youkrst wrote:[jesus personally appeared to me and said "behold, i am an allegory"

This is actually in the Gospels, where Jesus explains he is fictional:

Matt 13:34 Jesus spoke all these things to the crowd in parables; he did not say anything to them without using a parable.
Mark 4:34 He did not say anything to them without using a parable. But when he was alone with his own disciples, he explained everything.

a little child shall lead them."

Frank Zindler has been editor of American Atheists Magazine since 1996. He has an excellent long essay titled “Is Bart Ehrman Qualified to Write about Christian Origins?” in the excellent mythicist source book http://www.amazon.com.au/Ehrman-Quest-H ... B00C9N0WBI edited by Zindler and Price. This essay contains the best analysis I have seen from a widely read scientific author of the theory of Zodiac Ages.

Zindler there makes the following comments
• the “astral elements almost certainly had comprised the mysteries that had spawned the cult in the beginning”
• “the oldest symbols of Christianity, the chi-cross and the fish (actually two fish), were very likely symbols for the intersection of the celestial equator with the ecliptic (a la Plato’s Timaeus) and the astrological symbol for Pisces.”
• He asks “Was the Christian ‘New Age’ actually the precessional Great Year – the zodiacal Age of Pisces?”
• He explains that he published his precession theory of Christian origins in the journal American Atheist - http://www.atheists.org/content/how-jesus-got-life
• In a central key statement, Zindler writes “it is easier and more parsimonious to reconstruct an evolutionary sequence leading from a Docetic mystery cult with Gnostic affinities than from an historical Jesus to Gnosticism,”
• He suggests that the twelve apostles are “zodiacal figures surrounding the center of a solar cult” and that the miracle of the loaves and fishes refers “to the two fishes of the constellation Pisces and the five visible planets.”
• Zindler concludes “Given the relationship between Chronos and the mystery religions, especially Mithraism, and the evidence supporting the notion that Christianity originated as New Age cults observing the passage of the vernal equinox from the zodiacal sign of Aries into Pisces, it has always seemed to me that the chi-rho symbol was the severed umbilical cord left over from the birth of Christianity from an astral mystery cult – a cult that was watching and measuring the departure of the Heavenly Lamb and the coming of the Two Fishes.”
• Zindler says his hypothesis is “that the ‘crucifixion’ occurred at the intersection of the celestial equator and the ecliptic when the vernal equinox had moved into Pisces.” This hypothesis is a highly elegant and compelling basis to understand Jesus as a solar divinity, since the equinox is a function of the movement of the sun against the seasons.

Just to say, Robert, having finally read Ehrman's book, that it presents an historian's rationale for the historical existence of Jesus. The point can't be emphasized enough, that when the techniques of modern historical inquiry are applied, it looks as though there was a Jesus as the basis of the myths that emerged to constitute Christianity. Ehrman's case is multi-pronged and comprehensive, whereas I believe that you mythicists lean on single factors and do not have the experience, specialization, or training to make comprehensive judgments. It is just as important to be sure that historical discipline is followed as it to be certain that scientific method is employed in any investigation.

There has never been a school of thought positing a fictional Jesus until relatively modern times. This in itself doesn't mean that mythicists can't have discovered something unnoticed, but it does present a high bar for you all that your arguments haven't been able to surmount.

The importance of the did-Jesus-exist question is that history becomes significantly rewritten and, I would say, distorted, under the mythicist view that Jesus was not conceived or viewed as having lived. Neither you, I, or Bart Ehrman believes in Jesus Christ; we all would say that the Jesus we can read about is in many respects mythic. The crucial difference is my belief that he was held as a historical reality. The simplest explanation for this is that he actually lived, but even regardless of that, it's the assumption that he lived, by the people of the time, that really matters.

I'd be glad to discuss the book with anyone who has read it.

"factors and do not have the experience, specialization, or training to make comprehensive judgments. It is just as important to be sure that historical discipline is followed as it to be certain that scientific method is employed in any investigation"

Nor do amateurs have expertise in ancient lqnguage interpretation (Aramaic to mention just one)

That is why I dismiss myther story telling. It is disingenuous largley because it totally dismisses expertise.
Its agenda is quite clear for all rational people to see.

I will take this opportunity to put in a good word for a great course on the rise of Christianity by a real and legitimate ancient history scholar, Professor Kenneth Harl of Tulane

http://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/ ... 3/3466.htm

I have Harl's course on Alexander the Great. Professor Harl has deep expertise in ancient history and his presentation is excellent. He has outstanding credentials.
Anyone serious about ancient history (minus conspiracy lard) should purchase one of his courses.
You cant go wrong if you value real scholarship

That course looks tempting. Wish it were free, but I guess I'm spoiled. Probably need to wait until it's a less active season for me.

