Virtually all scholars believe that Jesus existed for one simple reason: the evidence indicates it (see link at bottom).

Four dissenting "scholars" have been repeatedly mentioned on this board in the attempt to show that (A) there is no real consensus, or at least, that the consensus is waning, and (B) there *must be* good reasons to believe that Jesus did not exist at all.

Neither (A) nor (B) is true. Citing the likes of Richard Carrier, Dan Barker, Earl Doherty and Robert M. Price to establish (A) and (B) is like citing John Gee, Dan Peterson, Michael Rhodes, and Hugh Nibley to "establish" that there is no real scholarly consensus about the meaning of the text of the Breathing Permit of Hor, and that, regardless of whether there is or not, there *must* be *some* good reasons to believe it's the autobiography of the Israelite patriarch Abraham. Again, neither is true.

The hard truth is that all eight of the guys I mentioned above are fringe voices working *against* the weight of evidence, and overwhelming scholarly consensus in their fields, in support of a conclusion seemingly predetermined by their own ideological commitments.

Barker, for example, is co-president of the "Freedom from Religion Foundation", an activist atheist organization which, amongst many other things, uses the courts to try to force municipalities to ban nativity scenes set up *on private property*. Doherty - a man of no confirmed academic training at all, though he claims a B.A. degree - is another activist atheist, as is Richard Carrier (an unaffiliated Ph.D. graduate of Columbia). Activist atheist Robert M. Price teaches philosophy at The Center for Inquiry, an odd little college founded by another activist atheist named Paul Kurtz, whose bizarre book "Living Without Religion" actually proposes the creation of a *brand new atheist religion* run by secular humanist leaders (priest figures) called "eupraxophers", with services in buildings (churches) called "eupraxophy centers". ("Eupraxophy" is a word Kurtz invented to refer to "wisdom and good practice"). All four devoutly believe that the world would be a better place without religion, Christianity in particular.

I am not at all saying their conclusion should be dismissed because of their pre-existing beliefs; I am saying that, as with the FARMS guys, their pre-existing beliefs seem to have been the determining factor in what conclusion they arrived at. That is not how scholarship should be done, and, I submit, is one big reason why academic scholars (whose careers depend on adhering to the rules of scholarly research very closely) have considered the evidence very differently, and come to a very different conclusion.

Below is an interesting little piece written by a member of the Australian Atheist Foundation and Australian Skeptics named Tim O'Neill explaining why virtually all scholars believe Jesus to have been a real person. For anyone interested in this topic, it is worth reading carefully: http://www.quora.com/Do-credible-historians-agree-that-the-man-named-Jesus-who-the-Christian-Bible-speaks-of-walked-the-earth-and-was-put-to-death-on-a-cross-by-Pilate-Roman-governor-of-Judea

Good luck in your intellectual journey.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 02/26/2015 04:32PM by Tal Bachman.

The New Testament is "based on a true story" just like movies are. VERY LOOSELY.

Tal Bachman Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Virtually all scholars believe that Jesus existed
> for one simple reason: the evidence indicates it
> (see link at bottom).

I've pointed out that the "virtually all scholars believe that Jesus existed" claim is false on its face numerous times. Why continue to use it?

> Four dissenting "scholars" have been repeatedly
> mentioned on this board in the attempt to show
> that (A) there is no real consensus, or at least,
> that the consensus is waning, and (B) there *must
> be* good reasons to believe that Jesus did not
> exist at all.

I just put up a list of 7 in another thread. And those are only the ones who are members of the AHA. Worldwide, the number is much larger.

> Neither (A) nor (B) is true.

Neither are your claims. Pot, meet kettle.

> Citing the likes of
> Richard Carrier, Dan Barker, Earl Doherty and
> Robert M. Price to establish (A) and (B) is like
> citing John Gee, Dan Peterson, Michael Rhodes, and
> Hugh Nibley to "establish" that there is no real
> scholarly consensus about the text of the
> Breathing Permit of Hor, and that, regardless of
> whether there is or not, there *must* be *some*
> good reasons to believe it's the autobiography of
> the Israelite patriarch Abraham. Again, neither is
> true.

