Who was the first person to claim Jesus never exsisted?

[GakuseiDon]

The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.

The power of this explanation, beyond its full consistency with our understanding of the modern mindset and how it is different, is that it also explains why any number of other figures of questionable historicity (Moses or Odysseus, for example) did not have any discussion of their non-historicity by the ancient writers.

I think there were such discussions. According to Tatian: http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/t ... dress.html

• And Metrodorus of Lampsacus, in his treatise concerning Homer, has argued very foolishly, turning everything into allegory. For he says that neither Hera, nor Athene, nor Zeus are what those persons suppose who consecrate to them sacred enclosures and groves, but parts of nature and certain arrangements of the elements. Hector also, and Achilles, and Agamemnon, and all the Greeks in general, and the Barbarians with Helen and Paris, being of the same nature, you will of course say are introduced merely for the sake of the machinery of the poem, not one of these personages having really existed.

My belief is that the evidence of Christianity's opponents suggest that the Gospels were thought to be some kind of ancient biography, even when the contents were not believed. This suggests the Gospels were presented as biographies, whether they were originally fiction or not. Origen recognized some of the tales in the Gospels to hold a deeper allegorical meaning, but also seemed to see them as biographies.

[Peter Kirby]

The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.

The power of this explanation, beyond its full consistency with our understanding of the modern mindset and how it is different, is that it also explains why any number of other figures of questionable historicity (Moses or Odysseus, for example) did not have any discussion of their non-historicity by the ancient writers.

I think there were such discussions. According to Tatian: http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/t ... dress.html

• And Metrodorus of Lampsacus, in his treatise concerning Homer, has argued very foolishly, turning everything into allegory. For he says that neither Hera, nor Athene, nor Zeus are what those persons suppose who consecrate to them sacred enclosures and groves, but parts of nature and certain arrangements of the elements. Hector also, and Achilles, and Agamemnon, and all the Greeks in general, and the Barbarians with Helen and Paris, being of the same nature, you will of course say are introduced merely for the sake of the machinery of the poem, not one of these personages having really existed.

My belief is that the evidence of Christianity's opponents suggest that the Gospels were thought to be some kind of ancient biography, even when the contents were not believed. This suggests the Gospels were presented as biographies, whether they were originally fiction or not. Origen recognized some of the tales in the Gospels to hold a deeper allegorical meaning, but also seemed to see them as biographies.

Well, we should look deeper than the "gotcha" here.

In many ways, the height of ancient knowledge touched on the base of modernity. Thus, naturally, you also had people who ventured that the Earth travelled around the Sun, the heliocentric theory before its time. Metrodorus of Lampsacus has in his way touched upon the very bottom stepping stone of the modern understanding of mythology. As quoted, he came close to the moment, "When, with Heyne, the modern notion of myth first appeared, it was confined to a remote past of archaic prehistory."

Metrodorus of Lampsacus is no more representative of his day than Dupuis was of his, when he ventured that Jesus had no historical existence. In each case, we are citing an avantgarde. In the case of Metrodorus, his suggestion was snowed under, as were the suggestions of Origen the theologian later, by centuries of literalism. In the case of Dupuis, time will tell. But this much is clear: the temperament of modernity has turned for the skeptical.

We do of course have some references to critics of Christianity, in Celsus and Porphyry. Even some of their writings, with Julian the Apostate and Lucian of Samosata. Perhaps the Talmud can be mentioned here as well. And we know the arguments, in some outline, that they do make against Christianity. They also bear out the explanation I've made here, in that they do not cross-examine the historical basis of it all in the way a modern would, but rather focus on philosophical points and stray bits of yes-but gossip.

Your argument regarding genre may stand. The OP does not have so much to do with genre as it does with an assumption of skeptical inquiry into the very fabric of the narrative and its "historicity." It's a modern trend. Particularly if the gospels were not seen as allegorical, my point stands, as this writer mentioned is making the claim that the Greek poets were writing allegorically.

[Leucius Charinus]

Forgive me for belaboring this point. However, I think it is pertinent to determining if there was a historical Jesus.

Can anyone provide a clear-cut example of an ancient author that asserted that Jesus never, ever existed?

