The Jesus is a Myth, Myth

  • Thread starter Thread starter MartinJordan
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
M

MartinJordan

Guest
Once in a while when I visit discussion forums (non religious subjects) , invariably talk mixes subjects about Christianity or Jesus. It then devolves into Jesus and the “2000 year myth”.

Now my question is first why do discussion eventually lead to this and second how often have you noticed it happening? Thirdly the arguments don’t devolve usually into Islam. But why not? After all Islam also believes in a "Jesus ".

So, if Jesus is a "myth " is it wrong to involve ourselves and mention on these forums that Jesus can’t be a Myth when Billons on earth know there was such a person? Regardless of how Jesus is considered in Christianity and Islam. (I know that we can even consider other Faiths who may accept that this "holy man " lJesus did exist) .

Interested in everyone’s thoughts.

God bless.

MJ
 
I usually don’t hear people claim that Christ didn’t exist since I believe science states that Christ must have existed. People probably believe this because they don’t believe in God, and since Christ is God they say He never existed in the first place. They probably don’t speak of Mohammedanism because they are more in contact with Christianity which also adores Christ as God, while Muslims see Him merely as a prophet.

It is commendable to defend the Faith on those forums.
 
Martin wrote above…

"…first why do discussion eventually lead to this and second how often have you noticed it happening? Thirdly the arguments don’t devolve usually into Islam. But why not? After all Islam also believes in a "Jesus ".

So, if Jesus is a "myth " is it wrong to involve ourselves and mention on these forums that Jesus can’t be a Myth when Billons on earth know there was such a person? Regardless of how Jesus is considered in Christianity and Islam. (I know that we can even consider other Faiths who may accept that this “holy man " lJesus did exist) .”

My reply:

Under the “other faiths” category Baha’is accept Jesus and acknowledge His existence and ministry… The Baha’i view is that Jesus was a Manifestation of God and had innate knowledge. Jesus was also what we call an Independent Prophet or Messenger of God and not simply a “mere prophet”:

The* independent Prophets** are the lawgivers and the founders of a new cycle. Through Their appearance the world puts on a new garment, the foundations of religion are established, and a new book is revealed. Without an intermediary They receive bounty from the Reality of the Divinity, and Their illumination is an essential illumination. They are like the sun which is luminous in itself: the light is its essential necessity; it does not receive light from any other star. These Dawning-places of the morn of Unity are the sources of bounty and the mirrors of the Essence of Reality.

The other Prophets are followers and promoters, for they are branches and not independent; they receive the bounty of the independent Prophets, and they profit by the light of the Guidance of the universal Prophets. They are like the moon, which is not luminous and radiant in itself, but receives its light from the sun.
*
~ Abdu’l-Baha, Some Answered Questions, p. 164
 
Confiteor_Deo said:
I usually don’t hear people claim that Christ didn’t exist since I believe science states that Christ must have existed. People probably believe this because they don’t believe in God, and since Christ is God they say He never existed in the first place. They probably don’t speak of Mohammedanism because they are more in contact with Christianity which also adores Christ as God, while Muslims see Him merely as a prophet.
It is commendable to defend the Faith on those forums.
Click to expand...
No, we see him as more than a prophet. We believe that he’s also a Messenger, the Messiah, the Word of God and a person who was born of a virgin. We also believe that he’ll return [to Earth] some day.
 
drac16 said:
No, we see him as more than a prophet. We believe that he’s also a Messenger, the Messiah, the Word of God and a person who was born of a virgin. We also believe that he’ll return [to Earth] some day.
Click to expand...
Sorry I got that wrong. A devout Muslim friend of mine told me the difference between the Catholic belief of God and the Muslim is that they see Him just as a prophet and not God.
 
