If Jesus wasn’t a real historical figure, where did Christian theology come from?
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Anonymous
Still playing transparent and silly semantic games. "Almost certain" and "likely" leave room for doubt and denial. |
Anonymous
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These three facts about the Historical Jesus are held by most critical scholars and historians.
1. Jesus’ death by crucifixion 2. Very Shortly after Jesus’ death, the disciples had experiences that led them to believe and proclaim that Jesus had been resurrected and had appeared to them. 3. Within a few years after Jesus death, Paul converted after a personal experience that he interpreted as a post resurrection appearance of Jesus to him. However, as Gary Habermas says, “Certainly one of the strongest methodological indications of historicity occurs when a case can be built on accepted data that are recognized as well established by a wide range of otherwise diverse historians.” (see Norman L. Geisler and Paul K. Hoffman, Why I Am A Christian: Leading Thinkers Explain Why They Believe (Grand Rapids, MI: BakerBooks, 2001), 152. Historian Christopher Blake refers to this as the “very considerable part of history which is acceptable to the community of professional historians.” (See Christopher Blake, “Can History be Objective?” in Theories of History, Ed. Patrick Gardiner (New York: Macmillan, 1959), pp. 331-333; cited in Geisler and Hoffman, 152. Ehrman has a new article about this at Huffington Post. In it he says: “Few of these mythicists are actually scholars trained in ancient history, religion, biblical studies or any cognate field, let alone in the ancient languages generally thought to matter for those who want to say something with any degree of authority about a Jewish teacher who (allegedly) lived in first-century Palestine. There are a couple of exceptions: of the hundreds — thousands? — of mythicists, two (to my knowledge) actually have Ph.D. credentials in relevant fields of study. But even taking these into account, there is not a single mythicist who teaches New Testament or Early Christianity or even Classics at any accredited institution of higher learning in the Western world. And it is no wonder why. These views are so extreme and so unconvincing to 99.99 percent of the real experts that anyone holding them is as likely to get a teaching job in an established department of religion as a six-day creationist is likely to land on in a bona fide department of biology.” I wanted to go ahead and offer some other quotes about the existence of Jesus. Keep in mind that I have included some that are by non Christians as well as some others by those that are far from being an Orthodox or Evangelical Christian. Also, there are also some quotes that already assume Jesus existed because they mention the certainty of his crucifixion and in some cases, the resurrection appearances (although they don’t think the resurrection explains the appearances): Jesus’ death by crucifixion under Pontius Pilate is as sure as anything historical can ever be. For if no follower of Jesus had written anything for one hundred years after his crucifixion we would still know about him from two authors not among his supporters. Their names are Flavius Josephus and Cornelius Tacitus.” – John Dominic Crossan, Co-founder of The Jesus Seminar Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography, pg 145 “Jesus death as a consequence of crucifixion is indisputable.”- Atheist Gerd Ludemann-The Resurrection of Christ, Pg 50. We can be certain that Jesus really existed (despite a few highly motivated skeptics who refuse to be convinced), that he was a Jewish teacher in Galilee, and that he was crucified by the Roman government around 30 CE”–Robert J. Miller, The Jesus Seminar and Its Critics, Santa Rosa: Polebridge, 1999, p. 38 Robert J. Miller (The Jesus Seminar) “Some skeptics have maintained that the best account of the biblical and historical evidence is the theory that Jesus never existed; that is, that Jesus’ existence is a myth (Well 1999). Such a view is controversial and not widely held even by anti-Christian thinkers.” –Michael Martin, “Skeptical Perspectives on Jesus’ Resurrection”, in Delbert Burkett’s The Blackwell Companion to Jesus, Oxford: Blackwell, 2011), 285 Michael Martin, Atheist No one. No one in scholarly circles dealing with ancient Judaism and early Christianity, of any religious or non-religious persuasion holds the view that Jesus never existed. You’re entitled to your own opinion, but not to your own truth.”—Larry Hurtado, specialist in New Testament and Christian origins, former Professor of New Testament Language, Literature & Theology (University of Edinburgh). Of course the doubt as to whether Jesus really existed us unfounded and not worth refutation. No sane person can doubt that Jesus stands as founder behind the historical movement whose first distinct stage is represented by the oldest Palestinian community.”- Rudolph Bultmann, Jesus And The Word, pg 13, 1958. I am of the opinion (and it is an opinion shared by every serious historian) that the theory [‘that Jesus never lived, that he was a purely mythical figure”] is historically untenable.” W. Marxsen, The Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, pg 119. To sum up, modern critical methods fail to support the Christ-myth theory. It has ‘again and again been answered and annihilated by first rank scholars,’ In recent years ‘no serious scholar has ventured to postulate the non-historicity of Jesus’—or at any rate very few, and they have not succeeded in disposing of the much stronger -, indeed abundant, evidence on the contrary.” –Historian Michael Grant, Jesus, An Historians Review of the Gospels, pg 200 There are those who argue that Jesus was a figment of the Church’s imagination, that there was never a Jesus at all. I have to say that I do not know any respectable critical scholar who says that any more.” Richard Burridge and Graham Gould, Jesus, Now and Then, 2004, pg 34. Let me state it plainly that I accept that Jesus was a real historical person, In my opinion, the difficulties arising from the denial of his existence still vociferously maintained in small circles of rationalist ‘dogmatists’ far exceed those deriving its acceptance”- Geza Vermes, The Resurrection, 2008, (ix) No serious historian if any religious or nonreligious stripe doubts that Jesus of Nazareth really lived in the first century and was executed under the authority of Pontius Pilate the governor of Judea and Samaria.” Craig Evans in Evans and Wright, Jesus, The Final Days, 2009, pg 3. |
Anonymous
DP. It takes a real Dr. Goebbels to say that your post calling the evidence "pretty persuasive" is the same thing as saying it's "persuasive" and then insult the heck out of pp. Pat yourself on the back for representing atheists in a mature and honest manner. |
Anonymous
https://chab123.wordpress.com/2012/03/28/quotes-on-the-existence-jesus/ |
Anonymous
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The late F.F. Bruce in his popular The New Testament Documents: Are they reliable? said:
“Some writers may toy with the fancy of a ‘Christ-myth,’ but they do not do so on the ground of historical evidence. The historicity of Christ is as axiomatic for an unbiased historian as the historicity of Julius Caesar. It is not historians who propagate the ‘Christ-myth’ theories.” -Bruce, The New Testament Documents. 123. |
Anonymous
They aren’t biased “against” at all. They have dedicated their careers to the study of the NT. They are deep into Christianity, whether they believe in the supernatural aspects or not. |
Anonymous
ax·i·o·mat·ic /ˌaksēəˈmadik/ adjective self-evident or unquestionable. |
Anonymous
Some skeptics have maintained that the best account of the biblical and historical evidence is the theory that Jesus never existed; that is, that Jesus’ existence is a myth (Well 1999). Such a view is controversial and not widely held even by anti-Christian thinkers.” –Michael Martin, “Skeptical Perspectives on Jesus’ Resurrection”, in Delbert Burkett’s The Blackwell Companion to Jesus, Oxford: Blackwell, 2011), 285 Michael Martin, Atheist |
Anonymous
Saying that he most likely existed but there isn’t definitive evidence isn’t denying. At all. It’s just saying we lack direct sources. Which would be true for proving the existence of almost anyone in that era. It’s not denying it’s just saying we don’t have evidence. |
Anonymous
Some skeptics have maintained that the best account of the biblical and historical evidence is the theory that Jesus never existed; that is, that Jesus’ existence is a myth (Well 1999). Such a view is controversial and not widely held even by anti-Christian thinkers.” –Michael Martin, “Skeptical Perspectives on Jesus’ Resurrection”, in Delbert Burkett’s The Blackwell Companion to Jesus, Oxford: Blackwell, 2011), 285 Michael Martin, Atheist |
Anonymous
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Is PP paid by the post? The more you post irrelevant quotes, the more we know you don’t have valid points to make.
