Is this a MOOC?

Jesus corporation similar Mohammed corporation and yehwa corporation lol just fooling followers lifetime businesses 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

Did he say what you do is cute? Around 7: 40 mark is where the guest snaps. Very entertaining. As if he has never heard an intelligent opinion thats fact based. Saluto Aron!

😂Warning if u read negative energy will creep out yr feet. Tell it's time for Jesus energy wash. 😮.

@@raya.p.l5919 Strong stuff smoking, you are!

How da ya know, were ya thar?

I thought you meant the amazing Gerry Raffery song at first

Harry Potter/London

​@@chrissober24 Spiderman, New York! There are others, too. 😂🥰✌

​@@chrissober24 thats my favourite one...

I couldn't disagree more. Aron is a weak debater and is kind of childish. I am a philosopher and expert on mysticism. Meaning. I've studied and understood the greats for years, which was essentially me unlearning.. Same thing everyone must do. If you want to actually learn the nature of the universe.. Then you should study Carl Jung, Alan Watts, and Jiddu KRishnamurti. Alan Watts it he go to, because he explains all of it and does it in an entertaining and easy way to understand.

​@@mikeydoes where are your debates and credibility? Expert on mysticism 😂 ok Gandolf.

@@CultofPersonality334 I've been on every philosophical forum and discussed will gladly discuss this with anyone. I'm familiar with Eastern philosophy, and most western minds as well. I studied many, so I have an idea what any person is coming up with, and where they get lost, in regards to understanding that we know we know nothing. Why are you upset that I know that I know nothing. It's nothing that special, in fact it is worse.. Since you know everyone is lost, but no one listens and just calls you names. Much easier to just be lost in samsara than to understand it, when no one else does.

​@@mikeydoes Alan Watts is indeed great and he was never as judgemental as some who listened or read him.

@@CultofPersonality334 ask your dear leader why he insulted me, blocked me, and didn't listen to anything I said. I went into the talk being respectful and enjoying both him and Jesse Lee Peterson, while not agreeing with either. Peterson and I both love all 3 of us even when we don't agree. Aron was not only disrespectful but he doesn't love us and might not love himself.

​@Michael Grant ...of life.

I always think of Joseph Smith and L Ron Hubbard, making up whole mythologies without any living prototypes they built them around. The only reason that people do not want to accept that for a scratch built 1st century religion is the age and how many peoplke would have fallen for another scam like LSD or CoS... I can see the parallels to the many preachers telling tall stories to outrecruit each other though. Basically any form of christianity, one with a flesh and blood Jesus as well as one that invented a person to declare its founder, would have stood in a similar competition with the surviing jewish sects and especially messianic cults that would imply such prophetic figures coming to bring liberty to occupied judea.

"He's not the Messiah, he's a very naughty boy"

@@tjarkschweizer... and death.

"And in that time, there will be rumors of things going astray" My favorite, and in my opinion, wisest preacher.

Don't think they'll classify his skull as homo sapien

Don’t forget that he wore a crown made of fire and could change colour at will!

​@@tamaratiny definitely a homo though

@@lidbass historical documents prove he was a shapeshifter that could take on any face, age, gender or race he wanted, at will and in incredibly short amounts of time. Must have been very useful during the first Zombieapocalypse when he fought the undead...

He possessed majik penny loafers and a diamond encrusted glove. Peace be upon him.

I'm hoping someone does that for me. I know the odds are pretty low, but we do know I exist and I figure that gives me an edge over all the other gods.

Well, when you put it that way

You can also blame Paul. The was the one who made Jesus bigger than he was.

Constantine did more for Christianity than any prophet or priest ever could. Who would have thought that all a religion needed to overstay its welcome was just a little bit of political endorsement. From an emperor no less.

​@Conon the Binarian exactly

That was my reaction. We believe Alexander the Great was a historic figure because, well, someone clearly created that massive empire and I never heard of any other candidate, so however warped his picture is in all those stories, there's clearly a historical kernel here. But Jesus? We know the legends about him had massive effects, But I know of no *personal* effect on history that you can actually verify. *Something* caused those legends, but it might as well have been a brilliant storyteller. I mean, the idea of a historical Jesus isn't completely implausible, but I know of nothing that would disprove the idea of that storyteller.

