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On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt?
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Other scholars think the ratio is more likely to be 0%. Source: Richard Carrier.
> this is a thread about ... Joshua
You're right, my mistake. Sorry. We're having two simultaneous discussions and I got mixed up about which was which.
> It means you need to interpret the text according to the grammar and historical context
OK, fine. So you read Joshua "according to the grammar and historical context" and conclude that it means something other than the plain meaning of the text. But if you do the same thing to Genesis you can likewise conclude that it too means something other than the plain meaning of the text. For example, Genesis 1 and 2 are clearly two different accounts written by two different authors. (The transition is actually at chapter 2 verse 4.) One refers to God as "Elohim" and the other refers to God as "YHWH". One says that animals were created before man, and the other says man was created before the animals. So the natural conclusion is that it's all just mythology. What's good for the Joshua goose is good for the Genesis gander. You can even do the same thing to the New Testament.
Fortunately, since you are only 18, you have plenty of opportunity to retrain to have a profession that does not require lying to people. I hope you grasp the opportunity to do that.
Morally, it seems bad to lie to people, but I can't say you have an obligation to preach atheism. If you have concerns about the morality of your actions but you do not want to create trouble for yourself, extricate yourself from your present activities that involve lying. You don't have to tell anyone why. This is what I would do. If your present obligations are a mixture of religious leadership and mundane things like driving kids from point A to point B, you could offer to do the driving but not the lying.
If you want to be the leader they think you are, tell them the truth starting now. They may feel uncomfortable hearing it. This is not you hurting them, this is them experiencing more personal development than they feel comfortable with. I am sure that making people feel uncomfortable was a legitimate part a of your role as leader when you were Christian, so there is no shame in doing that. Be mindful of potential retaliation. Do not get into a situation you did not choose. This is not what I would do - I would get a job doing something else and then consider coming back and disassembling their belief system when I felt properly prepared. But it is what Jesus would do, if he had different beliefs, and he existed.
Another option is to be a sociopath and make money by lying for the next few decades. If you felt comfortable with that you probably wouldn't have made your post. Unless you are an unusually talented preacher you would probably make more money by learning a new profession.
Hmm. I would love for Sam to interview Richard Carrier next to see if he convinces Sam that the historicity of Jesus, like many 'fringe' historians believe, is in doubt.
edit: his book, On the Historicity of Jesus, was peer reviewed and published by a major academic press, and is the first book on the subject to do so. That was in 2014. Carrier and other mythicists believe there is not enough historical evidence to say 'Jesus, the man, probably existed,' and if you read his arguments, they're compelling. Notice, he doesn't say 'Jesus definitely never existed,' just that the other side hasn't met their burden of proof.
His earlier book, Proving History, outlines many of the problems in the field of Jesus studies, namely, that no historical criteria has led any two scholars to the same conclusion about the actual life of Jesus the man. To quote:
>“I won't recount the whole history of historical Jesus research here, as that has been done to death already. Indeed, accounts of the many “quests” for the historical Jesus and their failure are legion, each with their own extensive bibliography. Just to pick one out of a hat, Mark Strauss summarizes, in despair, the many Jesuses different scholars have “discovered” in the evidence recently. Jesus the Jewish Cynic Sage. Jesus the Rabbinical Holy Man (or Devoted Pharisee, or Heretical Essene, or any of a dozen other contradictory things). Jesus the Political Revolutionary or Zealot Activist. Jesus the Apocalyptic Prophet. And Jesus the Messianic Pretender (or even, as some still argue, Actual Messiah). And that's not even a complete list. We also have Jesus the Folk Wizard (championed most famously by Morton Smith in Jesus the Magician, and most recently by Robert Conner in Magic in the New Testament). Jesus the Mystic and “Child of Sophia” (championed by Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza and John Shelby Spong). Jesus the Nonviolent Social Reformer (championed by Bruce Malina and others).
>Excerpt From: Carrier, Richard C. “Proving History: Bayes's Theorem and the Quest for the Historical Jesus.”
(It goes on from there.)
Not a scholar so wait for a better answer, but let me post the leading minority hypothesis that Jesus didn't exist. Richard Carrier (warning: lots of folks on this sub seem to hate this scholar) wrote the monograph On the Historicity of Jesus and the less academic Jesus from Outer Space which is the most current and probably comprehensive argument that Jesus didn't exist at all.
