Who Was Jesus? He Definitely Is Not God

I disagree. It seems highly unlikely that Jews would have made up a crucified Messiah who died like a common criminal in a manner that made Him cursed according to Deuteronomy. Not only that but after his demise, leadership of the Jerusalem church passed to Peter and after that to James, Jesus' brother. Paul reports interactions with both of these individuals, who claimed to be, and were regarded as, close to Jesus. I think it's unlikely that James would make up a composite brother, or that Peter would make up a composite master. The case for the historical Jesus is presented, I think convincingly, in Bart Ehrman's Did Jesus Exist? I'll concede that the Jesus presented in the Gospels (including all the deeds, sayings and miracles, might well be a composite of human and divine figures, but I think Jesus the crucified prophet was an historical reality. As for the existence of God, that question has been debated for centuries by some of humanity's best minds, and has drawn 80 pages of posts on the Does God Exist? thread on this forum. We could rehash the arguments, but since you've asserted rather bluntly that "there is no god", you've taken on the burden of proving that. Personally, I think it's a matter of faith, one way or the other.

 

You might also try the rebuttals by Carrier and Price. All three are wrong.

 

he was just a guy. who MAY HAVE CHANNELED a god. one who, should it even happen itself to exist, as it may or may not, CHOSE HIM to be channeled BY.
just exactly AS THAT SAME GOD, may have chosen every other revealer of every other organized belief.

yes its all speculation, but that at least corrisponds with the writings that became the christian bible.

there are of course other possibilities. but he didn't spent first 30 years of his life being what he spent the last three as.

he COULD be a fictitious character, created BEFORE the events of his life were supposed to have taken place, by a monastic order of jewish scholars, called the essenes.
the ones who wrote and 'hid' for preservation, the dead sea scrolls. many parts of which the public has never been and may never be allowed to see.

i you want a conspiracy theory, here's one: right wing christian organizations keep people from seeing them, because they would confirm the essenes, made the whole jesus story up.

and of course, the silly thing, there's a WHOLE BUNCH of people in south and central america who bare that name.

there are a lot of possible answers to this, and what i don't believe, is that anyone can really, without a time machine, and maybe not even then, produce convincing evidence of a certainty, which is which.

everything that in one part of that book, would seem to be a unique quality of him as a person, elsewhere in that same book, is said to apply to all of us.

the Baha'i explanation, is that if you see the sun in a mirror, yes you are really seeing the sun, but you are also seeing a mirror. and of course that's another way of saying, what we now call channeling.

to me, it doesn't matter. all religions are the same religion. by that i don't mean that they're all christianity, or even very much like it. but rather, that christianity is just one more among them, all of equal value and stature.

and are any of them valid? phylosophically, they all both are and are not. i don't think christianity is even unique in claiming its revealer rose from the dead, nor had a virgin birth.

and that's another thing that can never be confirmed or denied. it is of course, this very uncertainty, that defines religious belief in the broader (and inclusuve) sense.

 

There were already messianic cults around, and not everybody has always lived as the kind of strict jew you're talking about - especially not those who founded/made up christianity.

 

Possible. And a very valid thought. But just as certain as opposite claims in the end.

It can still very well be that he was a real human being. I'm not saying this out of wishful thinking, really. It is just what we have to conclude when we look objectively (not including his status as the son of god here btw). To me it doesn't really matter because I would agree with Okie that his teachings are what matters most and they still stand even if they wouldn't be specificly from an individual called Jesus.

 

I'm curious, why are the claims made by Jesus met with such incredulity, yet I'm sure many folks who think Christians are nuts believe this stuff;

Dalai Lama Gets To Decide Whether He'll Be Reborn Or Not, Buddhist Leader Says

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/16/dalai-lama-reincarnation_n_7076640.html?cps=gravity_2677_7415490363394804028

now doesn't that claim sound just as bat-shit crazy as Jesus' claims whenever there isn't one iota of scientific evidence that reincarnation is real.

 

and it would appear there is some doubt about if Buddha actually existed either;

http://buddhism.stackexchange.com/questions/1835/did-gautama-buddha-exist

after a quick perusal it seems there is just as much ambiguity concerning Buddha as there is concerning Jesus and that, like Christianity, the documents pointed to to affirm his existence were penned centuries after his supposed life and death





just pointing out that some folks accept things based on hearsay, yet condemn others for doing the same.

