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No Evidence that Jesus was a Myth

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Robert Tulip

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Re: No Evidence that Jesus was a Myth

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Flann 5 wrote:
Robert Tulip wrote: that JP Holding essay is worthless apologetic drivel. The MO is to identify any statement which can be twisted to achieve a polemical objective, while systematically ignoring the main context. If we ask Holding how the Gospels evolved, his hypothesis would be far less plausible than the two level mystery theory of Pagels, Freke and Gandy.
Well Robert,your loyalty to Achary S is touching.
The article I linked in Ari's blog critiqueing her "The Christ Conspiracy" was an expose of factual errors in her book on which her conspiracy theory is built.
If you want to rebut the actual criticisms in that article,then do that.How were her statements "twisted"?
You are really giving me an education in apologetic junk Flann. Ari starts off by a straight out ad hominem insinuating that the broadly attested Orthodox Historical Conspiracy to demolish Gnosticism is comparable to claims that the USA did not send a man to the moon. He next makes the entirely false insinuation that Acharya believes in ancient alien theories, seemingly for no other reason than because astrotheology fills him with emotional repugnance. Such a rhetorical flourish may play well in your fundamentalist pews but it is junk argument.

Ari continues to dig himself into his dogmatic hole by mocking Acharya’s critique of Christian propaganda about early martyrdoms. Perhaps Ari should read Candida Moss’ book, “The Myth of Persecution: How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom,” but I guess that would involve Ari letting the facts get in the way of his blind faith.

Here is a review of Moss http://www.salon.com/2013/02/24/the_myt ... ersecuted/

Ari's ‘review’ is nothing more than the effort of a fool sitting in a position of imagined institutional power who feels at liberty to mock analysis that destroys the foundations of his beliefs. His vacuous mockery continues with empty comparisons to The Da Vinci Code. His killer argument is that “Paul recounts the narrative of the last supper including the words of Jeuss”. Apart from the indifferent spelling of the name of his Lord and Saviour, Ari neglects the simple observation that what Paul calls “The Lord’s Supper” he claims to have “received from the Lord” despite never having met Jesus, and presenting what is more a ritualised ceremony of community than something plausibly conveyed from a man Jesus. Such texts are no proof whatsoever.

It is truly bizarre that nowhere does Paul ever say “as Jesus taught”. There is only one indirect allusion on divorce at 1Cor7:10, where Paul immediately disagrees with the alleged instruction from Jesus in the very next verse. Rather than taking counsel from the alleged kingly messiah, supposedly known to thousands but absent from history, Paul obtains all his revelation from his reading of the prophecies in the Old Testament. That is because Jesus was invented.

A pearler of the dark art of malicious distortion is Ari’s next gem where he presents a straight out lie, saying: “In this chapter she begins with the contention that their was no sort of Christian canon at all for 1000 years.” She actually says ““It took well over a thousand years to canonize the New Testament.” These two statements are completely different, but that is a matter of indifference to Ari. Acharya’s intent, in a somewhat ambiguous wording, was to point out that the Catholic Church did not settle its dogma on the canon until the 16th century. She did not, as Ari falsely asserts, say “their [sic] was no sort of canon”, but rather expressed in summary form the fact that within Catholicism debate about the canon continued for a long time.

What is happening here is that because Ari just can’t stand Acharya’s observation that Christianity is built upon lies, he has to lie himself, in a spirit of the very purest calumny.

All of Ari’s claims are completely tendentious, following the method I described from Holding in the comment quoted by Flann. Ari says “She turns to the Pauline epsitles (sic) claiming they "never discuss a historical background of Jesus...any person in the gospel account of the Passion" and "never quotes from Jesus’s purported sermons and speeches..." These should be uncontentious observations, except they incite fury from the pious. The need for Christians to clutch desperately at straws to justify their rebuttals of this simple historical point that Paul has no clear content about a real Jesus completely marks Christian scholarship as driven by faith rather than reason.

