I will refer anyone seeking answers to read the following:
Nicolas Notovich The unknown life of christ
Nicholas Roerich Heart of Asia and Alti-Himalaya

Both of these are heavily referenced in Micheal Tellinger's book The Slave Species of the Gods.

I consider this sufficient evidence to support the actual physical existence of Jesus the human being. As to his attaining god status that is for each one of us to determine individually

So these authors have some top secret "evidence" ?

top secret? NO
evidence? yes

Take the time to look it u p.

You'll have to forgive me, but....

Evidence?

You're going to have to do better than just claim that there is evidence.

This is one of those milk before meat kind of discussions.

Stupid motives, stupid evidence, stupid rationalizations are easier to digest than maggot ridden meat.

When one of the top Biblical scholars in the world, John Dominic Crossan, begin changing the narrative on the historical Jesus it prompted be to start investigating. Personally for me, the Biblical story of Jesus is complete hogwash and propaganda. The genesis of the name of 'Jesus' in the context of the Christ, Son of God, Savior, etc. is even in question.

It is unknown to this day who actually penned the Gospels. The ecumenical councils held in Nicaea only served to prop up the Jesus myth. The Bible, as we know it today, was essentially assembled during these councils and writings that challenged the 'Christian' movement (Gnostic gospels, etc.) were removed from the canon. It's as bad as the 'assembly' of the BofM.

I don't think there is any doubt that an individual challenged the Romans. But what was his real name? For an interesting read check out 'Jesus the Terrorist' by Peter Cresswell. The author maintains "Jesus was a zealot who wanted to be King of Israel. The apostles and disciples were members of his family, by blood and by marriage, and they went on to wage a war against Rome. Far from converting, Saul, the false apostle, remained malicious and vindictive to the end. Saul invented Christianity, borrowing the rituals of a pagan religion, Mithraism. The gospels are a deliberately scrambled version of Jewish zealot propaganda with characters, who were Jewish warriors, stolen and subverted by Christian writers."

To those replying:

Read the books and find out for yourselves.
Blasting me does not make anything true or false.

neither does your assertion.

If you cant craft a compelling argument about why it's worth our time looking at these books then we're not going to bother to look at them.

That is o k with me

Can I ask an honest question?

What in those two/three books separates them from the other books that I've read? What evidence do they bring up that has never been presented before?

So, if I may?

Nicolas Notovich has admitted to having fabricated the Life of Issa. You are actually using a modern fraud as one of your evidences of a 2,000 year old myth.

Nicholas Roerich is just bearing his testimony and not presenting any evidence, other than just how great he feels about it.

Michael Tellinger? Wow, that's just fiction

"Read the books and find out for yourselves."

I've said this exact same thing when I was a missionary about the Book of Mormon. People shouldn't fall for that argument about the BOM, why should they fall for it for the book you're promoting?

Whether or not a historical Jesus existed, the current status of what He started, or was started by pretenders to his name, is tending towards moribund. Divisions between the schisms will dog it forever, and the "schism'ing" continues.

Christianity and horses as a mode of transportation had their hay day. And they'll both always have their fans.

From a person on this board (who's on youtube a lot) I learned the most convincing evidence that Jesus existed. Here it is for what it's worth: Paul was the great missionary of Christianity and did more than anyone. He had his conversion on the road to Damascus. He spent 40 days with Peter and James ('brother of Jesus') and they all knew Mary the mother of Jesus very well.

Do you really think they were all hallucinating for 33 years? How many witnesses should substantiate a truth? In our courts one witness can be enough to make a binding verdict by a judge that we all believe and recognize as the truth. Here we literally have at least 15 indisputable personal eye witnesses.

There would have to be other sources than the Bible, no matter how many witnesses it says there were.

Regarding witnesses, like Twain said, "I could not feel more satisfied and at rest if the entire Whitmer family had testified."

That said, I have no idea if Jesus was a composite, complete mythology or based on someone because the evidence is not complete enough for me to know.


I'm one who enjoys these threads. New people come all the time and may be beginning to see the problems with the Bible.

dagny Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I'm one who enjoys these threads. New people come
> all the time and may be beginning to see the
> problems with the Bible.

