I agree totally man! It is a matter of faith. I have heard some Christians say things like, " Well it says in the bible that Jesus died in Jerusalem, that means that this story has to be true cuz Jerusalem really exists."

I usually reply with well Mt. Olympus is in Greece does that mean Zeus really lives there?

This is the main reason I don't get into mythicist debates. I've never seen a proof of Christianity that could benefit from evidence that a man named Jesus existed.

Yeah, I know that sounds like a crazy thing to say, but look at it this way. If there was a dude named Jesus who lived at or about the time that the gospels say, then what have we proven? Only that the gospel stories have a real person behind them. Christianity falls apart if Jesus was "just a man." So, where's the evidence that he was anything more than a man?

It's still special pleading to argue that because the bible says Jesus performed miracles, that he did. We don't assume that about any other magic in any other ancient books. So what's the justification for believing the bible's account of miracles?

The answer is that with or without a historic Jesus, there's no reason to believe the bible.

True.

I guess I should have been more clear.  I meant to say "if you uncovered enough historical evidence that there was a person whose life could have been the foundation of the myth."

A good analogy would be King Arthur.  If we found a tomb of someone named Arthur who really was a king, and we found out that he really did have a knight in his service named Lancelot, and there really was a dude named Merlin, that would only prove that those people existed.  There would still be no magic sword, or a watery tart lobbing scimitars at passersby.

FIFY. The watery tart didn't lob scimitars, she threw swords. There's a difference. 

Very soon, I'm going to stop trying to contribute to this thread.  So far I'm batting a solid .000 on getting my facts straight.

Moistened bint.

It certainly is. 

Don't overstate your case.  It is not an overwhelming majority.  It is a majority, but that doesn't prove a thing.  There is simply not enough of a majority to make it a consensus.  It has not been a consensus for two hundred years.  Even Tillich and Bultmann had their doubts.  Especially when we look at the books written by these scholars. 

This is just a small excerpt from my book on the problems with accepting the fallacious claim that scholarship is "undivided" on the issue of Jesus' historicity.  Keep in mind that this is copyrighted and not to be reprinted by anybody without my direct permission.

John Dominic Crossan is a man of severe intellectual honesty, as far as it goes, and his The Historical Jesus (1992) is certainly a display of his scrupulous scholarship.  For example, the book opens with the words from Morton Smith’s book Jesus the Magician (1978) which paint a very grim picture of the historical Jesus movement as a cumulative whole, and the words of Crossan which follow do not seem to help the scenario.  Indeed, Crossan states that the “historical Jesus research is becoming something of a scholarly bad joke.”  Even still, Crossan makes no attempt, at least immediately, to give us any reason why scholarship should accept the research done in the means of finding the historical Jesus.  He continues by saying, astutely, that there were historians and theologians alike that have suggested that it couldn’t—and shouldn’t—be done, giving the reader the understanding that there were those in the field of history who said that it couldn’t be done because of the historical problems, but really meant they didn’t want it to be done because of the theological problems.[i] 

            This is a serious problem of the quest as well.  Such a claim is accurate, and as was presented earlier, scholarship seems to welcome such a value as to compartmentalize an issue.  That is, when somebody suggests that what they are doing is really for the betterment of historical knowledge, in truth they are merely seeking to benefit their theology.  In this, one should not necessarily find fault in a person tries to validate their beliefs, in fact everyone should do just that, however as stated earlier, such things should never be done at the expense of good scholarship, and evidence or information should never be handled differently as a way to escape the possibility that one could be wrong about those beliefs.  Thankfully, Crossan seems to be one of the few who honestly seems to want to find the truth, although he tends to be naïve at times—of which he is not alone for most of the historical Jesus yoke seem to be just as naïve.  One would be hard-pressed to find somebody who straightaway calls the historical Jesus quest a “stunning embarrassment” and something that brings about “suspicion” from the scholarly community, yet Crossan has the integrity to do so.[ii] 

