ufo landed in North London.. apparently. Now imagine how hard it would be for me if someone said it was upto 100 years ago. The only person I know that would even be close to being there would be my gran, but her brains have gone funny in recent years, so she ain't much good for confirmation.

That's precisely the point. We are constantly able to cast doubt on outré events that happened will within our ability to investigate them, such as a UFO landing in North London last week. There are loads of people still around who can say, "I never saw that!"

Documentarily, we have known of Caiaphas the high priest and of Pilate the procurator only through the accounts of them in the Gospels. But archaeological discoveries of recent years have confirmed their existence.

My apologies, but it's 1am.. Any chance you can link to the discoveries please? I'm not entirely awake yet. Thanks.

I'll see what I can do if you're still interested. I was writing off the top of my head so I could be wrong about Caiaphas, but the Pilate reference comes from Graham Stanton's Gospel Truth? and includes a photograph of the inscription - apparently the only non-Biblical contemporaneous evidence we have for Pontius Pilate.

“ B Vaticanus, d 1, Rome, fourth cent.;
Sinaiticus, d 2, Saint Petersburg, fourth cent.;
C Ephræmus rescriptus, d 3, Paris, fifth cent.;
A Alexandrinus, d 4, London, fifth cent.;
D Cantabrigiensis (or Codex Bezæ) d 5, Cambridge, sixth cent.;
D 2 Claromontanus, a 1026, Paris, sixth cent.;
Laurensis, d 6, Mount Athos, eighth-ninth cent.;
E Basilcensis, e 55, Bâle, eighth cent.

By their dates, not one of these is of any value. It would be like using Interview with the Vampire to attest to the validity of 14th century vampire texts.

Actually I was arguing about how well attested the Gospel documents are, and quoted from the Catholic Encyclopaedia. However, the list of books was not part of my argument. To clarify, this is not a list of the very oldest manuscripts of any kind that exist, but simply the oldest relatively complete entire NT codices, or at the very least, four-gospel codices. The oldest fragment of NT is a piece of the Gospel of John which dates back to CE 125. Obviously John can not be much older than that (generally regarded as little more than 20 years, or 30 at most), so in terms of classical documents, what that represents is the almost certainly the closest-to-composition manuscript of any work in classical literary history.

This is where the "departure from reason" comes in. You can't just dismiss the Gospels and the Epistles of Paul because they're devotional texts.

Their "devotional" status is not the reason. The word of a couple of people is just never really suitable to be convinced of the validity of a character written about.

At the distance of nearly 2,000 years, the word of five people is quite substantial, and much more than many other similar historical figures get.

Even more so when they all disagree on the details, and even by your own submission - some of them wouldn't have even been there, (maybe even upto 100 years after his supposed death).

Actually I don't believe any one of them were there. In fact it's known that Paul certainly never met Jesus, and I don't claim that Mark, Matthew or Luke are actually the apostolic figures they are sometimes portrayed by doctrine (like the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch). But at this early stage of the Church, surely the "Kevin Bacon number" for any of the Evangelists - or any Christian at all - can hardly have been more than 2 just to get as far as a living Apostle, let alone to Jesus Christ himself.

It's only been 96 years since Twain died, and yet there's already like 100 copies of Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur's Court. Does that make Hank Morgan a real person? But who can argue otherwise?

I simply don't see that there's any point in comparing someone whose historicity is in doubt, with a popular fictional character. If Jesus did exist, the status of Hank Morgan is not affected. How does Morgan's fictionality affect the historicity of, say, Julius Caesar? That there are fictional characters is not in question. What is in question is whether it is at all likely that Paul, an evidently intelligent man, would have been fooled by Peter and the Apostles into believing in a fictional person that they are supposed to have known personally.

at least one of which was by common consent written only 40 years after the events, or well within the living memories of many people around at the time

Purely out of interest, what was the life expectancy back then? (If you know).

Well, what does life expectancy have to do with it? Say the "life expectancy", by which we mean "average life span of someone who made it out of birth and childhood" is approximately 45-50. That there have always been some people who were far older than that, at all times of history, regardless of different health and hygiene regimes, is surely not to be doubted?

which describe meetings between Paul and Peter and James, whose personal acquaintance with Jesus is not in doubt.

It isn't in doubt? Why not?

Obviously it's in doubt by people who are desperate to disprove Jesus's existence. But either Peter and James knew Jesus, or they're the ones who made it up. It's their existence as real people which is not in doubt, really. And I contend that that amounts to the same thing as there being no (reasonable) doubt in Jesus's existence.

Here is testimony

Testimony some 150/170 years after the supposed events. Who is to argue it? Not to mention that apparently Irenaeus was a bishop, (and thus in a position where bias would play a major part).

