1) I'm an atheist.
2) It's obviously pointless to try to reason with anyone who would assume the username 'RATTrules'.
But, I'm bored, so here goes . . .
This is a false analogy. Of the millions of dinosaurs it would be unreasonable to expect to have concrete evidence of the existence of any token individual -- say, a pterodactyl we could call 'Bob'. We have plenty of physical remains of humans that existed two thousand years ago -- but not for the vast MAJORITY of them. So what?We Know From Hard Evidence Dinosaurs Existed 66 Million Years Ago Yet We Have No Objective Evidence Jesus Existed Just 2 Thousands Years Ago
We have no firsthand testimony regarding the lives of MOST first century Palestinians. All this demonstrates is that his contemporaries didn't think he was all that fucking special, or if they did that no written records of this survive (unsurprising as most people in first century Palestine were illiterate). This is not evidence against the existence of a historical human being.A. We have no firsthand testimony from anyone who knew Jesus or wrote anything about him during his life time. (All the Gospels are late and anonymous). No person living in Roman Palestine neither saw, knew of, nor heard of either Jesus or his followers.
If Jesus was a typical first century Palestinian, he likely couldn't write. Does illiteracy entail non-existence? Of course not.
B. We have nothing written by Jesus himself. Ironically, Jesus is portrayed as highly educated speaking Hebrew (Luke 4: 16 – 20), Aramaic (Matt. 27: 46), Greek (Matt. 16: 6) and Latin (Matt. 8: 5 -13), yet he remained unable to write anything. (The story of Jesus writing in the sand in John 8: 2 – 11 is textually late and begs the question as to why Jesus wrote nothing. This could be because the author(s) of these forged accounts didn’t know either Hebrew or Aramaic.) (1) Even Jesus’ contemporary, the itinerant miracle working Apollonius of Tyana had works ascribed to him. (2) In short, the lack of Jesus having left anything in writing could be due to the fact that the forgers of the Gospel traditions viewed their detailed verbatim creations as totally sufficient.
Not sure what you're after here, but the fact that you can inteligibly speak of a historical Jesus apart from theology seems to undermine whatever point you are inarticulatly flailing at.C. The Jesus of the Gospels cannot be separated from the context of myth and theology. Jesus will (and must) remain an integrated part of myth and faith joined at the head just as Siamese twins who share vital organs are joined. To remove some type of reconstructed “Historical Jesus” from his world of faith and myth will only destroy both.
This is irrelevant. A red herring. So what? The Gospels were composed 60-100 years after the life of Jesus by Greek speaking converts. Does that demonstrate Jesus didn't exist? Of course not.D. The Gospels don’t tell us where they were composed. However, the fact they were composed in Greek and not a Semitic language which was native to Roman Palestine (such as Aramaic or Hebrew) points to their composition outside of Palestine. (See point, H)
There are to my knowledge, no books or wall graffiti about me. Does that prove I don't exist? Would you expect to find this thousands of years after the fact? Probably not. The most this demonstrates is that Roman Palestinians didn't think much of Jesus.E. While Roman Palestine is center-stage for the Gospels events, there has never been found any early manuscript of any Gospels or section of any Gospel or wall graffiti to validate Jesus ever lived in the entire country from Galilee to Jerusalem. In short, when scholars look to first century Roman Palestine for any evidence for the Gospel Jesus, they find totally nothing!
Your assertion of this is based on pure faith. Scholarship suggests otherwise.F. The early (65 -90 CE) traditional dates for the Gospels or purely based on conjecture and faith.
There were many messianic and/or apocalyptic figures during this time period. That only demonstrates Jesus would not have been unique in his historical context.G. Philo (the only contemporary source during Jesus life time) doesn’t mention Jesus although Philo was acutely interested in the Jerusalem Temple and anything that happened there. A Jesus who fought with the Temple Priest and Jewish leaders in Jerusalem would have mostly likely caught Philo's attention.
Historically, this is simply way off base. I have no clue who you/your source link is uncritically parroting here.H. Josephus’s account of Jesus (as well as his account of James and John the Baptist) is little more than Greek stories which tell us no more than what is stated in the Gospels composed outside of first century Palestine. These Gospels accounts were composed in Hellenistic Greek most likely in Asia Minor or somewhere around Alexander Egypt. (3) So far facts point to the case that early papyri such has P52, P45, P46, P47, P66, P72, and P75 (all found disposed of in Egypt) were likely also composed in Egypt. If this fact is correct, the statements by Josephus used to support a Historical Jesus have totally nothing to do with Roman Palestine, but Christian Egypt. This can be supported by the fact that most all quotations cited by the Old Testament are taken from the LXX ; a text which, like Jesus, never uses God’s personal name (Yahweh / Jehovah), but Theos. This very likely gives us a hint of the Gnostic theological beliefs of the composers as well as a location somewhere in Egypt for the creation of the Gospels traditions.
