Was there a historical Jesus at all? [Archive]

HansMustermann

7th April 2010, 08:46 AM

I have recently run into a... hypothesis, basically that the Gospels, especially Mark as the earliest of them, really describe something else and rather unexpected: Julius Caesar. You can find the full text here:

http://www.carotta.de/subseite/texte/jwc_e/crux.html

(I've linked to the part about the crucifixion, which I find the most interesting part, but you can start from the beginning if you have the time and inclination.)

Now it does sound like a bible-code kind of conspiracy theory, and maybe it even is, but the parallels are actually very interesting IMHO.

Don't get me wrong. I don't particularly subscribe to the view that it was some kind of just distortion or accident that started from the imperial cult of Caesar and ended up as the Christ. But it seems to me like the parallels, verbal ambiguities and outright puns in there, do make a case that it might have been all an allegory. I.e., much like The Wizard Of Oz is actually an elaborate allegory for some events at the time and the author's opinions of them, Mark or maybe the proto-Mark source, actually builds an allegory for Rome's transition into an Empire.

Why would they do that, is another good question.

A possiblity _I_ just can't ignore is that already by Mark's time, essentially they knew nothing at all about the "historical Jesus", if one even existed.

If you look at Paul's epistles, half of which are just about the only non-pseudepigraphic parts, he didn't seem very concerned with who Jesus was or what he has done, outside the fact that he was crucified and rose and deprecated the OT wholesale in the process. Paul, like so many very early Christians, seemed to be more of a doomsday cultist than a scholar. His focus was mainly on getting as many people as possible to accept Jesus's resurrection and be saved, than on writing a biography of the Christ.

I can imagine that after his death, essentially nobody knew any more who this Jesus guy even was, and by now probably enough people wanted to know more. Sure, he's the Messiah, but who was he as a man? Where did he come from? How did he find out he's a Messiah? Who was his mentor? Etc.

And basically it's a possibility that someone took the stories about Caesar and used them as a framework for the story of Jesus. It would need far less imagination and talent than starting from the scratch, if nothing else. Plus, it may have seemed fitting to base the story on such an illustrious figure.

And, since a common argument seems to be "Jesus must be true because it's too convoluted a story otherwise", it may well be that it's convoluted simply because it started from an already convoluted story and had to morph it into something unrelated.

Essentially, if that's the case, we have no way to reconstruct a "historical Jesus" at all. The way through Paul leads to just a hallucination, and the way through the Gospels leads us to a forgery based on Julius Caesar. Whatever information about a "historical Jesus" may have ever existed -- including if one actually existed -- is not to be found in the Bible.

Darth Rotor

7th April 2010, 08:50 AM

Essentially, if that's the case, we have no way to reconstruct a "historical Jesus" at all. The way through Paul leads to just a hallucination, and the way through the Gospels leads us to a forgery based on Julius Caesar. Whatever information about a "historical Jesus" may have ever existed -- including if one actually existed -- is not to be found in the Bible.
Let's see: Caesar was cut from his mother's womb (Cesarean section, the original), hence she had no birth canal, and no vagina, hence she had no sex at conception, hence Julius is divinely conceived, hence Jesus and Julius are the same guy.

Sure, works for me. :p I will now order Jesus Salad, not Caesar Salad, and be content with what they bring me: a small mount of olives! :D

DR

Trent Wray

7th April 2010, 08:56 AM

aggle-rithm

7th April 2010, 08:58 AM

stuff
.

I don't see any reason to doubt there was a historical Jesus who did at least some of the things described in the Gospels, but I think it's possible that he could have been confused with several other cult figures from around that time. Most of the sayings and parables attributed to Jesus come from a different source than the biographical info, and the Divine Christ described in the epistles doesn't necessarilly correspond with any actual person.

Trent Wray

7th April 2010, 08:58 AM

Simon39759

7th April 2010, 09:01 AM

I have recently run into a... hypothesis, basically that the Gospels, especially Mark as the earliest of them, really describe something else and rather unexpected: Julius Caesar. You can find the full text here:
http://www.carotta.de/subseite/texte/jwc_e/crux.html
(I've linked to the part about the crucifixion, which I find the most interesting part, but you can start from the beginning if you have the time and inclination.)
Now it does sound like a bible-code kind of conspiracy theory, and maybe it even is, but the parallels are actually very interesting IMHO.
Don't get me wrong. I don't particularly subscribe to the view that it was some kind of just distortion or accident that started from the imperial cult of Caesar and ended up as the Christ. But it seems to me like the parallels, verbal ambiguities and outright puns in there, do make a case that it might have been all an allegory. I.e., much like The Wizard Of Oz is actually an elaborate allegory for some events at the time and the author's opinions of them, Mark or maybe the proto-Mark source, actually builds an allegory for Rome's transition into an Empire.
Why would they do that, is another good question.
A possiblity _I_ just can't ignore is that already by Mark's time, essentially they knew nothing at all about the "historical Jesus", if one even existed.
If you look at Paul's epistles, half of which are just about the only non-pseudepigraphic parts, he didn't seem very concerned with who Jesus was or what he has done, outside the fact that he was crucified and rose and deprecated the OT wholesale in the process. Paul, like so many very early Christians, seemed to be more of a doomsday cultist than a scholar. His focus was mainly on getting as many people as possible to accept Jesus's resurrection and be saved, than on writing a biography of the Christ.
I can imagine that after his death, essentially nobody knew any more who this Jesus guy even was, and by now probably enough people wanted to know more. Sure, he's the Messiah, but who was he as a man? Where did he come from? How did he find out he's a Messiah? Who was his mentor? Etc.
And basically it's a possibility that someone took the stories about Caesar and used them as a framework for the story of Jesus. It would need far less imagination and talent than starting from the scratch, if nothing else. Plus, it may have seemed fitting to base the story on such an illustrious figure.
And, since a common argument seems to be "Jesus must be true because it's too convoluted a story otherwise", it may well be that it's convoluted simply because it started from an already convoluted story and had to morph it into something unrelated.
Essentially, if that's the case, we have no way to reconstruct a "historical Jesus" at all. The way through Paul leads to just a hallucination, and the way through the Gospels leads us to a forgery based on Julius Caesar. Whatever information about a "historical Jesus" may have ever existed -- including if one actually existed -- is not to be found in the Bible.

Caesar was a general; Jesus mostly preached peace.
Caesar was well-born; Jesus came from humble origins.
Caesar was the most powerful man in his time; Jesus was poor.
Caesar had mad booty; Jesus is not remembered to get lucky even a single time...
Caesar rules alone and share his power with no one; Jesus had a bunch of followers and lived in communism with them.
Caesar died old and sick; Jesus was 33.
Caesar's death tore the empire into a civil war; Nobody seemed to notice Jesus' death until the 2nd century CE.

If you have two narratives big and detailed enough to include enough details, it almost is a given that some of these details will coincide by sheer accident.
Cherry picking these details can often lead to a mistaken impression... that's where conspiracy theries come from.

ETA: I only wrote about the theory presented in the OP here, I don't know if the OP wants to get into the more general question of "Did Jesus exists?".

bluskool

7th April 2010, 09:08 AM

Simon39759

7th April 2010, 09:17 AM

Josephus is not conclusive, the main one of the two citations is clearly a later fake by Christians.
The second one is a passing reference to James, the brother of the one they call Christ. It is also quite likely to be an interpolation.
At any rate the whole Antiquity of the Jews is too suspicious and marred to be considered.

Tacitus wrote decades after the alleged events and was only considered about the presence of Christians in Romes (even then, he might have made a mistake, being unfamiliar with the subject, and misidentified Jews as Christians, the documents he refers to do not appear to mention Christianity specifically).
At any rate, his testimony is only evidence of the presence of Christians in the late first century, which was never in doubt and says nothing about the existence of Jesus himself...

Rasmus

7th April 2010, 09:28 AM

Then why did Josephus and Tacidus think he was real?

Besides, if Paul just hallucinated the idea of Jesus, why did he write letters to churches he started telling them to not listen to other missionaries with alternative messages? Who were these other missionaries? Did they also have hallucinations of Jesus?

I find the Jesus never existed hypotheses difficult to swallow. I am not saying that the stories in Mark aren't legendary fiction or just made up comparisons to other figures like Julius Caesar, but I still think there was a real Jesus even if we can never really know much of anything about him.

But then the term "real Jesus" becomes irrelevant.
The stories in the Bible should be about one specific person that has actually lived. No matter what happened to them over time, in the beginning someone should have really sat down and decided to tell / write / record / whatever the tales of *this guy*.

Then, it is equally important that enough of the original story survives that if you were looking at *this guy's* actual live, you should be able to say - with confidence - that the stories about the bible re-tell his actual life.

If these two factors are getting smaller and smaller, then eventually it just doesn't make sense anymore to speak of the historical Jesus at all, just like it doesn't make sense to speak of the historical Dorothy we learn about in Wizard of Oz.

And the entire discussion becomes utterly pointless, anyway. What would it tell us if we discovered that there actually was a guy named Jesus? Do you think he ever healed the sick, turned water into wine, brought the dead back to the living and walked on water? Do you think he really did rise from the dead himself?

If no, then it doesn't matter ***** if the real Jesus was more real than the real Dorothy, or more fabricated than Harry Potter. We know Ron Hubbard was real. We know Joseph Smith Jr was real. Does that incline anyone to become a Mormon or Scientologist? Should it?

HansMustermann

7th April 2010, 09:29 AM

Caesar was a general; Jesus mostly preached peace.
Caesar was well-born; Jesus came from humble origins.
Caesar was the most powerful man in his time; Jesus was poor.
Caesar had mad booty; Jesus is not remembered to get lucky even a single time...
Caesar rules alone and share his power with no one; Jesus had a bunch of followers and lived in communism with them.
Caesar died old and sick; Jesus was 33.
Caesar's death tore the empire into a civil war; Nobody seemed to notice Jesus' death until the 2nd century CE.

If you actually read the analysis there (and I know, it's a lot), at least some of those are actually explained, and there are more similarities too. Starting with the fact that although murdered, Caesar ultimately won and became a god. (Was deified.) Or that Caesar was called saviour too. And so on.

That said, as I was saying, I'm not saying that Julius Caesar _is_ Jesus Christ. While the authors seem to go for basically "it was just distortions in an oral story" slant, I'm not particularly buying that. But it seems to me very possible that someone constructed their Jesus midrash starting from the structure of Caesar's story. It's a powerful story of the hero coming against all odds as the saviour, being betrayed and apparently defeated, then ultimately winning even from beyond the grave. It's not the worst starting point, if you want to do a quick job of inventing the biography of another messiah who won even from beyond the grave.

Simon39759

7th April 2010, 09:32 AM

Yes; I did not have the impression you were particularly buying.
But, still, the coincidence are, in my opinion, just that, coincidences and the tendency of people to fall back into the same pattern of idealization.

I am sure you could find quite a few similarities between Jesus and MLK, for example, of even Jesus and Lady Di...

bluskool

7th April 2010, 09:32 AM

Josephus is not conclusive, the main one of the two citations is clearly a later fake by Christians.
The second one is a passing reference to James, the brother of the one they call Christ. It is also quite likely to be an interpolation.
At any rate the whole Antiquity of the Jews is too suspicious and marred to be considered.

Clearly the one passage contains Christian additions, but that doesn't mean it was made up entirely. Also, more specifically, why do you think we should throw out Josephus as a source entirely?

Tacitus wrote decades after the alleged events and was only considered about the presence of Christians in Romes (even then, he might have made a mistake, being unfamiliar with the subject, and misidentified Jews as Christians, the documents he refers to do not appear to mention Christianity specifically).
At any rate, his testimony is only evidence of the presence of Christians in the late first century, which was never in doubt and says nothing about the existence of Jesus himself...

From The Annals
"Christus, from whom their name is derived was executed at the hands of the procurator Pontius Pilot in the reign of Tiberius."
"

Cainkane1

7th April 2010, 09:33 AM

Simon39759

7th April 2010, 09:42 AM

Clearly the one passage contains Christian additions, but that doesn't mean it was made up entirely. Also, more specifically, why do you think we should throw out Josephus as a source entirely?

We know that at least part of it is made up.
We don't know what and to what extent.

It's not reliable (on that particular subject) and, even if it was, it does not bring any new information (Jesus preached, was a nice guy, got executed, we know that already).
So, there is not much reason to keep it outside of apologetists wanting an non-Christian source to bolster their belief in Jesus' historicity...

From The Annals
"Christus, from whom their name is derived was executed at the hands of the procurator Pontius Pilot in the reign of Tiberius."
"

Yeah, as I said, it's not about Jesus, it's about Christian with a short reference to their belief.
It's also a mistake, Pilate was prefect. It is sometime considered doubtful that Tacitus would make such an error. That, and the fact that nobody refers to this passage until a few centuries also suggests that it might be a later addition...

It also comes from the Christian tradition, Tacitus did not go there and investigate, his source has to be Christian traditions. Once again, it is a testament to the presence of Christians in Romes at the time and the fact they believed in Jesus, not much else.

HansMustermann

7th April 2010, 09:49 AM

Cavemonster

7th April 2010, 09:53 AM

I don't think Lady Di was deified, nor called a saviour, nor a bunch of other rather key elements of the mythos.

No, but a lot of other figures have.

And give it a couple thousand years, history has a way of mutating.

HansMustermann

7th April 2010, 10:02 AM

I don't see any reason to doubt there was a historical Jesus who did at least some of the things described in the Gospels, but I think it's possible that he could have been confused with several other cult figures from around that time. Most of the sayings and parables attributed to Jesus come from a different source than the biographical info, and the Divine Christ described in the epistles doesn't necessarilly correspond with any actual person.

But if enough elements are confused, embelished, or outright invented starting from another myth, is it still a "historical Jesus" or is it on par with "historical Dorothy from The Wizard Of Oz", as Rasmus so aptly puts it?

And, really, that is in fact the more important question: are there _any_ elements in there which are actually true? Which of them? And how would you know, much less get so sure that you have no reason to doubt?

The article makes a decent case that someone may have started purely from a story of Julius Caesar, and didn't even do a too thorough job of changing the names and words to morph it into a Jesus Christ story. Some names have barely a couple of letters switched around. (E.g., Nicomedes becomes Nicodemus, or both get their uncle back from the dead and he then remains with a woman named Martha. Didn't even bother changing _that_ name at all. Or the Capitoline Hill, whose name does contain the root for head, becomes the hill of Gologotha, i.e., of the skull or the head.) It follows the Caesar narrative as closely as to even mangle the geography of the place into more of a geography of Italy, e.g., by placing Judea right across the river from Galilee, just like Italy was right across the river from Gaul. Some whole sentences apparently the author didn't even bother changing at all, and can be read one way or another just because you already know you're reading about a crucifixion, hence putting someone on some wood naturally sounds like crucifixion instead of placing them on a funeral pyre.

Is there _anything_ from a historical Jesus in there, or is it all just a bad plagiarism of something that had nothing whatsoever to do with Jesus?

If you have no doubt, I envy you, because I do.

Manopolus

7th April 2010, 10:19 AM

Well, personally I think it was fiction to begin with, but perhaps it was inspired by the story of Julius Ceasar. I would also put forth the story of Socrates as a possible source of inspiration, as well as some stories from Greek and Egyptian mythology -- if similarity is a method of showing influence.

Here's the thing:

Stories influence culture, which again influences stories that may be independent of knowing the original story.

bluskool

7th April 2010, 10:21 AM

If no, then it doesn't matter ***** if the real Jesus was more real than the real Dorothy, or more fabricated than Harry Potter. We know Ron Hubbard was real. We know Joseph Smith Jr was real. Does that incline anyone to become a Mormon or Scientologist? Should it?

It matters to me. I would rather hold to the view that is closest to historically accurate. It is either true or false that Jesus existed and considering the impact that Christianity has has on western civilization, I think the question is certainly meaningful. It certainly is a question that matters to historians. Now, it might not matter to you and I am not saying that it should, but I don't really see why your personal opinion on what is meaningful historically should be the guide to what questions get considered.

Also, I never said that the mere existence of Jesus should make someone a Xtian. You seem to think that I must have religious motivations for thinking Jesus existed which is pretty presumptuous.

I Ratant

7th April 2010, 10:23 AM

And I'll have a bloody Mary as well :)
.
Do NOT go into your bathroom, close the door, look in the mirror, and say "Bloody Mary" three times!
You have been warned!

I Ratant

7th April 2010, 10:27 AM

Would it be expected the Hebrews would take up a Roman (oppressor) figure as something of value?
A loony-tune cult though, protesting against the man... the ruling elite in Israel.. might.
Hmm.. mayhap. :)

HansMustermann

7th April 2010, 10:33 AM

The hebrews in Judaea never too Jesus too seriously either. And I doubt that Mark was writing for their benefit anyway, since he was writing in Greek. And obviously wasn't from Judaea anyway, seeing how he mangles its geography. Likely (IMHO) the whole midrash is written by a Greek christian for the benefit of a Greek christian community. If there were any Hebrews among them, obviously they were helenized ones in exile which were equally out of touch with the actual place, or they wouldn't have swallowed the story.

bluskool

7th April 2010, 11:09 AM

We know that at least part of it is made up.
We don't know what and to what extent.

It's not reliable (on that particular subject) and, even if it was, it does not bring any new information (Jesus preached, was a nice guy, got executed, we know that already).

It doesn't matter if it tells anything about Jesus. It only matters if it is a reliable testimony to his existence which is the question at hand. You say it is not reliable and I am asking why. It is obvious that some of the one passage was made up, but I don't think there is any reason to think the whole passage was made up. I just can't imagine a Xtian scribe saying "hmmm, Josephus never mentions Jesus, so I think I'll go ahead and add a passage here so that future historians will have a non-xtian source for Jesus's existence." It seems more plausible to me that a scribe was copying
Josephus, got to the passage on Jesus and decided to alter it to reflect a Xtian message.

So, there is not much reason to keep it outside of apologetists wanting an non-Christian source to bolster their belief in Jesus' historicity...

I don't think it bodes well for the apologist that Xtian scribes were altering Josephus. An apologist might mention it when rattling off a list non-Xtian sources, but like you said, this source tells us nothing accept that Jesus existed and was killed. The apologist is going to be hard pressed to turn that into support for his faith.

Yeah, as I said, it's not about Jesus, it's about Christian with a short reference to their belief.
It's also a mistake, Pilate was prefect. It is sometime considered doubtful that Tacitus would make such an error. That, and the fact that nobody refers to this passage until a few centuries also suggests that it might be a later addition...

Making a mistake seems more plausible considering the fact that, at the time, procurators were in control of Judea and the fact that the rest of the passage doesn't speak favorably of Xtians.

It also comes from the Christian tradition, Tacitus did not go there and investigate, his source has to be Christian traditions.

How can that be certain? It could be the case that Tacitus just knew that the Xtians worshiped some guy that Pilot executed. There is no a priori reason for saying that Tacitus must have gotten that information from Xtians.

Trent Wray

7th April 2010, 11:12 AM

.
Do NOT go into your bathroom, close the door, look in the mirror, and say "Bloody Mary" three times!
You have been warned!

Bloody Mary! Bloody Mary! Bloody Mar ....

http://i969.photobucket.com/albums/ae174/trentwray/5634697.jpg

Darat

7th April 2010, 11:13 AM

Skeptic Ginger

7th April 2010, 11:30 AM

I just don't see the Caesar analogy so much, but the movie, "The God Who Wasn't There," (http://www.thegodmovie.com/) which lays out a good case for no historical Jesus included an hypothesis that Jesus has all the standard hero qualities as many 'gods' that came before him.

The Jesus of the Gospels bears a striking resemblance to other ancient heroes and the figureheads of pagan savior cults They list about 20 such qualities in the movie.

Skeptic Ginger

7th April 2010, 11:34 AM

Or got to something he interpreted as being about Jesus and "clarified" it, we know many religious folks do that today. (Not singling out religious folk for doing this it's just they are the group we are talking about.)The almost total lack of anything which supports the Jesus story in other historical records is pretty damning. Taken together with the fact the Josephus passage in question is awkward and seems out of place, supports that this passage was faked.

D'rok

7th April 2010, 11:45 AM

That said, as I was saying, I'm not saying that Julius Caesar _is_ Jesus Christ. While the authors seem to go for basically "it was just distortions in an oral story" slant, I'm not particularly buying that. But it seems to me very possible that someone constructed their Jesus midrash starting from the structure of Caesar's story. It's a powerful story of the hero coming against all odds as the saviour, being betrayed and apparently defeated, then ultimately winning even from beyond the grave. It's not the worst starting point, if you want to do a quick job of inventing the biography of another messiah who won even from beyond the grave.

Well, personally I think it was fiction to begin with, but perhaps it was inspired by the story of Julius Ceasar. I would also put forth the story of Socrates as a possible source of inspiration, as well as some stories from Greek and Egyptian mythology -- if similarity is a method of showing influence.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hero_with_a_Thousand_Faces

The similarities are neither surprising nor indicative of influence. One size really does fit all.

Darth Rotor

7th April 2010, 11:51 AM

If there were any Hebrews among them, obviously they were helenized ones in exile which were equally out of touch with the actual place, or they wouldn't have swallowed the story.
Right.

No true Jew ... is that the argument here? :confused:

If I recall correctly, the Jews were pretty good about quarreling with one another, from older accounts to roughly time of Jesus, so I find allusions to "Hellenized Jews" being "not real Jews" difficult to buy.

One of the wonderful things that the Christians had passed down to them from their Jewish theological and social ancestors was the joy of arguing with one another, over pretty much everything. Early Church, Constantine's era, Greek/Roman church, Roman/Lutheran, Roman/England, Avignon/Rome, down to the present time.

Whatever Jesus the wandering rabbi may have taught, the argumentative character of his early followers has become immortal: it lives to this day. :)

DR

Madalch

7th April 2010, 11:52 AM

.
Do NOT go into your bathroom, close the door, look in the mirror, and say "Bloody Mary" three times!
You have been warned!
DO NOT go into a bar, look at the bartender, and say, "Bloody Mary" three times!

You will get some alcohol that has been contaminated with some revolting tomato-based liquid.

Darth Rotor

7th April 2010, 11:53 AM

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hero_with_a_Thousand_Faces

The similarities are neither surprising nor indicative of influence. One size really does fit all.

Which segues nicely into a condom brand advertising campaign ...

Ceasar Condoms: One size fits all, trimmed or untrimmed

Foster Zygote

7th April 2010, 12:02 PM

D'rok

7th April 2010, 12:03 PM

Which segues nicely into a condom brand advertising campaign ...

Ceasar Condoms: One size fits all, trimmed or untrimmed

Speak for yourself pal. It's only Magnums around here. ;)

Bikewer

7th April 2010, 12:16 PM

Most all the early-Christianity authorities, even the skeptical ones like Ehrman, seem to think that Jesus was a real person; likely an apocalyptic rabbi.