Good point, dagny.

I think you will find that a lot of us don't see the evidence as persuasve.


> Paul was the great missionary of Christianity and
> did more than anyone. He had his conversion on the
> road to Damascus.

There is no independent evidence that Jesus appeared to Paul. Paul's account is unique, unsubstantiated, reliant upon a supernatural explanation, and very much self-serving. In a court of law, it would be given short shrift.


> He spent 40 days with Peter and
> James ('brother of Jesus') and they all knew Mary
> the mother of Jesus very well.

Perhaps. Again, the only evidence for these events comes from Paul and served his interests.


> Do you really think they were all hallucinating
> for 33 years?

Paul did not meet Jesus (in this life), so the 33 years does not apply to him. Most of the apostles met him much later, so the 33 years does not apply to them. Jesus's mother and brothers would have known him his whole life, or most of it, but they did not leave any testimonies. Everything we have that is strictly biographical comes from two sources, Mark and Q, and at least Mark did not include the resurrection--which is a significant omission. The evidence behind the Jesus story is scant.


> How many witnesses should
> substantiate a truth?

One if he is credible. Paul is the only person who directly recorded his experiences, but he was speaking in his own interest and is generally uncolloborated.


> In our courts one witness
> can be enough to make a binding verdict by a judge
> that we all believe and recognize as the truth.
> Here we literally have at least 15 indisputable
> personal eye witnesses.

No, we do not have "at least 15 indisputable personal eye witnesses." We have second-hand accounts of witnesses' experiences, predominantly recorded by people who never met those witnesses. Those accounts of accounts are far weaker evidence than the testimonies of the 3 and 8 witnesses to the Book of Mormon.

There is one actual witness of Jesus: Paul. And Paul testified to a supernatural experience that made him powerful and influential. His testimony would not pass muster in a court of law today, so Jesus becomes a matter of faith and not evidence.

If an individual chooses to believe, fine. But it is a question of faith, not concrete evidence.

Lot's Wife Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Everything we have
> that is strictly biographical comes from two
> sources, Mark and Q, and at least Mark did not
> include the resurrection--which is a significant
> omission. The evidence behind the Jesus story is
> scant.

And maybe only Mark. Q holds primacy with US experts but Mark alone holds sway in Europe scholarship. My thinking is Mark alone.

That's certainly possible.

There is another view that argues the gospels are a liturgical midrash for the Christian community that originall worshipped alonside the Jews in the synagogue. The stories in the Gospels correspond in topic sequentially with the Jewish liturgy. So while the stories take Jesus as the central figure as he was also religiously, the stories themselves only teach principles, not facts or events, or only tertiarially do so. Same as the stories from the Prophets section of the Talmud may be interpreted non-literally. A practice the converted jews were comfortable with.

So the nonsense genealogies are to teach that anyone can be accepted as Christian not just Jews. And that Jewish heritage has exterior additions too.

Mark doesnt have enough content to cover a calendar year. So in this view Matthew is generated to complete the topics needed and so on.

It's when these stories are used with converts from outside of the jewish tradition that literalism enters the tradition, a Christian rather than a Jewish heresy.

It's an interesting argument and explains the gospels well. The epistles are a result of the confusion between the literalists and nonliteralists. It also explains the tacked on nature of the long ending of Mark.

This interpretation needs fairly early dating of at least Mark and Matthew though. So as much as I find the textual argument compelling, I struggle with the dating as i think the Gospels are later products rather than earlier. Or maybe my intellectual biases are in conflict.

The other dynamic was the politics of the canonization. John is a radical outlier, and the question is why was such an esoteric gospel added to the NT?

In her treatment of the Gospel of Thomas, Elaine Pagels argues well that John was included because that is the only one of the four that declares that Jesus is God. Whether or not that is the case, I think it is important to recognize that politics were involved as well.

On the question of literalism, I don't think Judaean peasants were particularly metaphorical thinkers. There is a danger, again, of assuming that the common folk were as sophisticated as the Jews who left written records.

