Keeping a skeptical eye on the evidence, I like to remain aware of the possibility that I might be falling for mis-information that is being spread mischievously. Certainly some of the claims of similarities between the Jesus story and others are a little bit exaggerated, and correspondents have pointed this out to me now and then. (e.g. Justin's comments on this post about Jesus and Horus which seem to be very fair.)
So imagine my interest in finding a site called www.jesusneverexisted.com, where virtually every story that you ever heard in all your skeptical life seems to have been collected.
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| jesusneverexisted.com - where are the fallacies? |
If you have any interest in the ideas suggesting that the whole of christianity is built on very poor foundations, I think you will enjoy exploring that site.
To give you a taster, the following is probably only about 10% of the content of the home page alone.
Do
you really think it all began with a sanctimonious
Jewish wonder-worker, strolling about 1st century
Palestine? Prepare to be enlightened.
Jesus – The
Imaginary Friend
Christianity
was the ultimate product of religious
syncretism in the
ancient world. Its
emergence owed nothing to a holy carpenter. There were many Jesuses but
the fable was a cultural construct. Jesus – The
Imaginary FriendThe nativity yarn is a concatenation of nonsense. The genealogies of Jesus, both Matthew's version and Luke's, are pious fiction. Nazareth did not exist in the 1st century AD – the area was a burial ground of rock-cut tombs.
With multiple authors behind the original gospel story it is no surprise that the figure of "Jesus" is a mess of contradictions. Yet the story is so thinly drawn that being a "good Christian" might mean almost anything.
The 12 disciples are as fictitious as their master, invented to legitimise the claims of the early churches. The original Mary was not a virgin, that idea was borrowed from pagan goddesses. The pagan world knew all about virgins getting pregnant by randy gods: The Mythical "Virgin Mother".
Scholars have known all this for more than 200 years but priestcraft is a highly profitable business and finances an industry of deceit to keep the show on the road.
"Jesus better documented than any other ancient figure"? Don't believe a word of it. Unlike the mythical Jesus, a real historical figure like Julius Caesar has a mass of mutually supporting evidence.
The case for a mythical Jesus – Nailing Jesus.
Not only does it address the stories of Jesus, but it goes on to explore the myths about Paul too.
Enjoy!
Haha you do find some rubbish websites don't you. This is one of the silliest. :)
ReplyDeleteI'm hoping that someone who wants to save my immortal soul might point out why the evidence on that site is flawed. Its not enough to say that these are all old arguments that have been answered years or decades ago, because to me they haven't.
ReplyDeleteMaybe it is a silly site but I haven't yet discovered why.
Yesterday I had a twitter debate - a surprisingly reasonable debate at that - with @LostForWords17. He tried to convince me of the evidence from the stoic Mara, and from Tacitus and the Talmud. However, these are all much too late and a little vague to be considered more than anecdote.
He also, very nicely, said "Aye, the problem is its hard to tell looking directly at the figure for substantial evidence......but looking around at the outside occurrences and other characters that were meant to be around him it adds up" and this is where we had to disagree.