Is Jesus a Mythical Character?

[Tristesse]

Im not sure what your getting at here, but a book is not proof that Jesus was real.

No, not books. Texts from people outside of the bible, the most famous that people love to cite is Josephus. Although it's debatable whether his were forgeries.

 

[Tristesse]

From what I can see, your opinion is pretty worthless. But feel to prove me wrong. Open a thread on Mythra and defend this drivel. You'll fail. :yes:

Yeah, the story of mythra is very similar to the story of jesus, and the mythra story came before the jesus story. So, I'm not sure what your getting at. Are you christian, btw?

 

[Oberon]

I find that a lot of the "scholars" for the case of jesus, are not coming from secular stand points.

What scholars are you referring to? Every single historian of jesus' era, regardless of religious backround, agrees that at the very least he is historical.

I've read plenty of books, I can google pretty well anybody that's ever written anything on the subject. I can provide any point of view. You harp on the fact that the gospels are reliant on oral tradition but you have yet to provide a reasoned line of argument explaining how this is so.

First, you have yet to cite any of these books, nor have any of your google searches enabled you to quote a single expert historian of this era. As for oral tradition, I will get into this more fully later if need be, but in short I will give you a few pointers:

1. The gospels, which most scholars agree were all written orginally in greek, nonetheless contain many "hebraicisms." In other words, many of the sayings and teachings are obviously translations from Aramaic. They may have been translated by the gospel authors, or before, but in any case they are clear indications that the gospel authors were working with an oral tradition which predated Mark.

2. Aspects of Mark and the other gospels are clearly reliant on older material (e.g. certain parts contain untypical syntax and terminology, or are too cohesive, etc).

3. Paul uses technical terminology (e.g. paradidomi) which demonstrate that the Jesus tradition was formally passed on to him orally. In addition, there are parts of his letters which are clears recordings of oral traditions (credal formulas, "our lord come" which was originally aramaic, etc)

4. The culture which Jesus lived in was overwhelmingly illiterate and oral. There is no way the Jesus sect and what it eventually became (i.e. christainity) could have spread without an oral tradition, because too few people could read.

5. We have church fathers either describing receiving the Jesus tradition orally, indepened of the gospels, by "elders" and "disciples" who were versed in it.

6. Certain aspects of the gospels (i.e. the awkward juxtiposition or combining of various sayings, apothegms, parables, etc) only make sence if the gospel authors were either setting diseperate oral traditions within an overall framework, or were reliant on texts which did so (e.g. Mark).

Jesus is an almost carbon copy of Horus, MIthra and other religions where they also claimed he was 'the Son of God' IMO, there is no evidence to even suggest Jesus actually existed, if there is a would love to see it, but i will not get it, because it does not exist. All you can do is believe in a book that was written 300 years after the events supposedly happened.

The dying and resurrecting Mithras did not exist until after all four gospels. Please see my post on "The myth of the Jesus myth."

Also, your comment about "300" years clearly indicates you have next to no information (and that is putting it kindly) on this topic. All the NT was composed within 100 years of Jesus' death, and Mark wrote his gospel about 40 years afterward.

 

[The-G-man]

[/quote]The dying and resurrecting Mithras did not exist until after all four gospels. Please see my post on "The myth of the Jesus myth."[/quote]

Yes i am aware this part was added.

[/quote]Also, your comment about "300" years clearly indicates you have next to no information (and that is putting it kindly) on this topic. All the NT was composed within 100 years of Jesus' death, and Mark wrote his gospel about 40 years afterward.[/quote]

you cannot prove this, and if you can may i see the evidence?, where are these original gospels because knowone has seen them? and even if they did exist, how could you prove Mark etc. wrote them letalone whether they were true or not, whether you like it or not, the proof that Jesus lived is about as good as whether Mithra did, no more no less, and even if the bible was made 100 years after is this not long enough for it to be distorted in any way?

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

Are you christian, btw?

How pathetic ...

 

[Tristesse]

How pathetic ...

Your religion? I agree. haha I'm kidding. If you don't want to answer that question, thats fine. I was just curious.

 

[Oberon]

you cannot prove this, and if you can may i see the evidence?, where are these original gospels because knowone has seen them and even if they did exist?, how could you prove Mark etc. wrote them letalone whether they were true or not, whether you like it or not, the proof that Jesus lived is about as good as whether Mithra did, no more no less.

I will point out that first (again) of all your comment about 300 years is so completely wrong it indicates you probably have read even less on this topic than logician or dogsgod (i.e. virtually nothing). First of all, the oldest surviving pieces of new testament text date to the middle (or so) of the second century (e.g. P52). Just to be perfectly clear, I am not saying the gospels were written in the second century, but that we actually possess pieces of copied gospels which are from that time. So your 300 date is impossible. Also, we have quotations from "church fathers" such as Ireaneus and Papias are earlier than that.

