Jesus is a Fictional Character

[lukethethird]

And obvious fakes of his writings from the angel or whatever it was supposed to be were planted in the ground. I've seen them. Smith was a con man.

So an entire religion was founded on the writings of a con man. I see.

 

[ElishaElijah]

Work on your skills

Always

 

[lukethethird]

Wrong. You just accept a incorrect story about who actually wrote the gospels.

The names of the gospels were assigned in the late 2nd century. The first attestation of a gospel was by Justin Martyr about 150CE, he was the first person known to possibly have a copy of a gospel which he referred to as "memoirs of his apostles." Mainstream NT scholarship will attest to this, it is well understood and known through writings of Justin Martyr.

 

[lukethethird]

What is meant by die for your faith is in the context of those men and women that lived and walked with Jesus Christ when He was on the Earth. They wouldn’t have concocted a huge lie and then died, endured torture and lost everything for that lie.

That is folklore, try reading some actual history from the first three centuries. There are no non Christian writings from the 1st century that mention any of this so you have nothing to go on.

 

[ElishaElijah]

That is folklore, try reading some actual history from the first three centuries. There are no non Christian writings from the 1st century that mention any of this so you have nothing to go on.

I got a lot to go on, see you at the finish line
Did Jesus really exist? Is there any historical evidence of Jesus Christ? | GotQuestions.org

 

[oldbadger]

Someone actually named " Jesus" who was born in a manger under a star...?

How " real" is someone if most of what is
said of them is not real?

They were as real as the real bits.
Think of it this way....no matter how many lies are told about you or me, we are both real.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

Are you ok with Jesus as fictional or do you feel a need to insist that Jesus existed as a real person?

I don't believe any of the supernatural claims, so none of the rest matters except the words attributed to him, and even then, it wouldn't matter who wrote them. Most of the rest of the story could be historical or the opposite, and it changes nothing if the supernatural parts are fiction.

To be fair, if we apply the same standard, then so are Socrates, Confucius, and Pythagoras.

I do. Just as with the words of Jesus, it doesn't matter whether Socrates was a real person. What matters are the words attributed to him. Somebody wrote them. What if Shakespeare turned out to be a couple of sisters. That would be interesting, but wouldn't make the plays and sonnets any better or worth, no more or less worth reading.

the fact that our calender is based on Jesus the influence of Jesus teaching on the world and that a major religion is based on him, Jesus not existing would be an even greater miracle than his existence could ever accomplish.

So how about Saturn? He's got a weekday named after him, a solstice holiday, an adjective, a rocket engine, a planet, and a make of automobile. Given all of that influence on culture and your argument, Saturn not existing would also have to be a even greater miracle than his existence.

 

[Neuropteron]

I don't believe any of the supernatural claims, so none of the rest matters except the words attributed to him, and even then, it wouldn't matter who wrote them. Most of the rest of the story could be historical or the opposite, and it changes nothing if the supernatural parts are fiction.

I do. Just as with the words of Jesus, it doesn't matter whether Socrates was a real person. What matters are the words attributed to him. Somebody wrote them. What if Shakespeare turned out to be a couple of sisters. That would be interesting, but wouldn't make the plays and sonnets any better or worth, no more or less worth reading.

So how about Saturn? He's got a weekday named after him, a solstice holiday, an adjective, a rocket engine, a planet, and a make of automobile. Given all of that influence on culture and your argument, Saturn not existing would also have to be a even greater miracle than his existence.

Hi,
That is a valid argument.
To decide we would have to weight the influence that each of these characters exercised on the world scene, should we feel that this is the major criteria for our decision.

 

[Wildswanderer]

So an entire religion was founded on the writings of a con man. I see.

I'm sure a lot of religions have been founded by con men. Christianity has endured because it can't be disproven. The Joseph Smith tablets were easily proven to be fakes.

 

[Wildswanderer]

The names of the gospels were assigned in the late 2nd century. The first attestation of a gospel was by Justin Martyr about 150CE, he was the first person known to possibly have a copy of a gospel which he referred to as "memoirs of his apostles." Mainstream NT scholarship will attest to this, it is well understood and known through writings of Justin Martyr.

The names were assigned because it was obvious who wrote them.

 

[Clara Tea]

I think regardless of whether there existed a Jew/Rabbi at the source of the Biblical account. Jesus did not write anything. Can't even be sure, if he existed, what he looked like.

What we have is a fictional character, not a real character. There is simply not enough information about Jesus for Jesus to be real character. Even the name Jesus is a fictional creation.