But if you read the actual writing, it certainly seems convincing testimony. He's describing meeting an old man who talked about having met another old man who claimed to know Jesus. And at every stage it is written with conviction. It's not proof, of course, but it certainly convinces me. As to Irenaeus being "biased" because he was a bishop, that only works if the Jesus myth was a product of the second century, which I have to say I think there is quite convincing evidence, documentary evidence, that rules that idea out. People of Irenaeus's time would have no particular reason themselves to doubt the existence of Jesus, so bias doesn't really apply.

With me it's not about "bolstering atheism", (I can't believe in gods any less than I do now), but simply - as it has always been - down to the evidence. Four dodgy texts that rarely even agree on the basics does not come under the 'evidence' classification as far as I see it.

As I've hoped to show you, however "dodgy" they may appear to you, four texts is considerably more documentary evidence for one man's existence than most other historical figures of that era get. You're asking for a higher standard of proof for Jesus than you would for, say, General Varus of Teutoberger forest fame. I'm not particularly accusing you of this, but other atheists are too insistent on disregarding reasonable views of the evidence and excessive arguing from silence. As well as re-emphasising "there is NO evidence", when obviously the fact that people are talking about someone called Jesus does actually constitute some kind of evidence. Evidence that requires examination, sure, but not to be classified as "not evidence".

Ultimately, the closeness of the telling to the time of the actual events, plus the widespread assumption in the existance of a physical person Jesus by all the Christian writers, means that it's the "Jesus-as-myth" theory which requires more explanation and special pleading, than simply assuming that he existed and that people told (frequently wild and unbelievable) stories about him. Although it has often been claimed that the lack of evidence puts the burden of proof on the Christians, it seems to me that in this case it is Jesus's non-existence which falls foul of Occam's Razor. It's far simpler to assume that there was a person called Jesus who, like it or not, had a huge effect on everybody he came in contact with, than to believe that everything written from Paul in 50CE onwards was based on a 1st Century "James Bond" figure.

Yeah baby!.. 2500

While I'm puffing up the hill towards my first grand!!

 

[Chris_Smith]

*************
M*W: Let's get right down to it. Jesus didn't exist, and there is no proof that confirms he existed. Why is it that people continue to believe he is their dying demigod savior? When will they ever learn that there is no Jesus. No savior. No heaven. No hell. No religion? When will you people realize you are living a big fat lie?

Personally, I find that religion can only be a barrier. It's brainwashed into us at a very young age, and accepted not as a fairy tale of morals/metaphors etc. later on in life, but as the literal and desperate truth... Never mind eh. My religion is that there's no religion - and no answers, as imagination is our only true reality... and it's the imagination of man that concocted such religions to control our imaginations.

 

[SnakeLord]

Okie dokie Silas.. I got a long post to get through now.. thnx a bunch

But Moses is supposed to have lived between 2000BC and 1500BC iirc, and David around 1000BCE.

From a religious perspective, it is generally said that Moses wrote the early parts of the OT, including the story about Moses. It's also worth questioning the validity of the dates given and exactly how those dates are figured out.

I'm not denying that there have been considerable embellishments made to the actual events, even if they were true. What I've been arguing is that Jesus was a real person, and that this is shown by evidence within the New Testament that is, in fact, every bit as good as evidence to be found for other people in non-Biblical historical sources.

But in saying, you are then espousing that Gilgamesh was a factual character.. etc etc. Your only disagreement seems to stem from date of writing about the person - which I personally don't see as much of an argument - especially when a character is quite possibly a later ammendment of an already existing and written about character, (moses/sargon for instance, or jesus and his various counterparts).

If you're going to state that the NT is a valid source of evidence for existence of a character, then it is just as much evidence for the existence of miracles and existence of god - and solely on the basis that 'the book says so'. This leaves us being unable to distinguish a difference between jesus and frodo baggins.

There is too great a tendency to dismiss the New Testament as evidence.

A solitary book written by author/s unknown cannot really be considered valid evidence - especially given the blatant contradictions to those stories and the sole appearance within that one book.

Jesus died circa 29-31 CE.

It seems then that our discussion has come to an end. We were discussing whether jesus ever existed or not, and now you're giving me his funeral date as if it's solid as stone. Out of interest, who says he died in that year/couple of years?

and no serious scholar doubts the existence of Jesus.

This is inaccurate. I myself know several "serious scholars" that doubt the existence of jesus. Telling me many scholars, or a large portion of scholas is one thing, making such an absolute statement like the one you have is not really appropriate.

Nevertheless, those books, which were actually written within fifty years of his death

Again, considering we haven't even validated his existence, how are you able to give me such a definite date of his death?

Well, someone said those things, spoke those parables etc - why assume that they were put in the mouth of a fictional character?

I myself like to write. Perhaps, unlike Hubbard and others, I cannot start a religion - but I can write an interesting story. In my stories there are characters that say interesting things. Those interesting things come from my mind. Just because a character, (that never actually says anything himself), had the supposed ability to say things, doesn't mean there ever was an actual character that said things.

That's precisely the point. We are constantly able to cast doubt on outré events that happened will within our ability to investigate them, such as a UFO landing in North London last week. There are loads of people still around who can say, "I never saw that!"

