From my perspective, mythicists and True Believers both are purveyors of junk thought, trying to reconstruct history to fit their own agendas. Depending on the time period and how much of a written record was left behind, much of history is comprised of 1 percent fact and 99 percent interpretation. As Arthur Schlesinger says in this essay, every historian is committed to a doomed enterprise—the quest for unattainable objectivity.

"All historians are prisoners of their own experience and servitors to their own prepossessions. We are all entrapped in the egocentric predicament. We bring to history the preconceptions of our personality and the preoccupations of our age. We cannot seize on ultimate and absolute truths. “Purely objective truth,” said William James, “is nowhere to be found…. The trail of the human serpent is thus over everything."

With the Jesus story, we probably don't even have the 1% of factual information to go on. So we don't know if Jesus was a real person or not. All the rest is reconstructive noise, those who adhere to preconceptions of personality and our culture.

The article is worth reading.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archive ... stupidity/

Robert Tulip wrote:On your comment earlier about Saint Paul, he never mentions Nazareth, activity in Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Galilee, miracles, sayings or any other substantive detail about the supposed life of Jesus Christ, the man who allegedly had just founded the religion which Paul was proclaiming. The idea he would be so rude to an exalted real founder is absurd, rather like Stalin failing to know anything about Lenin, or Jefferson failing to know anything about Washington. Paul is a stepping stone from Gnostic secret cosmic mystery to the popularisation of the fable in the Gospels.

We've been here before Robert. It's simply false that Paul does not refer to an earthly human Jesus. It is itself a myth that Earl Doherty proposes with in my opinion, convoluted gymnastics with the texts to explain away what is perfectly clear, unless you want to force a preconceived theory on it for some reason or other.
James Hannam provides plenty of examples of clear references by Paul to a historical earthly human Jesus. You won't accept it and that's your right but I simply disagree and don't think Doherty's 'explanations' of these texts are good at all.
http://www.bede.org.uk/jesusmyth.htm

DB Roy wrote:And now the new scholarship centers around dismissing astro-theology and comparative religion as "non-scholarly."

Do you believe in astro-theology D.B. and what is astro-theology?

DB Roy wrote:Quetzalcoatl of Mexico was a feathered serpent. Serpents represent resurrection and feathers represent flight. The resurrected one who flew to the heavens. We are the fifth race of humans according to the cult of Quetzalcoatl and he created us from the bones of the previous races and quickened with his own blood--he shed his blood so that we could live. Upon his death, his heart ascended to heaven and became the morning star (Venus or the sun depending on the viewpoints of the stellar or solar cults). "I am the root and the offspring of David, and the bright and morning star." (Rev. 22:16)

The Incan creator god was Viracocha or Kon-Tiki. He created all things on earth including a race of giants that he decided he didn't like and destroyed them with a flood. He was said to be white and wore a white robe. He was intimately connected to the ocean (hmm, maybe he was a white whale) and disappeared over the Pacific by walking on the water.

Among the Polynesians, there was the Great Chief Maui. Just as Jesus recruited fishermen, Maui WAS a fisherman with a magic hook. To get the hook, Maui had to journey to the Underworld where her met a woman who was half-living and half-dead. He took her jawbone and fashioned the hood from that. With this magic hook, he and his brothers raised the South Sea Islands. Maui and his father separated the sky from the earth and so were called the saviors of humankind. Another Ichthys.

These stories were all over the world from an ancient time. Propagated by whom?

DB Roy wrote:Quote:
It's pick and mix. Which of your conglomeration of pagan deities and myths are the gospels based on,D.B.?




All of them. It's the same story being told and retold over many centuries. Known throughout the ancient world. All of them.

This is a really sloppy answer D.B. Mexican ,Incan and Polynesian myths influenced the writers of the gospels? Not only that but the articles I linked show why these parallels fail even for Egyptian candidates from closer to Israel and quite often the mystery cults of the region's practices are later than the new testament writings.
When you read these myths they are patently so with no historical or real geographical anchors of any kind in contrast to the gospels.
The gospels include supernatural miracles but not the kind of surreal absurdities that proliferate in pagan mythology.

Flann wrote:The gospels include supernatural miracles but not the kind of surreal absurdities that proliferate in pagan mythology.

One man's surreal absurdity is another man's sacred cow.

Flann 5 wrote: Do you believe in astro-theology D.B. and what is astro-theology?

Of course I do because I'm not an idiot. If these other religions were worshiping solar deities or planets as saviors then so is Christianity. This idea that other religions believe bullshit but when it's Christianity it's real is sheer idiocy if not outright lunacy. You're either crazy to believe or you're simply not very bright.

This is a really sloppy answer D.B. Mexican ,Incan and Polynesian myths influenced the writers of the gospels?

Not far-fetched at all. Charles Berlitz, the linguist, demonstrated parallels between various American Indian words and Greek. Teocali=house of god is "theou kalia" in Greek. Potomac is a word for river or water and potamos is Greek for water. The "toma" of tomahawk means "to cut" and "atom" is Greek for "not cut" or indivisible. Dr. Albert Hoffmann, inventor of LSD, demonstrated connections between the Greeks and Mayans when he investigated how magic mushrooms were found in different cultures. R. Buckminster Fuller believes that the Polynesians gave the world our words for "one" and "two." The Polynesians had a base 2 number system to call out teams of rowers on each side of their canoes. These Polynesian words for one and two used a vowel to start off one and a consonant to start off two. What you'll find is that virtually every culture shares this trait. Fuller said either angels wrote the words for one and two on pieces of paper and dropped them all over the earth or someone with a base 2 system with tremendous sailing and boating prowess circumnavigated the globe and shared this information with the cultures they encountered. According to Fuller, only the Polynesians fit the bill. So, anything is possible. The idea that we have completely mapped out our ancient past is pretty much full of holes. Menzies asks how the chicken reached the New World before Columbus. Schrag and Haze ask where the Nez Perce Indians obtained Appaloosa horses since the Spanish didn't have them.

Then there's this:

"By analyzing the DNA of 1,245 sweet potato varieties from Asia and the Americas, researchers have found a genetic smoking gun that proves the root vegetable made it all the way to Polynesia from the Andes — nearly 400 years before Inca gold was a twinkle in Ferdinand and Isabella's eyes.

The findings, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, offer more evidence that ancient Polynesians may have interacted with people in South America long before the Europeans set foot on the continent."

http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/201 ... e-columbus

Here in Michigan, you can still see the copper pits that were dug a couple of thousand years ago or more. It is known as Great Lakes copper and it is found in ancient implements all over the world. We don't even know who these people were other than being some unknown tribe of Indians who must have had brisk trade going because they mined 1.5 billion pounds of copper over the century and kept very little of it for themselves.

Yeah, that's right--you frigging Euros weren't the only people to travel the world. And you didn't civilize it, quite the opposite.

Not only that but the articles I linked show why these parallels fail even for Egyptian candidates from closer to Israel and quite often the mystery cults of the region's practices are later than the new testament writings.

Attis, Mithra, Krishna, Zoroaster, Hermes the Good Shepherd, etc. all predate Christianity substantially. The similarities between the early lives of Zoroaster, Buddha and Jesus are hard to shrug off unless, of course, you're a Christian who thinks his religion is somehow unique.

When you read these myths they are patently so with no historical or real geographical anchors of any kind in contrast to the gospels.

Kind of like Paul's writings--the earliest Christian writings. And I had a fun time watching Starwhe or whatever his name is do ridiculous acrobatics trying to explain how the gospel writers got the geography of Palestine wrong and included names of cities that don't exist.

The gospels include supernatural miracles but not the kind of surreal absurdities that proliferate in pagan mythology.

Now you know that's just a ridiculous statement, right? God-man born from a virgin, angels foretell the birth, star guides people to the birth site, dove comes down from heaven and heavenly voice speaks, raises man from the dead, executed and rises from grave. This not only surreal absurdity, it's the same kind of surreal absurdity that you find in pagan mythology.

Christians don't even know their own religion. At the town hall, right now, there is a scene of a manger with three kings bringing gifts and people and animals gathered around. Where did that come from? It's a scene that is not found in Christianity. There were never three kings that visited Jesus or three anything because the gospels never say how many there were--could have been 3000. When he was laid in a manger in Luke, it was shepherds; in Matthew, he born in a house and visited by "magoi" or magi. Magi is where we get words as "magic" and "magus." Essentially, Jesus was visited by sorcerers. The greatest miracle performed by Jesus was how he died on a Friday evening and rose after three days and yet it was a Sunday before dawn. THAT'S amazing!!!!

DB Roy wrote:Quote:
This is a really sloppy answer D.B. Mexican ,Incan and Polynesian myths influenced the writers of the gospels?




Not far-fetched at all. Charles Berlitz, the linguist, demonstrated parallels between various American Indian words and Greek. Teocali=house of god is "theou kalia" in Greek. Potomac is a word for river or water and potamos is Greek for water. The "toma" of tomahawk means "to cut" and "atom" is Greek for "not cut" or indivisible. Dr. Albert Hoffmann, inventor of LSD, demonstrated connections between the Greeks and Mayans when he investigated how magic mushrooms were found in different cultures.

You can believe that monotheistic Jews steeped in Old Testament Judaism such as Mark,Luke and John were listening avidly to wacky polytheistic and pagan fables from Aztec,Incan and Polynesian cultures if you like D.B.
You say they borrowed from all of these mythologies so maybe you could demonstrate examples from even a handful of them in say Mark or John's gospels.
Don't just trot out vague claims of 'virgin births and dying and rising gods'. I'll humour you on one of your 'candidates',Quatzalcoatl.
http://www.tektonics.org/copycat/quetz.php

J.P.Holding goes through about 25 of these posited copycat deities if any one is tempted to take this stuff seriously and wants to enter the weird world of mytho-babble.

http://www.tektonics.org/copycathub.html

Having looked at your case against the historic Christ posts, it is as expected raising the usual mythicist conspiracy theories,and bad arguments, most of which have been refuted in the articles I've linked on this thread.


If you can't see this that fine with me, but don't expect anyone who looks at the arguments carefully to be convinced by these discredited arguments for Christ myth theory.
It's comical that the proponents of these absurd theories are self described freethinkers and rationalists.
Here's a video debate on the alleged borrowings by the gospel writers from pagan myth between Dan Barker and James White.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XKOlOnRsD4
And here in contrast are some of the reasons Christians believe the evidence supports the view that the gospels are eye witness accounts of historic events. This talk by Dr Peter J Williams
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5Ylt1pBMm8

Interbane wrote:

Flann wrote:The gospels include supernatural miracles but not the kind of surreal absurdities that proliferate in pagan mythology.

One man's surreal absurdity is another man's sacred cow.

I can see what Flann is saying, though, that we can perceive a qualitative difference between Christian supernaturalism and some other supernaturalisms, such as from various mythologies. It could be mainly a matter of degree, frequency, and sophistication. It wouldn't surprise me if the winnowing of texts that occurred when the Christian canon was created was partly about moderating some of the supernatural elements. It was probably more about trying to make the theology accessible to the masses, though. There are a great many abstruse ideas, which some find beautiful and intriguing, in the Gnostic writings. I'm not saying that because the Bible might be relatively light on the supernatural, the miracles are more likely to be true..

geo wrote:From my perspective, mythicists and True Believers both are purveyors of junk thought

if by "mythicist" we mean someone who thinks the bible has all the hallmarks of mythology then that is far from "junk thought" because the bible does indeed bear all the hallmarks of mythology.

if by "true believer" we mean someone who thinks their mythology is different from everyone else's because it is historically accurate then i would agree, that is "junk thought"

most "mythicists" are quite happy to admit there were plenty of dudes called "jesus" around back in the day but the jesus the true believers are worshipping is an historicised "god-man" an archetype that has been woefully misunderstood by people who lack education on the subject.

labels are so misleading

mythicist, what is that supposed to mean

if thinking mythology is mythology makes one a mythicist then we should all be mythicists shouldn't we?

this seems much less "junk thought" than thinking the literal historical blood of a dying rising god man can cleanse you from sin.

compare these two statements

mythicist: "i think the bible is very much like various mythologies i've read."

true believer: "i am washed in the blood of the lamb" "Jesus is returning to destroy the anti-christ" "are you rapture ready?!"

of these two i think the mythicist is clearly FAR less "junkish" in thought.

HOWEVER if by mythicist we mean someone who says "there was no historical jesus" well that type of mythicist is by no means the only one, in fact most mythicists i've read are perfectly happy to grant the existence of someone called Jesus.

the problem is that this historical Jesus, should any true believers ever put up a candidate, would not be the virgin born son of god because that Jesus ie. the virgin born son of god is PURE MYTHOLOGY!!!

the mythological jesus is mythological. (Derrrrr)
the historical jesus is unsubstantiated historically. (DOH!)

this all seems perfectly obvious to me.

help me understand Jesus, send a double portion of thy Spirit upon me, that my eyes may be opened and i can see where Satan has decieved me

as the heavens are above the earth so is the mind above the body, but not literally

i suppose (as Bob Price often remarks) that when we deal with history we are dealing with probabilities much of the time.

