Proof that Jesus is a fictional invetion?

Uh oh....

Yes.

But then the evidence isn't the "real deal." In fact, it isn't even evidence. As the author admits: "Many of the parallels are conceptual or poetic, so they aren't all immediately obvious." Granted, all of that conceptual and poetic evidence can add up, but it usually adds up to zero - which I expect is the case here.

In another thread, one of the members posted a link to a précis of the author's argument. It was rather flimsy, and no evidence at all.

I am inclined to agree.
Can we really speak of evidence regarding texts that are thousands of years old? These old confessions they have discovered, can they be authenticated beyond any reasonable doubt? Something tells me that would be rather difficult..

As I understand it, nothing has been discovered. It's just an author who has taken Josephus's Jewish War, an extremely well-known text, and "reinterpreted" it as a linguistically subversive Roman propaganda text. That's not so much a discovery as pure conjecture.

I don't expect that any of the sources that we currently know about can be authenticated beyond a reasonable doubt. That's not to say that we'll never find evidence either proving or disproving the existence of Jesus. Perhaps some day a Bedouin shepherd will run across the bill from the Last Supper or a first draft of the Sermon on the Mount. Until then, we're left with what we have.

And here I was getting ready for a scandal. What a disppointment.

My apologies for spelling. The keyboard I am currently typing on doesn't register every press of the buttons

As far as old texts go, they're notorious unreliable. The putative passages in Flavius Josephus which are alleged to refer to Jesus are very likely interpolations. Louis Feldman of Yeshiva University, arguably the world's greatest living Hellenistic scholar and particularly with reference to Flavius Josephus, published a paper in the 1980s in which he states that more than 80% of modern scholars consider the Josephus passage to be at least in part, and some of saying in full, an interpolation. The famous passage in Tacitus which claims to mention Jesus (it doesn't actually do that) is considered by reputable scholars (those without a christian agenda) to be an interpolation.

As Joe points out, there is no confession. Even if there were, the provenance could reasonably be doubted--it could be a fabriction or an interpolation. As i said before, this guy's argument is flimsy.

Two door-to-door salesmen see each other on a street. They discover that their similar briefcases hold the same item that both are selling. One says to the other, "This is my street to sell." The other salesman replies, "No. This is my usual street to sell." The first salesman says, "People love me here. They think of me as Jesus Christ." The second salesman says, "If you can prove that, I'll leave and you can sell on this street."

So, the first salesman goes up to a nearby house door and knocks. A woman answers the door, and seeing the salesman announces in a loud voice, "Jesus Christ, are you here again!"

The second salesman shugs his shoulders and leaves.

End of an old joke.

I'll go along with Setanta considering his historiographical sensibilities. Moreover, even if I were to accept the existence of an historical Jesus I certainly cannot go along with his transformation (by Paul?) into the image of The Christ.

The Shroud of Turin has lately been dated to the time of Jesus by someone. I don't know what methods they used or anything. If they only could find his burial site and some linen threads that match -

marking

I bet Joe Atwill is hoping to make a bundle on this scam.

There is that.

I think Joe and Set make very convincing arguments. A new interpretation of some already known text is hardly sensational. I guess it becomes a popularity contest of sorts. Fuel on the fire...

That PRWeb page, of course, is designed to give a false impression of the thesis. The headline reads

What ancient confessions? The writings of Josephus? The headline makes it sounds as though some new documents had been discovered. That's how I understood it. Then I began to read the text of the press release and realized that there is absolutely nothing new about any of this. The quote in the headline, too, is spurious. 'We invented Jesus Christ'? Who said that? No attribution at all. I think I use the word 'scam' advisedly here.

Yes, that is what I understood as well. I read it rather quickly, but I got the impression that there was some new text that was going to be revealed. But it seems to be more a case of something "new" being "found" in already known texts.

Neither do I. Where did you see that?

As with gods, Jesus has to be proven before I believe he physically existed. I cannot accept either under the circumstances.