>Dear Chris
>
> > Since I don't really think that Jesus even existed,
> > even as an ordinary religious nutcake of those times,
>
>Then your knowledge of history is grossly inferior to your physics. Do
>you think Alexander and Nero existed? George Washington?
Shall we compare documentation, etc. for the Jesus vs. Alexander, Nero, and
George Washington?
They are not even in the same general categories as far as supporting
*evidence* is concerned. Jesus is *much* closer to the category of many
admittedly fictional characters, characters made up by religions, including
the religions of Jesus' day. There is *nothing* basic to the bizarre
stories of Jesus that was not already commonplace in pre- or non-Christian
religions. Nothing whatever. Nothing.
Oops! Sorry. I forgot to emphasize that: *NOTHING*.
This does not mean that someone did not exist who was called Jesus, of
course, and to whom the miracles were attributed, etc., just as there are
many people in the world today who supposedly work miracles for any number
of religions. But, the fact that there is such a well-established
alternative basis for both the biographical and the theological aspects of
the Gospels suggests that, at very best, they are doubtful.
Further, though it has been *claimed* that there is independent evidence
(independent of the obviously biased and otherwise questionable New
Testament claims) for the existence of Jesus, every time I've checked some
such claim, it has turned out to be about as "independent" of the New
Testament as "West Side Story" is independent of "Romeo and Juliet."
There is one such claim that Jones refers to in an earlier post that I
haven't checked out yet, but, knowing the lack of standards Jones applies
to anything that seems to support his claims, I do not expect much to come
of investigating it.
Further, *if* there were any such strong support for the existence of
Jesus, I'd *expect* it to be very well publicized by now, part of common
knowledge, though, of course, if it's just *assumed* that Jesus existed,
people might not bother to investigate or publish supporting evidence.
But then, why all the publications of the *alleged* instances of such
evidence that turn out to be empty?
No; until there is strong supportive evidence, the available historical
evidence is *against* his existence, though. This is one of those "Elephant
at the garden party" things. If, after the garden party, those present
during the entire event do *not* report vigorously that there was an
elephant there, you can pretty much bet that there *was* no elephant there
(unless, in this particular group, elephants at garden parties are a common
occurrence). That is, if Jesus *did* exist and *did* perform all the
stage-magician miracles he is alleged to have performed, the evidence of
his existence would *permeate* the independent writings of the times; he'd
have been discussed endlessly in the equivalent of the press at the time,
and written up at *great* length, by a *large* number of people working
without knowledge of each other, and *during* the time of Jesus' alleged
existence.
And so on.
I don't regard this as an absolute disproof of Jesus' existence, but it
makes it as questionable as the existence of any of the similar alleged
miracle-workers of many other religious traditions.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Dec 11 2000 - 18:35:19 EST