Reconstructing the Historical Jesus

Here is a book that pertains to this topic. This is a recent edition: The Sacred Mushroom and The Cross: A study of the nature and origins of Christianity within the fertility cults of the ancient Near EastJohn M. Allegro was one of the first translators to work on the Dead Sea Scrolls project back in the 1950s, so he brings some expertise to bear on the subject.(I have a fine hardback copy of the 1970 first edition!)

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

But nothing about Christianity becoming a major world religion has anything to do with the historical Jesus. So why should the fact that he is the focus of a major world religion have any bearing on the evidence required to conclude his existence?Jon

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Love your enemies!

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Then we should discuss how older religions helped define the jesus character.

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Only if it is relevant to the topic. And if you can actually bring anything to the subject instead of wasting time with posts like the last couple.

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But the problem is just that - "Q" doesn't exist. You can't put forward sources that don't exist as "independent support" for your claims.

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Of course we can, to the degree that we can identify their influence and reconstruct them. What we can't do is use the fact that we don't have these sources NOW to support a claim that they never existed, no matter what the evidence.

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Here's a hint, Paul - when you're making up sources that would conveniently corroborate your claims if they existed you're not actually providing support for your claims - you're engaged in patent nonsense.

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Here's a hint Crash, when you accuse people who come to conclusions you don't like of being dishonest - just BECAUSE they come to conclusions you don't like - it's pretty obvious that you're acting like the nastier sort of apologist.

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Which I've done. The more parsimonious claim is the one that assumes the existence of the least number of entities the existence of which is not required. Since the "Mythical Jesus" position has one less unnecessary entity, it's the more parsimonious of the claims. QED.

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Of course the entities in question are ASSUMPTIONS, not people. And you need an equally full explanation to make a valid comparison and you don't.For instance we don't NEED to assume that other people exist at all. Solipsism is very parsimonious by your standard. And if there's no real need to explain why we see other people then solipsism wins. So your version of parsimony simply doesn't work.

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The records you previously claimed didn't exist? How did Tacitus have access to them if they didn't exist, and if he did refer to records, why didn't he say that? Again, your recourse is to imaginary sources. How can you expect that to be convincing?

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Since I don't claim that Tacitus consulted any official records (did you fail to notice that I explicitly stated that I didn't believe that he did ?) and I don't claim that the records didn't exist when Tacitus was writing - only that they don't exist NOW that isn't exactly a valid objection. (I do suspect that the detailed records would have stayed in Jerusalem and been destroyed earlier, but that's not much more than my personal opinion).

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Why are you putting forward arguments that you don't believe?

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Because they exist and they are relevant. If you want to insist that there are no extra-Biblical references to Jesus then you are wrong. If you want to insist that there is no need to discuss Tacitus because Tacitus must have relied on Christian sources you need to deal with the arguments to the contrary. This is how you make a case, by dealing with the objections, not just by ignoring them.

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Except that it does, as I've demonstrated. The context is quite clear. Do you need it quoted again?

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No, you need to read it again. There's nothing that implies that Tacitus did not personally believe that Jesus existed.

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So, not written by Josephus but put forward as though he did.

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That's the precise definition of a "forgery."

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Not when it's an accident, as it may be. And even then there may be a genuine reference to Jesus there.

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Yes - that it's reasonable to expect some actual evidence if Jesus actually existed. Not imaginary evidence from imaginary sources, which is all you've been able to provide.

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Plenty of people lived and died without leaving any records that survived to the present day. So you still need to make a case which is more than opinion.

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No. Wrong. What we need to work out is whether there is any actual evidence that such a person existed and was the basis of the Jesus mythology.

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The Gospels and Paul's epistles are such evidence. Where's the evidence that there was no such person ?

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And where did I ever indicate that I considered it "extraordinary" that Christianity existed? Please be specific.

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You claimed that there was something extraordinary about the origins of Christianity if Jesus existed but you were very unclear about what it was. Thus I had to eliminate things that you MIGHT have meant.

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And how would the Gospels be based on such an individual? Please be specific.

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It seems pretty obvious. The first Christians tell (mostly true) stories about their dead leader. As these leaders start to die, their followers come to the realisation that maybe the world isn't going to end very soon and maybe it would be a good idea to write things down before it's too late and do so (Mark is supposedly based on Peter's teachings). The author of Luke even claims to have done considerable research on the matter. And so we get the Gospels. And later on, more Gospels, too.

