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Author: Raphael Lataster
Publisher: BRILL
Published: 2019-07-01
Total Pages: 508
ISBN-13: 9004408789
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →This volume explains the inadequacy of the sources and methods used to establish Jesus’ historicity, and how agnosticism can reasonably be upgraded to theorising about ahistoricity when reconsidering Christian origins.
Author: G. A. Wells
Publisher: Prometheus Books
Published: 2010-11-02
Total Pages: 258
ISBN-13: 1615923802
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Professor Wells argues that there was no historical Jesus, and in thus arguing he deals with the many recent writers who have interpreted the historical Jesus as some kind of political figure in the struggle against Rome, and calls in evidence the many contemporary theologians who agree with some of his arguments about early Christianity. The question at issue is what all the evidence adds up to. Does it establish that Jesus did or did not exist? Professor Wells concludes that the latter is the more likely hypothesis. This challenge to received thinking by both Christians and non-Christians is supported by much documentary evidence, and Professor Wells carefully examines all the relevant problems and answers all the relevant questions. He deliberately avoids polemic and speculation, and sticks so far as possible to the known facts and to rational inferences from the facts.
Author: Richard Carrier
Publisher:
Published: 2023-05-05
Total Pages: 0
ISBN-13: 9781914490231
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →The assumption that Jesus existed as a historical person has occasionally been questioned in the course of the last hundred years or so, but any doubts that have been raised have usually been put to rest in favor of imagining a blend of the historical, the mythical and the theological in the surviving records of Jesus. Carrier re-examines the whole question and finds compelling reasons to suspect the more daring assumption is correct. He lays out extensive research on the evidence for Jesus and the origins of Christianity and poses the key questions that must now be answered if the historicity of Jesus is to survive as a dominant paradigm. Carrier contrasts the most credible reconstruction of a historical Jesus with the most credible theory of Christian origins if a historical Jesus did not exist. Such a theory would posit that the Jesus figure was originally conceived of as a celestial being known only through private revelations and hidden messages in scripture; then stories placing this being in earth history were crafted to communicate the claims of the gospel allegorically; such stories eventually came to be believed or promoted in the struggle for control of the Christian churches that survived the tribulations of the first century. Carrier finds the latter theory more credible than has been previously imagined. He explains why it offers a better explanation for all the disparate evidence surviving from the first two centuries of the Christian era. He argues that we need a more careful and robust theory of cultural syncretism between Jewish theology and politics of the second-temple period and the most popular features of pagan religion and philosophy of the time. For anyone intent on defending a historical Jesus, this is the book to challenge.
Author: Bill Zuersher
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
Published: 2014-06-20
Total Pages: 317
ISBN-13: 1499018495
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →The only book you'll ever need to read about Christianity. This remarkable book provides a critical overview of Christian beliefs and the evidence for them. Where did these beliefs come from? Are there good reasons to believe Christianity is true? Bill Zuersher clearly explains each of Christianity's major beliefs. He then proceeds to demonstrate significant difficulties with each of them. The book tackles these beliefs in a logical order, beginning with the problems at the root of virtually all religions, suffering and death, and culminating in their supposed resolution through Jesus. Mr. Zuersher also examines the evidence for Christianity, namely religious writings and the historical fact of the early Jesus movement. He makes the case that this evidence does not support the religion's claims and he provides naturalistic alternative explanations for how its core beliefs arose. In these pages we see the coalescence of Jewish and Zoroastrian religious ideas with those of Greek philosophy and mystery cults, to form the belief system we recognize as Christianity today. The result, Mr. Zuersher argues, is not revealed truth, but rather a human patchwork which contains unwarranted assumptions and logical flaws, all founded upon questionable evidence. Entertaining throughout, it is must-reading for skeptics, apologists, and anyone interested the world's largest religion or the culture wars behind today's politics -- an invaluable resource for students and teachers, writers and debaters.
