Posted: Mar 12, 2021 11:35 am
Stein wrote:proudfootz wrote:RealityRules wrote:Recently, even Bart Ehrman has come around to the view of a growing number of scholars that the earliest Christians believed Jesus was a preexistent divine being. [1] And with good reason: the evidence is overwhelming. We see this in the earliest Christian creeds and doctrines that we have any evidence of (e.g., Philippians 2:5-11; Romans 8:3; Galatians 4:14; 1 Corinthians 8:6, 10:1-5). https://bibleinterp.arizona.edu/article ... uter-space
Carrier's reasoning is solid. Proving a negative is fraught with difficulties, and as he mentions in the commentary his conclusion is "Jesus was more likely mythical than historical" based on the evidence at hand - definitely not the sort of thing a 'fanatic' would say.
To quote Carrier:...it is only that non-existent version of Jesus that actually launched the religion (1 Corinthians 15; Galatians 1; Romans 16:25-26). Had there been no imaginary Jesus, there would have been no Christianity. Thus, the historicity hypothesis doesn’t really do all that much work to explain the origins of Christianity: we all agree it originated from the teachings of a non-existent Jesus, so why do we need to cling so desperately to a real Jesus, who didn’t even invent the religion?
The above comports with the conclusion I posted years ago in this thread: even if the Divine Jesus was somehow inspired by an actual person who traveled the dusty roads of Palestine, the Historical Jesus is just about the least important person to know about regarding the development of the christian cults.
PLENTY are not one bit interested in how Christianity started, duh. Far more interesting is Jesus's social criticism.
Stein
I do agree that many are not interested in christianity, its origin, and its content (such as it is). There's no particular reason why anyone who's not persuaded that gods exist should consider it important in any way, shape, or form.
I'd venture to submit that HJers and MJers (to adopt the Manichaean-type polarization of the 'debate') also agree that whatever message is attributed to this Jesus, it is purely human in origin. We can build on that!
If social criticism is the point of interest, it really doesn't matter who made that criticism - it has nothing to do with the validity of the criticism. It stands or falls on its own merits. But again, being interested in social criticism of a society that no longer exists is only of interest to a few. The biography of the person it might be attributed to is an even more obscure pursuit, and obviously irrelevant to the future of humanity.
Trying to dignify social criticism of today's society by attaching the name of some dude who lived 2000 years ago is wholly understandable. But who cares? Why not simply state your case and make arguments supporting your criticism?
Forget about trying to make it seem more authoritative by telling people 'Jesus agrees with me, so suck on it!'
