Did Christ really exist ?

[YoursTrue]

scholarship on Mithras:
Other savior gods within this context experienced “passions” that did not involve a death. For instance, Mithras underwent some great suffering and struggle (we don’t have many details), through which he acquired his power over death that he then shares with initiates in his cult, but we’re pretty sure it wasn’t a death. Mentions of resurrection as a teaching in Mithraism appear to have been about the future fate of his followers (in accordance with the Persian Zoroastrian notion of a general resurrection later borrowed by the Jews). So all those internet memes listing Mithras as a dying-and-rising god? Not true.


Carrier rebuttles the claim of Brown (not a PhD historian) and completely shows the Jesus birth is taken from Pagan ideas:
The virgin birth myth for Jesus was, certainly, almost entirely modeled on Jewish precedents, both in and out of the Bible—from the miraculous impregnation of Sarah in the OT, to the miraculous conception of Moses in Philo’s Life of Moses and the Biblical Antiquities. But it was a syncretic creation, combining those Jewish elements, with pagan, producing a hybrid, just like every other instance of cultural diffusion (e.g. the way the Romans altered the Athena story when adapting it to Minerva): something different from anything before, yet fully explained by all its precedents. I should also add, for those who will inevitably ask, yes, it’s true, the original Hebrew scriptures did not predict a virgin birth, although their Greek translations could still have inspired the idea, evidencing a third source, the paganized Judaism of Hellenism:
Virgin Birth: It's Pagan, Guys. Get Over It. • Richard Carrier



His apologetics is not accepted in the historicity field and has been shown to be false.Virgin Birth: It's Pagan, Guys. Get Over It. • Richard Carrier



Luke is the most agregious in copying narratives from the OT. It's total fiction.
As I have shown Jesus is just another late comer to the savior god trend and all of them are fiction.

I haven't seen you show what you claim to show. If predecessors write about similar experiences, it doesn't mean they are true.

 

[YoursTrue]

You mean the 613 commandments.

Actually they CAN be kept. Was there a particular commandment that you think can't be kept? God himself says they are easy:

Now what I am commanding you today is not too difficult for you or beyond your reach. It is not up in heaven, so that you have to ask, "Who will ascend into heaven to get it and proclaim it to us so we may obey it?" Nor is it beyond the sea, so that you have to ask, "Who will cross the sea to get it and proclaim it to us so we may obey it?" No, the word is very near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart so you may obey it.
Deuteronomy 30:11-14

Odd though that the physical temple is still not there where the high priest was to go in to the most holy on the day of atonement. Did that day of atonement stop, by the way?

 

[YoursTrue]

So, do you apply the same reasoning to bowling? 'Since I will never bowl a 300 game, I am not going to bowl at all?'

The Tanakh explicitly says that the commandments are NOT too difficult. See Deuteronomy 30:11-14

God did not demand perfection, else why give rules for sin offerings?

So when did the sin offerings stop?

 

[YoursTrue]

That has nothing to do with the Christian belief that God is perfect and just and sin separates us from God and God made a way for everyone. Mithras has nothing to do with Jesus because his followers didnt believe he was a savior.

That is true. Which is why I keep asking when did the sin offerings stop? Also, because I don't have time to go over all the posts, I would like to bring out the following: Humans and mice can regenerate missing rib - Futurity.
A rib can regenerate.

 

[YoursTrue]

So, do you apply the same reasoning to bowling? 'Since I will never bowl a 300 game, I am not going to bowl at all?'

The Tanakh explicitly says that the commandments are NOT too difficult. See Deuteronomy 30:11-14

God did not demand perfection, else why give rules for sin offerings?

So should a person steal or murder because they figure they're not perfect? You think?

 

[1213]

First, if they're genealogies of Joseph then they're irrelevant since in Matthew and Luke, Joseph is expressly NOT Jesus' father. Genealogies are for the father. There's nothing to suggest either is for Mary. There's nothing to suggest they're historical instead of clumsy attempts to have the Christian messiah descended from David. Into the bargain, as two genealogies of the same person, they're entirely incompatible.

Note too that Mark's Jesus, unlike the Jesuses of Paul, Matthew, Luke and John, is not descended from David and says you don't have to be.