And in a thousand years when there is not one person to be able to attest to that UFO landing, and the few other accounts concerning it written a hundred or more years after the supposed events, what validity would my one little account have? Ok, to stay with the NT, let's say there are four ufo accounts but all of them contradict each other. Would you justify it as a valid source of evidence?

At the distance of nearly 2,000 years, the word of five people is quite substantial

Not really no. However, if you'd like to go into more depth on why you consider the word of a 'supposed' 5 people, (that all disagree by and large), as substantial then I'd love to hear it.

Actually I don't believe any one of them were there. In fact it's known that Paul certainly never met Jesus, and I don't claim that Mark, Matthew or Luke are actually the apostolic figures they are sometimes portrayed by doctrine

To stick with my analogy, it would then be like a story concerning the UFO landing by people that weren't there and didn't see it. You still claim there is substance?

How does Morgan's fictionality affect the historicity of, say, Julius Caesar?

It doesn't, but that was not really what I was getting at.

What is in question is whether it is at all likely that Paul, an evidently intelligent man, would have been fooled by Peter and the Apostles into believing in a fictional person that they are supposed to have known personally.

This happens on a regular basis even now. Your work colleague says his brothers, girlfriends, sisters, boyfriends, uncle used to jam with the Eagles - and in general people will buy it. If you went up to Woody and said you saw a three horned demon raping a 15 year old crack addict girl down a back alley, he would believe it without question. When we 'think' we know people, we generally give them the benefit of the doubt. To use your phrase, we are often 'fooled', whether intelligent or not. We even have people in 2006 falling for the old 'god impregnated an earth woman' story without even raising an eyelid. People will accept without a lot of convincing - if they are that way inclined.

We could debate whether that's an issue of intelligence or not.

That there have always been some people who were far older than that, at all times of history, regardless of different health and hygiene regimes, is surely not to be doubted?

I wouldn't know, that's why I was asking

Obviously it's in doubt by people who are desperate to disprove Jesus's existence.

I wouldn't go so far as to say "desparate". To be perfectly frank it doesn't make the slightest bit of difference at the end of the day. I'm sure some think it would, but I personally don't. However, I am not willing to accept on the word of a 'supposed' few people, given the 'supposed' popularity of the person, (going all around doing miracles - even the romans taking notice), all based within a handful of pages.

But if you read the actual writing, it certainly seems convincing testimony.

If I was to go into church next Sunday, I'm sure I would hear convincing testimony too.

He's describing meeting an old man who talked about having met another old man who claimed to know Jesus.

Did I ever tell you my wifes, cousins, fathers, pet dogs, sisters, owner used to date Axel Rose?

Of course I might aswell state that I only mentioned Axel Rose because I was, and am, a big GNR fan. It would be the ultimate dream of any priest to tell you his friends friends friend got jesus' autograph and met the man in the flesh, (as opposed to the spirit )

As to Irenaeus being "biased" because he was a bishop, that only works if the Jesus myth was a product of the second century, which I have to say I think there is quite convincing evidence, documentary evidence, that rules that idea out.

Why would there only be bias if jesus was a product of the second century?

People of Irenaeus's time would have no particular reason themselves to doubt the existence of Jesus

Are we satisfied in stating that there were no non-believers at that time?

You're asking for a higher standard of proof for Jesus than you would for, say, General Varus of Teutoberger forest fame.

Personally I am not. Admittedly I might show more interest given the nature of this supposed person's existence, (much like I doubt the existence of Gilgamesh), but I would adopt the same standards regardless to the person.

but other atheists are too insistent on disregarding reasonable views of the evidence and excessive arguing from silence.

Perhaps they show a tad too much "passion", but then given how the world has turned out, one can hardly blame them. Of course we still need to judge the arguments given, (for both sides). Of course the fact that there even is an argument points at a certain number of unresolved issues concerning alleged existence.

As well as re-emphasising "there is NO evidence", when obviously the fact that people are talking about someone called Jesus does actually constitute some kind of evidence.

But no, not really.

People talk about Noah quite a bit, and yet it doesn't in and of itself constitute evidence to the existence of Noah. We can certainly see his origins stem from Ziusudra/utnapishtim who also must be given that same level of scrutiny. Is Jesus a later copy of stories concerning Mithra? Again that same level of scrutiny needs to be applied. If the Jesus myth is indeed a later retelling of Mithra, then we're not talking a 30 ce death, but a non-existent death because the character never existed. From there we would move onto a debate concerning the validity concerning the existence of Mithra. No?

it seems to me that in this case it is Jesus's non-existence which falls foul of Occam's Razor. It's far simpler to assume that there was a person called Jesus who, like it or not, had a huge effect on everybody he came in contact with, than to believe that everything written from Paul in 50CE onwards was based on a 1st Century "James Bond" figure.

Then the same must be true of Mithra, Gilgamesh, Robin Hood and so on.

