This is a question for Samnell that I didn't want to pose in an unrelated thread. Please refrain from flaming on 'til after (if) he posts. Then you guys can knock yourselves out until the thread gets locked.
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Samnell,
You seem to be a fellow Jesus-hater, and, if so, I was hoping you could help me out.
I was wondering from where you got the Jesus didn't exist stuff. That's been one of my pet theories ever since I read a book called The Foundations of Christianity by Karl Kautsky. It was written around 1910 or so, so I've always felt vulnerable basing my theory on a book that may or may not be 100 years out of date.
Kautsky was an orthodox Marxist by pre-Communist standards. With that caveat announced, I highly recommend the book.
Anyway, I know the argument has something to do with Flavius Josephus being the only non-Christian souce to mention Jesus before the Christians started spreading, but if you could fill in the details (or point to a source), it'd be much appreciated.
You can start with Wikipedia's Historicity of Jesus. Debates over the accuracy of Wikipedia aside, it provides numerous references including books where you can do your own research.
I would not classify myself as a 'Jesus hater'. I do not, however, believe he was divine. Even assuming there was a real Jesus of Nazareth, that does not prove the gospels were 100% accurate in their relating his life and work.
Personally, I am willing to assume Jesus existed and I am willing to listen to his message. Beyond that, I am going to need more non-biased evidence.
You can start with Wikipedia's Historicity of Jesus. Debates over the accuracy of Wikipedia aside, it provides numerous references including books where you can do your own research.
I would not classify myself as a 'Jesus hater'. I do not, however, believe he was divine. Even assuming there was a real Jesus of Nazareth, that does not prove the gospels were 100% accurate in their relating his life and work.
Personally, I am willing to assume Jesus existed and I am willing to listen to his message. Beyond that, I am going to need more non-biased evidence.
Oh, it doesn't matter to me either way, except I'm curious.
In the book I mention above, Kautsky cites some 19th-century historians/philosophers disputing his historicity, but he doesn't make any conclusions and the sources were all in German. Also, I used to see a pamphlet advertised in the back of some magazines under the bold title JOSEPHUS LIED!, but I never got to read it.
And then along comes Samnell proclaiming that Jesus never existed, so I figured I'd get to find out the argument for free.
But, I'll go look at wikipedia. Sigh.
Well, I'll be.
I had seen the Historicity of Jesus page before and knew that wasn't what I wanted, but I followed the link to Jesus Myth Theory and that's EXACTLY what I wanted. Guess I've got some reading to do.
Thanks.
You can start with Wikipedia's Historicity of Jesus. Debates over the accuracy of Wikipedia aside, it provides numerous references including books where you can do your own research.
I would not classify myself as a 'Jesus hater'. I do not, however, believe he was divine. Even assuming there was a real Jesus of Nazareth, that does not prove the gospels were 100% accurate in their relating his life and work.
Personally, I am willing to assume Jesus existed and I am willing to listen to his message. Beyond that, I am going to need more non-biased evidence.
Interesting. I will have to check that link out.
If I remember correctly, the question is not so much did Josephus lie, but were his writings tampered with. I do not know if we will ever know for sure. It seems to me that if the gospel accounts were true, other cultures would have taken more notice. Also, since I have never seen a miracle performed, I have a hard time believing the accounts written by second hand witnesses 30 years after the fact that have been translated.
If it is on Wikipedia, it must be true.
Merriam-Webster thinks it to be.
Then again, bootylicious is now a real word.
I'll be taking the grain of salt with the tequila.
Wait...
"Historicity" is a real word?
Seriously?
Sounds like a Bushism doesn't it?
Okay, I had made it a rule to steer clear of all controversial subjects, such as religion, when posting on this site, but I've violated that rule several times now, and I just can't help myself, because I'm curious to know if I'm misunderstanding something.
It seems to me that Samnell was implying a lack of evidence that ABRAHAM existed, not Jesus.
You were referring to this post, weren't you, Doodlebug Anklebiter?
I thought it was historocity? But the spell-check doesn't like that, so I guess not.
If I remember countless hours of documentaries and random reading right, our Romanized pal Josephus was not the only Jewish source to document the historical Jesus. If Jews acknowledged the historical man existed, then probably he did, since their contemporary accounts would indicate most thought only very casually about him, if at all (there were many people at the time claiming to be the Messiah), despite the trumped-up charge of them calling for his blood.
I could be wrong. I get a lot of information coming into my brain from many sources, so take it all with a grain of salt.
I personally am pretty sure a historical Jesus existed. Even extremely wild legends and myths begin with some kernel of truth.
Keep in mind that Jesus back then is as common as calling someone 'Joe' today. There were several insurrectionists as viewed by the state in that time frame with the same name. What is being disputed in Josephus' accounts is that some of the text appeared to be edited by a redactor centuries later to expand on 'who' this particular Jesus was.
I believe, the particular passage says something like Jesus the Christ. The problem I have with that is Josephus was Jewish. If it were the actual Christ, why did he only mention him once in passing?
I believe, the particular passage says something like Jesus the Christ. The problem I have with that is Josephus was Jewish. If it were the actual Christ, why did he only mention him once in passing?
This link really dissects the controversy from both sides of the discussion, albeit more from an apologetics point of view. But an interesting read nonetheless.
Thanks!
You seem to be a fellow Jesus-hater, and, if so, I was hoping you could help me out.
I wouldn't say that I'm a Jesus-hater. I don't hate the guy in the sense that I think the character presented to us in the Christian Bible is some sort of unimaginable monster. He certainly adheres to some awfully monstrous doctrines and seems rather confused, to put it mildly. But along the way he does manage to say some relatively decent things too. If they can be divorced from the supernatural imprimatur with which his proclamations are made (and I go back and forth on that) and isolated from the awful stuff (again I go back and forth on this) then he comes off a lot like many characters from fiction or history as a kind of mixed bag.
My own position on Jesus's historicity is that the subject needs to be better specified. The historical Jesus of which Christians speak is a miracle working, dead and resurrected son of Yahweh. Those attributes are as fundamental to him as his having hair and skin. In that sense, I'm quite confident saying there was no historical Jesus just as I'm quite confident saying there was no historical Hercules, Thor, or Odin.
But take out all the magic tricks and you end up with something else that I don't think many believers would be happy with: a total nobody. This Jesus was one of probably thousands with a common name. He was likewise one of a great number of people claiming to be messiahs and like all the rest he managed to completely fail at being the messiah. Was he executed? Was he married? Did he have a brother? Did he collect a coterie of young men and women who followed him around like he was Jerry Garcia? None of those are exceptional traits for a man in his line of work. But such a character is utterly marginal, so unimportant as to be beneath notice. We would not expect to find any significant documentary evidence that he ever lived. He's one of history's invisibles. It would be easy to invent such a character and sketch his life on preexisting themes. It would be easy to take such a character recently dead and instead invent a series of post-death visions and deeds.
For this second Jesus, I maintain that our remove we can't determine if there's any history or not. The layers of myth are so thick as to obscure anything that might be there. Was he really born in Bethlehem in a manger? It's not impossible, but it's also not impossible that this is just the then-latest version of the humble beginnings common to savior figures of the era. It's hardly beyond belief that even if he lived and his life did not act out all the proper proof texts that his latter-day adherents would claim it had. There are over fifty extant gospels, so even believers should be able to agree that firsthand knowledge of the subject was hardly necessary to get an ancient person to write one.
The second Jesus is also, of course, fundamentally alien to believers. Even if he existed he may as well not have as he bears no resemblance to the most salient traits of the Jesus with which they are concerned.
I was wondering from where you got the Jesus didn't exist stuff. That's been one of my pet theories ever since I read a book called The Foundations of Christianity by Karl Kautsky. It was written around 1910 or so, so I've always felt vulnerable basing my theory on a book that may or may not be 100 years out of date.Kautsky was an orthodox Marxist by pre-Communist standards. With that caveat announced, I highly recommend the book.
You've probably read better than I have, then. The only dedicated work I've read on the subject was, while a fun read, a pile of stinking crap when it came to history. The authors are a pair of pagan propagandists, and it shows through often. Their scholarship was rather slapdash, to put it mildly, and after reading the book I found plenty of people more learned than I on the subject poking holes in the mess. I didn't check all the endnotes myself, but was astonished to discover they could not even deign to establish the provenance of one of the artifacts they touted as a major piece of evidence for their position. The citation was, as I recall, literally "an old antiquities book".
I'm aware of the broad contours of the mythicist theses, though. They have trouble gaining traction in academia because most mythicists, like us, are not trained classicists and they will thus make elementary errors of fact that get them bounced before the full argument is even considered. I think that's harsh but fair, really. If someone is making the kind of mistakes that no decent scholar of the period would make, their work is obviously not as deserving of limited time and energy as those who do not make these errors. I'll do my best to lay it out after I talk about Josephus.
Anyway, I know the argument has something to do with Flavius Josephus being the only non-Christian souce to mention Jesus before the Christians started spreading, but if you could fill in the details (or point to a source), it'd be much appreciated.
If we had a genuine, uncorrupted, uninterpolated, non-Christian testimony to the existence of a Jesus who founded a new religious movement from a period contemporaneous with events, that would be golden. I would accept happily that yes, there was a Jesus. But that would still end up being a Jesus in the second sense above. It would take more than documentary evidence to establish any miracles, and in the absence of that their presence in the account itself injures the account's credibility.
So far as the Josephus passages go, most scholars do agree there is interpolation involved. The most problematic of them is first cited more than a century later by Eusebius, who practically told the reader of his history of Christianity that he would suppress anything injurious to the religion's reputation. Eusebius was a fan of Plato's idea of the Royal Lie, a deliberately false religion constructed to keep the commons in line. Those facts aren't fatal in themselves, but are reason to proceed very carefully. Origen, writing earlier, knows the work and yet does not mention the Testimonium. Since Origen was a Christian intellectual, one imagines that if he knew it he would. That he does not suggests that it did not exist in his copy, or at the very least did not exist in a version congenial to the Christian reader.
Was it fraud? Did a Christian copyist's marginal note migrate into the main text? Did a neutral, dismissive, or simply sparse mention get inflated into a text that makes Josephus sound like a believing Christian instead of a Jew? I think one could make a decent case for all of these scenarios.
The other contemporaneous references to Jesus are very weak, being late, secondhand, referring to his followers but not him, etc. They can be reasonably set aside without much argument.
The problems with the historicist case aside the documentary evidence are serious. The criteria by which the historicists try to peel the myth away and get at Jesus the man are pretty bad from a historical standpoint.
It’s claimed that Jesus must be an authentic guy because if the things claimed about his death did not happen no Christian would have included them. Dying on a cross is embarrassing. Who would follow a humiliated savior? But other saviors of the time castrated themselves and demanded it of their priests. In a culture obsessed with manly virility, this would be about the most humiliating thing ever. Yet this savior had a following. If we accept the argument for Jesus, we must accept it for the other guy too. The Infancy Gospels treat Jesus as a kind of idiot playing magic tricks that involve killing and resurrecting his buddies. That’s got to be humiliating. So we’d have to accept those too, but they are in no canon I’m aware of. And this is before we get into how people in the past would not be embarrassed by the same things we would be.
Another prong of the historical argument is the criteria of multiple attestations. That is, if the story is repeated in more than one gospel it’s probably true as they would have worked from the same firsthand knowledge and naturally repeated each other. Leaving aside the numerous contradictions of fact in the canonical gospels, they are not at all independent of each other. It’s just as reasonable to conclude that when one writer repeats another, it’s because they copied rather than report their own independent knowledge. Considering this would hardly be the first place in the Bible where it was copied into itself (at least from our POV, they didn’t have the same canon we did) it’s rather hard to dismiss. Much of the Bible we have is transparent repetitions of the same narrative arcs over and over again, sometimes verbatim, sometimes with names switched, and sometimes with interesting theological adjustments.
To put it bluntly, the aforementioned criteria don’t really stand up. They’re not the kind of thing you would use on an ordinary document with ordinary historical issues. That they are deployed with relatively little criticism speaks to the theological agendas of the scholars in question (most historical Jesus followers are also historical Jesus worshippers) and to the special position the Bible has in our culture. We don’t have the kind of arguments about the Sumerian Kings List as we do about the Bible because everybody agrees that no one really lived that long. The huge lifespans are a rhetorical technique to inflate the importance of various monarchs. If you say the same thing about the lifespans in Genesis, expect to get a different and much less comfortable response even from many secular audiences. Even scholarship more than a century old like the Documentary Hypothesis comes across as the kind of thing only secularists and people at the radical left fringe of the religion would believe about the Bible. We have the same issue with Jesus and the texts about him.
What is problematic for me is the absence of any good documentary evidence on top of the fact that Jesus’s narrative fits so very well with both the themes (not every literal detail, but the general plot arc) common to other savior figures from the same time and place and with the already-established tradition of retelling older religious stories in new contexts with different protagonists. When this thing happens in modern writing, we have no problem saying that X is a retelling of Y or deliberately partake of the same tropes. Why not the same of the Bible? In fact, we say exactly that about the myths of any other culture: tricksters, psychopomps, dying and reborn godmen, ritual acts to create sacred space, etc. The only thing that excepts the Bible from this is that it’s still a major object of religious devotion in our culture, so it’s granted all kinds of special pleadings that hold back both popular and scholarly understanding.
It seems to me that Samnell was implying a lack of evidence that ABRAHAM existed, not Jesus.
So everybody's clear:
Jesus? Maybe but all kinds of problems in determining if we have anything historical of him that survived.
Moses? Pure myth, like Perseus or Hercules.
Abraham? Pure myth, like Romulus and Remus.
Paul of Tarsis? Historical, but didn't write everything credited to him.
Just poppin' in to recommend a book that I found very interesting on the broader subject.
Moses? Pure myth, like Perseus or Hercules.
I'm hedging a bet that the mythmaking about Moses may have roots in the authenticated history of Pharoah Amenhotep IV (aka Atenaken) as well as the Hyksos occupation of Egypt.
Haven't read through everyone's posts yet, but I did find exactly what I was after in the Jesus Myth Theory page on Wikipedia.
Court Fool should be canonized.
Haven't read through everyone's posts yet, but I did find exactly what I was after in the Jesus Myth Theory page on Wikipedia.
Court Fool should be cannonized*.
FIFY
;-)
Court Fool should be canonized.
We should have canonical CourtFool! But what will we do with all noncanonical CourtFools?
Okay, I had made it a rule to steer clear of all controversial subjects, such as religion, when posting on this site, but I've violated that rule several times now, and I just can't help myself, because I'm curious to know if I'm misunderstanding something.
It seems to me that Samnell was implying a lack of evidence that ABRAHAM existed, not Jesus.
You were referring to this post, weren't you, Doodlebug Anklebiter?
Hmmm. Yes.
Ah, I see. A later poster brings in Jesus.
Oh well. Nevertheless, I did end up getting what I wanted.
Supposedly there were a couple of guys from Jerusalem during the Roman occupation that claimed they were the son of God, got crucified, then their followers claimed something about rising from the dead. Meaning this happened more than once.
Considering that and how Christianity had a big feud with and almost lost to the Cult of Mithras I suppose it's not Jesus or his minions who did the most work but Luck.
Luck happens.
Luck happens.
Luck and getting the state to suppress your rivals, yeah.
Luck and getting the state to suppress your rivals, yeah.
Luck happens.
Fists happen, too.
Supposedly there were a couple of guys from Jerusalem during the Roman occupation that claimed they were the son of God, got crucified, then their followers claimed something about rising from the dead. Meaning this happened more than once.
Considering that and how Christianity had a big feud with and almost lost to the Cult of Mithras I suppose it's not Jesus or his minions who did the most work but Luck.
Luck happens.
You're thinking of Appolonius, Simon Magus and Herod. They all claimed to be the messiah and died horribly except for Simon Magus. Simon Magus is believed to go to Ethiopia and help found the Gnostic sect of Christianity.
Luck and getting the state to suppress your rivals, yeah.
Luck happens.
Luck, power, political nous and the idea if you cant crush it adopt it (a very Roman idea)....
The latter Roman emperors were very keen on monotheism as they could use it for political control. The Pontifex Maximus (aka the Pope) is a religious title that belonged to the Emperors of Rome.
Much like My Queen - Liz 2.0 Queen of Down-under, Pommy land, the Kiwis and blah blah blah... is the head of the Church of England. Power through the control of a single religion.
Aurelian very much laid the ground work for monotheistic rule through Sol Invictus. Fixing up the failures of the Imperial Cult. Constantine the "first" Christian ruler (who may have converted on his death bed) full understood the power that the state stood to gain in controling a single unified religion.
