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!
2000yrs from now after a post apocalyptic collapse of society - "there once was a man called Makjal Jatsen who walked on the moon and could simultaneously walk forward and backwards at the same time and transform his appearance at will"
@@lidbass historical documents prove he was a shapeshifter that could take on any face, age, gender or race he wanted, at will and in incredibly short amounts of time.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...
My favourite thing about this interview is that it occasionally didn't go the way AronRa expected and instead of getting upset he smiled and asked for more. That's the attitude I prefer to see in debates and discussions, rather than trying to "win" or "destroy" or "own" the other person.
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.
@@SkeletortheLitch 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.
@@SkeletortheLitch 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.
Imagine being a random Middle Eastern preacher amongst many other preachers, then hundreds of years after you're death, practically the whole western world believes that you're the son of god! All because one Roman Emperor made it the official religion of the Roman Empire.
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.
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.
All the other historic characters referenced here, made huge marks on history while they were alive. The character of Jesus made no impact on history until long after his alleged lifetime.
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 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.
As a writer of fiction, the good professor is wrong in that a historical individual is needed for fan-fictions to be written. For example, Star Wars has a HUGE fan-fic base, yet it is all based on fictional characters. Also, the Jesus of the bible is a wholly constructed hero character that includes traits and themes found in prior characters, like Joshua, Moses, David, and others. This is a common writing style and character development. 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. This is supported by the fact that in none of the gospels is there, "and then I SAW JESUS DO BLAH BLAH BLAH." The lack of a first-person narrative points to someone writing fiction, not fact. There is no empirical evidence that the Jesus of the gospels was a living character. Could Jesus have been created from other Jesus's running around Judea between 100 BCE and 100 CE? Sure. But not the superhero described in the gospels.
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.
@@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.
@@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.😅
Dennis, where is this "Q" document? What is its provenance? Who wrote it? When was it written? Where was it written? Is it just a Myth? This document is doing an awful lot of heavy lifting for this Jesus character. Was Hercules a real person? Probably?
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.
I started watching your videos about a year ago when I was beginning to question Christianity and learn more about science, and they've been very interesting and informative. rock on dude! 🤘
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? :) th-cam.com/video/_WKnPfjY2lQ/w-d-xo.html
"We have similar stories of Alexander the great." Yes but we also have evidence from various different sources with different bias (followers, enemies, rivals, etc) that show that he did actually exist, along with physical evidence, such as coins and his conquests. Where as with jesus there's nothing, not a single thing from the time he existed. The guy supposedly annoyed and angered the Jewish priest so much that they had him killed but not one of those priests wrote a letter or document saying anything about this heretic, who claims to be the son of god and the messiah, and his teachings? Not a single one of them? The closed thing we have is Paul (who didn't write about a physical jesus) and later Mark (which the other gospels are based off of and that build on it), both decades later and by unknown authors (most of Paul's writings were by the same person, who historians and scholars call Paul but the rest we have no idea who wrote them). Comparing jesus to Alexander the great is like comparing King Arthur, Robin Hood, Sherlock Holmes or Spiderman to Alexander the great. It's a ridiculous comparison.
@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.
These new testament scholars are so desperatly clinging to the supposed historical imprtance of they book that they flat-out refuse to understand what Aron is saying and what's my opinion as well: They admit that a virgin won't give birth because an angel touched her lady bits without touching her ladybits, they admit there wasn't a crib and there wasn't a census, and certainly not one requiering people to go to the place their ancestors came from because this would be utterly chaotic, arbitrary and useless, there weren't 3 wise men, no water got turned into wine, no dead came back to life, dates and distances don't add up and story are directly contradicting each other, etc. etc. - no matter whether there was one guy influencing the story or rather 27, no matter whether he got called Jesus, Jeshua, or Dickpic Bigdick, no matter whether he remained a virgin for all his life, had a family, or failed to start a family because he ended up in the wrong places - he/they/it are this far from the depiction in the bible that it's simply not justified to speak of the book character as a real person: If there was a book about a person sharing my name, my date of birth, my favourite book, having the same hair colour and the same style to dress, visiting the same school and looking and speaking just like me - but in contrast to me accidentally finding the Amber Room in 2019, finding the cure for cancer while sitting on the toilet in may of 2020 and realizing in july of 2020 that it works just as well to eradicate a certain viral infection, getting rich and hiring Elon Musk for carrying a piss pot for me, following me around wherever I go - would it be justified to claim the book was about me, a real person who achieved nothing of the above and is known for their unnecessarily inflated youtube comments at the very best? No. No it wouldn't. The guy in the book would still be a fiction, even when they in fact share much more biographical affinities with me than the Jesus character shares with whatever individual supposedly inspired him, after all neither me nor the guy sharing my traits claim godlyness or having come back from the dead just to rule all of the universe in order to sort the pathetic little thing called humanity into two pods with each its own style of eternal torture. However you look at it - most of these new testament scholars including the better part of the few atheists in the field apply way lower standards to this Jesus person and their supposed historicity than they themselves would demand for any of the other "big names" in history. Even these scholars who hold an actual degree from a legitimate university and are allowed to call themselves a doctor or professor are essencially practicing a pseudo-science if their standards are this arbitrary - though from a psychological perspectice I understand them because admitting Jesus not being historical even if the stories arose in a legitimatly historical context and had been inspired by one or more real figures (Which fricking book isn't?!) would imply having a degree in effectivly nothing. It's like claiming Al gore invented the environment, became emperor of the moon and rides the great moon because that's how he got depicted in _Futurama_ - it's bullshit because there is a guy called Al Gore, but he's certainly not the emperor of the moon nor anything else. One Al Gore does exist, the other Al Gore is a figment of imagination.
I don't think it's surprising that the people who wrote the gospels, in Greek, were informed of Greek mythologies and nicked bits. But I think this is the first time I've heard of anyone looking into that.
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.
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.
Hey Aron! I remember i used to watch your videos back in 2008 and you were a big reason i let go of religion and havent looked back since from way back when i was just turning 18 and growing up in an insanely religious family. Years later i moved to to edinburgh scotland, and i think one time when you were visiting i actually saw you walking around edinburgh at the time when i was out on my lunch break. i didnt say anything cuz i didnt want to bother you but i remember checking your youtube and you mentioned you were in scotland at the time. talk about a coincidence! good to see you still so active on youtube, ive been out of the youtube space for quite awhile. cool discussion, my family all still literally think teh bible is historically accurate.
I left islam 12 years now but almost converted to christianity in my mid 30's, as I prayed from my heart and asked Jesus to reveal himself but the turnover DID NOT telly rational. God could've easy removed rational thinking and replaced it with submission just as some birds have built-in compass returning home to lay eggs 1000's KMs away and baby turtles hatched knew exactly crawl back into ocean having no one to teach them, god could've just programmed us all to wake up each morning and bow to him the way he wished. No confusion, no fuss, no holy scriptures, no messengers, no scholars in between, no debating, no different religions, no second thought, no hell fire fear mongering, no doubt. I realized over a decade that man made god and this deity contradicts his "all loving/ all merciful" and intelligence born within us every single time. All religions are false.