Author: Martin B. Copenhaver
Publisher: Abingdon Press
Published: 2014-09-02
Total Pages: 149
ISBN-13: 1426795971
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Contrary to some common assumptions, Jesus is not the ultimate Answer Man, but more like the Great Questioner. In the Gospels Jesus asks many more questions than he answers. To be precise, Jesus asks 307 questions. He is asked 183 of which he only answers 3. Asking questions was central to Jesus’ life and teachings. In fact, for every question he answers directly he asks—literally—a hundred. Jesus is the Question considers the questions Jesus asks—what they tell us about Jesus and, more important, what our responses might say about what it means to follow Him. Through Jesus’ questions, he modeled the struggle, the wondering, the thinking it through that helps us draw closer to God and better understand, not just the answer, but ourselves, our process and ultimately why questions are among Jesus’ most profound gifts for a life of faith. A game-changer of a book.
Author: Bart D. Ehrman
Publisher: Harper Collins
Published: 2012-03-20
Total Pages: 368
ISBN-13: 0062089943
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →In Did Jesus Exist? historian and Bible expert Bart Ehrman confronts the question, "Did Jesus exist at all?" Ehrman vigorously defends the historical Jesus, identifies the most historically reliable sources for best understanding Jesus’ mission and message, and offers a compelling portrait of the person at the heart of the Christian tradition. Known as a master explainer with deep knowledge of the field, Bart Ehrman methodically demolishes both the scholarly and popular “mythicist” arguments against the existence of Jesus. Marshaling evidence from within the Bible and the wider historical record of the ancient world, Ehrman tackles the key issues that surround the mythologies associated with Jesus and the early Christian movement. In Did Jesus Exist?: The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth, Ehrman establishes the criterion for any genuine historical investigation and provides a robust defense of the methods required to discover the Jesus of history.
Author: Larry W. Hurtado
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
Published: 2005-11-02
Total Pages: 293
ISBN-13: 1467425044
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →In How on Earth Did Jesus Become a God? Larry Hurtado investigates the intense devotion to Jesus that emerged with surprising speed after his death. Reverence for Jesus among early Christians, notes Hurtado, included both grand claims about Jesus' significance and a pattern of devotional practices that effectively treated him as divine. This book argues that whatever one makes of such devotion to Jesus, the subject deserves serious historical consideration. Mapping out the lively current debate about Jesus, Hurtado explains the evidence, issues, and positions at stake. He goes on to treat the opposition to -- and severe costs of -- worshiping Jesus, the history of incorporating such devotion into Jewish monotheism, and the role of religious experience in Christianity's development out of Judaism. The follow-up to Hurtado's award-winningLord Jesus Christ (2003), this book provides compelling answers to queries about the development of the church's belief in the divinity of Jesus.
Author: Gary R. Habermas
Publisher: College Press
Published: 1996
Total Pages: 308
ISBN-13: 9780899007328
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Rev. ed. of: Ancient evidence for the life of Jesus. Includes bibliographical references and index.
Author: Thomas L. Thompson
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2017-09-19
Total Pages: 314
ISBN-13: 1134946147
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →The historicity of Jesus is now widely accepted and hardly questioned by most scholars. But this assumption disarms biblical texts of much of their power by privileging an historical interpretation which effectively sweeps aside much theological speculation and allusion. Furthermore, the assumption of historicity gathers further assumptions to it, shaping the interpretation of texts, both denying and adding subtext. Scholars are now faced with an endless array of works on the historical Jesus and few question what has been lost through this wide-spread assumption of historicity. Is This Not the Carpenter? presents a very valuable corrective: a literary rereading of the New Testament.
Author: Raphael Lataster
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
Published: 2015-11-12
Total Pages: 0
ISBN-13: 9781514814420
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →For a lay audience, and with help from historian Richard Carrier, religious studies scholar Raphael Lataster considers the best arguments for and against the existence of the so-called Historical Jesus; the Jesus of atheists. Parts 1 & 2 analyse the cases made by Bart Ehrman and Maurice Casey, who assert that Jesus definitely existed. Their arguments are found to be riddled with errors, and dependent on unreliable, and even non-existing, sources. Parts 3 & 4 discuss the more sceptical work of Lataster and Carrier, who conclude that Christianity probably began not with a humble carpenter, but with 'visions' of a heavenly Messiah. This exciting collaboration makes it very clear why the Historical Jesus might not have existed after all, and, to those willing to adopt a commonsensical probabilistic approach, Jesus Did Not Exist.