We should have canonical CourtFool!
Wow. this is so sad.
I know! I am a hopeless flip-flopper and can not remember what I said from one day to the next. Why do I suddenly feel like Brian?
The latter Roman emperors were very keen on monotheism as they could use it for political control. The Pontifex Maximus (aka the Pope) is a religious title that belonged to the Emperors of Rome.
Not to long ago I read a biography of Julius Caesar and was, I don't know, kind of amazed that Caesar was a high priest for much of his political life.
Not much of our idea of a cleric, huh?
Moses? Pure myth, like Perseus or Hercules.
There's a lot of simmilarity between the origin story of Moses and the self-biograhical testimony of Akhenaton. There's been some theorising that Moses or the author of Genesis may have come fro Akhenaton's court and found a new way to pass along what had become heresy to Egypt's pharonic culture.
It's also worth reminding folks that the actual founder of Christianity was not Jesus, but Paul. And the execution of Paul and Peter under orders of Nero are part of accepted history.
I believe the mystey behind Akhenaton was conclusively solved by a couple of years ago by Doctor Doom and Thanos the Titan.
Not much of our idea of a cleric, huh?
Have you looked at the history of Popes? What about the Ayatollah? Plenty of religious leaders have seized or attempted to seize secular authority.
The latter Roman emperors were very keen on monotheism as they could use it for political control. The Pontifex Maximus (aka the Pope) is a religious title that belonged to the Emperors of Rome.Not to long ago I read a biography of Julius Caesar and was, I don't know, kind of amazed that Caesar was a high priest for much of his political life.
Not much of our idea of a cleric, huh?
First - priesthood was important part of political career in ancient Rome. Religion was inherently linked to politics there. Any public office was sacred (to a various degree, some functions were sacrosanct and assaulting such person or even resisting their actions was sacrilage)
Second - almost every adult male Roman citizen was a minor priest. Each pater familias was responsible for cult of household and family gods.Third - degree of religion/magic in everday life of ancient Romans would be closer to Runequest than to D&D.
Not much of our idea of a cleric, huh?Have you looked at the history of Popes? What about the Ayatollah? Plenty of religious leaders have seized or attempted to seize secular authority.
It's not the fact that he was interested in secular power that strikes me. It's the fact that the guy was pretty irreligious. He was a known whore-mongerer (his soldiers' words, not mine) and a ruthlessly brutal military leader. It's doubtful whether or not he even believed in any of the Roman gods.
Not familiar with all of the Popes, so I'm sure one of them fits the bill. Ayatollah Khomeini? Not so much.
Anyway, it's not a earth-shaking revelation or anything (ohmygod! religious leaders sometimes aren't sincere!?!), but it wasn't something I had known before.
Drejk--Didn't know the second point. Good point.
Drejk--Didn't know the second point. Good point.
Well, they weren't priests in a modern sense of ordination but they inherited religious authority within familias automatically from their fathers (or grandfathers if grandpa outlived papa) and were responsible for certain family rituals. I think that in HBO Rome series there is a scene or two in which Lucius Vorenus is performing such rituals.
And to move closer to actual topic of the discussion - my knowledge of Jewish culture and religion is minor but I think that patriarchs of Jewish families (and other semitic cultures of that region) had somewhat similar religious responsibilities as Roman patriarchs.
Anyway, it's not a earth-shaking revelation or anything (ohmygod! religious leaders sometimes aren't sincere!?!), but it wasn't something I had known before.
I misunderstood your surprise. My mistake.
He [Julius Caesar] was a known whore-mongerer (his soldiers' words, not mine)
Was just driving back from the gas station when this flashed through my head:
So, I think it was at a triumph. All of Rome lines the Via Sacra (or whatever) to honor the conquering priest. Fasces are held aloft as Gallic princesses in chains pass by escorted by stern-faced legionnaires. Next, the treasures of France are paraded past by slave bearers. Finally, the centurions march through boisterously bragging that their bald-headed general (and priest!) had bedded all the whores from Byzantium to Bordeaux (and the king of Bythnia to boot!)!
So, I take it back. With some fluff changes, he'd make a pretty great cleric of Asmodeus.
