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mindmetoo
Joined: 02 Feb 2004
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 Posted: Sat Aug 11, 2007 5:32 pm Post subject: The god who wasn't there hypothesis/the Jesus myth |
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_God_Who_Wasn't_There
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_as_myth
There's an interesting and compelling hypothesis that Jesus did not exist. It was expressed in the downloadable documentary The God Who Wasn't There (which kicked off the youtube game of denying the holy spirit to buy yourself a one way ticket to hell, baby!).
The thesis is Jesus was a legend that people simply, decades later, began to assume was real. Prester John, for example, is a story that people began to assume was a real person:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prester_John
Urban legends, of course, take on a life of their own.
Also, there is no record of a place called Nazareth until after the supposed time of Jesus. The town doesn't seem to exist by name until after the Roman persecution in 70 AD, when people fled to the area. Also the census and birth in Bethlehem (a contradiction right there) don't match historical records. Romans did not require people to return to their home towns for a census. The idea itself is insane. Why would you upset your tax base by forcing everyone to cease tax generating occupations to go back to their town for a head count?
The gospels of course were written several decades after the times they describe. There is no text in the hand of Jesus. Mohammad wrote, no?
Any historical mention of Jesus is purely third hand. "People claim to follow this guy named Jesus." That's about all we got.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus#Greco-Roman_sources |
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nicholas_chiasson
Joined: 14 Jun 2007
Location: Samcheok
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| Posted: Sat Aug 11, 2007 5:40 pm Post subject: |
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-Jesus never existed. Hmmmmmm. I wonder if there might be some kind of bias there. You know, why doesn't anyone post, Julius Ceasar or Buddah never existed? Obviously, some people WANT Jesus to have never existed. You know, I really don't like Parsees. So Zoroaster never existed.
-Considering Jesus is mentioned by name in Josephus, who witnessed the fall of Jerusalem in 70AD, and Jesus died in oh what 30 AD? Yeah 40 years later, people felt a need to invent some guy? |
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browneyedgirl
Joined: 17 Jul 2007
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| Posted: Sat Aug 11, 2007 6:21 pm Post subject: |
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| nicholas_chiasson wrote: |
-Jesus never existed. Hmmmmmm. I wonder if there might be some kind of bias there. You know, why doesn't anyone post, Julius Ceasar or Buddah never existed? Obviously, some people WANT Jesus to have never existed. You know, I really don't like Parsees. So Zoroaster never existed.
-Considering Jesus is mentioned by name in Josephus, who witnessed the fall of Jerusalem in 70AD, and Jesus died in oh what 30 AD? Yeah 40 years later, people felt a need to invent some guy? |
Yeah, in my religion class there was talk of Buddha being a combination of different people that lived at that time. Wouldn't that be cool to go back in time and see? |
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JMO
Joined: 18 Jul 2006
Location: Daegu
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| Posted: Sat Aug 11, 2007 6:37 pm Post subject: |
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| nicholas_chiasson wrote: |
-Jesus never existed. Hmmmmmm. I wonder if there might be some kind of bias there. You know, why doesn't anyone post, Julius Ceasar or Buddah never existed? Obviously, some people WANT Jesus to have never existed. You know, I really don't like Parsees. So Zoroaster never existed.
-Considering Jesus is mentioned by name in Josephus, who witnessed the fall of Jerusalem in 70AD, and Jesus died in oh what 30 AD? Yeah 40 years later, people felt a need to invent some guy? |
Zoroaster is an unfortunate name. Except for Julius ceaser I would agree with you. Well kind of. I would doubt the existence of the rest of those guys as well.
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| Obviously, some people WANT Jesus to have never existed |
Is the opposite of this, not true as well. Indeed it is very important to most christians that Jesus existed. |
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Troll_Bait
Joined: 04 Jan 2006
Location: [T]eaching experience doesn't matter much. -Lee Young-chan (pictured)
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| Posted: Sat Aug 11, 2007 8:20 pm Post subject: |
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| nicholas_chiasson wrote: |
-Jesus never existed. Hmmmmmm. I wonder if there might be some kind of bias there. You know, why doesn't anyone post,
Julius Ceasar or Buddah never existed? Obviously, some people WANT Jesus to have never existed. You know, I really don't like Parsees. So Zoroaster never existed.
-Considering Jesus is mentioned by name in Josephus, who witnessed the fall of Jerusalem in 70AD, and Jesus died in oh what 30 AD? Yeah 40 years later, people felt a need to invent some guy? |
Red:
I've heard this before. There isn't any comparison. Caesar led armies. Opposing soldiers and kings were defeated, captured and executed. Things were destroyed and built in his name. Most importantly of all, Caesar wrote things like memoirs. Jesus, if he existed, never wrote anything.
Orange:
This has been discussed. I even started a thread on the possibility that Buddha, spelled "Buddha" not "Buddah," never existed.
http://forums.eslcafe.com/korea/viewtopic.php?t=90327&highlight=Buddha+historical
Green:
And just as obviously, some people need for Jesus to have existed.
Violet:
The Testimonium Flavianum has been disputed since the 17th century. Even conservative biblical scholars grudgingly concede that it is, at most, only partially authentic. And without it, there is almost no evidence for a historical Jesus.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josephus_on_Jesus
Brown:
In the past, some people firmly believed that Heracles had really existed, and scoured the ancient world for the sites of his twelve labours so as to identify them as places of pilgrimage. |
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mindmetoo
Joined: 02 Feb 2004
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| Posted: Sun Aug 12, 2007 1:47 am Post subject: |
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| nicholas_chiasson wrote: |
-Jesus never existed. Hmmmmmm. I wonder if there might be some kind of bias there. You know, why doesn't anyone post, Julius Ceasar or Buddah never existed? Obviously, some people WANT Jesus to have never existed. You know, I really don't like Parsees. So Zoroaster never existed.
-Considering Jesus is mentioned by name in Josephus, who witnessed the fall of Jerusalem in 70AD, and Jesus died in oh what 30 AD? Yeah 40 years later, people felt a need to invent some guy? |
People don't compel others to pass laws based on a belief in Caesar. They do for Jesus. If Jesus did not exist, one might then wonder why one should heed those who claim a lot in his name.
And to cite wiki (with the customary caveats about it being wiki) regarding the Josephus account:
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| Concerns have been raised about the authenticity of the passage, at least in part, and it is widely held by scholars that part of the passage is an interpolation by a later scribe. Judging from Alice Whealey's 2003 survey of the historiography, it seems that the majority of modern scholars consider that Josephus really did write something here about Jesus, but that the text that has reached us is corrupt to a perhaps quite substantial extent. In the words of the Catholic Encyclopedia entry for Flavius Josephus, "The passage seems to suffer from repeated interpolations." |
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