Did Jesus Exist? by Bart Ehrman

But why cant Theodoric make these arguments in all their angles?You would think that there is no debate whatsoever about what the texts mean, if you only read Theodoric's sweeping pronouncements, that he passes as arguments.Theodoric declares.Theodoric sweeps.Theodoric pronounces.

He said something in the 50s CE to a group of "Christians".He wrote it down.Does the fact that Paul was a real guy who was really speaking (via writing or otherwise) to real followers of Jesus (Jesus What?), mean anything?Carrier seems to admit that it could be a big blow to Jesus Mythers position if this correspondence was with people who ALREADY felt Jesus was a human.I believe that is what Carrier wrote.

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as if Paul’s having to ingratiate himself to a crowd believing Jesus biologically descended from David doesn’t outright refute mythicism altogether. It’s thus Price’s approach I find wanting. That’s why I don’t adopt it.

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I can't help you in your discussion with Theodoric, though I was wondering if your discussion with him ties into the topic.--Percy

Quoting the passage:

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Romans 1: ¹Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God— ²the gospel he promised beforehand through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures ³regarding his Son, who as to his earthly life was a descendant of David, ⁴and who through the Spirit of holiness was appointed the Son of God in power by his resurrection from the dead: Jesus Christ our Lord.

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You ask if it means anything. Regarding the historicity of Jesus, no. I don't know anything about Carrier or Price, but why do you find anything in this persuasive about the historicity of Jesus?--Percy

I am persuaded to admit that Paul really wrote this in the 50s CE.The Gospel of Mark was not quoted and Mark was probably fully written by 75 CE.Nothing from the hypothetical Q document was quoted, an it existed earlier than Mark.The Acts of the Apostles chronology would place Paul's imprisonment at about 58/59 CE. Paul does not indicate imprisonment in this epistle. Scholars date this epistle late 50s.If Jesus was born around 5 BCE to 5 CE, the Paul was probably the same age or a bit younger. We have a contemporary of a (um)hypothetical human Jesus writing about Jesus. He was writing to followers of Jesus. And it sure can be argued he wrote that Jesus was descended from a human Israelite from centuries earlier.The fact that one has to look for alternative explanations for what Romans 1:1-4 was sayings about Jesus' biology is evidence that we have something to be said about here.There is some there there. Over there in Romans 1:1-4Paul counts as evidence if one accepts that he really wrote these things down at certain dates.

So still no evidence?

You say that about everything.Robert M Price says these 4 verses (the first 4, of Paul's in THE BIBLE) are probably fatal to the Jesus Myther theory, if Paul actually wrote them.Richard Carrier has essentially said there is nearly a 99% chance that Paul actually penned these verses.Carrier seems to strongly imply that the Jesus Myther theory is dead-meat if the Christians Paul is writing to actually believed Jesus was once a human.All facts.

None of that is evidence for a historical Jesus

Why are Carrier and Price visibly seeing their theory stare right at the edge of the abyss, then?Romans 1;1-4 is casually dismissed by you, Theooric.You and you alone are living in a blissful wonderland, while your fringe theory struggles mightily.

The "evidence" that he is looking for will never be unearthed by scholars. A man can have more degrees than a thermometer and get no closer to the truth. Then again, you or I are no better. My personal belief is that humans never "find" Jesus. He finds them.

I have no idea what percentage of Jesus Mythers take their position out of some sort of theological bias.I prefer to make no assumptions on peoples motives.(My swipes at Theodoric have to do with frustration at the close-minded set, which causes problems in society far beyond a harmless historical dispute)Close mindedness is hurting the endeavor of science and humanity's striving for and unlocking it true potential.Stephen Hawking attempted to lift the veil of ignorance, when he could:

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Hawking on Zayn Leaving One Direction

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The many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics and the theory of inflation have been fantastic subjects for imagination.

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Recently, during an event at the Sydney Opera House where Stephen Hawking participated through a hologram, he was asked the following question by the interviewer: “What do you think is the cosmological effect of Zayn leaving One Direction and consequently breaking the hearts of millions of teenage girls across the world?”

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Hawking’s answer can be interpreted as a reference to inflation theory and, through unification, also to quantum worlds: “My advice to any heartbroken young girl is to pay close attention to the study of theoretical physics. Because one day there may well be proof of multiple universes. It would not be beyond the realms of possibility that somewhere outside of our own universe lies another different universe — and in that universe, Zayn is still in One Direction.”

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Hawking’s comment can be explained using the schematic below. In this World, Zayn leaves the band. In World 1, however, Zayn stays with the band and nobody would ever know that he left the band in this World. In World 2, Zayn not only stays in the band, he also marries one of the girls that in this World are heartbroken. Not only that, in each of the millions of other worlds, World n = 3 to World n = millions, Zayn marries each one of the heartbroken girls in this World.

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Parallel Universes, Schrödinger, Hawking, Borges, and One Direction | COMSOL Blog

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Max Tegmark attempted to lift the veil of ignorance. From the pages of 2003 Scientific American:

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April 14, 2003

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Parallel Universes

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Not just a staple of science fiction, other universes are a direct implication of cosmological observations

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By Max Tegmark

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Is there a copy of you reading this article? A person who is not you but who lives on a planet called Earth, with misty mountains, fertile fields and sprawling cities, in a solar system with eight other planets? The life of this person has been identical to yours in every respect. But perhaps he or she now decides to put down this article without finishing it, while you read on.