"...the likes of..." Nice ad-hominem. Funny how even Ehrman and numerous other "historicist" scholars consider Carrier and Price (and others) fully qualified scholars.

> The hard truth is that all eight of the guys I
> mentioned above are fringe voices working
> *against* the weight of evidence, and overwhelming
> scholarly consensus in their fields, in support of
> a conclusion seemingly predetermined by their own
> ideological commitments.

Even if they were "fringe" (which they're not), that doesn't make them wrong. You declaring them working "against the weight of evidence" is a bare assertion, which completely ignores their arguments. Notice how you offer no rebuttal of their arguments, you just declare them all invalid, call them names, and then declare they're wrong.

> Below is an interesting little piece written by a
> member of the Australian Atheist Foundation and
> Australian Skeptics named Tim O'Neill explaining
> why virtually all scholars believe Jesus to have
> been a real person. For anyone interested in this
> topic, it is worth reading carefully:
> http://www.quora.com/Do-credible-historians-agree-
> that-the-man-named-Jesus-who-the-Christian-Bible-s
> peaks-of-walked-the-earth-and-was-put-to-death-on-
> a-cross-by-Pilate-Roman-governor-of-Judea

Gee, funny how you rip Doherty, and declare that he has an insurmountable ideology, for being part of/leader of an atheist organization. Then you use a different leader of an atheist organization (who has zero training in history, by the way, and is not an historical scholar of any stature) to "prove" them wrong. Hmm. I guess being a member of an atheist organization *doesn't* mean you have an insurmountable ideology then, right? So why mention it for Doherty?

I've read O'Neill's piece. It offers no new evidence to back up the "historicist" position. It's essentially an appeal to atheists to stop "making waves" by telling the christians their magic jesus didn't exist. And in it, he repeats the same fallacious claims you did above. Finally, he makes the same false dichotomy claim that bona dea and TMSH continually make: that if you don't find the evidence FOR an historical Jesus convincing, you MUST be promoting the "mythicist" claim. Which is false. And he makes a number of factually false claims (there are, for example, contemporary attestations of Hannibal).
But I'm guessing you didn't actually research any of his claims, you just "believed" them...?



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 02/26/2015 04:46PM by ificouldhietokolob.

Thanks for responding. I was very put off by the polemic tone of this article as well. The Hannibal analogy was just bad, even if there were no contemporary accounts of Hannibal. The article says Hannibal was a Carthaginian general who almonst defeated Rome. Did a Carthaginian general almost defeat Rome? That's a very consequential leadership role. Taking an army against Rome is a very real thing. If it happened, someone led it.

If we skip miracles--which we've got to in order to talk about real history, and not simply a faith question about whether God sent his son to earth as a man, and he was named, Jesus--then we're talking about a guy who really didn't do anything at all special. This is a far cry from asking whether Queen Elizabeth existed and demanding proof for her. A no-account Jesus is pretty much like asking whether Molly the maid existed 2,000 years ago. Why should anyone feel wedded to the answer to this question?

It is an interesting bit of history, but not worth calling someone "fringe" over. Read some of the comments to that article, much more level-headed than the article itself.

And I agree that claiming atheist scholars work for athiest institutions and thus must have an ax to grind is quite surprising for a field dominated throughout history by Christians who believe Jesus existed and is God, and whose entire interest in the subject is the proving of those two things.

I disagree that Jesus didn't do anything special. He was a teacher of philosophy and morality on the same level as the Buddha, Lao Tzu, Confucius, and others. His teachings have had a profound impact on history.

But we're not talking about a teaching attributed to a person, and the influence of the teaching, we're talking about whether a person existed.

