Could Jesus Have Been Simply a Fraud?

[outhouse]

That's true. When a question makes no sense, it's impossible for me to give an answer which makes sense. As I've said, I think it would be wonderful if you would perhaps spend a little more time in composing your thoughts and words.

Anyway, since you can't provide a replacement hypothesis for the one that explains why we have what we have... therefore my Jesus Theory is nearer the truth than any other and wins the day.

(Not trying to brag or anything, of course.)

hey if you cant provide a replacement hypothesis to the evidence were left with I understand.

It is either a martyred man at Passover who died and who was tortured and crucified, and writing followed soon after by Hellenist in the Diaspora.

OR your replacement hypothesis. Only Carrier, Price and Doherty have had the guts to try, the rest of the mythicist ditch, dodge, and avoid it.

 

[outhouse]

1. Cephas and Mark both knew Yeshua.
2. Ireneaus and Papias both write of their authorship....
3. Don't try to throw either away......
4. G-Mark shows that the author-compiler had INTIMATE KNOWLEDGE of the very subject matter. Such accuracy and mention about small specifics, that no outsider what have focused upon.
EDIT:- The very fact that G-Mark survived in the NT compilation is corroborative evidence that it had to be compiled using Cephas's notes, with Mark's additions, etc.


Lumps of your hypothesis (or your scholar's) fall down, because their opinions are no stronger than those of the lay. Scholar's have value in what they DO, what they can DISCOVER........ their opinions differ from each other so significantly that their scholarship cannot gain ground through their opinions, unless a greater mass of the public might find them appealing.

Like I said, you cannot provide a credible source for your position, only apologist. And they do not carry any credibility.

 

[oldbadger]

Like I said, you cannot provide a credible source for your position, only apologist. And they do not carry any credibility.

Yes I can. G-Mark itself. It stands all by itself. You cannot pull it down. The fact that it was copied, that Ireneaus and Papias supported it's authenticity, the fact that it includes so much that is UNHELPFUL to the faith, yet was retained....... because of the knowledge that it came from Cephas, Mark and others who must have been important.

And if you throw it out, woe to you if you then quote from it again................. don't chuck G-Mark down..


By the way...... how much can you prove?

 

[oldbadger]

Like I said, you cannot provide a credible source for your position, only apologist.

Apologist? I'm not defending any ideology! I'm defending what seriously looks like a (mostly) genuine report!

 

[outhouse]

You might do well to read G-Mark one more time, with your 2=class structure in mind, and Yeshua being taken down to meet John, who was so at odds with the upper class and it's disloyalty and dishonesty to the standards required of them.

The whole picture fits together, and G-Mark shows such chronological and historical straightness with your very idea as it's background. Strip away the evangelical addition as you need, and see the most believable account in the NT...... I do not know how it survived........ unless the Church knew that it was the very work of Cephas, Mark and others.

Sources please.


Like this example showing the opposite of your position.

Why Scholars Doubt the Traditional Authors of the Gospels |



To provide a good overview of the majority opinion about the Gospels, the Oxford Annotated Bible (a compilation of multiple scholars summarizing dominant scholarly trends for the last 150 years) states (pg. 1744):


“Neither the evangelists nor their first readers engaged in historical analysis. Their aim was to confirm Christian faith (Lk 1.4; Jn 20.31). Scholars generally agree that the Gospels were written forty to sixty years after the death of Jesus. They thus do not present eyewitness or contemporary accounts of Jesus’ life and teachings.”


The mainstream scholarly view is that the Gospels are anonymous works, written in a different language than that of Jesus, in distant lands, after a substantial gap of time, by unknown persons, compiling, redacting, and inventing various traditions in order to provide a narrative of Christianity’s central figure, Jesus Christ, to confirm the faith of their communities.

 

[outhouse]

Apologist? I'm not defending any ideology! I'm defending what seriously looks like a (mostly) genuine report!

And generally, only apologist follow your opinion.

While mainstream scholarships simply, do not.

 

[AmbiguousGuy]

hey if you cant provide a replacement hypothesis to the evidence were left with I understand.

So you think that a hypothesis is the same thing as evidence? How very curious.

Outhouse, may I ask if you've ever studied how science works? Have you considered what a hypothesis actually is and the relationship between hypotheses and evidence?

Forgive a little lecture, but evidence is the stuff with which hypotheses are built. We take observations and we connect them into tentative explanations -- which we call hypotheses -- and then we test these hypotheses.

For example, one piece of evidence which backs my (unassailable) hypothesis about the fictional Jesus would be our human need for heroes. I point to this need and I use it to build my (powerful) hypothesis that Mark created Jesus from whole cloth. I show how all of the evidence supports my (magnificent) hypothesis, and then you try (failing miserably, of course) to show either that my evidence is untrue (hehe) or that I've organized it improperly (as if!) in building my (rock-solid, uber-rational) hypothesis that Jesus was merely a fictional guy.

Do you see?

Since you can't undo any of my evidence nor show how it is misused, that's why you can't dent my hypothesis about the fictional Jesus and why your own hypothesis fails so utterly.

It is either a martyred man at Passover who died and who was tortured and crucified, and writing followed soon after by Hellenist in the Diaspora.

Jesus was a fictional character created by the writer of gMark. Sorry.

Since you can't offer a replacement hypothesis to the evidence we have... well... I win.

OR your replacement hypothesis. Only Carrier, Price and Doherty have had the guts to try, the rest of the mythicist ditch, dodge, and avoid it.

What, oh what, could you possibly be trying to say?

Who are Carrier, Price and Doherty and why do you constantly recite their names?? Are they some kind of puppets you carry in your pocket?

Really, outhouse, I hope you haven't been watching that Zeitgeist thing again and taking it too seriously. Please tell me it isn't so.