So, using 20-pt. buy, I get:
Julius Caesar
10th-level cleric/7th-level fighter
LE
S 13
D 10
C 10
I 15
W 15
C 19
But that's just a guess.
EDIT: I forgot the +2 for being human. I'll put it in Wisdom.
He [Julius Caesar] was a known whore-mongerer (his soldiers' words, not mine)Was just driving back from the gas station when this flashed through my head:
So, I think it was at a triumph. All of Rome lines the Via Sacra (or whatever) to honor the conquering priest. Fasces are held aloft as Gallic princesses in chains pass by escorted by stern-faced legionnaires. Next, the treasures of France are paraded past by slave bearers. Finally, the centurions march through boisterously bragging that their bald-headed general (and priest!) had bedded all the whores from Byzantium to Bordeaux (and the king of Bythnia to boot!)!
So, I take it back. With some fluff changes, he'd make a pretty great cleric of Asmodeus.
So, using 20-pt. buy, I get:
Julius Caesar
10th-level cleric/7th-level fighter
LES 13
D 10
C 10
I 15
W 15
C 19But that's just a guess.
EDIT: I forgot the +2 for being human. I'll put it in Wisdom.
Of topic and it belongs in another thread......
Sulla was lawful Evil - Julius Lawful Neutral... In marching on Rome he was following precedent set by Sulla. In order not to be prosecuted.... His term as Consul was up, his immunity to prosecution (on mostly trumped up charges by his political opposition)was coming to an end and he needed to do something to prevent himself from being executed, or exiled and have his family assets stripped.
You have to remember he barely survived though Sulla's reign of terror, where Sulla was drawing up lists of people and families that were to be executed and their properties taken. Julius was on one of those lists he was very determined to let it happen again.
Of topic and it belongs in another thread......
Sulla was lawful Evil - Julius Lawful Neutral... In marching on Rome he was following precedent set by Sulla. In order not to be prosecuted.... His term as Consul was up, his immunity to prosecution (on mostly trumped up charges by his political opposition)was coming to an end and he needed to do something to prevent himself from being executed, or exiled and have his family assets stripped.
You have to remember he barely survived though Sulla's reign of terror, where Sulla was drawing up lists of people and families that were to be executed and their properties taken. Julius was on one of those lists he was very determined to let it happen again.
You make a pretty good apology, but from strict D&D terms, the dude was totally evil. The ruthlessness he displayed during his campaigns against the Gauls prove that without a doubt, I think. The fact that during the Civil War he achieved a reputation for leniency only shows that he wasn't stupid evil.
He [Julius Caesar] was a known whore-mongerer (his soldiers' words, not mine)Was just driving back from the gas station when this flashed through my head:
So, I think it was at a triumph. All of Rome lines the Via Sacra (or whatever) to honor the conquering priest. Fasces are held aloft as Gallic princesses in chains pass by escorted by stern-faced legionnaires. Next, the treasures of France are paraded past by slave bearers. Finally, the centurions march through boisterously bragging that their bald-headed general (and priest!) had bedded all the whores from Byzantium to Bordeaux (and the king of Bythnia to boot!)!
Just a tiny nit-pick: The bit about the king of Bythnia was actually a (hopefully for the soldiers) good-natured dig at old JC, since the rumour was that he'd let the king be the top.
Just a tiny nit-pick: The bit about the king of Bythnia was actually a (hopefully for the soldiers) good-natured dig at old JC, since the rumour was that he'd let the king be the top.He [Julius Caesar] was a known whore-mongerer (his soldiers' words, not mine)Was just driving back from the gas station when this flashed through my head:
So, I think it was at a triumph. All of Rome lines the Via Sacra (or whatever) to honor the conquering priest. Fasces are held aloft as Gallic princesses in chains pass by escorted by stern-faced legionnaires. Next, the treasures of France are paraded past by slave bearers. Finally, the centurions march through boisterously bragging that their bald-headed general (and priest!) had bedded all the whores from Byzantium to Bordeaux (and the king of Bythnia to boot!)!
Well, to nit-pick even further, I don't know if Bordeaux had even been founded yet, but I was going for the alliteration. When I realized I could add "Bythnia" and "to boot", it was like BONUS!
Based on my memories of Asterix, Bordeaux was called Burdigala at the time. So you could still have used it. :)
Bingo!