Thanks for sharing this piece. As a practicing atheist/agnostic myself, I think it is important to parse outthe the two very different questions of whether such a person actually existed (it seems most likely he did) and whether such a person was the son of a god and the creator of miracles (most likely not).

That is the whole point.

Virtually all CHRISTIAN scholars ( Basically the only kind of bible scholars there are) believe Jesus was real. It's simply a heavily biased opinion. You need to read more Robert Price and Richard Carrier.

Okay...once and for all i'm gonna simplify this for Y'all so you can get on with your lives!!!

I believe in dinosaurs.
There was no "Garden of Eden".
There was no "Adam and Eve".
Most importantly there was no "fall from grace".
Therefore there was no need for a Jesus "saviour" figure to exist.
Can it be simplified any further???

I hear the flames a comin'...

Or so it seems to me!

You are right, sir.

I sometimes wonder if stories of the Garden of Eden are a retelling of ancestral memories of our primate/hominid history in the African rainforest. With the diminishment of the rainforest, our primate/hominid ancestors were "banished" to the hot, dry, African savannah. What felt like hell to them was in fact the path to their salvation.

The "tree of knowledge of good and evil" could be interpreted as a story of our species' journey to self-awareness.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/26/2015 06:24PM by summer.

I thought this was ironic considering that the Jesus story begins with a census and three wise (presumably literate) men:

"1. "There are no contemporary accounts or mentions of Jesus. There should be, so clearly no Jesus existed."

This seems a good argument to many, since modern people tend to leave behind them a lot of evidence they existed (birth certificates, financial documents, school records) and prominent modern people have their lives documented by the media almost daily. So it sounds suspicious to people that there are no contemporary records at all detailing or even mentioning Jesus.

But our sources for anyone in the ancient world are scarce and rarely are they contemporaneous"

I'm trying hard to keep an open mind here, but as soon as I delve into any detail of the Jesus story, alarm bells go off because of the obvious ridiculousness of it all.

Must be me not having "a sound background in the study of the First Century" which, apparently, requires you to check common sense at the door. An appeal to common sense, it seems, is an admission of "a very poor grasp of the evidence".

The good thing about this article is that this is all clearly laid out right up front. Makes it easy for the reader to know what they're supposed to think in order not to be caught impersonating a Scotsman.

Speaking of fallacies, it is, of course, a huge straw man to suppose that "people" would find it suspicious that there are no contemporary records.

For me, it's not so much the lack of contemporary records as it is the questionable reliability of the later records.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/26/2015 05:38PM by rt.

rt, your not taking the correct, that is, truly Scottish, perspective on this. You start by conceeding that the Jesus "stories" are apocryphal. Thus, no census, no killing babies, no manger and star, no wise men, no loaves and fishes, no endless wine at the wedding, or rising from the dead, or raising others from the dead, etc. The miraculous is out. Now, did Christianity form around a man called Jesus;, or did Christianity arise from stories about a man, and he was called Jesus (kinda like a blonde joke, I guess).

Taking the miracles out makes the stakes far smaller. It becomes simply a question of history, not a question of faith.

rt Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I thought this was ironic considering that the
> Jesus story begins with a census and three wise
> (presumably literate) men:
>
> "1. "There are no contemporary accounts or
> mentions of Jesus. There should be, so clearly no
> Jesus existed."

One of my big problems with that (and other) arguments is that it's a straw man. And like some posters here, it *assumes* that if you don't find the evidence FOR Jesus compelling, you MUST be claiming that he didn't exist. The argument above is not what scholars who don't find the evidence compelling argue.

What they do argue, is more along the lines of:

"There are no contemporary accounts or mentions of Jesus. Given his claimed famed in the bible, that's a problem. It's a good reason to not accept the claim that there was an actual historical Jesus."

See the difference? It correctly points out there's no contemporary mention. It gives a good reason we might expect there to be some. It doesn't make an opposite claim, it just gives this as a reason to not accept claimed historicity.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/26/2015 08:27PM by ificouldhietokolob.