HansMustermann

7th April 2010, 12:19 PM

Right.

No true Jew ... is that the argument here? :confused:

Nope. Just saying that

A) if your target audience is the Jews in Judaea, you'd write in Hebrew not Greek. Same, as, you know, if you want to preach a story to the Americans you'd do it in English not in Russian.

B) someone from the actual province of Judaea would be more likely to know that their province isn't bordered by that river. Basically same as if I told someone a story as true where someone crosses the Mississippi from Iowa directly to Washington DC, I might have a harder time convincing an actual inhabitant of Washington DC that that story is true.

Basically spare me the knee-jerk No True Scottsman reference, I'm not talking about habits or practices, I'm talking about objective stuff like language and the geography of the place.

Darth Rotor

7th April 2010, 12:22 PM

Nope. Just saying that

A) if your target audience is the Jews in Judaea, you'd write in Hebrew not Greek. Same, as, you know, if you want to preach a story to the Americans you'd do it in English not in Russian.

B) someone from the actual province of Judaea would be more likely to know that their province isn't bordered by that river. Basically same as if I told someone a story as true where someone crosses the Mississippi from Iowa directly to Washington DC, I might have a harder time convincing an actual inhabitant of Washington DC that that story is true.

Thank you.

Regarding your title, I, like Bikewer, I find Ehrman more credible than you.

DR

HansMustermann

7th April 2010, 12:27 PM

So, an appeal to authority? Not sure what the point was either, since I wasn't going for a popularity contest vs Ehrman.

HansMustermann

7th April 2010, 12:44 PM

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hero_with_a_Thousand_Faces

The similarities are neither surprising nor indicative of influence. One size really does fit all.

Yes, I'm very familiar with the monomyth actually. But what is claimed on that site goes a bit beyond that. There are a ton of similar names, of events that happen in the same order, use of verbs and phrasings that suggest something very different from the standard image of the passion, etc.

Basically, let's put it like this. Let's say I write a novel about a guy called Fridi Sackins who got a neclace from his uncle Cilco Sackins and has to take it to Mount Murder to destroy it. And incidentally his friends Jollyadoc and Samsmart accompany him. And they fight their way through a mine, and whatnot on their way.

I'm guessing at some point you'd say I plagiarized LOTR, rather than merely "it's just the same monomyth structure."

That, in essence, is the take of that book. The similarities are way past the point of being merely the same monomyth.

Mind you, I'm not necessarily saying they're right. It's just an interesting hypothesis, as far as I'm concerned. And it's not like we have a shortage of hypotheses on the topic that proved to be dubious or outright loony, so, who knows, we might just have another Dan Brown on our hands. But, just saying, it's a bit more complex than that.

aggle-rithm

7th April 2010, 12:49 PM

But if enough elements are confused, embelished, or outright invented starting from another myth, is it still a "historical Jesus" or is it on par with "historical Dorothy from The Wizard Of Oz", as Rasmus so aptly puts it?

And, really, that is in fact the more important question: are there _any_ elements in there which are actually true? Which of them? And how would you know, much less get so sure that you have no reason to doubt?

For the same reason I don't doubt when someone tells me they own a dog. The Gospels tell the story of a rabbi named Jesus who came from Nazareth and had some followers. This is in no way an extraordinary claim given the fact that "Yeshua" was a common name in Palestine and there were lots of rabbis with lots of followers.

The fact that he came from Nazareth raises some difficulty for Gospel writers, since the Messiah was supposed to come from Judeah. They fixed this by inventing two Nativity stories that explained away this inconsistency (although they are unfortunately not consistent with each other).

If someone just made up the whole thing, then why would they bother creating this difficulty? Why not just say he was from Bethlehem to begin with?

Minarvia

7th April 2010, 12:49 PM

.
Do NOT go into your bathroom, close the door, look in the mirror, and say "Bloody Mary" three times!
You have been warned!

No, no, no! It's "I don't believe in Mary Worth!" I'll be proven correct when TrentWray posts again later...:p

Now, "Candyman" five times...that may be true. ;)

NavyPack

7th April 2010, 01:03 PM

I have actually switched sides on this issue, after reading this:
http://rationalrevolution.net/articles/jesus_myth_history.htm

I would appreciate others here views on the reasoning of the author.

Foster Zygote

7th April 2010, 01:03 PM

Then why did Josephus and Tacidus think he was real?
If they'd been asked I doubt either one would claim to be able to refute the notion that Jesus was an invention. They assumed he did based on what they knew of the Christian narrative.

Besides, if Paul just hallucinated the idea of Jesus, why did he write letters to churches he started telling them to not listen to other missionaries with alternative messages? Who were these other missionaries? Did they also have hallucinations of Jesus?
Good point.

I find the Jesus never existed hypotheses difficult to swallow. I am not saying that the stories in Mark aren't legendary fiction or just made up comparisons to other figures like Julius Caesar, but I still think there was a real Jesus even if we can never really know much of anything about him.
Many, even most, I think, Scholars agree that there was a real person known as Jeshua ben Joseph who seems to have been an itinerant preacher in Galilee in the early first century C.E. Based on what little we have that scholars think might well be his own sayings (albeit likely paraphrased) he was probably a member of the Jewish apocalyptic movement. And given that the region was crawling with holy men, healers, prophets and even a one true messiah or two at the time that Jeshua ben Joseph is said to have been active, it seems likely the Jesus of legend may be based on stories about more that one person. At any rate, it seems likely that the historical Jesus would have been quite upset to learn that a blasphemous faith bearing his name would proclaim him god and become the religion of the Roman Empire.

Simon39759

7th April 2010, 01:05 PM

It doesn't matter if it tells anything about Jesus. It only matters if it is a reliable testimony to his existence which is the question at hand. You say it is not reliable and I am asking why. It is obvious that some of the one passage was made up, but I don't think there is any reason to think the whole passage was made up. I just can't imagine a Xtian scribe saying "hmmm, Josephus never mentions Jesus, so I think I'll go ahead and add a passage here so that future historians will have a non-xtian source for Jesus's existence." It seems more plausible to me that a scribe was copying
Josephus, got to the passage on Jesus and decided to alter it to reflect a Xtian message.

Yes, it is a testimony we are fairly certain has been altered.
It is really out of place, suggesting it was entirely made up, but even then.
We can't know it was there. We don't know it was not there. We can't know either way, hence, we can't rely on it, either way.

I don't think it bodes well for the apologist that Xtian scribes were altering Josephus. An apologist might mention it when rattling off a list non-Xtian sources, but like you said, this source tells us nothing accept that Jesus existed and was killed. The apologist is going to be hard pressed to turn that into support for his faith.

Go to the thread (mis)named: "evidences for why we know that the new testament writers told the truth", over in the History sub section.

Anyway; yes, the whole quote is unreliable one way or the other, you can't bring it to the table of evidence one way or the other, as you can't trust what it says.
So, the only way one can use it is being lying about its level or reliability, lying is a common tactic of some apologetists...

Making a mistake seems more plausible considering the fact that, at the time, procurators were in control of Judea and the fact that the rest of the passage doesn't speak favorably of Xtians.

Maybe, maybe not, I am not an expert on the subject, to be honest.

How can that be certain? It could be the case that Tacitus just knew that the Xtians worshiped some guy that Pilot executed. There is no a priori reason for saying that Tacitus must have gotten that information from Xtians.

What?
Yes there is a very good reason... Nobody but the Christians remembered (or cared) about Jesus at the time.
There might have been reference to him buried deep into the reports Pilatus was sending Rome regularly (and I am not convinced the execution of one trouble maker would stand out enough to be considered worthy of mention) but there is no reason for Tacitus to go on and look for himself unless he was familiar with the story of Jesus.
He, pretty much, HAD to have learned about it from Christians and there is no reason to think he checked any deeper than that. Really, if Tacitus had cared about the subject enough to go out of his way to conduct independent research about it, one would have expected more than a throwaway line out of the 16 books of Tacitus' annals, especially considering the 5th book focussed on the Jewish rebellion...

Darth Rotor

7th April 2010, 01:09 PM

So, an appeal to authority?
No.

A comparison of credibility between you and Ehrman on this particular topic. As I doubt you have income riding on this, no big deal. :cool:

DR

D'rok

7th April 2010, 01:18 PM

Yes, I'm very familiar with the monomyth actually. But what is claimed on that site goes a bit beyond that. There are a ton of similar names, of events that happen in the same order, use of verbs and phrasings that suggest something very different from the standard image of the passion, etc.

Basically, let's put it like this. Let's say I write a novel about a guy called Fridi Sackins who got a neclace from his uncle Cilco Sackins and has to take it to Mount Murder to destroy it. And incidentally his friends Jollyadoc and Samsmart accompany him. And they fight their way through a mine, and whatnot on their way.

I'm guessing at some point you'd say I plagiarized LOTR, rather than merely "it's just the same monomyth structure."

That, in essence, is the take of that book. The similarities are way past the point of being merely the same monomyth.

Mind you, I'm not necessarily saying they're right. It's just an interesting hypothesis, as far as I'm concerned. And it's not like we have a shortage of hypotheses on the topic that proved to be dubious or outright loony, so, who knows, we might just have another Dan Brown on our hands. But, just saying, it's a bit more complex than that.

Had a really quick perusal of the crucifixion section. First thing that jumps out: Equating the imperial succession after the murder of Caesar with Christ's resurrection is a really, really big stretch. The "passion play" equivocation is a force fit in general. I don't think the LOTR analogy holds.

The whole thing reads like The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail - i.e., a scattergun (fire buckshot at the barn, draw a circle around the scatter, conclude that you hit what you were aiming at) approach to quasi-academic heuristic "research" that is supposed to add up to...something.

I Ratant

7th April 2010, 01:29 PM

...
Go to the thread (mis)named: "evidences for why we know that the new testament writers told the truth", over in the History sub section.

...
.
You monster in human form!

Simon39759

7th April 2010, 01:30 PM

.
You monster in human form!

Barely human.
But I am just sharing the luv...

cj.23

7th April 2010, 01:37 PM

I have actually switched sides on this issue, after reading this:
http://rationalrevolution.net/articles/jesus_myth_history.htm

I would appreciate others here views on the reasoning of the author.

Geoff's book is the only Jesus Myther text which I give house room - as in his book sits on my shelf. I offered to formally debate him many times over on the RD forum, but he never rose to the bait - while it is an extraordinarily good book for a non-biblical studies writer, in fact I really think he should enter the field, there are several massive problems I percieve in his argument. But head and shoulders above almost anything else from that perspective, and worth buying and reading - well thought through, coherent, and valuably cites the texts he is referring to in the text. RR may be many things but he is not a fool or a woo, and I respect him greatly as a bloke and a an author. And I still fundamentally disagree with him for reasons i will happily discuss at length :)

cj x

kmortis

7th April 2010, 01:42 PM

.
You monster in human form!
I second this. In some jurisdictions that would be a capital offence.

Phoenix

7th April 2010, 02:09 PM

Given all the errors in the NT (there was no census at the time, no record of an infanticide in Bethlehem, no custom for releasing a condemned prisoner on Passover just for starters) and the fact that none of the major writers alive in his time like Philo or Seneca mention him, I'm inclined to believe he's myth. And if there was a real person behind him he's been covered in so much myth that he's lost to history anyway.

HansMustermann

7th April 2010, 02:19 PM

No.

A comparison of credibility between you and Ehrman on this particular topic. As I doubt you have income riding on this, no big deal. :cool:

DR

If my personal credibility had anything to do with it, I'm sure I'd feel some way or another about it ;) But the question is more like whether someone else's theory has some merit or not. Seeing as you still don't seem to have actually read it... what, your opinion of a theory is based on who posted the link? Doesn't seem particularly logical or relevant to the discussion, but maybe that's just me.

fullflavormenthol

7th April 2010, 02:20 PM

Personally I tend to think that someone or several individuals existed to form the basis for the original followers of proto-Christianity, but much of what we have now has gone through the standard substantial changes any religious text is bound to go through in such days.

That being said, I tend not to be impressed with The God Who Wasn't There, and similar works because they tend to rely too heavily on Campbell. The fact that the life of Jesus follows a hero narrative not unlike that of previous gods isn't a proof in itself. The best way to illustrate this is to look at the tellings of the lives of several great historical figures, and find that they all tend to follow the hero narrative. So in many respects I see the hero narrative as less an evidence of myth, but instead more of a study in how we as humans tell our stories.

HansMustermann

7th April 2010, 02:21 PM

Had a really quick perusal of the crucifixion section. First thing that jumps out: Equating the imperial succession after the murder of Caesar with Christ's resurrection is a really, really big stretch. The "passion play" equivocation is a force fit in general. I don't think the LOTR analogy holds.

The whole thing reads like The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail - i.e., a scattergun (fire buckshot at the barn, draw a circle around the scatter, conclude that you hit what you were aiming at) approach to quasi-academic heuristic "research" that is supposed to add up to...something.

In a sense, I can see a metaphoric link, given that Emperors ever after were called Caesar. Essentially we have a new Caesar presumably with a different face, vs Jesus appearing with a different face to his followers.

But yeah, I had the impression too that they're a bit over-zealous in finding connections.

HansMustermann

7th April 2010, 02:31 PM

Many, even most, I think, Scholars agree that there was a real person known as Jeshua ben Joseph who seems to have been an itinerant preacher in Galilee in the early first century C.E. Based on what little we have that scholars think might well be his own sayings (albeit likely paraphrased) he was probably a member of the Jewish apocalyptic movement. And given that the region was crawling with holy men, healers, prophets and even a one true messiah or two at the time that Jeshua ben Joseph is said to have been active, it seems likely the Jesus of legend may be based on stories about more that one person. At any rate, it seems likely that the historical Jesus would have been quite upset to learn that a blasphemous faith bearing his name would proclaim him god and become the religion of the Roman Empire.

But those scholars essentially still have _no_ other evidence there than the Bible itself, i.e., a personal opinion of how much to believe from it and how much not to believe. And maybe an extensive knowledge of the personal opinions of other people, such as Irenaeus and Tertulian, but who also had no other knowledge about those events.

It's no different from, well, if I were to opine that Clark Kent must have existed (even if maybe he wasn't all that super after all) because otherwise the author wouldn't go to such great lengths to explain his origin and weaknesses. And quote as support the opinions of a few more fanboys from the past who happened to agree with me.

And maybe go into a bit more of an analysis of names at the time, and conclude that Clark Kent wouldn't be too unusal a name either. And, look, some of the towns mentioned there exist too.

But in the end it's still the same circular logic of using story X to find credibility in a proof of the same story X that the fundies are doing. Until someone can find some proof of Jesus that doesn't actually go through a bunch of fanfic by people who never actually knew him, believing that he existed or not, and picking which details you want to believe (like that he actually was a rabbi or came from Nazareth), still amounts to basically just personal opinion. Scholar or no scholar.

NavyPack

7th April 2010, 03:04 PM

cj23:

I didn't have any idea whom that author was, someone in this forum linked to it one day. I read the entire thing, and find the bulk of his arguments plausible, many probable.

Towlie

7th April 2010, 03:25 PM

I have recently run into a... hypothesisAn ellipsis hypothesis?

cj.23

8th April 2010, 03:30 AM

cj23:

I didn't have any idea whom that author was, someone in this forum linked to it one day. I read the entire thing, and find the bulk of his arguments plausible, many probable.

Ah you read the website version? Might have been me, I sometimes suggest it to people. Yep he's a good bloke, well worth reading his book available from lulu. I'll write a review one day, and explain why I think he is sort of right, but ultimately wrong on the key issue of "was there a historical Jesus?"

In short his hypothesis is that the Christ Myth arose from Judaism, and can be seen presaged in Tanakh/OT/Apocryphal writings and is constructed from that. That he is correct that all the gospel writers frame Jesus in exactly those terms there is no doubt: indeed Christians have explicitly and very openly done so for centuries right back to the first generation who used these references and interpreting Jesus thus as a framework for the apologetic mission ot their fellow Jews - they cite Scripture to prove Jesus is the Messiah, and all the material we have in the gospels is written through that lens. Where Goeff and I strongly agree is on this, and the failure of most "pagan god" syncretism effects. Where we part company is when we get to the question of the historical basis for the events so mythologised-- I will cheerfully summarise my problems with his ideas if anyone interested.

Good book though.

cj x

cj.23

8th April 2010, 03:32 AM

It's over a year since I wrote this and I still have not written part 2, and i posted it in a thread here long ago I think, but potentially useful resource...
http://jerome23.wordpress.com/2009/03/09/debunking-the-myth-that-jesus-never-existed-the-historical-sources-for-jesus-part-one/
(from my non-poltergeist blog!)

cj x

pgwenthold

8th April 2010, 05:00 AM

But if enough elements are confused, embelished, or outright invented starting from another myth, is it still a "historical Jesus" or is it on par with "historical Dorothy from The Wizard Of Oz", as Rasmus so aptly puts it?.

Rasmus?

I thought I was the one who did "historical Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz"?

I even provide the basis: we know there was a girl named Dorothy who lived in Kansas who had an Aunt "M" (Maude Gauge Baum). She was clearly the inspiration for the girl Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz books. Granted, none of the stuff in the books actually happened to her, but as you note, this isn't all that much different from what some people claim about Jesus and the bibles.

HansMustermann

8th April 2010, 05:02 AM

Sorry. I guess my eyes slipped.

Simon39759

8th April 2010, 06:52 AM

Rasmus?

I thought I was the one who did "historical Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz"?

I even provide the basis: we know there was a girl named Dorothy who lived in Kansas who had an Aunt "M" (Maude Gauge Baum). She was clearly the inspiration for the girl Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz books. Granted, none of the stuff in the books actually happened to her, but as you note, this isn't all that much different from what some people claim about Jesus and the bibles.

And people could make the point that Dorothy from the wizard of Oz did, in fact, exists.
After all a number of definitively historical characters get their names attached to fiction after the facts: Washington and the tree; Alexander and the Gordian knot and the like.

The question then become: "what is the ratio of made up BS before you can say the fictional character is the most important of the two, before it becomes a fictional character with some inspiration in a real one" (like Dorothy).
And, in our case, if we think that Jesus was a person around which a bunch of myths coalesced, can we decide the part of the myths from what he really said and did and can we decide, on this basis, if he was mostly historical or mostly mythic? I don't believe we have that much information...

drkitten

8th April 2010, 07:15 AM

Most all the early-Christianity authorities, even the skeptical ones like Ehrman, seem to think that Jesus was a real person; likely an apocalyptic rabbi.

What the hell does "a real person" mean in this context?

The same Hebrew word that means "Jesus" is also used for "Joshua" elsewhere in the Bible -- the Bible documents something like five different people with that name.

It's like if I asked if "Samuel Smith" was a real person. (It's certainly a drinkable beer.) The Chicago Phone Book lists thirty people by that name, but I'm confident they have little or nothing to do with a 19th century English brewery. I'm also fairly sure that most people who drink the beer don't know jack about the actual history of the brewery or who the "Samuel Smith" that it's named after is.

Is "Caesar salad" named after a real person? Is it the same person who runs "Caesar's Palace" in Tijuana? How about Las Vegas? How about the same "Caesar" who ran the imperial palace in Rome?

CurtC

8th April 2010, 08:22 AM

What the hell does "a real person" mean in this context?

If you had a time machine and could work your way back, starting around the year 65, going back to around 30 CE, you should be able to trace the legends as they evolved.

Given that there was a following building within 20 years or so of his death, I think it's very likely that those legends would trace back to a real person who actually existed.

Another intriguing argument is that both Matthew and Luke go to implausible lengths to place Jesus's birth in Bethlehem in order to show that he was a descendant of David. These two stories not only contradict each other, each is completely implausible on its own. They had to do this because everyone at the time knew that Jesus was from Nazareth. Had the legends been completely made-up, the storytellers would simply have told about him being from Bethlehem.

bluskool

8th April 2010, 09:04 AM

Yes, it is a testimony we are fairly certain has been altered.
It is really out of place, suggesting it was entirely made up, but even then.
We can't know it was there. We don't know it was not there. We can't know either way, hence, we can't rely on it, either way.

To an extent I agree. We are talking about history, not an exact science. We have to go with what is most probable and that sometimes comes down to individual interpretation. I think it is most probable that there was something there about an actual person named Jesus and that this Jesus was the same person that the gospel myths are semi-based on. With that said, it is certainly possible that the passage is entirely made up and it is also possible, as Darat said, that the scribe interpreted a passage as being about Jesus when it really wasn't. But I don't think we should throw it out just because there are questions about it. If we applied that criteria to all historical sources, there would be little left to go on in many cases.

Go to the thread (mis)named: "evidences for why we know that the new testament writers told the truth", over in the History sub section.

:eek: Why would you do that, man? There was madness in any direction, at any hour. You could strike sparks anywhere.

What?
Yes there is a very good reason... Nobody but the Christians remembered (or cared) about Jesus at the time.
There might have been reference to him buried deep into the reports Pilatus was sending Rome regularly (and I am not convinced the execution of one trouble maker would stand out enough to be considered worthy of mention) but there is no reason for Tacitus to go on and look for himself unless he was familiar with the story of Jesus.
He, pretty much, HAD to have learned about it from Christians and there is no reason to think he checked any deeper than that. Really, if Tacitus had cared about the subject enough to go out of his way to conduct independent research about it, one would have expected more than a throwaway line out of the 16 books of Tacitus' annals, especially considering the 5th book focussed on the Jewish rebellion...

I suppose you are right

HansMustermann

8th April 2010, 09:05 AM

They had to make him be from Nazareth, because they had to fit it to Paul's "Jesus of Nazareth", which he had seen in that hallucination of his, and about whom he had already preached all over the place. So if afterwards you came with a BS made-up biography of the saviour, for the benefit of some of those churches started by Paul and his disciples, you _had_ to make it fit to what Paul had preached. You had to write it about the same saviour.

Basically the same as if now I proceeded to write a biography of Peter Parker before he became Spiderman, it would _have_ to be in the Forest Hills section of New York City. Because that place of origin is already a given for that character.

Does that make him a real person?

bluskool

8th April 2010, 09:12 AM

HansMustermann

8th April 2010, 09:20 AM

Check out for example the description of his vision in Acts Of The Apostles.

kmortis

8th April 2010, 09:20 AM

bluskool

8th April 2010, 09:21 AM

bluskool

8th April 2010, 09:24 AM

Check out for example the description of his vision in Acts Of The Apostles.

