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Of course the doubt as to whether Jesus really existed is unfounded and not worth refutation. No sane person can doubt that Jesus stands as founder behind the historical movement whose first distinct stage is represented by the oldest Palestinian community.

— Rudolf Bultmann

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Christianity

More quotes by Rudolf Bultmann

Myth does not want to be interpreted in cosmological terms but in anthropological terms—or, better, in existentialist terms.

New Testament and Mythology and Other Basic Writings (1941)

By no means are we at the mercy of those who doubt or deny that Jesus ever lived.

To de-mythologize is to deny that the message of Scripture and of the Church is bound to an ancient worldview which is obsolete.

Christian life is not realized in developing the personality or in shaping human community and somehow changing the world but in turning away from the world and becoming free of it.

New Testament and Mythology and Other Basic Writings (1941)

The mythology of the New Testament, also, is not to be questioned with respect to the content of its objectifying representations but with respect to the understanding of existence that expresses itself in them.

New Testament and Mythology and Other Basic Writings (1941)

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Must then a Christ perish in torment in every age to save those that have no imagination?

George Bernard Shaw Saint Joan (1923)

The whole religious complexion of the modern world is due to the absence, from Jerusalem, of a lunatic asylum.

Havelock Ellis

Christianity offers reasons for not fearing death or the universe, and in so doing it fails to teach adequately the virtue of courage.

Bertrand Russell Education and the Social Order (1932)

Christianity neither is, nor ever was, a part of the common law [this quote is referring to English Common Law].

Thomas Jefferson Vol. 1 Whether Christianity is Part of the Common Law (1764)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Rudolf Bultmann (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.