There is broad consensus amongst respected scholars that the Jesus of the gospels didn’t exist. This is hardly surprising. Gospel Jesus, as I hope I’ve demonstrated over the past few weeks, is constructed from fragments of Jewish scripture and Paul’s (and others’) visions and dreams. There is also good evidence, which I’ve not discussed, that some Jesus stories are recreations of legends and tales of other god-men (turning water into wine and the Road to Emmaus story*, for example).
All of which raises the question suggested by David Fitzgerald in Nailed, that if there was a real Jesus who was so incredible that he gave rise to an entire religion, why was almost everything about him invented? Why could his story not have been told as it was? Why didn’t his inspiring, dynamic personality speak for itself? Personally, I don’t care whether Jesus existed or not, but if the supposedly remarkable Jesus of history did once exist, he has been totally obscured by the stories, legends and myth that were constructed around him not long after he died. The celestial Jesus that today’s Christians claim to know personally, who they say inhabits their hearts while simultaneously living in heaven, is emphatically not the man who lived, but a myth. A different myth, even, than that of the New Testament. A non-existent star-man, waiting in the sky.
Jesus belongs with all those other heroes who may or may not have existed prior to their being turned into myth and legend: Abraham, Moses, Buddha, Confucius, Saint Nicholas, Robin Hood, Paul Bunyan. There is very little evidence, apart from stories and legends, that any of these figures actually existed. More, it’s entirely conceivable that Jesus belongs to a still different group of super-beings: those who were created as mythic characters, including but not confined to, Osiris (and the entire Egyptian panoply), Apollo (and all the Greek gods), Romulus, Circe, Attis, the angel Gabriel, Mithras, Aladdin, the angel Moroni, Superman, Harry Potter…
There is meagre evidence there was an historical Jesus who, even if he did exist, is now buried beneath layers of make-believe. The Jesus who has come down to us through the gospels and the rest of the New Testament is fictional. From his fairy-tale origin to his fantasy ascension and beyond, he’s completely imaginary.
I’m conscious I’ve written other posts making this same point. I find that, whatever starting point I take, invariably I end up here. Whether it’s ‘prophecy’, prayer, promises, miracles, the second coming, any aspect of the faith, none has any substance. They’re ineffectual, empty and have no bearing on reality. The character who supposedly embodies and promotes them becomes, as a result, similarly void. Either Jesus was transformed into a fantasy figure soon after he lived or he was imagined, by the likes of Paul, as a magical being to begin with. Whichever it was, from the earliest days of Christianity, there was no way for people to hear of or know about a man who actually walked the Earth.
*See Carrier, On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason to Doubt, pp 480-81
rejectingjesus, 
There’s actually some good stuff in the gospels, even from an atheistic perspective.
And we certainly face the same challenges today, from ironically enough, Christians themselves. (You know render unto Caesar, don’t be like the hypocrites, the Sabbath is made for man, not man for the Sabbath, etc.) At the end of the day, if it wasn’t someone writing down the words of the sage, they were the sage (Jesus) themselves. Could it come down to a sort of regression that Jesus himself is a parable about a sage that tells parables?
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I think very much it could. I’ve become convinced this is exactly how the sage was constructed.
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Or, of course, Jesus was the real deal.
I find it interesting how much Carrier must deny in order to bolster his failed hypothesis. Essentially, he must create a whole new time and place and remove the whole story of the Gospels from its location in time and space to a mythical never never land. But, hey, enjoy.
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I reference Carrier on one tangential point in my personal reflections and you leap on it, assuming, yet again, that my views derive entirely from him. They do not. I’ve spent a considerable number of posts demonstrating how gospel-Jesus’ story is invented, with this post serving as the conclusion to those reflections. Disagree all you like, but to take issue with Carrier is to miss the point (what a surprise: Don sidesteps the issue yet again!)
Why don’t you go and harass him on his site? He’d make mincemeat out of your ‘Jesus is the real deal’ nonsense, should he deign to post your ramblings.
