Jesus Christ of the Gospels Never Existed. He's a Myth and I Can Prove It (Part 1). (Earth, witness)
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Well YEAH, I didn't "forget" that. That's who the Mar Thoma (St.Thomas) Christians ARE--a sect who believes Thomas brought Christianity to them along with the Gospel of Thomas, which was a book of Jesus's sayings, and then that he was martyred in India.
As a person who find language fascinating, I find the strongest evidence for this to be the fact that these people in India were using Syriac in their church. It was a common language of Christianity in the Middle East before the Roman Church rose up and started spreading the word in Latin.
By the way, the.church changed with the influences of the Eastern Orthodox and Catholic Churches, but it still exists. There is now a large Mar Thoma church in the Toronto area. And I worked with a Mar Thoma Indian Christian in Brooklyn!
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There is now a large Mar Thoma church in the Toronto area.
I guess Michael would insist the Mar Thoma church in Toronto is proof Thomas was the first to make it all the way to Canada. Seems when it comes to claims about the apostles' missionary journeys he'd like us to believe the apostles were the first ones to circumnavigate the globe.
MQ, is it conceivable that the reason they're speaking Syriac over there is because ordinary missionaries in the 6th and 7th centuries went to India to spread the gospel? have they found anything over there to date the Syriac to the 1st century?
I guess Michael would insist the Mar Thoma church in Toronto is proof Thomas was the first to make it all the way to Canada. Seems when it comes to claims about the apostles' missionary journeys he'd like us to believe the apostles were the first ones to circumnavigate the globe.
It sounds a bit like the "Buddha footprints" found around Thailand and other places in Southeast Asia. There is NO evidence Buddha was ever in those places.
In New Jersey, it would be all the "GW slept here" sites. .
But this is the opposite in the case of Kerala. They are the only place I know of that claims Thomas came to them, and there is the question of how this little outpost of Christianity came to be and thrived in India long before members of the established churches or the Bible showed up AND was using a middle-eastern language in their worship.
Ah, now there's a legitimate question. What prompted the thread itself was me getting sick and tired of all the propaganda Christians throw around to prove Jesus was real, like "There is more evidence for Jesus than there is for Julius Caesar" and "The apostles were willing to die for their faith in Jesus" which I knew both were as false as a claim from them that the sun rises from the West.
So I set out to demonstrate how the Christian leaders from the beginning used falsehoods to promote their faith and weren't shy about using lies to push their faith as I showed here:
See that remark from John Chrysostom--where he asks, "Do you see the advantage of deceit?"
Chrysostom might just as well be asking, "Do you see how useful deceit and untruths and lies can be in persuading otherwise unreceptive people to accept as truthful our fables about the Jesus Christ?"
I mean that is just about what he is saying there, it's plain as day. And bald-faced dishonesty like that just makes me cringe, and this dishonesty within the Christian ranks goes on even today and we see it in here at times as a defense to the claim that the Jesus of the Bible was not real. (notice I didn't say a historical Jesus, who may have been a real ordinary person)
So I suppose I was trying to point out to people who come in and read these threads that they should beware of untruths about the gospel Jesus being passed off as facts by the Christians in here when in truth they aren't facts at all.
And it's nice that the mods in here ARE more knowledgeable and tolerant than most of the forums out there who will ban you at the slightest question like, "I'm not sure if Jesus was real." BAM! "Sorry Thrillobyte, you don't have permission to access this forum anymore." Thanks much for being as tolerant and understanding and gracious and kind as you are, MQ.
That's because this is a forum about religion, not just a forum for the religious.
There's no rule that says ancient writings have to be able to be corroborated with other writings. There are other historical and/or mythological figures only known via one ancient source.
I'm afraid I cannot accept the notion that a holy book is inherently and necessarily evidence for anything. They are books of claims, which then need to be evidenced. In the case of the gospels for example, the extraordinary and miraculous events described would certainly have caught the attention of the general populace, the authorities, and ultimately, historians. Since the more extraordinary the truth claim, the more evidence is required for substantiation, looking for no-skin-in-the-game corroboration is not at all unreasonable.
If we only know of a figure that is agreed to be mythological, then it doesn't matter how many sources we have, they're still mythological and not real, right?
As for historical figures we only know from single sources, there is no claim that they are gods, raised the dead, or flew up to heaven, and no assertion that if we do not worship them we will burn in hell -- so the lack of attestation is far less problematic or relevant.
I'm afraid I cannot accept the notion that a holy book is inherently and necessarily evidence for anything. They are books of claims, which then need to be evidenced. In the case of the gospels for example, the extraordinary and miraculous events described would certainly have caught the attention of the general populace, the authorities, and ultimately, historians. Since the more extraordinary the truth claim, the more evidence is required for substantiation, looking for no-skin-in-the-game corroboration is not at all unreasonable.
If we only know of a figure that is agreed to be mythological, then it doesn't matter how many sources we have, they're still mythological and not real, right?
As for historical figures we only know from single sources, there is no claim that they are gods, raised the dead, or flew up to heaven, and no assertion that if we do not worship them we will burn in hell -- so the lack of attestation is far less problematic or relevant.
Wait, I did not ever say that the holy book is necessarily evidence for anything. Some people do believe that, however. I am not going to get into argument over whether or not miracles happened with people who believe that they did. I don't care enough.