But Paul didn't write Acts. Also, Acts came after Mark which already had mentioned that Jesus was from Nazareth.

kmortis

8th April 2010, 09:28 AM

Right, that is closest to what my view on the subject would be. But I think that jesus was one, real person who preached an apocalyptic message, had twelve disciples whom he took to Jerusalem during the passover to try to stir up a rebellion. I think he and his disciples really thought he was the messiah that came to lead them in a rebellion against Rome. I think Judas really did tell the authorities what the plot was so they killed Jesus. The legend begins growing from there.
I agree with this, in general. Some of the particulars need to be held in more vagueness. For example, he didn't need 12 followers. The text actually seems to indicate more (for example the women are refered to, but largely ignored*), but tradition leaves us with 12. Many schools of mysticism (Jewish and Greek) find various numbers sacred. I suspect that this is one of those cases...12 tribes of Israel, 12 Apolstles?

One of his followers could have betrayed him. By tradition, that man was named Judas. That doesn't mean that he was the one.

*Women made up a large portion of the early Christians. I find it hard to believe that if there was any basis in fact, that that would not be a carry over from Yeshua's(the historic Jesus, as opposed to the mythic one of Christianity) ministry.

Darth Rotor

8th April 2010, 09:32 AM

If my personal credibility had anything to do with it, I'm sure I'd feel some way or another about it ;) But the question is more like whether someone else's theory has some merit or not. Seeing as you still don't seem to have actually read it... what, your opinion of a theory is based on who posted the link? Doesn't seem particularly logical or relevant to the discussion, but maybe that's just me.
Comparing to what I've read from Ehrman, and the CT style speculation you are referring to, I don't see much point in comparing wine to piss.

DR

Hokulele

8th April 2010, 09:37 AM

bluskool

8th April 2010, 09:38 AM

I agree with this, in general. Some of the particulars need to be held in more vagueness. For example, he didn't need 12 followers. The text actually seems to indicate more (for example the women are refered to, but largely ignored*), but tradition leaves us with 12. Many schools of mysticism (Jewish and Greek) find various numbers sacred. I suspect that this is one of those cases...12 tribes of Israel, 12 Apolstles?

One of his followers could have betrayed him. By tradition, that man was named Judas. That doesn't mean that he was the one.

Right, there is certainly a lot of vagueness in there. The reason I think there were twelve close disciples is because of the twelve tribes of Israel thing. I think he had them convinced that they would each be the rulers of one of the tribes when God brought the kingdom of heaven to Earth.

HansMustermann

8th April 2010, 09:42 AM

Pfft! Never heard of "retcon (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retcon)", have you?

Point taken. Still, I think it's harder to retcon a religion than a fanboy group. Then again, seeing some of the reactions to the SW prequels... :p

HansMustermann

8th April 2010, 09:50 AM

Comparing to what I've read from Ehrman, and the CT style speculation you are referring to, I don't see much point in comparing wine to piss.

DR

Right. So you haven't read it, but somehow know it's piss. Have you won Randi's prize yet? I mean, surely a test could be devised to test your knowing what a hypothesis is without reading it :p

HansMustermann

8th April 2010, 09:52 AM

But Paul didn't write Acts. Also, Acts came after Mark which already had mentioned that Jesus was from Nazareth.

I'm not taking Acts as gospel, but I was taking a wild guess that something as famous as Paul's vision he must have told _someone_ about. I.e., that it wouldn't be a retcon.

But if in effect that's a retcon from Mark, well, that's even more damning, because it replaces something from a honest hallucination with something from, basically, a liar.

kmortis

8th April 2010, 09:56 AM

Point taken. Still, I think it's harder to retcon a religion than a fanboy group. Then again, seeing some of the reactions to the SW prequels... :p
In the days before a written record and a charismatic leader?

kmortis

8th April 2010, 10:00 AM

I'm not taking Acts as gospel,
Good, cause those were the four preceding books. :)

but I was taking a wild guess that something as famous as Paul's vision he must have told _someone_ about. I.e., that it wouldn't be a retcon.
Paul was a public enough figure that his vision was a well told tale.

But if in effect that's a retcon from Mark, well, that's even more damning, because it replaces something from a honest hallucination with something from, basically, a liar.
Yeah, this is all speculation at this point. I don't think there's enough there to say that it's all made up, but one thing that reading The Illuminatus! Trilogy taught me is that an author can assemble a half-way decent story, basing it on real events, and come up with some really ********** up ****.

Simon39759

8th April 2010, 10:33 AM

I Ratant

8th April 2010, 10:38 AM

But it's the myths that have caused all the problems since. :)

HansMustermann

8th April 2010, 10:43 AM

Paul was a public enough figure that his vision was a well told tale.

Bingo. It would be more work IMHO to retcon that vision, than to just fit one's fiction to it. Or at least that's how I'd go about it.

Yeah, this is all speculation at this point. I don't think there's enough there to say that it's all made up, but one thing that reading The Illuminatus! Trilogy taught me is that an author can assemble a half-way decent story, basing it on real events, and come up with some really ********** up ****.

Well, if you mean that it's all speculation which came first, I can only agree.

If it's about Mark being a liar, just look at all the wrong or impossible stuff he's packed in there.

E.g., Jesus being dressed in purple for his mock triumph before being executed? (Mark 15:17) No ****? Purple was more expensive than gold and its use regulated by rank. (Whereas by comparison gold thread or silk weren't regulated. Tells you which was the more limited resource.) The only one entitled to even a stripe of purple in the whole province was Pilate on his official toga, and it's doubtful that he'd undress from his most expensive clothes just to dress a condemned criminal in them. Especially one freshly scourged. (Great way to ruin some expensive clothes, eh?)

And even then it wouldn't be a full purple toga. A solid purple robe, the so called "toga picta", was restricted to the Emperor and consuls, and on some very special occasions like opening the gladiatorial games in Rome whoever was opening them in their stead. Even Pilate wasn't entitled to one of those.

Though I'm guessing that he'd mean something more like the "toga trabea" variety, which was reserved only for _gods_ on special celebrations. (Fitting for the Christ, eh?) Again, not something you'd produce on short notice, nor something that even Pilate would just have around in his wardrobe.

So where did those purple clothes come from? Mark's imagination, that's where. Lie, simply put.

Simon39759

8th April 2010, 10:45 AM

But it's the myths that have caused all the problems since. :)

Maybe not exclusively, but yes, I see your point.
Nonetheless, it is beside the point of the OP.

kmortis

8th April 2010, 10:52 AM

Bingo. It would be more work IMHO to retcon that vision, than to just fit one's fiction to it. Or at least that's how I'd go about it.

Well, if you mean that it's all speculation which came first, I can only agree.

If it's about Mark being a liar, just look at all the wrong or impossible stuff he's packed in there.

E.g., Jesus being dressed in purple for his mock triumph before being executed? (Mark 15:17) No ****? Purple was more expensive than gold and its use regulated by rank. (Whereas by comparison gold thread or silk weren't regulated. Tells you which was the more limited resource.) The only one entitled to even a stripe of purple in the whole province was Pilate on his official toga, and it's doubtful that he'd undress from his most expensive clothes just to dress a condemned criminal in them. Especially one freshly scourged. (Great way to ruin some expensive clothes, eh?)

And even then it wouldn't be a full purple toga. A solid purple robe, the so called "toga picta", was restricted to the Emperor and consuls, and on some very special occasions like opening the gladiatorial games in Rome whoever was opening them in their stead. Even Pilate wasn't entitled to one of those.

Though I'm guessing that he'd mean something more like the "toga trabea" variety, which was reserved only for _gods_ on special celebrations. (Fitting for the Christ, eh?) Again, not something you'd produce on short notice, nor something that not even Pilate would just have around in his wardrobe.

So where did those purple clothes come from? Mark's imagination, that's where. Lie, simply put.
I think "Liar" and "lie" is a bit strong. I mean, Robert Ludlum isn't a liar when he writes about a CIA (an organization that exists) agent (a group of people who exist) named Jason Bourne (someone who didn't exist). Or, for a better example, Mel Brookes isn't a liar when he has the all-singing, all-dancing Torquemada, is he?

If we take most of Mark (and the rest of the gospels - in opposition to their collective name) to be mythology, then it doesn't make the author(s) a liar, but a mythmaker. The first person who set pen to paper could very well have been honestly writing what they'd heard. That what they'd heard had little connection to reality is immaterial.

I Ratant

8th April 2010, 10:52 AM

Historically,... that is, recorded history, we have solid evidence of charismatics with visions taking their followers to the cleaners, or to their deaths.
So the existence of a generator for the Xtian religion is not too difficult to accept.
His humanness would be pretty obvious, based on the later figures in history that have done the same thing.. more or less.
Mohammed, Marshall Appelwhite, Jim Jones, David Koresh... there's any number of actual figures at the beginnings of the more modern religions, but these had actual influences on the course of the beliefs, and weren't adopted as it were by the proselytziers that made the religion into what it became.

kmortis

8th April 2010, 10:54 AM

Bingo. It would be more work IMHO to retcon that vision, than to just fit one's fiction to it. Or at least that's how I'd go about it.

Well, if you mean that it's all speculation which came first, I can only agree.

If it's about Mark being a liar, just look at all the wrong or impossible stuff he's packed in there.

E.g., Jesus being dressed in purple for his mock triumph before being executed? (Mark 15:17) No ****? Purple was more expensive than gold and its use regulated by rank. (Whereas by comparison gold thread or silk weren't regulated. Tells you which was the more limited resource.) The only one entitled to even a stripe of purple in the whole province was Pilate on his official toga, and it's doubtful that he'd undress from his most expensive clothes just to dress a condemned criminal in them. Especially one freshly scourged. (Great way to ruin some expensive clothes, eh?)

And even then it wouldn't be a full purple toga. A solid purple robe, the so called "toga picta", was restricted to the Emperor and consuls, and on some very special occasions like opening the gladiatorial games in Rome whoever was opening them in their stead. Even Pilate wasn't entitled to one of those.

Though I'm guessing that he'd mean something more like the "toga trabea" variety, which was reserved only for _gods_ on special celebrations. (Fitting for the Christ, eh?) Again, not something you'd produce on short notice, nor something that not even Pilate would just have around in his wardrobe.

So where did those purple clothes come from? Mark's imagination, that's where. Lie, simply put.
Hrm...I'd never thought of the who clothing dye angle before. Makes me wonder what the basis was, if any. I do know that the reason purple was the royal color in so many cultures was due to the difficulty (therefore the expense) of dyeing cloth purple, starting with getting a source for the purple dye. Interesting.

bluskool

8th April 2010, 10:57 AM

I'm not taking Acts as gospel, but I was taking a wild guess that something as famous as Paul's vision he must have told _someone_ about. I.e., that it wouldn't be a retcon.

But if in effect that's a retcon from Mark, well, that's even more damning, because it replaces something from a honest hallucination with something from, basically, a liar.

Okay, I went back and re-read Acts 9 because I was reasonably certain there was no mention of Nazareth in the description and there was not. I am also pretty sure there is no mention of this at all in any of Paul's letters.

So, while it is possible that Paul hallucinated the idea of Jesus being from Nazareth and then spread this to his converts, there is absolutely zero evidence to support this theory.

And what is this about Mark being a liar? Based on the text, it doesn't appear that whoever wrote Mark was a literary genius. Mark's Greek is terrible. Matthew and Luke both clean up his grammar when they are copying from him. He also tells stories like some drunk guy in a bar would. It seems to me like he was just recanting stories that he got from the oral tradition. I don't see any reason to suspect he made the stuff up on his own.

HansMustermann

8th April 2010, 11:00 AM

Well, if you look in the wrong chapter, of course you won't find it. Try Acts 22:8 :p

cj.23

8th April 2010, 11:03 AM

My opinion on the whole question is this:
(snip)

Yep, nicely said Simon...

cj x

HansMustermann

8th April 2010, 11:03 AM

I think "Liar" and "lie" is a bit strong. I mean, Robert Ludlum isn't a liar when he writes about a CIA (an organization that exists) agent (a group of people who exist) named Jason Bourne (someone who didn't exist). Or, for a better example, Mel Brookes isn't a liar when he has the all-singing, all-dancing Torquemada, is he?

The difference is that Robert Ludlum or Mel Brooks never sold that as anything but fiction. They were very honest about that. But if Robert Ludlum would have claimed it to be factually correct, that's when "fiction" becomes "lie".

bluskool

8th April 2010, 11:06 AM

Well, if you look in the wrong chapter, of course you won't find it. Try Acts 22:8 :p

Damn it, you got me. I looked at the first time the story was told, but forgot about that one.:D

I Ratant

8th April 2010, 11:13 AM

The difference is that Robert Ludlum or Mel Brooks never sold that as anything but fiction. They were very honest about that. But if Robert Ludlum would have claimed it to be factually correct, that's when "fiction" becomes "lie".
.
I'm sorry to point out the ending screen for "Silent Movie" said.....
"This was a true story".

HansMustermann

8th April 2010, 11:17 AM

My opinion on the whole question is this:

-What we know:
Around the beginning of the second century, records start appearing of Christians.
They claimed to be based on the teaching of a certain Jesus of Nazareth that lived, and died, in Palestine in the first half of the first century.
Many of their writings were rooted in ealier Jewish traditions but they also displayed quite a few differences, including what might be an influence of the Greek philosophy.

That's really about it.
But from that, it is logical to conclude that Christianity does indeed, have its root in the teachings of a Jewish person at some point before the end of the first century.

That this Jewish teacher was named Jesus is absolutely credible as it was a common name.
That he lived from around the beginning of the century and died in 33CE is consistent with our (very loose) chronology so there is no reason to doubt that point. Indeed, several of Jesus' alleged teachings to make better sense within the framework of the time (during the Roman occupation, but before the Jewish revolt and the destruction of the temple so between 6 and 66CE).

That'd be arrested around Passover is not supported by any evidence (outside of the Christian traditions) but is also not difficult to believe, one would expect the Romans to be particularly suspicious about Religious agitators during this tense religious period, and crucification would be the likely punishment for somebody convicted of sedition.

To cut it short.
The core of the Jesus myth does not seem difficult to believe and does make sense based on what we know.
Due to how little evidence is available, it is difficult to make any firm conclusion, but there is no particular reason to disbelieve that Jesus was historical (not accounting for the accretion of myths around his person, of course).

Let me apply the same logic, if I may...

In the second half of the 19'th century a book appeared, called "War And Peace". You may have heard about it. It deals with events happening around Napoleon's invasion of Russia in 1812, and the changes in Russian politics and society resulting from it. Clearly those events and teachings we get from it, make sense for that time, and for no other.

Clearly the character of Count Pyotr "Pierre" Kirillovich Bezukhov is a believable character and name for that country and era. In fact Pyotr, as the Russian version of Peter, is still one of the most common Russian names. Kirillovich, "son of Kiril", is also a believable and correct kind of middle name for Russia. And his having acquired the correct French version of Pyotr during his studies in Paris, is all the more believable.

And, hey, why would the author go through all the trouble of having him come back from Paris and be an illegitimate son and all that, if it were just fiction? Right?

So by that logic there must have been a historical Count Pyotr "Pierre" Kirillovich Bezukhov, right?

Simon39759

8th April 2010, 11:35 AM

No.

But, by that logic, there must have been someone that wrote "War and Peace".
Because the books starts appearing in 1865 in Russian journals, it must be older than that.
However, presumably, not too much older, because if so, one would have expected to find a reference before that. Furthermore, the story takes place from 1805 all the way to 1820 (and incorporates enough elements that we know to have happened not to be science-fiction) so it must have been written between 1820 and 1865.
The same way that there is likely to have been a Jewish teacher in the first century Palestine...

Could this mystery writer be one of the protagonist of the story? Or be written about a real person? Presumably, I would not reject it a priori.

bluskool

8th April 2010, 11:44 AM

That'd be arrested around Passover is not supported by any evidence (outside of the Christian traditions) but is also not difficult to believe, one would expect the Romans to be particularly suspicious about Religious agitators during this tense religious period, and crucification would be the likely punishment for somebody convicted of sedition.

Not only is it not hard to believe, but it is independently attested in both Mark and John. Not only that, but riots were common during the passover and crucifixion was a common way that Rome dealt with it.

I don't want to put words in your mouth, but you also seem to be implying that if a source is Christian, it is useless. If that is your position, I think it is way too skeptical. Just because they are Christian sources, that doesn't mean that we can't glean any historical information from them. Yes, we have to apply strict criteria when evaluating them, but just throwing them out because they are religious seems a bit too stringent IMO.

HansMustermann

8th April 2010, 11:54 AM

Simon39759

8th April 2010, 11:57 AM

But you're not applying the same logic at all. You start from the same premise and in one case go "therefore the author exists" and in the other "therefore the protagonist exists." The author of the Gospel of Mark is Mark, not Jesus.

That's where you are wrong.
Jesus is not just the protagonist, he is the originator of the movement.

Someone must have created the teachings of Christianity.
Someone must have created the story of war and peace.

Same logic.

bluskool

8th April 2010, 12:03 PM

But you're not applying the same logic at all. You start from the same premise and in one case go "therefore the author exists" and in the other "therefore the protagonist exists." The author of the Gospel of Mark is Mark, not Jesus.

Actually you are double wrong. Mark, and all of the other gospels, were written anonymously. :D

Simon39759

8th April 2010, 12:04 PM

Not only is it not hard to believe, but it is independently attested in both Mark and John. Not only that, but riots were common during the passover and crucifixion was a common way that Rome dealt with it.

But both John and the synoptics were based on earlier traditions.
It is quite possible that both these traditions originated from the same original tradition, so you can't really assume they are independent accounts.

I don't want to put words in your mouth, but you also seem to be implying that if a source is Christian, it is useless. If that is your position, I think it is way too skeptical. Just because they are Christian sources, that doesn't mean that we can't glean any historical information from them. Yes, we have to apply strict criteria when evaluating them, but just throwing them out because they are religious seems a bit too stringent IMO.

Certainly, a Christian source is not useless.
Indeed, it is all what we have and, when they do not contradict the fact we know (the census account) or the laws of nature (the miracles account), I tend to give them the benefit of the doubt.
That's why, in the absence of contrary evidences, I'd have no problem accepting that the originator of the Christian tradition was indeed named Jesus, indeed hailed from Nazareth and was indeed crucified around Passover in 33CE...

bluskool

8th April 2010, 12:32 PM

But both John and the synoptics were based on earlier traditions.
It is quite possible that both these traditions originated from the same original tradition, so you can't really assume they are independent accounts.

What I meant by independent is that whoever wrote John appears to have not read the other gospels. But yes, it is possible, and even probable, that they get it from the oral tradition, which I think makes it a little more probable that it is true. On the other hand, the fact that it fits perfectly with a sacrificial theme could be seen as grounds for suspicion.

CORed

8th April 2010, 12:46 PM

DO NOT go into a bar, look at the bartender, and say, "Bloody Mary" three times!

You will get some alcohol that has been contaminated with some revolting tomato-based liquid.

To make matters worse, if you say it three times, you will probably get three of them.

HansMustermann

8th April 2010, 01:17 PM

Actually you are double wrong. Mark, and all of the other gospels, were written anonymously. :D

Yes, well, you understand what I mean. The key claim is that the author isn't Jesus.

drkitten

8th April 2010, 01:19 PM

That's where you are wrong.
Jesus is not just the protagonist, he is the originator of the movement.

Someone must have created the teachings of Christianity.
Someone must have created the story of war and peace.

So Count Pyotr "Pierre" Kirillovich Bezukhov is the creator of the story of War and Peace?

Why couldn't the author of Mark have put his words into the mouth of a fictitious rabbi?

Someone created the teachings of Objectivism, but it sure wasn't John Galt, despite the lengthy sermons that he "delivers" on the subject in Atlas Shrugged.

Galt is the protagonist -- well, one of the characters, anyway -- but Rand is the originator of the movement. Despite the fact that Rand herself never appears in any of her works.

Simon39759

8th April 2010, 01:27 PM

What I meant by independent is that whoever wrote John appears to have not read the other gospels. But yes, it is possible, and even probable, that they get it from the oral tradition, which I think makes it a little more probable that it is true. On the other hand, the fact that it fits perfectly with a sacrificial theme could be seen as grounds for suspicion.

Well, go back far enough and there must have been one unique tradition (either the small group of eyewitnesses or the, most likely even smaller, group of fakers). The question would be, when did the traditions diverge, when was the last common ancestor.
The synoptics could be summarized as Mark+Q but it does not seem that the author of John had access to either of these... so the divergence would have been even earlier than that, presumably, sometime before the end of the first century.

On the other hand, I do not necessarily agree that the existence of such an oral tradition make it 'more probable that it is true'.
This tradition would still have been transmitted orally for several decades before being fixed down and oral traditions can be very malleable.

drkitten

8th April 2010, 01:40 PM

Well, go back far enough and there must have been one unique tradition (either the small group of eyewitnesses or the, most likely even smaller, group of fakers).

Why? What's wrong with syncretism? It's not like there's not a long history of the that in Christian tradition. Look at Marjatta's search for a sauna in the Kalevala, or Bede's description of the Goddess Eostre.

HansMustermann

8th April 2010, 02:11 PM

So Count Pyotr "Pierre" Kirillovich Bezukhov is the creator of the story of War and Peace?

Why couldn't the author of Mark have put his words into the mouth of a fictitious rabbi?

Someone created the teachings of Objectivism, but it sure wasn't John Galt, despite the lengthy sermons that he "delivers" on the subject in Atlas Shrugged.

Galt is the protagonist -- well, one of the characters, anyway -- but Rand is the originator of the movement. Despite the fact that Rand herself never appears in any of her works.

Exactly. You explained it far better than I could.

HansMustermann

8th April 2010, 02:24 PM

I would also like to add that we _know_ that people back then created or kidnapped characters as sock-puppets for their own opinions all the time.

See the no less than two different "Acts of Barnabas" which use a named apostle as a sock-puppet. The first one to put in his mouth some opinions about some 5'th century events, supporting the position of the church of Cyprus, the second even more ridiculous as it "foretells" Muhammad by name. (I say "foretells" in quotes, because it's a forgery from late renaissance times.)

Among those who've been hijacked as sock-puppets just from the major characters, we have Peter, Thomas, even Judas, James, Luke, Matthew and a few others. That is, in addition to the gospels selected as canon. And some more than once. And several of them star Jesus himself as a sock-puppet spewing memorable stuff that needs saying from an even bigger authority figure. Even Paul is essentially name-dropped to legitimize the gnosticism of Valentinus.

The idea that anything whatsoever from such a document a document must be somehow based on something that that character actually did or said, or even the existence of such a character, is simply false.

Simon39759

8th April 2010, 02:38 PM

So Count Pyotr "Pierre" Kirillovich Bezukhov is the creator of the story of War and Peace?

If the only accounts we had about the writing of war and peace would have been it as the autobiographic writings of Bezukhov, sure, why not? This hypothesis is just as good as any we can come up with.