Ari then suggests fragment P52 containing parts of just five verses of John apparently proves that the four gospels existed in all their glory well before the third century, even though a paper in the Harvard Theological Review about this fragment concludes that “scholars of the New Testament have … abused papyrological evidence” and “the window of possible dates for P52 must include dates in the later second and early third centuries.” http://people.uncw.edu/zervosg/papyrolo ... misuse.pdf

The constant Modus Operandi here is that minor unclarity of wording is blown out of all proportion because Ari is a Christian apologist, happy to resort to entirely unscrupulous distortion to protect his flock from the historical truth.

With incompetent and sloppy logic, spelling and grasp of facts, Ari kicks an own-goal with a comment about why there are four gospels. Irenaeus gave the holy hand grenade of Antioch-type MPHG argument that the reason is there are “four corners of the world”. Ari seems to go into meltdown when Acharya notes the Masonic content of this bizarre argument. I would have thought that Ari’s apologetic interests would have been better served by not drawing attention to Irenaeus on the Four Gospels matter. Irenaeus said ““It is not possible that the Gospels can be either more or fewer in number than they are, For, there are four zones in the world . . . and four principle winds…Therefore, it is fitting that [the Church] has four pillars, breathing out immortality on every side . . .” (c. 180 AD). This is the first recorded reference to the four gospels, and it is highly esoteric and cosmic.

It seems that Flann is indifferent to evidence in citing such a worthless critique that is nearly undiluted polemic with almost no sensible content. What next? Acharya says there were many “additions and interpolations” to the Bible, and Ari-fever turns this into an alleged claim of “97% malicious interpolations”. He incompetently attributes the quote to Wheless, his arch demon, when Acharya cites a different author altogether, Charles Waite.

Ari shows himself incapable of understanding that just as one could say Captain Ahab said “Avast” without claiming Ahab was real, so too can Acharya cite Christ on bringing a sword without believing Jesus was real.

Next he defends the astonishingly naïve apologetic view that Josephus mentioned Jesus when this is among the most obvious frauds in all history. You really have to be wilfully blind to swallow this stuff. In more rank dishonesty, Ari turns Acharya’s comment that the Josephus references have “been dismissed by scholars” into the assertion she said “everyone agrees they are forgeries.” Ari just takes his readers for mugs when in the space of one paragraph he can so completely change his story just out of blind malevolent incompetence. Thanks Flann, great article.
Last edited by Robert Tulip on Sun Apr 12, 2015 9:42 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: No Evidence that Jesus was a Myth

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^

I agree that there is little evidence that shows Christians being persecuted en mass although there are a few instances of such, not so much against the Christian beliefs but because they would not give to Caesar what was Caesars.

I would love to see a comparison of the numbers Christianity persecuted and killed to finally push their beliefs into all the other communities as they helped usher in the Dark Ages and Inquisition.

If we were to add up all those poor devils we would see how much more vile Christianity was as compared to Rome in killing people just for their beliefs.

Regards
DL
Last edited by Gnostic Bishop on Sun Apr 12, 2015 10:27 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: No Evidence that Jesus was a Myth

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Robert Tulip wrote:Ari continues to dig himself into his dogmatic hole by mocking Acharya’s critique of Christian propaganda about early martyrdoms. Perhaps Ari should read Candida Moss’ book, “The Myth of Persecution: How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom,” but I guess that would involve Ari letting the facts get in the way of his blind faith.

Here is a review of Moss http://www.salon.com/2013/02/24/the_myt ... ersecuted/
I couldn't find this review in the link you provided,Robert.

And here's another review of Candida Moss' book by N.Clayton Crory.

http://www.bookreviews.org/pdf/9158_10095.pdf

You like Candida's book Robert, and Bishop like the book Candide. Look at that, a parallel!
Last edited by Flann 5 on Sun Apr 12, 2015 5:36 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: No Evidence that Jesus was a Myth

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Flann 5 wrote:
Robert Tulip wrote:Ari continues to dig himself into his dogmatic hole by mocking Acharya’s critique of Christian propaganda about early martyrdoms. Perhaps Ari should read Candida Moss’ book, “The Myth of Persecution: How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom,” but I guess that would involve Ari letting the facts get in the way of his blind faith.