@@KaiHenningsen Well it would be possible that "alexander" (meaning "Ruler of men") was a name put over a historical figure, whose real name was forgotten, maybe even deliberately erased, as some aspects of his later life and death deal with disagreements about how much the greek ruling class in the new empire should adopt to medo-persian customs... a damnatio memoriae of the real name, while the deeds could never be forgotten as they influenced centuries of history through the warladen story of the Diadochi... but yes, 22 cities popping up in a short time, three/four diadochi empires rising out of the ashes of the mighty persian realm? Egypt clearly being hellenized... that is not a coincidental development, there must have been a catalyst for this. And i think that both sides reflected his importance even centuries later when the Persian empires returned and fought against the Romans for another 6-800 years... the only real parallel to that in christian background is that the meshiach was expected and the veritable flood if citations to presumed "prophetic" pieces of the OT sprinkeld all throughout the NT story makes it abundantly clear, that whoever wreote that wanted to make it irrefutably clear that they thought the predictions of the old prophets had come true. (which is ... debatable, the Jesus Story manages to mess up as many "prophecies" of the 1st Century BCE messianic cults as they "fulfil", so ... yeah no, not a clear picture at all, especially when some details would be easy to correct like calling the bloody guy IMMANUEL like the one clear verse about the messiah saif he would be called...) Did a real guy exist and we just do not know anything about him, as his biography was heavily edited before being laid down for print? Did nobody exist and the panicking jews invented the story after the temple was vaporized, writing a full story to declare no more sacrifices would be necessary as god sent already the perfect one, resolving all guilt problems for all times... there are several possibilities, including wild mixtures of the two ideas. The idea they had to reuse a complete new foreign myth though to write this up is on a level with "no, people 3000 years ago cannot possibly have had the time and manpower to put one rock over another" style conspiracies of the Ancient Alien/Atlantis myth crowd. Very disrespectful and lazy, especially as it has bee done so many times with Horus, Dionysus and whatever other ancient god they could think of that had something like a death and resurrection event in their mythology... None of those could ever be confirmed.

That's not true. As far as I'm aware, Joseph of Arimathea *also* made absolutely no mark on history either, outside of his witch cameo in the gospels, despite allegedly being one of the primary leaders of Judea's Sanhedrin (and Jesus' secret disciple who was one of the people that unanimously sentenced him to death), almost as if he was made up wholecloth to explain why Jesus would have a tomb to be doing empty rather than being tossed in a mass grave like 99+% of all other crucifixion victims.

@lnsflare1 I'm not sure the point you're making. I agree, as far as I know, Joseph of Arimathea appears nowhere else but the gospels. He could easily be an invented fictional character.

@@djfrank68 That's my point. According to the gospels he's a historical character and major political figure of the region, but there is no record of him outside of him volunteering to put the guy he just voted to have executed into his own tomb, which makes no sense except for the fact that the narrative of a resurrecting Jesus would need to have a tomb for him to not be in and no one but a major political figure could even possibly get a tomb for someone who was crucified.

I've gotta get that

@@thedragonofechigo7878 it is a very good very detailed book and explains many reasons while it cant be proven indefinitely he didn't exist Jesus was probably almost definitely a myth.

So is the author/researcher Acharya S (Dorothy Milne Murdock) book "Christ Conspiracy"

True, and Carrier is saying to there could be a Jesus dude but not this historical Jesus and the evidence is weak. He is right.

​​​@@MrOliver1444 Carrier is a full mythisist. His position is that jesus was thought of as a divine being first and then made into a historical person Carrier has always taken the position that he thinks the possibility of a historical jesus is 1 in 3, which aren't bad odds, but regardless if he existed or not most of the stuff attached to him is fiction. I do think the strongest evidence for jesus is that Paul talks about meeting James the brother of jesus, josheus talks about the death of James the brother of jesus, Mark says one of Jesus's brothers is called james, and even when the church held the perpetual virginity of Mary, they held that James was his step brother or adopted brother. Carrier argues that James' title "brother" could be an honorific that was turned into a sibling relationship. I think it's more likely that Jesus was a real man who was killed and his brother and a few friends started a religion around him in Jerusalem.😅

Welcome to the dark side! Lol I’m jk, glad you came to your senses. Have a good one!

kzfaq.info/get/bejne/ea2oirinmNbUho0.html

Skip Aron. He is not a smart person. I was having a debate with him about the nature of philosophy and what God is. He is not familiar with any point of view other than atheism. Which is a very limited viewpoint and misses the unconscious realm. People exploring the unconscious will quickly realize that they don't know shit.