Next I will freely admit that we have no certain proof that the authors who are traditionally credited with the NT gospels actually wrote them (some scholars have argued that the traditionalists were right, e.g. Richard Bauckham on Mark, but there is certainly no consensus that the traditional authors actually wrote the texts).

Finally, I have already provided a great deal of evidence that the gospels are completely different from pagan myth. I would suggest you go over the the link to the thread on the "Myth of the Jesus Myth" I provided above, in addition to my posts throughout this thread (not that I am the only one by any means to say something worthwhile, just that I know I have addressed these issues already).

 

[gnomon]

Or did he actually walk the earth and do the things he claimed he did ?

And if he did, is there something we should be paying attention to?

Is Jesus a character of mythic status?

Of course.

Is is possible for an individual to be of both mythic status and historical reality?

Yes.

Does the historical reality always match up to the mythic quality?

No.

Do I believe in the supernatural qualities ascribed to Jesus?

No.

Was there a rabbi, teacher or important figure named Yeshua from which the character of the Messiah was based?

Possibly. It's not really all that important to me. Many of the moral teachings are found in other cultures and hold value. I see no reason to mythologize the man. All the scholarship focused on proving or disproving the flesh and blood man named Yeshua is interesting but irrelevant to how I live. Of course Christians differ in their opinion hence the existence of faith.

There are many individuals in the world of which whose actual existence is open to debate. Homer (although his existence doesn't support any religious debates) and Lao Tzu. I can still read The Odyssey or the Tao Te Ching without fretting about whether or not the individuals actually existed. Ever heard of Guan Yu?

 

[dogsgod]

What scholars are you referring to? Every single historian of jesus' era, regardless of religious backround, agrees that at the very least he is historical.



First, you have yet to cite any of these books, nor have any of your google searches enabled you to quote a single expert historian of this era. As for oral tradition, I will get into this more fully later if need be, but in short I will give you a few pointers:

1. The gospels, which most scholars agree were all written orginally in greek, nonetheless contain many "hebraicisms." In other words, many of the sayings and teachings are obviously translations from Aramaic. They may have been translated by the gospel authors, or before, but in any case they are clear indications that the gospel authors were working with an oral tradition which predated Mark.

2. Aspects of Mark and the other gospels are clearly reliant on older material (e.g. certain parts contain untypical syntax and terminology, or are too cohesive, etc).

3. Paul uses technical terminology (e.g. paradidomi) which demonstrate that the Jesus tradition was formally passed on to him orally. In addition, there are parts of his letters which are clears recordings of oral traditions (credal formulas, "our lord come" which was originally aramaic, etc)

4. The culture which Jesus lived in was overwhelmingly illiterate and oral. There is no way the Jesus sect and what it eventually became (i.e. christainity) could have spread without an oral tradition, because too few people could read.

5. We have church fathers either describing receiving the Jesus tradition orally, indepened of the gospels, by "elders" and "disciples" who were versed in it.

6. Certain aspects of the gospels (i.e. the awkward juxtiposition or combining of various sayings, apothegms, parables, etc) only make sence if the gospel authors were either setting diseperate oral traditions within an overall framework, or were reliant on texts which did so (e.g. Mark).

No one doubts that the odd phrase or saying can be of an oral tradition. The author of Matthew and Luke added birth stories to a previously written gospel, namely Mark. We can see the story of Herod killing all the babies under the age of two in order to kill a future king, one that will grow up and challenge the throne as prophesied by astrologers coming from the story of Moses and the bulrushes. These are written traditions, in this case the rewriting of Moses' birth.

If there was an oral tradition why did Matthew and Luke rely on Mark's written gospel?

Why are the birth stories of Matthew and Luke so incredibly different if they were of anl oral tradition?

Why was Mark not aware of a birth story if it was an oral tradition?

Why did Matthew and Luke copy 62 identical sayings from a sayings gospel?

Why did Mark make use of ancient Hebrew scriptures?

 

[dogsgod]

Also, the fact that Matthew and Luke copied the entire gospel of Mark tells us that there was a lack of any Jesus bio out there in any form.

 

[Just_me_Mike]

I read an interesting paper recently on this topic. I will just offer a paraphrase from this paper.
The author was addressing the myth of Jesus, compared to myths of old times. In it the author states that myths generally speaking are formed over long periods of time. Whenever we examine something we know to actually be a myth, not open to debate, we learn that these myths were created over long periods of time.
With Jesus, however the historical impact he had on his day, and since his day is overwhelming. It only took a few years for his story or myth to become Earth changing. Calendars were created around him.
Furthermore, the author cites something that William Durant pointed out in one of his books. That the impact and cohesiveness of the stories and collection in the bible, would be bigger than any miracle Jesus did if in fact it could have been put together in such a short time, by a bunch of men.