Jews also acknowledged Jesus. Josephus wrote of him and John the Baptist. But yes, in Christianity Jesus is the central figure, in Islam he is one of five messengers or major prophets along with Noah, Abraham, Moses, and Muhammad, however Jesus is said to have been the messiah in Islam and will come back on the final days. Islam rejects the divine nature of Jesus and also is strictly monotheistic like Judaism, saying the thought that God came to earth as a person is blasphemy, and also deny the crucifixion but made it appear that way.
With regards to your question, 99% of historians agree there was a historical Jesus, though they differ about the beliefs and teachings of Jesus as well as the accuracy of the accounts of his life, and the only two events subject to “almost universal assent” are that Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist and was crucified by the order of the Roman Prefect Pontius Pilate. Historical Jesus scholars typically contend that he was a Galilean Jew living in a time of messianic and apocalyptic expectations.Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist, whose example he may have followed, and after John was executed, began his own preaching in Galilee for only about two to three years prior to his death. He preached the salvation, cleansing from sins, and the Kingdom of God, using parables with startling imagery, and was said to be a teacher and believed in faith healing.
Ironically people never seem to question the historical Muhammad like they do with Jesus, when really the only information we have about Muhammad is in the Qur’an, and it isn’t much. The Hadith’s emphasize more on the life of Muhammad, but the Hadith was basically written in a timespan of 100-400 years after his death. ( You have people mocking Christianity on the basis that the gospels may have been written 30 years following the events). The reason the gospels were written so far after wasn’t because it was convenient. The society at the time was extremely a verbal one. The Christian movement began much this way, it was proclaimed by followers and spread. Buddhism is the same way, most of the words of the Buddah were passed on, not much first hand stuff. It seems as though when the apostles were coming near death they realized they needed to write the accounts of Jesus so that they may not be changed.
 
Confiteor_Deo said:
Sorry I got that wrong. A devout Muslim friend of mine told me the difference between the Catholic belief of God and the Muslim is that they see Him just as a prophet and not God.
Click to expand...
That is the difference between the Christian belief of God and the Islamic view of God. Catholic is just a branch of Christianity. That statement would be like saying the difference between the “Catholic God and the Sunni God”.
 
The beginnings of the formal denial of the existence of Jesus can be traced to late 18th-century France, and the works of Constantin François Chassebœuf de Volney (1757–1820) and Charles-François Dupuis (1742–1809).[20][21] Volney and Dupuis argued that Christianity was an amalgamation of various ancient mythologies and that Jesus was a totally mythical character.[20][22]en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christ_myth_theory but was dropped due to the overwhelming evidence that He in fact, did exist. New theories developed in every decade since, that Jesus was not divine, the Gospels were legends written much later, blah, blah, blah from modernist scholars.
The Myth Theory is taught as fact in some Ivy League universities. Why universities hire atheist professors to teach religion is anybody’s guess. 🤷

Muslims accept Jesus as a prophet but my challenge to them is if that is so why do they reject his prophecies concerning his death and resurrection?
 
jas84173 said:
Jews also acknowledged Jesus. Josephus wrote of him and John the Baptist. But yes, in Christianity Jesus is the central figure, in Islam he is one of five messengers or major prophets along with Noah, Abraham, Moses, and Muhammad, however Jesus is said to have been the messiah in Islam and will come back on the final days. Islam rejects the divine nature of Jesus and also is strictly monotheistic like Judaism, saying the thought that God came to earth as a person is blasphemy, and also deny the crucifixion but made it appear that way.
With regards to your question, 99% of historians agree there was a historical Jesus, though they differ about the beliefs and teachings of Jesus as well as the accuracy of the accounts of his life, and the only two events subject to “almost universal assent” are that Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist and was crucified by the order of the Roman Prefect Pontius Pilate. Historical Jesus scholars typically contend that he was a Galilean Jew living in a time of messianic and apocalyptic expectations.Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist, whose example he may have followed, and after John was executed, began his own preaching in Galilee for only about two to three years prior to his death. He preached the salvation, cleansing from sins, and the Kingdom of God, using parables with startling imagery, and was said to be a teacher and believed in faith healing.
Ironically people never seem to question the historical Muhammad like they do with Jesus, when really the only information we have about Muhammad is in the Qur’an, and it isn’t much. The Hadith’s emphasize more on the life of Muhammad, but the Hadith was basically written in a timespan of 100-400 years after his death. ( You have people mocking Christianity on the basis that the gospels may have been written 30 years following the events). The reason the gospels were written so far after wasn’t because it was convenient. The society at the time was extremely a verbal one. The Christian movement began much this way, it was proclaimed by followers and spread. Buddhism is the same way, most of the words of the Buddah were passed on, not much first hand stuff. It seems as though when the apostles were coming near death they realized they needed to write the accounts of Jesus so that they may not be changed.
Click to expand...
Thank you for this, very helpful
 
epostle said:
Muslims accept Jesus as a prophet but my challenge to them is if that is so why do they reject his prophecies concerning his death and resurrection?
Click to expand...
As I understand it, Muslims believe that the Judaeo-Christian scriptures were corrupted, either by design — like where Joseph Smith inserted a prophecy about himself in his own “translation” of the Bible — or by the fact that they were orally transmitted from person to person before being written down. The Qu’ran, on the other hand, is said to have been directly dictated by the angel Gabriel to Muhammad, so would be the verbatim Word of God.
 