i've never seen an argument or evidence for an historical jesus of god-man proportions worth betting a brass razoo on.

the probability to me seems to be that a bunch of people (myself included) were uninformed enough to take mythology as history, i mean god's people wouldn't lie, would they, they couldn't be wrong with the Spirit of Truth indwelling them?

the Jesus archetype is irresistible when you are in a certain psychological state, and it is easy to get things wrong when you care so much you don't think twice.

then once you've put all your eggs in one basket it takes honesty to say "Holy Shit, i musta taken a wrong turn at Albuquerque" (thanks again to Robert M. Price)

DWill wrote:I can see what Flann is saying, though, that we can perceive a qualitative difference between Christian supernaturalism and some other supernaturalisms, such as from various mythologies. It could be mainly a matter of degree, frequency, and sophistication.

Hi Dwill. Welcome to the war zone! Of course Christianity is definitively a supernatural religion predicated on a divine creator and saviour.
I don't claim to be an authority when it comes to understanding and explaining all about Christianity. What is the significance of miracles? That's a big question. What's striking to me is how in John's gospel especially they are described first and foremost as signs.
So when Jesus feeds the multitude bread and fish it follows with his declaration; "I am the bread of life". When he opens the eyes of the man born blind he says "I am the light of the world" and before raising Lazarus; "I am the resurrection and the life."
And there are other examples like this.
His statement that "before Abraham was I am" is readily understood by the religious opponents as a significant claim incorporating the famous self identification of Yahweh in Exodus as "I am that I am".
As you rightly commented in the past,these are claims of cosmic significance. If we ask the question who wrote the gospel of John you will get one set of answers from scholars sceptical of the supernatural, and the answer the apostle John from conservative Christian scholars. They will also point to the church fathers and what these say on authorship.

Here's a dilemma. If the author is simply inventing a mythical person or even somehow adding supernatural powers to an actual historical but exclusively human Jesus,either way it's a fraud. To what end?

To persuade people of the cosmic significance of a non existent or even a real person who could not possibly have such significance?
And let's say John actually was the author and the historic claims of this and his banishment to the Isle of Patmos for the gospel are factual,then how does this impact on the gospel account itself?
Are all these Christian claims of Paul and Peter being executed by Nero just fabrications which no one could possibly refute if they were false?
Two major Christian leaders of which a story can be concocted and all the contemporary Christians believe it just like that!

Some will talk of power politics and conspiracy but it doesn't read that way to me.

Sceptics can throw out all kinds of criticisms with catalogues of alleged contradictions or alleged pagan derivation etc.

Christians do answer these things but I think the incessant attacks have a psychologically undermining effect which they are intended to have, but in my view which admittedly is pro Christian, this is disproportionate to the real validity of many of these criticisms.
The contrast between Christianity and pagan myth is stark albeit there are similar themes in relation to God or gods,life after death and such ideas.
The nature cycle paganism and bizarre behaviours of pagan deities is in real contrast to the teachings,miracles and life of Christ as portrayed in the gospels.

The obvious lack of historicity,geography,societal, political and religious settings in pagan myth with the opposite in the gospels is another real contrast between them.

You are well aware of the issues. The belief in the resurrection of Christ is early just taking Paul's letter to the Corinthians as a starting point so there are real problems in postulating some later invention of this.

So I'm not so sure there was a winnowing of the supernatural. Certainly some writings were rejected but mainly due to their alien nature to Christianity as in gnosticism which turns Jesus from human to incorporeal entity. And salvation from it's clear roots in the old testament with it's sacrificial system, priesthood etc and salvation through atonement to salvation through self realisation.

There were many reasons some writings were rejected to do with questions of authorship and when they were written as well as their particular teachings.
The conspiracy theory can be convenient and obscure what actually was happening, as I read these things. Not that you are addicted to conspiracy theory yourself of course.

youkrst wrote:

geo wrote:From my perspective, mythicists and True Believers both are purveyors of junk thought

if by "mythicist" we mean someone who thinks the bible has all the hallmarks of mythology then that is far from "junk thought" because the bible does indeed bear all the hallmarks of mythology.

Yes, I must have had a case of vague-itis. I guess by mythicist I meant a hardcore mythicist who is certain that Jesus never existed. (There probably aren't many of those around.) I think we tend to take a hard stance when arguing with the camp that says Jesus definitely existed. That seems to be the consensus with most biblical scholars, but I don't think we can know for sure either way.

As for mythicist who accepts that Christianity shares many common characteristics with many other world mythologies, than I'm a mythicist too.