if jesus existance is questionable...

[pariah]

then why did christianity start?

i was discussing this with a friend and i was wondering what the biblical scholars here thought of jesus and the start of christianity. even if jesus existed, its highly unlikely he walked on water, cured by laying hands, etc... so how do you think the new testament formed?

sorry if this has been discussed to death, but i coudlnt find any relevant threads. thanks

[keyser_soze]

Originally posted by pariahSS
then why did christianity start?

i was discussing this with a friend and i was wondering what the biblical scholars here thought of jesus and the start of christianity. even if jesus existed, its highly unlikely he walked on water, cured by laying hands, etc... so how do you think the new testament formed?

sorry if this has been discussed to death, but i coudlnt find any relevant threads. thanks

The same way mythology builds up around any catchy story. Do you really think all of olympian stories really happened? Then you have a nice paralell...because the ancient greeks believed in those gods enough to kill and die for them. And they built upon those early ur-creations for several centuries, building a large and vast reaching religion out of a bunch of fishermans fantasies. And I think you can thank Paul for the majority of christianity, but that's just a personal view. edit: If you can't get your head around same generation creation and veneration of a deity, take into consideration paul's modern counterpart...L. Ron Hubbard.

[Peter Kirby]

Originally posted by pariahSS
i was discussing this with a friend and i was wondering what the biblical scholars here thought of jesus and the start of christianity. even if jesus existed, its highly unlikely he walked on water, cured by laying hands, etc... so how do you think the new testament formed? One view: Jesus was a philosopher-fraud like Apollonius of Tyana in Philostratus or (even better) Peregrinus in Lucian. His followers believed the imposture and lied to get people to believe ideals like their master. Is that alternative sexy enough to be convincing?

best,
Peter Kirby

[Postcard73]

You might want to check out The Jesus Puzzle by Earl Doherty. The book attempts to prove that a real Jesus of Nazareth never existed. A big part of this involves examining how xianity started without a historical figure...

In a nutshell, Doherty claims that the concept of a risen savior dying for mankind was a common theme of several mystery cults that existed in the Roman world during the time Jesus supposedly lived. However, the entire battle between good and evil, and the eventual salvation of man, all took place only in a pure spiritual realm as understood in Greek philosophy. Doherty repeatedly cites examples from the epistles - including Paul's letters - to show that this is what the earliest Christians believed. He then argues that the gospels and Acts, which were written later, presented a living, incarnate God on Earth in order to make the concept more accessible to the uneducated masses...

Like I said, that is a very brief summation. The book is much deeper than that...

[pariah]

why would paul start this religion? i mean whats the poitn of starting xianity if jesus didnt exist?

[mark9950]

why would paul start this religion? i mean whats the poitn of starting xianity if jesus didnt exist?

To gain power and control,The catholic church has a history of being part of governments that were very powerful and ruthless.

[Magus55]

Originally posted by mark9950
To gain power and control,The catholic church has a history of being part of governments that were very powerful and ruthless. Wrong, Christianity didn't have any power over the government until 300 years after it started, when Constantine made it the official religion of Rome. Before that, Christians were persecuted.

Christianity should have never succeeded if Jesus didn't exist. This is even taught in history classes. Atheists are about the only people in the world who doubt Jesus' existence, and probably the majority of atheists don't either, only the fundie ones like on this board.

So to Pariah, Jesus' existence isn't questionable to anyone but atheists. More people believe He existed than almost any other historical figure to ever walk the Earth. Show me one other human figure in history that has made the impact and had the following that Jesus had, that didn't actually exist.

[Demigawd]

Originally posted by Magus55
So to Pariah, Jesus' existence isn't questionable to anyone but atheists.

How about agnostics, deists, buddhists, hindus, shintoists, etc?

More people believe He existed than almost any other historical figure to ever walk the Earth.

That may be true, actually. Christianity is a very aggressive evangelical meme.

Show me one other human figure in history that has made the impact and had the following that Jesus had, that didn't actually exist.

Santa Claus. But he's just God-with-training-wheels.