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.
Aron, I just have to say thank you for all the hard work you put into these videos over and over and over again, it means a lot as a large part of my deconstruction is due to watching you, your debates and learning as I go along. Thank you for everything you do will continue to do.
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.
5:00 Washington, Presley, even Alexander ... we have large quantities of physical evidence of their existence, from their own lifetimes, objects attesting to their existence and first hand accounts by people who knew them. So there is evidence that there is indeed fact to separate from the fiction. Regarding Alexander, the first hand personal accounts themselves are lost but they were the basis for the ancient Roman biographer Rufus. He had access to them. So for us it is second hand. We do, however, have physical evidence from Alexander's own lifetime. A couple of bits that come to mind (and there's much more) are 2 Babylonian clay tablets, one recording his conquering of King Darius III, within a year of that historical defeat, while Alexander was still alive and the other was made one year after his death, recording the fact of Alexander's death. These 2 tablets are at the British Museum Christian apologists (and no, I'm not referring to Dr. McDonald) often like to point to Alexander as if we don't have substantial evidence. But in fact we do. 6:20 "I think the evidence (for a historical Jesus) is so overwhelming that I don't really understand how mythicists can get away with.... have any intellectual integrity... I think mythicism is intellectually bankrupt." And yet, we have NONE of the physical evidence or personal testimony for Jesus that we have for Alexander the Great, Washington or Presley. Dr. McDonald has never demonstrated, _with evidence_ "overwhelming" proof of Jesus' existence. Nor has he written a peer reviewed rebuttal to Dr. Carrier's On the Historicity of Jesus (OHJ). The biblical scholarship community is happy to bash Dr. Carrier, but none of them have actually written something equivalent in depth to OHJ but arguing for historicity. We're all supposed to take historicity for granted because people have believed it for 1900+ years. I'm disappointed that Dr. McDonald felt it necessary to get into the mythicist bashing mode in this video. I'd like to hear what he has to say about the gospels being fiction. But I'm tired of his derisive attitude towards serious scholarship that conflicts with his own beliefs.
I love that Dennis McDonald can disagree strongly with a position and still chill on a porch in the evening and do a interview together with a major proponent of that view. Takedowns and hit pieces are far too common among YTubers.
Imagine if they found the 'Q' document... and it proclaimed that the universe was sneezed into existence by the Great God Arkleseizure and we are all awaiting the arrival of the Great Handkerchief. Or that it was written by someone from the Q Continuum.
I think it's hyperbolic of Dr. Macdonald to assert that any mythicist position is intellectually bankrupt or dishonest, especially when he bases a lot of his case for his absolute certainty of the historicity of Jesus on flawed arguments. For instance, when he brought up Alexander the great being mythologized as support for the idea of Jesus being a real person who was also mythologized. While both characters experienced mythologizing, there's more evidence beneath the mythology to support the idea of Alexander the Great as a real person (coins, contemporary sources, etc.) than there is for Jesus. With Jesus, once the mythologizing is stripped away, there's little more (if anything other) than speculation about what he "must" have been or done without any compelling case as to why that conclusion is actually necessary. It's certainly possible there was a real individual behind the character, but whenever I've seen a historicist attempt to make a definitive case, it generally seems to rely upon flimsy reasoning (i.e. when they cite the mention of James the lord's brother by Paul in Galatians 1:19 as proof that Jesus must have had a biological family, despite the known historical precedent where early Christians referred to each other as siblings of Christ using variations of the same Greek word used to describe James' relationship to jesus, ἀδελφὸν) or hypotheticals and speculation (like the q hypothesis). If the case for historicity were really so overwhelming, you'd think it could be made without an integral reliance on any such speculative or even weak argumentation. I think it's more intellectually dishonest for historicists like Dr. Macdonald to assert there are no reasonable grounds for disagreeing on the basis of such arguments and shaky evidence than it is for mythicists to argue that the existing evidence is not conclusive enough to support certainty. There are crackpot mythicists, certainly, but it's not a wholly unreasonable possibility to entertain.
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.
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.
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.
Every time a biblical scholar belittles the idea that Jesus could be pure myth, I expect strong evidence to follow, but I am always underwhelmed. Consensus from a field of scholarship that originates via centuries of status quo, via faithful believers does not matter much to me. Analogies to other similar figures can work for either argument. A few mentions by ancient historians is weak as well. I don't know if I there is strong evidence either way but I am certain that anybody that tells his friends don't wash your hands before eating or advises you to abandon your family to worship the supernatural, simply doesn't know very much at all. Everything that is told could have easily been written by men. I know the story is nonsense because of all the things that could have been communicated and were not.
@@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?
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. :/
Not only are the gospels fiction, I believe Jesus himself is fictional. I do not believe he was a real person. It's possible he was based on several people that happened to live around that time, by mixing different traits (that would make him a Composite Character).
I will always find that confidence that jesus is historic quite strange, I've looked and asked so many historicists why they think he was real and theres absolutely nothing but a personal cultural attachment to the character, and the need to say "we dont doubt alexander the great" reinforces that notion to me, they can never just show evidence of jesus' historicity they just assume it.
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.
I’m a little concerned with how professor Macdonald continues talking about the Q document and what IT SAYS. The reason that is debated is cause we don’t have a Q document to read. He’s speaking about it as if this is just something we can grab and study..
Oh good, I made the obvious joke and called it fan-fiction instead of fiction and he just comes right out and calls it that himself. I'm glad, because Jiminy freaking Cricket is it ever obvious that it's Tumblr-grade fanfic at that.
The resurrection of Y'shua is every bit as real as the resurrection of one Elvis Aron Presley, as witnessed by thousands of 'Murricans, beginning within a year of his death.
wish the Professor would've articulated what jesus was minus his mythology one author described him as one of many magicians roaming the region with raising the dead as their biggest crowd-pleaser
Finding out that parts (if not _much)_ of Christian mythology is arguably derived from Greco-Roman epic mythology...when it's not simply "updating" Old Testament stories...makes me feel kind of stupid. How did I never consider it before? The entire New Testament is written in _Greek!_ It only stands to reason that, at the time of the New Testament's authorship, economic and political relationships throughout the Mediterranean region would have enabled (if not intentionally _promoted)_ cross-cultural literary and mythological influence. Great video!!!
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 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.
What is the Q document? "The Q source is a hypothetical written collection of primarily Jesus' sayings. Q is part of the common material found in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke but not in the Gospel of Mark. According to this hypothesis, this material was drawn from the early Church's oral gospel traditions."
Funny how they completely omit the Fact that the Greeks learned literacy, mythology, science, arts and abstract thought from the ancient Egyptians and so did Rome. He says all this garbage with a straight face. It’s remarkable. He just discredited himself.
