Fairly unusual for carpenters to come back from the dead but i suppose it could happen....

Sorry, but I don't understand what you are trying to say - please rephrase.

I also don't understand the King-Arthur comparison, since the tradition is totally different.

The story of Jesus is perfectly explainable regardless if he didn't exist, and can still have been made in good faith.

The logic is identical to yours. I'll assume you are being purposefully dense.

Ok, I know you think you are making sense, but you really aren't.
Try it this way - make your point first, then explain it.
I am not dense nor purposefully dense - your posts just don't add up.
Also, if you are not a native speaker of English, you should always consider the possibility that you are using some words in the wrong way.

I've always been told that Jews expected peace on earth as the harbinger of the messiah, and so as long as there is still war, we need not trouble ourselves worrying about which upstart preacher might actually be god coming to take us all away.

Of course, this doesn't come from theologians or religious historians... it just comes anecdotally from regular people, so it might not be office doctrine. But if it is true, I wonder how Christians moved away from it to allow for Jesus to be the messiah...? Oh god please, religious people, do not quote me scripture to explain why Jesus was the messiah! I couldn't care less.

You wrote this:

Per this logic, Jesus existed.

When I apply this logic further it is also clear that King Arthur existed. If the whole story was made up by some power-that-be, why would they create a whole new guy? Why not choose one of the hundreds of self-proclaimed kings and rulers running around at the time?

My point is that maybe they did, and maybe they didn't - in both cases historians are divided.

You on the other hand just handwave and say "ofcourse Jesus existed", which frankly speaking is lazy and you have presented absolutely no reason to trust your judgment.

And the only things you cough up as replies are demands of rephrasing, questioning my ability to understand and write English and claim that I don't make any sense.

If one of us who has problems with English, it is certainly not me.

This post was easy to understand while the posts you made before were not.

As for King Arthur - I already told you, the tradition is completely different. We have zero information on King Arthur for hundreds of years. Only then the grail and round table stories are written down, so we have no idea if the real King Arthur was just some leader with a name sounding something like "Arthur", or if he really was a king, or if he even for a short time united the nations and ruled them from some place that would later be known as Camelot. We don't know these things. We only know that he existed, because there are 6th century references to someone who was "as brave as Arthur".

The Q document, on the other hand, was written some twenty years after Jesus died. That is only one generation. This makes it unlikely that the story was made up altogether. People would have laughed at the author, telling him that they lived in the area at that time and never heard of any of this.

So now it would be possible to take this well-known figure and start telling everyone that he actually was resurrected. And thus start one of the many many sects that existed among the Jews of that time, and that turned out to be more compelling than the other sects, eventually making it a whole new religion.

bart,

does it bother you that atheists keep going back to the same questions like: ok, then how can you positively discredit all other major religions?

no

There is no proof of the Q document - it's just an easy explanation to an unknown, all you got in genuine non-biblical sources are 3-4 lines of text the first one in 100AD, and that one is even disputed in its neutrality.

As for King Arthur his name is mentioned in poetry as early as the 7th century, so several hundred years later is somewhat of an exagaration though that is certainly times those poems were translated and put into scholarly works.

However, I'm not making the case that Jesus didn't exist or that King Arthur did, I'm saying that there is absolutely no basis for handwaving and making 3-word statements beginning with "ofcourse" and ending with "existed".

And even if one accepts that historical Jesus existed, the link to biblical jesus' actions (even if you remove the magic) is..well...unclear. It could be so different that one weren't even talking about remotely the same individual.

The burden of proof on this one is yours; the generally accepted theory among scholars is that the Q document existed and was used as a source by at least two of the gospels.

when the burden of proof originally lies with the one making the assertions, that burden can not be transferred until something it proven

I cannot prove that the sun will rise tomorrow. But if you say that it won't, then you have to prove your statement, since the scientists agree that it will.
Same here.
BTW that sounded almost like trolling.

The same reason we have no evidence of anything directly written by Poseidon, Horus, or Hamlet.

Err...no. It's fine to hypothesise that common sources for two gospels exists and that it is a written document, with the caveat that you might not be correct.

You however are dating said imaginary document to the decade and claiming it proves the existence of Jesus, which is as they say....a stretch. The burden of proof is not on me to disprove what you claim the Q document proves in the slightest.

You know what? I pretty much just lost interest. We have exactly the same proof for the existence of the person and teacher Jesus as we have for the existence of the person and teacher Socrates. If you want to challenge everything, fine, but that is pointless.

I have no idea what that means. I also have no idea how a dutch guy who posts in perfect vernacular American can manage to miss how to spell a name that's repeated over and over around here but still manage to use commas correctly in every sentence.

But reraising with the "arrogance" comment was a nice move.

You keep saying this and you also said the Gospels were written from it. Now, none of that is correct afaik. Was there some sayings gospel referred to as "Q" incorporated into the the synoptic Gospels? yes. Was it written 20 years after Jesus crucifixion? You made the claim, let's have the reference. Was there anything written during His lifetime? Yes, according to some scholars as I've pointed out several times in other threads, there are sections of Mark that are believed to come from letters that became the sayings gospels and that Mark itself is simply a modified sayings gospel.

Ghehe, sorry, I get pissed off a little sometimes too, and then I vent, I'm only human. I should have just said, sorry, typo due to being dutch.

The no hits thing was referring to the mediumship thread, the way of questioning just made me think of that.

Also, thanks for the compliment(both of them ).

are there actually Christians on this board that actually believe that Jesus was not capable of writing? If so i find that unintentionally hilarious.

Yes, Jesus was God, and could do miracles that defied physics, biology, and chemistry, yet he could not write.

So either Jesus was not supernatural and could not write, or he was not supernatural and could write but chose not to, or he was supernatural and chose not to write. In either case you have to seriously wonder why.

I read my posts again, and it really sounds as if I meant that, my bad.
The Q document was written within 20 years after Jesus' death. The story about his resurrection, however, was not included in Q.

Well. it is interesting that you would ask someone else for a reference, when about the only link you have ever offered in support of this repeated claim supports the very claim you are questioning.

that's why i don't go around making assertions that i have absolutely no proof of then expect people to believe it and base my prejudices and hatred on it.

TOMORROW: THE CHURCH OF NO SUN!!! LET'S ENSLAVE PEOPLE AND KILL THEM AND NOT LET THE STRAIGHTS MARRY!!!

I think there's a larger issue here. Jesus was true man - He had to be, as well as true God. He could not live the life we live, and that was critical, if He used "supernatural powers" in daily life. In His time, it is probably 65% likely He never was taught to write. Not well enough to write a letter, anyway.

I don't care much about this specific question, but accepting Him with the human limitations He accepted, is important. That's because He never did one thing you could not do.

Oh. I'm sorry. No, it wasn't, I agree. But then, Q was easily written before the crucifixion.