The Time Problem With A Mythical Jesus

Greetings JasonB,

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You make many interesting claims about the dating of p52 and the other books of the New Testament. If you would like, please start a new thread and we can discuss this. But for this thread let focus on the time question, is 70 years enough time for a legend like the Mythical Jesus to evolve.

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Hmmm..
But your question is based on a FAULTY premise.YOU made the claim in this thread that P52 is dated to 100.
I pointed out this is WRONG in this thread (its more like 100-150, or even later)
Then you try to brush me off to another thread - is that because you realise you were wrong?Furthermore,
it seems your are unaware of the late, pseudographical nature of many of the epistles.
Are you aware that many of the epistles are late forgeries?
Like the Pastorals, the Johanine letters and the Petrine epistles?

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Please tell me how this does not tell of the empty tomb, He was buried .. He was raised. Clearly speaks of an empty tomb.

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Pardon?
Paul does not use the word "tomb" at all - do you really think this is a "clear" reference to an empty tomb?
Seriously?
Paul could mean a GRAVE which may be empty.
Paul could mean a GRAVE which is still full (Christ rising spiritually.)
Paul could mean something else entirely - e.g. Christ (our soul) "dies" by being born in our body, and is "raised" back to heaven when the body dies (a common ancient analogy.)There is NOT the slightest HINT of an "empty tomb" in Paul.
Your comments show you are retrojecting later beliefs into Paul.Paul speaks of meeting Christ in a VISION - the other appearances are no different, merely visions.
What makes YOU think otherwise?

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Is 70 years enough time for this to happened?

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What 70 years are you talking about?The FIRST mention of proto-Gospels is in c.130 by Papias
100 years after the alleged events.The FIRST published Gospel was c.142 by Marcion
110 or so years after the alleged events.The FIRST quotations from (still un-named) Gospels is in c.150 by Justin
120 years after the alleged events.Furthermore,
why do YOU think 70 years (more like over a CENTURY) is not enough for legends to develop?Legends about Augustus arose in DAYS.
Legends about Scheerson arose in months in the MODERN era.Please explain why YOU think legends could not arise
* in a CENTURY or so
* in an illiterate culture
* after 2 wars and several generations
?

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But you have a problem. The p52 fragment. The story had developed in only 70 years. (Granting that p52 dates to 125 AD and was written sometime before that, I choose 100 AD arbitrarily, I could choose a later date, but I could also choose a younger date)

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False.
P52 is dated 100-150 (or later.)
But,
YOU chose the EARLIEST possible date of 100 (and you FALSELY claim it could even be younger! Why?)In fact,
P52 COULD be as late as 150 (or even later.)
Your argument is based on a false premise, but you refuse to acknowledge this.

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The rest of your argument assumes a late dating of the New Testament which I do not wish to debate in this thread.

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Wrong.
I have researched (NOT "assumed") the dates of the NT writings, but it appears you have not.
You can find arguments for dates here -
Early Christian Writings: New Testament, Apocrypha, Gnostics, Church FathersYou are trying to exclude the evidence which shows you are wrong!
That's not debate - its preaching.Iasion

Perhaps to supplement your argument, you could provide an example of some myth being debunked because of it's creation time frame (ie within 70 - 100 years). Then we could compare this example to the Gospels. You could show elements in the example that aren't true with the Gospels. I, myself, would like some frame of reference for your "70 year" statement.thanx
PM1K

Thanks for responding. Galatians 1:11

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For I would have you know, brothers, that the gospel that was preached by me is not man's gospel. For I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ.

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True. But his claims about Jesus were falsifiable. Was there such a man? Did he preach in Israel? Was he crucified? These things could have, and I believe would have been checked out. There have certainly been more outrageous claims made about other people. But to make claims about people in recent history when facts can be checked, and to have them be accepted by many people, when acceptance came with such a great sacrifice for many? This does not point to a mythical Jesus, but a historic one. The p52 fragment tells us that the claims about Jesus were already established by at least 125 AD. This puts these claims in the realm of current events. This tells us that the claims about Jesus were being preached to contemporaries of Jesus. And many believed the claims when the facts could have been checked.

Hello IFEN Mormonism is a different animal. Joe Smith made claims that could only be proven up to a point, and then you have to take his word for the rest because he was alone, except for the angle, when he found the ancient scrolls. Now we can argue about the text of the scrolls, which has been done in great detail, and which I believe disprove their authenticity, but I can’t prove or disprove his account of how he got them.The claims made about Jesus were much broader and involved many places and people and were claimed by several individuals.If I claim that I was visited by aliens last night in my bedroom, you really have no way to disproof my simplistic claims. But if I claim that the aliens took me and 500 other people to the Whitehouse in their ship, and we blew it up, killing the president, you could verify these claims. The claims made about Jesus were verifiable to the people they were first preached to.