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Carrier is just the extreme – and more extreme with every iteration. But it is the extreme toward which every Jesus rejecter is headed. There is very little middle ground.
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That’s it, Don. Dismiss every view other than your own as ‘extreme’, when in fact it’s your own loopy ideas that qualify.
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And many of us non-believers find it interesting how much Christians must deny in order to bolster their failed hypotheses.
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“remove the whole story of the Gospels from its location in time and space to a mythical never never land.”
Don’t you have this backwards?
The mythical never never land is the land where angels, and demons, and gods, and talking snakes, and zombies are walking around everywhere…
What are you talking about?
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The mythical never never land is Carrier’s pseudo-history, for which BTW he has no actual concrete evidence. What he does is try to find correlations in every place possible and then concludes that they are the cause or source of the myth of Jesus created by the writers of the Gospels. That is literary gymnastics but not history.
So, point me to any concrete evidence for the creation of the myth. Maybe some 1st or 2nd century writer who exposes the whole mythmaking enterprise…
Continues in this vein for several hundred more pages…
Don, you’re in no position to demand evidence when you’ve failed to provide any yourself. As I’ve said before, you need to take up your concerns directly with Richard Carrier. I can only say, you can’t have read any of his work closely if you think this is how he works. I’ve also endeavoured to show how the Jesus story is constructed from pre-existing material. It is most emphatically not ‘history’, as every reputable scholar tells us.
You of course know better. (Yawn)
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“The mythical never never land is [Carrier’s] the Christians’ pseudo-history, for which BTW [he has] they have no actual concrete evidence.”
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You’re kidding. Start with Tacitus. There were many Christians in Rome during Nero’s reign before any of the Gospels were written. They were there before Paul ever traveled to Rome. Where do you think they came from? Clue: not from the myth Carrier thinks the Gospel writers spun.
They came from Jews who came from Jerusalem and from other Jewish groups across the Mediterranean world to Rome and shared the good news about Jesus.
What??!! Without Paul? Without the Gospels??!! YES.
And that was happening north, south, east, and west. One example, Thomas went to India in about 50 A.D. He went without a written Gospel and without anything from Paul. Paul had written nothing yet. The church he founded in southern India survives to this day. They are the Marthoma church among whom I worshipped when in India a few years ago.
Then there is the Coptic church in Egypt. They consider themselves indebted to Mark who came to Alexandria in the early 60s with the good news of Jesus. You can read the Gospel of Mark in the Coptic language today.
And what about the Syrian church beginning in Antioch? They were there in the 30s before Paul and before any written Gospel.
Wait! Whaaaat? before the myth was created. Yes.
Carrier is a historian. He knows this He just doesn’t tell you. It is an inconvenient truth.
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You definitely haven’t read Carrier. He doesn’t dispute that Christianity existed before the gospel myths were created. In fact, he spends a good deal of time discussing the fact that it did in On The Historicity. Is this why you’re afraid to take your apologetics directly to him?
Just so you know, the original Christ followers such as Cephas, had visions or an intense sense of the presence of the Risen Jesus. Paul tells us as much in 1 Corinthians 15, as do the gospels themselves with their talk of the Holy Spirit and Jesus being ‘among (believers) when two or three are gathered together.’ They became staunch believers and evangelists as a result of these experiences
Other people merely heard – second, third, fifth hand – about these visions and/or experiences, decided they must be for real and began to believe in the Risen Jesus themselves. The bulk of conversions back in pre-Paul and pre-gospel days would be through hearsay, not personal mystical experience. I suggest as much in this post: https://rejectingjesus.com/2023/01/18/a-funny-thing-happened-on-the-way-to-the-forum/
While this is my take on the situation before Paul and the gospel myths, Carrier most certainly does ‘tell you this’.
You are wrong. Please go and fight with him on his own blog. I won’t be publishing any more of your ill-founded critiques of him.
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People continue to have visions and the intense sense of the pretense of Jesus. That is not an argument against Christianity; it is an argument for. You are so concerned about the physical that you miss the spiritual. Both are real.