Regards,

 

[TheVisitor]

Then the same must be true of Mithra, Gilgamesh, Robin Hood and so on.

Gilgamesh....I always liked that one.
1\2 god 1\2 man....wonder where they got that idea.?
Sounds like a hybrid to me, S.L.
Need I say more.

 

[qwerty mob]

Not so, [...]

Yes, so.

 

[SnakeLord]

1\2 god 1\2 man....wonder where they got that idea.?

More like, wonder where the jesus 1/2 man 1/2 god idea came from. A lot happens when you have an extra 1,500 years to play with.

Sounds like a hybrid to me, S.L.
Need I say more.

Forgive me for not understanding what it is you're trying to say. The bible indeed states that god impregnated an earth woman. The result would indeed be a hybrid, (1/2 man 1/2 god). It seems to me that you don't like that idea.. Are you planning on having an argument against yourself or what?

 

[Iasion]

Greetings Silas,

The Bible the Evangelists knew was not the Hebrew bible, but the Greek Septuagint, and in the Septuagint the word is "parthenos" which definitely means virgin

Indeed you are correct - and I was aware of it - but it is an important point, and I should have mentioned it.

However,
if some Hebrews were trying to prove a Hebrew person was the Hebrew Messiah by fulfilling Hebrew prophecy, one would expect them to use the original Hebrew scriptures.

Instead we see a pagan writer, probably from Rome, who knew little about Hebrew culture, write a Greek myth based on a Greek version of the Hebrew scriptures.

We even see Jesus quoting the LXX !
A real Messiah would hardly quote the Greek version rather than the Hebrew.

This does not argue for a real Jesus.


(Although it is true to point out that the Tanakh of the Evangelists was the LXX. But this does not make the Isaiah prophecy any less fake, as it was not as prophecy.)

Iasion

 

[Iasion]

Greetings,

Cue some very puzzled Americans!

It's odd - seems to mean vagina in UK, but rear-end in US?

So, here in Australia I've heard it refer to both

Iasion

 

[Silas]

We even see Jesus quoting the LXX !
A real Messiah would hardly quote the Greek version rather than the Hebrew.

*Swivelling eyes*.... NO! IT'S THE REAL PERSON WHO WOULD QUOTE GREEK RATHER THAN HEBREW!

Seriously, why is it so hard to get people to understand that things that seem inconsistent are sometimes the very proof of the reality that they are failing to see? Iasion, sometimes you seem to argue, as above, that if Jesus existed then he really was the Messiah and the Son of God! Of course, if Jesus really was the son of God, then he'd undoubtedly speak from the Hebrew texts. A fictional representation of the Son of God probably would do the same to be the more convincing. An ordinary Galilean carpenter can only speak of the scriptures that he knows.

 

[Perfect]

" if Jesus existed then he really was the Messiah and the Son of God!"

I'm quite sure the J was a woman. Think about it..

She fed throngs of people with a minimal time frame.
She babbled, yabbered and elaborated about strange shit that could not be understood by many.

And she had so much shit to do that she had to get active even post-mortem.


Also, she said "brother" alot... make it a black woman.

 

[Silas]

Dammit! Half way through a response then accidentally hit the left hand extra button on my mouse, went "Back" and lost everything!

Okie dokie Silas.. I got a long post to get through now.. thnx a bunch

But Moses is supposed to have lived between 2000BC and 1500BC iirc, and David around 1000BCE.

From a religious perspective, it is generally said that Moses wrote the early parts of the OT, including the story about Moses. It's also worth questioning the validity of the dates given and exactly how those dates are figured out.

I was just using the generally accepted dates for illustrative purposes. The exact chronology hardly matters, the sequence of events is fairly clear. Moses let the people to the promised land, then after a long period under Judges (say a couple of hundred years), the people called for a King. They got Saul, who was overthrown by David, who ruled for 40 years, his son Solomon ruled for 40 years, and then the kingdom split into two and there is a long sequence of kings of both Israel and Judah until we get to Josiah, at which point this history (the Deuteronomic History) gets written down. The exact years of the lives of Moses and David do not matter, clearly centuries separate them from the authors of their history (to be more precise, the oldest authors of the Pentateuch, J and E, both date from some time after the kingdoms split and before the destruction of Israel in 722. D, the Deutoronomist, probably dates to immediately preceding the Exile, around 600, with more work added later after the exile in 586). Because of that separation, of course we can't make a connection between the authors of the Pentateuch and a "real" Moses, or even David. The very fact that the kingdoms of Israel and Judah were ever united is in considerable doubt, let alone the existence of a real David or Solomon as ruler of such a united kingdom.

These considerations of the mythological status of Moses, Noah and even Robin Hood, simply do not apply to Jesus, who at the very least was first written of by Paul - a man of the same generation and probably about the same age. The Gospels too were written by people who had become Christians either through knowing Apostles or from people who had been converted by Apostles.

