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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The Jesus evidence example (exactly the case we’ve been discussing)

People commit a category error when they say:

“There’s no archaeological evidence or contemporaneous outsider documentation for Jesus → therefore he probably didn’t exist.”

That reasoning only works if Jesus belonged to the category of people who normally leave archaeological or contemporaneous records (emperors, governors, high priests, famous rabbis, rebel leaders who mint coins, wealthy benefactors who commission inscriptions, etc.).

But Jesus belonged to a completely different category: 1st-century Galilean peasant itinerant preacher.
For that category, the normal, expected evidence profile is:
-Zero archaeology
-Zero contemporaneous outsider records

Demanding that a member of Category B produce the evidence typical of Category A — and then declaring him “probably fictional” when he doesn’t — is a textbook category error.

It’s like saying:

“I looked in the sky and didn’t see any fish → therefore fish don’t exist.” (Fish belong in water, not the sky.)
Or:
“I dug in the desert and didn’t find any whales → therefore whales are a myth.” (Whales belong in the ocean.)

In the same way:
“I looked for inscriptions and Roman police reports about Jesus and didn’t find any → therefore Jesus is a myth.” (Those kinds of records belong to emperors and governors, not Galilean carpenters.)

That’s the category error in a nutshell. Once you place Jesus in the correct historical category (lower-class apocalyptic Jewish preacher in Roman Palestine), the total archaeological and contemporaneous silence becomes the expected default, not a problem. [/quote]

These evidence claims are a classic red herring, constructing strawmen only to knock them down. The real issue is not the mere absence of specific archaeological evidence. No one expects a Nazareth tax receipt. What matters is [u][b]the positive evidence we actually possess[/b][/u].

The proposed analogy with Hillel or Judas the Galilean is a false equivalence. Judas the Galilean is accepted because Josephus provides a detailed and historically grounded description of Judas the Galilean across multiple works, offering specifics about his ideology, his movement's legacy, his followers, and even the fate of his sons. This stands in stark contrast to the highly disputed passage in the Testimonium Flavianum concerning Jesus, which is widely considered by scholars to be partially or wholly a Christian interpolation as it lacks the historical specificity found in other Josephan accounts.

For Jesus, the only narrative sources we have are the Gospels, which are anonymous, theological tracts written by non-eyewitnesses, full of demonstrable fictions like the universal census of Quirinius (Luke 2) or zombies walking the streets of Jerusalem (Matthew 27). These are not the kinds of sources historians can trust for historical facts.

The claim that "absence of evidence is meaningless" for a lower-class preacher is a fundamental misapplication of historical methodology. Absence of evidence is evidence of absence when evidence should be there. For a figure whose followers believed he was the key to salvation and divine revelation, detailed testimony in the earliest Christian sources should be present, but it is conspicuously absent.

The historicist lists all the evidence that couldn't possibly exist but conveniently ignores the most crucial evidence that should, detailed testimony in the earliest surviving Christian documents.  Paul's Letters are the only contemporary documents we have available, but his Jesus is a celestial, pre-existent Lord who reveals himself through scripture and mystic visions. Paul shows no knowledge of Nazareth, Bethlehem, a virgin birth, an earthly ministry in Galilee, specific miracles, twelve disciples, Judas' betrayal, or teachings like the Sermon on the Mount. His "brother of the Lord" is likely a spiritual brother, not a biological one, consistent with Paul's focus on spiritual family. And, Paul explicitly states his gospel came not from "flesh and blood" (human sources) but from "revelation" (Galatians 1:11-12).

The myth theory is a hypothesis that better fits the totality of the evidence (and lack thereof). Early Christians believed in a celestial Christ revealed in scripture and visions. This divine being was then historicized over the course of several decades, a process likely accelerated by the profound political and religious turmoil following the destruction of the Second Temple. With the cessation of Temple sacrifices, the foundational mechanism of atonement in traditional Judaism vanished. A historicized Jesus, portrayed in the Gospels (the first Gospel was written after the Temple was destroyed) as a single, perfect, and final human sacrifice whose blood atoned for sin, provided a potent and immediate theological solution to the crisis of atonement, making an earthly narrative a necessary tool for the survival and spread of the burgeoning Christian movement in a post-Temple world.

The historicist model requires us to believe that the earliest sources knew the least about the most important historical figure of their time, while later, non-eyewitness, anonymous sources knew everything. The point is that the positive evidence we do have points away from a historical Jesus and toward a mythical one. 
[/quote]

Jesus is nothing more than mythmaking. Apologists are grasping at straws to prevent themselves from facing truth and reality.  [/quote]

+ 1 million.  When you understand the psychology of religion, it all falls apart. 
[/quote]

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