The main points are: the gospels cannot be trusted at all, Jesus fits into a myth archetype that nearly never is based on a real person, Paul (our only contemporary source) never explicitly mentions a historical Jesus and should have, and early Christianity looks exactly like a mystery cult with a Euhemerized (starts as legend, then gets placed into literary fiction) dying-and-rising savior god.
Carrier also points what he perceives as major flaws in historical Jesus scholarship, mostly in one of his other books. A point he makes (and other, more mainstream scholars have made) is that every scholarly attempt to figure out who the historical Jesus actually was yields different results, and therefore the methodology used must not be sound.
You'll notice in this very thread people's misapprehensions about the evidence of Jesus - folks too often support their view about a factual Jesus on faulty evidence or dubious reasoning. For example; we have no contemporary sources from Jesus, except for Paul who never met the guy and doesn't mention Jesus as a person - never mentions a miracle, never mentions a ministry, never mentions Pilate, never mentions a tomb, never mentions disciples or even uses the word disciple. People often think there are more sources than there are, or that Paul explicitly says something he didn't.
That all said, keep in mind that Carrier's opinion is still the minority in scholarship after decades/centuries of having been proposed (Erhman calls it a 'fringe' view and probably has good reason to be annoyed by Carrier who publicly called Erhman a liar).
But there does seem to be growing agreement that the hypothesis that Jesus didn't exist, while improbable, should at least be taken academically seriously as a hypothesis rather than dismissed outright - and many scholars agree that we can say very little for sure about the historical Jesus since our sources are so poor; IE the gospel is nearly completely unreliable - see Robyn Faith Walsh's The Origin of Early Christian Literature and Randall Helms Gospel Fictions. To see Christianity itself placed in its greater political and religious context (to demonstrate it's not as surprising a a belief as some would have us believe), see Why Christianity Happened by James G. Crossley.
As a non scholar, I can only recommend books I've gotten through on my list, so I might be missing better examples or more current scholarship that renders my understanding obsolete. And I don't necessarily agree with Carrier's conclusions, but I find he does a terrific job pointing out a lot of the flaws with historical Jesus studies whether or not you agree with him.
>They don't dispute that "a man existed". They might dispute that a specific man existed with specific actions or characteristics attributed to him.
I mean, they don't dispute that men exist, but they literally do dispute that the Bible is based on any real, living person.
Here's a summary from Wikipedia:
>The Christ myth theory, also known as the Jesus myth theory, Jesus mythicism, or the Jesus ahistoricity theory, is described by Bart Ehrman paraphrasing Earl Doherty, as the position that "the historical Jesus did not exist. Or if he did, he had virtually nothing to do with the founding of Christianity." It includes the view that the story of Jesus is largely mythological, and has little basis in historical fact
> There are three strands of mythicism, including the view that there may have been a historical Jesus, who lived in a dimly remembered past, and was fused with the mythological Christ of Paul. A second stance is that there was never a historical Jesus, only a mythological character, later historicized in the Gospels. A third view is that no conclusion can be made about a historical Jesus, and if there was one, nothing can be known about him. > > Most Christ mythicists follow a threefold argument: they question the reliability of the Pauline epistles and the Gospels to establish the historicity of Jesus; they argue that there is lack of information on Jesus in non-Christian sources from the first and early second centuries; and they argue that early Christianity had syncretistic and mythological origins, as reflected in both the Pauline epistles and the gospels, with Jesus being a celestial being who was concretized in the Gospels. Therefore, Christianity was not founded on the shared memories of a man, but rather a shared mytheme.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christ_myth_theory
I'd suggest reading Carrier's On the Historicity of Jesus for an outline of one historian's argument that Jesus was purely mythical.
I'm really not meaning to be a dick here... This was intended as just a minor correction of a misconception you seem to have. But you were definitely wrong when you said '"A man existed" is hardly a disputed claim, nor is it of interest or historical relevance.' That is exactly what the mythicists dispute.
And I was wrong. It was against Celsus, because that's the title of letters. Celsus' letters have been lost, but not his name. I forgot that bit.
