If there was a real guy called Jesus of Nazareth around the early 1st century, who was crucified during Pontius Pilate, and his disciples and followers that formed the core of the religious movement later called Christianity, to argue that Jesus was nonetheless “completely fictional” becomes a mere twisting of words that miscommunicates its intent.
Isn’t that just what I said? I contrasted such a Jesus-figure with one who did not do those things, and said that the Jesus-figure you describe would count as a historical Jesus and one that did not do those things would not.
At this point no matter how much evidence appear for a historical Jesus, you can argue that he’s fictional because he doesn’t match well enough the story of the Bible.
When I start doing that then you can legitimately criticise me for it. Until then you are blaming me for something I haven’t done yet.
I’m getting tired, and this is becoming ludicrous. You’re not telling me why these things were important, if they weren’t real.
There could be many reasons, but the most obvious possibility is that Paul (or whoever) made up a story with those elements, and those who came afterwards had to work within that framework to maintain suspension of disbelief. If you’ve been proclaiming on street corners for years that you are followers of “Jesus of Nazareth” it could well be hard to suddenly rebrand yourself as followers of “Jesus of Bethlehem” when you figured out you’d have broader appeal if you claimed your messiah was the foretold Jewish messiah. They might wish with hindsight that they’d said he’d been born somewhere else to different parents with a different name, but you can’t change your whole brand identity overnight. That doesn’t mean the story is true, it just means that the person who made it up didn’t perfectly foresee the later opportunities to piggyback on other myths.
If you think about it, the argument that they must have had to keep those elements because they were real doesn’t actually make any sense. From the late first century onwards neither the people making up the Christian mythology nor their audience would have had any means to check whether those elements were factual or not. There would have been constraints on their ability to change their story, but historicity would not have been one of those constraints.
I’m not a Christian, I’m an atheist. That doesn’t mean I have to ignore what the evidence tells me.
I’m still not clear why you assume the zero point of the graph is a real story, as opposed to a made-up story. The fact that they changed it later isn’t evidence it’s real, just evidence that you can’t turn a cult on a dime.
Isn’t that just what I said? I contrasted such a Jesus-figure with one who did not do those things, and said that the Jesus-figure you describe would count as a historical Jesus and one that did not do those things would not.
I don’t understand. My version just has four elements: being an itinerant preacher, being called “Jesus of Nazareth”, being crucified by the Romans, and having his followers begin the Christian movement.
You already conceded there were many itinerant preacher, so that’s nothing special that we’d expect documentary evidence about for any specific one of them.
You already conceded that the name “Jesus” was commonplace, so there’s nothing special about that either.
We know as a matter of historical fact that the the Christian movement thought themselves as followers of Jesus of Nazareth. That’ s indisputable.
So the only thing that’s so extraordinary that you expect “documentary evidence” for you to you believe it happened, was that there was a crucifixion of this person? You don’t believe crucifixions happened in Judaea, is that it?
What exactly is this extraordinary hypothesis that you disbelieve in without the presence of documentary evidence?
There could be many reasons, but the most obvious possibility is that Paul (or whoever) made up a story with those elements,
And again you can’t explain why those elements were inserted. You just don’t have an explanation for them if they were fictional, you just call it a mistake on part of the unknown authors and move on.
Cult leaders don’t make up stories about fictional people with their own divine missions, they make up stories about their own visions, their own supposed divine missions. Show me a cult leader that ever invented other fictional people to be the messiahs, instead of themselves.
You aren’t addressing any of my points, you have just written your bottomline.
I’m still not clear why you assume the zero point of the graph is a real story, as opposed to a made-up story.
That’s very simple.
Besides all the arguments I’ve already given you about none of the story make at all sense as fictional, and goes against everything we know about how religious groups write their stories, there’s the plain fact that when asking if a person that’s supposed to have lived in existed for real or not. I give significant weight to the beliefs on the subject of the people that lived in his/her time, or as near it as we can get.
I haven’t seen “documentary evidence” that Socrates existed. It’s just that his contemporaries believed him to exist, and his life story doesn’t make sense as a fictional story. Same with Jesus and his own near-contemporaries.
Isn’t that just what I said? I contrasted such a Jesus-figure with one who did not do those things, and said that the Jesus-figure you describe would count as a historical Jesus and one that did not do those things would not.
When I start doing that then you can legitimately criticise me for it. Until then you are blaming me for something I haven’t done yet.
There could be many reasons, but the most obvious possibility is that Paul (or whoever) made up a story with those elements, and those who came afterwards had to work within that framework to maintain suspension of disbelief. If you’ve been proclaiming on street corners for years that you are followers of “Jesus of Nazareth” it could well be hard to suddenly rebrand yourself as followers of “Jesus of Bethlehem” when you figured out you’d have broader appeal if you claimed your messiah was the foretold Jewish messiah. They might wish with hindsight that they’d said he’d been born somewhere else to different parents with a different name, but you can’t change your whole brand identity overnight. That doesn’t mean the story is true, it just means that the person who made it up didn’t perfectly foresee the later opportunities to piggyback on other myths.
If you think about it, the argument that they must have had to keep those elements because they were real doesn’t actually make any sense. From the late first century onwards neither the people making up the Christian mythology nor their audience would have had any means to check whether those elements were factual or not. There would have been constraints on their ability to change their story, but historicity would not have been one of those constraints.
I’m still not clear why you assume the zero point of the graph is a real story, as opposed to a made-up story. The fact that they changed it later isn’t evidence it’s real, just evidence that you can’t turn a cult on a dime.
I don’t understand. My version just has four elements: being an itinerant preacher, being called “Jesus of Nazareth”, being crucified by the Romans, and having his followers begin the Christian movement.
You already conceded there were many itinerant preacher, so that’s nothing special that we’d expect documentary evidence about for any specific one of them. You already conceded that the name “Jesus” was commonplace, so there’s nothing special about that either. We know as a matter of historical fact that the the Christian movement thought themselves as followers of Jesus of Nazareth. That’ s indisputable. So the only thing that’s so extraordinary that you expect “documentary evidence” for you to you believe it happened, was that there was a crucifixion of this person? You don’t believe crucifixions happened in Judaea, is that it?
What exactly is this extraordinary hypothesis that you disbelieve in without the presence of documentary evidence?
And again you can’t explain why those elements were inserted. You just don’t have an explanation for them if they were fictional, you just call it a mistake on part of the unknown authors and move on.
Cult leaders don’t make up stories about fictional people with their own divine missions, they make up stories about their own visions, their own supposed divine missions. Show me a cult leader that ever invented other fictional people to be the messiahs, instead of themselves.
You aren’t addressing any of my points, you have just written your bottomline.
That’s very simple.
Besides all the arguments I’ve already given you about none of the story make at all sense as fictional, and goes against everything we know about how religious groups write their stories, there’s the plain fact that when asking if a person that’s supposed to have lived in existed for real or not. I give significant weight to the beliefs on the subject of the people that lived in his/her time, or as near it as we can get.
I haven’t seen “documentary evidence” that Socrates existed. It’s just that his contemporaries believed him to exist, and his life story doesn’t make sense as a fictional story. Same with Jesus and his own near-contemporaries.