Did Jesus Actually Exist?

Maybe the story was not picked up by CNN...

I did my homework and I also did the homework of others that don't bother.

You didn't even had a close look at that list, otherwise you would have spotted quite a number of historians.

You are starting to look like Frank, attributing to opponents feelings that only exist in your biased mind.

I'm calm, and loving, if you want to know. I don't do ire or hatred.

As for objectivity, mine is a lot greater that yours, as I have seen in many of your posts.

Just dismissing sources because they are not coincident with your views is not really conclusive of objectivity.

Yeah, tell me that you are a professional historian..

See how lazy you are?

Don't ask me to do your own homework, everything is available on the forum..

I ask for modern qualified scientists and you give me a link full of essayists and dead people, misrepresented in your link as SCHOLARS while they are nothing more than AMATEURS, plus a sprinkling of REAL SCHOLARS WHO BELIEVED IN SOME HISTORICAL JESUS, and you still expect me to fine-comb your web of lies to find a real, live historian in it???

So let's cut the link-to-a-revisionist-crap-site routine of deniers. Do your homework as I did mine. Check the credentials of your gurus. Who in your list is a modern historian? Gimme names and accreditations.

The point is that academia treats the myth theory with utter contempt. I have proven that beyond reasonable doubt.

It certainly doesn't have.

Again, dismissing authors and historians because they don't fit in your theories is what academia is doing and you are licking its ass.

If I cite people like Niels Peter Lemche and Thomas L. Thompson and you reply they lack credibility, it's your own credibility that's going down the drain..

That's a very good question. What motivates Jesus deniers? :-)

What motivates holocaust deniers, you think? Or anti global warming loonies?

Ignorance, hatred, and greed. Plus perhaps the tiresome repetition of these themes around us (and them), in the news or in our lives. So many people speak about Jesus or global warming or the holocaust, that it MUST be a conspiracy.

I mean, it's not any topic that attracts the hypercritics. These themes have something in common, a sense of fatefulness to them, and some sort of universal sense of guilt too. GW is about our children's fate. The holocaust casts a long shadow on mankind. And somehow, the guilt-transfer, scapegoating transaction inherent in the Christian interpretation of Jesus' death ("he died for our sins") annoys a lot of people.

Who knows how many are those "we".



Surely you need much more, and more, and more....

From the amount of sources given by you, 95% are nothing but commentaries against Christianity and asseverations that Yeshu (Jesus) wasn't the son of a god.

Only one or two of your sources in the middle of the bunch deny Yeshu as a historical person, as well as the last tree or four sources at the end.

But, surely, when reading those few commentaries denying the existence of this man, no one of the authors knew the existence of the Tractate Sanhedrin part 43a.

If they knew it, then surely they would have abstained themselves of writing so many incongruences.

You're clutching at straws here. I think you'll find that people who are sceptical about the existence of Jesus are not remotely like Holocaust, or global warming deniers.

In fact the opposite is true, carloslebaron is a Christian and a Holocaust denier. Why don't you ask him his motivation? On this thread he's in your corner. Gungasnake, evolution and global warming denier, is another bloody Christian.

Btw, it's very low down to mention Holocaust denial and scepticism about Jesus in the same sentence. You're better than that.

It's roughly the equivalent of invoking Godwin's law. Comparing those who don't agree with him to holocaust deniers is like accusing one's oppoent in a political debate of being a Nazi.

And it's a bit rich considering he's in the same camp as a Holocaust denier.

Ah-hahahahahahahahaha . . .

Please . . . if you know someone who will pay me to state what i sincerely believe to be true, based on the complete lack of contemporary evidence for your boy Jeebus, tell me how to get in touch with them.

You crack me up. Even if you manage to clutch one of those straws, it won't keep you afloat.

Ok, thanks for at least mentioning their names... Both real, serious historians from the school of Copenhagen. I did YOUR homework and checked their actual writings. They are not Jesus deniers.