Why couldn't the author of Mark have put his words into the mouth of a fictitious rabbi?
Someone created the teachings of Objectivism, but it sure wasn't John Galt, despite the lengthy sermons that he "delivers" on the subject in Atlas Shrugged.
Galt is the protagonist -- well, one of the characters, anyway -- but Rand is the originator of the movement. Despite the fact that Rand herself never appears in any of her works.

Of course, he could have.
But, the very likely existence of Q suggests that the tradition existed before that.

There must have been a source from where both Mark and Q (and John) originated.

Could this source have faked it or created a fictional proto-rabbi to attribute his words to?
Sure, why not, several ancient works were indeed similarly attributed, Confucius springs to mind.

But, in the absence of evidence suggesting this was the case*, it seems like an unnecessary hypothesis to me.

*Absence of evidence, for what I call the core tenet of Jesus' life: that he was from Nazareth, preach a bunch of stuff and was arrested and executed around the time of Passover 33.
This, of course, leaves out the miracles, it also leaves out several aspect of the story. Jesus, for example, was not as popular as the NT suggests and I don't believe his entrance in Jerusalem was nearly as glorious or even remarked than the story tels us. Also, which exactly of his teachings made it back to us and which ones were later additions is almost impossible to know...

Why? What's wrong with syncretism? It's not like there's not a long history of the that in Christian tradition. Look at Marjatta's search for a sauna in the Kalevala, or Bede's description of the Goddess Eostre.

Nothing wrong with syncretism. I strongly believe it had a big hand on shaping many of the early Christian traditions, especially the more supernatural elements...
But I also believed that there was a line of Christian oral tradition that existed and gobbled up these myths and add them to their own mythos.

Also, I want to make it clear that I am, by absolutely no mean, a Biblical scholar (as you probably have noticed). I am not even well versed on the subject at all. I did gather a few stuff here and there, including on these very fora, and made up my opinion from that. It certainly is NOT an expert opinion and is very likely to being proven false. In fact, many people on these fora (especially people posting in "the thread that shoult no be named" are much more knowledgeable than I could ever hope to become).

Simon39759

8th April 2010, 02:51 PM

Ok, we cross-posted, and addressed quite a few common points.

I would also like to add that we _know_ that people back then created or kidnapped characters as sock-puppets for their own opinions all the time.

See the no less than two different "Acts of Barnabas" which use a named apostle as a sock-puppet. The first one to put in his mouth some opinions about some 5'th century events, supporting the position of the church of Cyprus, the second even more ridiculous as it "foretells" Muhammad by name. (I say "foretells" in quotes, because it's a forgery from late renaissance times.)

Among those who've been hijacked as sock-puppets just from the major characters, we have Peter, Thomas, even Judas, James, Luke, Matthew and a few others. That is, in addition to the gospels selected as canon. And some more than once. And several of them star Jesus himself as a sock-puppet spewing memorable stuff that needs saying from an even bigger authority figure. Even Paul is essentially name-dropped to legitimize the gnosticism of Valentinus.

The idea that anything whatsoever from such a document a document must be somehow based on something that that character actually did or said, or even the existence of such a character, is simply false.

Indeed but: a) People rarely, in my opinion, make people up. Rather than create a fictional person to put their speech into the mouth of as such a person would not be better known than themselves or have more credibility.
Instead, it seems like people take somebody that is already famous and respected and attribute their speech to.

You mention Peter, Thomas and such, all of them were, at least considered, to be historical characters by the "forgers" and the people they were targeting.
I believe that several of the teachings attributed to Jesus were, indeed, attempts at sock-puppetry (isn't it Iraneus that complained about this practice?) But that doesn't mean that there was not a real character (or one character the forgers believed as real) to attribute the quotes to...

Once again, I do not believe we have any good evidence either way, but the idea of a total forgery seemed like an unwarranted complication to me.

HansMustermann

8th April 2010, 03:04 PM

HansMustermann

8th April 2010, 03:08 PM

Ok, we cross-posted, and addressed quite a few common points.

Indeed but: a) People rarely, in my opinion, make people up. Rather than create a fictional person to put their speech into the mouth of as such a person would not be better known than themselves or have more credibility.
Instead, it seems like people take somebody that is already famous and respected and attribute their speech to.

You mention Peter, Thomas and such, all of them were, at least considered, to be historical characters by the "forgers" and the people they were targeting.
I believe that several of the teachings attributed to Jesus were, indeed, attempts at sock-puppetry (isn't it Iraneus that complained about this practice?) But that doesn't mean that there was not a real character (or one character the forgers believed as real) to attribute the quotes to...

Once again, I do not believe we have any good evidence either way, but the idea of a total forgery seemed like an unwarranted complication to me.

But here's the important part: they weren't putting words into the mouth of a person they knew. They were putting words into the mouth of a person they read/heard about from someone else's gospel.

Yes, maybe they believed those persons to be real, but nevertheless, they didn't _know_ that. They were just hijacking an established and respected character.

There is nothing to say that Mark wasn't simply using this "Jesus of Nazareth" character that Paul had already popularized (thanks to his hallucination) as a sockpuppet.

bluskool

8th April 2010, 03:46 PM

Except Q is a hypothetical document that nobody has actually seen. And which, strangely enough, none of the early Christians or church fathers ever mentions. We have texts dealing with literally tens of sources and classifying them into heresies or not (e.g., Iranaeus's book), but strangely there is no mention of such a Q document.

Furthermore, we don't know exactly what's _in_ this Q document, and not at all who wrote it, and what sources did they use.

Matthew and Luke have material in them that is exactly the same and is not in Mark. It is nearly impossible that they didn't get it from the same source. We just call that source "Q" because we don't know what it is.

Even if it existed, was it truly an independent source traceable all the way to Jesus? Or is it another fanfic based on Paul's character? Or maybe an addendum to Mark?

Or maybe fairies wrote it. We can speculate all day, but the bottom line is that Mark and Luke had some similar source before them when they wrote their gospels.

I mean, what's hypothesized is that it may have contained the parables that are missing from Mark but are present in both Matthew and Luke. Nothing says that it developped completely independently of Mark and not, say, as an addendum by some people who wanted to put more wise stuff in the mouth of his character.

Yes, something does say that it developed independently of Mark. Namely the fact that there is absolutely no evidence that Mark ever contained them. Speculating that it was addendum to Mark just goes way beyond the evidence.

ETA: heck, how do we know that what's hypothesized as "Mark+Q" isn't simply a later copy of Mark with stuff added (it happened all the time), that Matthew and Luke both used as a source?

It is not a matter of knowing what Q is. Is it a mater of simply sticking to what we have evidence for instead of hypothesizing beyond.

Furthermore, is it possible that simply Luke copied some stuff from Matthew, but stayed clear of Matthew's going full tilt in dada land with the chasing prophecies to fulfill?

Not really. They are written too close together for this to be a plausible hypothesis.

Is it possible that someone else added those to Luke's text?

Sure, but again, no evidence.

I mean, you need to look no further than Marcion of Sinope's accusation that Iranaeus did just that: added a bunch of stuff to Luke, which both fancied to be the one true gospel. But obviously Marcion's copy was a lot thinner than Iranaeus's.

Marcion was writing after Luke and scholars generally think that Marcion edited Luke. Is there any evidence to the contrary?

You also have to remember that a major movement at the time was to try to construct a harmonized gospel, that has all the stuff from the others in one coherent narrative, without the contradictions between them. In fact, we're talking about the heyday of "gospel harmonies". into one super-gospel.

Can it be that the Luke we have is the result of such an attempt at harmonizing it with Matthew or viceversa? You'd take one and add some of the stuff it's obviously missing, because it's in the other, and it can't be that the other is _wrong_ about Jesus, right? It's not impossible, and it removes the need for a Q document altogether.

It's not impossible, but it is also not very plausible. Again, Luke wrote not too long after Matthew.

Kapyong

8th April 2010, 04:40 PM

Gday,

Given that there was a following building within 20 years or so of his death, I think it's very likely that those legends would trace back to a real person who actually existed.

But you just assumed you own argument - THAT he existed.
IF he did NOT exist, then a following did NOT build within 20 years of his death.

They had to do this because everyone at the time knew that Jesus was from Nazareth. Had the legends been completely made-up, the storytellers would simply have told about him being from Bethlehem.

But something that "everyone knows" does NOT have to be a true historical fact - that's where you went wrong here.

Everyone "knows" Darth Vader was Luke Skywalker's father.
ANYONE who writes a new story MUST have Darth Vader as Luke's father.
Because everyone "KNOWS" that.
But that does NOT make it treu, does it?

So -
back in the day, people "KNEW" that the messiah would come from Bethlehem - because their legends and myths and ancient books said so. (And, there was another tradition that he was from Nazareth.)

Thus, the authors of the Gospels were constrained to saying that - but it had NOTHING to do with it being historical.

Just as stories about Luke Sywalker are constrained to having Darth Vader as his father - nothing to do with history.

Yours is a common argument, but it's false -
things that "everyone knew" do NOT have to be historical.

K.

Simon39759

8th April 2010, 05:22 PM

Except Q is a hypothetical document that nobody has actually seen. And which, strangely enough, none of the early Christians or church fathers ever mentions. We have texts dealing with literally tens of sources and classifying them into heresies or not (e.g., Iranaeus's book), but strangely there is no mention of such a Q document.

Furthermore, we don't know exactly what's _in_ this Q document, and not at all who wrote it, and what sources did they use.

Even if it existed, was it truly an independent source traceable all the way to Jesus? Or is it another fanfic based on Paul's character? Or maybe an addendum to Mark?

I mean, what's hypothesized is that it may have contained the parables that are missing from Mark but are present in both Matthew and Luke. Nothing says that it developped completely independently of Mark and not, say, as an addendum by some people who wanted to put more wise stuff in the mouth of his character.

ETA: heck, how do we know that what's hypothesized as "Mark+Q" isn't simply a later copy of Mark with stuff added (it happened all the time), that Matthew and Luke both used as a source?

See what I mean about being open to changing my opinion?
You are making a very, very good point there.
I will need to look deeper into that, probably, but that Matthew just added some oral traditions local to his church to the existing gospel of Mark does seem to make a lot of sense...

Furthermore, is it possible that simply Luke copied some stuff from Matthew, but stayed clear of Matthew's going full tilt in dada land with the chasing prophecies to fulfill?

Is it possible that someone else added those to Luke's text?

I mean, you need to look no further than Marcion of Sinope's accusation that Iranaeus did just that: added a bunch of stuff to Luke, which both fancied to be the one true gospel. But obviously Marcion's copy was a lot thinner than Iranaeus's.

I don't know enough on the subject to make any comment.

You also have to remember that a major movement at the time was to try to construct a harmonized gospel, that has all the stuff from the others in one coherent narrative, without the contradictions between them. In fact, we're talking about the heyday of "gospel harmonies". into one super-gospel.

Can it be that the Luke we have is the result of such an attempt at harmonizing it with Matthew or viceversa? You'd take one and add some of the stuff it's obviously missing, because it's in the other, and it can't be that the other is _wrong_ about Jesus, right? It's not impossible, and it removes the need for a Q document altogether.

It does make a lot of sense, and certainly some of this have taken place (cf. the ending of the gospel of Mark).

Gday,

But you just assumed you own argument - THAT he existed.
IF he did NOT exist, then a following did NOT build within 20 years of his death.

Well, but something DID happen because they were followers 20 years after the alleged event.
Something had to have happened, even if it is Paul (or somebody else) spinning a tall-tale.

Somebody must have lived and started teaching the things that inspired the followers we find around 50CE. Maybe it was Paul, maybe it was Jesus, or maybe it was yet another person, possibly whose name was lost to history but somebody need to have started the tradition.
Considering the lack of evidence one way or the other, I have no problem with the hypothesis that this person was named Jesus, originated from Palestine and was crucified under Pilate.

But something that "everyone knows" does NOT have to be a true historical fact - that's where you went wrong here.

It certainly does not, but it does not have to be entirely fictional either...

Everyone "knows" Darth Vader was Luke Skywalker's father.
ANYONE who writes a new story MUST have Darth Vader as Luke's father.
Because everyone "KNOWS" that.
But that does NOT make it treu, does it?

So -
back in the day, people "KNEW" that the messiah would come from Bethlehem - because their legends and myths and ancient books said so. (And, there was another tradition that he was from Nazareth.)

Thus, the authors of the Gospels were constrained to saying that - but it had NOTHING to do with it being historical.

Just as stories about Luke Sywalker are constrained to having Darth Vader as his father - nothing to do with history.

Yours is a common argument, but it's false -
things that "everyone knew" do NOT have to be historical.
K.

Yes, and I am quite convinced that the Bethlehem bit was a post-hoc made up rationalization to make the Jesus myth fit the "prophecy".
But that does not mean much about the reality (or not) of Jesus' existence...

Foster Zygote

8th April 2010, 08:38 PM

Right, that is closest to what my view on the subject would be. But I think that jesus was one, real person who preached an apocalyptic message, had twelve disciples whom he took to Jerusalem during the passover to try to stir up a rebellion. I think he and his disciples really thought he was the messiah that came to lead them in a rebellion against Rome. I think Judas really did tell the authorities what the plot was so they killed Jesus. The legend begins growing from there.

I think that any accounts of other holy men that may have found their way into the Jesus narrative probably did so in the decades after his death. As his legend grew and storytellers began to invent ever more dramatic tales regarding his greatness it seems likely that some elements of other miracle workers might have found their way into the stories simply because there were so many of them at the time. So some of the miracles attributed to him may have been exaggerations of the acts of others. Of course, it's also quite likely that many of the supernatural acts of Jesus were simply created from whole cloth by people telling their versions of his story.

Minadin

8th April 2010, 09:30 PM

E.g., Jesus being dressed in purple for his mock triumph before being executed? (Mark 15:17) No ****? Purple was more expensive than gold and its use regulated by rank. (Whereas by comparison gold thread or silk weren't regulated. Tells you which was the more limited resource.) The only one entitled to even a stripe of purple in the whole province was Pilate on his official toga, and it's doubtful that he'd undress from his most expensive clothes just to dress a condemned criminal in them. Especially one freshly scourged. (Great way to ruin some expensive clothes, eh?)

Silk? They didn't regulate potatos, microchips, or tobacco back then either.

Being as figurative as these texts are, being 'dressed in purple' might mean - briefly - wearing some sort of purple sash as a mockery, during the trial, which could have been removed later. Pilate might have had something of the sort for ceremonial purposes. Or, having some other symbolic adornment placed on his person that signified authority, which the author summarized as being 'dressed in purple' to convey the meaning of having a similar 'mock' dressing up.

HansMustermann

8th April 2010, 10:46 PM

You do know that Rome actually imported silk, right?

HansMustermann

8th April 2010, 11:58 PM

Kapyong

9th April 2010, 03:28 AM

Gday,

Well, but something DID happen because they were followers 20 years after the alleged event.

Only IF you assume Jesus did exist in the first place.

The argument looks like this :
* There were followers only 20 years later (in the 50s)
* therefore, Jesus probably existed (in the 30s)

But this leaves the initial assumption unstated - the argument is really :
* assuming Jesus existed in the 30s, then the writings in the 50s were 20 years later
* therefore we have writings from 20 years later
* therefore Jesus existed (in the 30s)

This just ASSUMES the conclusion - that Jesus existed. It is faulty argument.

If Jesus did NOT exist, then those writings in the 50s were NOT 20 years later, and thus do not argue for Jesus existing only 20 years earlier.

Look at it another way - there is no "20 year" period in any actual Christian writing.

Paul wrote apparently from the 50s, but he does NOT ever place Jesus in time. The early epistles also fail to place Jesus in time (only the late forged Pastorals do so.)

The Gospels and their stories do not become known until early 2nd century. It is only in early 2nd century that Jesus is finally placed in the period of Pilate - a CENTURY after the alleged events.

The period between Jesus alleged time, and the time when people claimed that was Jesus' time is a CENTURY.

These 20 years are a red herring. No-one ever claimed Jesus existed only 20 years before their time.

K.

Kapyong

9th April 2010, 03:44 AM

Gday,

It certainly does not, but it does not have to be entirely fictional either...

Indeed,
but I am not making that argument.

Let's recap -

CurtC said :
"They had to do this because everyone at the time knew that Jesus was from Nazareth. Had the legends been completely made-up, the storytellers would simply have told about him being from Bethlehem. "

Meaning that a detail that "everyone knew" could not be "completely made up" - i.e. it must be historically true.

I showed that this argument is faulty - because it is easy to think of examples where something that "everyone knows" is not historically true.

Of course - that's not quite the same thing as being able to "make up" anything you want. The stories of Jesus are hardly "made up" at all - the authors are using many previous traditions to write a story with many echoes and allusions to previous legends and scriptures - a far cry from "completely making it up".

The authors were constrained to a Messiah who was from Bethlehem. And they also inherited a tradition that Jesus was from Nazareth (possibly from nazir.)

But neither of these traditions had anything to do with history.

It is simply not correct to argue that a tradition that "everyone knows" must be accurate history.

K.

Darat

9th April 2010, 03:48 AM

...snip... Maybe it was Paul, maybe it was Jesus, or maybe it was yet another person, possibly whose name was lost to history but somebody need to have started the tradition. ...snip...

We can't even say that with any certainty, there could have been numerous different traditions all with their own unique origins that coalesced into "one" movement. And I think we can do beyond that and say there were many different traditions that were merged (sometimes kicking and screaming) into what we now view as early Christianity.

bluskool

9th April 2010, 07:30 AM

@bluskool: I hope you realize though, that there is exactly as much evidence for the Q document as for fairies. Nobody saw it, nobody from that age ever mentioned it, nobody knows its author, nobody knows exactly what's in it.

Sorry, seems to me like you're the one who chooses to believe in fairies, not the ones who ignore it until actual evidence is found.

Except that there is evidence for Q as I already stated. The only real rival hypothesis is that Luke relied on Matthew, but there are a number of problems with that. For example, Luke followers the order of Mark, but doesn't use any of the material that he shares with Matthew in the same order that Matthew does. Another example is that Luke and Matthew add the same (hypothetical) Q material to Markan paragraphs, but not the same paragraphs.

Simon39759

9th April 2010, 07:35 AM

Only IF you assume Jesus did exist in the first place.

The argument looks like this :
* There were followers only 20 years later (in the 50s)
* therefore, Jesus probably existed (in the 30s)

But this leaves the initial assumption unstated - the argument is really :
* assuming Jesus existed in the 30s, then the writings in the 50s were 20 years later
* therefore we have writings from 20 years later
* therefore Jesus existed (in the 30s)

Not really, the 20 years period is not too important. Let's put it another way: the Pauline epistles tell us that there were people in the 50ies believing that Jesus had died for their sins (and was resurrected).

Therefore, something must have happened before that to start this tradition of somebody dying for their sins.

This just ASSUMES the conclusion - that Jesus existed. It is faulty argument.

If Jesus did NOT exist, then those writings in the 50s were NOT 20 years later, and thus do not argue for Jesus existing only 20 years earlier.

Look at it another way - there is no "20 year" period in any actual Christian writing.

There isn't, but Paul does mention people that are still alive and meet with Jesus, that does give us a very rough idea of what timeline the apostle had in mind.
Not that it truly matters.

Paul wrote apparently from the 50s, but he does NOT ever place Jesus in time. The early epistles also fail to place Jesus in time (only the late forged Pastorals do so.)

The Gospels and their stories do not become known until early 2nd century. It is only in early 2nd century that Jesus is finally placed in the period of Pilate - a CENTURY after the alleged events.

The period between Jesus alleged time, and the time when people claimed that was Jesus' time is a CENTURY.

These 20 years are a red herring. No-one ever claimed Jesus existed only 20 years before their time.

Ok, sure.

K.[/QUOTE]

We can't even say that with any certainty, there could have been numerous different traditions all with their own unique origins that coalesced into "one" movement. And I think we can do beyond that and say there were many different traditions that were merged (sometimes kicking and screaming) into what we now view as early Christianity.

Very true, and it is totally possible that an anterior legend was later dressed up as being about some way-ward itinerant pastor in Palestine. And we certainly know that fan-fiction can easily develop around such myth that seem awfully specific and detailed.
Yet, I don't really see any reason to disbelieve that one central among these traditions was based on the half-remembered life and teaching of a real physical preacher.

drkitten

9th April 2010, 10:48 AM

Not really, the 20 years period is not too important. Let's put it another way: the Pauline epistles tell us that there were people in the 50ies believing that Jesus had died for their sins (and was resurrected).

Therefore, something must have happened before that to start this tradition of somebody dying for their sins.

Of course, that tradition dates back literally thousands of years. Have you ever heard of a "scapegoat"? The idea of an object, animal, or person taking on the sins of the group and then immediately being killed (or in the case of the 'scapegoat,' driven off into the wilderness) appears in all times or cultures.

Simon39759

9th April 2010, 12:05 PM

Of course, that tradition dates back literally thousands of years. Have you ever heard of a "scapegoat"? The idea of an object, animal, or person taking on the sins of the group and then immediately being killed (or in the case of the 'scapegoat,' driven off into the wilderness) appears in all times or cultures.

Yes, of course, and I do believe that it is this cultural understanding that drove the proto-Christian to explain Jesus' death as a willing sacrifice.
Nonetheless, I also think likely that there was an initial teacher who was executed and whose death required making sense of, by the cooptation of earlier myth.

Lot of the Jesus' myth were fiction, anterior myth, post-hoc justification and the like.
But I also think that there very well might have been a real figure who lived and taught and started a tradition. As this core tradition developed, it integrated other, sometime contradictory, mythology, when they conflicted, yet another layer of explanation grew, which generated the Jesus' nativity myth with the flight to Egypt, the birth in Bethlehem, the fairy tale about the first born being murdered and the blunder about the census...

HansMustermann

9th April 2010, 12:51 PM

The myth could be added around just about any core, not just around an itinerant preacher from Nazareth called Jesus.

For a start the whole thing is centered around the Pharisee notion at the time of a messiah and resurrection. That messiah was supposed to start the messianic times, i.e., basically end days, where not only Israel would be freed, but also the dead would be resurrected too.

You can build that up both ways. You can take an itinerant preacher and add that to it, or you can simply take the existing myth and put a random name on it. Essentially they already had a well known character to hijack for that sockpuppetry anyway: the messiah.

Same as basically if you expect some plumber from my company and I'm inclined (for whatever reason) to lie to you that I already sent you one and you weren't home, it doesn't matter the exact name, it matters it's about "the plumber." If you ask "which one?" I can make up a name. Sure, it was "John Smith" that came and didn't find you home. You can that take it as evidence that it must be based on a real plumber with that name, but really it's the wrong element to latch on. It's not about "John Smith" it's about "the plumber."

