The 12 Apostates

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Posts by The 12 Apostates

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  51

  Did Jesus exist? Probably not

  by The 12 Apostates in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  threads about this have been made before, but none have been made for a few years.

  i was very much on the fence with this one, i never really cared.

  but i became curious recently, having had a few interactions with street preachers.

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  The 12 Apostates

  Did you read the article at the link I posted where Bart Ehrman deals with the question of Nazareth? Even if the claim about Nazareth was true it wouldn't matter. It would just be another historical error regarding the Jesus of history.

  I've bookmarked it for tomorrow. I'm open to anything else you wish to add as I will read it all.

  We know that there was a community of followers of a dead teacher from an early period. They had oral traditions about him long before these were written down. The gospels were also based on earlier written sources.

  Exactly, we agree, a teacher. Just a nameless guy of some description, maybe more than one. But was he born in Bethlehem? Did he claim to be the messiah and have 12 apostles? We cannot say.

  There is clearly an evolution of Christology within the gospels. Mark doesn't even mention the birth narratives and leaves his audience hanging regarding the resurrection.

  Yes.

  Nobody can be certain about which historical details are based on fact and which are exaggeration and which are pure fiction, but exactly the same can be said about almost every character of history.

  Most of them aren't venerated as messiahs or gods who punish people with eternal damnation for disbelief. The claims aren't quite of the same magnitude.

  Jesus's existence is crucial to the narrative, Socrates's existence isn't.
• 
  51

  Did Jesus exist? Probably not

  by The 12 Apostates in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  threads about this have been made before, but none have been made for a few years.

  i was very much on the fence with this one, i never really cared.

  but i became curious recently, having had a few interactions with street preachers.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
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  The 12 Apostates

  I wouldn't say it's so much convoluted, rather just long, I didn't sit down and craft it for hours, so apologies if it's not structured in the most comprehensible way. I write quickly and don't bother proof-reading when it's just internet forum stuff.

  Yes, that's what I'm saying. I think it's hard to communicate exactly what I mean by 'Jesus', because it's such a complex realm of study. After all, you have those who believe he was real and everything in the gospels is true. Those who believe he was real but only the non-supernatural elements are true. Those who believe he was real but only some or even none of the stories are true, and those who don't believe he existed at all. And then within those there is some overlap. I would place myself somewhere around the third option.

  There was probably someone (or several amalgamated people), but we know nothing about them beyond the most vague superficialities (I.e. they were Jewish). I mean, I agree that there were lots of Jewish radicals around at the time, and no doubt the Christ story used one or some of them as a basic template for the kind of person he was, but my argument I suppose is, so what? That's not the Jesus of the gospels any more than William Randolph Hearst is Charles Foster Kane.

  As for the PS, I didn't click it twice. I posted once, then added an edit, then noticed that someone else had posted and moved us onto a new page, so I re-posted the edit in a new post, so it wouldn't be missed if you'd perhaps already read the original post prior to the edit.

  TL;DR: I don't think we disagree to the degree you may have thought, although we do disagree on Nazareth it would appear, but I am willing to be proven wrong on that if you would like to post more about it.
• 
  51

  Did Jesus exist? Probably not

  by The 12 Apostates in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  threads about this have been made before, but none have been made for a few years.

  i was very much on the fence with this one, i never really cared.

  but i became curious recently, having had a few interactions with street preachers.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  The 12 Apostates

  I think you may be misinterpreting me somewhat here. I didn't go into very much detail in my opening post, and re-reading it I can see that there was a lack of clarity on my part in what I was saying. So I will add some just so we understand each other. I am not saying that Jesus wasn't in any way based on anyone, simply that whoever he was based on (if he was), that person remains unidentified and so there's no reason to assume that anything in that person's life resembled the life of Jesus beyond perhaps him being a Jew with a following, of which there were many at the time, rendering it a rather unremarkable thing. To that extent, can we really say he was 'Jesus'? We don't even know his name, if there even was a person.

  The dispute over the existence of Nazareth adds further doubt to the veracity of the 'earthly' details within the story of Jesus. And it is heavily disputed, with many of the claims that it must have existed at the time resting on the Bethlehem birth issue.
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  51

  Did Jesus exist? Probably not

  by The 12 Apostates in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  threads about this have been made before, but none have been made for a few years.

  i was very much on the fence with this one, i never really cared.

  but i became curious recently, having had a few interactions with street preachers.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  The 12 Apostates

  Let me flip it around and ask you in what ways this Jewish Rabbi who you think probably existed resembles Jesus? How can you say he does when we know literally nothing about him? I didn't actually say that he bears no resemblance to Jesus in anyway, I was simply implying that we know nothing about him so for all we know he bears no resemblance to Jesus, and the onus is still on the believer to demonstrate a connection. Until a person can even be identified, this is going to remain a tall order. Maybe there was someone, maybe there wasn't, but when you're dealing with maybes, it's always best to err on the side of non-belief.