DWill wrote:That course looks tempting. Wish it were free, but I guess I'm spoiled. Probably need to wait until it's a less active season for me.

It really does. And its got great reviews. The professor is quite good. He gives enormous historical context. Almost to the point of overkill. His Alexander the Great course had mega context.. it was not a cursory endeavor

DWill wrote:Just to say, Robert, having finally read Ehrman's book, that it presents an historian's rationale for the historical existence of Jesus. The point can't be emphasized enough, that when the techniques of modern historical inquiry are applied, it looks as though there was a Jesus as the basis of the myths that emerged to constitute Christianity.

Hi DWill, I have also read Ehrman’s book, and I came away with a totally opposite conclusion from you. As Richard Carrier comprehensively proves in his contribution to the collection of rebuttal essays that I linked in the post to which you responded, Ehrman does not in fact apply modern historical techniques. Your assertion that he does so is a faith statement on your part. The reality, as Carrier proves in On The Historical Jesus, is that the far most plausible explanation for the available historical evidence is that Jesus Christ was invented. My view is that Frank Zindler provides the most compelling explanation of this invention in the comments I quoted from him.

DWill wrote:Ehrman's case is multi-pronged and comprehensive, whereas I believe that you mythicists lean on single factors and do not have the experience, specialization, or training to make comprehensive judgments. It is just as important to be sure that historical discipline is followed as it to be certain that scientific method is employed in any investigation.

Again this is a rhetorical faith statement on your part which is easily refuted in the collection of essays against Ehrman. The so-called “prongs” of Ehrman’s case all turn out on examination to be worthless, late, reliant on Christian faith assertions, fraudulent, distorted, and made by Christian apologists to do far more work than any objective analysis could support.

You need a steely faith to ignore the simple historical facts, such as that the Jesus texts in Josephus were obviously not written until the fourth century.

DWill wrote: There has never been a school of thought positing a fictional Jesus until relatively modern times. This in itself doesn't mean that mythicists can't have discovered something unnoticed, but it does present a high bar for you all that your arguments haven't been able to surmount.

That assertion that mythicism is modern is just rubbish. The second letter of John in the New Testament refers directly to the Docetic school which held that Jesus was imaginary, condemning it in lurid terms as the anti-Christ. This Bible text calls explicitly for the suppression of the school of thought that Jesus was fictional. This political statement provided a strong basis for the later successful efforts of the church to paint heresy as idiotic falsehood. In fact the reality was that these so-called heretical teachings were the historical truth, albeit a truth that did not serve the objective of making Christianity a universal belief system suitable for the prevailing social context.

DWill wrote: The importance of the did-Jesus-exist question is that history becomes significantly rewritten and, I would say, distorted, under the mythicist view that Jesus was not conceived or viewed as having lived. Neither you, I, or Bart Ehrman believes in Jesus Christ; we all would say that the Jesus we can read about is in many respects mythic. The crucial difference is my belief that he was held as a historical reality.

Your “belief” here is a matter of faith, which can be contested by the standard methods of scientific historiography, including the analysis of available evidence. Zindler makes a really crucial point which I quoted above and repeat: “it is easier and more parsimonious to reconstruct an evolutionary sequence leading from a Docetic mystery cult with Gnostic affinities than from an historical Jesus to Gnosticism.” This invocation of the elegant Ockhamite scientific principle of parsimony here in terms of a plausible evolutionary sequence is not something that true believers in the Historical Jesus can simply brush aside on the grounds that Zindler is merely the long term editor of the American Atheist magazine.

DWill wrote: The simplest explanation for this is that he actually lived, but even regardless of that, it's the assumption that he lived, by the people of the time, that really matters. I'd be glad to discuss the book with anyone who has read it.

This “assumption” that you cite has precisely zero evidence in its support that is independent of the romance story in the Gospel of Mark, a story which is in the same historical romance genre lampooned by Cervantes in Don Quixote as utterly true in all respects.

When all the real evidence goes back to Saint Mark, a single author who had motive, means and opportunity for invention, the status becomes like an imaginary future debate on whether Tolkien’s fantasy, or other similar stories including Hercules, King Arthur, Robin Hood, William Tell, the man of La Mancha, Paul Bunyan, Luke Skywalker, Superman, Harry Potter, etc, are based on real historical individuals. In all these case, like Jesus, any drawing on real historical examples is solely incidental to the core myth making agenda.