[Rational BAC]

Alternate theories are always interesting. And the idea that Jesus did not exist is definitely on the alternate side. Fun thing to consider but not in any kind of serious way. It is a fun thing to consider lots of strange ideas.

But using that famous Occam's (sp?) razor the most simple explanation is the most viable one.

The most simple and most obvious explanation is that Jesus did exist,----

----(very strange conspiracy theories and the idea that there were a whole bunch of seriously gullible dumbass people from the first century who really shouldn't have been walking around aside)

Now exactly what He said and did? Lord knows. Although considering that what He said and did was carried on a fairly short oral tradition and written down within just a couple of generations---------I think, (give or take some and allowing for later corruption) what is in the Bible about Jesus is probably fairly accurate.

I like conspiracy and alternate theories too. But they are really just intellectual playthings.

[nermal]

Originally posted by Magus55
Show me one other human figure in history that has made the impact and had the following that Jesus had, that didn't actually exist.

Well, not "human" maybe, but to refute your point that popularity equals existence:

Pick your Hindu God. There are about a billion Hindus on the planet, you know. If numbers are a verification of veracity, how can a billion people be wrong?

Is it just a case of "My god can beat up your god"?


Christians are so damn funny dismissing other religions.

Reverend Lovejoy: "...be they Christian, Jew, or "other.""
Apu: "Hindu! There are seven hundred million of us, you know."

Ed

[Doctor X]

Yes . . . apparently never heard of King Arthur, Mithras, Moses, or Pokemon. . . .

--J.D.

[pariah]

ok, so we have the possibility of paul wanting to gain control. that sounds unlikely to me...i mean he made up storeis about the son of god? what would prompt him to do that?

and then the argument that xianity didnt gain control utnil 300 years later anyway...sooo???

why else?

[Cutter]

Maybe Paul was just a total whackjob like David Koresh.

Really, the possibilites for why anyone would want to start a religion are limited only by human imagination!

[Asha'man]

Originally posted by pariahSS
ok, so we have the possibility of paul wanting to gain control. that sounds unlikely to me...i mean he made up storeis about the son of god? what would prompt him to do that?
What would prompt Joseph Smith to invent Mormonism?
What would prompt L.Ron Hubbard to invent Scientology?

It’s a good question, but we don’t have to have a precise answer. We know that people do such things, so adding Paul to the long list of religious inventors isn’t really much of a stretch.
Originally posted by pariahSS
and then the argument that xianity didnt gain control utnil 300 years later anyway...sooo???
I don’t think Paul was trying to take control over an empire, at least not directly.

I do think that one of the early motivations behind the story was to incite rebellious feelings, but that may have been directed mostly towards the Jewish authorities and law. I think the focus of the religion changed over time, and was later used to suppress rebellious feelings. Clearly, the story evolved over time, and I think this is one of the major themes of that evolution.

Originally posted by Rational BAC
But using that famous Occam's (sp?) razor the most simple explanation is the most viable one.
Occam’s razor must be applied to equal theories, ones that both explain the evidence equally well. The whole point of the Mythical Jesus theory is that many things are poorly explained by the Historical Jesus theory. The amount of information about the life of Jesus really should not explosively increase over time unless people were making stuff up. Paul’s writings look fishy if you read them without ever looking at the Gospels, they don’t seem to say what people think they say.

The important part is to figure out where the invented material came from. If it came from mining of scripture, and from other lines of theological thought that were common in the area, then you have a valid source that simply doesn’t need a historical persona to start the ball rolling. Suddenly, Occam’s razor allows you to get rid of Jesus himself, since he is superfluous to the whole process.

[boneyard bill]

Almost everything Jesus did in the Gospels, including the miracles, happened, as Paul said, "according to scripture." So if you wanted to reconstruct what happened you go to scripture and see what was foretold and then write a gospel.

That seems to be Doherty's idea of what happened. But what Jesus said is not in the O.T. scripture so where did that come from (the pronouncement stories in Mark as well as gospel Q. And what O.T. scripture would have the Messiah from Galilee? Galilee wasn't even Jewish until it was forceably converted by the Maccabees about a century before Christ.

That seems to me to be one of the greatest difficulties with Doherty's thesis, and I've never seen it addressed.