Anyway, thought this might be a different perspective to think about the topic.

This is my 2nd post, I look forward to chatting on this forum

 

[dogsgod]

I read an interesting paper recently on this topic. I will just offer a paraphrase from this paper.
The author was addressing the myth of Jesus, compared to myths of old times. In it the author states that myths generally speaking are formed over long periods of time. Whenever we examine something we know to actually be a myth, not open to debate, we learn that these myths were created over long periods of time.
With Jesus, however the historical impact he had on his day, and since his day is overwhelming. It only took a few years for his story or myth to become Earth changing. Calendars were created around him.
Furthermore, the author cites something that William Durant pointed out in one of his books. That the impact and cohesiveness of the stories and collection in the bible, would be bigger than any miracle Jesus did if in fact it could have been put together in such a short time, by a bunch of men.

Anyway, thought this might be a different perspective to think about the topic.

This is my 2nd post, I look forward to chatting on this forum

The epistles write of a spiritual Christ, residing and crucified in a heavenly realm and this sort of belief dominated for a long time. Eventually gentiles, far removed from their Jewish roots began to accept the gospels as accounts of actual events, and they did not effect Christianity as a whole until the end of the second century. The first person to have been known to have some form of written Gospel outside of the authors themselves was Justin Martyr writing in the mid second century. So, how quickly people started accepting the gospels and the main character as an actual being is debatable.

 

[Just_me_Mike]

DogsGod, I am just curious if you have ever read the bible, like most of it? It is alway snice to know if the person you discuss things with is read up on the subject matter.

thanks

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

Also, the fact that Matthew and Luke copied the entire gospel of Mark tells us that there was a lack of any Jesus bio out there in any form.

Again you bellow intellectual incompetence while wallowing in non sequitur.

 

[dogsgod]

Is Jesus a character of mythic status?

Of course.

Is is possible for an individual to be of both mythic status and historical reality?

Yes.

Does the historical reality always match up to the mythic quality?

No.

Do I believe in the supernatural qualities ascribed to Jesus?

No.

Was there a rabbi, teacher or important figure named Yeshua from which the character of the Messiah was based?

Possibly. It's not really all that important to me. Many of the moral teachings are found in other cultures and hold value. I see no reason to mythologize the man. All the scholarship focused on proving or disproving the flesh and blood man named Yeshua is interesting but irrelevant to how I live. Of course Christians differ in their opinion hence the existence of faith.

There are many individuals in the world of which whose actual existence is open to debate. Homer (although his existence doesn't support any religious debates) and Lao Tzu. I can still read The Odyssey or the Tao Te Ching without fretting about whether or not the individuals actually existed. Ever heard of Guan Yu?

I agree with you. The existence of Jesus is totally irrelevant to me as well, but it makes for interesting debate for debate's sake, if nothing else. Unfortunately, people don't show an interest in debating the individuals you've named.

 

[dogsgod]

DogsGod, I am just curious if you have ever read the bible, like most of it? It is alway snice to know if the person you discuss things with is read up on the subject matter.

thanks

I've read The Bible and I've read the New Testament numerous times. I give it credit as to why I'm an atheist.

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

I find that a lot of the "scholars" for the case of jesus, are not coming from secular stand points.

Are you christian, btw?

How pathetic ...

Your religion? I agree. haha I'm kidding. ... I was just curious.

No, you were not being "just curious."

So tell me: which scholars and what scholarship was compromised by virtue of "not coming from secular stand points [sic!]"? Which scholars and what scholarship do you stupidly dismiss solely because the source is not an avowed atheist?

 

[Tristesse]

Again you bellow intellectual incompetence while wallowing in non sequitur.

For someone who claims intellectual fervor, you sure do spend a lot of time not showing that side. Here's a thought, instead of just saying that someone is wrong, or saying there not on an intellectual par with you, why don't you offer up some evidence for why they are wrong, or why you don't agree with them. Instead of knocking their intelligence.

 

[Tristesse]

No, you were not being "just curious."

So tell me: which scholars and what scholarship was compromised by virtue of "not coming from secular stand points [sic!]"? Which scholars and what scholarship do you stupidly dismiss solely because the source is not an avowed atheist?

Actually, I was just curious.

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

Again: which scholars and what scholarship was compromised by virtue of "not coming from secular stand points [sic!]"? Which scholars and what scholarship do you stupidly dismiss solely because the source is not an avowed atheist?