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The idea of such an alter ego seems strange and implausible, but it looks as if we will just have to live with it, because it is supported by astronomical observations. The simplest and most popular cosmological model today predicts that you have a twin in a galaxy about 10 to the 1028 meters from here. This distance is so large that it is beyond astronomical, but that does not make your doppelgänger any less real. The estimate is derived from elementary probability and does not even assume speculative modern physics, merely that space is infinite (or at least sufficiently large) in size and almost uniformly filled with matter, as observations indicate. In infinite space, even the most unlikely events must take place somewhere. There are infinitely many other inhabited planets, including not just one but infinitely many that have people with the same appearance, name and memories as you, who play out every possible permutation of your life choices.

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You will probably never see your other selves. The farthest you can observe is the distance that light has been able to travel during the 14 billion years since the big bang expansion began. The most distant visible objects are now about 4 X 1026 meters away--a distance that defines our observable universe, also called our Hubble volume, our horizon volume or simply our universe. Likewise, the universes of your other selves are spheres of the same size centered on their planets. They are the most straightforward example of parallel universes. Each universe is merely a small part of a larger "multiverse."

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By this very definition of "universe," one might expect the notion of a multiverse to be forever in the domain of metaphysics. Yet the borderline between physics and metaphysics is defined by whether a theory is experimentally testable, not by whether it is weird or involves unobservable entities. The frontiers of physics have gradually expanded to incorporate ever more abstract (and once metaphysical) concepts such as a round Earth, invisible electromagnetic fields, time slowdown at high speeds, quantum superpositions, curved space, and black holes. Over the past several years the concept of a multiverse has joined this list. It is grounded in well-tested theories such as relativity and quantum mechanics, and it fulfills both of the basic criteria of an empirical science: it makes predictions, and it can be falsified. Scientists have discussed as many as four distinct types of parallel universes. The key question is not whether the multiverse exists but rather how many levels it has.

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This much longer article (than what I quoted), was actually the basis of Scientific American sending mail-in advertisement "junk mail" for part of the first ecade of the century.The literature said something like:Do you know you have a double in another universe reading this flyer. Most physicists agree that you do. In that parallel universe, you are taking advantage of learning about the mysteries of our worldlolScientific American attempted to open minds to get closer to the truth.

I am in no way swiping at Carrier and Price.I admire both men, and think they are actually exemplary examples of open-mindedness, and courage when it comes to tackling tough issues.Both advance the endeavor of learning, and even science.(Some of their followers are the very antithesis of what they stand for, however)

So still no evidence for the existence of a historical Jesus? Do you know what the topic is?

Romans 1:1-4 should not be too hard for you to find.HINT - start at the very first word of Paul's writings.Carrier said this about the Roman Christians Paul was addressing around 57 AD:

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as if Paul’s having to ingratiate himself to a crowd believing Jesus biologically descended from David doesn’t outright refute mythicism altogether.

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Carrier is not 100% for certain (?) saying he feels that existing Christians believing Jesus was a man falsifies Jesus Mythicism, but he strongly implies it.Perhaps it was his rhetorical style in debate, and the words were not indicative of what he would explicitly say, in a different context?

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It’s thus Price’s approach I find wanting. That’s why I don’t adopt it.

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Perhaps it reflected a polemical style of Carrier when responding to those he feels made a bad judgment call?BUTBUTBUTBUTMaybe, just maybe Carrier let it slip that he feels existing Christian communities, in c. 57 CE, believing in Jesus the man, are early enough witnesses to the living man Jesus, that he offered us a datum indicating an allowed terminus post quem of c. 57 CE (compounded with a terminus ante quem around c.57-60) being the date the existence of believers in Jesus the man is considered detrimental to Jesus Myther school's thesis.I always assumed it would be allowed at that date, since the existence of the Gospel of Mark proves such a thing was believed by c.70 CE.I have no fucking clue what you think, Theodoric.Let us all know what you think.

How is any of this evidence for the historical Jesus? You mean ancestry?Obviously you see something in Romans and in the writings of Carrier and Price that Theodoric and I do not see. My own view is that you can build a stack of baseless opinions to the moon and it would mean less than one iota of actual historical evidence. The supposed greatest figure in history somehow managed to escape any mention at all by historians that goes beyond "reports say there was a guy who had followers."We're left with being asked to trust what religious believers say, and I trust none of them from any religion. I see no difference in your protestations of the truth of Christianity than I do in a Jew's claim of the truth of Judaism or a Muslim's claim of the truth of Islam and so on.It was argued earlier that even if the Jesus of faith didn't exist (the miraculous Jesus, the resurrected Jesus, the God Jesus), Paul at least based his Jesus of faith upon an actual person, the historical Jesus, who was quite possibly just an obscure mystic who did not live the life described in the gospels, or at least none of the miraculous things. Or maybe he was a composite.If the real Jesus did none of the non-miraculous things written of him, such as the baptism by John or the overturning of the tables at the temple or the Sermon on the Mount, then he's not really a historical Jesus. He's just a guy Paul made up stories about. Early Christian communities made up more stories providing more detail that were based upon Paul's sparse commentaries.--Percy