[Viti]

The Mythmaker: Paul and the Invention of Christianity by Hyam Maccoby outlines a very plausible theory on Paul's motives and methods. According to this theory, Jesus was one of many candidates for Messiah "King" and Paul simply deified him.

[godfry n. glad]

As base, the OP question is a good one and any mythicist worth their salt needs to be able to answer it.

It's my supposition that the start of Christianity is based upon a desire to obtain a ticket into the afterlife. As I understand it, the concept of an eternal afterlife was a fairly new one in Jewish circles and was gaining ground all about with the flourishing of the various mystery cults. Mix that with resentment of the power of the corrupt Temple priests and a messiah cult that promised to free the Sacred Land from the grip of the heathen Romans and you get a potent brew.

I suspect that Christianity grew out of a desire to obtain an easy and cheap ticket to Heaven, the new destination of choice. Jesus became the "savior" that acted as the "guide" that got you into the idyllic eternal afterlife...all you had to do was believe. The easy ticket was the source of its spread and its success. The story of a human Jesus morphed out those beginnings, with embellishments to make it attractive in comparison to all the other cults active at the time.

godfry n. glad

[offa]

Offa,

then why did christianity start?

That is an excellent starting point! I pondered for years over
this question. I was born to an atheist family and went through
trials in grade-school having to say the Lord's Prayer and I was
there when they added "under GOD" to the Pledge of Allegiance.
My wife and my children's spouses and my grandchildren are baptized
Catholics, that is, they are shallow and are willing to accept
the supernatural, whereas, myself, what ever makes them happy makes
me happy.
I discovered that Jesus did exist and was a living - breathing
Hebrew priest. What did Jesus do that was so bad? I knew he did
something naughty but I could not figure what it was that he did.
What Jesus did that was so bad was write John. What was
so bad was that he revealed mysteries of his cult. The reason he was
so evil was that he had left his original cult (adultery) whereas his
brother James (the lame crippled soul who Jesus healed against James
wishes) remained true to the cult. Jesus is identified in John as the
"word". Jesus committed adultery when he was twelve (plus twelve makes
him twenty-four because being an infant was his first twelve years
and at his bar mitzvah he became a one year old Child in A.D. 6). He
was twelve (24) in 17/18 AD and was crucified in 33 AD at the age of
39/40.
Paul believed that Jesus was dead and was surprised when he
discovered him at Damascus (about twelve miles from the real
Jerusalem) and Jesus opened Paul's eyes.
The cult went pretty much into seclusion but Paul had a story
which was the truth (the truth is not necessarily true) that Jesus
had been resurrected. Jesus had survived the crucifixion and had
become non-existent while writing John. When John
started circulating it was a heresy. Writing (authoring) was
illegal in a sense, like today, that our libraries are censored.

Thanks,
Offa

[Postcard73]

Originally posted by pariahSS
why would paul start this religion? i mean whats the poitn of starting xianity if jesus didnt exist?
It's been a while since I read Doherty's book, so I hate to say a whole lot about it. I know there are a lot of people on this forum who are much more familiar with it than I am. I think perhaps Doherty would suggest that Paul didn't invent the religion; he just helped repackage it.

Originally posted by Rational BAC
what is in the Bible about Jesus is probably fairly accurate.
Can you please provide any valid reason why this statement should be considered as even possibly true? Even if Jesus did exist, I see no reason to believe that what appears in the Bible is an accurate depiction of his life and actions. I believe the earliest of Paul's letters are dated more than twenty years after Jesus traditionally died. How can we possibly expect that after twenty years of oral re-telling, what we have is what originally existed? A huge part of Ronald Reagan's public career can be viewed today courtesy of videotape, yet everytime you turn around, there's a new book about him. If modern historians with access to a huge database of historical evidence in the forms of video, books, speeches, newspapers, etc., can't figure out what was going on with Reagan, then how can we realistically expect Paul to accurately compile the life of Jesus with nothing more than an oral history? Never mind the generally held belief that the gospels, which much more directly attempt to tell the actual story of Jesus' life, weren't written until even later!