But I also don't necessarily buy the argument in the bolded. I am pretty sure lots of events occurred, and people rose to relative local fame, etc., and that there were many stories that died with those who witnessed them and those to whom the stories were told and maybe even written down somewhere at one time.
A rabbi walking around saying radical things against the establishment and purported to have conducted miracles might be big news in a certain region of a small country, but nobody in Greece or Rome or India was likely to hear of it, and if they did, they would probably dismiss it as rumors from a place to which they didn't assign any importance. In fact, I bet there were other prophets making a ruckus with stories told of the miracles they performed in other lands whose legends have been lost with time. Literacy was rare, and so was long-distance communication.
A sorta-similar situation occurred in the 19th century in the USA. I remember reading a good article on this. The belief that Christ's return was at hand sprung up, and many new religious groups formed in a number of places, mostly in northern states, based on this idea. Many of them had calculated "the date" and preached that Judgment Day was coming very soon.
Well those days came and went, just as they do when somebody says they've got Judgment Day nailed down now, and some of the groups faded and died out. Several did not. Their followers reassessed their beliefs and formed new religions that we know now as the LDS Church, the SDA Church, and the Jehovah's Witnesses. I am sure there might be written records of other groups that either died out or were absorbed by these, but I am also pretty sure that there were others that are forever lost to history, and that was only 200 years ago.
People heard of Jesus through Paul and probably other followers of Jesus, as the religion spread out around the Mediterranean, and eventually, many more people heard of the religion called Christianity as it established itself in a wider world.
I'm not saying that looking for more historical evidence is not unreasonable. In fact, it's interesting. We've got the discovery of a stone plaque containing the name PILATVS in our own lifetime, the first evidence outside of the Bible that there was a Roman government official named Pilate. If the Romans didn't think it important enough to record the name of one of their own, why would anyone assume it to be a given that they'd waste time and scrolls writing about a rumored miracle worker in an occupied country, a religious figure coming out of a religious they thought was as ridiculous as Christians today think the Roman Gods were? It wasn't worth their time.
Wait, I did not ever say that the holy book is necessarily evidence for anything. Some people do believe that, however. I am not going to get into argument over whether or not miracles happened with people who believe that they did. I don't care enough.
But I also don't necessarily buy the argument in the bolded. I am pretty sure lots of events occurred, and people rose to relative local fame, etc., and that there were many stories that died with those who witnessed them and those to whom the stories were told and maybe even written down somewhere at one time.
A rabbi walking around saying radical things against the establishment and purported to have conducted miracles might be big news in a certain region of a small country, but nobody in Greece or Rome or India was likely to hear of it, and if they did, they would probably dismiss it as rumors from a place to which they didn't assign any importance. In fact, I bet there were other prophets making a ruckus with stories told of the miracles they performed in other lands whose legends have been lost with time. Literacy was rare, and so was long-distance communication.
A sorta-similar situation occurred in the 19th century in the USA. I remember reading a good article on this. The belief that Christ's return was at hand sprung up, and many new religious groups formed in a number of places, mostly in northern states, based on this idea. Many of them had calculated "the date" and preached that Judgment Day was coming very soon.
Well those days came and went, just as they do when somebody says they've got Judgment Day nailed down now, and some of the groups faded and died out. Several did not. Their followers reassessed their beliefs and formed new religions that we know now as the LDS Church, the SDA Church, and the Jehovah's Witnesses. I am sure there might be written records of other groups that either died out or were absorbed by these, but I am also pretty sure that there were others that are forever lost to history, and that was only 200 years ago.
People heard of Jesus through Paul and probably other followers of Jesus, as the religion spread out around the Mediterranean, and eventually, many more people heard of the religion called Christianity as it established itself in a wider world.
I'm not saying that looking for more historical evidence is not unreasonable. In fact, it's interesting. We've got the discovery of a stone plaque containing the name PILATVS in our own lifetime, the first evidence outside of the Bible that there was a Roman government official named Pilate. If the Romans didn't think it important enough to record the name of one of their own, why would anyone assume it to be a given that they'd waste time and scrolls writing about a rumored miracle worker in an occupied country, a religious figure coming out of a religious they thought was as ridiculous as Christians today think the Roman Gods were? It wasn't worth their time.
Well said, MQ. The tendency to view ancient times through the lens of our modern mass communication milieu is far too typical and the source of great misunderstanding of ancient writings and their import.
As for the Bible itself, as you know, the Bible is not one book but a collection, with reference to the NT, of at times independent writings. Paul's letters are independent of the Gospels, and many scholars regard the Gospel of John to be independent of the Synoptic Gospels. Multiple independent sources are regarded by historians as evidence of historical reliability. This argument made by some skeptics that the Bible can't be considered as historical is nonsense. While the Gospels are theological treatises and contain legendary material they do also contain actual history as well and this is recognized by actual historians who do Jesus studies.
The idea that the NT texts are independent is nonsense, even you are aware of the synoptic problem, and the argument about whether Q existed or not.
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Seems when it comes to claims about the apostles' missionary journeys he'd like us to believe the apostles were the first ones to circumnavigate the globe.
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The tendency to view ancient times through the lens of our modern mass communication milieu is far too typical and the source of great misunderstanding of ancient writings and their import.
