CADRE Comments

I, Joe Hinman, defending proposition, Resolved: That the external (not in Bible) evidence is strong enough to warrant belief in Jesus' historicity . I do not have to prove factually that Jesus actually did exist, only that belief in his historicity is warranted. This question has nothing to do with miracles. A man could exist and be thought to have worked miracles even if he did not. So miracles in no way limited Jesus' actual existence. I was an atheist, and when I was I thought the Jesus myth thing was groundless. This is not a Christian vs Atheist issue. It's really a struggle over how to understand historical facts. I have five arguments. I will summarize them briefly and link to longer pages with material for documentation. The arguments are: I. The Talmud II. Papias III.  Polycarp IV. Josephus (mainly the brother passage) V. The web of historicity (in second post) I am going to ask the reader to read a couple of very long pages and a...

These are the voyages of Jesus myther propaganda... (part 1) It's five year mission, to seek out new lies and new propaganda slogans, to boldly go where no historians have gone before...    Years ago, way back in 2009 I did a post on Atheistwatch about the Jesus project , not seminar but project . They really did have a five year mission. Last week I did a post on the parent organization , the centerpiece of atheist propaganda machine, the center for inquiry (they do skeptical inquiry magazine). What came of that Jesus project? It's five years  were up in 2013. I said that the time: " Cracking The Jesus Myth Phony Scholarship Code ." Richard Carrier has a couple of articles on his blog about a big conference for the Jesus Project held at Amherst last December. O it sounds very scholarly. It presents the image of a group of major scholars meeting to mull over the lattes scientific findings that proving that Jesus never existed. This create...

Introducing Our Newest Member, Don Macintosh of the Transcending Proof Blog. More about Don in Comments Someone pointed out to me recently that on his blog Aron-Ra had announced his conversion to mythicism (the view that Jesus Christ was a religious invention rather than a historical figure) and supported it with arguments. Link to that post below: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/ reasonadvocates/2015/11/03/ jesus-never-existed/ Given that Aron's post received plenty of attention (generating over 1,500 comments), I thought it deserved a serious if brief rebuttal, which begins below:   I saw an  article in Inquisitor   today, wherein someone read through 126 historic documents from 1st century Israel, written by people who should have known about Jesus, yet had never heard of him. This includes Josephus, whose only mention of Jesus is now known to have been a forgery or redaction inserted later by someone else. Josephus also wrote extensively about Herod the Gr...

Kenneth Humphreys Is probably the major Paul Myther.I can't find out much about him, but he wrote a Jesus Myth book, The Christos Mythos . See a review by major historian James omerea. His anti-Paul arguments are laid out on a blog: A Fabricated Apostle: Two Different Pauls . Humphreys has many argumens but I will deal with six, and to summarize them: (1)Argument from silence on Paul's great acts (2) Disparities between Epistles and Acts (3)Conflicts between Paul's Roman citizenship and Jewishness (4) Paul's conversion story is implausible. (5)Supposedly parallel passages with Josephus. (6)No evidence of Paul in Ephesus His First Argument is an Argument from Silence (OF COURSE). There's no record of Paul being assigned to enforce Jewish sanctions against heretics. Moreover, Paul was always meeting Kings and civic dignitaries yet there is no record of it in secular history. "The trail-blazing Christian missionary and apostle,...

The Jesus myther thing is funny. They wanted to be totally sure they wouldn't go to hell so they convinced themselves Jesus just didn't exist. Actually they got the idea from 18th and 19th century people such as Bruno Bauer who did not have benefit of more recent scholarly developments. It was an age of unbelieving super liberal scholarship where thinkers like Von Harnack were more common and believing scholars like Lightfoot and Wescott were less common. Atheists are already skeptical of any counter evidence and it's really the final solution of atheism to erase Jesus from history. But Paul proves Jesus existed. He met his brother and some of his best friends, and speaks of his fleshly nature and earthly linage. But not to worry, Paul didn't exist. That's right there is actually a big movement (by Jesus myth standards) to say Paul didn't exist. But Paul is proved to have existed because the author of Peter's epistles, whoever he was, said he did. Gues...

In August, neilgodfrey posted on a question: "Do mythicists read Paul's references to Jesus's humanity as interpolations or metaphors?" As for interpolations, which is the focus of this post, Neil helpfully answers "No." Indeed, Neil claims "This is another misinformed assertion advanced by some who appear never to have read mythicist publications. " He then notes one interpolation from Thessalonians for Dr. Price and does not mention Earl Doherty at all. He corrects himself in the comments, noting one interpolation entertained by Doherty. Ultimately, Neil claims, "The only interpolations singled out in Paul’s letters by anyone who advances a mythical Jesus (at least from my readings) are those that are strongly argued to be interpolations by scholars who have expressed no interest in mythicism, and who almost certainly would accept a “historical Jesus”." Earl Doherty Doherty himself seems sensitive on this point. In a respons...

Doherty compiles the different understandings of the early church in its attempts to come to terms with what the events of Jesus life and death meant, and plugs into them Gnostic interpretations and uses the fact of theology itself to imply that the church didn't have the story of the cross and the tomb when it began. Between these two poles lie other incongruent conceptions. In the earliest layer of the Gospel of John, Jesus is the mythical Descending-Ascending Redeemer from heaven who saves by being God's Revealer; later he is equated with the Greek Logos. Jesus is the heavenly High Priest of the Epistle to the Hebrews, the non-suffering intermediary servant of the Didache, the mystical Wisdom-Messiah of the Odes of Solomon. Paul hints at divergent groups in places like Corinth who "preach another Jesus." In the diverse strands of Gnosticism Jesus (or Christ) is a mythical part of the heavenly pleroma of Godhead, sometimes a revealer akin to John's...