That is the sad reality, that any attempt to historicize Jesus is in effect looking at one’s own reflection as Witherington put it, and at ones own individual presuppositions.  Perhaps this is why there are so many differing opinions on who Jesus was, and what group or affiliation he belonged to.  Consider the list of scholars who write on the historical Jesus; E. P. Sanders, Robert Funk, John Dominic Crossan, Ben Witherington, Paula Fredriksen, Geza Vermes, Burton Mack, Hyam Maccoby, Morton Smith, Bruce Chilton, John Meier, N. T. Wright, S.G.F. Brandon, G.W. Buchanan, John M. Allegro and many others; there are practically just as many claims from the community as to who Jesus was as there are scholars writing on him.  Jesus, according to the questers, was one of the following: An itinerate preacher,[iii] a cynical sage,[iv] the Essene’s righteous rabbi,[v] a Galilean holy man,[vi] a revolutionary leader,[vii] an apocalyptic preacher,[viii] a proto-liberation theologian,[ix] a trance-inducing mental healer,[x] an eschatological prophet,[xi] an occultic magician,[xii] a Pharisee,[xiii] a rabbi who seeks religious-reformation,[xiv] a Galilean charismatic,[xv] a Hillelite,[xvi] an Essene,[xvii] a teacher of wisdom,[xviii] a miracle-working-exorcist prophet[xix] and yes the list goes on.  Somewhere in this mess, some really believe to find the historical Jesus.  Paul Rhodes Eddy sums up the conflicting dramatis personae by saying that the new quest has been “anything but uniform.”[xx]  

[i] John Dominic Crossan, The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant (1992) Pg. xxvii

[ii] ------- Pg. xxviii

[iii] J.D. Crossan, The Historical Jesus (1992)

[iv] J.D. Crossan, The Historical Jesus (1992); Burton Mack, The Christian Myth: Origins, Logic and Legacy (2003), The Lost Gospel: The Book of Q and Christian Origins (1993), and A Myth of Innocence: Mark and Christian Origins (1988); F.G. Downing, Cynics and Christian Origins (1992); Paul Rhodes Eddy, Jesus as Diogenes? Reflections on the Cynic Jesus Thesis; Journal of Biblical Literature, Vol. 115, No. 3. (Autumn, 1996), pp. 449-469.

[v] John M. Allegro, The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Christian Myth (1992)

[vi] Geza Vermes, Jesus the Jew (1973), The Religion of Jesus the Jew (1993); B. Thiering, Jesus and the Riddle of the Dead Sea Scrolls: Unlocking the Secrets of His Life Story (1992).

[vii] S.G.F. Brandon, Jesus and the Zealots (1967); G.W. Buchanan, Jesus: The King and His Kingdom (1984)

[viii] Bart D. Ehrman, Truth and Fiction in the Da Vinci Code (2004); Paula Fredriksen, From Jesus to Christ (1988)

[ix] James M. Robinson, The Jesus of Q as Liberation Theologian, paper presented at the Jesus

Seminar, (October 25-27,1991).

[x] S. Davies, On the Inductive Discourse of Jesus: The Psychotherapeutic Foundation of Christianity, paper presented at the Jesus Seminar, (October 22-25, 1992) and Jesus the Healer: Possession, Trance, and the Origins of Christianity (1995)

[xi] E. P. Sanders, Jesus and Judaism (1985); John P. Meier, A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus, Vol. 2: Mentor, Message and Miracles (1994).

[xii] Morton Smith, Jesus the Magician (1978)

[xiii] Harvey Falk, Jesus the Pharisee: A New Look at the Jewishness of Jesus (2003); Hyam Maccoby, Jesus the Pharisee (2003)

[xiv] Richard Horsley, Jesus and the Spiral of Violence (1987); Marcus Borg, Jesus: Uncovering the Life, Teachings, and Relevance of a Religious Revolutionary (2006); Bruce Chilton, A Galilean Rabbi and His Bible: Jesus' Use of the Interpreted Scripture of His Time (1984)

[xv] Geza Vermes, Jesus in the World of Judaism (1984)

[xvi] Harvey Falk, Jesus the Pharisee: A New Look at the Jewishness of Jesus (2003)

[xvii] Harvey Falk, Jesus the Pharisee: A New Look at the Jewishness of Jesus (2003); John M. Allegro, The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Christian Myth (1992)

[xviii] Marcus Borg, Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time: The Historical Jesus and the Heart of Contemporary Faith (1995)