It's remarkable that you can point to a measly verse from 2 John, one that does not even say what you claim, and call it proof of a Jesus-fiction school. Yet, when Paul makes many clear references to a Jesus who had lived, these are insufficient to show that Paul believed he had lived, and most importantly to him, died. With the Church's obsessive accounting of all the heresies that needed to be put down, it beggars belief that it would have missed the granddaddy of them all.

Well, if you still have this book and have the time and would like to explain how Ehrman fails, I'll listen and give my own views.

DWill wrote:It's remarkable that you can point to a measly verse from 2 John, one that does not even say what you claim, and call it proof of a Jesus-fiction school.

Not just a verse, but a series of clear statements from both 1 John and 2 John. Let’s go through the most egregious, to try to get a feel for the bullying culture that Ehrman is defending:

1 John
4:1-3: “1Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. 2This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, 3but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming and even now is already in the world.”

• Here John says the test of whether a prophet is true or false is whether they acknowledge that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh. The implication is that the allegedly false prophets are Docetic - claiming that Jesus is only spirit and not flesh, ie that Jesus only seemed to come in the flesh. These Docetists, condemned as heretics, teach that those who argue for the flesh Christ are deluded.

4:6 “We are from God, and whoever knows God listens to us; but whoever is not from God does not listen to us. This is how we recognize the Spirit of truth and the spirit of falsehood.

• Instead of using factual evidence about Jesus to justify his bullying, John simply asserts that the flesh camp is on God’s side. They never do use facts because there are none.

4:20 “Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar.”

• Considered together with the preceding anti-Docetic lines, the implication is that Docetists are liars because they disagree that there is any basis for the assertion of the Historical Jesus

5:6 “This is the one who came by water and blood—Jesus Christ.

• Baptism and the cross.

5:10 “Whoever believes in the Son of God accepts this testimony. Whoever does not believe God has made him out to be a liar”

• A key anti-Docetic line. Unless you believe the saving blood of Christ was physically shed on the cross you are calling God a liar. The blood was real and not imaginary. The NIV headlines this section “Faith in the Incarnate Son of God”. It is designed to clarify the distinction between orthodox Christians who believed in the embodied Christ as the core of faith and those who held that Christ was fictional.
• This theme of the reality of the incarnation and the error of Docetism is ramped up in one of the earliest church letters, from Ignatius of Antioch to the church in Smyrna generally dated to 110 AD. http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0109.htm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_to_the_Smyrnaeans Ignatius reinforces John’s point with violent murderous language about heretics, establishing the militaristic obedience cult of the bishop which was the selective adaptation that enabled Christianity to triumph over other messianic sects.

2 John
1:6 : “this is love: that we walk in obedience”

• An extraordinary assertion! Here the political twisting of language to serve the interest of the hierarchy of the church begins. Love is not obedience. The problem John’s clique saw with Gnostic Docetism was that it failed to serve the militaristic agenda of conformity.

1:7: “many deceivers, who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh, have gone out into the world. Any such person is the deceiver and the antichrist.”

• The only reason to insert “in the flesh” in this verse is to insinuate that these Satanic “deceivers” preach some other Christ, ie one who only came in the spirit, ie a myth. This, like Ignatius’ later language, is clear proof of the early existence of a Jesus-fiction school.

1:10: “If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, do not take them into your house or welcome them.”

• The teaching in question is that Jesus Christ came in the flesh. As this hate speech and the letter from Ignatius illustrate, the early church was not loving towards such people

1:11: “Anyone who welcomes them shares in their wicked work.

• So, if a Christian so much as speaks to a person who thinks that Jesus was not real, they are defined by the Bible as “wicked”. Nice.

DWill wrote: Yet, when Paul makes many clear references to a Jesus who had lived, these are insufficient to show that Paul believed he had lived, and most importantly to him, died.

No, no clear references. Two obscure ambiguous references, one to the fact that the story of Jesus emerged among the Jews (Rom 1:3) and the other an allegorical statement that he was ‘born of a woman’, even though no biographical details of this Jesus are ever cited apart from a dislocated death and alleged resurrection. All Paul’s ideas come from scripture and the spirit, not from Jesus. Wanting does not make it so.

DWill wrote:With the Church's obsessive accounting of all the heresies that needed to be put down, it beggars belief that it would have missed the granddaddy of them all.

No, the church did not miss this “granddaddy” but made it a main focus of the first heresiologist Ignatius of Antioch. I recommend reading his Letter to Symrna, it is not entirely dissimilar in tone to Ehrman’s diatribe.