Let's say that in 4000AD, fragments of an old book are found written by a member of the Unification Church. Are we to doubt Sun Myung Moon's existence simply because the Moonie in question never met him, but only knew people who had? We don't doubt his existence right now because we have all sorts of evidence of his existence. But just because the evidence disappears over time, that doesn't remove Moon's physical existence in the here and now.

I'm not denying that there have been considerable embellishments made to the actual events, even if they were true. What I've been arguing is that Jesus was a real person, and that this is shown by evidence within the New Testament that is, in fact, every bit as good as evidence to be found for other people in non-Biblical historical sources.

But in saying, you are then espousing that Gilgamesh was a factual character.. etc etc. Your only disagreement seems to stem from date of writing about the person - which I personally don't see as much of an argument - especially when a character is quite possibly a later ammendment of an already existing and written about character, (moses/sargon for instance, or jesus and his various counterparts).

First of all, no I am not espousing that Gilgamesh as a real person. When I said "people in non-Biblical historical sources" I was referring to people like, as I said, General Varus, for instance. There may only be one or two accounts of his life and death, written over a hundred years afterwards, and no actual manuscripts dating to prior to the eighth or ninth centuries, but nobody really doubted that Varus existed even before the late 20th Century archaeological discoveries of the remains of his army in the Teutoberger. The Biblical evidence for Jesus is far better founded, but Jesus being Jesus, his existence is put into question in a way that wouldn't occur to people to apply to Varus.

If you're going to state that the NT is a valid source of evidence for existence of a character, then it is just as much evidence for the existence of miracles and existence of god - and solely on the basis that 'the book says so'. This leaves us being unable to distinguish a difference between jesus and frodo baggins.

Actually I haven't really been saying "the book says so", and I have repeatedly stated that obviously I don't believe in any of the miraculous parts of the tale. But there are things that you can say from a close reading of the text that ring true because they are not likely to have been found if the character was a mythological representation of Jewish Messianic hopes. I haven't really argued using that kind of evidence because I've really been trying to demolish a theory of "Jesus is a fiction" on the more obvious grounds that a contemporary fiction is not the same as an ancient myth, and then further, that a contemporary fiction is a more outré explanation than positing that the man, at least, existed, and was "mythologised" in the same way that only real people are today. In a couple of hundred years, Mrs Thatcher is probably going to be credited with having defeated Hitler. George Washington's cherry tree incident is taught in American history classes to this day, despite being an utter fiction.

There is too great a tendency to dismiss the New Testament as evidence.

A solitary book written by author/s unknown cannot really be considered valid evidence - especially given the blatant contradictions to those stories and the sole appearance within that one book.

Ah, tut tut, you're jumping straight in with modern fallacious views. The New Testament is not "one book" just because we read it between one set of covers today! In reality, of course, there are at least three separate sources for Jesus: the letters of Paul, the Gospel of Mark and the sayings book Q. Mark never saw Q, and both Matthew and Luke had other sources for stories which are not found in either Mark or Q. As to contradictions, that is what I expect of near contemporary accounts. In Tony Benn's first volume of diaries, one entry he made is compared to the diaries of the same meeting made by two other people (one was Dick Crossman, I can't remember the other). The differences are telling. Only fictional characters have a "canon" from which you cannot depart. Like Star Trek V, for instance!

Jesus died circa 29-31 CE.

It seems then that our discussion has come to an end. We were discussing whether jesus ever existed or not, and now you're giving me his funeral date as if it's solid as stone. Out of interest, who says he died in that year/couple of years?

Erm, the Gospels. This goes back to what I was actually arguing about at the time, to do with how you would place someone in time if you were creating a myth about them. The Deutoronomist did not pretend that he knew Moses or his family personally. Clearly Moses lived hundreds of years ago. The author of Gilgamesh was not writing a near contemporary account of a man who was, say, the last king but one. The Gospels date the birth and life of Jesus reasonably specifically, by reference to how long Augustus and Tiberius respectively had been Emperor. I wasn't actually saying Jesus died in 30, I was saying the Gospels said he died in 30, but were themselves written in 70-80 (if we restrict ourselves to the Synoptics, which I prefer to do.) The Gospels are evidently not making claims about an ancient mythical hero, but about someone that some of their readers can be expected to remember.

and no serious scholar doubts the existence of Jesus.

This is inaccurate. I myself know several "serious scholars" that doubt the existence of jesus. Telling me many scholars, or a large portion of scholas is one thing, making such an absolute statement like the one you have is not really appropriate.