Almost all ancient history is filled with myth,character assassination,rumors treated as fact ,portents,soothsayers etc. Doesnt mean that none of it happened. The census thing came because the messiah was supposed to be born in Bethlehem and Jesus was from Nazareth. It was a way to get him there.Do you doubt Joseph Smith lived because his story is filled with visions,angels and gold plates? Those kinds of religious beliefs were common when and where he lived. Same with Jesus. Then there is Occam's Razor. Younhave a choice of a human Jesus being the source for Christianity or a fantastic conspiracy. Which is more likely?



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 02/26/2015 05:51PM by bona dea.

You can't keep trying to argue by analogy, bona dea, it doesn't work. People don't believe or disbelieve JS existed because of mythical claims. The belief in JS as a living person is based on all of the contemporary evidence that he lived. Only Mormons believe the mythic stuff, but the presence of mythic stuff doesn't implicate JS' existence at all. Please don't confound the issue by pretending this is anything like trying to figure out whether an poor, itinerate, unimportant (while he was alive) person existed 2,000 ago, long before the age of the printing press and newspaper.

Well, if you put it that way, I have to admit I have no difficulty accepting that a poor, itinerant, unimportant person existed 2,000 ago.

I know, right? There was probably more than one. Oops! Now I've gone and started something.

The point is that impobable stories were common in certain times such as the Burned Over District and 1st Century Palestine. Why discount Jesus and not Joseph Smith on that basis alone. I am aware there is more evidence for Smith but my point is the improbable stories and only that.

bona dea Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Almost all ancient history is filled with
> myth,character assassination,rumors treated as
> fact ,portents,soothsayers etc. Doesnt mean that
> none of it happened.

Doesn't mean any of it DID happen, either.

> Younhave a choice of
> a human Jesus being the source for Christianity or
> a fantastic conspiracy. Which is more likely?

False dichotomy. There are, actually, dozens -- perhaps hundreds -- of *possible* ways things might have happened. And a "human source for Christianity" doesn't mean the human had to be "Jesus." Since there are dozens to hundreds of possible ways things might have happened, and not a one of them can be clearly shown correct by evidence, what is reasonable is to not claim ANY of them happened -- but to be honest, and agree we don't know.

In all these threads, I have yet to see a single compelling bit of evidence that a physical "Historical" Jesus Christ existed. There's a lot of wishes and dreams that he did, there's a lot of, well, there were teachers in the areas that he lived, he was one of those types of answer (of course there were, how do you pick which one is your candidate for "Historical Jesus"), but no real evidence to support anything of the kind.

Maybe there was a historical Jesus, maybe there wasn't, but if he did exist he didn't look like, sound like or do anything like what was written in the Bible about him (he couldn't have, almost all of it had a magical tint to it, he couldn't just talk to his followers, he also had to give them unlimited bread and fishes, he couldn't just attend a wedding party, he had to turn water into wine and so on and so on...)

So what does it matter if he did exist, the best argument for continuing to look for him is his supposed "moral importance to society" and how his teachings have changed the world.

First off, let's not get carried away here, the majority of the earth doesn't believe in him at all and most morals can be shown to grow naturally from society, via normal progress, if anything for a large part of western history, Christianity stifled progress in several ways (calling science blaspheme being one example).

Second, saying that Jesus's personal teachings is what changed the western world is like saying that Moroni's personal teachings has influenced thousands of Mormon's teachings via his writings in the BOM. I think we can all agree that Moroni has no basis for any historical anything. It was Joseph Smith who influenced thousands of Mormons. In the same way, it's really the writers of the Bible (whom we know were not contemporaries of Jesus Christ, even if he did exist, everyone seems to agree on this) who have created the influence and moral teachings of Christianity. We don't have a single transcribed work that the supposed "Historical Jesus" said. For all we know, the person that Jesus was based on was a horrible bigoted person who called for the death of every non-jew, but he just met the necessary criteria that the writers needed to use as a model for their "savior" character, and it stuck.