[xix] Helmut Koester, Introduction to the New Testament. Vol. 2: History and Literature of Early Christianity (1982)

[xx] Paul Rhodes Eddy, Jesus as Diogenes? Reflections on the Cynic Jesus Thesis; Journal of Biblical Literature, Vol. 115, No. 3. (Autumn, 1996), pp. 449

Perhaps, Christos, you can enlighten us.  Who was Jesus?  These are just some of the many different "historical Jesus" characters that your 'undivided' scholars have come up with.  So, which was he,or would you like to add another to the list?  Perhaps you need to critically examine the claims.  If Jesus really existed, why all this confusion, why all these problems.  He is supposed to be the greatest man who ever lived, yet we have more evidence for the first ever 'apple-polishing' in history (Samuel Noah Kramer, History Begins at Sumer:Thirty-Nine Firsts in Man's Recorded History) than we do for Jesus.  Part of this problem lies with the complete inconsistancy we have between the only surviving manuscripts that talk about him - the New Testament.

Lie!  I am calling you on LYING!  Why don't you try again?  IU never ever cited Harris or Dawkins, and I did cite quite a large handful of others.  But because you are either too incompitent to do your own research, or perhaps you're just too lazy, I'll give you a short list of impressive scholars who do doubt the historicity of Jesus (aside from those mentioned above):

J.R. Hoffman

Thomas L. Thompson

John Van Seeters

Philip R. Davies

Niels Peter Lemche

Earl Doherty

G.A. Wells

Alan Dundes

All of these names are highly recognized and noteworthy.   

Way to misrepresent or dodge the point. 

Who said Paul was from Tarsus?  Paul certainly never claims that in his Epistles.  That is something Luke made up, and has no basis in history. Your naivety towards this subject is astounding.  Even more so, don't forget we don't have any additional evidence of Paul outside the NT.  And we already know people wrote in the name of Paul frequently, and were effective in doing so - Marcion believed Hebrews was written by him!

Yes, and they can also completely make up people as well.  The Jews were notorious for creating history, and inventing characters, especially using the Torah over and over, recycling tropes.  The Gospels are just recycled tropes.  Consult the following authorities:

Thomas L. Thompson, The Messiah Myth ; The Early History of the Israelite People; The Mythic Past; The Historicity of the Patriarchal Narratives; Niels Lemche, The Israelites in History and Tradition; Miller-Hayes, A History of Ancient Israel and Judah; Phillip Davies, In Search of "Ancient Israel"; Matthews-Benjamin, Old Testament Paralles: Laws and Stories from the Ancient Near East; James Pritchard, Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament with Supplement; Giovanni Garbini, History and Ideology in Ancient Israel; Myth and History in the Bible; John Van Seters, In Search of History: Historiography in the Ancient World and the Origins of Biblical History; Gosta Ahlstrom, The History of Ancient Palestine; Alexander Heidel, The Babylonian Genesis (To name a few)

It wasn't only the Jews who did this.  We have hundreds if not thousands of manuscripts from Greeks and Romans who euhemerized mythical figures into historical settings.  Aside from the Aeneid, the Homeric Epics, the poems of Euripides, Astrophanes, and others, we also have Egyptian, Babylonian and Sumerian mythological characters placed into history as well.  This was commonplace.

 You historicists are all bonkers some time.  You get so caught up in trying to prove your myth, you ignore the obvious theological messages behind the plots.  The plots themselves are literary functions, and help support a constant theme that has existed since the Sumerians - the conquest of life over death.  This theme is continuously echoed in every mythology since their Istar-Tammuz (Kramar, ibid.).  The theological story of the Gospels is brilliant, and gives us incredible insight into not only the theological mindsets of the authors, but how the authors differed in terms of theology (again a reason why such incompatibilities exist in the NT is partly because each Gospel writer had different theologies).     

In trying to historicize these events (and indeed, you can't), you are completely missing the whole point behind them.  When I can go through the whole Gospel of Mark and show you a parallel almost word for word from the OT, that does not bode well for your claim that Jesus was historical. 

I'll tell you what.  Let's JUST take the first chapter of Mark.