You're going to have to back that up with specific references. By "serious scholars" I mean Richard Elliot Freedman, Graham Stanton, EP Sanders, Geza Vermes. I do not mean, say, Carsten Thiede, who's repeated attempts to have G. Matthew antedate even the 60s was driven by his devotional Christianity. And I do not mean Thomas L. Thompson, whose minimalist theories I see refuted time and time again. Thompson in particular is noted for making references to mythological elements in Jesus and deducing that therefore Jesus was mythological, having neglected a) the mythologising of real people that does take place and b) again, the lack of time difference. He argues (this is about the OT) that because the intent of the authors of the history of Israel were intent primarily on making theological points, that therefore the whole story is completely fictional. Then he compares a tale of Omri and a battle he won with the Mesha stele, and then claims that because the Mesha stele was written towards the end of the reign of the king it is about, and not exactly contemporary with the war it describes, that it is completely fictional. The fallacy involved is evident! First of all, just because the outcome as recorded may not be in accordance with the facts ("Our side won! Our side won!") does not mean you can conclude that the whole war never happened. Thompson is undoubtedly considered a serious scholar, and he's credentialled up the wazoo, but his arguments are still fallacious, and considered so by the bulk of Biblical scholarship, I believe.

Nevertheless, those books, which were actually written within fifty years of his death

Again, considering we haven't even validated his existence, how are you able to give me such a definite date of his death?

Well, someone said those things, spoke those parables etc - why assume that they were put in the mouth of a fictional character?

I myself like to write. Perhaps, unlike Hubbard and others, I cannot start a religion - but I can write an interesting story. In my stories there are characters that say interesting things. Those interesting things come from my mind. Just because a character, (that never actually says anything himself), had the supposed ability to say things, doesn't mean there ever was an actual character that said things.

This sort of disregards the kind of fictional writing that was the norm in those days. I'm not aware that anyone had even thought of writing a novel based on a fictional person that was supposed to be living today or in the very recent past. If you can cite prose works that are, I'll accept your point, but by and large fiction was in the form of verse, and performed in plays rather than plain written stories. I'm perfectly willing to change my mind on that point if you have evidence to the contrary.

That's precisely the point. We are constantly able to cast doubt on outré events that happened will within our ability to investigate them, such as a UFO landing in North London last week. There are loads of people still around who can say, "I never saw that!"

And in a thousand years when there is not one person to be able to attest to that UFO landing, and the few other accounts concerning it written a hundred or more years after the supposed events, what validity would my one little account have? Ok, to stay with the NT, let's say there are four ufo accounts but all of them contradict each other. Would you justify it as a valid source of evidence?

That the people thought they saw something and that therefore there was something to see, of course I would, why not? Did you ever see UFOs over Phoenix on Discovery Science? The descriptions of what people saw vary enormously, and of course they were all wrong if they thought it was visiting aliens, but they saw something and there really was something for them to see. Four people would not independently make up a fictional UFO sighting - they would embellish what it was they saw, I've no doubt. And with my current state of knowledge, I would say that their interpretation (alien spacecraft) was misguided and mistaken. And again we're not actually talking about distant lights in the sky, but the doings of a human being.

At the distance of nearly 2,000 years, the word of five people is quite substantial

Not really no. However, if you'd like to go into more depth on why you consider the word of a 'supposed' 5 people, (that all disagree by and large), as substantial then I'd love to hear it.

I said 5 people, but lets reduce it to 3, none of whom ever met Jesus. It's still more documentary evidence and closer to the actual events than Varus gets, or

Actually I don't believe any one of them were there. In fact it's known that Paul certainly never met Jesus, and I don't claim that Mark, Matthew or Luke are actually the apostolic figures they are sometimes portrayed by doctrine

To stick with my analogy, it would then be like a story concerning the UFO landing by people that weren't there and didn't see it. You still claim there is substance?

Well, I'm not going to just rehash arguments that I've just made elsewhere.

What is in question is whether it is at all likely that Paul, an evidently intelligent man, would have been fooled by Peter and the Apostles into believing in a fictional person that they are supposed to have known personally.

This happens on a regular basis even now. Your work colleague says his brothers, girlfriends, sisters, boyfriends, uncle used to jam with the Eagles - and in general people will buy it. If you went up to Woody and said you saw a three horned demon raping a 15 year old crack addict girl down a back alley, he would believe it without question. When we 'think' we know people, we generally give them the benefit of the doubt. To use your phrase, we are often 'fooled', whether intelligent or not. We even have people in 2006 falling for the old 'god impregnated an earth woman' story without even raising an eyelid. People will accept without a lot of convincing - if they are that way inclined.

First of all, the Eagles do exist, right? I mean, you're not claiming that just because people who claim to know someone famous don't actually know them, therefore the famous person doesn't exist, right? I'm fully aware of peoples' gullibility with regard to beliefs that they were brought up in, that their parents and parents' parents were brought up in, and which only a couple of centuries back would have been practically lunatic to question. I just don't think that Jesus - in 50CE being talked about by people who claimed to know him - falls into the same category as a three horned devil or, say, a redneck-abducting alien. He was this guy who said things, attracted a following, pissed off the authorities and was executed. The things he said caused those around him to associate him with the promised Messiah, the anointed of God, and so they gave him the attributes you would associate with the Divine - a virgin birth, for instance. And a partly botched rescue-from-crucifixion became an actual death and resurrection. It's really really hard for me to believe that Peter and James thought it would be a hoot to pretend there had been such a person when they came to talk to former scourge and enemy, now a committed convert and arrogant self-publicist Paul, or that they could have maintained such a facade.

