Jesus' story: Gospel truth or myth?

[rug]

Updated: APRIL 12, 2017 — 3:01 AM EDT
by Robert J. Hutchinson

In the midst of the French presidential elections, which are becoming nearly as chaotic and controversial as the U.S. election of 2016, what many people in France are talking about these days is something else: the French pop philosopher Michel Onfray's latest best-seller, Décadence.

The book is 650 pages of rambling communist philosophy centered on the claim that Western civilization is based on a huge lie: that a man named Jesus of Nazareth really existed.

Of course, Onfray - a former high school teacher turned best-selling left-wing intellectual - is merely piggybacking on a "meme" that has swept through college campuses and internet chatrooms in the United States over the last several years.

Known as "mythicisim," this is the claim that Jesus of Nazareth is an entirely fictional character with no more claim to historical status than Odysseus, King Arthur or, for that matter, the Wizard of Oz.

The advocates of this position in the United States - mostly self-taught amateurs on the internet but one or two legitimate Ph.D.s - claim that Christianity was originally an esoteric mystery cult that worshipped a heavenly "Christ" figure and only later identified the fictional Jew named Jesus as this heavenly savior.

http://www.philly.com/philly/opinion/20170412_Jesus__story__Gospel_truth_or_myth_.html

[Orrex]

1. I hope it's true

Especially the part where, in a fit of pique, he blights a fig tree.

[rug]

2. Are you in the self-taught internet amateur camp or the legitimate PhD camp?

Whether a particular incident occurred or whether a passage was didactic says nothing about the existence of Jesus. Which is the point of the article.

[Orrex]

3. I would say that I know as much about the Gospel as any Christian I know

And I know as much about "Gospel truth" as any person in history who has claimed knowledge of that unknowable subject.

For the record, I have no problem accepting that Jesus was likely a real person.

[Hokie]

4. This article is so thin on facts it should be called veneer

Really, why did someone bother to write this?

An example:

But is there any truth to Onfray's and other mythicists' claims? Is it possible that Jesus never even existed at all?

Of course, it's possible ... just as it's possible we're actually floating in gigantic vats of goo, like in The Matrix, and the entire outside world is a holographic illusion produced by Skynet and our robot masters.

The author then presents very little evidence that Jesus existed and none for his miracles.

[rug]

6. Considering what he's reviewing, it's ponderous.

[Hokie]

13. I haven't read the book and I am guessing you haven't either

However, I have read enough to convince me that there is a significant possibility that a historical Jesus never existed or if he did was nothing close to what is depicted in the gospels. The author of the article just completely dismisses that possibility and doesn't support that dismissal at all.

[InAbLuEsTaTe]

5. What? The Wizard of Oz is not real?! Then who helped Dorothy get home to Kansas?

[rug]

7. No, he's not. Demonstrably so.

[Orrex]

8. And Oz's divinity is no less credibly demonstrated than Jesus'

[rug]

9. Did you learn that at meme camp?

[Orrex]

10. Please feel free to refute my assertion.

Your ad hominem broadsides do not support your position.

[rug]

11. Right after you demonstrate it.

Memes and cliches are not arguments.

[Orrex]

12. Simple

Oz is purported to have wondrous powers, and the only evidence for his supra-normal existence is in the form of literature that assumes outright the truth of his wondrous powers. I have no problem accepting that Oz the fictional character is based in whole or in part on a real, mundane person who actually existed.

Jesus Christ is purported to have wondrous powers, and the only evidence for his supra-normal existence is in the form of literature that assumes outright the truth of his wondrous powers. I have no problem accepting that Jesus the fictional character is based in whole or in part on a real, mundane person who actually existed.


Your turn.

[rug]

14. L. Frank Baum.

Jesus rose from the dead. Believe it or not. You can't debunk it.

Simple.

[Orrex]

15. That's not an argument; it's witnessing

It is a well-worn regurgitation of belief (taught in meme camp, perhaps?) and cannot be considered convincing to anyone who doesn't choose to believe it. Certainly it is not a demonstration of Jesus' divinity.

It strikes me as foolish to believe in something so monumental and transcendent without equally monumental and transcendent evidence in support of it. An extensively edited and revised collection of ancient scribblings is very weak evidence indeed.