MartinJordan said:
Once in a while when I visit discussion forums (non religious subjects) , invariably talk mixes subjects about Christianity or Jesus. It then devolves into Jesus and the “2000 year myth”.

Now my question is first why do discussion eventually lead to this and second how often have you noticed it happening? Thirdly the arguments don’t devolve usually into Islam. But why not? After all Islam also believes in a "Jesus ".
Click to expand...
Because they come from a Judeo-Christian background. The same reason they don’t spend time why the Hindu gods aren’t real.

Atheists who were raised in Islamic cultures would likely spend more time debunking Islam than Christianity. We discuss what we know (or think we know).
 
Kaninchen said:
All terribly vague, isn’t it?
Click to expand...
Oh, I don’t know. Peter, Paul, Matthew, Mark, John and James – all Jews – wrote quite specific and detailed letters and Gospels about Jesus. None of these strike me as vague.
 
MartinJordan said:
Once in a while when I visit discussion forums (non religious subjects) , invariably talk mixes subjects about Christianity or Jesus. It then devolves into Jesus and the “2000 year myth”.

Now my question is first why do discussion eventually lead to this and second how often have you noticed it happening? Thirdly the arguments don’t devolve usually into Islam. But why not? After all Islam also believes in a "Jesus ".

So, if Jesus is a "myth " is it wrong to involve ourselves and mention on these forums that Jesus can’t be a Myth when Billons on earth know there was such a person? Regardless of how Jesus is considered in Christianity and Islam. (I know that we can even consider other Faiths who may accept that this "holy man " lJesus did exist) .

Interested in everyone’s thoughts.

God bless.

MJ
Click to expand...
Atheist historian and blogger Tim O’Neill points out that scholarly consensus among historians is that Jesus existed. He also blows apart the ‘Jesus is a myth’ myth here:

armariummagnus.blogspot.ca/2014/01/did-jesus-exist-jesus-myth-theory-again.html

Here:

armariummagnus.blogspot.ca/2011/05/nailed-ten-christian-myths-that-show.html

And here:

armariummagnus.blogspot.ca/2013/12/the-jesus-myth-theory-reponse-to-david.html
 
Peter_Plato said:
Atheist historian and blogger Tim O’Neill points out that that scholarly consensus among historians is that Jesus existed. He also blows apart the ‘Jesus is a myth’ myth here:

armariummagnus.blogspot.ca/2014/01/did-jesus-exist-jesus-myth-theory-again.html

Here:

armariummagnus.blogspot.ca/2011/05/nailed-ten-christian-myths-that-show.html
Click to expand...
Still, there’s no hard historical evidence, as far as I know. To paraphrase Kierkegaard, that’s the thing about faith - ya gotta believe.
 
tomarin said:
Still, there’s no hard historical evidence, as far as I know. To paraphrase Kierkegaard, that’s the thing about faith - ya gotta believe.
Click to expand...
The Shroud is hard (well, okay, “soft”) evidence. The growth of the Church, the conversion of Paul, the Gospels, the continuity with the Old Testament prophecies, the destruction of Jerusalem, the martyrdoms of the disciples and Apostles are all evidences in the sense of these all need to be explained by whatever brought them about. There is no reason not to side with the best explanation as far as the entirety of events is concerned.

As for Kierkegaard, as much as I think he was a master of identifying and explicating what it means to be Christian by way of an intensely personal depiction of it, he wasn’t Catholic in the sense of seeing what that first person account means relative to belonging to the community of saints as a member of the Body of Christ.

Kierkegaard would, himself, admit that his role was to be a keen observer of what it means to be a Christian, not that he, himself, necessarily was one, perfectly.
I have never fought in such a way as to say: I am the true Christian, others are not Christians. No, my contention has been this: I know what Christianity is, my imperfection as a Christian I myself fully recognize – but I know what Christianity is. And to get this properly recognized must be, I should think, to every man’s interest, whether he be a Christian or not, whether his intention is to accept Christianity or to reject it. But I have attacked no one as not being a Christian, I have condemned no one. And I myself have from the first clearly asserted, again and again repeated, that I am ‘without authority’.
Click to expand...
The Point of View of My Work as an Author, Lowrie, p. 144, 153-155
Click to expand...
 
Peter_Plato said:
Oh, I don’t know. Peter, Paul, Matthew, Mark, John and James – all Jews – wrote quite specific and detailed letters and Gospels about Jesus. None of these strike me as vague.
Click to expand...
You might think that, I couldn’t possibly comment beyond a passing mention of the potentially missing word ‘allegedly’.

Hopefully, we will thus avoid a session of variations on: “Oh, yes it is!/Oh, no it isn’t!”
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top