Same here. The core message is "the messiah has already arrived." The central character there is "the messiah." Putting a name on him might be necessary, just to seem more plausible if people start asking for more details. Ok, I'll name my Messiah, "Pyotr Kirillovich Bezukhov". But essentially that myth is made around "the messiah" not around "Pyotr Kirillovich Bezukhov". It's the name "Pyotr Kirillovich Bezukhov" that got added to the given character "the messiah", not the quality "messiah" added to a real person named "Pyotr Kirillovich Bezukhov".

And misunderstandings around the core can go multiple ways. If they were so confused as to get his deeds wrong, his execution wrong, etc... how do you know they even got his name right? Or the place of origin? Or occupation? How do you know it's not actually about, say, a guy called Joseph instead of Jesus, and who was nailed in Samaria instead of Judaea? Or about someone who wasn't as much of preacher as a sicarius? (Nasty branch of the Zealots, who'd even knife anyone as much as suspected of collaborating with the Romans.) Would be a more believable reason for a crucifixion than just preaching peace and love, no?

It seems to me like people are essentially looking at a story which is 99% BS and lies, and deciding which 1% is not only true, but beyond any reason to doubt. Where does that certainty come from? Me, if someone lied to me about 19 different things, I'd be wary of taking the 20'th as truth beyond any reason to doubt. But essentially just that happens to the gospels: even people who recognize everything else as falsehoods, then pick one detail like the name and place of birth and proclaim that one as beyond any reason to doubt.

Skeptic Ginger

9th April 2010, 12:56 PM

I have actually switched sides on this issue, after reading this:
http://rationalrevolution.net/articles/jesus_myth_history.htm

I would appreciate others here views on the reasoning of the author.These are many of the same arguments in the movie I noted on page 1, "The God Who Wasn't There." I too switched sides from the default position that a real "historical Jesus" must have been what the NT was recording. I had this image of a charlatan like Joseph Smith claiming he had gold tablets and magic glasses, or an India magic man such as exist today scamming people for money, or perhaps an L Ron Hubbard who just happened to be charismatic enough to snow ball a following.

The movie was the first time I was introduced to the concept the default assumption (aka common sense) wasn't necessarily the only possibility. Seems to me the evidence favors a mythical man, not an historical one.

bluskool

9th April 2010, 02:08 PM

I have actually switched sides on this issue, after reading this:
http://rationalrevolution.net/articles/jesus_myth_history.htm

I would appreciate others here views on the reasoning of the author.These are many of the same arguments in the movie I noted on page 1, "The God Who Wasn't There." I too switched sides from the default position that a real "historical Jesus" must have been what the NT was recording. I had this image of a charlatan like Joseph Smith claiming he had gold tablets and magic glasses, or an India magic man such as exist today scamming people for money, or perhaps an L Ron Hubbard who just happened to be charismatic enough to snow ball a following.

The movie was the first time I was introduced to the concept the default assumption (aka common sense) wasn't necessarily the only possibility. Seems to me the evidence favors a mythical man, not an historical one.

I wouldn't change my opinion based on the views of a very small number of scholars or a movie. When they are only presenting one side of the story – especially a story that has a lot of highly technical aspects to it – it is easy to make it seem like the facts are on your side.

Kapyong

9th April 2010, 02:14 PM

Gday,

There isn't, but Paul does mention people that are still alive and meet with Jesus,

No he doesn't.

Paul does NOT say people "met with Jesus".
Which is why you didn't quote any such claim.

We have is a title "Brother of the Lord" - not a claim to have met Jesus.

But NO CLAIM that anyone met a historical Jesus at all.
None.

But Paul says clearly :
* he got his Gospel from NO MAN, but from revelation
* he is just as much an apostle as the others

This shows Paul had NO IDEA of any historical person from 20 years earlier.

Therefore, something must have happened before that to start this tradition of somebody dying for their sins.

The idea started centuries, even millenia earlier.

There is not the slightest sign in Paul of a tradition starting 20 years ago. Paul's talks about a timeless reality - no hint of a historical Jesus, even when we expect it.

K.

Bill Thompson

9th April 2010, 02:19 PM

Kapyong

9th April 2010, 02:33 PM

Gday,

From several sources I have heard that there was a historian who mentioned him and what he was like. Sorry, I do not remmember the name of the historian.

Very convincing.

No Bill - there is no contemporary historian who mentioned Jesus.

But there ARE writers from LATER who repeat Christian beliefs - such as Tacitus.

And a passage in Josephus - which is forged or tampered with.

But NO contemporary historical mention at all.
None.

Just because someone writes a book about something does not make it true.

So why do you believe the book by the alleged "historian" (whose name you can't even remember and don't know how to check) ?

Funny how you say that about books you DISAGREE with,
but simply accept as true those you AGREE with.

Also, Jesus is mentioned in the Talimud (albiet in very negative terms). Now, if he never really existed, you would think that point would be exploited by the people who disliked christianity the most.

CENTURIES later, the Talmud has bizarre stories about Jesus that he :
* was a bastard son of a Roman soldier
* learned black magic in Egypt
* had 5 disciples
* was stoned to death in Lydda.

You cannot really beleive this nonsense is evidence for a historical Jesus from centuries earlier?

It's just crap made up later to discredit Christians.

We also know that the gospels were not written by committee. Most were compiled after the scribes went out and spoke to either people who claim to have seen Jesus or knew someone who knew someone.

Rubbish.

Not one NT writing claims anyone actually met a historical Jesus (apart from the forged 2nd century 2 Peter.)

Saying that Jesus (the human) never existed is just as wacky to me as any other conspiracy theory.

Sigh.

Another person who hasn't the FAINTEST IDEA what the argument actually is.

But by calling it a "conspiracy theory", that proves it false, right Bill ?

What nonsense - there is NO ONE arguing for a "conspiracy" at all. No-one. Why did you bring up this silly "conspiracy theory" idea? hmm?

It's exactly like I said back in my "Who claimed to have met a historical Jesus" thread :

Some people, including Bill here, are convinced we have numerous accounts from, and about, people who ACTUALLY MET Jesus, thus Jesus MUST have existed, otherwise it's a "conspiracy".

But as usual, Bill hasn't actually read the background, hasn't checked the facts, deosn't even know who that 'historian' even is !

Bill -
there is NO-ONE who claimed to have met a historical Jesus (apart from the forged 2 Peter.)

there is NO-ONE who even claimed to have met someone else who met Jesus.

Please give up this silly nonsense about "conspiracies". NO-ONE said anything about a conspiracy, please pay attention if you want to join in the discussion.

K.

Simon39759

9th April 2010, 03:05 PM

Gday,
No he doesn't.
Paul does NOT say people "met with Jesus".
Which is why you didn't quote any such claim.

I didn't quote such claim because I didn't have the time/ energy to look through all the epistles and look for it.

I thought I remembered Paul mention some people that walked with Jesus and 'had not yet fallen asleep' or some such (in relation with the claim putatively made by Jesus that he would come back in his followers' lifetime).
I might be wrong, of course.

We have is a title "Brother of the Lord" - not a claim to have met Jesus.
But NO CLAIM that anyone met a historical Jesus at all.
None.

By Paul? Certainly not. But, yes, he did use that term about James, that could be figurative, of course.

But Paul says clearly :
* he got his Gospel from NO MAN, but from revelation
* he is just as much an apostle as the others

This shows Paul had NO IDEA of any historical person from 20 years earlier.

No, this show that Paul had his Gospel from no man but from revelation, and that he considered himself an apostle, as the others...

It could be that he considered that every apostles got his Gospel by 'revelation' (then, why make the point about his status) or maybe he was trying to make the point that getting the Gospel that way was just as good (or better) than getting it from physical interactions with the supposed Jesus.

The idea started centuries, even millenia earlier.

There is not the slightest sign in Paul of a tradition starting 20 years ago. Paul's talks about a timeless reality - no hint of a historical Jesus, even when we expect it.
K.

Meh; the reference to James could be such a hint.
The fact that Paul felt like defending his status despite having gotten the gospel through revelation might be another hint...

My point is, we don't have good evidences one way or the other so I decided to go along the 'conventional wisdom'.

HansMustermann

9th April 2010, 03:31 PM

It seems to me like the "don't believe the others, they just want to deceive you / discredit me / perpetuate the status quo / etc" is the standard stance of delusional CT-ers and snake-oil salesmen alike. In fact it's become almost the #1 sign that someone is selling you a delusion or snake oil. That Paul felt a need to apply the same defense preemptively, of course, doesn't automatically discredit him, but... let's just say it isn't an automatic support for the idea that he told the truth, either.

bluskool

9th April 2010, 03:52 PM

I didn't quote such claim because I didn't have the time/ energy to look through all the epistles and look for it.

I thought I remembered Paul mention some people that walked with Jesus and 'had not yet fallen asleep' or some such (in relation with the claim putatively made by Jesus that he would come back in his followers' lifetime).
I might be wrong, of course.

You are talking about the creed that Paul recites in 1 Corinthians 15:3-7.

"For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures: And that he was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve: After that, he was seen of above five hundred brethren at once; of whom the greater part remain unto this present, but some are fallen asleep. After that, he was seen of James; then of all the apostles."

Simon39759

9th April 2010, 04:05 PM

You are talking about the creed that Paul recites in 1 Corinthians 15:3-7.

"For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures: And that he was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve: After that, he was seen of above five hundred brethren at once; of whom the greater part remain unto this present, but some are fallen asleep. After that, he was seen of James; then of all the apostles."

Thank you.
I knew (well; I thought I remembered) that it was there, somewhere...

ETA: Reading it in context, though, it does not explicitly states that the people the resurrected Jesus is supposed to have appeared to knew him while he was alive.
That's the impression it gives to me but you could argue otherwise, clearly.

Kapyong

9th April 2010, 04:19 PM

Gday all,

You are talking about the creed that Paul recites in 1 Corinthians 15:3-7.

"For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures: And that he was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve: After that, he was seen of above five hundred brethren at once; of whom the greater part remain unto this present, but some are fallen asleep. After that, he was seen of James; then of all the apostles."

Ah yes.

But that's not people "meeting Jesus".

That's people having a VISION of Jesus (according to some unknown source that Paul does not disclose.)

A far cry from the claim that people met a historical Jesus.

K.

Foster Zygote

9th April 2010, 05:53 PM

From several sources I have heard that there was a historian who mentioned him and what he was like. Sorry, I do not remmember the name of the historian. But whenever The Discovery channel does a bit on Jesus (what he must have looked like, what was the historic context of what he sayd) they always mention that he really existed because of this historian.
Mentioning someone who others believe to have existed is not the same as confirming that person's existence first hand. We have no first hand historical accounts of Jesus as a living person.

Also, Jesus is mentioned in the Talimud (albiet in very negative terms). Now, if he never really existed, you would think that point would be exploited by the people who disliked christianity the most.
No, he isn't.

I know, I know, there is a book written that presents the theory that Jesus was entirely made up "The God Who Wasn't There" . There are lots of books written that present theories that are not true. Just because someone writes a book about something does not make it true.
Yes, thank you, we know that. The thing is you have to actually address the arguments and points presented in the book before you can dismiss them.

We also know that the gospels were not written by committee. Most were compiled after the scribes went out and spoke to either people who claim to have seen Jesus or knew someone who knew someone.
No. There is no evidence that the authors of any of the gospels, canonical or otherwise, did such research. In fact, the authors of Luke and Matthew simply copied large parts of the gospel of Mark in their own works. Are you even aware that the gospels were not written by the people to whom they are traditionally attributed?

bluskool

9th April 2010, 06:10 PM

No, he isn't.

Yes, he sort of is. Jesus is mentioned in the commentary section of the Talmud. But this is much later and not really a reliable source for his historicity.

Simon39759

9th April 2010, 06:25 PM

Yes, he sort of is. Jesus is mentioned in the commentary section of the Talmud. But this is much later and not really a reliable source for his historicity.

I believe that all of, at least, the earliest quote, are now considered not to be about our (well, I am an atheist) Jesus just, other guys, some of which were also called Jesus...
Maybe some later teachings dating from the time when Christianity had rose to prominence, might be about Jesus, I am not familiar with these, but nothing that would not be traced back to the Christian tradition...

Bill Thompson

9th April 2010, 06:31 PM

Gday,

Very convincing.

No Bill - there is no contemporary historian who mentioned Jesus.

You sure? Have you searched on this?

I mean, sure, the Discovery Channel give us bull on the bermuda triangle. But I don't think they would get away with inventing a historian and mentioning him several times on several shows.

Bill Thompson

9th April 2010, 06:53 PM

Mentioning someone who others believe to have existed is not the same as confirming that person's existence first hand. We have no first hand historical accounts of Jesus as a living person.

{Talumud}

No, he isn't.

An awful lot of Jewish people and an awful lot of religious scholars would have to be lying to me. I have to go with what most people who seem creditable have told me.

For now, your side of the argument smells a lot like a conspiracy theory.

I am not talking about a god here, just a guy. What are you proposing?... it was just made up by a few guys who paid off a few guys to tell the story and so on and so on?

Your theory seems less plausable.

You might find some coincidence or hint that it was all made up, but the preponderance of evidence suggests that he was not invented out of the blue. Have you seen the youtube video about boloney detection?

A little google came up with te Roman historians Cornelius Tacitus and, Seutonius. I don't know if any historian actually saw Jesus. But these historians were not in the business of writing mythis. Consider this. If a historian who lived about the time of George Washington and wrote about him without ever meeting, whould his record be considered hog wash?

Someone once actually told me the passages in the Jewish records that mention Jesus. Are you saying that Jesus is not mentioned at all in the Tallimud?

Now, once again, if he was just made up, I think SOMEone would have blown that whistle. THe Jews and the Romans would probably have wanted float that idea even if it was a rumor that Jesus was a myth. Even if they could get the idea that Christ was made up to stick, they would have given it a try.

I have found a lot of google hits that say jesus is mentioned in the tallimud or in Jewish records. Either those web links are all lying or you are.

Something else. Physical evidince of John the Baptist is in museums in Turkey. So, he existed but his cousin, Jesus, did not. RIiiiiight...:rolleyes: Dude, that is way hard to believe.

================

Are you using the "anything is possible" angle like the mormons do when I debate them? Like them, I think your theology blinds you. I think you believe it is way cool if Jesus was just made up out of the blue. You are attracted to that idea just like the Mormons are attracted to a golden bible given to America by angels.

Skeptic Ginger

9th April 2010, 07:42 PM

I wouldn't change my opinion based on the views of a very small number of scholars or a movie. When they are only presenting one side of the story – especially a story that has a lot of highly technical aspects to it – it is easy to make it seem like the facts are on your side.So your premise is no one could possibly present convincing evidence in a movie format?

Or are you assuming all movie format arguments are by their nature slanted propaganda?

Or what? We are too stupid to have checked the validity of the presented evidence because we were so snookered by a slick presentation?

Sorry, your underlying assumptions appear to be flawed. The movie (and I assume the paper/web site/book as well), was convincing because the evidence is convincing, not because those of us influenced to take a second look at our preconceived assumptions are naive.

Complexity

9th April 2010, 07:45 PM

I don't think it matters a jot whether the jesus critter ever really lived.

xians will believe that he did regardless.

The rest of us will regret that they have this belief regardless.

If he did once live, he's been dead for a very long time, and I won't hold him overly responsible for the silliness and evil that has been done in his name.

In time, he will be utterly forgotten, as will we all.

Skeptic Ginger

9th April 2010, 07:48 PM

...
Saying that Jesus (the human) never existed is just as wacky to me as any other conspiracy theory.You are ignoring the evidence presented in the film and other writings that make the case Jesus is a myth and not an historical person. Instead you argue based in simple incredulity. That's not much of an argument.

Kapyong

9th April 2010, 08:17 PM

Gday,

You sure? Have you searched on this?

Absolutely certain.
I have read all the alleged 'evidence'.

I mean, sure, the Discovery Channel give us bull on the bermuda triangle. But I don't think they would get away with inventing a historian and mentioning him several times on several shows.

They didn't.
You are almost certainly referring to Tacitus.

Who wrote in earliy 2nd century - about 80 YEARS after Jesus. NOT contemporary.

Tacitus did NOT record early 1st century Jesus' existence,
he recorded 2nd century Christian BELIEFS.

K.

Kapyong

9th April 2010, 08:28 PM

Gday,

An awful lot of Jewish people and an awful lot of religious scholars would have to be lying to me. I have to go with what most people who seem creditable have told me.

There ARE late references to Jesus in the Talmud and other Jewish writings.

From CENTURIES later, saying completely different things about Jesus.

For now, your side of the argument smells a lot like a conspiracy theory.

Nope.
It is NOTHING to do with a conspiracy at all.
You don't appear to have ANY IDEA what the Jesus myth theory is about.

I am not talking about a god here, just a guy. What are you proposing?... it was just made up by a few guys who paid off a few guys to tell the story and so on and so on?

No-one here proposes that.

Your theory seems less plausable.

You shown you don't have any idea what the Jesus myth theory claims.

You might find some coincidence or hint that it was all made up, but the preponderance of evidence suggests that he was not invented out of the blue.

No-one said he was invented out of the blue.

A little google came up with te Roman historians Cornelius Tacitus and, Seutonius.

Neither was contemporary.
It's not clear who Suetonius is referring to.

I don't know if any historian actually saw Jesus.

I know;
modern historians know -
NO historian met Jesus.

In fact - we don't even have ONE SINGLE claim from a CHRISTIAN to have met Jesus, OR anyone else in the stories !

Not one Christian claims to have met Jesus, Mary, Josepg, Martha, Lazarus etc. etc.

There is a complete DISCONNECT between the people IN the stories, and the people who WROTE the stories - NOT ONE single person is in both groups.

But these historians were not in the business of writing mythis.

Once again you show no understanding of the issues.
Tacitus wrote 80 YEARS after Jesus, about Christian beliefs. - NOTHING to do with Jesus existing.

Tacitus got Pilate's title WRONG, not to mention the fact that Roman records could NOT POSSIBLY have recorded the condemed man as 'the Christ'.

This shows conclusively that Tacitus is merely recording Christian BELIEFS - which do NOT mean he existed at all.

Now, once again, if he was just made up, I think SOMEone would have blown that whistle.

They did EXCATLY that !

Celsus, in late 2nd century, attacked the Gospels as fiction based on myths :

"Clearly the christians have used...myths... in fabricating the story of Jesus' birth...It is clear to me that the writings of the christians are a lie and that your fables are not well-enough constructed to conceal this monstrous fiction"

Caius, claimed the truth about Jesus was falsified from the late 2nd century :

"For they say that ... from ... Zephyrinus the truth was falsified ..."

Porphyry, in late 3rd century, claimed the Gospels were invented :

"... the evangelists were inventors – not historians”

Julian, in the 4th century, claimed Jesus was spurious, counterfeit, invented :

"why do you worship this spurious son...a counterfeit son", "you have invented your new kind of sacrifice ".

Julian was “convinced that the fabrication of the Galilaeans is a fiction of men composed by wickedness.. ”

When they arose, critics DID claim the Gospels were invented, fiction, lies.

K.

Brainache

9th April 2010, 11:28 PM

Gday,

...
Celsus, in late 2nd century, attacked the Gospels as fiction based on myths :

"Clearly the christians have used...myths... in fabricating the story of Jesus' birth...It is clear to me that the writings of the christians are a lie and that your fables are not well-enough constructed to conceal this monstrous fiction"

http://www.tertullian.org/rpearse/celsus/celsus.htm

Caius, claimed the truth about Jesus was falsified from the late 2nd century :

"For they say that ... from ... Zephyrinus the truth was falsified ..."

Google gave me this: Results 1 - 1 of 1 for "For they say that ... from ... Zephyrinus the truth was falsified ...". (0.36 seconds)

http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=160952&page=5

Porphyry, in late 3rd century, claimed the Gospels were invented :

"... the evangelists were inventors – not historians”

http://ptet.dubar.com/bible-composition.html

Julian, in the 4th century, claimed Jesus was spurious, counterfeit, invented :

"why do you worship this spurious son...a counterfeit son", "you have invented your new kind of sacrifice ".

Hmmm
Results 1 - 1 of 1 for "why do you worship this spurious son...a counterfeit son", "you have invented your new kind of sacrifice ". (0.63 seconds
http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&rls=com.microsoft%3Aen-US&q=%22why+do+you+worship+this+spurious+son...a+coun terfeit+son%22%2C+%22you+have+invented+your+new+ki nd+of+sacrifice+%22&btnG=Search&meta=&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=

Julian was “convinced that the fabrication of the Galilaeans is a fiction of men composed by wickedness.. ”

When they arose, critics DID claim the Gospels were invented, fiction, lies.

K.http://www.ccel.org/ccel/pearse/morefathers/files/julian_apostate_galileans_1_text.htm

Can I ask your source for the quotes I couldn't find on google?

shadron

10th April 2010, 01:09 AM

Let's see: Caesar was cut from his mother's womb (Cesarean section, the original), hence she had no birth canal, and no vagina, hence she had no sex at conception, hence Julius is divinely conceived, hence Jesus and Julius are the same guy.

Sure, works for me. :p I will now order Jesus Salad, not Caesar Salad, and be content with what they bring me: a small mount of olives! :D

DR

Ummm.....

Pliny the Elder (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pliny_the_Elder) theorized that Julius Caesar's name came from an ancestor who was born by Caesarean section [that is, Caesar was named after the operation, not vice versa], but the truth of this is debated (see the article on the Etymology of the name of Julius Caesar (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etymology_of_the_name_of_Julius_Caesar)). The Ancient Roman Caesarean section was first performed to remove a baby from the womb of a mother who died during childbirth. Caesar's mother, Aurelia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurelia_Cotta), lived through childbirth and successfully gave birth to her son, ruling out the possibility that the Roman Dictator and General was born by Caesarean section.

fullflavormenthol

10th April 2010, 01:17 AM

garethdjb

10th April 2010, 03:00 AM

Google gave me this:

http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=160952&page=5

Hmmm

http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&rls=com.microsoft%3Aen-US&q=%22why+do+you+worship+this+spurious+son...a+coun terfeit+son%22%2C+%22you+have+invented+your+new+ki nd+of+sacrifice+%22&btnG=Search&meta=&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=

http://www.ccel.org/ccel/pearse/morefathers/files/julian_apostate_galileans_1_text.htm

Can I ask your source for the quotes I couldn't find on google?

The Julian quotes can be found in his 'Against the Galatians', HERE: (http://www.ccel.org/ccel/pearse/morefathers/files/julian_apostate_galileans_1_text.htm)

For if it is God's will that none other should be worshipped, why do you worship this spurious son of his whom he has never yet recognised or considered as his own? This I shall easily prove. You, however, I know not why, foist on him a counterfeit son. .

But why do you not sacrifice, since you have invented your new kind of sacrifice and do not need Jerusalem at all?

