13 ms·

Would be hard for Jesus, given he didn't exist.

by stackbutterflow 4y ago

tsimionescu 4y ago
That is an extremely fringe belief, in disagreement with most scholars of antiquity.
- ncmncm 4y ago
  But the gradient is positive.
  - bhaak 4y ago
    What's that supposed to mean?
    - ncmncm 4y ago
      In 1900, no historians thought Jesus was like Moses, Abraham, and Adam, made up from whole cloth. In 2000, some did. Today, more. The scenario as I understand it is that Paul's writing came first. But to get a congregation to pay attention they found they had to invent a corporeal Jesus to have said their things, then apostles to have heard them, then a bio for where and when, and finally gospels to tell it in. For those who object that such a thing wasn't done, consider Moses and, really, all of Genesis and Exodus. Iliad. Thor'n'Loki. It was not just done, but positively demanded.
- option_key 4y ago
  True, but that's because history as a discipline has incredibly low standard of evidence. They collectively decided that since reliable evidence is often very difficult to produce, they will settle for what they can get. A lot of antique or even medieval historical figures are known from a single sentence in some chronicle written 100 years after their death.
  - tsimionescu 4y ago
    That would make it unknowable whether he existed, it would not mean we have reason to believe he didn't. This is not like physics where it's natural to assume something didn't exist if the proof for its existence is not strong enough.
    - ncmncm 4y ago
      Only because a lot of people want to believe. We are all confident Adam, Noah, and Moses were made up, with none of the proof positive that you are demanding for this one case.
      - tsimionescu 4y ago
        Adam, Noah and Moses were only attested and believed to exist by groups living in the Kingdom of Judah. For Moses, people have looked a lot for any kind of evidence that there was some significant Jewish presence in Egypt, or Egyptian migration to the area of Israel, and nothing of the kind has been found, either in Egyptian documents or in archaeological evidence - which is actually evidence of absence when expecting a significant population to have migrated that way. Further accounts from the books of Exodus and Deuteronomy, such as the battle of Jericho, have also been somewhat conclusively debunked (the city of Jericho hadn't existed, at least not worth walls, for a few hundred years before the time of the conquest is supposed to have taken place). Similarly, we have looked long and hard for evidence of a massive flood that could have lent some credence to the story of Noah, and nothing of any significant magnitude was found for that time - and here, we know for sure that a flood would have left significant geological evidence, so we know the flood can't have existed. Adam has so little information associated with him that it's hard to even define what it would have meant for him to exist. We do know for sure, based on DNA evidence, that there is no single father + mother pair from which all humans living today have sprung, definitely not anyone living anywhere near close to the Jewish account of Adam. In contrast, the idea of a founder of the Christian sect, one who was killed under Pontius Pilate around the year 33, has no major evidence against it, and is a somewhat plausible account of how the Christian sect could have come to be. There are no sources asserting a different origin, and there are no sources that contradict the possibility that Pontius Pilate and the Jewish authorities would have punished someone behaving like Jesus did. So, the neutral position is to say that he may or may not have existed, we don't know. If you further believe the biblical or non-biblical sources attesting to his existence, even if you think they are weak, you can even say that it's more likely that he existed than that he didn't.
- scott_s 4y ago
  I don't think it is a fringe belief. I have not heard of such a consensus among "most scholars of antiquity." What are you basing that on? A discussion I heard in the past few years which mentions that is an open question is here: https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/the-evidence-for-the-history-of-jesus/ https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/the-evidence-f...
  - tsimionescu 4y ago
    The Wikipedia article [0] has a lot of quotes pointing to this. Even modern supporters of the theory, like Robert M. Price, recognize it as a fringe position within academia. Of course, it is an open question in some sense, as the evidence is nowhere near as powerful as, say, Newton's laws of motion, or the existence of Julius Caesar. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus#CITEREFStanton2002 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus#CITEREF...

Would be hard for Jesus, given he didn't exist.

tsimionescu 4y ago

That is an extremely fringe belief, in disagreement with most scholars of antiquity.

ncmncm 4y ago
But the gradient is positive.
- bhaak 4y ago
  What's that supposed to mean?
  - ncmncm 4y ago
    In 1900, no historians thought Jesus was like Moses, Abraham, and Adam, made up from whole cloth. In 2000, some did. Today, more. The scenario as I understand it is that Paul's writing came first. But to get a congregation to pay attention they found they had to invent a corporeal Jesus to have said their things, then apostles to have heard them, then a bio for where and when, and finally gospels to tell it in. For those who object that such a thing wasn't done, consider Moses and, really, all of Genesis and Exodus. Iliad. Thor'n'Loki. It was not just done, but positively demanded.
option_key 4y ago
True, but that's because history as a discipline has incredibly low standard of evidence. They collectively decided that since reliable evidence is often very difficult to produce, they will settle for what they can get. A lot of antique or even medieval historical figures are known from a single sentence in some chronicle written 100 years after their death.
- tsimionescu 4y ago
  That would make it unknowable whether he existed, it would not mean we have reason to believe he didn't. This is not like physics where it's natural to assume something didn't exist if the proof for its existence is not strong enough.
  - ncmncm 4y ago
    Only because a lot of people want to believe. We are all confident Adam, Noah, and Moses were made up, with none of the proof positive that you are demanding for this one case.
    - tsimionescu 4y ago
      Adam, Noah and Moses were only attested and believed to exist by groups living in the Kingdom of Judah. For Moses, people have looked a lot for any kind of evidence that there was some significant Jewish presence in Egypt, or Egyptian migration to the area of Israel, and nothing of the kind has been found, either in Egyptian documents or in archaeological evidence - which is actually evidence of absence when expecting a significant population to have migrated that way. Further accounts from the books of Exodus and Deuteronomy, such as the battle of Jericho, have also been somewhat conclusively debunked (the city of Jericho hadn't existed, at least not worth walls, for a few hundred years before the time of the conquest is supposed to have taken place). Similarly, we have looked long and hard for evidence of a massive flood that could have lent some credence to the story of Noah, and nothing of any significant magnitude was found for that time - and here, we know for sure that a flood would have left significant geological evidence, so we know the flood can't have existed. Adam has so little information associated with him that it's hard to even define what it would have meant for him to exist. We do know for sure, based on DNA evidence, that there is no single father + mother pair from which all humans living today have sprung, definitely not anyone living anywhere near close to the Jewish account of Adam. In contrast, the idea of a founder of the Christian sect, one who was killed under Pontius Pilate around the year 33, has no major evidence against it, and is a somewhat plausible account of how the Christian sect could have come to be. There are no sources asserting a different origin, and there are no sources that contradict the possibility that Pontius Pilate and the Jewish authorities would have punished someone behaving like Jesus did. So, the neutral position is to say that he may or may not have existed, we don't know. If you further believe the biblical or non-biblical sources attesting to his existence, even if you think they are weak, you can even say that it's more likely that he existed than that he didn't.
scott_s 4y ago
I don't think it is a fringe belief. I have not heard of such a consensus among "most scholars of antiquity." What are you basing that on? A discussion I heard in the past few years which mentions that is an open question is here: https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/the-evidence-for-the-history-of-jesus/ https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/the-evidence-f...
- tsimionescu 4y ago
  The Wikipedia article [0] has a lot of quotes pointing to this. Even modern supporters of the theory, like Robert M. Price, recognize it as a fringe position within academia. Of course, it is an open question in some sense, as the evidence is nowhere near as powerful as, say, Newton's laws of motion, or the existence of Julius Caesar. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus#CITEREFStanton2002 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus#CITEREF...