Look, the stories from the Brother's Grim may have a seed of truth in them, but they were changed so much by time and retelling that they no longer resemble the original truth in any way shape or form (if there was an original true story to start with) Does that mean that there's a historical Cinderella? Jack from the Bean Stalk? Does it even matter? Would tracking them down and using them as some kind of "proof" be even historically interesting? Maybe it would, but I seriously doubt that any historian would stake their reputation on stating that they know "for sure" that a historical Cinderella exists...

Why do so many people make the same claim to a "Historical Jesus" with such fervor? So many christians claim that atheists should at least take the agnostic route of "I don't know", why don't they do the same thing with the existence of Jesus?

You seriously think Christianity didnt influence history? Wrong, wrong, wrong.

Wait. Finally Free! didn't say Christianity didn't influence history. The claim is Jesus didn't influence Christianity. Christianity made up stories about Jesus and propagated them long after Jesus died. His life, if it existed at all, was just a seed around which Christianity developed.

Not really. Jesus founded the movement which became Christianity. Sure Paul changed and added to it but it wouldnt exist without Jesus. That makesJesus pretty important

So you agree with Mormons that Moroni is really ther founder since he wrote the book, JS really just translated his work.

That is the stupidist thing on this thread.

That's an awesome reply, don't address the issue at all...

There is just as much proof that a historical Jesus "founded" Christianity as there is for Moroni creating the book that founded Mormonism. You may not like it, but so far I haven't seen arguments against it.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/26/2015 06:53PM by Finally Free!.

And if Jesus didn't actually exist.... then Christianity is thrown onto the heap of religions regarded as myth.

bona dea Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Not really. Jesus founded the movement which
> became Christianity. Sure Paul changed and added
> to it but it wouldnt exist without Jesus. That
> makesJesus pretty important

You just used the claim being argued about to try and prove the claim being argued about.
You've *assumed* "Jesus founded the movement."
Your "...it wouldn't exist without Jesus" claim is a bare assertion, and since lots of other religions that worshiped god-men began without actual people being around to be turned into god-men, there is no such imperative.

Exactly!

Well if he existed he was a fucking liar.

Unless he was some deity figure. So you can't have it both ways.
He was either the son of god or a fucking liar , a la Joseph Smith.
Place your bets gentlemen please.

My money is on him never having existed, like hansel and gretel, although I believe you can find a grave of a hansel who did exist around the time the story was written.

In O'Neill's piece, I don't see a "polemical tone". I see concern and exasperation over the fringe misrepresentation of evidence which, when assessed using standard scholarly protocols, has compelled a scholarly consensus. One would think that exmos claiming empiricist bona fides would be more open-minded toward that consensus and the many reasons for it.

Tal Bachman Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> In O'Neill's piece, I don't see a "polemical
> tone". I see concern and exasperation over the
> fringe misrepresentation of evidence which, when
> assessed using standard scholarly protocols, has
> compelled a scholarly consensus. One would think
> that exmos claiming empiricist bona fides would be
> more open-minded toward that consensus and the
> many reasons for it.

His reasons were the same tired old arguments, nothing new, and a number of them are factually incorrect. He's not a "scholar," nor an historian -- so that he repeats such errors isn't surprising, but it is disappointing.

You would think that exmos would be more open-minded towards challenging a "long-held consensus" whose foundation is riddled with errors and assumptions and "faith," rather than declaring anyone who challenges it a "fringe lunatic." Oh, well.

Tal, I think you have incorrectly presumed that people here take at face value what the "fringe scholars" say. We don't. For example, I read 1 Clement for myself. I was shocked to find that what Carrier said about it was actually true. It is what the ancient authors say or don't say that makes the case for a mythical Jesus.