LATEST POSSIBLE DATE

The name of "Jesus" does not appear in any ancient texts or inscriptions from antiquity. There was an earlier thread here somewhere (I cant find it right now) in which the OP asked for the earliest extant manuscript in which the name of "Jesus" appears as distinct from the nomina sacra "IS". At the moment we have no date. I think the earliest conjectured date might have been from a Syriac ms from the 5th century. But nothing has yet been confirmed.

Therefore - in one sense - you are putting the cart before the horse. Find Jesus first, then find his denial.

Whatever date we find for dear Jesus it will, most likely, be very late, and after the Decree of Theodosius 381 CE establishing Nicene Orthodoxy and the legal status of any utterly foolish heretics. Between the 4th century and the 18th century the legal status of heretics and blasphemers would not inspire any person to make the claim in writing that Jesus never existed. Statements such as Bart Ehrman's (below) that claim that the mythical Jesus was an invention of the 18th century, without mentioning the existence of the laws of heresy and blasphemy (which faded in the 18th century), omit critical information.

• • "The idea that Jesus did not exist is a modern notion.
    It has no ancient precedents. It was made up in the eighteenth century.
    One might well call it a modern myth, the myth of the mythical Jesus."
    
    (Did Jesus Exist?, p.96)."

EARLIEST POSSIBLE DATE

There have been earlier discussions on the following issues ...

Were the Gnostics mythicists? ........................ viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1175
The Historicity of "Post Resurrection" Jesus ..... viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1194


The non canonical Acts are fiction novels featuring the appearance of a fictitious post resurrection Jesus.

The author of the Acts of John for example has the apostle John wandering around after Jesus looking for his footprints on earth but alas, he couldn't find any footprints.

You might like to ague that this is not a clear cut example of an early person claiming that Jesus never existed.

Supposing you hired a detective to check out whether Mr X existed or was a fake, and the detective couldn't find any footprints for Mr X.

You tell me. Would you believe or disbelieve that Mr X (who incidentally was resurrected from the dead) existed?





LC

[GakuseiDon]

Your argument regarding genre may stand. The OP does not have so much to do with genre as it does with an assumption of skeptical inquiry into the very fabric of the narrative and its "historicity." It's a modern trend. Particularly if the gospels were not seen as allegorical, my point stands, as this writer mentioned is making the claim that the Greek poets were writing allegorically.

Not much I really disagree with, Peter. I do think there was a lot of skepticism in ancient times, but as you write, it was more along philosophical points rather than criticisms of sources. So if there had been no Jesus, and the Gospels were fiction but presented as factual, then no-one would have questioned them, especially if the Gospels were written after the fall of Jerusalem so there would have been no-one to check with anyway. The only people who would argue against a HJ would be Carrier's MJ proponents, in reaction to the new HJ proponents, or HJers in reaction to MJers.

As an aside, another example of skepticism in ancient times: Lucian recounts the story of Alexander in his day, mid-Second Century CE. Alexander had created a puppet of a snake, and convinced people that it was really a new god called "Glycon". He apparently obtained great fame in his time, with even the Emperor of the day sending representatives IIRC. It doesn't shed any light on the question of Jesus, but it's an interesting story on how some claims were questioned.

Lucian writes:
http://www.tertullian.org/rpearse/lucia ... xander.htm

• In that matter, dear Celsus, to tell the truth, we must excuse those men of Paphlagonia and Pontus, thick-witted, uneducated fellows that they were, for being deluded when they touched the serpent— Alexander let anyone do so who wished—and besides saw in a dim light what purported to be its head opening and shutting its mouth. Really the trick stood in need of a Democritus, or even Epicurus himself or Metrodorus, or someone else with a mind as firm as adamant toward such matters, so as to disbelieve and guess the truth— one who, if he could not discover how it went, would at all events be convinced beforehand that though the method of the fraud escaped him, it was nevertheless all sham and could not possibly happen...
  
  When at last many sensible men, recovering, as it were, from profound intoxication, combined against him, especially all the followers of Epicurus, and when in the cities they began gradually to detect all the trickery and buncombe of the show, he issued a promulgation designed to scare them, saying that Pontus was full of atheists and Christians who had the hardihood to utter the vilest abuse of him; these he bade them drive away with stones if they wanted to have the god gracious. About Epicurus, moreover, he delivered himself of an oracle after this sort; when someone asked him how Epicurus was doing in Hades, he replied: “With leaden fetters on his feet in filthy mire he sitteth.”...
  