Here is a review of Moss http://www.salon.com/2013/02/24/the_myt ... ersecuted/
And here's another review of Candida Moss' book by N.Clayton Crory.

http://www.bookreviews.org/pdf/9158_10095.pdf

You like Candida's book Robert, and Bishop like the book Candide. Look at that, a parallel!
Actually, I have never read the book.

All I have is this below that I have tried to argue with people but get few takers. Either most agree with the logic or they cannot formulate an argument against mine.

I like to use the term evolving perfection for nature. Otherwise, a perfect God or nature becomes a stagnant pool of information and our souls and consciousness as a part of that perfection would be useless to the universe.

Evolving, the perfection of whatever God and nature was, to whatever God and nature will be, means we have to think this way, unless you see God as somehow losing his initial perfection. This is not allowed in a perfect God’s or natures repertoire.

When this was written, most thought it to just be a cynical view of life but I think it is quite true and irrefutable, based on the anthropic principle and pure logic.

What do you think?

Candide.
"It is demonstrable that things cannot be otherwise than as they are; for as all things have been created for some end, they must necessarily be created for the best end.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vmc72fCJivA

This is done by nature and not a God but would be a requirement of a God if he were real.

-------------------

I use that argument as it goes well with my Gnostic Christian views.

Jesus said, "If those who attract you say, 'See, the Kingdom is
in the sky,' then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they
say to you, 'It is under the earth,' then the fish of the sea will
precede you. Rather, the Kingdom of God is inside of you, and it is
outside of you. [Those who] become acquainted with [themselves]
will find it; [and when you] become acquainted with yourselves, [you
will understand that] it is you who are the sons of the living
Father. But if you will not know yourselves, you dwell in poverty
and it is you who are that poverty."

-------------------

In God's kingdom, there would have to be evolving perfection and that is what I see.

What do you see buddy?

Regards
DL

P.S. The notion that Gnostic Christians think matter to be evil is not true. Matter is perfect.
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Re: No Evidence that Jesus was a Myth

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Robert Tulip wrote:What next? Acharya says there were many “additions and interpolations” to the Bible, and Ari-fever turns this into an alleged claim of “97% malicious interpolations”. He incompetently attributes the quote to Wheless, his arch demon, when Acharya cites a different author altogether, Charles Waite.
Who exactly is Charles Waite and what are his qualifications in textual criticism?
It is decidedly not the view of scholarly textual critics that of the claimed 150,000 variant readings 149,500 were "additions and interpolations"
Even the sceptical biblical scholar Bart Ehrman agrees with the other textual critics that the overwhelming majority of variants are spelling errors and copyists mistakes and not "additions and interpolations."
So even if Ari mistakenly attributed this quote to Wheless it remains a gross distortion and misrepresentation of the textual evidence and completely inexcusable since the actual views of scholarly textual critics are readily available.
The intended implication is clear and entirely misleading.
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Re: No Evidence that Jesus was a Myth

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For Christians we believe that God has revealed himself in Christ
So then let's get back to basics:

Was Jesus Christ a god or a man? Please answer this simple question in your own words and don't post some asshole URL with 50 pages of sheer bullshit that you don't even bother to isolate the relevant passages from (because you didn't read it yourself, you're just evading the question). Here, I'll make it so easy even a Christian should be able to do it--please prove me right on that count:

Jesus Christ was a _______ ("man" or "god").
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Re: No Evidence that Jesus was a Myth

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Image
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When you spread out your hands in prayer, I will hide My eyes from you; even though you multiply your prayers, I will not listen. Your hands are covered with blood.
Isaiah 1:15

But if there is serious injury, you are to take life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise.
Exodus 21: 23 - 25
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