Without the church destroying any other belief and making church attendance compulsory it would never have been believed, but hell and a nasty death for none believers made it what we see today
Did we need a real Herculese for the demigod to have been invented whole cloth out of some fiction writer's imagination? If not: We don't need a real guy to make sense of the myth of the god of torture's demigod.
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.
@@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.
I've always liked the "Jesii" theory: One Jesus was a learned Rabbi, another was an above average healer, and at least one other was a revolutionary leader. But in an age without anything like a "media" with modern standards of journalistic vetting, all the oral lines of local news "telephoned" in a tangle of misidentification: "Did you hear what Jesus just did?" "Healed those guys?" "No, he outwitted the pharisees!" "I thought he was talking about how he came not to bring peace, but swords?" Without true "last names", it all just got mixed up by gossip turning into local legend...
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)
@@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.
@@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.
THE TEMPEST - Lili It gives you comfort just to think that God is by your side To help you with your petty wants, you only have to pray Everything given or denied, it’s part of his great plan But what of when your world falls down, loss of home and pride Nature is a cruel beast, she arrives to ruin and flay She doesn’t care, she doesn’t think, of Gods, of love or man. - The cruel sea, the skies and wind all dark with careless hate Your home picked up and flung aside, the air fulfilled with death Is this the plan he had for you? You still think he is great Perhaps you think that he is kind for sparing most his flock A score of reasons to excuse, indifference, sin or fate It’s still the same, your world is gone, your hopes and prayers a mock. - And as you stare into the sky and bend your knees in thanks Your neighbor’s dead, your town a wreck, what thanks is due to him? Who’s made your life a misery, no future left for you You’re leaving now, your fate unknown a victim of his whim You’ll join the mass of those he’s scorned, the lost the faithful too Perhaps this trial will make you think, this God cannot be true. - If he is love then what’s this hate, inflicted on mankind It’s not just here, it’s everywhere, Infidel and faithful alike He doesn’t care, he strikes us all, and we’re supposed to find The meaning of the tragedy, the reason of the plan Be grateful for the mercy, mercy no one sees, mercy undefined The game he’s played with human pawns, the game he’s played with man. - The great Khayyam wrote of the game, a checkerboard of lies He knows the fate of everyone and watches from above And you may lift your hands to him, expectant of his love He only cares about the game, the players live or die And if you die that is the cost of being in the game A player faithful might be spared, the wanting to the flames.
But in what way did Jesus exist? If he was just a guy called Jeshua who was born, gained less followers than Logan Paul then died, how is this ACTUALLY the Jesus of the Bible? Doesn’t Christ’s historical existence have to include some of the detail to be this character in reality? Him saying mythicism is “intellectually bankrupt” then basically saying even Jesus wouldn’t recognise himself as being the protagonist in the gospels is some polemical hair splitting of the highest order.
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.
@RexCalliber Yes. Or to put it another way: "To whom are we referring when we discuss 'Jesus'? " A person who raised the dead? A person who walked on water? It seems like most professional historians' answer is: "The patchwork person who is left in the gospels after you take out all of the obviously non-historical accounts"
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.
I'm not a scholar by any stretch of the imagination, so I'm looking for some education. The gentleman mentioned the Q documents many times but unless I'm mistaken we have no Q documents and never have. How can we be certain the Q source is a real thing?
Question, i watched all of the discussion with Amaneul, did he ask for it to be taken down or was that your decision? Just curious as it was very entertaining to watch
Actually, I think what he mean was that the sayings found in Q (the parts of Luke & Matthew that are not in Mark) are NOT found in earlier Greek stories. MacDonald would know this, that's his expertise. To put it another way, he is saying, roughly: "Most of the gospels are (mimetic) fan fiction. But a small portion, called Q, are not". I think that's a valid statement. However it doesn't follow that Q is accurate, or that Q contains no fictionalizing. It only implies that *IF* there is a historical Jesus, then the trace of him is most likely found somewhere in Q.
@@exoplanet11 it implies no such thing. Q is just as likely to be fiction as anything in the gospels. Hypothesizing the existence of a more accurate source is pure speculation and apologetics. Paul and Mark include no reference to any Q material, and those are the earliest known sources.
I still don't get how some of these PhDs say Jesus was historical, that is really just a complete assumption. I also think that if there were one man, he is so far removed from the Jesus story we know it wouldn't even matter.
Is it just me, or when people claim the historical evidence for Jesus is overwhelming, they never mention a single one. Then you hear from mythicists, they claim there isn't any. Having heard several convos about the subject, I have NEVER heard an extra biblical fact about Jesus whatsoever. Can someone help enlighten me here and suggest something I should see/hear/read?
I really think we need more than the historic Jesus to explain Christianity. Paul never met Jesus, yet still became convinced he was The Lord Of Glory and Son of God. There are apocryphal texts that describe Jesus speaking the words of the Psalms. You would need to add a prophet to a pre-existing Heavenly tradition to explain both the veneration, and contemporary obscurity of Jesus.
How i would love to have him along side of us in the BB... although I can tell this man likely is quite busy and would not have the spare time to dedicate it with us. This was great Aron.
According to his own definition, that would make Spiderman comics "historical fictions" as well, since they take place in a real city, with real landmarks, and involve or incorporate real people. Like when Spiderman met Barack Obama. Just because a story incorporates real world elements doesn't make the fantastical elements of the stories any more true.
I cannot agree with him at all (nor Bart Ehrman) on the historicity of Jesus, but neither are literary nor archeology scholars, and both studied theology as taught by christians for christians, and even if self proclaimed Atheists (Bart is for sure) still contaminated with that education. I get a strong feeling whenever someone says historical Jesus is so evidentiary that anyone going against it is full of shit, they have to be full of shit, and when I hear their arguments for it they always are, and it seams they just can't let go of the Jesus figure for whatever it's worth to them! The evidence to make such a claim is not just weak, but pretty much non existent, and until there's something irrefutable to substantiate it, or refute it like a cash of letters between the authors revealing they made it all up... All they have to go by are all of the versions of the new testament, so then using the book itself as evidence as if it substantiates it's own supposed truth, and like what 2 or 3 accounts outside of the bible; none actually claiming Jesus existed, and all just recording second hand information from verbal anecdote. Writing about a group of people and their belief (Josephus and the other guy) does not confirm truth to their belief. People coming out of the woodwork way late and really the whole timing of all of it reeks of made up after the non facts, and coupled with everything we do know about the region and time, other literature, writing styles and all that, a whole bunch of it is in fact fictional, which makes it all the more likely that much more, perhaps all of it is in fact just made up. Often used arguments for martyrdom and what not presuppose those accounts are true without evidence, so they just add up all of the little unsubstantiated claims and act like they carry more weight together, and change the odds in Jesus's favor, but that's just not how it works! It's not how anything works!
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.
I know that I leave alot of corky, goofy, somewhat amusing comments sometimes, really making fun of creationists, and all theist in general. I do it to amuse myself really, due to the fact that I take my feelings about how people take these beliefs and use them for political gain, financial gain, and don't care what they do to the lives of these families that deeply hold these beliefs and teach their children that this is reality and if they deny this reality, they will face unimaginable torture and torment that their bodies will feel over and over, again and again. You will beg for water, you'll beg for it to end, and you will be ignored by God! This was what I was told as a child. Everytime I was upset because I wasn't allowed to do this or that. I would ask why? And would get the same answer- "Because I said so!" And I hated that so much because it wasn't an answer, there wasn't any explanation. Only my parents being lazy imo. So I felt I had a right to be upset. Of course the "Honor thy mother and father" commandment always popped up as something that was supposed to scare me or make me shut up. And if I kept on, then I was possessed by the devil. It would make me extremely angry to have them tell me that I was possessed by a demon! And my dad would literally try and beat it out of me. And I wasn't going to allow my dad to do that! And at 10 years old, I fought back. People acted like I was a problem child. But as I got older, I didn't care what they thought. But I still respected my parents, and tried to do what I wa supposed to do. But now that I'm 44 years old, my mom is 72, my dad has been dead since 2009, and I'm the only person on my family that hasn't allowed the indoctrination to take hold. So now I speak my mind on what I think about chritianity, what I think about religion, and what I think it's doing to this country and the people who call it home. So if I make a comment that pisses another atheist off or may be something they don't agree with? I'm not doing that on purpose. Because I want to be corrected if there is a correction due. I want to understand why I'm wrong and what to do to make sure I don't make the same mistake. But I'm still going to be goofy, and attempt to be funny lol. Love all of Aron Ra's work and videos.
I have not heard this overwhelming abundance of evidence that jesus was definitely a historical figure. They always say that they have so much, but I haven't heard anything that I think is very convincing. And not an overwhelming amount of it, either
@@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.
I'm not sure what he means by "historical Jesus" There are no witnesses to give direct quotes, and there certainly are no writings that can be attributed to such a person. The best that you can say is that there were religious teachers with the same common name.
@@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.
the bibble is a collection of materials for brand support for the new religion, complete with a magic mascot and a mind blowing finale. there is so much in the christian religion that is cherry picked and packed into form from various other belief systems, it's as if Marvel Comics came up with a World Savior everybody's best buddy.
Religion is no solution for the requirements of humanity in the 21st century, god is created by human in the image of knuckle-dragging human. Aron Ra is a hero for humanity for presenting this extremely valuable information to the world.
Without checking references or details, Dennis R MacDonald has only recently begun to declare such a vehement anti mythicist position. I believe that he wasn’t always so damning of the proposition. On the assumption I’m not mistaken, I wonder what happened to change his position?
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.
@@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.
//it first appears as narrative in the Q document // You mean a document we don't have, have never had and is never mentioned in any other ancient text. A document which is being used to explain how a story has been written. Does this mean we must have a document for all other writings ever based on what happened as no one can ever just make stuff up.
The argument that Virgil loosely based the Aeneid on Homer’s Iliad, in order to create a more grandiose ‘history’ for the Romans, is a key point. Homer’s epic poem did much the same for Greek ‘history’, and drew on even older mythologies: many of which are no longer extant. I would content that this is exactly what the Gospels did. They borrowed archetypes from the Hebrew Bible in order to create a more believable narrative, unaware that the Hebrew Bible had done exactly the same, basing its own central characters and events on a variety of older sources from Egypt, Assyria etc. The ancient (and modern) meme that Jesus must have been real and must be the ‘anointed son of god’, because it was all prophesied in the Hebrew Bible holds about as much water as a colander.
2 Peter 1: 16 - ''For we did not follow cleverly devised fables when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of His majesty'' Yeah fan fiction indeed
The existence of a man called Jesus who believed he was the son of god and got nailed to a cross is irrelevant. It's the claims made in the gospels that are the issue and there are enough differences between all 4 to suggest they were about different men.
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.
@@Uryvichk Even if Christianity only was made up, it only is possible, because the believers are convinced about the real existence of Jesus. If a proof will be found in future, that Jesus never existed, Christianity will fall apart. So, yes(!), it IS relevant for the Christians, if Jesus existed or not!
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Sign up for the course, "Synopses of Epic Tragedy of the Gospels" with the link below.
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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!
Baker street in London is historically real. Watson and Sherlock are not.
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...
2000yrs from now after a post apocalyptic collapse of society - "there once was a man called Makjal Jatsen who walked on the moon and could simultaneously walk forward and backwards at the same time and transform his appearance at will"
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.
My favourite thing about this interview is that it occasionally didn't go the way AronRa expected and instead of getting upset he smiled and asked for more. That's the attitude I prefer to see in debates and discussions, rather than trying to "win" or "destroy" or "own" the other person.
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.
@@SkeletortheLitch 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.
@@SkeletortheLitch 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.
Imagine being a random Middle Eastern preacher amongst many other preachers, then hundreds of years after you're death, practically the whole western world believes that you're the son of god!
All because one Roman Emperor made it the official religion of the Roman Empire.
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
All the other historic characters referenced here, made huge marks on history while they were alive. The character of Jesus made no impact on history until long after his alleged lifetime.
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 still think that monty python's portrayal of 1st century Palestinian preachers is spot on. One more preacher amongst many.
@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.
As a writer of fiction, the good professor is wrong in that a historical individual is needed for fan-fictions to be written. For example, Star Wars has a HUGE fan-fic base, yet it is all based on fictional characters. Also, the Jesus of the bible is a wholly constructed hero character that includes traits and themes found in prior characters, like Joshua, Moses, David, and others. This is a common writing style and character development. 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. This is supported by the fact that in none of the gospels is there, "and then I SAW JESUS DO BLAH BLAH BLAH." The lack of a first-person narrative points to someone writing fiction, not fact.
There is no empirical evidence that the Jesus of the gospels was a living character. Could Jesus have been created from other Jesus's running around Judea between 100 BCE and 100 CE? Sure. But not the superhero described in the gospels.
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 think "On The Historicity of Jesus" by Richard Carrier makes an excellent case for Jesus being entirely mythical.
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.😅
Dennis, where is this "Q" document? What is its provenance? Who wrote it? When was it written? Where was it written? Is it just a Myth?
This document is doing an awful lot of heavy lifting for this Jesus character.
Was Hercules a real person? Probably?
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.
I started watching your videos about a year ago when I was beginning to question Christianity and learn more about science, and they've been very interesting and informative. rock on dude! 🤘
Welcome to the dark side! Lol I’m jk, glad you came to your senses. Have a good one!
th-cam.com/video/CGxWUv3ppVY/w-d-xo.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? :) th-cam.com/video/_WKnPfjY2lQ/w-d-xo.html
🤣🤣. Aron Ra is an imbecile.
"We have similar stories of Alexander the great." Yes but we also have evidence from various different sources with different bias (followers, enemies, rivals, etc) that show that he did actually exist, along with physical evidence, such as coins and his conquests.