Yes, the point is to show that Jesus was born to the house of David, to his ancestry. And, it is possible that both of the genealogies have some parts missing. And it is also possible that people have been known by more than one name, which could cause problems. Because of this, we can’t really tell are they incompatible, because both of them may just be part of the whole truth, but not the whole truth. But obviously, if you need to believe that they are incompatible, you are free to do so. For me it is enough if people understand that it is not necessary so.

 

[blü 2]

Yes, the point is to show that Jesus was born to the house of David, to his ancestry. And, it is possible that both of the genealogies have some parts missing. And it is also possible that people have been known by more than one name, which could cause problems. Because of this, we can’t really tell are they incompatible, because both of them may just be part of the whole truth, but not the whole truth. But obviously, if you need to believe that they are incompatible, you are free to do so. For me it is enough if people understand that it is not necessary so.

Well, apart from the genealogies of Matthew and Luke being cockamamie, the author of Mark says his Jesus is not descended from David, and that this isn't a necessary qualification anyway. His biography is the first and only substantial one for Jesus, the others being re-editings and re-writes of it.

Who you gonna believe?

 

[paarsurrey]

Did Christ really exist ?

Well Christ is a title name, yes Jesus did exist, I understand, as Quran mentions him as a truthful messenger/prophet of G-d . Jesus was neither a god nor son of a god, he was son of Mary. Right, please?
Why one doubts him, please?

Regards

 

[paarsurrey]

Well, apart from the genealogies of Matthew and Luke being cockamamie, the author of Mark says his Jesus is not descended from David, and that this isn't a necessary qualification anyway. His biography is the first and only substantial one for Jesus, the others being re-editings and re-writes of it.

Who you gonna believe?

Magenta refers.

This can be easily known, I understand, with "claim" and "reason" method or the Religious Method, please. Right, please?
Is there a "Skepticism" Method of enquiry, research or exploration, please?

Regards

 

[blü 2]

Magenta refers.

This can be easily known, I understand, with "claim" and "reason" method or the Religious Method, please. Right, please?
Is there a "Skepticism" Method of enquiry, research or exploration, please?

Skepticism is simply reasoned enquiry, historical method. We read the texts, we find five authors, each with his own distinct Jesus, each Jesus with his own origins and both fictional adventures he shares with the others, and fictional adventures unique to him.

The question is whether, behind the words, a single historical human figure can be discerned.

I don't say that there can't be such a figure, but there doesn't have to be.

If there is, then the further question is whether we can say anything historical about him that doesn't start with "probably", "possibly", "likely", "he would have" &c.

One possible example of this is the way that Jesus, in all four gospels, and with only the one exception, never refers to his family or to his mother except in the most hostile terms ─ Mark 3:31-35, Mark 6:4-5, Matthew 10:35-37, Luke 11:27. John 2:3, contrast John 19:26).

 

[paarsurrey]

Skepticism is simply reasoned enquiry, historical method. We read the texts, we find five authors, each with his own distinct Jesus, each Jesus with his own origins and both fictional adventures he shares with the others, and fictional adventures unique to him.

The question is whether, behind the words, a single historical human figure can be discerned.

I don't say that there can't be such a figure, but there doesn't have to be.

If there is, then the further question is whether we can say anything historical about him that doesn't start with "probably", "possibly", "likely", "he would have" &c.

Jesus never claimed himself that he was from the lineage of David so it is a superficial enquiry to start with, I understand. It has no bearing on the existence of Jesus. History does not claim to have a list of all the humans with their lineage since inception to check if a certain named human being existed. Does it, please?
Notwithstanding the above, different individual have different notions of "Skepticism", and none of them is or can claim to be a spokesperson of "Skepticism", I understand. Right, please?
"What is one gonna believe, please?"

Regards
____________
Skepticism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
plato.stanford.edu › entries › skepticismDec 8, 2001 — In the case of Pyrrhonian Skepticism, F includes every proposition, but we can generate different versions of Cartesian Skepticism by varying F. A ...
by J Comesaña · ‎2001 · ‎Cited by 4 · ‎Related articles
Ancient Skepticism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
plato.stanford.edu › entries › skepticism-ancientFeb 24, 2010 — The Stoics explore differences between sense perception, illusion, and ... While the different skeptical schools develop variants of the ...
by K Vogt · ‎2010 · ‎Cited by 70 · ‎Related articles

 

[Skywalker]

Jesus never claimed himself that he was from the lineage of David so it is a superficial enquiry to start with, I understand. It has no bearing on the existence of Jesus. History does not claim to have a list of all the humans with their lineage since inception to check if a certain named human being existed. Does it, please?
Notwithstanding the above, different individual have different notions of "Skepticism", and none of them is or can claim to be a spokesperson of "Skepticism", I understand. Right, please?
"What is one gonna believe, please?"