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But again, you're not making any sense. What story was "replaced"? If there was no historical Jesus then there was no real origin Christianity to "replace." So what could possibly have been replaced?

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Obviously the real story would be how Christianity ACTUALLY began. Unless you want to argue that Christianity didn't have an origin your question makes no sense to me.

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I would go so far as to say that it's a certainty that exaggeration and embellishment occurred. Ergo, it's most likely to assume that the exaggeration and embellishment parts go so far as to include his actual existence. Once you're lying about nearly everything, why not lie about the rest?

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Because that would be stupid. If you have exaggerated and embellished to glorify an individual the last thing you do is replace him with an imaginary creation. A lot of the exaggeration and embellishment wouldn't even be conscious falsehoods, just the usual failures of memory. So there is no real continuity here. You can't use the existence of exaggeration and embellishment to argue for the complete falsehood of the Gospels.

Funnily enough, the only people I can find claiming that Mark is so early are Christians, since this way they can argue that the author is more likely to have met Jesus and that the prophecy of the Temple's destruction was written down before the Temple was destroyed. From the fact that the Mark 13 appears to be about the Jewish Revolt and the destruction of the Temple, secular scholars pretty much universally date it in the 70s or 80s.You also claimed upthread that 1 Thessalonians mentions Luke, so must postdate it. This simply isn't true. There are bits of 1 Thessalonians which people argue must be later additions, since they sound more like Luke than Paul, but Paul certainly never mentions Luke.In your efforts to make Paul dependent on the gospels, you're making the gospels more contemporaneous with the events they describe, and attributing to the authors the powers of prophecy (or at least great foresight!).

Someone founded Christianity.From your posts I gather that this person should meet the following criteria:1. It must less extraordinary that they, rather than a historical Jesus, would found Christianity.2. It must be more parsimonious to conclude that they founded Christianity3. They must be better documented than Jesus, including independent non-Christian sources.So, who is it ?

Ok. Since it is relevant to the topic then we should discuss it.The jesus character is partially derived from previously established religions.
This weighs against the suggestion that there was an historic jesus.Perhaps you can actually bring something to the subject instead of wasting time with posts like the last couple.

Burden Of Proof fallacy...
http://www.nizkor.org/...ures/fallacies/burden-of-proof.html

Since you won't support or even explain your assertion other that stating that there are similarities which somehow undermine the idea of a historical Jesus there's nothing for me to discuss.

If Crashfrog claims to have a better explanation for Christianity than a historical Jesus, then the burden of proof is certainly on him to show that he does. And that certainly includes showing that his explanation is less vulnerable to his own arguments. If it were not then his arguments are irrelevant.

But that is not what you asked.
You asked "Who founded christianity?", and not "Why is your explanation better?"You are doing exactly the same as a someone claiming that if a physicist doesn't believe in god then he must be able to explain how the universe began - else god is trve and the physicist is wrong.And CF has explained why 'no historical jesus' is self-evidently more parsimonious than 'an historical jesus'.
Other than linking a definition of 'parsimonious', I see little more he can do to explain it to you.

No, but they do take self-serving documents and try to use certain methodologies for extracting from them what can be called historical. Like Mohammed. And possibly Socrates (I'm not sure of the exact dates of the writings about Socrates). I know when the writings about Jesus are dated by historians (unlike you who seems to think Mark is 50AD for some reason). When I said 'at or around' I was referring to a time-scale of decades. I was answering your question as to why the resurrection isn't commonly held to be historical. Clearly you missed my point wherein I was mocking your poor analogy. Perhaps you can explain how a document about a person written within decades of their life can be analogous to a 7-year old's beliefs about a person written thousands of years after their life. Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

Physics isn't history.And there are realms of difference between proposing 'god' as an explanation and proposing 'human being' as an explanation.Jon

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Love your enemies!

Now you just need to understand what an analogy is. I guess you must be arguing with my analogy.

No, Crashfrog has simply demonstrated yet again (and now you also) that 99.9% of all attempts to use parsimony in an argument result in pure bollocks. Would you care to define what metric you are using to perform the necessary comparison? I'm sure I have a paper somewhere around here that actually gives the calculations for comparing likelihood of mythical imaginative ideas vs mythical real-person-inspired ideas but for some reason I can't quite lay my hands on it right now