I can dodge bullets from a machine gun and it's proven because my journal says that 1000 people witnessed it. Don't bother finding anyone to ask, they're all dead. Just take my journal as truth.

Is your journal on Youtube? Because that would make it true.

Anywhere on the interwebs would testify to the veracity of my very special skills.

I was planning to have vloggers debate over my journal on youtube, but your idea is better.

Indeed. What is there to debate?

You put it on Youtube: end of story.

I was taught in my conversion to Judaism classes that the prevailing Jewish view (at that time: early 1980s) was that Jesus was not a historical person.

More recently, Henry Abramson (the Jewish history teacher, on YouTube) has said (in at least one of his YouTube history lectures; my recollection is that it is Dr. Abramson's lecture on Paul) that he, himself, does personally "believe" (academically, not religiously) that Jesus, a historical person, did exist. (Dr. Abramson, who is an Orthodox Jew who teaches history at university level, has a series of lectures on YouTube which discuss Jewish history in the context of those early Christian times. This reference is in one of them.)

In the Talmud (ancient learned discussions of Jewish history and law) there are [academically] ambiguous references, written during that general time frame, about a person who possibly could have been the human being Christians refer to as Jesus:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_in_the_Talmud

I, personally, find it interesting that, among knowledgeable Jews, this subject is now "in play," because earlier in my life, this was (to my knowledge) definitely not the case.

There is movement here, but to what end, I do not know.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/20/2019 10:14PM by Tevai.

My hunch is that Jesus existed.

There were probably scores of men named Jesus, perhaps several of whom were teachers. I suspect that one of them was particularly memorable and probably taught some of what the Bible and tradition ascribes to him. Then people superimposed their preferred glosses and Paul transformed his much-embellished story into a radically different religion.

But at the core, I guess, was a man named Jesus. What level of confidence would I attach to my surmise? Not much more than 50%, meaning that if presented with new evidence I could easily be persuaded otherwise.

https://historyforatheists.com/This site, written by atheists, has several articles on the subject. I am not interested in yet another argument on this subject, but if you are interested and open minded you might like it. It discusses some other issues that new atheists have wrong as well as well.

What is a "new Atheist" ?

Did you forget to pay your membership fee again?

This has been a lively discussion. That is what I seek many times when I post here.All of you who responded are thinkers. Whether or not I agree with you is moot. That I stimulated thought completes my purpose. I thank you all for responding. It has been interesting

Thank you for starting the discussion, TDR.

I tend to go back to this thought. If Paul was real, and if he did in fact meet Peter as he claimed, then Jesus was a historical figure.

The rest of the story?

If there was no gravity I think I would be able to fly.

The problem with this is that it requires to many ifs. We are talking about the most edited story ever. As well as verified and conceivable reasons to not tell the truth. Verified because Jesus cannot have done many of the things that are attributed to him. Conceivable because Jesus's story has been used and is currently used for unscrupulous purposes.

I can if with the best of them but I don't really want to do that. What I want is for a clear separation between a person's desire to have faith in Jesus and my desire to not hear about their faith.

No source is reliable, no source is absent corruption, I choose to be agnostic with the caveat that I'm not going to argue with the person who claims that Jesus is a myth.

To add. I'm not agnostic about the god thing. Jesus, if he ever existed, was 100% not a god.

Scholars know the names of other wandering preachers and healers of the time period, so I don't know why they wouldn't know Jesus's name as well.

Paul is well documented, and he did visit Jesus's brother and another apostle in Jerusalem. My question is when, how, and why the mythic elements were added. I can accept Jesus as a wandering preacher, but the addition of the mythic elements is what I find interesting.

The mythic elements are the earliest elements recorded. Paul's writings are the oldest and visionary and mythic as regards Jesus.

This is part of the problem of ferreting out the history from the mystery.

I'll add that Paul's inclusion of the mythical elements calls into question either his source or his motives.

My bet is on his motives.

He was an educated man, a worldly man. He was perfectly capable of reading Mark literally; it would not at that time have had the resurrection passages.