This is just from chapter 1.  This is the story in which the opther stories are based on, and build upon, but even they do a very good job of using tropes from the Old Testament.  12 disciples are a literary trope as well - just as Moses chose 12 men to lead the tribes of israel, Jesus too chooses twelve men to lead Israel.  He also calls them in the same way Elijah calls Elisha, and others.  It's fitting in the way of 1 Samuel, when Jesus calls, they answer.  (Here I am, Lord!)  But they are lost, and the authors of the Gospels make the disciples out to be blundering idiots most of the time, and this is done to enhance Jesus as a character, but also make those characters who are special recycled tropes stand out, and seem spectacular.  In every miracle, every healing, every event in the Gospels can be traced back to the Old Testament, literally and allegorically.  

Like I said, in your quest to try to historicize these events you fail to understand the real message behind the Gospels, and the reason they exist.  You take them from meaningful, masterful theological allegory, and turn them into dispicable wastes if paper and make them all out to be horrible historians who lie and add to the text to better an agenda.  IN all reality, I think by trying to historicize the Gospel events, and even jesus, YOU are making the original Christians out to be fools and liars.  I see them for what they were: Hellenized Jews who sought to better their positions by building morale through the written word.

This thread title is a lie. Most, if not all educated atheists I have debated in threads and chat rooms since 02 believe in the historical Jesus. The only exception has been here on this website. Even Anthony Flew, who was considered the worlds foremost philosphical atheist, and the father of the modern atheist movement, believed in the historical Christ before he renounced atheism -- He is now a theist. Most atheists don't know this.

Most atheists here aren't aware of the fact that the mythicist theory has been completely rejected by contemporary scholarship. The only ones pontificating the mythicist lie, are non-historians on the internet. Stop listening to those crackpots, like Carrier, and read a book by a REAL historian.

JAROSLAV PELIKAN (2006)

 Was considered the worlds foremost expert on Christian history and the development of doctrine. He received 42 honary doctorates, awards and honors from Bill Clinton, the Library of Congress, and the U. S. Government. He also received the JOHN W. KLUGE prize. This is the equivalent of the Nobel Prize awarded to the Humanities.

Read his five-volume set, "THE CHRISTIAN TRADITION".

Also, read "THE BAKER ENCYCLOPEDIA OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS," by Norman Geisler. It refutes everysingle atheist argument ever leveled against Christian theism.

Apotheon is just dodging because he is simply not well read enough to keep up with me.  When theists like him can't keep up, all they can do is make baseless assertions and pretend to know what they are talking about.  He doesn't realize we're not as gullible as he is, and will not succumb to the pseudo-intellectualism he hopes to be taken as knowledge.  Nice try.  But if you can't handle the heat...you know the rest.

Freethinkaluva,

 While I appreciate your zeal, please understand that anybody who is serious about Jesus mythicism needs to read more than Acharya.  In fact, I think they should skip ALL books dealing with mythicism, and first read the Bible cover to cover, and then study Koine and Coptic, and then read several hundred books on the social-cultural period from the dawning of the Hellenistic Age through the Council of Nicea (a good 600 year period), andafter they do this, they need to finger through the hundreds of literary works including pseudopigrapha and apocrypha, religious texts, poetry, inscriptions and dedications of multiple types of cultures, and then AFTER they gain all this knowledge, and have read all these things, then, they should perhaps consider the works of the Mythicists like Price, Carrier and Acharya (although, I really disagree with a lot of what Acharya says).  

Serious students need to do serious research.  Taking a shortcut i.e. reading mythicist books alone will not give them any more advanced knowledge or education, it will only give them a broad understanding, and to this day nobody - NOBODY - has written a definitive work on the mythicist case.  That is what I am doing.  So you get all of this information, and not just the arguments.  But it should never end just there, and nor should it start there.  It needs to start with educating yourself on the sociology of the time period, and build up from there.   

Well that is because of the tomes of evidence you have for her existence (maybe you even have a ticket stub or two from a live concert, maybe not).  But even still this is irrelevant.

