“5 good reasons to think Jesus never existed”

10 thoughts on ““5 good reasons to think Jesus never existed””

1. and….most of the stories in the Gospels could not possibly be true.

   Reply

2. For #2, the little information the early epistle writers have about Jesus can be found in the Hebrew scriptures of the day, ie, the Old Testament.

   Reply

3. 4. The gospels, our only accounts of a historical Jesus, contradict each other.

   This isn’t a good reason to suspect Jesus didn’t exist.

   Reply

   1. You know that the gospel’s were written by disciples of Paul and Matthew. Luke and John were most likely written by their person. Also, John was a good friend of Jesus and knew him and wrote more humanly of him, that’s why it’s different. Mark is a very short and simple gospel because it was written while the writer(or writers) was on the run from prosecution. Matthew is a first hand account because Matthew was an Apostle and has the most descriptive gospel because of that. Luke was written by a physician so he had a very scientific and reasonable explanation for everything. The fact that you believe the largest religion in the world was based off of a fake person that somehow took over the largest empire ever, you are a sad person.

      Reply

4. FYI, it may be worth mentioning that Valerie Tarico’s article is not new. It first appeared on her own blog in August 2014, and then on Salon/Alternet the following month. Curiously, the original title was “Five Reasons…”, without the word “good”.
   The original blog article had the following postscript, which does not appear in the Salon/Alternet versions:

   Author’s note: Not being an insider to this debate, my own inclination is to defer to the preponderance of relevant experts while keeping in mind that paradigm shifts do occur. This means that until either the paradigm shift happens or I become a relevant expert myself, I shall assume that the Jesus stories probably had some historical kernel. That said, I find the debate fascinating for several reasons: For one, it offers a glimpse of the methods scholars use to analyze ancient texts. Also, despite the heated back and forth between mythicists and historicists, their points of agreement may be more significant than the difference between historicized mythology and mythologized history. The presence of mythic tropes or legendary elements in the gospel stories has been broadly accepted and documented, while the imprint of any actual man who may have provided a historical kernel–how he may have lived, what he may have said, and how he died–is more hazy than most people dream.

   Reply

   1. Thanks for reminding me. I thought it had a ring of deja vu.

      Reply

5. All her reasons are valid, so not a bad effort but I would (writing quickly) put the following reasons front and centre

   1) The earliest Christians don’t seem to know a Jesus of Nazareth and, it seems mostly likely they worship a celestial/heavenly Jesus

   2) The first narrative we have about Jesus, the gospel of Mark, can be demonstrated to be – via analysis of intertexutuality – a work of theological allegorical fiction NOT an historical biography

   3) ALL other information about Jesus post-Mark can be shown to be derived from Mark. Nobody else, whether Christian or non-Christian, has any other independent evidence. All rely on the first source Mark…which contain no reliable historical information.

   Jonathan

   Reply

   1. Sounds interesting. Got an academic source?

      Reply

      1. Hi Bee,

         I am a big fan of R.G Price’ work – his case stresses the above points. See link:

         http://web.archive.org/web/20150218004315/http://rationalrevolution.net/articles/fictional_jesus.htm

         J

         Reply

6. The real significance of this article is not the details of the arguments themselves but the fact that it is published by Salon.com. And of course it has been published in other comparable online sites (eg Alternet), too. These are not the sorts of publishers who are noted for propagating anti-intellectual nonsense. On the contrary, they expose the nonsense of agenda driven conservative antipathy towards science, etc.

   The only come-back hostile anti-mythicists have is to appeal to the authority of their profession.

   Sure, the details of some of the arguments themselves can be debated. They are not all watertight under close scrutiny. But they do make sense enough to be put on the discussion table. That’s what the hostile anti-mythicists want to avoid — genuine debate and discussion. They want to close down any suggestion that their professional interests are based on questionable — debatable — assumptions.

   Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.