The superimposition of mythology served a purpose: it made Paul and his movement powerful.

I think it worthwhile to account for the general worldview at that time.

I think, although I'm not sure, that generally speaking mythical and magical elements were met with less skepticism in Paul's time. Paul could have had a source that claimed the mythical and he might have accepted it because he was already inclined to believe that things like that happened.

I imagine that those who perpetuated the fraud didn't have to also be the origin of the fraud. Jesus could have surrounded himself with unknowing conspirators. That scenario has played out before.


I say that while at the same time believing that the fraud originated after Jesus died. But I have no proof of any of this.

Sure, the world was more susceptible to mythology and tales of the supernatural at that time. But the rulers of the Roman empire were as cynical and worldly as political leaders today, and most of them would have been extremely pragmatic in their religion--to put it charitably. That realpolitik view of the world would have informed the Greek schools of the day, which were long past literal belief in the classical myths. So Paul would have been trained in that agnostic or atheistic tradition.

I think also you see in Paul's writings a well-developed sense of political expediency. He was a religious leader, certainly, but he threw away the OT, which Jesus never did; and he transformed Jesus's religion, if he thought of himself as founding one, from a Jewish movement to a gentile religion. As he said, he and his followers were to be "all things to all people," which suggests great intellectual and spiritual. . . flexibility.

Was he sincere? I imagine that at times he was confident he was doing God's work, just as JS probably sometimes did. Con men do that. They con themselves as part of their overall con. And sometimes con men think that what they are doing is right even if they know some of it is fraudulent: witness the Q15 in SLC.

So I don't believe Paul was as gullible as the peasants in their widespread mystery cults. He knew a lot more than that. He was probably sincere in some of his beliefs and teachings, but the bottom line is that he radically changed the Jesus movement in a way that increased his personal power and prestige immensely.

Well reasoned, I can't add anything.

jacob Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Well reasoned, I can't add anything.

I concur.

Well done, Lot's Wife.

What a shame that Saul/Paul never was assigned to visit with Joseph Smith! They may have had ever so much in common.

I have been trying to compare the Jesus myths with Mormonism. In Mormonism you had Joseph and perhaps a small handful of others that were instrumental in creating the myth. Then of course, it took many more to believe it and spread it.

So in Christianity you had Paul, and just a few others as well? As Mormonism proves, it would not have taken many people.

Without Jesus, there would be no Christmas presents and no Chocolate Easter Eggs. So I have no problem coexisting with non-preachy Christians. I can say "Merry Christmas!" as convincingly as any real Christian!

But here's the thing: If Jesus really existed, too bad he didn't leave a message that was clear and concise.

Aren't all our churches today founded on the notion that one guy knew/knows the Real Truth and by following his lead, you'll get to Glory? And don't many churches tell their members, "Everybody else is doing it wrong!"

I enjoy the anarchy of "I've got Jesus in my heart, and I know I'm saved; I don't need no priest or church building, cuz I got the bible!" Very refreshing!

I heartily dislike the emphasis many religions put on life after death, implying that there's no need for science and all the folderal science comes up with. And the notion that "The Poor will always be with us..." and mormonism's view that if you were righteous, you wouldn't be poor, don't seem very Christian.

And the opposite, too, that certain people get special blessings, knowledge, stature, and that it's all part of ghawd's plan. Special much?

And now, perhaps because of science and streaming videos, the mystique of religion is evaporating. That tried and true aphorism, "why didn't ghawd tell people to boil their drinking water?" is making an impression on more and more people. They are deciding to live life without a SkyDaddy.

If there was a Jesus, and if he left mankind a message or a plan, it really doesn't matter, because there will never be an agreement as to the details of the message or the plan.

It would seem that as time moves on, fewer and fewer people make Jesus, and whatever he came to Earth to do, a factor in their lives. Too many false prophets being exposed, too many liars for the Lord in our faces.

Happy Easter!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/21/2019 02:46PM by elderolddog.

Well said.

Presumably God could figure out a way to let everyone know the definitive facts about Himself without all the faith BS. But He doesn't. Guess why.

