According to the Gospels Jesus founded Christianity.He is presented as the founder and it is presented by people claiming to be his followers. Mithras is not presented as the founder of anything or even as a real person. I hope you can appreciate there is a difference here. Paul is certainly responsible for a lot of things but even he attributed Christianity to Jesus as if he were a real person, furthermore Christianity already existed (by his own account at least) since he used to persecute Christians himself. Christian doctrine really does depend on Jesus being a real person otherwise the whole idea of redemption doesn't really work. It is not a religion about an 'idea' as some other religions were. It is a religion ostensibly about the teachings and sacrifice of a real person and it makes no sense for that religion to exist if the real person did not exist.
Of course it did come about in first century Judaea in the milieu of Messianic sects that were around at that time, and a lot of work on the Dead Sea Scrolls has made it clear that a lot of Christianity wasn't quite as new or original as previously presumed, but the idea that a group of people invented their own teacher to follow just does not make sense. It makes less sense, on balance, than the idea that a guy started preaching the Kingdom and got some followers.
(Of course it did come about in first century Judaea in the milieu of Messianic sects that were around at that time, and a lot of work on the Dead Sea Scrolls has made it clear that a lot of Christianity wasn't quite as new or original as previously presumed, but the idea that a group of people invented their own teacher to follow just does not make sense. It makes less sense, on balance, than the idea that a guy started preaching the Kingdom and got some followers.
Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag,
Mon 17 Oct 2011, 18:06,
archived)
Using internal evidence as evidence is circularOutwith the Gospels there is no evidence that Jesus started Christianity. There's basically none that *Paul* started Christianity, but at least his Epistles are attested earlier than the Gospels, and were very influential.
We know the early Church fathers existed, and we know that they all had different beliefs. That's attested even three hundred years later when Constantine was pushing for a unified dogma, and it's attested by the Epistles which discuss theological differences with other Christian leaders.
"Jesus" isn't actually attested outside of the dogma. "Paul", whatever the writer of the bulk of the Epistles attributed to him may have been called (and it seems a consensus that the bulk of them were written by a single man), *is*, by dint of the writings he left behind.
Sorry, but "Paul" has a stronger claim than "Jesus".
The alternative is that I'll accept, on the evidence of the writings "he" left behind, that Moses was the founding father of Judaism. Hell, the Pentateuch is attributed to him, I reckon he's got an even better claim than Jesus! (There is zero proof that Moses existed, either, and it seems frankly unlikely. Likewise Abraham, Isaac, Joseph et. al. Even Solomon and David are on shaky ground.)
(We know the early Church fathers existed, and we know that they all had different beliefs. That's attested even three hundred years later when Constantine was pushing for a unified dogma, and it's attested by the Epistles which discuss theological differences with other Christian leaders.
"Jesus" isn't actually attested outside of the dogma. "Paul", whatever the writer of the bulk of the Epistles attributed to him may have been called (and it seems a consensus that the bulk of them were written by a single man), *is*, by dint of the writings he left behind.
Sorry, but "Paul" has a stronger claim than "Jesus".
The alternative is that I'll accept, on the evidence of the writings "he" left behind, that Moses was the founding father of Judaism. Hell, the Pentateuch is attributed to him, I reckon he's got an even better claim than Jesus! (There is zero proof that Moses existed, either, and it seems frankly unlikely. Likewise Abraham, Isaac, Joseph et. al. Even Solomon and David are on shaky ground.)
boris the spider,
Mon 17 Oct 2011, 20:43,
archived)