I would point out that the Bible is able to offer testable, verifiable evidence in the form of specific, fulfilled prophecies - in fact, the Bible is about 1/4 prophecy! In addition to the many, many historical examples of fulfilled prophecy, here are just a few that have happened in the past 100ish years. Israel Scattered and returning to her land: Ezekiel 36:19-24 says, "I dispersed them among the nations, and they were scattered through the countries; I judged them according to their conduct and their actions. And wherever they went among the nations they profaned my holy name, for it was said of them, ‘These are the Lord’s people, and yet they had to leave his land.’ I had concern for my holy name, which the people of Israel profaned among the nations where they had gone. “Therefore say to the Israelites, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: It is not for your sake, people of Israel, that I am going to do these things, but for the sake of my holy name, which you have profaned among the nations where you have gone. I will show the holiness of my great name, which has been profaned among the nations, the name you have profaned among them. Then the nations will know that I am the Lord, declares the Sovereign Lord, when I am proved holy through you before their eyes. “‘For I will take you out of the nations; I will gather you from all the countries and bring you back into your own land." This is quite amazing. God said He would scatter Israel among the nations for their disbelief and return them back to the land. What other people in the history of mankind has been scattered across the world for hundreds/thousands of years and returned to their homeland (the very same area of land) as an identifiable people? This isn't just being moved from one place to another place after being conquered - it is being literally scattered throughout the world. This is unprecedented throughout the history of humankind and yet the Bible said it would happen way before 1948 when Israel was reborn as a nation. Jews have been returning to Israel from all over the world just as foretold - Russia, China, the US, India, Japan, etc. The land divided: Amazingly, there is even more detail. When noting that the land will have been divided among the nations Joel 3:1-2 says, "In those days and at that time, when I restore the fortunes of Judah and Jerusalem, I will gather all nations and bring them down to the Valley of Jehoshaphat. There I will put them on trial for what they did to my inheritance, my people Israel, because they scattered my people among the nations and divided up my land". Notice that last part "...and divided up My land". It was foretold that the land would be divided! Logically, if it weren't divided then God couldn't put the nations on trial for dividing it. Yes, Israel is back in a part of the very same land they used to have just as foretold, but some of the land was divided as well among the surrounding countries. The land was in fact divided by Britain, who was in charge of making this land a place for the Jewish people. Instead much of the land was given to the Arabs/"Palestinians". This was formalized in the United Nations Partition Plan which was adopted by the UN General Assembly On 29 November 1947 Resolution 181. This was written WAY before 1947/1948, yet we saw this come to fulfillment in the United Nations Partition Plan. It happened just as foretold even down to the detail of the land being divided among the nations. The country reborn in 1 day: What's more, the Bible said Israel would be reborn as a nation in 1 day. Isaiah 66:7-8 says, "Before she goes into labor, she gives birth; before the pains come upon her, she delivers a son. Who has ever heard of such things? Who has ever seen things like this? Can a country be born in a day or a nation be brought forth in a moment? Yet no sooner is Zion in labor than she gives birth to her children." This happened May 14, 1948 when Israel declared itself to be a nation and President Truman (the US being a superpower of the time) formally acknowledged them as such. Contrast this with the founding of the US - they declared themselves to be a nation with the declaration of independence in 1776, but no countries acknowledged them as a nation at that time. In fact, the first country to declare them a nation was Morocco in 1777 and the first major world power of the time to acknowledge them was France in 1778. Let's step back now and think about these prophecies. The Bible makes the claim that the Jewish people would be scattered throughout the entire world and return to the very land they were in as an identifiable people. To put into perspective just how bold this prophecy is, this feat has never happened to any other group of people throughout the history of humankind. So the Bible predicted something that has never happened throughout history would happen to a specific people long before it happened, and it came to pass exactly as foretold. As if that wasn't enough it said this would happen and that the land would be divided among the nations, which we know also happened in 1947/1948. Even more, that the country would be "born" in 1 day. There isn't any other religion out there that offers these kinds of specific prophecies that we know were written well before they happened. 1 Corinthians 15:2-4, "By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain. For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures," Additionally, here is a fabulous message illustrating salvation through the account of the thief on the cross. It's only a about a half hour and for something with eternal consequences, it makes sense to at least hear it out right? :) kzfaq.info/get/bejne/lb17obOXz7-WnIU.html

🤣🤣. Aron Ra is an imbecile.

Linguists and historians have not stopped fighting for centuries about the existence of a real Robin Hood, King Arthur or Merlin. Occasionally they even doubt Charlemagne actually was real... or several of the Aethel-- kings of the pre Norman time. We see doubts about the number and sequence of Emperors of Rome or China, of Pharaos and of Popes... Johnny Appleseed allegedly was a real person, but the myth was blown out of any proportion. Was Paul Bunyan ever a normal lumberjack though?

Thats not what he was saying when he made that comparison. He was likening the way that writers added embellishment and hyperbole to the adventures of a person who really existed, to the way in which modern fan fiction writers do the same thing for characters which may not be historically real, but exist already in other media. So for example Homer Simpson and Frasier Crane both have their established traits, memories, life events and so on. Fan fic writers then take those characters they like and add on to or extend the capabilities or accomplishments of that character. So the historicity of the character isnt what he was comparing, but the way in which fan fic writers take the established reality of a character and modify/manipulate/expand on it.

"Lastly, all of the gospels are written in the third person POV, as if you are watching a play on stage and writing what you see and hear." I rarely see this point made but I think it is one of the most important points when assessing the credibility of the Gospels. The Gospels are written in the style of historical fiction. Without external evidence it is impossible to discern fact from fiction in a historical novel. The professor grossly exaggerated the strength of external evidence for the Jesus narrative in the New Testament. Percival Lowell stared at Mars for years and discovered a vast network of canals. This guy has stared at New Testament minutia for years and has discovered evidence that doesn't exist.

@@davefoc that's why i am a mythicist, because of scholars who think that is more likely that some present day readers of Josephus are smoking weed than the Josephus himself being drunk when he wrote his testimony or the guys who translated him being intoxicated with other substances, as if drugs, alcohol or hallucinogenic mushrooms didn't exist in antiquity. It would have been much better if authors of gospels had been inspired by Socrates or Aristotle (or Ovidius, the author of delightful erotic poems), and not by Homer or Virgil. It would have been nice to have had a religion born or inspired from Shakespeare's writings, and Macbeth would have been the new messiah.

