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My message is that Jesus did not exist but was a 4th century literary fabrication

Greetings

I have had an interesting career (see below) and presently find myself

researching the field of ancient history with a view to present a

revisionist history of the 4th century of our "common era".

My position can be most appropriately summarised by quoting the

opening lines from the three books which Emperor Julian authored

c.361 CE "Against the Christians".

It is, I think, expedient to set forth to all mankind

the reasons by which I was convinced that

the fabrication of the Christians

is a fiction of men composed by wickedness.

Though it has in it nothing divine,

by making full use of that part of the soul

which loves fable and is childish and foolish,

it has induced men to believe

that the monstrous tale is truth.

I have researched this material now for over five years

and am happy to attempt the answer of any questions

any skeptical people may ask here, or elsewhere, on this

material.

My message that Jesus did not exist but was a 4th century

literary invention may at first sound impossible and counter-

intuitive, however if people are interested and willing to ask

critical and skeptical questions about the reasons why I

believe that the historical truth is best explained in this manner,

then I will be happy to do my best to answer these questions.

ABOUT ME

http://www.mountainman.com.au/about.html

Finally, I wish to state that I feel that I am acting and researching

this material out of a desire to establish the ancient historical truth

of "christian origins" -- what really happened in the 4th century?

Best wishes to one and all.

Kookaburra Jack

http://www.mountainman.com.au/essenes/

2 members like this

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Kookaburra Jack on June 9, 2010 at 11:46am

Paleographic assessment cannot be relied upon as a primary method of dating, unlike C14 analysis, or a dated fragment, for example.

See my arguments against an early P52 here:
http://www.mountainman.com.au/essenes/article_071.htm

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Permalink Reply by Dave Rogers on June 9, 2010 at 11:40am

You might be interested in the longest non-word game discussion thread in A/N history.

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Permalink Reply by Jo Jerome on June 9, 2010 at 11:19pm

You might be interested in the longest non-word game discussion thread in A/N history.

Heh, you beat me to it Dave.

After taking way, way too long to realize I was talking to brick walls, I think I'll just sit back on this one and let Jack do it for a while.

Cue the "X is true not because I have supporting evidence or a logical argument but just because I say so" in
3...
2...
1...

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Permalink Reply by Kookaburra Jack on June 9, 2010 at 11:53am

[img]http://www.mountainman.com.au/essenes/c14_NTA.JPG[/img]

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Permalink Reply by Matt VDB on June 9, 2010 at 12:00pm

"My message that Jesus did not exist but was a 4th century
literary invention may at first sound impossible and counter-
intuitive"

No sir, that would be the euphemism of the year. I've been debating Jesus Mythers for a pretty long time now, and I thought I had seen all the different sub-species. But apparently I've now found the rarest group of them all: the ones who maintain not that Jesus was a conglomeration of various historical figures (which is already indefensible), not that he was a figment of people's imaginations and constructed out of various Messianic expectations (flat out untenable), not that he was a metaphor for some kind of astrological Sun-worship rituals (ignorant), not that he was invented by Saint Paul and the gospel authors (absurd to the point of being ludicrous), but that he was invented in the Fourth Century. The Fourth fucking Century.
That means believing that Saint Paul, the gospel authors, the non-Pauline epistle authors, Origen, Tertullian, Augustine, Stephen, Tatian, Athenagoras, Hippolytus, Arnobius, Anatolius, Novotian, the gnostics, the Ebionites,...; all these people never existed, and the writings of Tacitus, Josephus, Pliny, Trajan, and a multitude of anti-Christian writers... were all altered or fabricated wholesale.

Oh, and all this went on without alerting anyone else in the world for at least 17 centuries; not even the most dedicated Christian and non-Christian scholars who spent their lives studying this material; that is, until Kookaburra Jack showed up.

You're delusional. Best wishes to you.

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Permalink Reply by Matt VDB on June 9, 2010 at 12:17pm

Hehe, sorry 'bout that. Give me some credit though: it can't speak for you or anybody else, but I found it fairly hard to type those four paragraphs from down here on the floor, where I'm still rolling around laughing.

I'm glad though. Sometimes I get the feeling we atheists are more intellectually rigorous than the religious. I'll be sure to think about this thread next time I get that feeling.

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Permalink Reply by Matt VDB on June 10, 2010 at 5:00am

Yep. They forged three centuries of theological dispute and debate, among Christians and against Christians. Three centuries.

I just read part of his site and I think I lost brain cells.

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Permalink Reply by Dave Rogers on June 9, 2010 at 12:40pm

see how long this thread could go.

Better order some more servers...