It maybe he didn't exist at all
On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00QSO2S5C/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_jUYxCb233PSW3
Jesus: Neither God Nor Man - The Case for a Mythical Jesus https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00772ZH8Y/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_oVYxCb3MF1Z9J
Well technically those records from the mid 100s are saying that christians exist, and they did. The epistles of Paul were written in the 50s, the gospel of Mark written in the 70s, Matthew and Luke written in the 80s or 90s, and John, the revelation of another John, the revelation of Peter, and the ascension of Isaiah and many other Christian stories written in the 100s to the 300s before the ecumenical councils were started in 325 when they decided to narrow down Jesus eventually settling on the trinity by the fourth ecumenical council pushing out Gnosticism like the gospel of Thomas, Marcion, and Origen as well as Aryanism, Nestorianism and other "heresies" leading to the church of the East, Coptics and other early schisms. After the next four councils they came to the idea about iconoclasm where the Eastern Orthodoxy was against the use of iconography and the Catholics stuck with icons such as the crucifix, statues of Mary, and other icons. This was all by the time of the 600s.
Soon after this time the orthodox christians, Coptics, Islam and other sects went their own ways. In Islam Jesus is the chosen human messiah but not the son of God nor was he crucified before his ascension. In some Eastern religions Jesus is sometimes seen as another transcendent beings like the Buddha and Buddha is sometimes seen as a reincarnation of Vishnu in some forms of Hinduism.
Zoroastrianism heavily influenced monotheism and the traits of the supreme god found in most abrahamic religions. It added the concept of heaven and hell. It added armageddon. Many forms of Christianity didn't start out believing in an afterlife but the Catholic concept of heaven, hell, and purgatory was under question by Martin Luther especially the concepts of the church selling something that allows them to skip purgatory and changing the message of the bible from the originally intended meaning. As a result most protestant religions don't have a complicated hierarchy with bishops, archbishops, popes, and such but they'll have a pastor and perhaps deacons and that's about it. The eastern orthodoxy has a few of their ecumenical decisions but the Catholics kept it going up until they went from 7 to 21 with 15 or 16 being related to the protestants being excommunicated and doomed to hell. In the first Vatican council (ecumenical council decision #20) the church rejects rationalism, materialism, and atheism and anything that could cause problems with the church doctrines. More recently (since the 1960s) they have gradually adjusted to science and with the removal of hell and the acceptance of evolution and the ongoing pedophilia the church is falling apart and might again break into multiple denominations.
The protestants went on another path and in the 1900s the rise of fundamental literalism led to a resurgence of young earth creationism and flat earthers while just a few decades earlier the seventh day Adventists, Mormons, Jehovah witnesses and Baha'i came out of the various religions holding fast to creationism and the existence of Jesus.
While these beliefs account for the majority of held religious beliefs (Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Baha'i, Zoroastrianism) only the abrahamic religions of Christianity, Islam, and Baha'i rely on Jesus being historical. Scholars who hold these beliefs will claim they have evidence that Jesus matches their religious idea such as an empty tomb pointing to a resurrection. The scholars who try to establish historicity on either side will fall back to some random Jewish rabbi, perhaps Jesus ben Annanias or Yeshua ben Yosef who was a preacher mulch life the more established John the Baptist and like John was killed and remained dead while his followers shared their memory of him by word of mouth so that he gradually gets more and more absurd and magical by the time the gospels were written. Others will point out that Jesus was a spiritual being probably hundreds of years before the first century when Paul, Peter, Timothy, and others spoke of their visions (related to gnostic Christianity) and it was another couple decades before a Greek speaker unfamiliar with Judaism and the geography of the region wrote the gospel of Mark. Other stories were also in circulation in the following decades such as the Q document so the authors of Matthew and Luke took the various gospels at the time like Mark, Q, and possibly a couple others and combined them with the contradictory birth narratives I pointed out previously. The kept the same crucifixion but added a resurrection which was later added to mark and gave Judas different reasons for betraying Jesus. Then in the next five decades wildly different concepts of Jesus arose such as an attempt to state he was just an ordinary person that was possessed by the son of God. The gospel of John, using gospels like the gospel of Thomas and a sayings gospel was written so that he became more of a superman character. He left off the birth narrative starting with the popular baptism cult of John the Baptist and this time he wasn't turned in by Judas at all but instead told Judas and his army that he is the one they seek. After this there were various acts of the apostles and revelations about Armageddon and various apocrypha that the early church leaders decided to leave out so that they could say Jesus was born to a virgin, died by crucifixion, and had a bodily resurrection from the dead. They left behind just enough contradictions that they decided upon the trinity so that he could be an eternal being equal to the father and spirit and after the death of the son the holy spirit is released to the apostles to spread to the early church.