Obviously it's in doubt by people who are desperate to disprove Jesus's existence.

I wouldn't go so far as to say "desparate". To be perfectly frank it doesn't make the slightest bit of difference at the end of the day. I'm sure some think it would, but I personally don't. However, I am not willing to accept on the word of a 'supposed' few people, given the 'supposed' popularity of the person, (going all around doing miracles - even the romans taking notice), all based within a handful of pages.

You state that you're not desperate to disprove his existence, and then you deliberately minimse the extent to which his existence can be attested to. By any standards of historiography, the relevant New Testament documents do not comprise merely a "handful of pages". On that basis, you really are on far better grounds for disbelieving in Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great or Cleopatra. You don't disbelieve in those people because it's unreasonable to, yet you disbelieve in Jesus when there's actually more written about him dating from only a few years after his death than there ever was for any of those, simply because the writings that do talk about him substantially happen to have been collected in the form of what is now regarded as a "Holy Book".

But if you read the actual writing, it certainly seems convincing testimony.

If I was to go into church next Sunday, I'm sure I would hear convincing testimony too.

When the preacher declares that he knows Jesus personally (or when Woody or Lori do on these pages) that's a declaration of faith. When Polycarp, reported by Irenaeus, said he knew the Beloved Disciple, that's not a declaration of faith, that's either the truth or a lie. It's not really the same kind of "conviction".

He's describing meeting an old man who talked about having met another old man who claimed to know Jesus.

Did I ever tell you my wifes, cousins, fathers, pet dogs, sisters, owner used to date Axel Rose?

(I really really hate to do this yet again!) So if you're lying about that, then Axl Rose never existed?

As to Irenaeus being "biased" because he was a bishop, that only works if the Jesus myth was a product of the second century, which I have to say I think there is quite convincing evidence, documentary evidence, that rules that idea out.

Why would there only be bias if jesus was a product of the second century?

You claimed that Irenaeus was biased because he was a Christian. But if why would he lie about talking to a man who claimed to know the Beloved Disciple, unless he was part of the whole Jesus Myth conspiracy which would have been being generated at that time? If, on the other hand, he simply assumed that Jesus existed, and was happy to know someone who knew someone who had met him, his Christian bias does not really affect the account he gives, does it? Maybe a bit, but not so much as to lead you to conclude there never was a Jesus.

People of Irenaeus's time would have no particular reason themselves to doubt the existence of Jesus

Are we satisfied in stating that there were no non-believers at that time?

Obviously, I meant Christians. But assuming Nero or Domitian really persecuted Christians in the first and second centuries, even they probably would have assumed Jesus existed. But that's all irrelevant, neither proving nor disproving his existence.

You're asking for a higher standard of proof for Jesus than you would for, say, General Varus of Teutoberger forest fame.

Personally I am not. Admittedly I might show more interest given the nature of this supposed person's existence, (much like I doubt the existence of Gilgamesh), but I would adopt the same standards regardless to the person.

Well, you don't say if you believe in Varus or not, so it's pretty hard for me to argue with your response. If you do disbelieve in him, then I would say that you are taking the "I need hard evidence for everything" argument to a silly extreme - which as I began this argument with, is heading away from the rational.

but other atheists are too insistent on disregarding reasonable views of the evidence and excessive arguing from silence.

Perhaps they show a tad too much "passion", but then given how the world has turned out, one can hardly blame them.

I can. I'm an atheist because of my skeptical and rational viewpoint, not because I hate Christianity or any other religious manifestation. This thread was started by Medicine Woman who is passionately atheistic to an extent that I personally find a little disturbing, and entirely too revealing of ulterior motives.

As well as re-emphasising "there is NO evidence", when obviously the fact that people are talking about someone called Jesus does actually constitute some kind of evidence.

But no, not really.

People talk about Noah quite a bit, and yet it doesn't in and of itself constitute evidence to the existence of Noah. We can certainly see his origins stem from Ziusudra/utnapishtim who also must be given that same level of scrutiny. Is Jesus a later copy of stories concerning Mithra? Again that same level of scrutiny needs to be applied. If the Jesus myth is indeed a later retelling of Mithra, then we're not talking a 30 ce death, but a non-existent death because the character never existed. From there we would move onto a debate concerning the validity concerning the existence of Mithra. No?

*sigh* Jesus would be a "later copy of stories concerning Mithra" only if the new stories told of someone a couple of hundred years ago. Nobody would make up a fictional person today, copying Jesus's story elements, claim him as a worship figure and then claim that this fictional person began preaching in 1960 and died in 1965. Somebody may well start up a religion based on David Koresh, and they could claim miraculous powers, virgin birth and even seeing him alive after Waco. I do not see anybody doing the same thing for Joe Bloggs, someone I just made up.

it seems to me that in this case it is Jesus's non-existence which falls foul of Occam's Razor. It's far simpler to assume that there was a person called Jesus who, like it or not, had a huge effect on everybody he came in contact with, than to believe that everything written from Paul in 50CE onwards was based on a 1st Century "James Bond" figure.