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I was not arguing either for or against Christianity, merely pointing out that early converts did not experience the Risen Jesus in the flesh. They encountered him only within their own heads, as Paul implies.
Those you mention in this comment who experience Jesus today do so in precisely the same way. That’s because Christianity is a religion of visions dreams and emotional experiences, nothing more. These are as ‘real’ as a drug-induced hallucination or the dream you had last night.
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The thing that continues to amaze me about believers like you, Don, is that you’re so CERTAIN that your information is correct. Yet you’re depending on the same sources that the many and several who write against Christianity.
Further, nearly all the early writers were Romans — NOT Jewish, who happen to be the TRUE inventors of the God legend.
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“ You of course know better. (Yawn)”
Thank you for the snarky comment, you wonderful spirit filled xtian!
“The mythical never never land is Carrier’s pseudo-history, for which BTW he has no actual concrete evidence.”
And what is your evidence that a miracle performing man-god ever existed?
“They came from Jews who came from Jerusalem and from other Jewish groups across the Mediterranean world to Rome and shared the good news about Jesus.”
“ And that was happening north, south, east, and west.”
And of course, they all preached the exact same jesus as everyone else, because word of mouth is the most precise way to transmit information!
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Don:
“ People continue to have visions and the intense sense of the pretense of Jesus. ”
Pretense: an attempt to make something true that is not the case, appear true.
You’re right Don, you’re trying to make something true that is not true!
“ That is not an argument against Christianity; it is an argument for.
You are so concerned about the physical that you miss the spiritual. Both are real.“
Evidence for the spiritual realm, please.
Neil:
“Those you mention in this comment who experience Jesus today do so in precisely the same way. That’s because Christianity is a religion of visions, dreams and emotional experiences, nothing more. These are as ‘real’ as a drug-induced hallucination or the dream you had last night.”
Excellent!! This it exactly!!
Dreams and visions are by definition personal, and subjective. What you interpret from a dream, would be, and is, different from person to person!
Don, don’t you see that everything you’re writing is actually making the case AGAINST xtianity?
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Yeah, I see “pretense.” Eyesight, I guess. But it did offer the opportunity for comment.
Evidence for the spiritual? Well, one evidence would be the dreams and visions. Another is the almost universal sense of the spiritual. Yes, I know you are wanting something objective capable of examination. Sorry to disappoint, but the vast majority of people both now and throughout the past would not require objective for something they experience.
Yes, I also know that visions and dreams can be the result of drugs and medications and some medical conditions. People who experience actual spiritual dreams and visions, however, do not think they are the same. Why? Because what they learn in such experiences often proves to be true.
Dr. Mary Neal had a near death experience during which she was told her son would die. Ten years later he was in fact killed in a bicycle car accident. See https://www.huffpost.com/entry/dr-mary-neal-in-deep-shift_n_6633758
There have been many others with similar experiences. See https://youtu.be/5CWAjcZLQSo
Many tell of meeting people who are relatives they’ve never heard of before, but find out later what they learned was true. Many are healed. Many have their lives turned around.
That probably all sounds strange and crazy to you, goyo, but objective things happen in the physical world as a result of these experiences. You can do with them what you want. I am convinced that they are real.
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I’m sure Goyo will want to respond to the ‘evidence’ you present here, Don, but I’m going to jump in first.
So, a handful of dreams from the billions that are experienced each and every night by the world’s population look like they might have been premonitions? That’s your evidence of the spiritual? What about the billions upon billions of dreams that don’t later materialise in the real world? You’re just going to discount those?
Oh, and unfortunately people are killed in traffic accidents every day; it’s no more than a coincidence Mary Neal dreamt of one ten years (ten years!) earlier than her son was involved in one.
I had a vision while a Christian which appeared to come true a few weeks later. I realise now I selected the parts of the vision that were compatible with its apparent realisation and conveniently disregarded the rest. That’s how we interpret visions and dreams. It’s how Christianity started too; a couple of people had a dream or vision of what they took to be Jesus risen from the dead and they confused it with reality, just like Mary Neal, just like you.