Basically by the 300s there was a dominant sect holding to a divine human Jesus and that was the sect that set up the early church considering everything else to be a heresy including Islam when it rose up out of Zoroastrianism and Nestorian Christianity. Throughout the middle ages they produced a lot of hoaxes like cups, foreskins, pieces of petrified wood, and a shroud. As time went on it was just assumed that Jesus was a historical figure and it was the consensus about 100 years ago. Since then the consensus has come under scrutiny so that Bart Ehrman and Richard Carrier are at the head of each side of the debate and neither of them hold fast to the gospels being reliable depictions of Jesus nor are the documents that came 100 years later saying that christians exist. There are many people holding many different religions. It doesn't automatically make their beliefs true. Josephus was tampered with by Eusebius and the rest don't really make any claims about a Jesus being real but only relaying what the christians had said about their beliefs such as a messiah who was crucified by Pontius Pilate 100 years ago. By this time everyone who could corroborate his existence had died and while he would have been still alive Philo of Alexandria wouldn't be wondering where he was and Justin Martyr wouldn't be saying that he predated the demigods that were being worshipped by at least 1500 years before Jesus was supposed to have lived.
Here are some books from both sides of the debate:
Richard Carrier: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00QSO2S5C/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1 (Jesus was probably a spiritual mythical being first and a man later)
Bart Erhman: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0053K28TS/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1 (Jesus was probably an ordinary man but we can figure out more about the historical Jesus)
Robert Price: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00J0OPUZM/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1 (Debunking the religious apologetics put forth by Lee Strobel)
Lee Strobel: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01863JLK2/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1 (Defending the divine human Jesus of Christianity)
I'll let you decide.
>the Law is the 10 Commandments
Do you have any Biblical justification for that?
>I respect Moses but he doesn't have more authority than Christ. Do you think Moses does?
Personally, I agree with the apparent consensus about Moses:
>Scholarly consensus sees Moses as a legendary figure and not a historical person
mostly because I don't care much and going with the apparent consensus of relevant scholars seems like the best thing to do in such a circumstance. I also agree with Carrier that Jesus probably didn't exist either, just because I read him and haven't yet found compelling counterarguments (but I admit not looking hard because, again, I don't care much). But my beliefs don't matter -- I'm trying to understand how you can hold on to yours when they make no sense.
So back to that. If there's some plausible argument that the Law referred to in Matthew 5:18 is the ten commandments and not the entirety of Mosaic law, then I suppose you're right, the absurdity I was seeing isn't there. Certainly the talk of jots and tittles that appear in some translations of Matthew 5:18 makes more sense if it's all the Mosaic law rather than just the 10 Commandments, because Mosaic law is long and tedious and the 10 Commandments isn't.
Carrier says that Matthew was written for the purpose of making Christianity more palatable to Jews. If this is your sense of it, that's another reason for the law in question to be the laws that the target audience were familiar with, which would be all of Mosaic law.
And if Jesus meant Mosaic law, then relative status between Jesus and Moses shouldn't be relevant to you because Jesus delegated to Moses with Matthew 5:18. We can also conclude that your religious beliefs are determined more by whoever guides you in interpretation of the Bible than what a balanced reading of the Bible actually says. Do you know who that is? I don't need a name, but can you tell me their job title?
"On the Historicity of Jesus" by Richard Carrier is excellent.
And then there's Richard Carrier who argues the opposite.
>I don't believe I've ever heard of any credible historian or scholar denying that he existed
Richard Carrier, On the Historicity of Jesus. They are a minority, but he's not the only one.
>[Jesus] obviously [existed].
Bald assertion.
Edit: I misread, the post I was replying to meant that Mohammed existed. But people replied so I will keep the substance of my wrong post here.
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