For me, here's the thing. There are so many mythical gods and half-gods that human-kind have worshipped over the millennia, like Hercules for one. The Greeks, Romans, Vikings, various aboriginal tribes, Hindus, etc. all have their own set of deities.

But for this one god or half-god, Jesus, people try so hard to make him a real person. I don't quite understand how he gets a pass, while all the other deities don't.

I simply see him no differently now than all of the other god-myths that have been out there.

If Theodosius I had decided that the Cult of Isis should be the official religion of the Roman Empire, most of us might be Isisians today, trying to prove that Isis was real.

The other thing that bothers me is all of the Jesus quotes in the Bible. Jesus said this and Jesus said that. Someone remembered all the words of Jesus, word-for-word, so many years after his death?

I don't recall any mention of a scribe following him around everywhere he went, copying down his sermons.

Anyway, that's just me. Evidence or no evidence, I have problems that I just can't get around.

This is a repost--with some additions--of what I stated on the closed thread. My analysis that these discussions "often became quite nasty" appears to be born out, and I feel obligated to comment further.

With regards to Josephus, I am persuaded that as an Orthodox Jew, even mere mention of Jesus-as-the-Messiah would've been blasphemous to him, and he would've avoided it.

Too, all of the gospels can be traced back to a "single source," at least according to what I remember. The story of a "virgin conceiving" is also found in accounts that predate Christianity.

The story of the Resurrection has its parallels in the Osiris Myth, and--working from memory from an Egyptology class--the idea of "eating the blood-and-flesh of a god" predates the New Testament by centuries. This is also true of accounts of a "virgin conceiving."

With regards to that claim "these abundant historical references leave us little doubt," it has to be noted the earliest accounts can only be dated to around 25 years after Jesus was supposedly born.

Don't get me wrong; I remain "essentially a non-denominational Christian" (with "agnostic tendencies" :-), but I don't find it necessary to "impose" that reality on those outside of myself, and I find that with regards to the "historical record," that claim of "little reasonable doubt that Jesus lived and died" is fairly narcissistic and probably unwarranted.

As our old friend Flattopsf would remark, "Because you say so?"

I also reject the opposing argument that insists the "historical Jesus" was a myth. I don't see that claim as proveable; my views on that one rest on the "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" axiom.

Because this is a repost from another thread, some of what is included in Cabbie's post here is confusing to me.

Anyone who is interested in the concept of Jesus as the Jewish Messiah needs to read:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Jewish_messiah_claimants

During our lifetimes (the lifetime of anyone reading this right now) there has been another, and important within a Jewish context, Jewish claim to being the Messiah: The Chabad [right-wing Jewish religious group] rebbe: Menachem Mendel Schneerson (1902-1994).

This claim (made mostly by his followers, not so much by Schneerson himself) has continued to grow (among those Jews so inclined) over the past twenty-five years since Schneerson's death. No one outside of Chabad, or perhaps those on the extreme Jewish right, takes it seriously, but it continues to have a small, but discernable, impact on Jewish life in general, whether non-Chabadniks are in agreement or not. (To overall world Jewry, this claim of messiahship is somewhat akin to a persistent mosquito bite which will not go away.)

Josephus was indeed an Orthodox Jew (there was no other kind of Jew anywhere during Josephus's lifetime, nor would there be for a very long time), but he was also a historian and a storyteller....and Orthodox Jews through the centuries, and to this very day, today, have periodically proven themselves to be more than amenable, on occasion, to believing that some contemporaneous male Jew might, very possibly, be "the messiah."

Two Mormon Stories podcasts that may be of interest to readers of this thread:

John Dehlin interviews New Testament/Early Christianity scholar Bart Ehrman. Ehrman is personally an agnostic/atheist.:

https://www.mormonstories.org/podcast/bart-ehrman/


Apparently there were those who felt Dehlin should also interview New Testament scholars who are dedicated Christians in order to give equal time to a potentially different perspective. That interview can be found here:

https://www.mormonstories.org/podcast/defending-christianity/

Why not historical Jesus?

In my short (relatively) life, I've known three people who embody the characteristics ascribed to Jesus.