Are you ok with Jesus as fictional or do you feel a need to insist that Jesus existed as a real person?

It's okay if Jesus and God are fictional, as long as we're fictional too.

They say that God is infinite. Maybe we are just a little bit away from God (which would put us at infinity, too).

Maybe God was created with the big bang...if so, he existed in space of zero width, zero height, and zero depth (if you believe the old theories that said it was all crushed to a singularity). New theories cast doubt on this idea, claiming that some force (I suppose quantum forces) kept the universe from gravitational collapse before the big bang.

The bible says that God was the alpha (beginning) and the omega (end). If the two are the same, time didn't change for God. That would explain how God knows the future. But wouldn't that mean that the universe continues to expand until it wraps around in space-time and starts at the beginning? That would mean that the distant future of the universe is the beginning of the universe. If so, that would certainly explain what caused the big bang and where all of the matter in the universe came from.

The problem with that idea is that, as far as we know, nothing goes backwards in time.

Maybe we are all in an imaginary dimensions (or many imaginary dimensions)?

Philosophers have grappled with the idea that we don't exist. They call that branch of philosophy existentialism. When I was finishing up grad school in philosophy, getting an advanced degree, I grew to dislike that branch of philosophy....it made things so meaningless.

I switched to other disciplines of science and the arts, and got many more advanced college degrees.

 

[Clara Tea]

You're implying that later Christians edited Josephus to reference Jesus without proof. I mean they could have but you don't have any proof.

History gets murky as we peer into its depths.

I suppose that we could apply the laws of probability to the issues, much as quantum mechanics derives meaning from random variables.

 

[Audie]

They were as real as the real bits.
Think of it this way....no matter how many lies are told about you or me, we are both real.

But if people remembered me as a great
basketball teacher, nothing said about me
would be real.
Which is kind of the point

 

[Clara Tea]

Why would a Jewish historian document a christ when Judaism as a religion doesn't even acknowledge such a person. It makes no rhyme or reason.

It has to be a reference involving the early Christians and their belief in a Christ which is what is being described and mentioned.

That fits in with the historical context and Judaism in general.

Jews predicted the coming of a Messiah. But, most of them, particularly high rabbis, rejected the idea that Jesus was the Messiah. During his lifetime, Jews thought of Jesus as a sorcerer (because of his proported miracles). They thought that he dabbled in the occult, and therefore was evil.

I think that deeds speak louder than words....evil is as evil does. Certainly modern Christians are evil (torture camps, unprovoked wars, ignoring the homeless, ruining the environment for greedy oil companies, cutting tax for the rich while making a debt that eventually the working middle class will have to pay, advocating the National Rifle Association, etc).

 

[Clara Tea]

Semi historical fiction?

Lost cities have been found, using the bible as an aid.

Before television, it was common for storytellers to go from town to town. Could it be that the bible is nothing more than a fanciful story?

 

[Audie]

Always

Then dont pretend you dont understand me

 

[Sand Dancer]

The names of the gospels were assigned in the late 2nd century. The first attestation of a gospel was by Justin Martyr about 150CE, he was the first person known to possibly have a copy of a gospel which he referred to as "memoirs of his apostles." Mainstream NT scholarship will attest to this, it is well understood and known through writings of Justin Martyr.

Maybe they still lived hundreds of years then.

 

[Sand Dancer]

Jews predicted the coming of a Messiah. But, most of them, particularly high rabbis, rejected the idea that Jesus was the Messiah. During his lifetime, Jews thought of Jesus as a sorcerer (because of his proported miracles). They thought that he dabbled in the occult, and therefore was evil.

I think that deeds speak louder than words....evil is as evil does. Certainly modern Christians are evil (torture camps, unprovoked wars, ignoring the homeless, ruining the environment for greedy oil companies, cutting tax for the rich while making a debt that eventually the working middle class will have to pay, advocating the National Rifle Association, etc).

Supposedly the Messiah was going to be a human warrior that punished Israel's enemies. That's not Jesus.

 

[ElishaElijah]

Then dont pretend you dont understand me

I understood you but by the example you used you didn’t understand me.

 

[Clara Tea]

To be fair to Socrates, he was personally known both to Plato and to Xenophon, who each wrote about him. (On the other hand, I guess you could argue that Bacon wrote Plato and Xenophon as well as Shakespeare.)

That would certainly explain aversion to bacon.

When I was getting my degrees in philosophy, we learned that Socrates never wrote anything. But, Plato, his student, wrote most that we know of him.

Comparisons of Bacon's work and Shakespeare's work clearly reveals that Shakespeare copied.