Jesus, the Christian Myth

[Rick B]

FYI Josephus was born in 37 CE and died in 100 CE which makes him a contemporary of Christ and recorded the historical fact of Christ's existence as a pagan not predisposed to fabricate the facts.

 

[Shlomoh]

Cnn so finding Jesus is dopey as most shows about Jesus. It is uninformed. Jesus was real alright but the new testament writers were not writing about the real person but a god they made out of him

 

[Boris56]

Yes you nailed that.

 

[Augustus]

The need to fit him into prophecy didn't arise until his 'deification' at Nicea a couple of generations later. Paul's 'jesus' was a spiritual thing, he doesn't speak of him as a physical man at any point that I can recall. The Gospels seem to be several attempts at a sort of fanfic based on the preexisting epistles, that as good fanfic tends to, takes several creative liberties.

Every good hero needs a backstory after all.

He wasn't deified at Nicaea though.

Nicaea was mostly about resolving longstanding Christological issues, especially those surrounding Arianism.

They didn't change anything or create anything new, they simply chose which existent tradition should be considered 'official'

 

[sayak83]

FYI Josephus was born in 37 CE and died in 100 CE which makes him a contemporary of Christ and recorded the historical fact of Christ's existence as a pagan not predisposed to fabricate the facts.

As has been been noted by most historians, at least 50-60% of Josephus' reference paragraph about Jesus is a clear later fabrication. Given such dishonesty, I wonder if the absence of skeptical contemporary material about Jesus is mere coincidence. If the transmitters are so obviously dishonest, why would anyone trust them.? I personally do not find ancient historians to be trustworthy at all. It's better to rely on archeology and accidental preservations rather than deliberative accounts as they are more propaganda.

 

[pearl]

Cnn so finding Jesus is dopey as most shows about Jesus. It is uninformed. Jesus was real alright but the new testament writers were not writing about the real person but a god they made out of him

According to R Bultmann, the historical man named 'Jesus' was an eschatological Jewish prophet whose original disciples(A.D. 30's) knew him only as such, and whom the post-apostolic (i.e. non-apostolic) Hellenistic church (late first century A.D.) deified as the Son of God: "Jesus proclaimed the Kingdom of God...,...the kerygma of the Hellenistic church proclaimed Jesus as the crucified and risen Christ" . Thus, Bultmann recognized the two predominating cultural influences which shaped each New Testament document: [a] the historical Jesus dressed in the mythical garb of the Gnostic "heavenly redeemer"

 

[Glaurung]

This series is a blatant pandering to the fundamentalist Christians and is no more truthful than a Sunday morning ministry TV program. I challenge CNN to research the academic treatment of the gospels and epistles and consider the academically historical possibility that Jesus was not a real individual.

In other words, you want material that blatantly panders to your presuppositions instead. Well, there's plenty of stuff around to keep you busy. It's just your polemic is a tad hypocritical and ill-informed. For one, you're downright wrong about what happened at Nicaea.

I don't think so! Jesus is "well-documented" ONLY in the New Testament, and nowhere else. On that view, Jesus is no better documented than Frodo Baggins.

Which is still better than almost all other figures we take for granted. To insist that the historicity of Jesus isn't justified is special pleading.

 

[Robert Landbeck]

I am disappointed that CNN is promoting their TV docu-drama, Finding Jesus: Faith Fact Forgery as a documentary. CNN as a responsible source of trustworthy news should be careful to be academically accurate in his portrayal of Jesus as if he were historically verifiable person. This series is a blatant pandering to the fundamentalist Christians and is no more truthful than a Sunday morning ministry TV program. I challenge CNN to research the academic treatment of the gospels and epistles and consider the academically historical possibility that Jesus was not a real individual. He is more likely a myth and a composite of several folk heroes of his time at the end of the first century. Eventually, he was deified in the fifth century by the Nicene Council assembled by Emperor Constantine to incorporate the growing Christian movement into the Roman Empire. In particular, refer to the book Who Wrote the New Testament? The Making of the Christian Myth by Burton L. Mack (copyrighted in 1995 and published by HarperCollins, NY, NY). Dr. Mack is Professor Emeritus in early Christianity at the Claremont School of Theology in Claremont, California. What Dr. Mack’s book explores is the source of the Scriptures of the New Testament. Then he carefully analyzes the chronology of events in the Bible using verifiable references. Dr. Mack is one of many academic historians who dispute the verifiability of the stories of the New Testament. Among his findings are:


· Paul of Tarsus wrote his epistles 12 years after the time of [1] Pilate when the crucifixion of Jesus allegedly occurred in Jerusalem. Paul had been exiled from Jerusalem is a religious radical by the Temple priests. Paul may have written his Epistles, in Greek, from a scriptorium in Ephesus or Corinth on the Aegean Sea about 200 miles from Jerusalem. He then sent copies of his epistles to Greek speaking Jewish congregations in the vicinity of the Aegean Sea. Paul's Jesus could have been anyone of a number of other crucified victims of the Romans in Achaea (Greece) or any part of the Roman Empire.


