Posts by The 12 Apostates

Did L. Ron Hubbard really exist? Probably doesn't matter........what's true is true, what is not is not.
Be it a scienrology pamphlet or the book of Acts, what matters is what's true in the document, not whether the characters within them existed or not.
If you could find out with certainty that a man called Ieshua/Jesus existed at that time, in that place, with those teachings..... would it matter at all as to what is true?

Well yes, but then we'll just end up in a 'does anything really matter' spiral, if we follow that to its conclusion.

Among the words attributed to Jesus — whether he said them or not — are some brilliant insights, some facile platitudes and some dangerous dogma.

And of course many of those brilliant insights weren't exactly original.

51

Did Jesus exist? Probably not

by The 12 Apostates in

jw
friends

threads about this have been made before, but none have been made for a few years.

i was very much on the fence with this one, i never really cared.

but i became curious recently, having had a few interactions with street preachers.

The 12 Apostates

I'm not questioning the historicity of anybody. I'm saying that all of your reasons to doubt the reality behind the Jesus of the gospels could equally be said about many other characters from history.
You said in your OP that your thoughts are 'Based on the limited research I've conducted over the past few days'. I agree it is an interesting topic but I think you should dig a lot deeper.
The best case for a historical Jesus is probably made by Bart Ehrman. The best and most recent case for a mythical Jesus is made by Richard Carrier.

No I know you weren't seriously questioning the historicity of anyone. You were suggesting that if we accept that Jesus never existed then perhaps we ought to accept that many others with similarly flimsy supporting evidence never existed. And I would agree actually, perhaps Alexander the Great never existed, I'm open to the possibility. But I don't care so much, because the question of his existence isn't quite the hot topic of Jesus's existence. Do you get me? I wasn't raised by Alexander's witnesses.

On the other hand however, I'm not sure that 'well if Jesus never existed then maybe no one did' (intentional exaggeration btw!) is such a good argument. It doesn't speak to the historicity of Jesus to concede that the historicity of many other historical figures is equally shaky, quite the opposite. It speaks to the limitations of historical scholarship in general.

I will dig deeper, there's no reason not to. I was simply checking in with where I'm currently at.

And lastly I have to say it doesn't give me much confidence in the idea of a mythical Jesus to hear that its best proponent is Richard Carrier. Mind you, I don't ultimately have a real horse in the race, as an atheist. Whether Jesus existed or not, he certainly wasn't the messiah.

51

Did Jesus exist? Probably not

by The 12 Apostates in

jw
friends

threads about this have been made before, but none have been made for a few years.

i was very much on the fence with this one, i never really cared.

but i became curious recently, having had a few interactions with street preachers.

The 12 Apostates

It wasn't a tangent I wanted to go down.

EDIT: Thank you for the recommendation, I will look into his book.

51

Did Jesus exist? Probably not

by The 12 Apostates in

jw
friends

threads about this have been made before, but none have been made for a few years.

i was very much on the fence with this one, i never really cared.

but i became curious recently, having had a few interactions with street preachers.

The 12 Apostates

No don't start pulling out logical fallacy 101 terms, this was a side issue that I never related to the central point, don't pretend otherwise.

You can claim that other historical figures may not have existed all you like, but this thread is about our man JC. Perhaps Julius Caesar (the other great JC) never existed, I don't know. There's certainly more evidence that he did though.

51

Did Jesus exist? Probably not

by The 12 Apostates in

jw
friends

threads about this have been made before, but none have been made for a few years.

i was very much on the fence with this one, i never really cared.

but i became curious recently, having had a few interactions with street preachers.

The 12 Apostates

No, that's true, but this was in reference to your comparison of his historicity to the historicity of other historical figures. Not so much a question of his historicity but rather a question of the importance of his historicity.

51

Did Jesus exist? Probably not

by The 12 Apostates in

jw
friends

threads about this have been made before, but none have been made for a few years.

i was very much on the fence with this one, i never really cared.

but i became curious recently, having had a few interactions with street preachers.

The 12 Apostates

I gave an example at the very end. You can't be the son of god if you aren't real.

Not that you could be to begin with of course, but it seems there are billions out there who genuinely believe it to be possible, if we are to assume that the majority of Christians actually do believe.

I'm actually sceptical of that, perhaps the next thread should be about whether Christians really exist.

51

Did Jesus exist? Probably not

by The 12 Apostates in

jw
friends

threads about this have been made before, but none have been made for a few years.

i was very much on the fence with this one, i never really cared.

but i became curious recently, having had a few interactions with street preachers.

The 12 Apostates

I'm not using the quote function anymore as it sucks, the formatting in the text box is crazy. So I'll use italics.

Why not an actual man called Jesus?

He may have been called Jesus, but the name isn't really the duck, he was far more than his name. He may or may not have been called Jesus, if it was just one man. That's the point, we don't even know basics like that.

No of course not. That was invented to connect him to an OT prophecy. Matthew and Luke use very different stories to achieve that.

That's one example that's known to be untrue, I probably shouldn't have started with it, but many of the others are just assumed to be true, and they are just assumptions in many cases.

I think he did make claims of that sort. Otherwise his failed claims would have been written out of the story.

But that's my point, we don't in fact know what claims he made as there are no eyewitness testimonies. The gospels are ultra-secondary sources. I'm going to stoop to the level of 'why not' now and ask, if the miracles were made up, why not much of the rest? I don't like arguments from ignorance, but I feel compelled to make that one.

Why? Are the words attributed to Socrates any less interesting if they were written by somebody else and put in the mouth of a mythical Greek philosopher?

I'm confused. I think you may have misread me there as that was exactly my point. Socrates's ideas are what's interesting, not so much his life story, assuming he existed, which I know is heavily disputed, hence I chose him as an example. Many of Jesus's sayings are rendered hollow if he didn't exist, Socrates's sayings aren't, unless he too at some point claimed to be the son of god.

51

Did Jesus exist? Probably not

by The 12 Apostates in

jw
friends

threads about this have been made before, but none have been made for a few years.

i was very much on the fence with this one, i never really cared.

but i became curious recently, having had a few interactions with street preachers.

The 12 Apostates

Did you read the article at the link I posted where Bart Ehrman deals with the question of Nazareth? Even if the claim about Nazareth was true it wouldn't matter. It would just be another historical error regarding the Jesus of history.

I've bookmarked it for tomorrow. I'm open to anything else you wish to add as I will read it all.

We know that there was a community of followers of a dead teacher from an early period. They had oral traditions about him long before these were written down. The gospels were also based on earlier written sources.

Exactly, we agree, a teacher. Just a nameless guy of some description, maybe more than one. But was he born in Bethlehem? Did he claim to be the messiah and have 12 apostles? We cannot say.

There is clearly an evolution of Christology within the gospels. Mark doesn't even mention the birth narratives and leaves his audience hanging regarding the resurrection.

Yes.

Nobody can be certain about which historical details are based on fact and which are exaggeration and which are pure fiction, but exactly the same can be said about almost every character of history.

Most of them aren't venerated as messiahs or gods who punish people with eternal damnation for disbelief. The claims aren't quite of the same magnitude.

Jesus's existence is crucial to the narrative, Socrates's existence isn't.