 

I feel the same way abour the mythicist responders. Eighty might seem an impressive number to you, but they aren't taken very seriously by other scholars. Their arguments are seriously flawed. Presenting them is like citing 80 commentators from FOX News on whether Hillary Clinton would make a good President. Ehrman has an outstanding reputation and credentials as a New Testament scholar, he is learned in Koine Greek, and has demonstrated a capacity for scholarship and Biblical analysis that, in my opinion, ranks with the best in the field. The Mythicists were highly threatened by his book, which is why they joined forces to attack him. Without Jesus to discredit, they would have no livelihood. For a balanced view, I'd recommend reading the book.

 

That's true, but in trying to figure out how a bunch of Palestinian Jews in the first century came to believe in a figure called Jesus, we can only go on what seems most plausible from the available evidence. Making up a crucified messiah seems most unlikely for a Jewish audience, and it also seems unlikely that James would make up an imaginary brother. And the bit about baptism by John the Baptist is difficult to explain. Why would they make that up only to go through contortions trying to explain why that didn't make the Baptist superior to Jesus?

More importantly, though, is the body of thought attributed to Jesus: the Sermon on the Mount, the parable of the Good Samaritan, the idea that God is love, that the two most important commandments are love of god and love of neighbor, the golden rule, forgiveness, turning the other cheek, and non-judgmental concern for everyone, including society's rejects. I consider these to be self-evidently true, regardless of who said them, and when I call myself a Christian, I mean that I believe in these. (Same goes for Buddhism)

 

my counter point would be, that it is also possible, to assume nothing. that any, all or none, could pretty much all, equally as likely as not, have existed or not existed, either way.

 

When you hear only one side of the argument, including the sound bites they provide, that argument usually sounds stronger than the one they are tearing apart. And yes, we could say the same thing about Christian apologists, for whom I have little respect. Surely, though, we can't put Ehrman in that category. He's an agnostic who made his reputation exposing errors and forgeries in translations of the gospels and challenging the New Testament account of the origins of Christianity. He presents a case for the existence of Jesus, but continues to make the case that the historical Jesus was a failed apocalyptic preacher who was "too historical"--i.e., concerned with issues that are radically different from those relevant to contemporary Christians. Those Christian apologists have it in for Ehrman at least as much as do the mythicists.

 

Alas, I conceded too much. After writing this, I came across I.F. Stone's The Trial of Socrates which presents Socrates as a shil for the Greek oligarchs in encouraging young Athenian aristocrats to dispise democracy and admire the Spartan fascist constitution. The results are evident in the writings of his pupil Plato (See Plato's Republic). Good heroes are hard to find.

 

Ahh yes, the father, the son, and the holy toast.



It looks like Jesus is vomiting,
or stuffing something is his mouth.

 

Ah, yes, Tomas Paine. Does that seem like a cogent argument to you? He talks about reason, but the basis of his argument here seems to be some kind of gut-level aversion to the idea of Christ--very similar to the aversions felt by Jews and Muslims to the idea. Where's the logic?

 

In the sphere of politics there are no heroes only the good at tact, and cunning. Politics is one thing, reason another. The politically minded always seek to convince. That Socrates didn't convince you means he is not a good politician but doesn't make him less of a thinker. Jesus purported take on devotion to the political machine was to render unto ceasar only what was required and keep out of the courts. Jesus sought to inform. Regardless whether or not a hero is acclaimed is a matter of taste or the play of attraction/revulsion. There is no definitive end to this ongoing practice of measuring up. It is said however those are blessed that hunger and thirst for righteousness for they will be satisfied.

The holy is not hard to find. Forgiveness is hard to comprehend because our claims on impropriety seem just. How do you conceive the holy without the idea of the profane to compare to? I understand the holy to be without confusion of elements. Another way to say it would be things as they are created by god. A world without confusion of elements appears when you relinquish the sliding scale of devotion to the heroic and disdain for the taboo. To see the world without judgement transcends any question of worthiness and leaves you gaping in wonder and thrilled to realize you yourself are a crowning part. I and my father are one.

I understand Thomas Paines logic in terms of apparent density. Christianity traditionally as set of oaths of belief, distinct from jesus, makes a hero out of the messenger and in so doing obscures the message. It is not a cogent argument against christ but it is against the deistic distortions of the cultural establishment. Another writer of the same argument was Ralph Waldo Emerson.