Hello Chiroptera You have to look at what was claimed about Jesus. He healed the sick. Gave sight to the blind. Fed thousands with a few loafs of bread, was crucified by a roman leader. Was later seen alive by hundreds of people.I have never heard stories about UFO’s that entailed such detail, over a span of three years, involving so many people, all being claimed by several eye witnesses. They claimed more than just healing. The fledgling Christina religion had opposition. Nero for instance murdered thousands of Christians in the first century AD. These were all new converts, dying for what they were recently told. The various Jewish sects had reason to inform the Christian converts of the lies they were being told by the apostles, proof, any proof that debunked their claims would have killed the movement. Paul, who was a persecutor of the Church, who was a leader in the Jewish community, could have been persuaded that his visions where not real if he had been presented with evidence that what he saw, and what he was told by Peter and James when he met with them, never happened. The claims were verifiable. People would have checked them out.

Jason,If you keep asserting an early p52 to support your claims then you must defend that date. I don't know the life expectancy in those times. I have read but have no source at the moment that literacy was very low. Fact checking remains a challenge today. Even today many believe claims of all sorts of things without checking facts. Witness many threads on this very forum. lfen

First of all, in the case of the Jews it was being claimed that they killed the messiah. A messiah they were all waiting for and preaching others to be on the look out for. They did not like the accusations being made.Secondly, they were loosing converts.Thirdly, faith in their own dogma would compel them to debunk claims that falsified their own beliefs.And finally, loved ones were being ‘led astray’. Sons, daughters, wives, husband. Paul said in 1 COR 15 that Jesus appeared to 500 people after his death at one time, and some of them are still alive (at the time of his writing). Not well preserved today. Be we are talking only a few years. I don’t think it is nave to say that the claims that were being made in the 1st Century about Jesus could have been checked out by the people of that time. If I wrote a book about Teddy Roosevelt and made outlandish claims about him, they could most certainly be checked out.

So many of the things you talk about and in particular, the issue of the first few centuries of the christian era, predate anything we would recognize as the Bible. They were an oral history, and there was little in the way of a canon. There were many Gospels floating around, and those Gospels contained many extradordinary accounts. Most of the Gospels (probably about 50 all told) contained things that were later deemed unfit to be included. For example, there are the Young Jesus Gospels, the Book of Enoch, the Gospels of Thomas and Mary, the Stories of Adam and Eve. Parts of these later became incorporated into the existing Biblical books, for example the brief mention of Sons of God, but the connections to the longer versions have pretty much been forgotten.It was only several centuries after Christ's death that anything we would recognize today as Christianity was formalized. And such things have continued. Simply take some time and read the Lives of the Saints and you will see example after example of such acts. It is precisely because such things can be adopted and spread quickly that the Church is so methodical about the process of canonazation.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

You would not need to proof every claim, only disprove one, and you destroy the foundation. A person, who lives 33 years, touches many other lives. You would only have to find one person, who said, wait a minute that’s not the way it happened. Prove one event didn’t happened and the house of cards fall.Go back to my claim about my great Uncle Harry in my original post. How difficult would it be to stop my cult of Harry movement?

Hello IasionDebating the dates of the New Testament is a great idea. But I am only interested, in this thread, in the time frame for a mythical Jesus legend to emerge.Thanks

If I did that then I would spend the rest of my time in this thread defending my examples. And I am not really interested in doing that.

With or without the ATF?

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"Archeologists near mount Sinai have discovered what is believed to be a missing page from the Bible. The page is currently being carbon dated in Bonn. If genuine, it belongs at the beginning of the Bible and is believed to read, 'To my darling Candy. All characters portrayed within this book are fictitous, and any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.' The page has been universally condemned by church leaders."
-Rob Grant and Doug Naylor

The p52 fragment is without question from the Gospel of John. Dating it to 125 AD puts the claims sometime before that. That pushes the claims very close to the events, not centuries after. I am more interested in the claims made about Jesus and if 70 years is enough time for a legend to form.

Jason,Even today most christian proseltyzing is based on emotional appeal and distortions of facts and few check those facts. Because there are so very few non bibical mentions in support of a historic Jesus you are forced into this argument that basically that because Christianity survived it must be true. Would you make that claim of Islam? You can't check the facts, yet you are asking us to take the Gospels as fact simply because they weren't abandoned as false by early Christians? There is no neccessity here.It's not yet been established that Paul thought his Christ had lived recently on earth and was crucified in Jerusalem. I think he might have known something but I don't know how important that would have been to him. Visions were counted highly in the OT, and in the lands of the Roman Empire. I wouldn't be at all surprised if people at that time didn't make much distinction between the truth of visions and the truth of rational fact.Your argument can not establish the accuracy of the gospels. That you are even making such a weak argument is testimony to the weakness of your evidence. Paul's route of a Christ by personal revelation and faith seems to make more sense for you. There is just so very little historically that that is a very dubious foundation.lfen

Hey man, I was at Ruby Ridge.
(This too could be very easily proven false.)