No one here is denying his existence. |
Anonymous
The only thing PP knows how to do is to post off-topic quotes. 
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Anonymous
The theory of Jesus’ nonexistence is now effectively dead as a scholarly question.” – Jesus Outside the New Testament: An Introduction to the Ancient Evidence. Pg 14. |
Anonymous
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Some of you continue to ignore the posts here confirming there's linguistic AND external evidence. You stop up your ears and continue to insist there's only internal evidence from the gospels (which, as pointed above you use incorrectly anyway, asserting the evidence is rooted in faith instead of being based on historical analyses and simple logic). PP above did a good job with the external evidence. The linguistic evidence is interesting to me.
So here you go, Saint Bart on the linguistic evidence. https://ehrmanblog.org/gospel-evidence-that-jesus-existed/ . What follows is a cut and paste, shortened with the hope you'll read it (although that seems unlikely) and with my bolding. *** Linguistic evidence Good evidence shows that some of the Gospel accounts clearly go back to traditions about Jesus in circulation, originally, in Aramaic, the language of Roman Palestine, where Jesus himself lived. One piece of evidence is that Aramaic words occasionally appear in stories about Jesus, often at the climactic moment. This happens in a variety of stories from a variety of sources. For example, In Mark 5 Jesus raises the daughter of a man named Jairus from the dead. When he comes into her room and raises her, he says to her “Talitha cumi.” The author of Mark translates for us: “Little girl, arise.” ... [a story about Bart's German professor giving German anecdotes] ... This story about Jairus’s daughter, then, was originally told in Aramaic and was later translated into Greek, with the key line left in the original. So too with several stories in a completely different Gospel, the Gospel of John. It happens three times in just 1:35-42. This is a story that circulated in Aramaic-speaking Palestine, the homeland of Jesus and his disciples. Traditions Stemming from Aramaic The other reason for knowing that a tradition was originally in Aramaic is because it makes better sense when translated *back* into Aramaic than it does in Greek. My favorite illustration of this is Jesus’ famous saying: “Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath; therefore the Son of Man is the Lord of the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27-28). The context: Jesus’ disciples have been eating grain from a field on the Sabbath day; the Pharisees object, and Jesus explains that it is permissible to meet human needs on the Sabbath. Then his clever one-liner. But the one-liner doesn’t make sense. Why would the Son of Man (Jesus) be Lord of the Sabbath BECAUSE Sabbath was made for humans, not the other way around? In other words, when he says “therefore” the Son of Man is the Lord of the Sabbath, what is the “therefore” there for? The logic doesn’t work in Greek (or English). But it would work in Aramaic. That’s because in Aramaic the word for “man” and the word for “son of man” are the same word: “Bar enash” (could be translated either way). And so what Jesus said was: “Sabbath was made for bar enash, not bar enash for the Sabbath; therefore bar enash is lord of the Sabbath.” Now it makes sense. The saying was originally transmitted in Aramaic, and when translated into Greek, the translator decided to make the final statement about Jesus, not about humans. Reality Check: Jesus Existed Christianity did not make a big impact on Aramaic-speaking Palestine. The vast majority of Jews in the homeland did not accept Christianity or want anything to do with it. There were not thousands of storytellers there passing on Christian traditions. There were some, of course, especially in Jerusalem. But the fact that these stories based on Aramaic are scattered throughout our sources suggests that they were in circulation relatively early in the tradition. Most of these are thought to go back to the early decade or two (probably the earliest decade) of transmission. [bolding added] You cannot argue that Jesus was made up by some Greek-speaking Christian after Paul’s letters, for example. |
Anonymous
This is relevant because Jesus died in AD 30 (or AD 33) and these reports represent a true diversity of independent attestations supporting his existence. These sources reporting on Jesus by and large were in a position to know the truth of the matter, and so have a justified belief. At the same time, there are no existing reports suggesting that people believed in a Jesus myth--not even one. |