@@danieljohnston2379 In other words, the fact that jesus myths exist is not evidence for or against a historical jesus, and is certainly no basis to conclude he existed.

I was called possessed and evil In second grade for saying Jesus was basically Hercules, and banned from a Christian private school for blasphemy... they are genuinely pathetic and desperate enough to defend their falling apart world view that they will insult kids who think different because that threatens them... turns out I have autism and adhd, so my atypical thought patterns may have been a disability, but the real retards are the ones being cunts trying to defend a myth as literal. Their propaganda and wrath is excessive

What? Don't be a fool! It's _OBVIOUSLY_ as magical and prophetic as the whole "the messiah will be born of a woman" prophecy!!@#~!@#!@#!@#!@ Yes I'm being sarcastic, and _boy_ isn't it just so depressing that you gotta point that out still even in this day and age.

There are several good scholars pursuing this. Robin Faith Walsh is one. Richard Carrier did his PhD dissertation on Ancient Roman attitudes towards science, and in the process examined their mythology, obviously closely related to Greek mythology. He then brought this to his later work examining the New Testament.

There was a YTuber who made a series of videos about this about 10 years ago. It was awesome. Wish I could remember the name of his channel.

Exactly! At first, this revelation was mind-blowing. Then, I felt like an idiot for never having considered _before._ It makes perfect sense once somebody points it out.

Your weakness sickens us.

Coming from anyone else that greeting would feel patronizing. Coming from Aron, it feels like a warm hug.

There's a scene in that movie with Lincoln splitting a log to make a wooden rail. They called him old Rail Splitter in real life. Thus proving -I am- Vampires, who are not me, are real.

Abraham lincoln vampire killer is a documentary

I AM ABRAHAM'S BROTHER BETHUEL REBECCA'S DAD JACOB'S GRANDFATHER. A PAUL 🍎 PAP PAUL APOLLYON. THE MIGHTY HUNTER

AKHENATEN. Is ABBA ABRAHAM'S BROTHER

I live in Elizabethtown. EL GOD IZ JESUS BETH HOUSE 🏠

@Conon the Binarian it's why I fall more into the mythacist (probably just spelt that wrong), I'm agnostic on it though and don't really think it matters whether there was a historical jesus, it just annoys me that scholars give jesus special treatment and say that there's evidence bit whenever I've looked or asked no good evidence has ever been shown, yet academics dismiss the idea for no reason, yet will happily view similar characters from the same time period as mythological.

Yes I agree. For me the equation is simple: there are 3 big source for Jesus, the NT, Tacitus and Josephus. The first is describing and arguing for a supernatural being, a demigod. Demigods almost certainly don't exist, therefore it's claims of Jesus' existence can be dismissed in the absence of extraordinary evidence. And the last two have a huge problem of interpolation when it comes to Jesus. And the parts that aren't interpolated mention a vague, generic Jesus - is it THE Jesus or A Jesus? Yeshua was a common name back then. That leaves you really, having to rely on the NT - but how do you justify a historical Jesus off of a clearly fictional character without additional evidence? The Historists are letting the inertia of previous generations taking Jesus' historicity as a given, do the heavy lifting.

Q is a mere theory and nobody has ever seen even citations from it in tertiary sources. It's basically the sources theory for the Canonical gospels, insisting they must have had several external documents to trade down the real sayings and stories of this Jesus guy until the not eyewitness gospel authors could write their reports. A theory that isn't really necessary as the sayings are mostly just quotes from old testament books that at the time were deemed to be prophetic... you do not need a collection of citations from a real guy to write such a thing down. Between him treating the Q document as confirmed reality, the weird fringe theory about the Odyssey (matching other charlatans "proving" Jesus is a rewrite of the Horus Myth or Dionysus or Mithras or "enter vaguely known god X here", all of which were laughed out of the room) and his claim of the convincing strength of supposedly historical evidence, which in reality has consistently been defanged and exposed as weak sauce whenever actual sources were cited, i get the impression the guy might be a nice but very fraudulent senior trying to monetize his pet fanfiction online.

Honestly, even if the Q document did exist, it would already certainly only show that there was one more layer of plagiarism, not that there was a real Jesus.

There are a LOT of bad historicist arguments, but somehow the bad mythicist arguments refute the entire position if disproved while the bad historicist arguments do not. This doesn't really make sense when few historicists agree on all the supposed historical facts about Jesus; clearly if any one of them is right all of the others are wrong, so would we count the refutation of any one of the wrong arguments as proof that historicity is completely false? No, that's total nonsense, and the same must be true of mythicism. The baseline position of "I am unconvinced that there exists enough reliable evidence to support the contention that Jesus of Nazareth was a historical person" is essentially a mythicist position, and it does not seem to me at all unreasonable. All it takes is flipping whether you are convinced to become a minimal historicist. It seems implausible that failing to be convinced by the evidence we have is somehow foolish. It's like a juror voting to acquit in a murder case where there are a few pieces of evidence and a possible motive, but nothing else; are they "foolish" for saying they maintain a reasonable doubt, even if all the other jurors are convinced?

