Historicity of Jesus?
Offline I watched the RRS debate vs Ray Comfort and Kirk Cameron, and I recall Kelly saying that there was no non canonical evidence for the physical existence of a "Jesus Christ." I have not researched enough to know if this is indeed fact, so excuse my ignorance on the subject. It's always been enough to know that religion was bs I was never really concerned about there being a real Jesus Christ or not. But I realize now that if enough evidence against the existence of a physical Jesus Christ could be found then I think the basis for the religion would crumble. So my question is was there ever in the very least a man named Jesus Christ? Also is there any historical documentation outside of the bible that indicates the possibility of a Jesus Christ? I read somewhere that they discovered the person he was actually based on, and that his name was Yoshua Ben Yosef or something like that. I remember someone mentioning that Jesus Christ was the name given to him by Julius Caesar, because his original name was "too jewish." I dont remember where I heard all this and im not sure if any of it is accurate. Anyway If anyone can refer me to any research on the subject or provide some answers I would really appreciate it. I think if i could present enough evidence that Jesus never existed, I could turn a few heads in my area to hear me out about the irrationality of this bullshit.
Ideally, it ought not to matter. But many is the apologist who will begin their sermon by saying "We do know at the very least that there was a man named jesus...". I used to do it myself, actually. Aside from christian apologists getting a free pass with this assertion goes unchallenged, it allows for all other sorts of nonsense to germinate, such as the recent fad belief that jesus took a field trip to India or Tibet for some buddhist training.
A technicality, but I don't think one could expect to find evidence against jesus' existence. Rather, it is to establish whether the evidence for his existence is sufficient or not. Hence the argument from silence.
That is quite an intriguing notion, given that the real J.C. died 5 decades before the supposed birth of the fake j.c.
You've probably found it already, but there's a whole forum devoted to this.
Science points to god...and laughs.
..... and if a JESUS dude existed it wouldn't change a thing about religion dogma crap ..... did Plato exist ?
Thank you for your response and I'm checking out the forum, lot of answers I was looking for here.
You should consider reading my articles that I post up frequently on my blog. Here is a god starting point, with lots of links to my own articles and additional offsite articles.
----------------------------------------
Please help me get my resources so I can finish my book more quickly.
My wish list.
Et suppositio nil ponit in esse.
"You act ridiculously," said Ion, "to doubt everything. For my part, I should like to ask you what you say to those who free possessed men from their terrors by exorcising the spirits so manifestly. I need not discuss this: everyone knows about the Syrian from Palestine, the adept in it, how many he takes in hand who fall down in the light of the moon and roll their eyes and fill their mouths with foam; nevertheless, he restores them to health and sends them away normal in mind, delivering them from their straits for a large fee. When he stands beside them as they lie there and asks : 'Whence came you into his body?' the patient himself is silent, but the spirit answers in Greek or in the language of whatever foreign country he comes from, telling how and whence he entered into the man; whereupon, by adjuring the spirit and if he does not obey, threatening him, he drives him out. Indeed, I actually saw one coming out, black and smoky in color." "It is nothing much," I remarked," for you, Ion, to see that kind of sight, when even the 'forms' that the father of your school, Plato, points out are plain to you, a hazy object of vision to the rest of us, whose eyes are weak." - Lucian, Lover of Lies
Very interesting I looked through some of it and it helped in answering alot of questions. Particularly the statements about Josephus' documentation of Jesus being a forgery, I recall Ray Comfort trying to use that as grounds for a non canonical reference to jesus. I'll definitely look into your writing more deeply on the weekend when I have more time. There was one thing I was thinking about when I read question 7 "Do you believe Jesus was a composite of pagan gods?" I recently saw a film you've probably heard of online called Zeitgeist, which contains some interesting things, and some things that are just bullshit. In the movie the claim seems to be that Jesus was directly based on Horace, a claim I always found hard to believe. If anything I figured Jesus would be based more so on greek myths, rather the Egyptian ones since greek culture was closer to home. Another central claim in the movie is that the bible is an astro theological calendar, that marks different eras such as the age of aquarius etc... Do you think there is any truth to that? The creator of the film reffered to a book called, Egypt the Light of The World, by Gerald Massey as his basis for believing Jesus was plagiarism of Horace. Do you think it's worth checking out or is it outdated scholarship like you said in the post? Thank you for your response it will be helpful in my continued research.
I appreciate your compliments. I would be honored, of course, if you continued reading my articles.
As for Zeitgeist, I found it horrid. If there was one solid fact in that movie, it happened by accident. Astrotheology is a concept that is only founded in conspiracy, not realistic history. In other words, Zeitgeist is metaphysics instead of wissenshaft. I do not support it, nor would I encourage anybody to believe it. I linked to some articles dealing with these positions.
The best to you,
Rook
P.S. If you have 48 minutes free, you should watch my lecture. It is in my blog.
----------------------------------------
Please help me get my resources so I can finish my book more quickly.
My wish list.
Et suppositio nil ponit in esse.
"You act ridiculously," said Ion, "to doubt everything. For my part, I should like to ask you what you say to those who free possessed men from their terrors by exorcising the spirits so manifestly. I need not discuss this: everyone knows about the Syrian from Palestine, the adept in it, how many he takes in hand who fall down in the light of the moon and roll their eyes and fill their mouths with foam; nevertheless, he restores them to health and sends them away normal in mind, delivering them from their straits for a large fee. When he stands beside them as they lie there and asks : 'Whence came you into his body?' the patient himself is silent, but the spirit answers in Greek or in the language of whatever foreign country he comes from, telling how and whence he entered into the man; whereupon, by adjuring the spirit and if he does not obey, threatening him, he drives him out. Indeed, I actually saw one coming out, black and smoky in color." "It is nothing much," I remarked," for you, Ion, to see that kind of sight, when even the 'forms' that the father of your school, Plato, points out are plain to you, a hazy object of vision to the rest of us, whose eyes are weak." - Lucian, Lover of Lies