· The first Gospel, the Gospel of Mark, was written after the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 CE, about 60 years after the time of Pontius Pilate and the crucifixion of Jesus of Galilee. This first Gospel and all subsequent Gospels were written in Greek by Greek speaking Jewish scribes. Jesus from Galilee spoke Aramaic. Whatever Jesus may have said in Galilee in Aramaic early in the first century was somehow transcribed in Greek 60 years later. The Gospels were the transcriptions of oral traditions about a martyred Jewish rabbi that were ancient at the time they were written. These stories were not documented by any other Roman or Greek historians or chroniclers of the time. Almost nothing in the Gospels is historically accurate by the standards of academic historians.


· The Acts of the Apostles scripture was written at the very end of the first century or about 85 years after the crucifixion and about 40 years after the death of Paul of Tarsus. Given that a lifespan in that era was about 40 years, probably no one from the time of Paul of Tarsus was alive to recount Paul’s activities. Paul's travels to spread his messages throughout the Roman Empire were likely fabrications to revive the legend of Jesus. Without this scriptural revival, the legend of Jesus would have been lost to antiquity.


· The New Testament books were not organized in accordance with the time they were written. They were organized as if they were a history of the life of Jesus. The Gospel of Matthew was written after the Gospel of Mark although Matthew precedes Mark in the sequence of the Gospels. Because Matthew includes the story of the birth of Jesus, it was given prominence. All of the Gospels were poetically contrived late in the first century over 80 years after the time Jesus. The Epistles were written by Paul of Tarsus at least 10 years before the Gospels were written but were placed after the Gospels in the organization of the New Testament in the fifth century because the Epistles were primarily about the death of Jesus. Paul’s Epistles were about the martyrdom of Jesus and the theological meaning of his death as envisioned by Paul. Although Paul’s portrayal of Jesus preceded the Gospels, neither Paul nor his themes from his Epistles are mentioned in the Gospels. The scribes of the Gospels apparently did not know Paul or his Epistles.


Given the life long time gaps and the language barriers that intervened between the time that Jesus preached in Galilee and the time the Scriptures were written, the New Testament is not a historical document but a poetical legend. No independent Roman or Greek historians of the first century wrote any validation of the stories of the New Testament.


In summary, your new series about Jesus belongs with the Sunday morning ministry shows. To portray your series on Jesus as a documentary is a gross misrepresentation of academically historical truth. To be honest, you should qualify your series as a theological review and not as a documentary. I would also challenge CNN to produce a critical review of the New Testament from an academically accurate perspective for the growing number of "nones" in our nation that reject the unfounded dogma of Christianity.


Arthur F. Garcia, Jr., author of A Skeptic’s God: The Irrelevance of Religion in a Modern World

[1]

The 'events' of two thousand years ago remain mostly a mystery and the theological narrative of tradition no more than self serving, institutionalized myth. The question is how to know what, if anything about Jesus has relevance and what does not. The means to sort out that mess may be at hand. Even if it means bringing down the whole of tradition! This link should help.
The Final Freedoms

 

[Kenny]

As has been been noted by most historians, at least 50-60% of Josephus' reference paragraph about Jesus is a clear later fabrication. Given such dishonesty, I wonder if the absence of skeptical contemporary material about Jesus is mere coincidence. If the transmitters are so obviously dishonest, why would anyone trust them.? I personally do not find ancient historians to be trustworthy at all. It's better to rely on archeology and accidental preservations rather than deliberative accounts as they are more propaganda.

I think that is a double edged sword. Both extremes are wrong--that it is completely reliable (we know that the numbers are exaggerated) or that it is completely unreliable (much of the names and what happened is correct)

Just as one must look at historians and double check the information, one must also double check the people who criticize the historians and look what they say with a grain of salt because of bias.

An example would be, "We know that there is error in what Josephus wrote so we just can't accept anything that he said about Jesus" (even though basically the vast majority of people don't dispute that he existed).

 

[sayak83]

I think that is a double edged sword. Both extremes are wrong--that it is completely reliable (we know that the numbers are exaggerated) or that it is completely unreliable (much of the names and what happened is correct)

Just as one must look at historians and double check the information, one must also double check the people who criticize the historians and look what they say with a grain of salt because of bias.

An example would be, "We know that there is error in what Josephus wrote so we just can't accept anything that he said about Jesus" (even though basically the vast majority of people don't dispute that he existed).