Regards
____________
Skepticism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
plato.stanford.edu › entries › skepticismDec 8, 2001 — In the case of Pyrrhonian Skepticism, F includes every proposition, but we can generate different versions of Cartesian Skepticism by varying F. A ...
by J Comesaña · ‎2001 · ‎Cited by 4 · ‎Related articles
Ancient Skepticism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
plato.stanford.edu › entries › skepticism-ancientFeb 24, 2010 — The Stoics explore differences between sense perception, illusion, and ... While the different skeptical schools develop variants of the ...
by K Vogt · ‎2010 · ‎Cited by 70 · ‎Related articles

The gospel writer Matthew calls Jesus the son of David, and historians in those times had to be accurate in what they wrote.

 

[blü 2]

Jesus never claimed himself that he was from the lineage of David

Correct ─ in each case the claim is made by the author.

However, in Mark, Jesus himself denies that he's of the line of David.

so it is a superficial enquiry to start with

Or it is another of a long list of inconsistencies which influence our interpretation of the documents.

It has no bearing on the existence of Jesus.

Since it bears on the credibility of the documents, it's part of the evidence and needs to be weighed accordingly.

History does not claim to have a list of all the humans with their lineage since inception to check if a certain named human being existed.

Correct. But how is that relevant?

different individual have different notions of "Skepticism", and none of them is or can claim to be a spokesperson of "Skepticism".

I don't claim to speak for skepticism as such. I simply approve of skepticism as part of reasoned enquiry, and set out to employ it accordingly.

 

[joelr]

5BC?

The concept of a world savior was popular in the Persian religion. Around 5BC after the Persians defeated the Babylonians the Jewish leaders were allowed to return and in this period we see the concepts from the Persian belief system reworked into Judaism.

OT Professor Professor Francesca Stavrakopoulou explains at 3:25

 

[joelr]

The flood belief existing in other faiths supports the Bible because it shows that what the Bible said happened actually happened. The fact that other people talked about it shows they are all talking about the same event that happened.

There are many many motifs that ancient myths shared. They are always stories that have deeper meaning rather than literal.
The Israelites were not even a culture when the Mesopotamian flood and creation myths were created.
You are suggesting that the biblical version is actually true when every other version is positive that the name of every character involved was completely different and in the case of the Mesopotamian version, there were multiple Gods involved but everyone got all the names wrong until the Israelites left Canaan then finally wrote down a version with the correct God and correct names of the characters. That is absurd.
It's still less absurd then the fact that modern geology has completely ruled out all possibilities of a world flood yet you think somehow ancient myths trump modern science?

The flood myths are one of many mythological archetypes that are common among most cultures. Like dragons, giant serpents, giants, young gods vs old gods, axis mundi, humans came from clay, none are real. Being used often in myths is because very new culture comes from an older culture?
The early Israelites still worshiped Ashera the consort of Yahweh. This was a Canaanite goddess and that is also where Israel emerged from.


Comparative mythology - Wikipedia

 

[joelr]

Osiris didn't resurrect. He became a zombie.

So says some online encyclopedia. Apologetics made it's way into academia at some point way in the past and you can still see traces of it today. But when you look to actual scholarship not only are dying/rising gods known to be common in the same region and period but Isis wasn't even a zombie. If he was he was still able to get busy. Not very zombie-like?


"Plutarch writes that “Osiris came to Horus from the other world and exercised and trained him for the battle,” and taught him lessons, and then “Osiris consorted with Isis after his death and she became the mother of Harpocrates.” It’s hard to get more explicit than that."
(Plutarch, On Isis and Osiris 19),




Comparative mythology - Wikipedia
Many myths feature a god who dies and often returns to life.[20] Such myths are particularly common in Near Eastern mythologies

Dying-and-rising deity - Wikipedia
and that the genuine dying-and-rising god is a characteristic feature of Ancient Near Eastern mythologies and the derived mystery cults of Late Antiquity.[8]

 

[joelr]

I dont know if the story of Noah's ark is literal or a parable. Christians have different beliefs about parables being literal. Christian beliefs about God and redemption are not taken from Zoraster.