Niels Peter Lemche: Has published extensively on ancient Israel and the OT but not on the NT. Has participated in and lends much support to the Jesus Seminar:

The seminar's reconstruction of the historical Jesus portrayed him as an itinerant Hellenistic Jewish sage and faith healer who preached a gospel of liberation from injustice in startling parables and aphorisms.[4][5][6] An iconoclast, Jesus broke with established Jewish theological dogmas and social conventions [...] he depicts God as a loving father; he fraternizes with outsiders and criticizes insiders.[4][5][6] According to the seminar, Jesus was a mortal man born of two human parents, who did not perform nature miracles nor die as a substitute for sinners nor rise bodily from the dead.
(Wikipedia)

VERDICT: NOT A JESUS DENIER


Thomas L. Thompson: wrote in response to a 'dismissal' of one of his books by Bart Ehrman:
http://www.bibleinterp.com/articles/tho368005.shtml
[Bart Ehrman] has attributed to my book arguments and principles which I had never presented, certainly not that Jesus had never existed.3 Rather than dealing with the historicity of the figure of Jesus, my book had argued a considerably different issue [...]. Rather than a book on historicity, my The Messiah Myth offered an analysis of the thematic elements and motifs of a particular myth, which had a history of at least 2000 years. This included a discussion of the Synoptic Gospels’ theological reiteration that Samaritan and Jewish scriptures had their roots in an allegorically driven discourse on a large number of dominant ancient Near Eastern literary themes.

VERDICT: AMBIGUOUS, BUT SAYS HE DOES NOT ARGUE AGAINST THE HISTORICAL JESUS.

Strange tied in but in that regard I believed we do not know enough yet to draw any firm conclusions on how must or how little human actions are effecting the climate and whether if it is having some large effect is that effect for the good or bad overall as the weather/climate systems are far to complex for our current computer models.

From my understanding climate theories would tend to have us going into a cooling period now and frankly I must perfect losing shore line then having most of New York City/state not to mention Canada cover by a few miles of ice as happen not that long ago as in between 20 and a hundred thousands years ago.

You are in the same camp as Bill, a GW denier.

Odd as saying we do not know enough yet to reach a firm conclusions in my opinion is being a denier of human large scale cause GW, just as stating that Jesus odds of being a real person seem to me to be 50/50 is being a denier.

But then you seems to love to view the world in very simple terms and those taking complex positions are for the most part is far beyond your understanding.

**** off. BillRM is an idiot, and I've argued with him on this thread. I'm not in the same camp as him, I've consistently said that the jury is out. I've remained agnostic on the whole issue. BillRM is a denier who's backtracked because he's an idiot.

And I made him do the volte face, not you.

Anyway you're the one implying that people who don't agree with you are Holocaust deniers. Nobody has thrown any mud in your direction.

I am not in the Christian corner, but in the corner of rational atheists, respectful and aware of the relevant scholarship. My contradictors are in the corner of a long discredited theory peddled by idiotic amateurs.

The connection with the holocaust is important in terms of mental processes and debating techniques, which are similar, and not a low blow. I already stated in a post to Set that the "crime" so to speak is not at all comparable. Nobody cares about Jesus deniers, but holocaust deniers are dangerous. I can do the math: denying the existence and ordeal of what? 6 million Jews is 6 millions of times a graver crime than denying the existence and ordeal of one (1) Jew... So I am not outing those ideas on the same moral plane, but in both cases we have a scientifically discredited theory peddled by biased amateurs, for polemic reasons. Similarly, a denier is by definition 'locked' in his or her denial. They can't listen to reason. So even pointing out that the thesis has no traction whatsoever in academia does not prevent them from finding electricians and journalists who wrote books about GW or Jesus, respectively.

I am still waiting for anyone to post where I had stated that a real person could not be a part of the Jesus myth.

Nice for people to make up positions for me and then attacked me for positions I have never taken.