I am providing a methodological critique here. I believe people in the ancient world who were self consciously writing or preserving records for posterity were doing so to advance their own ideology. As Churchill said "history will be kind to me for I will write it." I much prefer archeology and documents that were written for other purposes that got preserved. Consider Josephus, he was a Jewish elite who turned against his own people during the revolt and threw himself in in the camp of the emperor. So he gets to write the history of Jewish people.? Then his work gets transmitted by Christians who were looking to shore up the credentials of Jesus and Christianity. So I take the truth claims in such documents with lots of pepper and salt (same for Cesar's glorious campaign written by... Caesar).

 

[Satans_Serrated_Edge]

He wasn't deified at Nicaea though.

Nicaea was mostly about resolving longstanding Christological issues, especially those surrounding Arianism.

They didn't change anything or create anything new, they simply chose which existent tradition should be considered 'official'

"The Council of Nicea overwhelmingly affirmed the deity and eternality of Jesus Christ and defined the relationship between the Father and the Son as “of one substance.” It also affirmed the Trinity—the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit were listed as three co-equal and co-eternal Persons."

What occurred at the Council of Nicea?

 

[ronandcarol]

Jesus, the Christian Myth
If you see Jesus only as a myth,
you stand the chance to "myth" out on eternal salvation.
He is the only way.
ronandcarol

 

[Rival]

Jesus, the Christian Myth
If you see Jesus only as a myth,
you stand the chance to "myth" out on eternal salvation.
He is the only way.
ronandcarol

Salvation from what?

 

[Augustus]

"The Council of Nicea overwhelmingly affirmed the deity and eternality of Jesus Christ and defined the relationship between the Father and the Son as “of one substance.” It also affirmed the Trinity—the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit were listed as three co-equal and co-eternal Persons."

What occurred at the Council of Nicea?

As I said, they decided which of the existing Christological versions was "official", there was nothing new there. Most of them already believed that, which is why it became official.

 

[Satans_Serrated_Edge]

As I said, they decided which of the existing Christological versions was "official", there was nothing new there. Most of them already believed that, which is why it became official.

But that is where the real push to retcon the story vis a vis OT prophecies began.

 

[Augustus]

But that is where the real push to retcon the story vis a vis OT prophecies began.

Whatever gives you that idea? They were reaffirming centuries old beliefs. Do you think it took a meeting about Arianism for them to try to link the Messiah to OT prophecy?

 

[sayak83]

But that is where the real push to retcon the story vis a vis OT prophecies began.

As far as I am aware all four gospels (as well as Thomas) and all the NT writings were already written before the council of Nicea. Lots of large fragments found from times before that. So what precisely is your position.

 

[Kenny]

I am providing a methodological critique here. I believe people in the ancient world who were self consciously writing or preserving records for posterity were doing so to advance their own ideology. As Churchill said "history will be kind to me for I will write it." I much prefer archeology and documents that were written for other purposes that got preserved. Consider Josephus, he was a Jewish elite who turned against his own people during the revolt and threw himself in in the camp of the emperor. So he gets to write the history of Jewish people.?

But archaeology does have the capacity to do the same thing. Whether someone wrote it on a pyramid wall, a stone etc. At some point one accepts what is written when it matches what one finds.

Then his work gets transmitted by Christians who were looking to shore up the credentials of Jesus and Christianity. So I take the truth claims in such documents with lots of pepper and salt (same for Cesar's glorious campaign written by... Caesar)

Surely this can happen and could happen.

But to throw out all of what is written (letters, epistles, books etc) on the basis of "they are just shoring up the credentials" is a biased position IMV.

That is why I enjoyed so much the book "The Case for Christ" by Lee Strobel, an award winning Chicago Tribune reporter. Here is a man who was an atheist hell bent on disproving the Bible with all the reasons mentioned above and much more. Wanted to prove to his wife how wrong she was in deciding to become a believer in a myth.

After extensive research, trips, interviews to prove how wrong she was, he became a believer.

At some point one has to just accept what IS fact and let write the story without prejudice.

 

[Satans_Serrated_Edge]

As far as I am aware all four gospels (as well as Thomas) and all the NT writings were already written before the council of Nicea. Lots of large fragments found from times before that. So what precisely is your position.

My position? It seems to me that the original narrative did not cast Jesus AS god or even necessarily as the Jewish Messiah. The lineage is wrong, the story is wrong, and nowhere is Jesus explicitly stated as god. At least nowhere that doesn't require a good deal of eisegesis to carefully extrapolate.(before Abraham blah blah blah)

Nicea is where the (now) popular trinitarian narrative was born, or at the very least, was brought into canon.

 

[sayak83]

My position? It seems to me that the original narrative did not cast Jesus AS god or even necessarily as the Jewish Messiah. The lineage is wrong, the story is wrong, and nowhere is Jesus explicitly stated as god. At least nowhere that doesn't require a good deal of eisegesis to carefully extrapolate.(before Abraham blah blah blah)

Nicea is where the (now) popular trinitarian narrative was born, or at the very least, was brought into canon.

I was asking do you think the gospel narratives were significantly tampered with after the Nicea Council.?