Where as with jesus there's nothing, not a single thing from the time he existed. The guy supposedly annoyed and angered the Jewish priest so much that they had him killed but not one of those priests wrote a letter or document saying anything about this heretic, who claims to be the son of god and the messiah, and his teachings? Not a single one of them? The closed thing we have is Paul (who didn't write about a physical jesus) and later Mark (which the other gospels are based off of and that build on it), both decades later and by unknown authors (most of Paul's writings were by the same person, who historians and scholars call Paul but the rest we have no idea who wrote them).
Comparing jesus to Alexander the great is like comparing King Arthur, Robin Hood, Sherlock Holmes or Spiderman to Alexander the great. It's a ridiculous comparison.
@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.
These new testament scholars are so desperatly clinging to the supposed historical imprtance of they book that they flat-out refuse to understand what Aron is saying and what's my opinion as well:
They admit that a virgin won't give birth because an angel touched her lady bits without touching her ladybits, they admit there wasn't a crib and there wasn't a census, and certainly not one requiering people to go to the place their ancestors came from because this would be utterly chaotic, arbitrary and useless, there weren't 3 wise men, no water got turned into wine, no dead came back to life, dates and distances don't add up and story are directly contradicting each other, etc. etc. - no matter whether there was one guy influencing the story or rather 27, no matter whether he got called Jesus, Jeshua, or Dickpic Bigdick, no matter whether he remained a virgin for all his life, had a family, or failed to start a family because he ended up in the wrong places - he/they/it are this far from the depiction in the bible that it's simply not justified to speak of the book character as a real person:
If there was a book about a person sharing my name, my date of birth, my favourite book, having the same hair colour and the same style to dress, visiting the same school and looking and speaking just like me - but in contrast to me accidentally finding the Amber Room in 2019, finding the cure for cancer while sitting on the toilet in may of 2020 and realizing in july of 2020 that it works just as well to eradicate a certain viral infection, getting rich and hiring Elon Musk for carrying a piss pot for me, following me around wherever I go - would it be justified to claim the book was about me, a real person who achieved nothing of the above and is known for their unnecessarily inflated youtube comments at the very best?
No. No it wouldn't. The guy in the book would still be a fiction, even when they in fact share much more biographical affinities with me than the Jesus character shares with whatever individual supposedly inspired him, after all neither me nor the guy sharing my traits claim godlyness or having come back from the dead just to rule all of the universe in order to sort the pathetic little thing called humanity into two pods with each its own style of eternal torture.
However you look at it - most of these new testament scholars including the better part of the few atheists in the field apply way lower standards to this Jesus person and their supposed historicity than they themselves would demand for any of the other "big names" in history. Even these scholars who hold an actual degree from a legitimate university and are allowed to call themselves a doctor or professor are essencially practicing a pseudo-science if their standards are this arbitrary - though from a psychological perspectice I understand them because admitting Jesus not being historical even if the stories arose in a legitimatly historical context and had been inspired by one or more real figures (Which fricking book isn't?!) would imply having a degree in effectivly nothing.
It's like claiming Al gore invented the environment, became emperor of the moon and rides the great moon because that's how he got depicted in _Futurama_ - it's bullshit because there is a guy called Al Gore, but he's certainly not the emperor of the moon nor anything else. One Al Gore does exist, the other Al Gore is a figment of imagination.
I don't think it's surprising that the people who wrote the gospels, in Greek, were informed of Greek mythologies and nicked bits. But I think this is the first time I've heard of anyone looking into that.
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.
"Hello puppies and kittens" That light-hearted intro just made me feel so much better and light.
Your weakness sickens us.
Coming from anyone else that greeting would feel patronizing. Coming from Aron, it feels like a warm hug.
Hey Aron! I remember i used to watch your videos back in 2008 and you were a big reason i let go of religion and havent looked back since from way back when i was just turning 18 and growing up in an insanely religious family.
Years later i moved to to edinburgh scotland, and i think one time when you were visiting i actually saw you walking around edinburgh at the time when i was out on my lunch break. i didnt say anything cuz i didnt want to bother you but i remember checking your youtube and you mentioned you were in scotland at the time.
talk about a coincidence!
good to see you still so active on youtube, ive been out of the youtube space for quite awhile.
cool discussion, my family all still literally think teh bible is historically accurate.
I left islam 12 years now but almost converted to christianity in my mid 30's, as I prayed from my heart and asked Jesus to reveal himself but the turnover DID NOT telly rational. God could've easy removed rational thinking and replaced it with submission just as some birds have built-in compass returning home to lay eggs 1000's KMs away and baby turtles hatched knew exactly crawl back into ocean having no one to teach them, god could've just programmed us all to wake up each morning and bow to him the way he wished. No confusion, no fuss, no holy scriptures, no messengers, no scholars in between, no debating, no different religions, no second thought, no hell fire fear mongering, no doubt.
I realized over a decade that man made god and this deity contradicts his "all loving/ all merciful" and intelligence born within us every single time. All religions are false.
Man made god in his image .
Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter was such a cool movie.
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 🏠
Aron, I just have to say thank you for all the hard work you put into these videos over and over and over again, it means a lot as a large part of my deconstruction is due to watching you, your debates and learning as I go along.
Thank you for everything you do will continue to do.
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.
5:00 Washington, Presley, even Alexander ... we have large quantities of physical evidence of their existence, from their own lifetimes, objects attesting to their existence and first hand accounts by people who knew them. So there is evidence that there is indeed fact to separate from the fiction.
Regarding Alexander, the first hand personal accounts themselves are lost but they were the basis for the ancient Roman biographer Rufus. He had access to them. So for us it is second hand.
We do, however, have physical evidence from Alexander's own lifetime. A couple of bits that come to mind (and there's much more) are 2 Babylonian clay tablets, one recording his conquering of King Darius III, within a year of that historical defeat, while Alexander was still alive and the other was made one year after his death, recording the fact of Alexander's death. These 2 tablets are at the British Museum
Christian apologists (and no, I'm not referring to Dr. McDonald) often like to point to Alexander as if we don't have substantial evidence. But in fact we do.
6:20 "I think the evidence (for a historical Jesus) is so overwhelming that I don't really understand how mythicists can get away with.... have any intellectual integrity... I think mythicism is intellectually bankrupt."
And yet, we have NONE of the physical evidence or personal testimony for Jesus that we have for Alexander the Great, Washington or Presley. Dr. McDonald has never demonstrated, _with evidence_ "overwhelming" proof of Jesus' existence. Nor has he written a peer reviewed rebuttal to Dr. Carrier's On the Historicity of Jesus (OHJ).
The biblical scholarship community is happy to bash Dr. Carrier, but none of them have actually written something equivalent in depth to OHJ but arguing for historicity. We're all supposed to take historicity for granted because people have believed it for 1900+ years.
I'm disappointed that Dr. McDonald felt it necessary to get into the mythicist bashing mode in this video. I'd like to hear what he has to say about the gospels being fiction. But I'm tired of his derisive attitude towards serious scholarship that conflicts with his own beliefs.
I love that Dennis McDonald can disagree strongly with a position and still chill on a porch in the evening and do a interview together with a major proponent of that view. Takedowns and hit pieces are far too common among YTubers.
I assume you are referring to the wonderful discussion between MacDonald and Richard Carrier, hosted by @Mythvision That was a very nice discussion.
Imagine if they found the 'Q' document... and it proclaimed that the universe was sneezed into existence by the Great God Arkleseizure and we are all awaiting the arrival of the Great Handkerchief.
Or that it was written by someone from the Q Continuum.
@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!
We could write today that Michael Jackson perfected the moonwalk; future generations could interpret that he indeed walked on the moon, backwards! 😆
I love the idea. You should consider starting that religion. It could really take off...and might make you rich!
I think it's hyperbolic of Dr. Macdonald to assert that any mythicist position is intellectually bankrupt or dishonest, especially when he bases a lot of his case for his absolute certainty of the historicity of Jesus on flawed arguments. For instance, when he brought up Alexander the great being mythologized as support for the idea of Jesus being a real person who was also mythologized. While both characters experienced mythologizing, there's more evidence beneath the mythology to support the idea of Alexander the Great as a real person (coins, contemporary sources, etc.) than there is for Jesus. With Jesus, once the mythologizing is stripped away, there's little more (if anything other) than speculation about what he "must" have been or done without any compelling case as to why that conclusion is actually necessary.
It's certainly possible there was a real individual behind the character, but whenever I've seen a historicist attempt to make a definitive case, it generally seems to rely upon flimsy reasoning (i.e. when they cite the mention of James the lord's brother by Paul in Galatians 1:19 as proof that Jesus must have had a biological family, despite the known historical precedent where early Christians referred to each other as siblings of Christ using variations of the same Greek word used to describe James' relationship to jesus, ἀδελφὸν) or hypotheticals and speculation (like the q hypothesis).
If the case for historicity were really so overwhelming, you'd think it could be made without an integral reliance on any such speculative or even weak argumentation. I think it's more intellectually dishonest for historicists like Dr. Macdonald to assert there are no reasonable grounds for disagreeing on the basis of such arguments and shaky evidence than it is for mythicists to argue that the existing evidence is not conclusive enough to support certainty. There are crackpot mythicists, certainly, but it's not a wholly unreasonable possibility to entertain.
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.
*_This is why I call it "THE BUY BULL"_*
Yeah gospel simply means the good news they definitely wasn't biographies or histories at least not in the modern sense.
Propaganda to sell their cult.
“There is overwhelming evidence for Jesus”…. Seriously? Overwhelming?? I have a hard time to buy that.
Very interesting video, Aron, thank you! But I’d love to see the ‘overwhelming’ proof that a historical Jesus existed, as I have not seen any.
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
I was really hoping Aron was going to make a mcdonalds university joke but never the less amazing video as always
Hamburger university is Kent Hovind's alma mater
Lmao @ 6:28. Crazy to flat out say someone has no integrity because you refuse to engage with their works.
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.
Thanks for yet another great discussion.
Every time a biblical scholar belittles the idea that Jesus could be pure myth, I expect strong evidence to follow, but I am always underwhelmed. Consensus from a field of scholarship that originates via centuries of status quo, via faithful believers does not matter much to me. Analogies to other similar figures can work for either argument. A few mentions by ancient historians is weak as well. I don't know if I there is strong evidence either way but I am certain that anybody that tells his friends don't wash your hands before eating or advises you to abandon your family to worship the supernatural, simply doesn't know very much at all. Everything that is told could have easily been written by men. I know the story is nonsense because of all the things that could have been communicated and were not.
Yes...watching it again and Dr Md is being very rude, publicly showing he doesn't like Aron on Arons channel. Cheeky barsterd. Misspelt on purpose!
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. :/
Not only are the gospels fiction, I believe Jesus himself is fictional. I do not believe he was a real person. It's possible he was based on several people that happened to live around that time, by mixing different traits (that would make him a Composite Character).
I will always find that confidence that jesus is historic quite strange, I've looked and asked so many historicists why they think he was real and theres absolutely nothing but a personal cultural attachment to the character, and the need to say "we dont doubt alexander the great" reinforces that notion to me, they can never just show evidence of jesus' historicity they just assume it.
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.
Just got the latest book from Dennis. Greetings from Serbia. I love your work Aron.
Another Ra-man in Serbia? Glad I'm not the only one
I’m a little concerned with how professor Macdonald continues talking about the Q document and what IT SAYS. The reason that is debated is cause we don’t have a Q document to read. He’s speaking about it as if this is just something we can grab and study..
I tell you what...you two obviously do not like each other! My word Dennis was very rude wasn't he? Or is it me?
He comes across as a person who thinks he's better than Aaron or knows more.
Poor guy, getting interviewed by Aron right in the middle of getting a haircut!
Oh good, I made the obvious joke and called it fan-fiction instead of fiction and he just comes right out and calls it that himself. I'm glad, because Jiminy freaking Cricket is it ever obvious that it's Tumblr-grade fanfic at that.
The resurrection of Y'shua is every bit as real as the resurrection of one Elvis Aron Presley, as witnessed by thousands of 'Murricans, beginning within a year of his death.
wish the Professor would've articulated what jesus was minus his mythology
one author described him as one of many magicians roaming the region with
raising the dead as their biggest crowd-pleaser
That whole vile book is fiction!
And the invisible wizard of the book they presuppe is the most evil character in all of fiction.
Finding out that parts (if not _much)_ of Christian mythology is arguably derived from Greco-Roman epic mythology...when it's not simply "updating" Old Testament stories...makes me feel kind of stupid. How did I never consider it before? The entire New Testament is written in _Greek!_ It only stands to reason that, at the time of the New Testament's authorship, economic and political relationships throughout the Mediterranean region would have enabled (if not intentionally _promoted)_ cross-cultural literary and mythological influence. Great video!!!
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.
Abraham Lincoln definitely existed. He _probably_ didn’t hunt vampires.
What is the Q document? "The Q source is a hypothetical written collection of primarily Jesus' sayings. Q is part of the common material found in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke but not in the Gospel of Mark. According to this hypothesis, this material was drawn from the early Church's oral gospel traditions."
Funny how they completely omit the Fact that the Greeks learned literacy, mythology, science, arts and abstract thought from the ancient Egyptians and so did Rome. He says all this garbage with a straight face. It’s remarkable. He just discredited himself.
Hey Aron great video. May I ask why the last livestream in which you debated Amanuel got taken down?
dr McD throwing shade at Dr Carrier.
unfortunately, he hasn’t published anything remotely close to disputing Dr Carrier’s arguments.
He made tons of logical fallacies and in the apologetics world, those count as demonstrable facts, don't you know?
What a lovely and insightful chat.
WW2 was a real event . Is Captain America real also ?
Thanks Aaron Ra this reminds me of something I’ve heard you say in the past in the words of Socrates “ I know I don’t know “. Thanks
Awww.. My imaginary friend isn’t real? But I’m so attached to my delusion.
Exactly. Also, you're on drugs for not accepting my delusion.
Without the church destroying any other belief and making church attendance compulsory it would never have been believed, but hell and a nasty death for none believers made it what we see today
Did we need a real Herculese for the demigod to have been invented whole cloth out of some fiction writer's imagination?
If not:
We don't need a real guy to make sense of the myth of the god of torture's demigod.
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.
I thought the book of Mormon was fan 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.
What happened to your live stream with Amanuel?
I've always liked the "Jesii" theory: One Jesus was a learned Rabbi, another was an above average healer, and at least one other was a revolutionary leader. But in an age without anything like a "media" with modern standards of journalistic vetting, all the oral lines of local news "telephoned" in a tangle of misidentification: "Did you hear what Jesus just did?" "Healed those guys?" "No, he outwitted the pharisees!" "I thought he was talking about how he came not to bring peace, but swords?" Without true "last names", it all just got mixed up by gossip turning into local legend...
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.
Dr Richard Carrier makes a very strong case for Jesus never actually existing.
no he doesn't. he makes a strong case that we don't know if jesus existed.
I feel that he didn't really answer why historians believe that Jesus was a real person despite there being 0 evidence for it
THE TEMPEST - Lili
It gives you comfort just to think that God is by your side
To help you with your petty wants, you only have to pray
Everything given or denied, it’s part of his great plan
But what of when your world falls down, loss of home and pride
Nature is a cruel beast, she arrives to ruin and flay
She doesn’t care, she doesn’t think, of Gods, of love or man. -
The cruel sea, the skies and wind all dark with careless hate
Your home picked up and flung aside, the air fulfilled with death
Is this the plan he had for you? You still think he is great
Perhaps you think that he is kind for sparing most his flock
A score of reasons to excuse, indifference, sin or fate
It’s still the same, your world is gone, your hopes and prayers a mock. -
And as you stare into the sky and bend your knees in thanks
Your neighbor’s dead, your town a wreck, what thanks is due to him?
Who’s made your life a misery, no future left for you
You’re leaving now, your fate unknown a victim of his whim
You’ll join the mass of those he’s scorned, the lost the faithful too
Perhaps this trial will make you think, this God cannot be true. -
If he is love then what’s this hate, inflicted on mankind
It’s not just here, it’s everywhere, Infidel and faithful alike
He doesn’t care, he strikes us all, and we’re supposed to find
The meaning of the tragedy, the reason of the plan
Be grateful for the mercy, mercy no one sees, mercy undefined
The game he’s played with human pawns, the game he’s played with man. -
The great Khayyam wrote of the game, a checkerboard of lies
He knows the fate of everyone and watches from above
And you may lift your hands to him, expectant of his love
He only cares about the game, the players live or die
And if you die that is the cost of being in the game
A player faithful might be spared, the wanting to the flames.
But in what way did Jesus exist? If he was just a guy called Jeshua who was born, gained less followers than Logan Paul then died, how is this ACTUALLY the Jesus of the Bible? Doesn’t Christ’s historical existence have to include some of the detail to be this character in reality? Him saying mythicism is “intellectually bankrupt” then basically saying even Jesus wouldn’t recognise himself as being the protagonist in the gospels is some polemical hair splitting of the highest order.
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.
@@Uryvichk Good analogy.
@RexCalliber Yes. Or to put it another way: "To whom are we referring when we discuss 'Jesus'? " A person who raised the dead? A person who walked on water? It seems like most professional historians' answer is: "The patchwork person who is left in the gospels after you take out all of the obviously non-historical accounts"
I actually wanted to hear about the Q document. My understanding is that it hasn't been discovered, so how do we know it ever existed?
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.
I'm not a scholar by any stretch of the imagination, so I'm looking for some education. The gentleman mentioned the Q documents many times but unless I'm mistaken we have no Q documents and never have. How can we be certain the Q source is a real thing?
Q is a hypothetical source. But you can find (a portion of it) by simply extracting the commonalities in Matthew & Luke that are not in Mark.
Awesome as always thanks again to the ever growing and ever inquisitive Aron ra.
😊
I'm wondering what evidence that Jesus was in some way a historical person that he says is overwhelming actually is...
So overwhelming that the early Church fathers had to resort to widespread interpolation and outright inventions.
Question, i watched all of the discussion with Amaneul, did he ask for it to be taken down or was that your decision? Just curious as it was very entertaining to watch
What manuscript did he translate the NT from? Ask him what he translated the Q from. He must have fairy magic.
We're living in times of earthquakes, and wars and rumors of wars!!! 😱
"the Q document is not mythologized" He cannot possibly know that.
Actually, I think what he mean was that the sayings found in Q (the parts of Luke & Matthew that are not in Mark) are NOT found in earlier Greek stories. MacDonald would know this, that's his expertise. To put it another way, he is saying, roughly: "Most of the gospels are (mimetic) fan fiction. But a small portion, called Q, are not". I think that's a valid statement.
However it doesn't follow that Q is accurate, or that Q contains no fictionalizing. It only implies that *IF* there is a historical Jesus, then the trace of him is most likely found somewhere in Q.
@@exoplanet11 it implies no such thing. Q is just as likely to be fiction as anything in the gospels. Hypothesizing the existence of a more accurate source is pure speculation and apologetics. Paul and Mark include no reference to any Q material, and those are the earliest known sources.
I just learned something new. I shall ponder this.
I still don't get how some of these PhDs say Jesus was historical, that is really just a complete assumption. I also think that if there were one man, he is so far removed from the Jesus story we know it wouldn't even matter.
Is it just me, or when people claim the historical evidence for Jesus is overwhelming, they never mention a single one. Then you hear from mythicists, they claim there isn't any. Having heard several convos about the subject, I have NEVER heard an extra biblical fact about Jesus whatsoever. Can someone help enlighten me here and suggest something I should see/hear/read?
David Fitzgerald's books are pretty good.
I really think we need more than the historic Jesus to explain Christianity. Paul never met Jesus, yet still became convinced he was The Lord Of Glory and Son of God. There are apocryphal texts that describe Jesus speaking the words of the Psalms. You would need to add a prophet to a pre-existing Heavenly tradition to explain both the veneration, and contemporary obscurity of Jesus.
news flash people believe crazy stuff
1.2 billion people are Hindus, does that make Vishnu real? No.
Falkor made an appearance! Also the snake room is looking great!
How i would love to have him along side of us in the BB... although I can tell this man likely is quite busy and would not have the spare time to dedicate it with us. This was great Aron.
What happened to the the video with the "Here's the thing" guy.
If we brought Jesus forward in time, he'd say, "Why are you all depicting me as a fat, orange businessman in a painfully obvious hairpiece?"
🤣🤣🤣
What happened to “here’s the thing?”
According to his own definition, that would make Spiderman comics "historical fictions" as well, since they take place in a real city, with real landmarks, and involve or incorporate real people.
Like when Spiderman met Barack Obama.
Just because a story incorporates real world elements doesn't make the fantastical elements of the stories any more true.
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.
It was an interesting conversation. Thank you.
I cannot agree with him at all (nor Bart Ehrman) on the historicity of Jesus, but neither are literary nor archeology scholars, and both studied theology as taught by christians for christians, and even if self proclaimed Atheists (Bart is for sure) still contaminated with that education. I get a strong feeling whenever someone says historical Jesus is so evidentiary that anyone going against it is full of shit, they have to be full of shit, and when I hear their arguments for it they always are, and it seams they just can't let go of the Jesus figure for whatever it's worth to them!
The evidence to make such a claim is not just weak, but pretty much non existent, and until there's something irrefutable to substantiate it, or refute it like a cash of letters between the authors revealing they made it all up... All they have to go by are all of the versions of the new testament, so then using the book itself as evidence as if it substantiates it's own supposed truth, and like what 2 or 3 accounts outside of the bible; none actually claiming Jesus existed, and all just recording second hand information from verbal anecdote.
Writing about a group of people and their belief (Josephus and the other guy) does not confirm truth to their belief. People coming out of the woodwork way late and really the whole timing of all of it reeks of made up after the non facts, and coupled with everything we do know about the region and time, other literature, writing styles and all that, a whole bunch of it is in fact fictional, which makes it all the more likely that much more, perhaps all of it is in fact just made up. Often used arguments for martyrdom and what not presuppose those accounts are true without evidence, so they just add up all of the little unsubstantiated claims and act like they carry more weight together, and change the odds in Jesus's favor, but that's just not how it works! It's not how anything works!
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.
I know that I leave alot of corky, goofy, somewhat amusing comments sometimes, really making fun of creationists, and all theist in general. I do it to amuse myself really, due to the fact that I take my feelings about how people take these beliefs and use them for political gain, financial gain, and don't care what they do to the lives of these families that deeply hold these beliefs and teach their children that this is reality and if they deny this reality, they will face unimaginable torture and torment that their bodies will feel over and over, again and again. You will beg for water, you'll beg for it to end, and you will be ignored by God! This was what I was told as a child. Everytime I was upset because I wasn't allowed to do this or that. I would ask why? And would get the same answer- "Because I said so!" And I hated that so much because it wasn't an answer, there wasn't any explanation. Only my parents being lazy imo. So I felt I had a right to be upset. Of course the "Honor thy mother and father" commandment always popped up as something that was supposed to scare me or make me shut up. And if I kept on, then I was possessed by the devil. It would make me extremely angry to have them tell me that I was possessed by a demon! And my dad would literally try and beat it out of me. And I wasn't going to allow my dad to do that! And at 10 years old, I fought back. People acted like I was a problem child. But as I got older, I didn't care what they thought. But I still respected my parents, and tried to do what I wa supposed to do. But now that I'm 44 years old, my mom is 72, my dad has been dead since 2009, and I'm the only person on my family that hasn't allowed the indoctrination to take hold. So now I speak my mind on what I think about chritianity, what I think about religion, and what I think it's doing to this country and the people who call it home. So if I make a comment that pisses another atheist off or may be something they don't agree with? I'm not doing that on purpose. Because I want to be corrected if there is a correction due. I want to understand why I'm wrong and what to do to make sure I don't make the same mistake. But I'm still going to be goofy, and attempt to be funny lol. Love all of Aron Ra's work and videos.
I have not heard this overwhelming abundance of evidence that jesus was definitely a historical figure. They always say that they have so much, but I haven't heard anything that I think is very convincing. And not an overwhelming amount of it, either
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.
I'm not sure what he means by "historical Jesus" There are no witnesses to give direct quotes, and there certainly are no writings that can be attributed to such a person. The best that you can say is that there were religious teachers with the same common name.
Prof: The characters in the New Testament were -
**ad interruption**
Melted to perfection.
😂😂😂
Even your ads are trolling the evangelicals 😂
Aron Ra is where religion comes to die. Let it be a quick and not too merciful death.
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.
The Bible is to Jesus what Bram Stoker’s Dracula is to Vlad the Impaler.
the bibble is a collection of materials for brand support for the new religion, complete with a magic mascot and a mind blowing finale. there is so much in the christian religion that is cherry picked and packed into form from various other belief systems, it's as if Marvel Comics came up with a World Savior everybody's best buddy.
Maybe they can update it and include Live From Golgotha as the final book.
Religion is no solution for the requirements of humanity in the 21st century, god is created by human in the image of knuckle-dragging human. Aron Ra is a hero for humanity for presenting this extremely valuable information to the world.
Without checking references or details, Dennis R MacDonald has only recently begun to declare such a vehement anti mythicist position. I believe that he wasn’t always so damning of the proposition. On the assumption I’m not mistaken, I wonder what happened to change his position?
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.
So basically just several fanfics where authors were writing almost entirely off of their headcanons
//it first appears as narrative in the Q document //
You mean a document we don't have, have never had and is never mentioned in any other ancient text. A document which is being used to explain how a story has been written. Does this mean we must have a document for all other writings ever based on what happened as no one can ever just make stuff up.
The argument that Virgil loosely based the Aeneid on Homer’s Iliad, in order to create a more grandiose ‘history’ for the Romans, is a key point. Homer’s epic poem did much the same for Greek ‘history’, and drew on even older mythologies: many of which are no longer extant.
I would content that this is exactly what the Gospels did. They borrowed archetypes from the Hebrew Bible in order to create a more believable narrative, unaware that the Hebrew Bible had done exactly the same, basing its own central characters and events on a variety of older sources from Egypt, Assyria etc.
The ancient (and modern) meme that Jesus must have been real and must be the ‘anointed son of god’, because it was all prophesied in the Hebrew Bible holds about as much water as a colander.
And poorly written fiction at that.
A degree in fairytales from a accredited university, waste of education
Everything in the Bible is true.
And some of it actually happened.
That made me smile.
2 Peter 1: 16 - ''For we did not follow cleverly devised fables when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of His majesty'' Yeah fan fiction indeed
The existence of a man called Jesus who believed he was the son of god and got nailed to a cross is irrelevant. It's the claims made in the gospels that are the issue and there are enough differences between all 4 to suggest they were about different men.
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?
Of course, it IS relevant! No Jesus means no ressurection means no Christianity!
@@Uryvichk Even if Christianity only was made up, it only is possible, because the believers are convinced about the real existence of Jesus.
If a proof will be found in future, that Jesus never existed, Christianity will fall apart. So, yes(!), it IS relevant for the Christians, if Jesus existed or not!