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Comment by krapp | Hacker News Reader

Plenty of people have faced the risk of persecution, torture and death for fallacious and fraudulent beliefs sincerely held.

Nevertheless, it remains the case that Christianity began with a diverse multitude of often mutually contradicting schools of thought and far more than four Gospels, all written decades if not centuries after the death of Jesus, about whom we know nothing beyond a scholarly consensus that a person existed upon whom the religion is based, supernatural claims notwithstanding. We certainly have not a single word or teaching that can be directly attributed to Jesus, or the apostles. Whether one considers that "intentional fraud" or simply religion and folklore in its natural state is up for interpretation.

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And the "scholarly consensus" is based on phantoms and will-o-the-wisps that evaporate upon examination. The scholarly consensus among scholars who have actually examined the evidence in detail and published under peer review is unanimous that he most likely did not exist; and that if such a one did, nothing written in gospels/acts describes anything any actual person did or said.

Wholesale fabrication was the normal mode of production for religious literature at the time. Why would exactly four gospels, out of the many dozens, be different, that way? And why exactly those four and not some other? Their contradictions demonstrate their authors were not interested in accurately recording anything.

We need look no farther than 2 Peter to find dire warnings to pay no attention to the other Christians saying Jesus had not walked the Earth; so we know that was a common enough belief to worry its late forger. Of course anything they wrote was burnt in short order, along with them.

Sure. My point is just that "whole cloth" fabrication "right from the beginning" is far too simple an explanation. Anyone fabricating from whole cloth would have made the facts much less inconvenient. Anyone knowing they were making things up would have given up rather than spend decades on the run as reports of the torture and execution of their co-conspirators trickled in.

Your arguments have all already been comprehensively addressed, in detail, in the peer-reviewed literature, which you may read at your leisure. Your suggestions are there demonstrated as untenable.

As someone interested in the topic but without any particular knowledge of it, any pointers to peer-reviewed literature from either POV would be appreciated.

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