Jesus wasn't Jesus

on my blog I talked about some of the reasons that others have decided that Jesus never existed and I hinted at some of my own I say hinted because it seems I was too subtle I'm often asked to explain things more deeply because I often give evidence that I think paints the picture obviously enough that I can safely assume that my listener will see the image indicated however that rarely happens for reasons that are usually my fault so I'll go into it a bit more I said there are two possibilities regarding Jesus he was either an ignorant first-century charlatan and cult leader heavily exaggerated like Robin Hood or he's a completely imaginary legendary character like Hercules everyone seems to be okay with the first option except the Christians of course and a lot of people have problems with the second one but think about this there's really not that much difference between them is there already we've established that by either option there can't have been a real Jesus one of my oldest friends still calls himself a Christian even though he doesn't believe a word of the Bible he told me he's Christian because he likes to believe that not because he thinks it's true I don't think he realizes what that admission means to me he says that Jesus was just some schmuck who had a lot of Legends lumped onto him and when I suggested that there might not have been any one actual Jesus at all he got angry he said he wanted there to be some schmuck by which he meant he wanted there to be some truth at the root of the tale we all do for whatever reason I used to look at all the old myths wondering what really happened but it's not as simple as that sometimes none of it is true at all and sometimes it's a blend of distortions and exaggerations compiled from multiple original events that aren't related and then what have you got if there were three to five actual people at the root of the story and none of them would even recognize themselves within that story then what looking at the contested option first let's imagine we've constructed a time scanning app that allows us to watch history unfold on our screens and pan around or explore where we want to now let's go look for King Arthur how could the Arthurian legends have emerged unless there was a King Arthur at the root of it right except that what you get there is a collection of fanciful legends of impossible nonsense so when you strip all that out you don't have any occasion of one particular guy historians can't point him out either in time or in space and some of the multiple potential Arthur's already been in England and I don't think any of them were named Arthur if there was one he wasn't an actual King so if there ever was an Arthur who was something else living somewhere else would that mean there was an Excalibur Lancelot Camelot where did each of those other elements come from somewhere else in someone else what happened with King Arthur is what I think happened to Jesus if you found a guy named Jesus who had a brother named James who also met Paul assuming that Paul was talking about a real person then maybe that guy was either Jesus of damn Gnaeus someone who we think is different than the guy we're looking for or that guy was not even aware of the mountain of nonsense that has been heaped upon his name he wouldn't even recognize himself as the Jesus we're looking for because some of those stories had nothing to do with him maybe what happened with Jesus is more like what happened with Brian the problem that a lot of people have with this is that they think that we only need to match a few details from a handful of different versions of what is essentially one story in it everyone has always agreed on what that story is but I don't think that at all not even part of it we can't expect that any collection of details and the Gospels are true and that they're the actual story at all were that they all originated only from the things that one guy actually did or said look how the rumor mill turned Darwin into a racist and Hitler into an evolutionist that happened almost immediately the Gospels were written decades later with an obvious agenda intent on depicting Jesus as the new David the new Moses a king a messiah or a god my suspicion is is if you found someone whom you think might be the Jesus you're looking for then other time travelers or archeologists or historians would likely say that it was someone else or that parts of this legend pertained to someone else and if you left that guy see any version of Christianity even a century later he wouldn't recognize it and wouldn't even think the story was about him let's choose an easier one let's look for Noah that name doesn't show up until the priestly writers exiled in Babylon around 500 BCE and prior to that the Noah character was known as the asuras and possibly you bar two - all of whom have slightly different backgrounds attached since they all hail from different Mesopotamian regions however we know that the story is a gross exaggeration of a localized inundation of the Iraqi flood plain centred on the city of cherepakhin 2900 BCE so many of the details between these different accounts are consistent that we know they're all talking about the same event and that event has been confirmed by archaeologists and geologists so we found noah right except that he's a handful of different people none of whom matched the 600 year old codger in the bible these stories match each other more closely than they do the biblical version because they were all written a thousand years earlier closer to the actual event importantly the additional story is like where Noah curses his own kids afterwards and sends them off to populate different parts of the world that did not come from these earlier legends that came from somewhere else meaning that it pertains to someone else and some of these other characters or events may be completely imaginary no one goes looking for the truth at the heart of the tales of Prometheus Dionysus or Hercules because we're all pretty sure that that's just people making up stories based on nothing but imagination and that could be true of Jesus too but and that is what others have suggested but that's not exactly what I'm suggesting I think Jesus was more in line with Noah in that you've got all these fanciful exaggerations but they're not all one guy and they're not all real either and I'm not just talking about the other pre-christian God men that Jesus is apparently based on although that is an important point - I'm talking about the most that I think we could expect of a historical Jesus and I don't think that that would either qualify as historical or Jesus in the very early years of Christianity you already have factions arguing over whether Jesus was a real person the Ebionites or Nazarenes were a renunciant set who held that Jesus was a purely human prophet but they did not accept Paul's account of it which is important here then you have the dos etics who say that Jesus was a fully divine being who merely appeared to be human as an illusion so Jesus is not a physical person and therefore can't really die unless it happens in the celestial realm which is what Richard carrier suggests then you have the Gnostics who are even older than Christianity and they cast Jesus as an emissary between man and God however they did not believe that Jesus died for our sins and that's a significant difference - then you've got the Coptic version which again is early enough that it could be contemporary with the Gospel of John their account includes the Gospel of Thomas in which jesus said that if God wanted men to be circumcised then men wouldn't be born with foreskins and that rare bit of actual wisdom is part of the NAG Hammadi library where God Himself is oblivious to the fact that he was created by other gods in secrecy and where Jesus is less important a character than there are few different recurrent versions of Adam then there's the infancy gospel contemporary with the Gospel of Luke which tells the story of Jesus as a boy in that young Jesus is more like Damien from The Omen because he kills other children with incantations and brings clay figures to life with a golem spell remember this gospel was supposed to have preceded the Gospel of John and what does that mean about the credibility of the Gospel of John and look at all the disparity already we've got 16 non canonical Gospels emerging in the early days of Christianity all of which purporting to tell the story of Jesus yet they're all different stories in the early church banned them all as completely heretical the only Gospels which are candid eyes are the last one which shouldn't be for obvious reasons and the ones largely based on the first one even that first one was written decades after Jesus allegedly died and it's missing important elements of his life like the virgin birth that was anonymously added later the Gospel of Mark is 92% identical to Matthew except that it corrects some of the errors that shouldn't have been in Matthew and when it did not get corrected was chapter 1 verse 23 it's a misreading of Isaiah 7:14 as if that was supposed to be a prophecy pertaining to Jesus read the rest of that chapter it can't be Isaiah was talking about another prophecy that was supposed to be fulfilled some 700 years earlier by some other perfectly ordinary bastard that prophecy failed spectacularly - but that's a rant for another time still in the first couple centuries of Christianity we have Justin Martyr an early Christian apologist telling Helenus Greeks that Jesus is really no different than any other half-human Godman such as Hercules no we atheists understand that Jesus is not significantly different than the pagan gods but it's nice to see a Christian apologist admit that to also remember that there was never in historic origin for Hercules Justin Martyr accepts as gospel the story of Jesus being strong like a giant to run his course around the world before the hell is that story what was he reading back then where did any of these fanciful tales come from what this should implies that we have no idea how many different legends of original Christianity was based on or what those stories were even about because they've been censored hidden away or destroyed even the early Christians had a very different concept of theology than we do today certainly Jesus himself if there was one would have to we've got two different birth dates in different centuries for a kid who grew up in multiple towns in two different countries Christopher Hitchens says that this indicates a historic origin where someone was trying to fudge the data to make their actual person fit all the myths and fulfill their prophecies but at the same time it implies two different realities at least and that fact refutes the first assumption how much of this came from some other actual figure and how do we discern it from the other sources some of which weren't based on any living person at all I mean come on we know that certain elements of Jesus life were adapted from earlier tales like the slaughter of the innocents which was adapted from the childhood of Moses which was itself adapted from the childhood story of Sargon and if you read the myths of Dionysus you'll quickly see parallels to as with Krishna and Buddha as well how much if any of this story actually pertain to any confused and delusional first century faith healer and cult leader who really lived had that person ever even heard of Mary or Judas had Pilate ever heard of Jesus I really don't think so all we know about the Gospels is that most of it didn't happen that way and that's the only thing we can be sure of so my thinking is that even if there was only one guy whom any number of analytical observers would all agree was the guy that the first version of Christianity was based on which I don't think it's the case then I think that if that guy got to see any of the incarnations his cult had evolved into he would say no that's not what happened that didn't happen that's not what I thought that's not what I taught That's not me and then they would lament the things that he really did that got forgotten or confused with something else that either never happened or had nothing to do with him you