Depends on which belief? It's a fact that these concepts:

"Historical features of Zoroastrianism, such as messianism, judgment after death, heaven and hell, and free will may have influenced other religious and philosophical systems, including Second Temple Judaism, Gnosticism, Greek philosophy,[7] Christianity, Islam,[8] the Baháʼí Faith, and Buddhism.[9]"

were not part of Judaism until the Persian invasion. The Persian rulers invited all the exiled Jewish religious leaders to return to their city center and establish their religion. Over the next few centuries Jewish scribes and prophets started getting ideas that they too were going to get a messiah and Gods agent Satan was also in a epic war with God and the world was going to end in fire and destruction.
Obviously some concepts already existed. Redemption is a theme running through all religions so that was obviously there since the beginning. It's probably part of the Canaanite religion as well.

 

[joelr]

The Old Testament doesn't mention God having a wife.

I have heard Professor Francesca Stavrakopoulou talk about other evidence, this is over 10 years old.

Archeology of the Hebrew Bible
William Dever, Professor Emeritus at the University of Arizona, has investigated the archeology of the ancient Near East for more than 30 years


"
One of the astonishing things is your discovery of Yahweh's connection to Asherah. Tell us about that.
In 1968, I discovered an inscription in a cemetery west of Hebron, in the hill country, at the site of Khirbet el-Qôm, a Hebrew inscription of the 8th century B.C.E. It gives the name of the deceased, and it says "blessed may he be by Yahweh"—that's good biblical Hebrew—but it says "by Yahweh and his Asherah."

Asherah is the name of the old Canaanite Mother Goddess, the consort of El, the principal deity of the Canaanite pantheon. So why is a Hebrew inscription mentioning Yahweh in connection with the Canaanite Mother Goddess? Well, in popular religion they were a pair.
The Israelite prophets and reformers denounce the Mother Goddess and all the other gods and goddesses of Canaan. But I think Asherah was widely venerated in ancient Israel. If you look at Second Kings 23, which describes the reforms of King Josiah in the late 7th century, he talks about purging the Temple of all the cult paraphernalia of Asherah. So the so-called folk religion even penetrated the Temple in Jerusalem.

Is there other evidence linking Asherah to Yahweh?
In the 1970s, Israeli archeologists digging in Kuntillet Ajrud in the Sinai found a little desert fort of the same period, and lo and behold, we have "Yahweh and Asherah" all over the place in the Hebrew inscriptions.

 

[joelr]

That has nothing to do with the Christian belief that God is perfect and just and sin separates us from God and God made a way for everyone. Mithras has nothing to do with Jesus because his followers didnt believe he was a savior.

Every religion says their God is perfect, how is that even a point?
"In Suppliants, of Aeschylus, Zeus is described as: "king of kings, of the happy most happy, of the perfect most perfect power, blessed Zeus"
Sup. 522. "

"Savior gods" was the actual type of gods that Jesus was modeled after? They all go through some struggle, often defeat death and save baptized members of the group by getting them into the afterlife and granting personal salvation?

Dying-and-Rising Gods: It's Pagan, Guys. Get Over It. • Richard Carrier
Not in ancient Asia. Or anywhere else. Only the West, from Mesopotamia to North Africa and Europe. There was a very common and popular mytheme that had arisen in the Hellenistic period—from at least the death of Alexander the Great in the 300s B.C. through the Roman period, until at least Constantine in the 300s A.D. Nearly every culture created and popularized one: the Egyptians had one, the Thracians had one, the Syrians had one, the Persians had one, and so on. The Jews were actually late to the party in building one of their own, in the form of Jesus Christ. It just didn’t become popular among the Jews, and thus ended up a Gentile religion. But if any erudite religious scholar in 1 B.C. had been asked “If the Jews invented one of these gods, what would it look like?” they would have described the entire Christian religion to a T. Before it even existed. That can’t be a coincidence.

 

[joelr]

I haven't seen you show what you claim to show. If predecessors write about similar experiences, it doesn't mean they are true.

It suggests all the shared stories are religious syncretism. Each new culture takes basic myths and creates their own version. Similar but with their own spin. Christianity is a Jewish version of the Hellenistic religions that were popular in the area.