Present some evidence for the spiritual that is independent of the human imagination, Don, and maybe then we’ll listen to you.
https://rejectingjesus.com/2017/11/04/the-evidence-for-christ/
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I don’t expect you to be able to discern between dreams and dreams. Until you have a dream from God you will not have anything to compare. Until you have a vision from God you will not be able to compare. But for those who do have both there is a difference.
It is not human imagination. But it is impossible for me or anyone to give you a means of distinguishing. But goyo asked and I gave him what I have and know.
I have not had visions. I rarely have a dream that I discern to be a dream from God. But I do often have a sense that this or that is a word of God for me or the presence of God.
You will not understand that either. And it may be why you are not a Christian today. You did not have a deep experience of God. It was intellectual or habit or emotional but not deeply personal.
I am afraid many Christians are like that. They have not gone deep enough with God to have that experience. It is all what they believe by the word of others. That is not enough for me – or for you. We think about things. So, the experience of God is vital for me.
If we who are merely intellectual or habitual Christians do not have that, if we have not sought God at that level, we are vulnerable to Intellectual doubt. In my case, I not only pushed on for a personal relationship but examined the doubts and found them without real foundation.
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You’re right, I ‘can’t discern between dreams and dreams (sic)‘. I do know, however, that there are vivid dreams and ones that are more difficult to remember. You’re merely confusing the two. Both are just dreams, nothing else.
Your line ‘until you have a dream from God you can’t know what it’s like’ is poppycock. When you’re as indoctrinated as you are, your God-beliefs will inevitably influence your dreams, just as aspects of my waking life inform mine. There’s nothing supernatural about it.
So how about some more persuasive evidence of the spiritual realm? One that is independent of the human mind? Your unsupported assertion that the search for spiritual meaning is universal isn’t it, in the same way the universal beliefs in dragons or immortality don’t mean those things are real either.
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They have not gone deep enough with God to have that experience.
I went VERY deep with “God” … “He” was my whole life.
And yet … and yet … here I am today. A non-believer. How could this possibly happen???? BECAUSE … None. Of. It. Was. Real.
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It is your experience or non-experience, Nan. I won’t argue that. IF YOU DON’T ARGUE MINE and the millions of Christians like me.
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We cannot argue with what we have not experienced ourselves? Got it. I guess this is goodbye then.
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But it’s difficult to NOT argue once a person recognizes the absurdity of accepting make-believe. Experiences are just that. Experiences … which are different for every individual. So, to attempt to encompass what you feeeel into a “truth” is hardly a validation.
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It is not THE ONLY validation. But I’ve presented others, such as the existence of God so often that it seemed redundant to do so again.
However, it hardly needs to be said that the two go together. If God does not exist (your position) then an experience of God in dreams, visions or in simply a strong sense of his presence would have to be experiences common to everyone or maybe drug induced hallucinations. If God exists (my position) then dreams, visions, and the sense of the presence of God are certainly consistent with that fact.
You, not believing God exists, must explain what Christians report of their experiences as hallucinations or common dreams … or lies. Yet, it is the rare person not being a Christian who has these kinds of experiences, or anything like them. And when they do, it is usually life changing.
I do not mean the dreams we all have, sometimes vivid dreams. I do not mean hallucinations we might all have under the influence of drugs or medications. I mean a strong sense of God’s presence. I mean dreams that seem to direct us to do things that work out to be beneficial for the kingdom of God. I mean visions of Jesus. Do you have those? Are those common to lots of people? If so, your explanation deserves consideration. If not, then what is the explanation?
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You, not believing God exists, must explain what Christians report ,,,
No, I do not have to “explain” what believers report. Dreams are just that. Dreams. The fact that one’s life is centered around some celestial being most likely affects their dreams, but it is in NO WAY proof or evidence of anything except the person had a “A series of mental images and emotions occurring during sleep.”
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“Dreams are just that. Dreams.”