[rug]

16. If you read Baum, presumably you'd know Oz is a fictional place with a fictional wizard.

There's not a hint of divinity. It's a pretty lame ground on which to rest an antitheist argument.

The antitheist "evidence" argument is equally lame. Measure the infinite. Let me know how you do.

[Orrex]

18. More witnessing.

I've only read six or seven Oz books because I find the style someone tiresome.

To the extent that Oz is a fictional place, so what? The Gospels take place in a fictional middle east in which miraculous events and supernatural beings are assumed to exist.

As far as your demand that I "measure the infinite," I must ask you "to what end?" You are asking me to assume the existence of the object of your belief, which is obviously begging the question. Demonstrate that your particular flavor of "the infinite" exists, and then I will measure it.

While you're at it, why don't you explain how you can believe with any confidence that God is benevolent, since it could just as readily be an infinitely evil entity masquerading as The Good Guy in order to fool the faithful.

[edhopper]

17. We don't know

and perhaps never will.

But of course the existence of a historical figure (which I consider more logical) has no bearing on the myths in the New Testament.
I find it highly improbable that any of the so called words of Jesus there in have any veracity. And let's not get into the miracles.

[Hokie]

19. I can still remember my awaking

I was maybe 12 or 13 sitting in a Methodist Church on Easter Sunday. I was bored with the sermon and to pass the time I was looking at the back of the hymnal. I was reading how Christianity determined what day Easter fell on every year. (You can look it up. It's the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox.) They gave the dates for Easter for around the next 50 years. Of course the Christians hijacked the spring festival for Easter like they hijacked the winter solstice festivals for Christmas. Neither date is close to being historically correct for what they supposedly represent.

I remember thinking. You know this is a bunch of hooey like astrology. It's all a fairy tale. I haven't looked back.

[Igel]

20. Don't see the hijacking.

Such things get repurposed all the time. Whatever the "spring festival" you have in mind entailed, it probably meant something else entirely different 5k BCE and 10k BCE. Gods come, gods go.

As for Easter, except for some local cultural additions it has nothing to do with any festival in the British Isles. The date was set wrt Passover, to make sure that it was the Sunday after Passover. Why? Because the narrative says Jesus was killed on Passover. The first Sunday after Passover would be, by their tradition, when he was resurrected.

Passover is in the spring; if the calendar drifts, then an intercalary month is added to make sure Passover is in the spring. All that remains is to define "spring" in terms not of the barley harvest but of the vernal equinox.

Note that the "neither date is close to being historically correct for what they supposedly represent" is just false. I don't observe Easter. Passover was a few days ago. Today is the Sunday during the Days of Unleavened Bread (often termed "Passover", which originally referred to a family occasion or to a ritual sacrifice on the afternoon of the same day). The last high day is tomorrow--unless you go by a Jewish organization's official sighting of the new moon in Jerusalem, in which case the last high day is Tuesday this year. Yes, there's a group that does this, and also checks to see if the first barley is ripening.

Anyway, if Jesus was resurrected on the Sunday after Passover, it was pretty much by definition the Sunday during the Days of Unleavened Bread. This year that would be today, which is entirely not coincidentally the date for Western Easter. (There's an Eastern Easter, but that's because of calendric drift.)

Was Passover originally a spring festival "taken over," whatever that means? It may have been; but it remained a spring festival centered on the start of a new year based on agriculture, and was the start of the spring barley harvest.


As for Xmas, the point is valid. But it's easier to be syncretistic, which is by definition what most religions have been in history (including the late 19th century formulation of a neo-pagan religion that goes by the name "Wicca", based on a variety of theosophic ramblings and traces of rites and traditions scattered across half a dozen distinct cultures and some, "Why not do this, too"-ism).

[Hokie]

21. Maybe 'hijacked" was too strong

I know a lot of religions and cultures celebrate events around the same times of the year. I was thinking more of the right wing Christians who take offense if you wish them "Happy Holidays" as if Christianity somehow has the exclusive right to celebrate anything in December.

Also how can a holiday that vary over a month on the calendar be considered historically accurate? I would say in the ball park night be a better way to put it.