 I'm not even saying it's necessarily wrong for people to believe Jesus was a real person.  Because it was antiquity, we don't have any way of verifying to any absolute degree, anything related to naturalistic events.  (We can rule out supernaturalism based on its irrelevancy and its lack of evidence even in todays age)  It is actually okay to assume the existence of a historical person even when there is very little evidence.  And perhaps if, as Richard Carrier might say, there were only ten very odd things amiss with Jesus, I would probably still consider him to have lived.  It's when you start getting into the hundreds of problems with accepting the existence of a historical Jesus where one should start doubting.  

The evidence I have given above is sufficient for one to start seriously questioning the existence of a historical Jesus.  I will use another example, let's look at Job.  Job was written by an anonymous author, the dating is speculative (as is all dating concerning the Bible). But Job certainly was not a historical person, he was a literary invention specifically made to run through a series of theological points.  (Here is a question you all might be interested in pondering:  The character if Job obviously believed in God...but do you think the author of Job did?)    

The same is true for the Gospels.  Anyway, I've really made my case above.  I think people should start considering what I've said, before continuing to make comments that seem off base, or are too grandiose to claim in the first place. 

That is a problem, Freethinkaluva.  Astrotheology is her ONLY explanation for the myths of the BIble - but they are false.  The explanation is bunk.  And her books are short cuts.  I'm not a fan, and I'll never be a fan until she presents a better position for mythicism.  So far, you have claimed a lot and proved nothing.  You are simply peddling a book of pseudotruths.  You need to stop.  You don't know what real historical research entails, you just think you do.

Good, but you're not helping. You're promoting the same horrible scholarship this campaign was started to remove from mythicism. 

Because you know nothing about me, nor do you seem to have any clue what you're talking about, I'll let this slide. 

Says the Acharaya S Parrot.

Price was NOT a fan of her earlier books, he criticized them harshly.  Wake the fuck up dude.  Carrier certainly doesn't support her, and he is a historian - Price is a theologian.  And Price has been wrong on more then one thing.  He also promotes Frank Zindler, and although Frank and I are friends and colleagues, not everything Frank says is accurate either.  You have this obsession with trying to prove Acharaya right - I'm telling you, she isn't.  And I have read more then you realize on this subject - that is why I'm being peer reviewed, and makes me wonder why Acharaya was not.

Even if I hadn't, the outlines are enough to show she is clueless. 

That is because she hasn't done enough to provide evidence her position is accurate.  She is sloppy.  She might well be right - but she doesn't go about it correctly.  If you had any sense of scholarship and what it means to Peer Review, perhaps you'd get with the program.

No, I admit I didn't read her new book, which to me sounds like nothing but quotes from authors, while she plugs her astrotheology hype - which is nothing but sensationalism. 

First, Doherty is NOT a scholar.  He admits this.  He wrote books, yes, and they are excellent.  But they are not foolproof, and certainly not at all 100% correct.  He makes some errors, and is humble and honest enough to admit that he had, in fact, made some grievous claims.  Although he majored in classical studies, he doesn't work in the field, and for a long time he hadn't.  That isn't to say his work is not valuable - it is.  

Second, Price and I are aslo friends.  But Price makes some claims I have a hard time swallowing.  For example, the dating of Pauls Epistles is beyond fringe.  The top two textual critics who ever lived, Bart Ehrman and the late Bruce Metzger both adequately dated the epistles to the time of the first century.  Price is an advocate of the Dutch Radicals, like Van Manen and Thomas Whitaker, both of whom were great for their day, but who represent a position and time in redaktiongeschichte long since put down by new discoveries, translations, and manuscripts.  Their work is outdated by decades.

What makes them "better" at this then me?  You don't even know me.  You walk into this message board, and tote opinions of a person who I am familiar with, and their positions on astrotheology, which has absolutely no solid foundation, and you think you know it all.  Then you claim that Price and Doherty are better then I am.  Says who?  Price is, certainly, more experienced.  And I would consider him a mighty scholar, but he is a theologian, not a historian.  And as I've said, there are things I very strongly disagree with concerning Price's views.  

And as stated before, Price has criticized Acharaya for a long time, and the only reason he has really supported her is because he was the one who straightened her out (in a sense of steering her in the right direction)!  I've read his review of her book, and know her downsides.  She's a sloppy scholar.  