And that is why what I am saying does not make sense to you.
It is, nevertheless, the experience of men and women from as far back as we can know that God speaks in dreams.
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And my Aunt Bessie occasionally talks to me in my dreams … how does that differ from “God” speaking to you or anyone else in a dream? It doesn’t. As everything else in your world, it boils down to what you WANT to believe.
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Maybe. Maybe not. You don’t really know, do you?
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‘I’ve presented other (‘validations’), such as the existence of God so often that it seemed redundant to do so again.’
You have? Where? I must’ve missed those. You were asked repeatedly by goyo, Ark and others to provide evidence (not ‘validations’) of God, and by me to provide evidence of the supernatural in general, independent of the human imagination. You failed to supply the former and completely ignored the latter. Don’t know pretend you did either; you know perfectly well you did not.
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Here’s the deal. Present evidence, not validations, for the natural fine-tuning of the fundamental forces and for the natural origin of those forces and I’ll use that as a model for my evidence for the existence of God.
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I’m not here to make ‘deals’. It’s you who comes to my blog to make your assertions about God, Jesus, the supernatural and ways of perceiving them. It is not unreasonable of me and others to ask how you know these things. What evidence is there for your God? For the supernatural? What mechanism exists to distinguish dreams that are from God and those that emanate from elsewhere? You’ve consistently avoided supplying any such evidence, trotting out ‘validations’ instead. Your fine-tuning challenge is likewise a red herring.
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No. It is simply the means by which I can determine the standard you have for evidence. If you provide evidence for natural origins and the way the universe works, that will give me a model to follow. I don’t think that is unreasonable. If you like, pass it off to goyo.
I have asked others on other occasions. The best answer I got was that natural origins is a parsimonious explanation. That is not evidence, but it is at least honest.
The problem with that explanation (different of course from evidence) is that I may do exactly the same.
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Others refuse to play your game because they see it for what it is: a feeble attempt to divert attention away from your inability to provide evidence for the supernatural. If you want to see the standard of evidence for the natural origin of the universe, read one of the many books qualified scientists have written about it (I’ve just Googled the subject; there are many books to choose from. Then again you’ll probably dismiss the authors as biased/atheists/not as knowledgeable as you/some other excuse.)
So, to repeat, where is the evidence for God’s existence? Where the evidence that people’s experience of ‘him’ is anywhere other than in their heads?
Either put up or shut up, Don.
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I think you are evading the issue.
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The issue being you providing the evidence for the independent existence of the supernatural. I’m not the one evading it, Don; you are. You don’t get to set the agenda here.
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I assume a non-answer is because there is no answer.
A conversation should be just that, a conversation.
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Interesting you think this is a conversation. Conversing involves listening to others and responding to what they’ve said rather than jumping in and lecturing them.
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Amen!
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Where the evidence that people’s experience of ‘him’ is anywhere other than in their heads?
The question that NO believer can answer.
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Don:
“You will not understand that either. And it may be why you are not a Christian today. You did not have a deep experience of God. It was intellectual or habit or emotional but not deeply personal.”
Another “No true xtian “ fallacy. You have no idea about my xtian experience. My experience was highly personal, including offending other family members about them not being “spiritual “ enough… my “spirit-filled” brethren and I judged other members of our church about who was a baby xtian, who was lacking in faith, who needed to study the word more (everybody else!)
You know, because I’m willing to bet you do the same things!
Don’t tell me I didn’t “know the lord”…
Don:
“It is not THE ONLY validation. But I’ve presented others, such as the existence of God so often that it seemed redundant to do so again.”
Sorry, no you haven’t!
1. What is the evidence that god exists?
2. What is the MECHANISM by which you can tell which dream or vision is of god, and which is just a dream?
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What are the “mechanisms” by which you can tell that the person on the other end of the phone call is your wife? I would say voice. I do not mean how she sounds but her diction and unique idiom. You probably don’t have a problem determining it is your wife on the line. Those who have both dreams and dreams from God do not have much trouble telling the difference.