The Caius quote comes from 'Against the Heresy of Artemon', more context HERE: (http://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/fathers/view.cfm?recnum=1724)

For they say that all those of the first age, and the apostles themselves, both received and taught those things which these men now maintain; and that the truth of Gospel preaching was preserved until the times of Victor, who was the thirteenth bishop in Rome from Peter, and that from his successor Zephyrinus the truth was falsified. And perhaps what they allege might be credible, did not the Holy Scriptures, in the first place, contradict them. And then, besides, there are writings of certain brethren older than the times of Victor, which they wrote against the heathen in defence of the truth, and against the heresies of their time: I mean Justin and Miltiades, and Tatian and Clement, and many others, in all which divinity is ascribed to Christ. For who is ignorant of the books of Irenaeus and Melito, and the rest, which declare Christ to be God and man?

HansMustermann

10th April 2010, 06:44 AM

Because The God Who Wasn't There keeps getting brought up as evidence I will restate that its value is in question because it realies too heavily on the hero narrative as proof that Jesus didn't exist. As such I would challenge anyone to find some historical figure that doesn't conform to the hero's journey in some form in keeping with the works of Joseph Campbell. That is really the weakness in using him as a source in such matters, because his only real power is in literature. Hence why I only encounter him in literature classes and not in history.

Actually, I'd say there are plenty of historical figures which did not start from an everyman and did not fade back into obscurity, effectively leaving the world like they found it. There are plenty of figures which went against silly odds and lost. Etc.

E.g., exactly what about Crassus's story is even vaguely resembling the monomyth? He doesn't fit as protagonist, antagonist, contagonist or any other of those sacred prescribed roles. What part of his paying out of his own pocket to go after Spartacus, only to see Pompey get the triumph for putting down the rebellion, is monomyth material? What part of his going to fight the Persians, mis-judging their logistics badly and getting hammered badly for it, then ending up dying with molten metal poured down his throat, fit the monomyth?

They may not make the most exciting myths, but if we're talking "historical figures" and not "memorable literary characters", I'd say that following the monomyth was more exception than rule.

So, yes, the objection that someone's life ends up sounding like a verbatim implementation of the monomyth, seems to me like a very valid one. The lives of real people don't usually fit the prescribed design that well.

But, heck, even if we're talking entertaining stories, let's not forget that half of Holywood's history was before acquiring their obsession with a formulaic obedience to the monomyth.

In fact, I'd say that the very fact that by now they need classes and consultants to turn any story into an exact implementation of the monomyth (to the point where standard plot twist X has to happen in minute Y out of Z) shows that that One True Narrative isn't the automatic form of all human stories. If it were, all stories would simply _be_ that way, and we wouldn't need all those people whose specialty and job description is squeezing a story into the monomyth mould.

Skeptic Ginger

10th April 2010, 01:55 PM

Brainache

10th April 2010, 02:45 PM

The Julian quotes can be found in his 'Against the Galatians', HERE: (http://www.ccel.org/ccel/pearse/morefathers/files/julian_apostate_galileans_1_text.htm)

The Caius quote comes from 'Against the Heresy of Artemon', more context HERE: (http://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/fathers/view.cfm?recnum=1724)

Thanks for that. My google powers are weak.

I was a little worried that Kapyong may have been being less than honest with these quotes, but you have put my mind at rest.

NavyPack

10th April 2010, 03:42 PM

Bottom line.

Whenever you give a critical examination of the evidence provided, it always crumbles away. Couple that with the knowledge of the culture/zeitgeist (sp) during that era, (ie messiah, gods, rituals, prophets, tribalism, symbolism), I humbly submit that any honest evaluation would, at bare minimum admit that a HJ is no more likely than literally hundreds of contemporary men/mythos.

Christianity's survival is simply an accident of history, on par w/ the survival of Indian elephants vs extinction of mammoths & pigmy elephants.

What looks like destiny/reliability, in hindsight, is illusory.

Just the thought of a devout Jew utilizing cannibalism as the foundation of his ultimate purpose/message/church.

And yet, I still fully understand that this discussion is moot in all practical terms; Even if there were a dude who provided the bulk of teachings/actions/adherents, it was the Judean god, brought to Judea not by the Exodus, which didn't actually occur, but by Babylon, with a godly wife in tow.

But I could be wrong...

bluskool

11th April 2010, 12:39 PM

So your premise is no one could possibly present convincing evidence in a movie format?

Or are you assuming all movie format arguments are by their nature slanted propaganda?

That's quite a straw man you pulled out of my statement. I said that I wouldn't base my opinion on a movie or a small number of scholars. That's called an opinion, not an argument and it doesn't entail anything about whether I think movies can present valid arguments. You missed some of qualifiers. For example, this particular argument is one that is rejected by the overwhelming majority of experts in a wide variety of related fields. That doesn't mean that the argument is false, but it should raise suspicion.

Or what? We are too stupid to have checked the validity of the presented evidence because we were so snookered by a slick presentation?

Did you check the validity of the argument? If so, what about the counter arguments offered by scholars do find unconvincing?

Sorry, your underlying assumptions appear to be flawed. The movie (and I assume the paper/web site/book as well), was convincing because the evidence is convincing, not because those of us influenced to take a second look at our preconceived assumptions are naive.

That Jesus was probably a real person is not an assumption. It is a position based on a fair amount of evidence, some of which has been presented here. If wish to argue against the evidence, go ahead and do so. But just saying that the position has been defeated by a movie does not add any light to this conversation.

NavyPack

11th April 2010, 01:25 PM

bluski...

What positive evidence are you refering to?

From everything I have found, every piece of evidence brought forth so far falls into two camps:

Statemenst about the existence of christians, and their beliefs, decades/centuries after the fact.

Dubious/obvious forgeries or 'corrections' by later scribes.

If I have missed an important piece of information/evidence, I would love to take a look @ it.

I honestly have no emotional investment in this issue, as I have explained that it is ultimately moot. From my viewpoint, the majority of biblical scholars who believe in a HJ, due so not on positive evidence.

In my opinion, it is more of a emotional appeal along these lines:
"We now know that the bible isn't reliable and/or true. But there were hundreds of itenerant preaches in that time, so why not? Why take away jesus from our friends & family?"

Skeptic Ginger

11th April 2010, 07:05 PM

That's quite a straw man you pulled out of my statement. I said that I wouldn't base my opinion on a movie or a small number of scholars. It's not a straw man. You've said it again. You've made an assumption any film presentation cannot suffice to present a compelling case.

That's called an opinion, not an argument and it doesn't entail anything about whether I think movies can present valid arguments. You missed some of qualifiers. For example, this particular argument is one that is rejected by the overwhelming majority of experts in a wide variety of related fields. That doesn't mean that the argument is false, but it should raise suspicion.I question your 'experts'. I've read a number of web page summaries of the rebuttals to the "no historical Jesus" evidence and the rebuttals were mostly apologetic walks around the evidence.

Did you check the validity of the argument? If so, what about the counter arguments offered by scholars do find unconvincing?Yep. The strongest arguments against an historical Jesus come from the lack of corroborating records, either of the man himself, or of the rulers and traditions described as part of the Jesus story.

That Jesus was probably a real person is not an assumption. It is a position based on a fair amount of evidence, some of which has been presented here. If wish to argue against the evidence, go ahead and do so. But just saying that the position has been defeated by a movie does not add any light to this conversation.That's your misappraisal of my words. I said I held the default assumption the Bible was a valid historical record, as this is what was 'common knowledge' as far back as I can remember. It was the movie which presented a convincing case that made me, for the first time say, "gee, maybe that assumption about the Bible as a valid historical record (not counting all the mythical stuff) was a bad assumption."

DOC

12th April 2010, 12:08 AM

If it can't be proven that Jesus rose from the dead, then Jesus (even if he did exist) was just another philosopher/catalyst and that's all. His pre-death existence isn't as important as his supposed resurrected one and I'm not sure why more believers don't focus on that aspect.

The apostle Paul, former Christian hater and subsequently probably the greatest evangelist in history, felt the exact same way.

http://bible.cc/1_corinthians/15-17.htm

But because of the information available to him at the time it looks like the well educated former Christian hater came to believe it did happen which was why he tirelessly risked his life to preach it and wrote the 13 letters that make up a large portion of the greatest selling book in history.

HansMustermann

12th April 2010, 03:06 AM

DOC,

1. the "I didn't believe myself, but now I'm convinced" sales pitch is still being used to sell snake oil. Whether it's a belief, or miraculous gasoline additives, or quantum chi pendants, or... anatomy enhancement pills, or some financial ponzi scheme, or ID, that's the standard format for an unverifiable personal anecdote as testimony. Just have a look in your spam folder.

It gives the gullible a message that someone was already all sceptical until presented with evidence, so don't they have to bother with either themselves.

Unfortunately, this is already known by the con artists too, so all too often it's from the start just the standard lie format.

2. Nevertheless, Paul had an (unverifiable) hallucination. That's the evidence that convinced him.

That hallucinations seem very real to the one having them, is already known. After all, Joan d'Arc was convinced enough by her seeing those saints, to even go get herself burned at the stake in the name of what they told her to do. You don't do that unless it appears to be real. And the recent guy who killed the guy next to him on the bus because God told him so, well, obviously it seemed real enough to him too. Etc.

The problem is that essentially it's a malfunction in the same instrument you use to decide whether it's real or not. Same as when you measure a battery with a deffective multimeter. If it says 1.2V, on a battery that's supposed to go to 1.5, you decide it's nearly empty, and that must be the real thing. If actually your multimeter is on the fritz and that battery is actually at 1.4V (e.g., because a contact is nearly dead and you effectively have a resistor along one of the leads), that's an indication you don't get.

But at any rate, that Paul got convinced by his own hallucination and mistook it for evidence, doesn't mean I have to do the same thing.

Brainache

12th April 2010, 03:41 AM

I was talking about this thread to a friend of mine and I was taking the side of the folks here who say there was no historical Jesus. She countered with the argument that if he was fictional, his teachings would have been different. By which I mean that what the stories say Jesus said and did, doesn't match up with the kind of Messiah that the Old Testament predicts.

If 1st Century Jews decided to invent a Messiah from whole cloth, they would have made sure he was the one their book was telling them to look for.

The later gospels try to work around the problem by adding stupid stuff about a census and riding two donkeys etc to try to match the Jesus story with the OT prophecies, but if Jesus was an invention, the author would have known all of the prophecies and written the Jesus story to match them in the first place.

It makes sense to me.

Unless of course the person inventing the Jesus story wasn't Jewish and only had an outsider's knowledge of their religion.

I'm still waiting for someone to invent that time machine so we can actually settle these questions...

HansMustermann

12th April 2010, 04:19 AM

Well, which interpretation of the OT? Not everyone was an OT literalist, and in fact the sect that won was already very liberal with interpreting the OT. To this day there are at least 3 competing versions of afterlife alone in Judaism, and back then there still a fourth: that there is none. Supported by none other than the major and powerful sect that were the Sadducees.

They disagreed on pretty much just about anything in there. E.g., while the Sadducees were taking "an eye for an eye" as literally sentencing the perp to get an eye poked out, the Pharisees were taking it as making him pay an adequate compensation to the victim for the loss of an eye. E.g., while the Sadducees were taking it literally that someone impure (e.g., has just handled the dead) be excluded from community life for X days, the Pharisees were busy devising cleansing rituals so that person can still be a part of their community. Etc.

And there were a lot of other ideas being imported, some successfully, some not, from Zoroastrianism and a few other cults and philosophy schools, again mostly via the Pharisees.

I'm saying this to put things into context: the old religion was in a state of flux, and doctrines were interpreted differently by each different rabbi. (Who incidentally was a Pharisee.)

The idea of a Messiah was one such. The dominant Pharisee version of a Messiah and of the end times, was, basically, that the Messiah will not just free Israel, but will also resurrect all the dead or mark the beginning of the age where the dead will be resurrected and live for ever. Or at least those deserving eternal life.

A Messiah capable of even resurrecting himself was very much in line with that. ETA: It would in fact be the ultimate proof that he _is_ that messiah.

And that a splinter group or a hallucinating guy would take it from there in an even more different direction, isn't actually all that unbelievable.

Brainache

12th April 2010, 04:59 AM

HansMustermann

12th April 2010, 05:16 AM

Brainache

12th April 2010, 06:10 AM

The earliest Gospel is likely Mark, and even that was some time afterwards and likely preaching to the choir so to speak. The earliest mentions we have of Jesus are from Paul, and he seems to be more than a bit vague about who he was and exactly what he did.

In between we have a gap of some tens of years where likely some gentiles (Paul claimed to be the apostle to the gentiles, remember?) had time to figure out which parts from that OT ought to apply to their messiah and flesh out the image that way. Matthew is probably the clearest example of that, as he even misundestood most of the prophecies he claimed fulfilled. He clearly wasn't a scholar of the Jewish Tanakh.

Also, how do you figure that that supports a historical Jesus anyway?

Well, the fact that there was something to "flesh out" in the first place. The "fleshing out" was only possible if the bones of the story already existed.

I imagine Saul of Tarsus meeting a little cult of Jews who tell him the tale of their dead founder. They tell him all about this heretic whose teachings they follow. Saul says "hmmm, love your neighbour? Forgive your enemies? Blessed are the meek? (etc etc) I like it!" He changes his name to Paul and says "I want to tell everyone about this! Look out Rome, here I come!"

The Jews that Saul met were just one of many little cults around in that time and place, but this particular group happened to be talking about a bloke called Jesus who was executed for being a heretic. Saul is an excitable rich guy who goes off the deep end proselytizing wherever he goes. He builds up a following telling almost the same story about this Jesus bloke to everyone he meets. Different places get slightly different versions of the story and the oral nature of the tradition ensures that the stories diverge over the ensuing decades. Eventually they are written down. Some are just copies of the earlier ones with bits added to boost circulation (miracles performed and prophecies fulfilled etc).

If there never was a heretic preacher called Jesus who was stoned for preaching on the sabbath or nailed to a cross or whatever, then I guess we have to conclude that it was all invented by Saul/Paul. Maybe he was just a bored rich kid who should have got himself a better hobby, or a wife.

I'm not too fussed either way, it won't make religion evaporate even if I did get my time machine and video-taped Saul inventing the whole thing. People would still believe it and I'd probably end up burned at the stake, or something.

HansMustermann

12th April 2010, 06:23 AM

Well, in the end that's the whole point of this thread: there may have been _something_ to flesh out, but that "something" doesn't necessarily have to be "a wandering rabbi from Nazareth called Jesus."

You know, because that's the implied false dichotomy in the argument that goes "it must be based on the real guy, because otherwise they could have made a wholly invented story a lot simpler." The false dichotomy is that either it was either based on a historical Jesus, or it was invented from scratch. What dawned upon me when reading that Julius Caesar claim (even though it itself may well be false) was basically that there are other possibilities than those two. They could have started from anything whatsoever.

We just don't know what happened there, and some seem to be just too eager to fill in the blanks with something that's just another unsupported piece of imagination.

Brainache

12th April 2010, 06:27 AM

HansMustermann

12th April 2010, 06:51 AM

- They could have just started from one or more other myths, for example, and changed a few names.

- They could have made a mish-mash of sayings and legends about several different Jesus/Joshua guys, so there is no single one of them that was "the historical Jesus". As was said repeatedly, it was very common name, so the possibility of name clashes is also very very high. There were literally tens of thousands of Jesuses running around at any given time.

Think about my example about hallucinating about a Russian messiah called Ivan. Now think that two centuries later some idiot scribe has that _and_ some completely unrelated text with some smart-ass parables from some completely other Ivan. But he has not much clue about Russia and russian names, and thinks there must be just one guy called Ivan. So he merges them into the other text.

What does it have to do with Jesus? Well, for example: do we know that _if_ a Q document existed at all, it actually was about the same Jesus? Nope, not really.

- They could have simply started with a list of stuff to fulfill, not only from their own religion, but from the guys they were trying to convert too, and built the story from there. And it ended up so convoluted simply because it had a mile long list of bullet points to touch.

Etc.

pgwenthold

12th April 2010, 08:41 AM

If 1st Century Jews decided to invent a Messiah from whole cloth, they would have made sure he was the one their book was telling them to look for.

But aren't there absolutely examples of the bible doing this? For example, didn't Luke make up that whole "everyone had to register for the census" crap just as an excuse to get Jesus born in Bethlehem, because that is where everyone thought the Messiah was supposed to be born?

So there are stories going around, but they don't sufficiently correspond to what the Messiah is like, and Luke, trying to make Jesus into a messiah, makes up some story about a non-existent census.

Similarly, Jesus is supposedly claimed to be born of a virgin, because that is what the translated version the gospel writers had was saying, despite the fact that the actual old testament didn't say virgin, it said "young woman." So Jesus is given properties to conform with a mistranslated version of the old testament.

There are other examples, too.

Finally, I have to wonder about your friend's claim. The usual christian approach is to challenge others to explain "how Jesus satisfies so much of the old testament prophecy" or some such nonsense. Apparently she is unfamiliar with Josh McDowell.

Simon39759

12th April 2010, 09:56 AM

The apostle Paul, former Christian hater and subsequently probably the greatest evangelist in history, felt the exact same way.
http://bible.cc/1_corinthians/15-17.htm

Not really.
There is no real evidences that Paul ever considered Jesus existence as more than spiritual and metaphysical (aka, we don't know for certain that Paul believed Jesus to have been a physical human being, read the thread, 'ktxbye).

But because of the information available to him at the time it looks like the well educated former Christian hater came to believe it did happen which was why he tirelessly risked his life to preach it and wrote the 13 letters that make up a large portion of the greatest selling book in history.

We don't really know that Paul was well educated either, we only have, Paul (and his travel assistant's) testimonies and it seems pretty clear to me that Paul was never above a wee bit of self-aggrandizing embellishment.
Indeed, while I lack the knowledge to make my own judgement on this matter, I have read several times scholars commenting on how crude Paul's Greek and/or knowledge of the Bible was, which suggests that he was not so well educated after all.
Of course, we only have the Christian mythology to tell us that he previously hated Christianity and converted...

Also, while 13 epistles are indeed attributed to Paul, they, by no means, "make up a large portion" of the Bible. They are a small portion of the New Testament, itself a small portion of the Bible.
Furthermore, only 7 of these epistles are now considered authentic.
Finally, the Bible DOES NOT consitute the biggest selling book in history. A fact that would be irrelevant anyway and a blatant appeal to popularity.

What is annoying is that you were corrected on several of these mistakes in your own thread.
Yet you repeat them here in a blatant illustration of your intellectual dishonesty...

Kapyong

12th April 2010, 02:05 PM

Gday,

I was talking about this thread to a friend of mine and I was taking the side of the folks here who say there was no historical Jesus. She countered with the argument that if he was fictional, his teachings would have been different. By which I mean that what the stories say Jesus said and did, doesn't match up with the kind of Messiah that the Old Testament predicts. If 1st Century Jews decided to invent a Messiah from whole cloth, they would have made sure he was the one their book was telling them to look for.

Unfortunately, your friend has no idea what the Jesus Myth theory actually claims.

It is NOT claimed it is made from whole cloth at all !
That is almost the exact OPPOSITE of the real claim.

The main thrust of the Jesus myth theory is that the story is crafted, NOT from whole cloth, but from episodes in the OT, (and some pagan cites also.)

Many elements of the Jesus story are clearly lifted from the OT, and it SAYS SO many times "to fulfil the scriptures".

Your apologist friends' argument bears no similarity with the actual claims and evidence.

K.

Kapyong

12th April 2010, 02:06 PM

Gday,

Finally, I have to wonder about your friend's claim. The usual christian approach is to challenge others to explain "how Jesus satisfies so much of the old testament prophecy" or some such nonsense. Apparently she is unfamiliar with Josh McDowell.

Yes, Brain's friend seems to have no idea what Christians claim, nor what Jesus Mythers claim.

K.

bluskool

12th April 2010, 02:11 PM

bluski...

What positive evidence are you refering to?

We have numerous, independent sources all claiming that Jesus was a real person. Paul, Mark, Q, M, L, John, possibly Tacitus, possibly Josephus and possibly the Gospel of Thomas.

There are, of course, problems with the sources. They aren't as close to the event as we would like, they aren't disinterested, they contradict each other, etc... But this is the only evidence we have so we must take it for what it is and try to apply rigorous historical scrutiny in order to see if there is any real history that can be extracted. For now we will stick to Paul since he is our earliest source. But I do think that Mark would be another good source to consider since we have no evidence that Mark had read Paul.

a. Paul claims to have come to believe in Jesus because of a vision (Galatians 1:11-12), but to have been persecuting the church prior to this (Galatians 1:13-14, Philippians 3:4-6). If Paul made the whole thing up, who was it he was persecuting?

b. Paul claims he met with Jesus's disciples including his brother James. (Galatians 1:18-19). If Paul didn't think Jesus was real, why did he claim that Jesus had brothers? (We also see this claim in the less controversial passage from Josephus.)

c. Paul recites what is considered to be a pre-Pauline creed in 1 Corinthians 15:3-8 where he states that Jesus died, rose from the dead and was then seen by his followers. In order to believe that someone died, you would have to believe they were once alive.

d. Paul indicates that Jesus preached to the Jews while he was alive in Romans 15.

e. Paul says that Jesus preached guidelines for divorce. (1 Corinthians 7:10-14)

f. Paul describes the last supper and Jesus' betrayal in 1 Corinthians 11.

g. Paul claims that Jesus was crucified in 1 Corinthians 2.

All of these show that Paul at least believed and spoke about Jesus as if he was a real person. We also have evidence that Paul was concerned about other evangelists with alternative gospel messages which further makes it difficult to believe that Paul just made Jesus up or hallucinated him. The best explanation for these facts is that Jesus actually was a real person. I think that any other explanation is going to require hypothesizing beyond the evidence.

Kapyong

12th April 2010, 02:52 PM

Gday,

We have numerous, independent sources all claiming that Jesus was a real person. Paul,

False.
Paul does NOT claim Jesus was a "real person" anywhere.
He makes religious claims about a spirit-being.
But believers insist they IMPLY a real person.

Mark, Q, M, L, John,

False.
None of these books (one a speculated set of SAYINGS) has a actual claim that Jesus was a "real person".
They are STORIES about a man-god.

possibly Tacitus,

False.
Tacitus does NOT make any claim that Jesus was a "real person".
He merely repeated 2nd century Christian BELIEFS.

possibly Josephus

Josephus is corrupt, perhaps totally forged.

and possibly the Gospel of Thomas.

False.
G.Thomas does NOT make any claim that Jesus was a "real person".
It's a book of SAYINGS, with NOTHING historical at all.

bluskool - sayings and stories ABOUT a spiritual God-man ARE NOT 'claims he was a real person' anymore than the Greek Myths about Hercules are claims Hercules was a real person.