Then the same must be true of Mithra, Gilgamesh, Robin Hood and so on.

Same argument. Same rebuttal. No, Mithra, Gilgamesh and Robin Hood are all separated by time from accounts of their stories, so that there is no reasonable connection to them. You yourself keep on making up fictional accounts in order to prove the validity of the "fiction" argument, but you forget the essential point that the people involved are real. There really are a group of people called "The Eagles". There really is an Axl Rose. My old Dad knew Montgomery (or at least saw him in the flesh), who himself met Winston Churchill. In the fullness of time, thousands of years away, perhaps that sentence I just typed will be the only documentary evidence for the existence of Winston Churchill. But does the gradual dropping away of all the evidence of his existence mean that he never existed? Gilgamesh is a fictional character to all intents and purposes. Robin Hood is a fictional character to all intents and purposes. Jesus, having been written about when people would remember whether he existed or not, is not the same thing.

 

[qwerty mob]

Worth the wait though... getting fresh coffee. yum

Edit: Thanks, Silas. Another terriffic read. At least two of your many points are highly persuasive, but I'm going to let them soak in before I comment, if at all.

All the Best

 

[Iasion]

Greetings,

I think you've missed my point. James Bond, Sherlock Holmes and Rhett Butler are not being held up as Gods or other people with magical powers.

Yah, not good examples.

How about
* Ceres (and the various Great Mothers)
* Bacchus / Dionysus
* Isis

All
* myth
* foundations for religions
* various myth cycles exist

Figures like Odysseus, King Arthur, or Luke Skywalker, while not the basis for major religions, are examples of mythical figures who attracted later myth making.

There is no need for a historical core, it is just a common human feeling to want to find the REAL figure at the core - even if there was none.

Consider William Tell - almost every Swiss person would be 100% certain he was real. In fact, he was almost certainly a myth.

Marco Polo - everyone knows he went to China, don't they? The reality - he probably didn't, he just weaved a nice story from others (see Jacob d'Ancona.)

When you have a state insisting, on pain of death, that everyone believe in Jesus, centuries of persecution of anyone who differs - then the weight of "belief" becomes overwhelming.

Not because it is true - but because everyone who disagreed was beaten down.

Jesus WAS a myth, and people are starting to wake up and realise it.

Iasion

 

[Silas]

We were discussing the reality of the miracles. Iasion, you cited Sherlock Holmes and James Bond etc, as clearly fictional characters of today. I said that there are no magical claims made about them, so it's irrelevant to the point of discussion, which was whether Jesus could actually perform the miracles he was ascribed with. I then pointed out that it's never claimed that Jesus did things that could not be faked, such as a Quidditch match. The Quidditch match is clearly fictional because it could not be faked. Jesus "healing" people miraculously, something that fraudulently happens to this day, "walking on water" - an embellishment of him walking in shallows, perhaps, who knows, but they never claimed he parted the water, or was seen flying over the water. The Lazarus thing was mentioned in John which I personally disregard as any kind of historical source, but say it was true - it's not unlikely to have been a pre-arranged stunt. It's not like they buried a dead body and then after Jesus came by, Lazarus clawed his way out of an old and undisturbed grave. He was lying, supposedly dead, in the room where he had been supposedly ill.

Having forgotten the point of the argument, now you come back to me once again with actual mythological gods, plus Odysseus, King Arthur, William Tell - whose tales' setting predates the telling by many centuries, with no direct claim of knowledge of either the time or the people in the stories. And none of which was relevant to my point which was that Jesus only did those things that a real person could do or could fake. And not things like wave a light sabre around or hold a spaceship up by the power of his mind (since you wanted to put Luke Skywalker in the mix).

When you have a state insisting, on pain of death, that everyone believe in Jesus, centuries of persecution of anyone who differs - then the weight of "belief" becomes overwhelming.

I am getting tired of explaining for the umpteenth time that I do not believe in Jesus because of my Christian upbringing or any consideration of religious or theological elements, but solely the normal historical references and inferences one can make based on the material we have. I cannot see how a religion can possibly begin based on a fictional character who is supposed to have been a real person of the recent past. If Jesus was posited to have lived 200 years before Paul, and we could then draw a link between the Jesus myths and Mithra myths, then sure. You can always convince people of the existence of a mythological person as long as there is nobody around who can state definitively they never existed. But they would not use mythological Mithra-based elements and apply them to a different but still fictional person of "today". If you're going to attribute mythology to a person of "today" then that person has to exist, even if nothing said about him is true, otherwise you would not convince Pagan One. You can create a myth about David Koresh, but only because there was a David Koresh to create myths around.