  In general, the war that he waged upon Epicurus was without truce or parley, naturally enough. Upon whom else would a quack who loved humbug and bitterly hated truth more fittingly make war than upon Epicurus, who discerned the nature of things and alone knew the truth in them? The followers of Plato and Chrysippus and Pythagoras were his friends, and there was profound peace with them; but “the impervious Epicurus” —for that is what he called him—was rightly his bitter enemy, since he considered all that sort of thing a laughing-matter and a joke.

I remember Carl Sagan in his epic "Cosmos" said about Plato and Pythagoras that "their influence has significantly set back the human endeavour" which surprised me, given the reputation that they have had. But Lucian didn't seem to be a fan either.

[Clive]

Does something that is "fully god fully man" exist?

Did Achilles receive his lessons from Chiron in a place? Was Achilles' mum a sea nymph?

We are discussing a world where the gods existed! Life was thought to be breath - your spirit leaves you when your breath leaves you. The Lord Jesus Christ - Yahweh's annointing saviour - is a holy spirit of god who is with us, who carries out rituals to save us - this is my body etc.

We have different stories about how this god became human - at his birth, at his baptism, at his resurrection, at his meeting with Elijah, at his second coming. Were these really attempts to fit the man into the god or to explain how and when the god became fleshy? The Docesists are further variations!

To assert Jesus existed requires a modern scientific understanding that did not exist before Hooke. The converse of not existing is also only possible with this change of thinking.

My understanding is that we have a classic godman - a chimera - who only got split into god bits and "historic" bits from the seventeenth century.

[Leucius Charinus]

What can we conclude from this?

I will answer my own question with some scholarship on the development of the analysis of mythology in western culture.

Peter G. Bietenholz, in Historia and Fabula: Myths and Legends in Historical Thought from Antiquity to the Modern Age, pp. 333-335, writes:

Not until the uproar caused by Strauss' deflation of the supernatural Jesus did Western civilization establish a workable set of requirements for the documentation of both historical fact and historical myth or legend. Westerners have, as it were, become programmed to ask: is that story true? So much so that, ever since, they have had difficulties in coming to grips with other cultures, which have kept aloof from routine questioning of this kind. We stand at the end of a long development that began in spot check-fashion during the Renaissance. The progress was, as we have seen, tortuous. Misdirected reasoning, as with Kircher's Tower of Babel or Caze's royal Joan of Arc, led into blind alleys. The theory of accomodation, as Semler used it, obstructed the proper understanding of myth, and so did late explosions of Euhemerism in works such as those by the abbe Banier and Heinrich Eberhard Gottlob Paulus. Instances of hypercriticism, such as Voltaire's denial of the historical Moses and Dupuis' denial of the historical Jeuss, point forward to more disciplined manifestations of scholarly obsession in the nineteenth century.

When, with Heyne, the modern notion of myth first appeared, it was confined to a remote past of archaic prehistory. The formation of myths was attributed to a long process of oral transmission. While parallels between the primordial age of myth and primitive cultures in the contemporary world had been noted from the time of Fontenelle, 'mythical' and 'primitive' had remained inseperable and often synonymous notions. So much so, that Heyne had refused to apply the term 'myth' to Virgil's and even Homer's elaborations of the pristine tales. Strauss realized that his work significantly modified this concept. The myth of Christ's resurrection had been born and taken a firm hold among the first generation of his disciples, in the fully literate society of the Augustan empire. ... it was Strauss, who truly intitiated the modern study of the genesis of myths.

Thanks for the citations.


LC

[Clive]

Ancient Atomism
First published Tue Aug 23, 2005; substantive revision Fri Nov 18, 2011
A number of important theorists in ancient Greek natural philosophy held that the universe is composed of physical ‘atoms’, literally ‘uncuttables’. Some of these figures are treated in more depth in other articles in this encyclopedia: the reader is encouraged to consult individual entries on Leucippus, Democritus, Epicurus and Lucretius. These philosophers developed a systematic and comprehensive natural philosophy accounting for the origins of everything from the interaction of indivisible bodies, as these atoms—which have only a few intrinsic properties like size and shape—strike against one another, rebound and interlock in an infinite void. This atomist natural philosophy eschewed teleological explanation and denied divine intervention or design, regarding every composite of atoms as produced purely by material interactions of bodies, and accounting for the perceived properties of macroscopic bodies as produced by these same atomic interactions. Atomists formulated views on ethics, theology, political philosophy and epistemology consistent with this physical system. This powerful and consistent materialism, somewhat modified from its original form by Epicurus, was regarded by Aristotle as a chief competitor to teleological natural philosophy.