A violent death seems to keep the memory of someone alive and enables opportunists (Paul) to use their memory for their own gain.

I never believed he "died for our sins." The sins of most of us don't warrant a death penalty on our parts or on our behalf by Jesus.

The whole thing never made sense, other that someone was very enlightened, loving and forgiving, and tried to teach people a better way to live--and was himself a murder victim.

I like what Paul Toscano said, "If Jesus wasn't God, he should have been."

I just don't get the insistence that there "must" be a historical Jesus. What would be the point?

If there were a historical Jesus, it's incredibly unlikely he'd be anything like what's described the Bible. Based on all reasonable assumptions, he wouldn't have mystical powers to heal, raise the dead, turn water into wine, create a feast out of a pittance of food, or to walk on water. All of that would have been added later to bolster the story.

If he was a "real" person. He didn't have the following described in the Bible, or some contemporary would have written about this teacher who was amassing a following, as noted by other, we know the names of some teachers from that time period, why not this "special" one?

If he was real, he would likely have been a modestly popular teacher who was somewhat progressive in his teaching. But, not so progressive to make him newsworthy. Again, otherwise we'd have heard about him and this question of existence wouldn't be in question at all. If he wasn't made up whole cloth, then he was just some guy who's life was dramatically embellished, to the point the guy's actual life story is completely unrecognizable. It's likely his name wasn't even the Jewish equivalent of "Jesus"

If that's the case, does this mean there was a "historical" Jesus, or was there just some convenient guy who the "Christian" movement could use to base their desired story on? i.e. it could have and would have been anyone, so who cares?

As an example, it's likely that Joseph Smith used local landmarks and names for various settings and people in the Book of Mormon. Does this mean there's "Historical" evidence of the BOM? Of course not, Joseph Smith just used these names and locations because it was convenient.

In the same way, if there were a person that early Christians based their fledgling religion on, it doesn't mean that there's a "historical Jesus", just some guy who's life story was stolen and embellished to meet their needs.

The Gospel of Thomas is a (pretty much) straightforward collection of Jesus's teachings and sayings. So it appears that a number of people found his teachings worthwhile enough to preserve.

In the book, "Zealot," Reza Aslan puts Jesus in with a larger group of wandering teachers and healers. He names at least five other well-known healers along with another group of exorcists. Apparently Jesus had a solid reputation as a healer, although there was at least one man who was better regarded. In a time and place lacking effective medical knowledge and care, this was no small thing.

Aslan states that at the time, John the Baptist was the best known of the sages. Jesus's reputation did not even come close to John the Baptist's.

I have a real issue with Zealot. Namely that for Aslan to be correct we must ignore most of the lexicon about Jesus and adopt a limited explanation for the contradictions that riddle the New Testament. Specifically that everything that doesn't support his theory must have been made up and everything that does support his theory is accurate.

In general if we are to accept the archetype Jesus theory than we need to accept that the real person is lost to history. It is impossible to know what kind of person Jesus was because there is literally no way of knowing what is real/embellishment/made up.

Was Thomas a contemporary of Jesus? Did he write them while listening to him? According to a quick web search, the Gospel of Thomas was written in 140 AD, over a hundred years after Jesus supposedly died. In my mind, this makes his account suspect in the "historical Jesus" discussion.

If Jesus was the person described in the Bible, why is there no contemporary mentions of him? Someone who accomplished even a fraction of what he did should have had at least a mention somewhere. This was a guy who supposedly had thousands of people following him everywhere, he even had a very public execution. No mention anywhere from that time.

Again, he could have been a progressive teacher, but who he REALLY was is lost and ultimately unimportant. The Jesus in the Bible almost certainly doesn't match anyone person in real life.

IIRC some of the sayings that were collected in the Gospel of Thomas go back to the very early days of Christianity. The collection of sayings grew over time. The gospel was not written all at once.

I love this thread thedesertrat1. Are you in the Sinai, Mojave, or Palm Springs.

Fact vs Fiction is always one of my favorite plot lines and you can guess which one of those is the antagonist in my book.