The one exception is schizophrenia. But there are other symptoms of schizophrenia.
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Imagining things can be such fun!
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There’s so much here to reply to…
I checked your link to the doctor…you failed to mention that during her NDE, she went to heaven and toured the facility and met jesus in person! This is why she was “sent back”, to travel the country and write books!
Nice gig!
Here’s some quotes:
“It was this experience that was different than here,” she says. “The senses were different. I mean the beauty was incredibly intense, there’s no other earthly equivalent.”
Neal says she did not see a tunnel of light, but rather, something much more expansive. “I was in a hurry to get to this big, domed structure of sorts,” she says. “There were many spirits inside, and when I arrived, they were overjoyed and welcoming me and greeting me, and really joyful at my arrival.”
“Did the people that met you — were they angels?” Elrod asks. “Did they have bodies?”
“They had physical form. They had heads, arms, legs and were wearing sort of robes,” Neal describes. “I knew they were there to love me and guide me and protect me.”
Neal says the spiritual beings told her it wasn’t her time and that she had to go back to her body. “I did what I think any reasonable person would do, and I said, ‘No, I’m not going. You can’t make me.’ And they said, ‘Well, you are going, and we will take you back, and here’s some of the work you have to do.'”
“I was taken back down this path and was reunited with my body,” she says. “They told me a little bit about this mandate to share my experienced with other people.”
Let’s analyze this…”the beauty was intense…there’s no other earthly equivalent!
How does she know this?
Beauty of what?
A domed structure with spirits inside?
Where is this description of heaven in the bible?
They wear clothing in heaven? Why? Isn’t everything perfect? Why would spirits wear spiritual clothing?
Then, a prophesy that took 10 years to fulfill?
I call bullshit! This lady is lying!
And you’re so desperate for anything that resembles evidence that you accept this rubbish.
This is embarrassing! You wouldn’t accept this story from a Muslim, or a Mormon.
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You wouldn’t accept this story from a Muslim, or a Mormon. — BINGO!!!
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How do you know?
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Nan, you are thinking as a fundie. That must have been your background. If so, it hasn’t served you well., God is not a respecter of persons. (Doesn’t the Bible say that?) Muslims often have visions of Jesus. Mormons believe in Jesus. They are different, but I’ll let God sort that out.
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Thanks for reading.
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“There is broad consensus amongst respected scholars that the Jesus of the gospels didn’t exist.”
What respected scholars? Richard Carrier?
But you did say “Jesus of the Gospels.” A very large consensus of historians and Biblical scholars agree that Jesus existed. Hey, even Bart Ehrman.
What your “respected scholars” mean by Jesus of the Gospels, however, is the operative word, and I doubt you would find consensus once they got down to defining what that meant to each of them. If you have ever actually read those scholars, you would find that there is really little consensus on the details of anything. It is why they write books and papers trying to persuade each other of their ideas.
The same might be said of evangelical Bible scholars. You’ve been around academia long enough to know that this is the way it works.
But about Jesus of the Gospels. Most modern critical Bible scholars are atheists or at best agnostics. Of course, they will not accept as factual anything Jesus did. But that is a matter of prior assumptions, not investigation, any more than it is for you.
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Here we go again with the Carrier obsession. Would one scholar constitute a consensus? Of course not, so clearly that wasn’t what I was saying.
Yes, Ehrman does think a Jesus existed, but that’s not what or who I was referring to. Ehrman and the scholars you blithely dismiss as agnostic (for agnostic read impartial), agree that the Jesus of the gospels did not (and does not) exist. Even you can appreciate the difference… can’t you?
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Neil, read the last line of your blog post. You bring Carrier up. Here’s my take https://biblicalmusing.blogspot.com/2023/03/richard-carriers-problem.html
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I’m aware of that. I refer to it in my first response to you. As I said there, it is a tangential reference that does not imply Carrier forms a consensus all on his own, yet you chose to focus on it as if it were the main point of the post. You are obsessed with Carrier, not me.
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