There are, of course, problems with the sources.

Damn right.
NONE of them stand up to scrutiny.
NONE of them contain a CLAIM that Jesus was a real person at all - not one.

They aren't as close to the event as we would like, they aren't disinterested, they contradict each other, etc... But this is the only evidence we have so we must take it for what it is and try to apply rigorous historical scrutiny in order to see if there is any real history that can be extracted.

We have.
There is no history of Jesus there to be extracted.

For now we will stick to Paul since he is our earliest source.

Yah, claims about VISIONS of a timeless God-man.
NO claims about a 'real person' at all.

K.

Complexity

12th April 2010, 03:04 PM

It doesn't matter at all if there really was a man on whom the jesus myth was hung.

There isn't a 'god', there is no 'son of god', communion wafers remain crackers, and there are better hobbies available than promulgating jeebus stuff.

pgwenthold

12th April 2010, 06:02 PM

We have numerous, independent sources all claiming that Jesus was a real person. Paul, Mark, Q, M, L, John, possibly Tacitus, possibly Josephus and possibly the Gospel of Thomas.

What about the other gospels? Judas? Mary Magdalene? Aren't those gospels, too? Do they not talk about Jesus as a real person?

Why do people completely focus only on those gospels selected by the early church because they best represented the message the church wanted to convey, including coherency?

From a historical perspective, non-church endorsed are just as legitimate sources about Jesus those endorsed by the church. Lack of agreement among them would only reflect the fact that the gospels as we know them are carefully selected.

154

12th April 2010, 06:05 PM

Brainache

12th April 2010, 06:42 PM

Gday,

False.
G.Thomas does NOT make any claim that Jesus was a "real person".
It's a book of SAYINGS, with NOTHING historical at all.

Yah, claims about VISIONS of a timeless God-man.
NO claims about a 'real person' at all.

K.

Ummm...

http://www.gnosis.org/naghamm/gthlamb.html
These are the secret sayings which the living Jesus spoke and which Didymos Judas Thomas wrote down

(13) Jesus said to his disciples, "Compare me to someone and tell me whom I am like."
Simon Peter said to him, "You are like a righteous angel."
Matthew said to him, "You are like a wise philosopher."
Thomas said to him, "Master, my mouth is wholly incapable of saying whom you are like."
Jesus said, "I am not your master. Because you have drunk, you have become intoxicated from the bubbling spring which I have measured out."
And he took him and withdrew and told him three things. When Thomas returned to his companions, they asked him, "What did Jesus say to you?"
Thomas said to them, "If I tell you one of the things which he told me, you will pick up stones and throw them at me; a fire will come out of the stones and burn you up."

A lot of these sayings just read like the ravings of schizophrenic to me, but the author of this gospel does claim to have spoken with a living man who said a lot of the same things generally attributed to Jebus. There are also sayings that aren't in the usual NT stories.

Thomas does seem to be talking about a living person. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying he was the son of God or that he rose from the dead or did any miracles, but I don't understand why it is so important to you to believe that there was no one person behind the myths.

Again, if there were no historical Jesus, there wouldn't have been any need to change the story to match the OT prophecies.

Hokulele

12th April 2010, 07:17 PM

I was talking about this thread to a friend of mine and I was taking the side of the folks here who say there was no historical Jesus. She countered with the argument that if he was fictional, his teachings would have been different. By which I mean that what the stories say Jesus said and did, doesn't match up with the kind of Messiah that the Old Testament predicts.

I'll use this bit as the jumping off point, as I may be the friend in question here. ;)

One thing that seems a bit unclear in the OP and very unclear in this last page of points is the issue that Paul and other early Christians most likely did not see themselves as inventing a new religion, which seems to be the assumption when talking about inventing a Jesus as a starting point for something other than Judaism. Judging by Paul's letters, which seem to be the center point of this discussion, he wasn't so much creating something to replace OT Judaism, but to expand or enhance it.

If this were the case, why invent a vision that would pretty much be viewed as nonsense by the majority of the Jews of the time? Although Paul is specifically addressing gentiles the majority of the time, it is clear he is aware he is working within the framework of Judaism judging by his commentary on the church in Jerusalem, and not one of the other religions prominent at the time or as the establishment of something novel.

Kapyong

12th April 2010, 08:39 PM

Gday,

Ummm...
http://www.gnosis.org/naghamm/gthlamb.html

Not quite.
The author does NOT identify himself as Thomas.
He does not say "he" heard it, he does not say "I".
He implies it, at best.

This is no different from the anonymous Gospel authors putting word in the mouths of Jesus and others.

NOT ONE of your listed "claims" actually have a clear and specific claim to have met a historical Jesus personally.

Ummm...
A lot of these sayings just read like the ravings of schizophrenic to me, but the author of this gospel does claim to have spoken with a living man who said a lot of the same things generally attributed to Jebus. There are also sayings that aren't in the usual NT stories.

He makes NO SUCH claim.

The claims actually are :
"Jesus spoke"
"Thomas wrote down"

The author does NOT claim to have "spoken to Jesus", nor to have heard Jesus.

You are reading your beliefs into the text.

Ummm...
Thomas does seem to be talking about a living person.

The author does not clearly claim to be Thomas.

Ummm...
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying he was the son of God or that he rose from the dead or did any miracles, but I don't understand why it is so important to you to believe that there was no one person behind the myths.

It is important to me to get to the truth.

Why is it so important to YOU for there to be a person behind the myths?

Again, if there were no historical Jesus, there wouldn't have been any need to change the story to match the OT prophecies.

What?
If there was no historical Jesus, there was no story to change.

The story we have DOES match the OT, we can see many examples where the Jesus story is clearly echoing episodes in the OT. The writers remind us time and time again that Jesus "fulfilled the scriptures".

It's exactly what we expect of a story which is crafted from elements from earlier scripture, not from history.

K.

Kapyong

12th April 2010, 08:43 PM

Gday,

If this were the case, why invent a vision that would pretty much be viewed as nonsense by the majority of the Jews of the time?

Invent a vision ?
Who said that?

(Why do people have so much trouble grasping what the Jesus Myth claims actually are? No-one argues Paul "invented a vision" at all.)

Paul seems to have really had a vision. A life-changing vision which filled him with inspiration to preach to others, and convince many. Because people BELIEVED in visions back then.

But so what?
Visions means nothing to US, no matter how real they were to Paul or his followers.

K.

HansMustermann

13th April 2010, 01:36 AM

What about the other gospels? Judas? Mary Magdalene? Aren't those gospels, too? Do they not talk about Jesus as a real person?

Not to mention that out of that list, if "M, L" means Matthew and Luke, then that list only really contains Mark as an original source. And possibly Q, _if_ it really existed, and _if_ it even referred to the same Jesus. It's pretty accepted that Matthew and Luke copied wholesale from Mark, and John basically was doing a retelling harmonized with the more educated Greek concepts and way of thinking.

So listing all 4 as different evidence seems to me basically as silly as if I were to present Star Wars Episode IV as VHS, laser disk, DVD and remastered BluRay as 4 independent pieces of evidence of the existence of our messiah Luke Skywalker. And hey, look, at some point it switched from Han shooting first to Han shooting second, so they must be separate sources, right? :p

bluskool

13th April 2010, 04:57 AM

Gday,

False.
Paul does NOT claim Jesus was a "real person" anywhere.
He makes religious claims about a spirit-being.
But believers insist they IMPLY a real person.

You didn't address any of the information I provided from Paul's letters where he appears to think that Jesus was real.

False.
None of these books (one a speculated set of SAYINGS) has a actual claim that Jesus was a "real person".
They are STORIES about a man-god.

You think they need to say "Jesus was a real person" explicitly in order for us to assume that they, at least, believed they were writing about a real person? Is this the same criteria you would apply to all of history?

Also, John is the only gospel that claims Jesus was a man-god.

False.
Tacitus does NOT make any claim that Jesus was a "real person".
He merely repeated 2nd century Christian BELIEFS.

Maybe.

Josephus is corrupt, perhaps totally forged.

Their are two passages in Josephus, one that is controversial and one that is relatively uncontroversial and only tells us that Jesus had a brother.

False.
G.Thomas does NOT make any claim that Jesus was a "real person".
It's a book of SAYINGS, with NOTHING historical at all.

Seriously? Are you aware that the first line in the Gospel of Thomas is "These are the secret sayings that the living Jesus spoke and Didymos Judas Thomas recorded." That sounds like a claim that he was alive to me. And it contains nothing historical because... you say so?

bluskool - sayings and stories ABOUT a spiritual God-man ARE NOT 'claims he was a real person' anymore than the Greek Myths about Hercules are claims Hercules was a real person.

And assuming your position is true when evaluating the evidence is called begging the question.

Damn right.
NONE of them stand up to scrutiny.
NONE of them contain a CLAIM that Jesus was a real person at all - not one.

Simply repeating your belief that you can't infer that they thought that Jesus was a real person is not persuasive. I listed several instances in Paul where you could draw the inference that Paul at least thought he was talking about a real person. What are your arguments against those points?

We have.
There is no history of Jesus there to be extracted.

Who is we? Because the vast and overwhelming majority of scholars and historians researching the subject beg to differ. This isn't meant to be an argument from authority. I am just wondering who the "we" that you refer to are.

Yah, claims about VISIONS of a timeless God-man.
NO claims about a 'real person' at all.

Again, what are your arguments against the examples I gave from Paul. Are you saying he is talking about a vision in each instance?

bluskool

13th April 2010, 05:07 AM

What about the other gospels? Judas? Mary Magdalene? Aren't those gospels, too? Do they not talk about Jesus as a real person?

Why do people completely focus only on those gospels selected by the early church because they best represented the message the church wanted to convey, including coherency?

From a historical perspective, non-church endorsed are just as legitimate sources about Jesus those endorsed by the church. Lack of agreement among them would only reflect the fact that the gospels as we know them are carefully selected.

No, it is not because they are the books that the church selected. The reason for using these sources is because they are the earliest. Gospel of Thomas is not in the New Testament and could be an early source as well which is why I included it. The other gospels you refer to are dated to more than a century after Jesus supposedly lived.

bluskool

13th April 2010, 05:12 AM

Not to mention that out of that list, if "M, L" means Matthew and Luke, then that list only really contains Mark as an original source. And possibly Q, _if_ it really existed, and _if_ it even referred to the same Jesus. It's pretty accepted that Matthew and Luke copied wholesale from Mark, and John basically was doing a retelling harmonized with the more educated Greek concepts and way of thinking.

So listing all 4 as different evidence seems to me basically as silly as if I were to present Star Wars Episode IV as VHS, laser disk, DVD and remastered BluRay as 4 independent pieces of evidence of the existence of our messiah Luke Skywalker. And hey, look, at some point it switched from Han shooting first to Han shooting second, so they must be separate sources, right? :p

No, "M" is the material in Matthew that only appears in Matthew ad nowhere else. Same for L. It's an independent source because we don't know where the material came from. Did they each have another source, did they make it up, did they get it from the oral tradition, was it just other material from Q? Who knows?

CurtC

13th April 2010, 06:29 AM

@bluskool: I hope you realize though, that there is exactly as much evidence for the Q document as for fairies.
That's not true at all. We know there had to be something there, and we can know some of the stuff that was in it, and infer its basic qualities. That doesn't mean that it is like fairies - a better analogy would be the common ancestor between the great apes and monkeys. We know this creature had to exist, and we can infer a fair amount of info about it, it's just that we don't have any physical specimens.

HansMustermann

13th April 2010, 07:09 AM

No, "M" is the material in Matthew that only appears in Matthew ad nowhere else. Same for L. It's an independent source because we don't know where the material came from. Did they each have another source, did they make it up, did they get it from the oral tradition, was it just other material from Q? Who knows?

You mean, the stuff where Matthew invents an atrocity about Herod here, a mass zombie invasion there, a Speedy-Gonzales like trip to Egypt and back in another place, etc? That stuff is so completely nutjob that it's kinda surprising to see it taken as a source at all.

ETA:

And also, it seems to me like you still overstate the case for Q. It's easy to pretend it's just some whole parables that have been copied from somewhere else, but for example it's harder to use a Q hypothesis to explain why there are words added in the middle of a freaking sentence in both Matthew and Luke, if they were not copying from each other or from the same revised version of Mark. There are no less than 198 instances of a single word added in the same place in both Matthew and Luke, compared to Mark, and 82 involve two words, 35 three, 16 four, and 16 instances of five or more words.

Do you suppose that the Q document said "add the word X in the third position of sentence Y"?

I'm sorry, but that kind of thing is _far_ easier explained by copying from each other or from the same revised copy of Mark, than by a separate Q document.

And that's just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Q problems.

HansMustermann

13th April 2010, 07:22 AM

No, it is not because they are the books that the church selected. The reason for using these sources is because they are the earliest. Gospel of Thomas is not in the New Testament and could be an early source as well which is why I included it. The other gospels you refer to are dated to more than a century after Jesus supposedly lived.

The only surviving copy of the Gospel Of Thomas is dated 350 AD. An earlier similar text exists from 200 AD, but it's not quite the same text. And while some argue that it might be early, others place it as late as 150 AD or even later.

bluskool

13th April 2010, 08:44 AM

You mean, the stuff where Matthew invents an atrocity about Herod here, a mass zombie invasion there, a Speedy-Gonzales like trip to Egypt and back in another place, etc? That stuff is so completely nutjob that it's kinda surprising to see it taken as a source at all.

That and things like the sermon on the mount. I am not claiming that we should take the source at face value, but if there is a saying in M that is also in, say John for example, then we can say that the criteria of independent attestation is met.

ETA:

And also, it seems to me like you still overstate the case for Q. It's easy to pretend it's just some whole parables that have been copied from somewhere else, but for example it's harder to use a Q hypothesis to explain why there are words added in the middle of a freaking sentence in both Matthew and Luke, if they were not copying from each other or from the same revised version of Mark. There are no less than 198 instances of a single word added in the same place in both Matthew and Luke, compared to Mark, and 82 involve two words, 35 three, 16 four, and 16 instances of five or more words.

They could have been copying from a deutero-Mark, but that doesn't get rid of the need for Q. Moreover, just stating that there are a lot of agreements against Mark in Matthew and Luke sounds more damning than it is when you actually look at the agreements in the original Greek as Streeter has done in The Four Gospels (http://www.katapi.org.uk/4Gospels/master.html?http://www.katapi.org.uk/4Gospels/Ch7.htm).

Do you suppose that the Q document said "add the word X in the third position of sentence Y"?

That question doesn't make any sense. Q is hypothesized as the material in Matthew and Luke which is not in Mark, so how could Q be used to modify what was written in Mark?

I'm sorry, but that kind of thing is _far_ easier explained by copying from each other or from the same revised copy of Mark, than by a separate Q document.

No, that view raises far more questions than it answers. For example, if they copied a revised Mark, (that I guess you are claiming contained Q material) then why does Luke, Matthew and Mark follow the same outline used in the Mark we have, but completely rearrange the rest of the material? Is it just a coincidence that Matthew and Luke happened to rearrange the specific parts of this hypothetical Mark which are not contained in the Mark we have?

And that's just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Q problems.

No it's not. The minor agreements argument is by far the best and most serious argument against Q and even it doesn't hold up very well under scrutiny.

HansMustermann

13th April 2010, 09:04 AM

Again, you're implying a sort of consensus that just isn't there. There are at least half a dozen theories about who copied from whom/what, and the Q hypothesis is just one of them. Starting with the one of Augustine of Hippo himself, the so called Augustinian Hypothesis, that basically Matthew was first and Mark and Luke copied from him. Mark simply being an abridged version of Matthew in this view. And ending with the Griesbach hypothesis that Mark is basically summarizing both Matthew and Luke, and the Farrer hypothesis that Luke was basically copying from Luke and Mark, i.e., basically the kind of harmony I was talking about earlier.

The four-source solution, with M and L being separate and independent sources, is frankly the least agreed upon.

And it seems to me like a core claim to making up all those sources independent is to handwave that all those authors or sources were indeed independent. (To the extent that that now I'm apparently supposed to assume that the four evangelists could have not even known about _Paul_.) That wasn't clear at all even to the church fathers. E.g., the aforementioned Augustine Of Hippo said, "And however they may appear to have kept each of them a certain order of narration proper to himself, this certainly is not to be taken as if each individual writer chose to write in ignorance of what his predecessor had done"

pgwenthold

13th April 2010, 09:15 AM

No, it is not because they are the books that the church selected. The reason for using these sources is because they are the earliest. Gospel of Thomas is not in the New Testament and could be an early source as well which is why I included it. The other gospels you refer to are dated to more than a century after Jesus supposedly lived.

Which makes them SO much better than those that were written 50 years after, right?

bluskool

13th April 2010, 10:16 AM

Again, you're implying a sort of consensus that just isn't there. There are at least half a dozen theories about who copied from whom/what, and the Q hypothesis is just one of them. Starting with the one of Augustine of Hippo himself, the so called Augustinian Hypothesis, that basically Matthew was first and Mark and Luke copied from him. Mark simply being an abridged version of Matthew in this view. And ending with the Griesbach hypothesis that Mark is basically summarizing both Matthew and Luke, and the Farrer hypothesis that Luke was basically copying from Luke and Mark, i.e., basically the kind of harmony I was talking about earlier.

I am not just implying it, I am directly saying it. The existence of Q is the most widely held view among historians and biblical scholars.

The four-source solution, with M and L being separate and independent sources, is frankly the least agreed upon.

Where do you get that idea from?

And it seems to me like a core claim to making up all those sources independent is to handwave that all those authors or sources were indeed independent. (To the extent that that now I'm apparently supposed to assume that the four evangelists could have not even known about _Paul_.)

What handwaving? I said that there is no evidence that the authors knew each other or read each other. If you think they did, you are just going beyond the evidence. I also never said they couldn't have known about Paul. I said that they show no sign of having read Paul. Again, there is just no evidence.

That wasn't clear at all even to the church fathers. E.g., the aforementioned Augustine Of Hippo said, "And however they may appear to have kept each of them a certain order of narration proper to himself, this certainly is not to be taken as if each individual writer chose to write in ignorance of what his predecessor had done"

Why should I give a crap about what some church father thought in the fourth or fifth century?

bluskool

13th April 2010, 10:19 AM

Which makes them SO much better than those that were written 50 years after, right?

Yes. For ancient historians, the earlier sources are always thought to be more reliable.

pgwenthold

13th April 2010, 10:22 AM

Yes. For ancient historians, the earlier sources are always thought to be more reliable.

So then we should conclude that L Frank Baum's original Wizard of Oz books are more reliable than the modern adaptations, being written 100 years later? They are better historical sources?

bluskool

13th April 2010, 10:36 AM

So then we should conclude that L Frank Baum's original Wizard of Oz books are more reliable than the modern adaptations, being written 100 years later? They are better historical sources?

You are begging the question. The discussion here is over whether or not Jesus was a real person. You are assuming he wasn't in your analogy. We know the Wizard of Oz is entirely myth and allegory. We know the gospels contain myth, but based on the evidence, they appear to contain legendary myths based on an actual historical figure.

Darat

13th April 2010, 10:45 AM

You are begging the question. The discussion here is over whether or not Jesus was a real person. You are assuming he wasn't in your analogy. We know the Wizard of Oz is entirely myth and allegory. We know the gospels contain myth, but based on the evidence, they appear to contain legendary myths based on an actual historical figure.

I've looked into this ;) and I can find records of girls around the age given for Dorothy in the first book living in Kansas at the time the book is set, how do you know that the Dorothy of the books wasn't based on one of those real people?

bluskool

13th April 2010, 11:20 AM

I've looked into this ;) and I can find records of girls around the age given for Dorothy in the first book living in Kansas at the time the book is set, how do you know that the Dorothy of the books wasn't based on one of those real people?

:rolleyes: Come on now, do I really have to do this? Is it not obvious to everyone here that the analogy is false?

pgwenthold

13th April 2010, 11:53 AM

:rolleyes: Come on now, do I really have to do this? Is it not obvious to everyone here that the analogy is false?

There was a girl by the name of Dorothy who lived in Kansas, who had an Aunt Em. This we know for a fact, and it completely corresponds to characteristics attributed to Dorothy, as described in the Wizard of Oz series of books.

There have been many Royal Historians of Oz over the years, with L Frank Baum being the first. Ruth Plumly Thomson is generally considered the second, and her books are treated as cononical, although when contradictions are found we usually defer to the Baum version of events. ONeill wrote a book or two, but no one takes them too seriously. He should have stuck to illustrations.

I see nothing inherent that distinguishes the discussion of the "historical Dorothy" from the "Historical Jesus" discussions that go on here.

pgwenthold

13th April 2010, 11:59 AM

You are begging the question. The discussion here is over whether or not Jesus was a real person. You are assuming he wasn't in your analogy.

Not at all. In fact, I would argue it the other way around. By dismissing the (supposedly) later written gospels as "less reliable," you are inherently asserting that they are referring to a real person or events. My example shows that if you are referring to (what you think are) "fictional characters," then the timing is irrelevant. They are all equally unreliable. Hence, using timing to determine reliability implies a real character/event.

We know the Wizard of Oz is entirely myth and allegory.

What do you mean "we"?

I can tell you, I am not making that up about Dorothy and Kansas and Aunt Em (although technically, it was Aunt "M" - as in Maude Gauge). So it is NOT entirely myth, and if you mean what I think you mean, you are also VERY wrong about the allegory (no one buys that crap anymore, particularly in the first book)

We know the gospels contain myth, but based on the evidence, they appear to contain legendary myths based on an actual historical figure.

Depends what you mean by "historical figure." If you mean "Someone with the same name who existed and only had passing resemblance to the person described in the bible" then, sure, I agree. But that also applies to Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz, so take it for what it is worth.

Kapyong

13th April 2010, 02:29 PM

Gday bluskool,

Here is an answer to your Paul claims :

a. Paul claims to have come to believe in Jesus because of a vision (Galatians 1:11-12), but to have been persecuting the church prior to this (Galatians 1:13-14, Philippians 3:4-6). If Paul made the whole thing up, who was it he was persecuting?

WTF ?
Paul had a VISION.
Christians DID exist. Rome DID exist. Persecutions DID exist.

The subject is whether Jesus existed in history - NOT whether Christians or persecutions did.
There is NOTHING here to argue that Jesus was historical at all. Why do YOU think there is ?

b. Paul claims he met with Jesus's disciples including his brother James. (Galatians 1:18-19). If Paul didn't think Jesus was real, why did he claim that Jesus had brothers? (We also see this claim in the less controversial passage from Josephus.)

Paul did NOT say he met Jesus' brother.
He gives the TITLE "Lord's Brother' to James, and makes it clear that he, Paul is JUST AS MUCH an apostle as James.