 

[outhouse]

Please read the whole article.



Why Scholars Doubt the Traditional Authors of the Gospels |


Instead, scholars have long recognized that the anonymous author of Mark was most likely an unknown Gentile living in the Jewish Diaspora outside of Palestine. This is strengthened by the fact that Mark uses the Greek Septuagint to quote translations from the Old Testament. Likewise, the author is unaware of many features of Palestinian routegeography. Just for one brief example: in Mk 7:31 Jesus is described to have traveled out of Tyre through Sidon (North of Tyre) to the Sea of Galilee (South of Tyre). In the words of scholar Hugh Anderson in The Gospel of Mark (pg. 192), this would be like “travelling from Cornwall to London by way of Manchester.” These discrepancies make little sense if the author of Mark was a traveling attendant with Peter, an Aramaic-speaking native of Galilee [5].


The way that the Gospel of Luke uses Mark as a source likewise casts doubt on Mark being the original author. As discussed above, the author of Luke borrowed from as much as 65% of the material in Mark. This is all very interesting, since the author of Luke is likewise the author of Acts, and Mark, the attendant of Peter, has an appearance in Acts (12:25). That means that the author of Luke includes in his later narrative the supposed author from whose gospel he borrowed 65% of the material. Yet, never once does the author of Luke identify this man as one of his major sources!


As Randel Helms points out in Who Wrote the Gospels? (pg. 2):


“So the author of Luke-Acts not only knew about a John Mark of Jerusalem, the personal associate of Peter and Paul, but also possessed a copy of what we call the Gospel of Mark, copying some three hundred of its verses into the Gospel of Luke, and never once thought to link the two – John Mark and the Gospel of Mark – together! The reason is simple: the connecting of the anonymous Gospel of Mark with John Mark of Jerusalem is a second-century guess, on that had not been made in Luke’s time.”

 

[outhouse]

Your errors to many to even begin to waist time.

Lets deal with the major ones.

So you think that a hypothesis is the same thing as evidence? How very curious.

.

Did I say that? You have comprehensive issues.


A hypothesis explains the evidence.

Jesus was a fictional character created by the writer of gMark.

Wrong again.

Paul's writings refute this.

 

[AmbiguousGuy]

Your errors to many to even begin to waist time.

Oh my. Please don't do the waist time thing here in public. Kids may be watching.

Did I say that? You have comprehensive issues.

Comprehensive issues. Yo. I love you, man, but you don't always make it easy for me to keep a straight face.

Wrong again. Paul's writings refute this.

Paul's writings support my Fictional Jesus Theory in every detail, of course.

But if you ever come up with a replacement hypothesis to try and explain the facts which we have, I am all ears. Please try.

 

[oldbadger]

Sources please.

G-Mark is its own source. Like I wrote earlier, it stands all by itself. Take it, or leave it.

Like this example showing the opposite of your position.

And then you quote from the :-http://adversusapologetica.wordpress.com/
which shows its agenda so obviously as to be biased.

..... most scholars accept......... what a joke. I saw one name, Bart Ehrmann. Are you a disciple of his, then?

 

[outhouse]

G-Mark is its own source. Like I wrote earlier, it stands all by itself. Take it, or leave it.

This is only your own unsubstantiated opinion.


Which does not refute scholars and professors.

 

[outhouse]

Paul's writings support my Fictional Jesus Theory in every detail, of course.

.

It is OK and very transparent you don't want to engage in a serious discussion.


Maybe if you don't get to steer the debate, its no fun for you.

 

[Thief]

This is only your own unsubstantiated opinion.


Which does not refute scholars and professors.

Still trying to steer the discussion, I see.

 

[AmbiguousGuy]

It is OK and very transparent you don't want to engage in a serious discussion.

Jesus was a fictional character created by the writer of gMark.

All evidence supports that view. Just give it an honest look. You'll see.

 

[Thief]

Jesus was a fictional character created by the writer of gMark.

All evidence supports that view. Just give it an honest look. You'll see.

So was the text a complete fraud?
If Jesus was fictional....the parables mean nothing to you?

 

[VocoInDubium]

There is a great book called Nailed which goes through a few of the myths of Jesus and provides a very convincing case that Jesus is also just a myth. Has anyone read it and considered the arguments presented?

 

[AmbiguousGuy]

So was the text a complete fraud?

Hi, Thief. I have no strong beliefs about the text. My guess is that some writer got the idea to take the existing Jesus character, already the basis of a new religion, and write a story about a real Jesus who lived in 30CE Jerusalem. A sort of fan fiction.

Matthew and Luke, of course, are not standalone accounts. They are revisions of Mark and other material. John is too late and too theological to be taken as historical. (I think of it as I think of the Book of Mormon, so far as historicity about Jesus.)

Does that mean Mark is a fraud? I don't know. Is fan fiction a type of fraud? I guess it depends on the intent of the writer.

If Jesus was fictional....the parables mean nothing to you?

I enjoy parables and other literary forms, even though their characters and events are usually or always fictional.

 

[Sees]

So was the text a complete fraud?
If Jesus was fictional....the parables mean nothing to you?

The great wisdom and spirit of Gandalf and other mythical characters means much to me

 

[technomage]

There is a great book called Nailed which goes through a few of the myths of Jesus and provides a very convincing case that Jesus is also just a myth. Has anyone read it and considered the arguments presented?

Self-published, no peer review, atheist activist. None of that disproves his arguments, but they also do not make for a promising start.

Fitzgerald's arguments take the form of ten "myths" that he "debunks." Flatly, the specific "myths" he provide, and the counterarguments he offers, could be used to teach a class in logical fallacies--but only as a bad example. His arguments are frequently ludicrous, occasionally outright dishonest, and always presented as "fact."