Reply to How do you "know" that Jesus/Christianity is not just a crazy story?

Forum Index » Off-Topic

Reply to "How do you "know" that Jesus/Christianity is not just a crazy story?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote] The story of Jesus is likely an agglomeration of such stories into a single mythological person.[/quote]

So you choose the "Jesus as myth" possibility.  (I will address your other objection, the reliability of the Gospels and the New Testament, in a separate post, if I get the chance, though some bits will overlap.)

Just a few thoughts:

If the events recorded in the Gospels did not really happen, then several separate authors chose to engage in realistic literary fantasy, in very different styles, during the same time period.  The four different styles are all different versions of collected eyewitness accounts, rather than literary flights.  Specific people, locations, events, and non-anachronistic minutiae of daily life are everywhere.

If the events recorded in the Gospels did not really happen, there should be some evidence of contemporaries refuting such wild tales, debunking the myth as it formed, because no myth comes ready-made and widely accepted.  There was not enough time for a myth to develop.

If the divine Jesus of the Gospels is a myth, who invented the myth?  His close disciples, or a later generation?  What was their motive?  For their testimony to Jesus' divinity was not only the story of their time with him, but also his teachings, which were so radical, so outrageous, so beyond human imagination, they set the hedonistic, pagan Roman world on fire, while it got his followers killed, by the thousands and tens of thousands.  There was Jesus the man, Jesus the divine, and Jesus the Word of God.  That's a lot of myth to organize and disseminate and live and preach and stay faithful to.  People generally end practical jokes under torture.  And Jesus was not a Jewish civil disobedience mythical hero set up against the Roman "Man."  Most of the Jews rejected him, for good reasons.

Then there is the consistency of the "myth."  We have about 500 different copies of the New Testament that date earlier than 500 A.D.  The manuscripts are mutually reinforcing and consistent, and later discoveries (Dead Sea scrolls) have fortified earlier ones.  No other ancient text is in as good shape.  There is no evidence of a pre-"myth" Jesus.  There were plenty of powerful, literate agents alive at the same time.  All available contemporaries have a consistent recall.  No other work of antiquity has as much staying power.

Jesus' closest followers specifically denied the possibility of myth:  "For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty."  2 Peter 1:16  So they either told the truth, or lied.  (hence, possibility of apostles as deceivers)

It is one thing to speculate that the records of Jesus' life were the differently-authored, condensed tales of several different wandering "holy" men during the Roman empire.  It is another to contrast that speculation against the available evidence, and common sense.

[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics