Peter Kirby wrote: ↑Thu Nov 17, 2022 5:20 pmIf this is what you've landed on, then your attempt to prop up this idea is like Weekend at Bernie's. As soon as you stop pushing it, it will completely die and fade, and nobody will care.Leucius Charinus wrote: ↑Mon Nov 14, 2022 1:09 am The anti-heresy works of Irenaeus, Tertullian, etc were designed to show the books of the NTA were circulating early.
The quoted comment was in context a response to G'Don's attempt to summarise my arguments. A professional and fair practice when attempting to understand the actual arguments with which one does not agree. And I appreciate G'Don's attempt because others here seem content to employ strawman arguments and ridicule rather than trying to understand what the idea actually is.
The idea that there was never an historical Jesus is not going to fade away and die. Not for a weekend but for almost seventeen long and dark centuries a fabricated corpse has been propped up in the "[dead] writings" pushed by Nicene church industry. Not only that but the massive (Arian) controversy which erupted forth from the Nicene Council has not been understood in terms of a plain and simple political history. The Ecclesiastical "Histories" written by the Christian victors are not political histories but rather idealised propaganda. (See my comments about "British Colonial Histories")
The historical existence of Irenaeus and Tertullian ("the father of Latin Christianity") essentially represent unexamined postulates which are at the moment held to be true by all those who study Christian "history". I would argue that we must responsibly question whether these literary sources were authored by historical figures. Or whether they were fabricated by the Latin Church industry many centuries removed and to whom we have, unreasonably and unreservedly IMO, extended the benefit of the doubt.