Dave Ellis
Contributor
- Dec 27, 2011
- 8,933
- 821
- Gender
- Male
- Faith
- Atheist
- Marital Status
- In Relationship
- Politics
- CA-Conservatives
We have no personal accounts, that's part of the problem. However even if we did, personal accounts are typically considered the most unreliable form of evidence.
Using your same criteria, we can claim the existence of Spiderman has been proven archaeologically. After all, he lives in New York City, and many places in New York that appear in the comic have been verified to exist.
There's a fairly accurate portrayal of 20th and 21st century American culture in the books as well, so that's just further evidence, right?
The point is, if real people and places exist within a story, that does not provide evidence that the story itself is true.
No, actually that's incorrect. Paul (who is our earliest source) is quite emphatic that he speaks with Jesus only in visions and through revelation, and never as a flesh and blood person.
In fact Paul talks openly that the knowledge of Jesus is only revealed through him by scriptural interpretation and revelation, and no human sources at all... which is rather strange if Jesus apparently lead a ministry and had lots of followers about twenty years previously. Paul is largely writing about a Dionysus-like god figure with a strong influence from the Greco-Roman mystery faiths which were widespread in the region at the time. The mystery faiths usually included some kind of saviour god, resurrection, a lord's supper, etc. And yes, Paul writes about the "Lord's supper", not the "last supper" in his letters. The idea gets turned into the last supper in the gospel writings. These are just a few of many examples, however the parallels to the mystery faiths are absolutely undeniable. In short, it's likely Paul created a Jewish version of a mystery faith, and that eventually grew into Christianity.
Biographical information for Jesus only starts to show up in the gospels, which were written at least 20 years after Paul's letters.
Actually, that's just flat out false. You even said yourself multiple branches of early Christianity (i.e. the Gnostics) believed Jesus was a divine entity and not a flesh and blood person.
If Jesus had clearly been a flesh and blood person, then how could that debate ever arise, especially in the early stages of Christianity? Theudas was one of the early notable Gnostic thinkers, and was a student of Paul himself. Theudas went on to be Valentinus's teacher, and Valentinius went on to start one of the most widespread Gnostic Christian movements.
Gnostic Christianity continued on for a few centuries until it was declared heretical by the now orthodox sect of Christianity and violently suppressed. But that doesn't mean their views on Paul's writings were wrong.
How so? Every religion has critics, and many of those critics have well researched and valid arguments. However, many times if someone has faith, then providing them with evidence that they're wrong isn't going to matter. They're going to keep on believing despite the evidence to the contrary
That's also not true. Going back to your own example of Gnostic Christianity, numerous sects believed Jesus Christ was a celestial being of sorts, and never existed in the flesh and blood.
As for secular historical records, there is no mention whatsoever of Jesus from contemporary sources. In fact this is something early Christian church fathers like Origen criticized historians of the period about (supposedly not stopping to think there might have been nothing to write about on the topic).
On that note, the 1st century is rather well documented, and there were a number of credible Roman historians in the area at the time Jesus was purported to have preached and built his ministry. Despite these historians listing numerous cult leaders, purported messiahs, scandals, etc not one of them ever mentions Jesus.
You could argue that they were not writing about him because they didn't believe in him, however that's not tenable. If anything if that was the case we'd have expected them to write the narrative from a critical pro-roman perspective. They'd have recorded him just as another false messiah who was crucified. But we don't even have that, which is rather telling.
It didn't pass totally unnoticed by critics at all. There was a ton of theological debate, and when the now orthodox Christianity got the upper hand politically, they had all the gnostic books banned and burned, and Gnostic Christians put to death. That's not exactly "going unnoticed".
As for the gospel writers, there is no doubt they're attempting to create a biography of sorts for a flesh and blood Jesus. That doesn't mean their stories are true though... the gospels were written 40-80 years after the fact, by anonymous authors who never met Jesus. Their accounts contain numerous examples of "miracles" and other stories that were commonly attributed to other gods at the time as well that came long before Jesus. There's huge amounts of Zoroastrian and Mithraic influence in the gospel narratives, among other religions practised at the time. Virtually the entire gospel narrative has been lifted from the pre-existing myths of other religions.
Upvote
0