Since the Greek adjective atomos means, literally, ‘uncuttable,’ the history of ancient atomism is not only the history of a theory about the nature of matter, but also the history of the idea that there are indivisible parts in any kind of magnitude—geometrical extension, time, etc. Although the term ‘atomism’ is most often identified with the systems of natural philosophy mentioned above, scholars have also identified commitments to indivisibles in a number of lesser known figures. Often these are formulated in response to paradoxes like those of Zeno of Elea (early 5th c. BCE) about infinite divisibility of magnitudes. Some of these identifications of other kinds of atomism outside the main tradition are controversial and based on slight evidence.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/atomism-ancient/

Maybe there is too much chopping up occurring? The indivisible atom here is the fully god fully man?

Christianity is an attempt to reconcile the world views of the materialists and the teleologists?

[Roger Pearse]

Funny enough:
http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/4 ... id=2&uid=4

"Yet no other English deist was so falsely quoted by Voltaire... Bolingbroke did not like Voltaire personally... "

Perhaps even this reference in 1769 is not "clear cut"?

An interesting article. I also thought that the idea arose among the followers of Bolingbroke; but probably because of someone who had read Voltaire (for who today reads Bolingbroke?). It is hard to know the facts among these scoundrels. The point that is not made as plainly as it might be is that Bolingbroke was a Tory, and the leader of the Tory party at the time in question (whose policies included High Anglicanism and "Church and King" as their drinking toast); while, from the look of it, Voltaire was a Frenchman whose policies might well be thought more in line with Whig ideas (at this period well before the French revolution). Political animosity comes into it here; and it is possible that anti-clericalist Voltaire transferred some of his enmity to the French aristocracy to what he may have seen as their English equivalent?

But of course I really know very little about either man, so do correct me if I am wrong.

Dupuis, certainly, published in 1795 and writing earlier, makes the cut: "The existence of Christ, the restorer, cannot be accepted as a historical fact, as little as the conversation between the snake and the woman..." (Origine).

Dupuis certainly is the originator or repeater of a huge quantity of low-grade nonsense at this period. How infuriated this revolutionary would have been to learn that we think of him as published in 1795 and not in "Year 4" (or whatever)!

Napoleon is said to have earnestly asked the question. (Perhaps a reason behind the churchman's pamphlet questioning the existence of Napoleon.)

I cannot locate the document supposed to be parodied here, Historic Doubts Relative to Jesus of Nazareth. Perhaps someone else can?

Nor can I. I did a fairly serious search online, google, bing, google books, jstor, and copac; and I can't find any trace of it. I would guess that it is an essay or pamphlet, probably under a different title, perhaps with that as the sub-title?

All the best,

Roger Pearse

[cienfuegos]

Forgive me for belaboring this point. However, I think it is pertinent to determining if there was a historical Jesus.

Can anyone provide a clear-cut example of an ancient author that asserted that Jesus never, ever existed?

Not to be confused with someone who wrote they did not believe in the miracles or resurrection of Jesus but a statement that emphatically claims that a man named Jesus who Christians claimed was crucified by the Romans around 30 A.D. never, ever existed.

Thanks in advance.
Sincerely,

John T

I think this is a non-starter right out of the gates.

Who was the first person to claim that Zeus did not exist?
Who was the first person to claim that William Tell did not exist?
Who was the first person to claim that King Arthur did not exist?

If this is a cogent test of authenticity, then why not ask:

Who was the first person to deny that Jesus rose from dead?

One would think that if such an extraordinary event was said to occur someone would have said, "hey wait a minute..." If no one did, it must be true?

This just simply isn't even a worthwhile objection.

[Roger Pearse]

I think the point is worth asking. If it is universally accepted in antiquity that Jesus was a real person, and nobody at the time debates that, then this is data. It is correct, as far as I know; not least because the "prove to me that X existed" is rather transparently a ploy to divert attention from the real question, "Are the claims of X true". I see the same tactic pursued in regard of Mohammed, and transparently for the same reason. Since I prefer to deal with questions rather than evade them, I don't have much time for that form of defensive argument.