Channel: AronRa

Views: 531,582

Rating: 4.6287928 out of 5

Keywords: Jesus, mythicist, mythicism, Justin Martyr (Author), gnostics, gnosticism, ebionites, docetics, Early Christianity (Literature Subject)

Id: 6lqC8fvIspY

Length: 12min 18sec (738 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 07 2015

Reddit Comments

[u/MikkyfinN]

That was a pleasure to watch. Someone has done some reading.

[u/Arkansan13]

Dear non-existent god he just regurgitated every half baked or poorly understood mythicist argument.

For one you start off on a bad foot when you make a character judgment of a possible historical figure 2000 years removed, I mean come on what's with the need to call him a "Charlatan" couldn't he have just been simply wrong with out intentionally being deceptive.

Two he simply states "Jesus was based on earlier god men" without actually backing it up. You need to give a substantial argument for this.

Three the Docetism argument. This doesn't really work the way he thinks it does, it doesn't match up like he claims it does with Carrier's "celestial Jesus" theory. The Doectics believed Jesus "appeared" to be here on earth not in heaven, this was simply an extension of their belief that he was simply to divine to completely manifest in an imperfect world. Even more this argument doesn't really mean anything, so what if some of them believed he only appeared to be here on earth? That doesn't really prove that there wasn't a man behind the stories. Oh and a side note there really wasn't a unified docetism, much like the term gnostic it's being heavily rethought and is really to broad to be particularly useful.

The logic here is just... bad. He also sort of doubles back at the end and says "well if there was a Jesus there is no way he bares any resemblance in any fashion to anything written so basically he isn't "Jesus" and I'm right either way". Just no.

[u/Good_withoutGod]

Mythicism is making a comeback