That said, the story that Obama was born in Kenya is a fiction perpetrated by writers with an agenda. The story of Jesus is related to us in the Gospels by writers with an agenda and likely filled with fictions. Does that mean Jesus didn't exist?
Biography writers today have no first hand knowledge of Lincoln? Does that mean Lincoln never existed?I. I have discussed Josephus’s often wild and unreliable fabrications dealing with the Bible stated as history HERE Regardless, Josephus NEVER said he had any firsthand knowledge of these three Gospel events nor does he tell us how he got his information. His use of this material (that which a Christian did not interpolate) in his Jewish Antiquities has more to do with the embellishment of his work (a standard ploy of Josephus in his Antiquities) than with truth.
Most of the so-called Pauline letters are pseudopigraphal. So what? It's irrelevant to the discussion at hand.J. St. Paul NEVER saw or met any earthly Jesus. Paul’s letters are little more than theological discussions. If Paul had the Gospels at hand, why does he know so little about Jesus? It has long been known among scholars that the account of Paul’s life in the latter half of the Book of Acts and his Epistles can’t be reconciled. Moreover, like the Gospels themselves, neither Paul’s letters nor the New Testament as a whole can textually be dated with any certainty prior to 200 CE as there is no manuscript evidence.
Paul never knew Jesus. Neither, in all likelihood did any of the actual composers of the Gospels. I never knew Socrates. Is he imaginary?K. None of the original apostles (be they 12 (Mark 6:7) or 72 (Luke 10: 1) or 120 (Acts 1: 15) left us anything. 1 and 2 Peter knows little of any Historical Jesus, but is highly theological.
Clearly you (and your source) have no idea what a "straw man" refers to in logic/rhetoric. You can disagree with, e.g., Ehrman's views of Jesus, but what bearing does that have on his existence? I can disagree with your views about Obama or Juan Croucier. Doesn't mean either isn't real.L. The so-called Historical Jesus is nothing more than a straw man. To construct a so-called "Historical Jesus" out of the myth and theology of the Gospels is purely conjecture rebuilt on subjective ideas using the conflicting and contradicting Gospel accounts. There have been several dozen Historical Jesus figures created to vindicate anything that can come close to reality. When cut out of the mythical environment of the Gospels, we have nothing but a straw man created in the scholars own image. The Historical Jesus created by Bart Ehrman carries no more value that the Historical Jesus created by Thomas Jefferson after he took a knife to the Gospels stories in his Bible.
I use 'RATTRules' as synonymous with 'retard'. Does that mean you don't exist?M. The use of “Jesus” by the Early Church Fathers is purely theological and used for rhetorical purposes. The confession of Jesus Christ is a statement of faith and not history.
How many historians of the future will discuss RATTrules and his cogent and illuminating posts? Besides, if I speak of the idiocy of RATTrulesianism, aren't I not obliquely speaking of you?N. While Christianity is mentioned by ten pagan writers, Jesus never is.
The Essenes had nothing to do with Jerusalem or Jesus. How many Taylor Swift websites discuss the merits of "Out of the Cellar"? Is it fake too?O. Jesus is not mentioned in the Dead Sea Scrolls. Though we have about 930 texts and fragments of scrolls preserved by the dry climate of Palestine (often under bat dung), we find no Christian textual material from the first two centuries CE in Palestine. (6) Yet, with similar climate conditions in Egypt, the textual traditions of has left us with fifty-two texts, most dealing with Gnosticism.
Poison was modeled after the New York Dolls? Are they unreal?P. The idea that Jesus was an itinerant non-literary prophet preacher is modeled after the same theory that Elijah and Elisha were also itinerant, non-literary prophets / preachers, but whose lives we now know are based entirely in fiction.
What shithole do you come from? You think anyone will remember it in 2000 years? I hope not.Q. Josephus, as governor of Galilee, had firsthand knowledge of the area and tells us that Galilee had “two hundred and four cities and villages” (7), yet he knows nothing about any town or village in lower Galilee called Nazareth . . . a place so important to Jesus in the Gospels. Neither is Nazareth mentioned in the Old Testament, nor in the Talmud nor in the Midrash.
You do a disservice to atheists when you post crap like this. Put on your floaties, wade back to the shallow end of the gene pool, and be quiet when adults are talking.