I have two scholars actively engaged in peer reviewing my book, and three others who I could call on for peer review as well.  It's also being peer reviewed by the editor of the Copenhagen Monograph Series.  Acharaya S cannot make that same claim.     

You're not pissing me off for dissenting.  I'm not mad at all.  You are just showing your ignorance, and I'm finer with that.  No skin off my back. 

No, you may not think so.  But this is the sort of scholarship and ignorance I am trying to combat.  So like it or not, you're an "enemy" in my eyes.  You're who I am trying to stand against.  You are going about mythicist research completely the wrong way, and you don't even get that. 

Let's not have a "who screwed up more" contest.  Believe me, you don't want that. 

Clearly you have no concept with who you are talking too.  Again, anybody who reads this, who has listened to me for five minutes, would disagree with you. 

You don't even know what Mainstream Academia is.  You are completely clueless, and you're lecturing somebody who actually does know what it is and is a part of the process.  I'll admit, you have some balls, but you seem to be missing the the most vital organ, or maybe you're just not using it.  Get with the program, you are making yourself look silly, and nobody else who has ever met me would agree with any of your conclusions here.  

You know nothing about it at all, and it shows. The fact that the argument is not new is not important and is not news to us.

Whether the argument is old or not is not a valid counter argument, it's the fallacy of appealing to antiquity, Argumentum ad antiquitatem. This is the fallacy of asserting that something is wrong simply because it's old.

What actually matters is the present state of the argument, in short: is it a good one? And it remains true that there is NO evidence of there ever being any contemporary accounts of an actual Jesus.

So please stop wasting the board's time with inept argument.

You've got it so backwards it's hilarious. Mythicist don't have to have 'anything' in the first place, they merely have to show that christians have nothing!  And there is NO evidence of there ever being any contemporary accounts of a jesus. The burden of proof is on the christian; he mythicist merely needs to demonstrate what already is known: no actual evidence for there being any contemporary accounts of jesus.

Stop embarrassing yourself with these miserably inept arguments... you can't even work out where the burden of evidence lies, and this just proves how ignorant you are.

No evidence of there being any contemporary evidence/no provenance, no case.

The only one who needs to read here is you. Stop making yourself look ridiculous.

http://www.rationalresponders.com/a_silence_that_screams_no_contemporary_historical_accounts_for_jesus

Mythicism relies on a valid argument from silence. When a claim is of an exceptional or extraordinary nature, yet is made in the absence of any evidence, the claim is likely to be false. Claiming to have flown over NYC at lunchtime, yet being unable to provide any evidence, would lead to people rejecting the claim.

(I await you telling me that all arguments from silence are invalid, this will complete your trifecta of ignorance.)

How to make an Argument from Silence

According to Gilbert Garraghan (A Guide to Historical Method, 1946, p. 149)

To be valid, the argument from silence must fulfill two conditions: the writer[s] whose silence is invoked would certainly have known about it; [and] knowing it, he would under the circumstances certainly have made mention of it. When these two conditions are fulfilled, the argument from silence proves its point with moral certainty.

In addition, the historian Richard Carrier suggests two additional criteria to strengthen an argument from silence:

1) Whether or not it is common for men to create similar myths.

It is prima facie true that this is the case. History is replete not only with 'god' claims, but with claims for messiah status.

2) The claim is of an extraordinary nature, it violates what we already know of nature.

(Important note: this is not to rule out extraordinary claims, a priori.)

The mythicist argument meets all four criteria.

Also see:
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/richard_carrier/jesuspuzzle.html#General

Carrier writes:
There are two ways to "prove" ahistoricity:

(1) If you can demonstrate that there is both (a) insufficient evidence to believe x and (b) sufficient evidence to disbelieve x, then it is reasonable to disbelieve x. This is the "Argument from Silence."

(2) If you can demonstrate that all the evidence can be far better accounted for by a theory (y) other than historicity (theory x), then it is reasonable to believe y and, consequently, to disbelieve x. This is the "Argument to the Best Explanation."

For more on evidential arguments from silence: http://www.umass.edu/wsp/methodology/outline/silence.html

Again, each of your posts points to our basic ignorance on these matters. You come here to announce blatant errors, or things we already knew well before you stumbled onto our boards. Stop making an ass of yourself.