  We know there were thousands of Jewish Rabbis around at the time in many sects, but we know very little about their life stories. What evidence is there for a Jewish Rabbi who was born in Bethlehem, had 12 disciples and was crucified in the 30s? Those are some of the earth-bound elements of Jesus's story and none of them have any evidence outside of the gospels to support their veracity; gospels which were written decades later by unknown authors. It's not extraordinary to claim that these events didn't happen. Jesus was probably based on many different Jewish Rabbis of the time, at best.

  The convoluted gospel stories could well be based on disagreements rooted in the fact that although the stories are mythical, the motives behind the writers shifted over the decades, requiring earlier parts to be altered with convoluted additions, like the Bethlehem story. The origin doesn't have to have been genuine for that to be the case.
• 
  51

  Did Jesus exist? Probably not

  by The 12 Apostates in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  threads about this have been made before, but none have been made for a few years.

  i was very much on the fence with this one, i never really cared.

  but i became curious recently, having had a few interactions with street preachers.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  The 12 Apostates

  A Jewish Rabbi existing and being later transformed by storytelling into Jesus is as good as Jesus never existing if the Jewish Rabbi bears no resemblance to Jesus in any way, which is likely the case given how little of a mark this Rabbi must have made on his higher profile contemporaries (none of them ever mentioned him). All knowledge about Jesus comes from writings that originate years after his supposed death. So whether it's likely or not, his existence remains a hypothesis and must be treated as unknown till proven true.

  The fact that the existence of Nazereth in the 1st century as anything more than a city of the dead remains in dispute still means that the onus is on believers to demonstrate that it existed. As yet it remains at best unproven.
• 
  51

  Did Jesus exist? Probably not

  by The 12 Apostates in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  threads about this have been made before, but none have been made for a few years.

  i was very much on the fence with this one, i never really cared.

  but i became curious recently, having had a few interactions with street preachers.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  The 12 Apostates

  There probably was an itinerant preacher named "Jesus" wandering around Galilee in the first half of the first century, who attracted a number of followers.
  ...
  One or more of Paul's disciples had been a disciple of the wandering Jesus.

  Whilst this is entirely possible, perhaps probable, there's no evidence that even a wandering teacher named Jesus existed. There were many Jewish teachers of course, and many many Jewish sects, but we don't know that any of these teachers was called Jesus, and we certainly can't make any connections between any of these teachers (Jesus or not) and the latter invention of the messianic Christ figure.

  Little is known for certain of Paul/Saul and his disciples either, although he is at least known to have existed in some form.
• 
  51

  Did Jesus exist? Probably not

  by The 12 Apostates in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  threads about this have been made before, but none have been made for a few years.

  i was very much on the fence with this one, i never really cared.

  but i became curious recently, having had a few interactions with street preachers.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  The 12 Apostates

  It doesn't matter what 'they' believe. Reality doesn't need their approval. However, if they can present some evidence that Jesus was real, then that would certainly be of interest to me. 'So-and-so scholar believes in Jesus so he must be real' obviously isn't going to be enough, but if they can explain why said scholar believes, that would be a start. The onus is very much on the believer to demonstrate that he existed, not on the non-believer to prove that he didn't.
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  64

  What Do You Think of Socialism?

  by minimus in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  do you support socialism?

  is it something that you would want in your country?.

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  The 12 Apostates

  And that post makes you look like a conceited bigot.
• 
  51

  Did Jesus exist? Probably not

  by The 12 Apostates in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  threads about this have been made before, but none have been made for a few years.

  i was very much on the fence with this one, i never really cared.

  but i became curious recently, having had a few interactions with street preachers.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  The 12 Apostates

  Threads about this have been made before, but none have been made for a few years. I was very much on the fence with this one, I never really cared. But I became curious recently, having had a few interactions with street preachers. Based on the limited research I've conducted over the past few days, I've come to the tentative conclusion that Jesus never existed. There were obviously many people named Jesus (or however they spelt it at the time) living in the ancient middle east, but none of them were the 'Jesus'. Not the supernatural Jesus, nor a more earth-bound facsimile. If there was a Jewish teacher called Jesus in 1st century Palestine, then his life will have been so different from the Jesus of Christianity that one couldn't possibly say he was the same person.

  Numerous pieces of evidence brought me to this conclusion, but the final nail in the coffin was the discovery that Nazereth didn't even exist in the 1st century. No Nazereth means no Jesus of Nazereth. I'm even inclined to retract the word 'tentative' from the previous paragraph.

  WHAT DO YOU THINK?
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  64

  What Do You Think of Socialism?

  by minimus in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  do you support socialism?

  is it something that you would want in your country?.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
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  The 12 Apostates

  If you want to see lazy go to Baltimore, Detroit, Memphis, Saint Louis and other inner cities where the drug culture is high and people suck of the work of others.

  Making sweeping generalisations about entire cities as an argument against the principle of a social safety net just makes you look like a sociopath.