Jesus Existed

PrefaceI will address our cases separately in this round with conclusions and last rebuttals. =Aff Case=Scholarly ConsensusThis is not an argument, so why should I respond to this ? We are debating the likelihood of Jesus’ existence. Pro affirmed this in the rules round:“This is strictly about which theory fits the evidence better. If my theory fits the evidence better vote for me. If Envisages theory fits the evidence better vote for him. “Thus we should care less what the scholarly consensus is (and it rightly is an appeal to authority) for the purposes of this debate. EvidencesI would like to relate back to Pro’s own criteria in his opening round for what constitutes reliable evidence. The following considerations are made:“1. When was the source, written or unwritten, produced (date)?2. Where was it produced (localization)?3. By whom was it produced (authorship)?4. From what pre-existing material was it produced (analysis)?5. In what original form was it produced (integrity)?6. What is the evidential value of its contents (credibility)? ”With these considerations I will summarise Pro’s case for the existence of Jesus along with the philosophical considerations. WitnessesJosephusPro doesn’t respond to my arguments regarding Josephus, thus he drops my point that it was written over 60 years after it’s purported events (hence not contemporary and failing criterea #1), moreover it is most likely derived from oral traditions and certainly not eyewitness testimony (failing #4 & 6), and has undergone significant forgery and interpolation in its manuscripts, which lays serious doubt on #5. This added to the fact that the most Josephus can affirm is the oral traditions at the time, it cannot in principle affirm a historical Jesus any more than Paul has. Josephus’ accounts do not evidence either a mythical or existent Jesus. TacitusPro drops the fact it is written 80 years after the purported fact (failing #1), moreover the fact that the passage is most likely a Christian “corrective” interpolation (failing# 4 & 6). Moreover even if the passage was accurate, it cannot in principle lend more credence to Jesus’s existence, but can only affirm the oral traditions of the Christians at the time (which were already numerous and established). Apostle PaulPro drops the fact he never met Jesus (which significantly reduces it’s evidential value #6), moreover we know that Paul was obviously motivated, and not disinterested from the letters he wrote, which significantly undermines it’s credibility as accurate & reliable testimony (#3). Moreover Paul readily and explicitly admits that what he knows about Jesus came via. revelation, not from knowing/meeting Jesus, and that he never claimed to. Con never addressed these arguments. If Paul never knew Jesus, and doesn’t even claim to report on witnesses during his life, then this casts serious doubt on the validity of his claims. Moreover Pauls most frequent claim about jesus, by far is his crucifixion & resurrection, which runs slap bang into the contamination principle. Pro’s only significant argument here is for James, “brother of the Lord” by appealing to context/misinterpretation, but doesn’t at all argue how. He literally just asserts I am misinterpreting without backing it up. He ignores the “policing” argument for the non-kinhood of James, and the fact that Paul makes several appeals to brothers of Jesus directly (1 Cor 9:5), as well as indirectly (Romans 8:15-29, Romans 9:26 Gal 3:26-29, Gal 4:4-7). Thus Pro’s arguments simply do not prove what he wants them to. Markan Gospel & Q SourcePro drops my arguments regarding the hypothetical nature of the Q document, and hence it’s lack of credence as an original source, and impossibility to verify any of the six criterea Pro proposed for determining the reliability of a source. The use of this source is simply an exercise in speculation. The Markan Gospel Pro drops all my points against it, which largely are shared with Josephus & Tacitus in that they are derived from oral traditions (at best) and to make things worse, we clearly know the author of Mark had intentionality, and was motivated to promote his theology (#1, 2, 5 & 6). Pro drops the points that Mark demonstrably ‘made up’ mundane facts (which already seriously call into question other mundane facts, such as Jesus’ existence) and blends them with a healthy dose of supernaturalism in a single narrative. Thus the Gospel of Mark is heavily compromised by the contamination principle, which lends serious doubt over the (already dubious) mundane claims of the Gospel. Pro’s only positive argument here is for the “criterion of embarrassment” and points out a handful of embarrassing events within the Gospel, but he ignores my point that virtually all entirely mythical narratives have some embarrassing elements within them. The most it can possibly determine is the honesty of a certain passage from the eyes of an author, and not its inherent credibility. To make things worse, both of Pro’s examples are plagued with supernatural contamination. =Neg Case=Mythical JesusMy theory is rather simple, and is a weaker version of Carrier’s argument. That Jesus is just an outcome of the oral tradition environment at the time. A figure like Jesus inevitably would have arisen in the environment at the time. Moreover my position is preferred a priori as I do not need to appeal to the existence of a specific person (a man named Jesus) who had significant impact on these traditions, and that these traditions directly describe him. My argument is that virtually everything written about Jesus is: 1. Derived by the cultural stories/oral traditions/conversion efforts of the early Church 2. Could not in principle demonstrate Jesus’ existence any more likely, as they are decades removed from the purported events, with already a large church base established and thus virtually all historical references to Jesus, as well as ‘genuine’ or ‘honest’ parts of the NT books are just repeating the sayings of this culture. Moreover, a tremendous lack of contemporary, or even closely contemporary historical attestation weights significantly against Jesus existing, since we would expect this to have happened if Jesus really did exist. Oral TraditionPro provides no defence against oral traditions, and his only arguments against this by Pro was a red herring in referring to Jewish traditions, and to referring to Jewish *written* traditions instead. Pro thus concedes we have several decades of motivated oral traditions in the case of Jesus. With Christians attempting to convert non-Christians during this early period, leading to significant level of fabrication and stories being produced in this period. This coupled with low literacy rates of the Galilee/Middle East at the time (<10%), followed by significantly lower rates of written literacy. [2] Furthermore the problem is not just in the transmission and fabrication of stories form person-to-person , but the witnessing, each event only occurs once in history, and is transmitted via the person telling that story, and that person telling another person a story etc. Thus there is no level of ‘rehersing’ that could occur between the events and their oral traditions decades later. Thus it is impossible with oral transmission to determine which stories are actually witnessed, and which were fabrications or fables since there is no evidence that it could have been after a few ‘generations’ of converts. I have offered this environment of oral traditions as an effective mechanism by which not only the stories about Jesus end up being constructed, with previous myths and fables changed, adapted and synthesised which end up becoming euhemerised. We should prefer my position since we already know this mechanism was significantly in effect within the NT, thus it’s extension to Jesus himself is greatly favoured by Occam’s Razor, and is naturally expected to occur anyway, as it had for innumerable purely mythical characters previously. Textual TransmissionPro attempts a red herring fallacy here, by affirming Jewish written tradition to the written tradition of the New Testament. However this is clearly a false comparison because: 1. We already have abundant evidence from our existing manuscripts of the NT that it was poorly conserved, with hundreds of thousands of mistakes 2. The Jewish traditions were unusually good at preserving their texts, however the practices that lead to such accurate transmission are absent from the NT traditions, especially during the early Church[1] Thus the comparison of the transmission of the (already highly dubious) original stories of the NT with the transmission of the Old Testament is frankly absurd. Contamination PrinciplePro offers zero defence against my argument from the contamination principle, which in documents such as the Gospels significantly affects their credibility for even mundane claims. Simply appealing to other figures (such as Pythagoras, Alexander the Great, etc) considered historical just begs the question and ignores the context regarding those figures (such as significant impartial, and physical historical evidence, with independent contemporary witnesses, etc. ). ConclusionPro drops far too many points to be left with a credible positive case, to one should vote Con purely based on Pro’s failure to uphold his positive case alone. I have presented unchallenged mechanisms by which the mythical Jesus would have arisen in the early Middle East, and highlighted that virtually all evidence of Jesus sufferers severe scholarly drawbacks not observed for other historical figures. References 1. . http://en.wikipedia.org... 2. The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (Q-Z) p50.