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Permalink Reply by Kookaburra Jack on June 9, 2010 at 7:34pm

Why dont you start where you began by attempting a defence of your assertion (which represents the mainstream assertion) that P52 is "early" - ie: before Bullneck turned up. That P52 and the rest of the presumed "early" papyri fragments are all "early" as asserted is provisional and conjectural.

The population demographics of the city of Oxyrhnchus suffer a massive explosion in the mid fourth century. Everyone is trying to scramble out of the towns and cities controlled by the 4th century imperially sponsored christians. Pachomius led the way after a "vision" in the year 324 CE. What did Pachomius see that sent him hundreds of miles up the Nile from the city of Alexandria?

The christian apologists who continue to flout the paleographic dating assessments on the Oxyrhnchus papyri fragments as "secure" are as yet oblivious to the common sense question as to the population explosition of the mid 4th century. Common sense suggests that the Oxyrhnchus Rubbish is from the population explosion of the mid 4th century !. No academic christian has yet argued for this, but I am.

I am also asking the novel question about the finding the papyri fragments of both types - (1) orthodox canonical new testament books ... and (2) gnostic / non canonical / new testament apocrypha books -- on the same rubbish dump. Did the orthodox and the gnostics throw their books at each other at the tip on Sunday afternoons in Oxy?

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Permalink Reply by Kookaburra Jack on June 9, 2010 at 6:02pm

Constantine controlled the preservation of literature in the empire from c.312 CE. We can go through each author of antiquity by starting with Josephus, whose chief reference to "Bilbo Jesus Baggins" and the "Nation of Christians" has often been asserted to have been a 4th century Eusebian forgery - and a stupid one at that.

Your response indicates that you may not even be foggily aware of the century old work by by Arthur Drews, translated by Joseph McCabe, online at WIKI entitled The Witnesses to the Historicity of Jesus which deals with quite a number of the Roman and Jewish sources you mention above.

See
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Witnesses_to_the_Historicity_of_J...

The large scale alteration and fabrication of the literature continued well after the epoch of Constantine and Eusebius, and was accompanied by fascist censorship and destruction of many documents, manuscripts and libraries. The list of authors involved is extensive, but Constantine did have absolute power and he wielded it in a very fascist manner. In an article entitled Authors of Antiquity I exhaustively list and categorise the legions of authors whom you started to mention above.

See
http://www.mountainman.com.au/essenes/authors_of_antiquity.htm

Also look up Historical Revisionism on WIKI, you seem to think that the revisionary analysis of ancient history has some sort of taboo. I dont think so. We have been dealing with this New Testament Fairy Story for over 1600 years, and when it was first introduced to the Roman Empire by Bullneck, there was no chance to ask questions Conversion to the centralised state monotheistic imperial cult was conducted by the sword and imperial legislation.

And if you think I am delusional then you should have no trouble citing some unambiguous archaeological evidence which supports the existence of either Jesus, the new testament or the "Nation of Christians" prior to the rise of Bullneck (Constantine's nickname). If you can provide and cite such unambigous evidence then you might even have some claim to call me delusional.

As a final note, my claim is that Constantine not only ordered the fabrication of the New Testament and the "Historia Ecclesiastica" of Eusebius, but also the "Historia Augusta". I hope you have heard of this insidious 4th century forgery, because the modus operandi of the fabrication I am alluding to has been elucidated by academic analysis of this "history".

the "Historia Augusta":
http://www.livius.org/hi-hn/ha/hist_aug.html

The following quotes are from the above site ....
======[Start quote]===========
the Historia Augusta is something like an ancient mockumentary.

One of the most charming aspects is the introduction of fake information, especially in the second half. At least one ruler has been invented, remarkable omens are introduced, and anecdotes are added. The information in the second half of the life of the decadent emperor Heliogabalus is very entertaining, but completely untrue, and only introduced as a contrast to the biography of his successor Severus Alexander, who is presented as the ideal ruler.

Among the many games that are played in the Historia Augusta is the invention of no less than 130 fake documents, most charmingly introduced in the introduction of the Life of Aurelian. Fake sources were not a new practice (cf. the invented letters in Plutarch's Life of Alexander).

What is new, however, is that the author the Historia Augusta invents sources to disagree with them. This is, to the best knowledge of the author of this article, unique in ancient literature;

======[End quote]===========

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Permalink Reply by Phil on October 14, 2012 at 2:26pm

And if you think I am delusional then you should have no trouble citing some unambiguous archaeological evidence which supports the existence of either Jesus, the new testament or the "Nation of Christians" prior to the rise of Bullneck (Constantine's nickname). If you can provide and cite such unambigous evidence then you might even have some claim to call me delusional.

Good bet he cannot......