@@Uryvichk except your baseline position isn't the position of most mythicists. most mythicists affirmatively assert that jesus was not historical OR they are deliberately ambiguous on that point. mythicists also argue that the mythical nature of the gospels is evidence against historicity, which it is not. your "baseline" position is agnosticism, which I agree with, but it is not mythicism.

@@scambammer6102 I think the position they described is absolutely a form of mythicism. The most well articulated mythicist positions I have seen given, and the ones which I subscribe to personally do maintain some ambiguity on the question of historicity because they recognize that it would be intellectually dishonest to assert 100% certainty that there was no historical Jesus, but that there is insufficient evidence to assert that there was, either. I think you are correct when you say the mythical nature of the gospels by itself is not conclusive evidence against historicity, but I would argue that the combination of the mythical nature, composition based upon pre-existing literary elements, and the dearth of any definitive affirming evidence from a corroborating source other than the gospels make a more compelling case against its likelihood than any case I've seen made in its favor. With all this said, I still acknowledge the plausibility of a historical Jesus, I just don't believe it's the best hypothesis to account for the current body of data, and that mythical construction has a stronger case, at least in its better form.

@@scambammer6102 If one does not believe that Jesus was real -- and "I'm not convinced he was" is not believing it, even if it's just "I think it's 50/50 either way" -- then I don't see how any other explanation than mythicism can explain the existence of Christianity. The minimal position certainly wouldn't dispute that Christianity exists, after all, or even that it got started around the 1st century CE; those, at least, are reasonably well-supported facts. Christianity thus came into existence without the presence of an actual man named Jesus, or at least could have (as the existence of Christianity itself is clearly not sufficiently convincing of historicity to a person who doubts it), so the only other explanation is that someone invented it (or that a divine being revealed it, but that's a weird way to go about things). I don't care what "most mythicists" argue. See my point above: Historicists are not discredited by the people who claim Jesus faked his death and moved to India or China, even though those are clearly historicist positions. Even if every popular mythicist's position is suspect or even directly refuted, it doesn't make mythicism false. Also, nearly every scholar would agree that the Gospel accounts contain fictionalization, even if they believe they're based on historical events. They must, because none of them agree on anything and some of them talk about events and conversations that no one could have witnessed. I would argue that such points ARE evidence against historicity, as seeing how much of the accounts are clearly fictional makes it at least reasonable to conclude that they're entirely fictional. HOWEVER, other elements of the Gospels would be evidence in favor of historicity; even something as basic as setting something in Roman Judea frames the story as something that at least could theoretically have happened (as opposed to setting it in some wholly nonexistent setting). The question is where the balance lies, which is going to depend heavily on interpretation when dealing with (partially or wholly) fictionalized accounts.

@@calebwarren8168 Mythicists are inconsistent and what they are best known for is affirmatively asserting that jesus didn't exist, and they don't have the evidence for that. I think Paul's letters provide significant evidence for the existence of a historical Jesus, and I do not buy the mythicist argument that Paul was merely describing a guy in the sky. Of course, Paul has severe credibility problems, and all of his information is based on hearsay. So on balance the evidence is not persuasive either way.

Skip him and go to Watts. I have debated him and won. He is just another grifting atheist. He has no need to expand his mind, like Sam. They are already considered Gods and sources for Atheists, despite missing so many key points in philosophy. As mentioned, the best thing to do would be to listen to some Alan Watts. Skip this man, he needs Watts himself.

@Conon the Binarian You'll need a grandfather clock, a bottle of champagne, and three dimes... FORWARD, INTO THE PAST!

The Q Continuum are only going to write about the most important (to them) man that ever lived: Jean-Luc Picard.

You should deffo write some parodoy crossover fan fic!

Hamburger university is Kent Hovind's alma mater

Yeah... historians say there is evidence but they never say what it is other than things like... 1) Other historians believe there was a Jesus. 2) There is a reference to James, brother of Jesus. So if a brother gets mentioned I guess anyone must be real... you just need to say he had a brother and suddenly the historians will believe. I'm not against the idea of Jesus having existed, I'm just asking those who claim Jesus existed... why so certain? I once asked someone with a graduate degree in theology to tell me what is the evidence for Jesus existence while standing on one foot. He just shook his head and walked away.

Right I'm still waiting for these dishonest historians to show me the evidence

Man made god in his image .

Tradition, indoctrination, peer pressure,, and desperate dreams for a paradise afterlife.

I find the evidence scant either way. There's obviously not enough there to say with any certainty that a historical Jesus existed, but I'm always skeptical of attempting to draw sweeping conclusions about patterns of myth and fiction in history, particularly in eras where our knowledge of the day-to-day thinking of ordinary people is remarkably sparse; yes, we have lots of writings from antiquity outlining people's thought processes, but most of them are elites with power, wealth, and education, and I don't trust the way they thought to be representative of the way most people back then thought. It seems sketchy that Jesus would be wholly invented without a real smoking gun, such as something proving confidently that the Jesus myth predates 1 CE. But it also seems sketchy to believe the guy even existed, because the stories about him read like fiction. But would they have read like that in their time? I don't know, honestly.

well there is some evidence of jesus' historicity in paul's letters. It's not great but it's not nothing. And the mythicist efforts to explain it away are just as pathetic as most historicist arguments. The amount of BS on this subject is impressive.

@@scambammer6102 Paul's letters all talk about a supernatural Jesus, nowhere does he mention Mary, or any other member of his family... with the exception with James, and he calls him 'a brother of the lord' which was what christians called each other before the name 'christian' existed.

@@rsr789 you are trying to debunk points I didn't make LOL. I disagree with your comment, but it obviously isn't worth talking to you.

Another Ra-man in Serbia? Glad I'm not the only one

Propaganda to sell their cult.

Yeah, that ... demonstrates a lack of integrity, I'd say.

Yup. I see your point there. My view, is that say they found the grave of Alexander the Great, or Robin hood, or found definitively that neither existed, it makes no difference. Jesus tho.. well lawmakers today are trying to make laws based on what they think he said.

When he said "What you do is cute." Showed his bias..He already has his preconceptions of Aron and they obviously are not favourable.

@@acera12345 Exactly what I thought. Aron's take is rather nuanced for a mythicist position. And to hear this professional be so passive-aggressive makes me roll my eyes. Does he know something Aron doesn't?

And Aron missed his chance at the end. He should have responded with "'Allahu akbar'".

He was very rude in my opinion. Is he threatened by Mr. Ra's popularity I wonder, which someone who wants to always be right, wants to assert right off the bat that they're the smarter one. :/

You are right. There is no historical evidence that Jesus of Nazereth existed. Jesus was quite a common name at that time.

​@@satyrsak Jesus wasnt a common name at the time. Some transliteration of it may have been, but the letter J didnt exist until around the 1600s.

​@@Suzume-Shimmer From the Wiki "The English name Jesus, from Greek Iesous, is a rendering of Joshua (Hebrew Yehoshua, later Yeshua), and was not uncommon in Judea at the time of the birth of Jesus. Yeshua/Yehoshua means "Yahweh is lordly", but popular etymology linked it to the verb meaning "save" and the noun "salvation", and the Gospel of Matthew tells of an angel that appeared to Joseph instructing him to name him Jesus because "he will save his people from their sins"

@@oscargordon Ok. So the greek Iesous and the hebrew Yehoshoa . Yes I'm aware of that. My point was Jesus wasnt a common name at the time. It wasnt a name at all , until around 1600 after the letter J was finally invented. No one named Sean will tell you to just call them Jean or John, even though they are all three of similiar etymology. And really why change Iesous anyway. ? No one changed Yahweh. It seems if a God has a name that name might have some significance. If its changed its almost like worshipping another God.

@@Suzume-Shimmer You should take a look at the Wiki on the letter “J”. Aramaic, Geek, and Old Latin languages did not have the “Jay” sound. The I and J shapes were interchangeable. The J shape was not “invented” in the 1600s as the shape was just an alternate to the I shape and used in Roman times, for instance in numerals where it was common to write a J instead of an I if the last character in the number was a one, eg. XXIIJ = 23. What happened in the 1600s was that the J shape was starting to be used to distinguish between the old “yod” or “yet” sound that the I / J represented and a new harder “jay” sound. Remember that when you hear a latin mass, they say “Yay-zoo” even though it is spelled Jesu. When the English Bibles were being compiled in the 15th and 16th centuries they used the J character. I have no idea when the change pronouncing the name as “Gee-zuss” from “Yay-zoos” occurred.

None of those would have been called Jesus/Joshua. That makes much more sense when it was forced onto the story to mark the "savior figure" (the literal meaning of Joshua/Jesus)

@@Ugly_German_Truths But Jesus *was* a common name back then. Or rather, Yeshua. Source: BIble Reasons. Which is why he was called Jesus of Nazareth.

@@arthapeterson5239 yeah but it also means "savior" which is a helluva coincidence. It's quite possible that the name "jesus" was added to one or more stories about other people, which is the kind of things ancient jews did all the time.

Above average healer 😂😂😂

@@scambammer6102 No. Wrong. It means "God is salvation." That does not mean "I am the savior" or "this is the savior". It is similiar to naming your child Sophia, or Holy Wisdom.

Well, it explains a demigod founder, Heaven, and Hell.

Ot is marketing. The gospel sold the religion to a Greek speaking audience that were familiar with the Greek gods, the demigods and there deeds. It is our fewish preacher did the same, the same as Asklepios the god of healing and others

Makes me feel stupid and then mad

Makes sense to me…if in the beginning we all started out from the same two people then split up into different cultures we would all share the same stories. The Demi gods are the nephelium .

@@WikedLovely1 We would only share the same stories that occurred _before_ we split into different cultures. After that, each culture would have its _own_ stories. As referenced in this video, the Greco-Roman stories occurred long _after_ such a split would have happened but long _before_ the 1st Century CE. As such, the biblical accounts aren't a retelling of _shared_ history; they are plagiarized Greco-Roman legends, "updated" to make the names and locations fit the messianic narrative. As for Greco-Roman demigods' superficial similarity with the nephilim, it seems counterproductive to reinforce one's own religious beliefs by referencing characters from mutually exclusive theological mythology, while _also_ proclaiming that said theology is false. P.S. Genetics, Biology, Anthropology, Archaeology, and History...for starters...all either (A) _fail_ to provide objectively observable, consistently demonstrable evidence _for_ any biblical narrative and/or (B) _do_ provide objectively observable, consistently demonstrable evidence _against_ it. That's why historians and scholars...who understand this subject matter better than you or I ever will...overwhelmingly agree that Adam, Eve, Noah, Moses, and Jesus didn't actually exist, at least not in any way that resembles their biblical descriptions. They...like the characters of Greco-Roman mythology...are fiction.

It is.

@@tjarkschweizer 50 shades is fan-fiction of Twilight which is fan-fiction of My Chemical Romance ... turtles all the way down!

@@KaiHenningsen Indeed. Isn't it great.

Yes, and the Gospels are also fan fiction as almost all of the elements of the Jesus story are just lifted from the OT stories.

@@oscargordon I am afraid it is a little more complicated than that.

Moreover, I don't know of any scholars who make the explicit argument that a "historical Heracles" must have existed. Seems like scholars are giving special treatment to Christian mythology.

there might have been a real heracles

@@scambammer6102 If you don't believe in Heracles, he'll come down from Mt. Olympus to kick your ass forever. But he loves you.

@@scambammer6102 Not based on any evidence. Actually, what we do have points the contrary: the earliest tales have him completely mythological, and then only later is he 'real', and living upon the earth.

@@rsr789 that's bullshit. The "earliest tales" we have are paul's writings and paul does not depict him as "completely mythical." I know what the mythicist position is at least as well as you do, so unless you have something interesting to say we are done.

Nobody's saying that historical fiction is true. "Fiction" is right there in the name.

@@alexanderrichards239 - "nobody" is saying that?

@@Starhawke_Gaming At least nobody should say it. Because they would be wrong.

And the invisible wizard of the book they presuppe is the most evil character in all of fiction.

So overwhelming that the early Church fathers had to resort to widespread interpolation and outright inventions.

He made tons of logical fallacies and in the apologetics world, those count as demonstrable facts, don't you know?

I agree. If Jesus existed, it would be the Jesus of the Bible (since that is what Christians are talking about). If the Jesus of the Bible existed, then the supernatural factually exists. Since the supernatural does not factually exist, then Jesus does not exist. Professor MacDonald is apparently unable to perform simple logical deductions.

Hear me out on this for a second: It's basically like the old meme of Chuck Norris jokes. Chuck Norris is a real person, a real actor, and a real martial artist. But none of the absurdities proposed by Chuck Norris jokes are real. If we were to collectively forget, as a society, every single accurate historical detail of Norris's life (which, sadly, means losing every copy of Way of the Dragon), and had only the jokes, would we really still have any knowledge of "Chuck Norris?" The mere fact that the joke subject shares his name would do little to actually provide us with any meaningful information about whether there was a historical man by that name, and what would be left of him if we stripped away all the memes.

@@Uryvichk I think we’re on the same page. Cards on the table I don’t know, or care, if Jesus was a “real” person who got blown way out of proportion by a later mythos. I object to that fella calling mythicism “intellectually bankrupt”. I’ve read Carrier, Price & other books that don’t rule out a real character on which the stories are based. They just make good arguments regarding the notorious amount of similar myths in the Greco/Roman/Egyptian world & highlight the total lack of consistency in the Bible & the absence of other corroborating evidence, even polemics, which would normally follow. This is at least worth debating & it’s only 1500 yrs or so of special pleading, fear of the church & cultural assimilation that has allowed this debate to become unpalatable for many including this guy apparently. As religion loses its grip on society, it’s power to injure, torture or bully people into silence greatly reduced by enlightened thinking, it’s gonna have to address these debates with the kind of open mind it constantly requests from those it wishes to proselytise.

He comes across as a person who thinks he's better than Aaron or knows more.

Religion doesn't deserve any mercy

Come on, it doesn’t have to be nasty, as long as it’s quick. The withdrawal symptoms of former believers are often harsh enough.

​@@kellydalstok8900 Yup. It still hurts sometimes, a decade later.

@@zemorph42 the greatest regret of my life is that I had my children indoctrinated before I came to reason.

@@chuckeelhart1746 I often wondered what I would do if I had kids with a believer and they wanted them to go to church and sunday school. I have a feeling I probably wouldn't do anything.

That's the core of the issue tbh. Even if we proved there was A single historical Jesus figure, that does nothing to prove anything he did was represented in the Gospels. And it certainly wouldn't make Christianity start making sense again.

That's why it ultimately doesn't "matter" whether Jesus was a historical figure or not, because Christianity-the-religion is clearly not true. However, I agree with those who say we shouldn't just accept that Jesus was a historical figure on the paucity of the evidence we have at present. My personal take is that I don't think we know and have about as much reason to think he did exist as didn't, and that it doesn't really matter either way to the formation of Christianity. So if there was no Jesus, Christianity is made up; if there was a Jesus, Christianity is still made up, just fictionalizing a real guy instead of fictionalizing myth and scriptural exegesis.

it isn't irrelevant. why are you here commenting?

David Fitzgerald's books are pretty good.

Yeah that's a pretty ridiculous thing to base historicity on. We haven't found the damn thing!

People want there to be many different people writing about Jesus. When you look at all of the stuff that is common between Matthew and Luke, they want to pretend that both M and L had copies of some lost document rather than Matthew copied from Mark and added his embellishments. Luke had a copy of Matthew and didn't like some of his embellishments so he modified them to his own liking. The proposed Q document is nothing more than the stuff in Matthew that Luke didn't reject.

We don’t know, it’s only a hypothesis and if Dr Macdonald didn’t present it that way he should have, even though it’s safe to say he’s very sure of its existence. It’s not anything ridiculous by itself although I think it’s fair to say Dennis puts a lot more emphasis on it and has a lot more confidence in his reconstruction of it than is typical. But as far as I know he’s a good scholar, let’s just say he is not afraid to challenge the norms and voice unique opinions on things.

@@Jd-808 I'm not saying that the "double tradition" material DIDN'T come from the a lost document and the author of Luke definitely DID copy from Matthew. It is simply that Occam's razor says we can shave off Q because it isn't necessary to explain parts common to Matt and Luke. I should note that there are some scholars who propose that Matt copied from Luke, but of those that reject the Q hypothesis, it is far more likely they support the idea that Luke copied from Matt.

@@oscargordon I mean that’s technically true but it’s not really that easy. Just because a simple explanation is theoretically possible doesn’t mean it’s the best explanation, or that it remains so simple when elaborated upon. Close examination of Luke as it relates to Matthew and Mark requires jumping through a lot of hoops to explain what’s going on between Luke and Matthew. Q itself is a simple solution to that problem.

Exactly. Also, you're on drugs for not accepting my delusion.

Good grief, there IS NO Q DOCUMENT. It is a pure supposition, to finagle some of the overlap of the Canonical gospels into a coherent backstory, giving the gospels another 50 years of authenticity. Nobody has ever found a Q document, NOBODY can know what is in it and him talking about it as if he has it on his harddrive is dishonest as fuck!

Unrealistic? Not so much. Without any sort of evidence? Yeah.

news flash people believe crazy stuff

1.2 billion people are Hindus, does that make Vishnu real? No.

no he doesn't. he makes a strong case that we don't know if jesus existed.

🤣🤣🤣

That made me smile.

Revelation

It's the same reason a biologist might suddenly start coming out as "anti-creatuonism". Because they just found out such a ridiculously fringe position existed.

@@natew.7951 It would have been nice if he had given any sort of actual evidence that there was a historical Jesus instead of just asserting it, using ad hominem attacks, and incorrectly claiming that the evidence we have for Jesus is even 1% as credible as the evidence we have for Alexander the Great.

@@lnsflare1 he's a real historian, how often do you see real cosmologists take time to counter flat earth? It's just not worth their time

@@natew.7951 I see them do so fairly often, since real cosmologists and other professional scientists and educators generally enjoy teaching people how the things they are saying are true and the evidence that they use to show it. Just spouting logical fallacies rather than actually providing evidence for his position does not make his position true.

Or, hear me out. Jesus was an amalgamation of characters and stories from the Old Testament.

@@oscargordon Hard to say what all might have been included. I wouldn't doubt it, but I would also stand by Roman, Hellenic and other more contemporary mythology having an influence.

@@ericwood3709 Most certainly there were other influences since the Gospels and Epistles were written by people with a Greek education, they would all have been aware of the Greek stories where, for instance, gods impregnating humans was a common trope. Others have mentioned Homeric influences. However, the overwhelming basis of the Jesus stories still come from OT "prophecies" as is attested to by evangelical Christians. I should add that the Jews did not have a concept of Heaven and Hell. Those were borrowed from Zoroastrianism. From the Wiki. "Historically, the unique features of Zoroastrianism, such as its monotheism, messianism, belief in free will and judgement after death, conception of heaven, hell, angels, and demons, among other concepts, may have influenced other religious and philosophical systems, including the Abrahamic religions and Gnosticism, Northern Buddhism, and Greek philosophy."

I'd really like to see his overwhelming evidence for a historical Jesus. I've yet to see anything that I think qualifies as that. Not that it is a topic that I have put much time into, but still, if it's that overwhelming, I'm surprised I haven't heard of it yet. As far as I know, there is no "overwhelming evidence" in either direction. My personal opinion is that the gospels were probably very loosely based on a real guy (or maybe several who's stories got mashed together), but I'm by no means attached to that, it just feels a bit more likely to me. Frankly, I just don't care. Whether Jesus was a real dude who's life got absurdly exaggerated, or if he was entirely made up just isn't important to me. Either way, it's still a load of crap. Sure, it might be interesting to know for certain, but it doesn't really matter.