Despite the fact that I am an atheist, I never doubted that Jesus existed until I read Doherty's book. Doherty did not convince me that Jesus never existed, but he did convince me that the existence of a historical Jesus was not the foregone conclusion it is so often assumed to be. I personally think Jesus' existence is a mystery that will never be solved...

[Doctor X]

I gather than the fact he is born twice ten years appart is "fairly accurate?"

--J.D.

[Mageth]

Show me one other human figure in history that has made the impact and had the following that Jesus had, that didn't actually exist.

Adam and Eve, Noah, Abraham and Moses all come to mind, as the first three are absolutely myths and the last two are at least equally as mythical (or legendary) as Jesus.

Note that I think Jesus may well have been a real person, or even more than one person; I think the description of Jesus and his acts in the Bible is more legendary than pure myth.

Thus I think it may be the legend of Jesus that's made the impact.

[Magus55]

Originally posted by Mageth
Show me one other human figure in history that has made the impact and had the following that Jesus had, that didn't actually exist.

Adam and Eve, Noah, Abraham and Moses all come to mind, as the first three are absolutely myths and the last two are at least equally as mythical (or legendary) as Jesus.

Note that I think Jesus may well have been a real person, or even more than one person; I think the description of Jesus and his acts in the Bible is more legendary than pure myth.

Thus I think it may be the legend of Jesus that's made the impact. Yet you don't see people going to church every sunday to worship the legend of Hercules or Zeus. Sorry, try again. And people don't worship Adam and Eve, Noah, Moses etc., and i'd include them in the person of Jesus since they led the way to His life and ministry.

[Mageth]

Originally posted by Magus55
Yet you don't see people going to church every sunday to worship the legend of Hercules or Zeus.

Those are mythical beings, Magus. Besides, 2000 years ago, Zeus et al had far greater influence in the world, and far more worshippers, than Jesus. The world has changed its taste in mythical figures many times in the past. That doesn't help your case much.

Sorry, try again.

I believe the challenge was to "Show me one other human figure in history that has made the impact and had the following that Jesus had, that didn't actually exist." If you don't think Abraham and Moses in particular have had huge impacts on the world, I'd say even greater than Jesus' (after all, there are three major world religions that sprung from the Abrahamic mythology) I don't know what to say.

And people don't worship Adam and Eve, Noah, Moses etc., and i'd include them in the person of Jesus since they led the way to His life and ministry.

Well, I don't recall claiming anyone did worship the mythical/legendary people I mentioned, Magus. I'm citing them as examples of mythological/legendary characters that have had great influence and have great followings. I'd assume nearly as many Christians believe those legends/myths as believe the Jesus legend/myth.

And you're right, they did lead the way to the Jesus Legend. If the A&E/Noah/Abraham/Moses myths/legends weren't there (i.e. if Hebrew Mythology wasn't there), the Jesus Legend wouldn't be , as the Christian mythology sprung from the Abrahamic mythology, as did Islam mythology. So I'd say again that, since the world owes Judaism, Christianity, and Islam to those myths, Abraham and Moses have had more of a impact on the world than Jesus. Simply put, more people trace their religion back to Abraham and Moses than do to Jesus.

[Peter Kirby]

On the flip side, Moses wouldn't be nearly as well-known today if it weren't for the characters of Muhammad and Jesus spawning global missionary religions.

best,
Peter Kirby

[Doctor X]

One can also add the Buddha and Krisna . . . both around and actively worshipped far longer than Junior.

--J.D.

[Aerik Von]

If Odin and Zeus did not exist. Why do we have the wealth of Greek mythos? People catch hold of a grain of sand and by the end it's a mountain.

Human nature, really.

[Aerik Von]

Originally posted by Magus55
Yet you don't see people going to church every sunday to worship the legend of Hercules or Zeus. Sorry, try again. And people don't worship Adam and Eve, Noah, Moses etc., and i'd include them in the person of Jesus since they led the way to His life and ministry.

Hmmm...obviously you know nothing of pagan/atavistic subculture. Here in NYC Zeus worship is still quite active. They believe a God of his power can manipulate water to create lightning, not so outrageous in the light of a man born twice and died and ressurected.

:eek: