Ok, well, now you're directly contradicting Jon who insists that there was no early Christian church until decades after Jesus's supposed death. (If the crucifixion was supposedly in 33AD, which is what I thought everybody accepted, then there's no way Paul could have converted to a religion that wouldn't have existed for two years in 31AD, or have persecuted any Christians beforehand.)
PaulK is using the term 'Christianity' to refer to the early Jewish sect of Jesus followers. This is pretty clear to anyone reading his posts.
So you keep saying, but I can't get you to show me any of it!
What is this
evidence for the existence of Jesus? Please be specific.
The 100% revolution in Messianic thinking that arose in the Jesus movement is one bit. You've never offered a better explanation for this.
What evidence do we have for those things that leads us to believe that Paul really was persecuting Christians and really did convert?
Well, he said as much, and there's not much reason to doubt his claims. It is less probable that he is lying and more probable that he is telling the truth. Thus, historians stick with the more probable conclusionlike any reasonable person.
I've demonstrated that the mythical Jesus explains all of the available evidence of the existence of Jesus - to wit, that people in the first century were telling each other stories about a guy we would later call "Jesus".
No you haven't. Not at all. You haven't once demonstrated why your explanation is a better explanation, or why it is more probable.
I don't see how making up stuff to blame Jews somehow establishes the veracity of the Gospels in this regard.
Let's start with the fact that unlike most CCoI idiots today, early Christians were well aware of the fact that
Jesus was a Jew.
I don't see how this follows, you'll have to elaborate.
Calling Jesus your savior and then telling everyone about how he failed to save you is a real unlikely thing, especially when you must then go quote mining and back tracking and Gish galloping around trying to prove that your claims are true.
There are such better and more obvious things to make up than a savior who doesn't save, a messiah that isn't a messiah, a king that doesn't rule. What on earth would prompt folk to just make up all this contradictory and unreasonable crap? And is such an explanation more likely than the explanation that there was some Jewish apocalyptic preacher who got executed by the Romans? We're aware of many cases of the latter. What cases of the former are there?
What makes Mythical Jesus more probable?
If there was no execution-specific or Judea-specific purge of Roman records, then all the records were lost coincidentally. And if it's all just a coincidence that all the records are gone, then there's no reason that the lack of execution records or records from Judea should imply that there may have been a Jesus execution record that also was lost - just as five heads in a row on a coin specified as "fair" doesn't imply anything about the result of a sixth toss, making a sixth heads result a complete coincidence.
No one has argued that the lack of records shows us that there may have been a Jesus execution record. The point that others have tried (failingly, it appears) to get across to you is that the lack of records doesn't show the lack of a crucifixion. If it did, we'd have to say that the Romans didn't crucify anyone in Judea at the time, which is just nonsense.
No. I'm arguing that the odds of the loss of a Jesus-specific execution record are unrelated to the number of documents that survive in total, once you've stipulated that there was no purposeful purge of execution-related or Judea-related (or any other characteristic-related) documents.
If there ever was a record created for Jesus' execution, how big do you suppose it would be?
That it's just a coincidence that both Jesus-specific and Jesus-nonspecific documents are missing, once you've stipulated that there was no effort made to purge those types of documents.
But it's not a coincidence. The records are all linked. How massive and special do you think the Jesus execution record would have been?
But again, the fact that it is published as fiction is nothing but a reflection of the popular consensus - the argumentum ad populum - that the work is fiction. Similarly that a book is published as non-fiction reflects nothing but the popular consensus that the work is non-fiction.
What stupidity. What nonsense. LotR is clearly a work of fiction because an historical setting for it has never been demonstrated to exist. We can find no evidence of an age of trolls and dwarfs and elves and hobbits and all other such crazy critters.
The historical Jesus, however, fits perfectly into an established historical setting.
This should make it obvious why the latter cannot simply be discarded as fiction while the former can be.
Again, maybe you could kindly let Jon know? Since he's adamant that the "historic Jesus" didn't actually found Christianity. It's a little difficult to keep up with the arguments for the "historic Jesus" when you can't seem to agree amongst yourself what they actually are.
Lol. Really? I think we all know what PaulK is talking about, all of us but you.
The Gospels ARE evidence of a historical Jesus.
Already refuted.
A refutation that, ironically, appears as invisible and undetectable as your mythical Jesus.
Jon
Love your enemies!
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