Meanwhile, we see a Jewish name "Ahiyah" (IIRC) which means "Brother of Jahveh", we see a culture that calls itself the "children of God".

Can you explain why YOU think a title "Lord's Brother" overcomes the obvious implication that James NEVER met Jesus? (because Paul says he is just as good an apostle as James - he has "seen" Jesus just like they did.)

c. Paul recites what is considered to be a pre-Pauline creed in 1 Corinthians 15:3-8 where he states that Jesus died, rose from the dead and was then seen by his followers. In order to believe that someone died, you would have to believe they were once alive.

Darth Vader died, he was once alive.
Do you really still not grasp this simple point?
Fictional people DO live.
Fictional people DO die.
Just NOT in history.
Yes, Paul believed Jesus died - in heaven.
No - Paul does NOT place Jesus in history - no place, no date, no people.

d. Paul indicates that Jesus preached to the Jews while he was alive in Romans 15.

No he doesn't. WHich is why you didn't quote any such.

e. Paul says that Jesus preached guidelines for divorce. (1 Corinthians 7:10-14)
Wrong again. Why do you think you can get away with this? Paul attributes it to THE LORD, but you falsely claimed he "says that Jesus preached". The LORD could just as easily mean revelation, or God.
Paul SAYS specifially he got his Gospel from NO MAN - a clear point you keep ignoring.

f. Paul describes the last supper and Jesus' betrayal in 1 Corinthians 11.

Yes, he does. But why do YOU think he is referring to a historical event? He does not give a place, or time, or mention any person. Why do YOU think this is historical, please tell us?
You repeatedly make the same error - that anything about Jesus must be historical. When we see time and time again that Paul is referring to spiritual things.
Lando Calrissian betrayed Luke and Han - does that make it historical?
Edward ate with the witch - does that make him real?
No.
So why do you think this other story is real?
Because you BELIEVE, and eveything you say is subordinated to that BELIEF.

g. Paul claims that Jesus was crucified in 1 Corinthians 2.
Yes, but why do YOU think he refers to a historical event ?
How about these references :

Gal. 2:20 "I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I that live, but Christ living in me."
Does Paul here mean HE was historically crucified? Of course NOT!

Gal. 5:24 "Those who belong to Christ have crucified the flesh with its passions and lusts. "
Does Paul here mean the flesh is literally "crucified" ? Of course NOT!

Rom. 6:5 "For if we have become united with him in the likeness of his death, we will also be part of his resurrection; knowing this, that our old man was crucified with him, that the body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be in bondage to sin. "
Does Paul here mean his old man was "crucified" ? Of course NOT!

So Paul repeatedly uses "crucified" allegorically, why do YOU simply CLAIM that every reference to Jesus is HISTORICAL? Without any argument at all ?
All you are doing is ASSUMING Paul means everything historically, by ignoring all the allegorical comments he made, then claim "see - it's historical".
How silly.

All of these show that Paul at least believed and spoke about Jesus as if he was a real person.

No they don't. They show Paul believed in Jesus as a real "life giving spirit".
But Paul does NOT mention :
* when Jesus lived
* where Jesus lived
* who Jesus lived with etc.

You just ignore the many claims when Paul says he is referring to a spiritual being "Christ in you, the hope of glory"; then just insist a few other vague spritual comments MUST be historical.

We also have evidence that Paul was concerned about other evangelists with alternative gospel messages which further makes it difficult to believe that Paul just made Jesus up or hallucinated him.

Rubbish.
There are different versions of the Hercules myth - does that make him historical ? No.
There are different versions of the Krishna myth - does that make him historical ? No.
There are different episodes written about Sherlock Holmes - does that make him historical ? No.
Why do YOU think it makes Jesus real?
Why?
Your argument always boils down to "I find it hard to believe" but you don't bother with any actual argument.

You keep repeateding the SAME MISTAKE over and over :
Paul said XXX.
therefefore Jesus was real.

Without making ANY connection between XXX and Jesus being historical. All you are doing is reading your BELIEFS into Paul's words.

The best explanation for these facts is that Jesus actually was a real person. I think that any other explanation is going to require hypothesizing beyond the evidence.

But the vast majority of your alleged "facts" are actually just claims that are FALSE.
We already know "what you think". But you don't support it with solid evidence.

K.

Kapyong

13th April 2010, 02:45 PM

Gday,

You didn't address any of the information I provided from Paul's letters where he appears to think that Jesus was real.

I just did, but none of them actually say what you claim.

You think they need to say "Jesus was a real person" explicitly in order for us to assume that they, at least, believed they were writing about a real person? Is this the same criteria you would apply to all of history?

No.
Please READ my posts.

Also, John is the only gospel that claims Jesus was a man-god.

Ah, so you haven't actually READ the Gospels. Now it all starts to make sense.

Their are two passages in Josephus, one that is controversial and one that is relatively uncontroversial and only tells us that Jesus had a brother.

Rubbish.
The 2nd one has big problems.
Not that you'd know.

Seriously? Are you aware that the first line in the Gospel of Thomas is "These are the secret sayings that the living Jesus spoke and Didymos Judas Thomas recorded." That sounds like a claim that he was alive to me.

But that's NOT the subject!
Did you think we would not notice your attempt to change the goalposts?

The issue is whether any specific, identifiable person claimed to have met Jesus.

You said G.Thomas did.

I pointed out that G.Thomas did NO SUCH THING at all - his claims are :
* Jesus spoke
* Thomas heard
Without the author identifying himself - which is what YOU claimed at first, but now can't admit your mistake.

So now, you CHANGE the subject to whether this book refers to a "living Jesus" - a completely different subject.

Yes, this anonymous book makes a CLAIM that Jesus was "living" - so what?
So was Hercules and Harry Potter and Gollum.
In the stories.
Not in history.

Once again - you keep repeating the same error over and over :
Jesus is referred to as X
therefore I believe Jesus was historical.
Which is complete nonsense.

And it contains nothing historical because... you say so?

No, because it coantains nothing historical :
* no dates
* no places
* no people

I listed several instances in Paul where you could draw the inference that Paul at least thought he was talking about a real person. What are your arguments against those points?

Posted.
None of them stand up to scrutiny.

Because the vast and overwhelming majority of scholars and historians researching the subject beg to differ.

99.9% of whom are Christian believers working in Christian establishments whose job and reputation and friends all DEPEND on them keepng that belief.

This is the MOST BIASED sample you could find on the whole planet.

How many atheists believe in Jesus, bluskool ?

This isn't meant to be an argument from authority.

But that's exactly what it is - just like saying :
"I'm not a racist but..."

I am just wondering who the "we" that you refer to are.

Me and others here and elsewhere.

Again, what are your arguments against the examples I gave from Paul. Are you saying he is talking about a vision in each instance?

But NONE of your examples actually clearly refer to a historical person. You just CLAIM they do.

K.

Kapyong

13th April 2010, 02:46 PM

Yes. For ancient historians, the earlier sources are always thought to be more reliable.

Rubbish.
You're just making it up as you go.

K.

Kapyong

13th April 2010, 02:48 PM

Gday,

We know the gospels contain myth, but based on the evidence, they appear to contain legendary myths based on an actual historical figure.

False.
You BELIEVE this with an overwhelming passion.

But sadly, your evidence does not stand up to scrutiny at all.

K.

Kapyong

13th April 2010, 02:53 PM

Gday,

:rolleyes: Come on now, do I really have to do this? Is it not obvious to everyone here that the analogy is false?

The analogy is good.
The problem is YOU and YOUR beliefs.

You START with the BELIEF that Jesus was historical, then insist that Jesus was historical.

The facts are - we compare here two stories - both containing myths and legends, and also some elements of reality.

YOU simply insist ONE is historical and the other isn't.
That's the whole of your argument : "I believe".

Every post of yours is essentially the same :
"Jesus was historical, therefore this reference X is to a historical event (therefore I've shown Jesus WAS historical.)"

K.

HansMustermann

13th April 2010, 02:56 PM

What handwaving? I said that there is no evidence that the authors knew each other or read each other. If you think they did, you are just going beyond the evidence. I also never said they couldn't have known about Paul. I said that they show no sign of having read Paul. Again, there is just no evidence.

So, those whole paragraphs which differ from Mark in the same word, in the same position are... coincidence? All over 300 of them?

And they managed to write Christian stuff some decades after Paul spread Christianity... completely without being influenced by Paul's protagonist or ideas?

Plus, it seems to me a bit disingenuous to accept what is exactly conjecture about the document Q, but essentially scoff at conjecture when it's not what you want to believe. One or the other. If you want more evidence than just matching paragraphs, fine, but then please do provide similar evidence for that document Q for example.

Why should I give a crap about what some church father thought in the fourth or fifth century?

Why should I give a crap about a rationalization that's even later than that by a millenium?

But basically what it says is that you're basically more Catholic than the Pope, so to speak. Even the RCC doesn't consider the four gospels to be independent confirmations.

HansMustermann

13th April 2010, 02:59 PM

Yes. For ancient historians, the earlier sources are always thought to be more reliable.

Wait, wait. So (an estimated, not actually dated) 50 years earlier for the sources _you_ like is all that's needed to make them more reliable... but when it comes to the opinion of a major theologian that lived over a millenium before your favourite hypothesis, then it's why should you give a crap about it? It seems a little inconsistent.

Kapyong

13th April 2010, 03:17 PM

Gday,

I am not just implying it, I am directly saying it. The existence of Q is the most widely held view among historians and biblical scholars.

So, you support Q.
Whose existence is based on clear commonalities in the texts of the different Gospels.

I said that there is no evidence that the authors knew each other or read each other.

But you reject the argument that the authors read each other.
Which is based on the clear commonalties in the text of the different Gospels.

Yup,
you just make it up as you go.

K.

Kapyong

13th April 2010, 03:28 PM

Gday,

I said :
"Tacitus does NOT make any claim that Jesus was a "real person". He merely repeated 2nd century Christian BELIEFS."

Maybe.

Certainly :

1. Tacitus refers to Pilate (*) with the WRONG title - the one used in Tacitus's time, NOT the correct one from Jesus' time. This shows Tacitus was using contemporary beliefs and legends, not based on any records or facts.

2. Tacitus refers to the condemned man with the Christian title "Christ", not the usual Roman name form such as "Jesus son of Joseph" or "Jesus of Nazareth" e.g. This shows that Tacitus was repeating Christian views, NOT Roman records or any historical facts.

Tacitus is evidence for 2nd century Christians believing in Christ.

So what?
We know there were 2nd century Christians believing in Christ.

Another FAILURE to actually show any EVIDENCE for a historical Jesus - this just goes on and on for ever. Christians repeat the SAME lists of alleged evidence; sceptics point out the obvious problems with them; the faithful argue and bluster and preach....

Some time later, the SAME list will get posted as if that's a slam dunk for Jesus, the sceptics point out the SAME errors, the faithful preach on and on ...

K.

(*) Have you realised he is not "Pilot" yet ?

From The Annals
"Christus, from whom their name is derived was executed at the hands of the procurator Pontius Pilot in the reign of Tiberius."

Up in the sky !
Is it a plane?
Is it a bird?

No, it's Pontius Pilot !

pgwenthold

13th April 2010, 03:48 PM

Rubbish.
You're just making it up as you go.

K.

Um, yes and no. "Earlier versions of a source" are absolutely considered to be more reliable in terms of what that source originally said. Indeed, I would certainly consider a 100AD version of Mark to be more reliable to what the author wrote than a copy from 500AD.

However, Mark's original story about a legendary character allegedly born 70 years earlier is not more historically relevant than the Judas account written 100 later. If bluskool doesn't like my Wizard of Oz analogy, I could replace it with biographies of, say, Benjamin Franklin or Abraham Lincoln. Is a biography of Abraham Lincoln written in 1920 necessarily more reliable than one written in the year 2000? Even if they contain contradictions? As far as we know, perhaps the whole reason that a year 2000 biography is written is because the author is disgusted with all the blatently incorrect information being peddled in that original version? Maybe the whole reason the gospel of Judas was written was because the author thought the original gospels were so fictional that he needed to provide an authoritative, and more correct, in his view, account?

Kapyong

13th April 2010, 04:13 PM

Gday,

Um, yes and no. "Earlier versions of a source" are absolutely considered to be more reliable in terms of what that source originally said. Indeed, I would certainly consider a 100AD version of Mark to be more reliable to what the author wrote than a copy from 500AD.

Indeed :-)

I was just picking up on the word 'always'.

I certainly agree it is 'usually'.

But consider how sometimes a late mss is considered to be from an earlier tradition, and thus somewhat more reliable than another mss which is actually earlier.

However, Mark's original story about a legendary character allegedly born 70 years earlier is not more historically relevant than the Judas account written 100 later.

Yah,
especially if there was no history to start with.

There are various authors who have written about Luke Skywalker - that doesn't make him historical.

Essentially, the conversation with bluskool has gone like this :

bluskool : Jesus was historical, because his story includes feature X - and feature X can only be historical

sceptic : but what about this fictional story A which ALSO has feature X - showing that feature X CAN be in a fictional story

bluskool : wrong - story A is fictional, so Jesus is historical - your analogy fails !

sceptic : head. desk.

I just don't think bluskool realise he is STARTING with the fixed belief that Jesus is historical - so to him, every mention of a fictional or allegorical story is not related and can be dismissed a priori - because he ALREADY knows Jesus is real.

If bluskool doesn't like my Wizard of Oz analogy, I could replace it with biographies of, say, Benjamin Franklin or Abraham Lincoln. Is a biography of Abraham Lincoln written in 1920 necessarily more reliable than one written in the year 2000? Even if they contain contradictions?

That could work, but he's likely to say :
"they were REAL people ! See ! I was right"

As far as we know, perhaps the whole reason that a year 2000 biography is written is because the author is disgusted with all the blatently incorrect information being peddled in that original version? Maybe the whole reason the gospel of Judas was written was because the author thought the original gospels were so fictional that he needed to provide an authoritative, and more correct, in his view, account?

Yup.

That seems to be something like it - each author wrote what HE thought was the REAL story. But their idea of what was REAL was religious and ideoligical (according to the scriptures), and is not pinned down to any actual history.

If it was about HISTORY, they would all be at pains to connect it to history - e.g. "I Thomas whatsit saw this with my eyes in the 15th year of Tiberius" or "I spoked to Jesus face to gace in the Temple on the feast of blah blah".

There is NOTHING like that - instead of relying on historical markeres, they all use religious themes and legends, and feel free to change the story to change a theological point.

It's all stories and legends.

K.

pgwenthold

13th April 2010, 04:17 PM

That could work, but he's likely to say :
"they were REAL people ! See ! I was right"

I thought of that, but the point is that while it is obvious that earlier texts mean nothing when it comes to accounts about fictional people, they also don't mean much when it comes to accounts about real people, either. IOW, there is no basis that "earlier versions of the story" means anything at all, either for real or fictional characters. Thus, no basis to discount the Gospel of Judas or Mary Magdalene.

As I said, earlier _copies_ of the story certainly do matter, because they provide a more reliable reflection of what the author originally wrote.

Skeptic Ginger

13th April 2010, 06:03 PM

What about the other gospels? Judas? Mary Magdalene? Aren't those gospels, too? Do they not talk about Jesus as a real person?

Why do people completely focus only on those gospels selected by the early church because they best represented the message the church wanted to convey, including coherency?

From a historical perspective, non-church endorsed are just as legitimate sources about Jesus those endorsed by the church. Lack of agreement among them would only reflect the fact that the gospels as we know them are carefully selected.I was under the impression all historical writings have been examined for evidence of a real historical Jesus.

I'm pretty sure the Gnostic Texts don't offer any more reliable evidence of an historical Jesus. Are there other texts you had in mind?

Wiki has a decent compilation of the evidence and rebuttals. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus)

Brainache

13th April 2010, 06:51 PM

OK I haven't watched the film, or read many of the links, I've just been trying to follow the conversation in this thread. I definitely do not need to believe in an historical Jesus, it is just the story that I grew up with and I always assumed it was the consensus opinion. I am happy to be corrected on that.

I am just interested in these debates, so Kapyong, please stop implying that I have any kind of agenda when I'm asking this stuff, I'm just trying to learn. OK?

So my question is: Is this Jesus Myth idea saying that the apostles were a mystic sect who sat around telling each other what the voices in their heads were saying? Kind of like the way modern day Pentacostals "speak in toungues" and then interpret whatever it was that the holy ghost was saying?

I noticed a few lines in the gospel of Thomas where the apostles were asking things like "when will we see you?", is this evidence for the idea that Jesus was a theological concept to these people, rather than a human being?

When the author of Thomas speaks of a "living Christ" is that the same as modern Christians who talk about the Holy Spirit?

If these questions have already been covered in the thread, could someone link me to the answers please?

Kapyong

13th April 2010, 07:26 PM

Gday,

OK I haven't watched the film, or read many of the links, I've just been trying to follow the conversation in this thread. I definitely do not need to believe in an historical Jesus, it is just the story that I grew up with and I always assumed it was the consensus opinion. I am happy to be corrected on that.

That Jesus is historical IS the consensus.
But so was the Demon Theory of disease.
So was the belief that smoking was good for you.

The consensus in this case consists of 99.9% of Christians working in Christian places whose work and career and friends and respect DEPENDS on them believing. It's the most biased consensus one could imagine.

I am just interested in these debates, so Kapyong, please stop implying that I have any kind of agenda when I'm asking this stuff, I'm just trying to learn. OK?

Fantastic :-)

If you want to learn, then I suggest you start here with the 12 easy pieces of the Jesus Puzzle :
http://www.jesuspuzzle.humanists.net/puzzle1.htm

It's a clear and simple explanation of Earl's version of the Jesus Myth argument - one of the strongest contenders.

12 simple, small pages. Easy.

K.

HansMustermann

14th April 2010, 03:16 AM

Just to show how complicated things can get, and why one can't automatically take the first coincidence as proof of "the historical X", I humbly submit two literary examples:

1. The humorous and fictive genealogy of the Twain family by Mark Twain. The obvious problem there is that Mark Twain was a pseudonym, and there was no Twain family to trace at all.

And while that story was ultimately loosely started from a real person -- Mark Twain himself -- that actual person doesn't appear anywhere in the actual story. Any effort to find a real person _in_ the story would be futile.

2. Pinocchio and Buratino. Both talk about a living long-nosed wooden puppet, the name of the Russian one is a corruption of the Italian word for puppet or doll even, both dreamed of becoming a real boy, both run from home, both involve a character called Giuseppe (though one is called Geppetto, a nickname for Giuseppe) even if in different roles, etc. And there is not only such loosely shared material between the two, but also events that are in one but not the other, and events which are told differently or in a different order in the two.

You know, sorta like the Gospels.

Voila, we have our two independent documents to prove that such a puppet actually existed. It's based on a real historical living puppet, right?

In reality, Aleksey Nikolayevich Tolstoy just reimagined Pinocchio from memory, after having read it as a child. They're not independent at all.

bluskool

14th April 2010, 05:06 AM

There was a girl by the name of Dorothy who lived in Kansas, who had an Aunt Em. This we know for a fact, and it completely corresponds to characteristics attributed to Dorothy, as described in the Wizard of Oz series of books.

There have been many Royal Historians of Oz over the years, with L Frank Baum being the first. Ruth Plumly Thomson is generally considered the second, and her books are treated as cononical, although when contradictions are found we usually defer to the Baum version of events. ONeill wrote a book or two, but no one takes them too seriously. He should have stuck to illustrations.

I see nothing inherent that distinguishes the discussion of the "historical Dorothy" from the "Historical Jesus" discussions that go on here.

I'm no Baum expert so I will have to rely on you here. So Baum never wrote or discussed his inspiration for the book and there are no biographies written about him? And there were other writers at the time writing about this Dorothy, including a half dozen letters from some guy with references to her and Oz which predate the text of The Wizard of Oz?

HansMustermann

14th April 2010, 05:41 AM

Just to clarify one thing which might be relevant, without taking a side in the corporeal/non-corporeal part:

a. Paul claims to have come to believe in Jesus because of a vision (Galatians 1:11-12), but to have been persecuting the church prior to this (Galatians 1:13-14, Philippians 3:4-6). If Paul made the whole thing up, who was it he was persecuting?

In Philippians 3 only 6 is actually relevant, the other two just form his claim to how zealous he was previously and ceremonially blameless. E.g., his circumcision in the 8'th day establishes him as a Jew by birth not by conversion. But is 6 actually relevant? The whole thing reads as a continuation of his claim to former zeal, and the "persecuting the church" reads like a weird aside in the middle of it all. Was "persecuting the church" some kind of requirement to be blameless in Judaism? I doubt it.

The answer is that "persecuting the church" is not what he says at all, and not about the church of Jesus at all. He proclaims himself a "dioko", from "dio" = to pursue, or prosecute or persecute. Essentially what he's actually telling us there is that he was no passive follower of Judaism, but quite active in pursuing it. And a pursuer of Judaism, not of Jesus, at that.

Simon39759

14th April 2010, 06:31 AM

Seriously? I had never read that analysis before; I'll need to go and look for myself, but it seems really interesting!

pgwenthold

14th April 2010, 06:34 AM

I'm no Baum expert so I will have to rely on you here. So Baum never wrote or discussed his inspiration for the book and there are no biographies written about him? And there were other writers at the time writing about this Dorothy, including a half dozen letters from some guy with references to her and Oz which predate the text of The Wizard of Oz?

Outside of her birth certificate, you mean?

You appear to be missing the point. I am not asking whether there was a "historical Dorothy," as in a girl who inspired the stories of the Wizard of Oz. I'm telling you, there was one. She had some things in common with Dorothy of the books, in that she was from Kansas and had an Aunt "M." Moreover, what I haven't said is that we also know that the author of the WoO knew her (she was his wife's niece).

There have been literally dozens of authors who have written hundreds of stories about this girl in the hundred or so years since she lived. Not so many before the Baum's first book, although in 2000 years, one might not be too surprised to hear people talking about some girl named "Alice" as REALLY being about "Dorothy" (kind of like "he will be called Immanuel"). Although others will contend that the stories about Alice predate Dorothy's birth certificate, and hence are not about her.

I should also mention, that not one of the 100s of books that have been written about her tell us anything reliable about her life aside from the fact that her name was Dorothy, she lived in Kansas, and she had an Aunt Em.

bluskool

14th April 2010, 11:09 AM

Gday bluskool,

Here is an answer to your Paul claims :

WTF ?
Paul had a VISION.
Christians DID exist. Rome DID exist. Persecutions DID exist.

The subject is whether Jesus existed in history - NOT whether Christians or persecutions did.
There is NOTHING here to argue that Jesus was historical at all. Why do YOU think there is ?

So Christians already existed and Paul didn't make the whole thing up, right? And you get the idea that Christians existed prior to Paul from?

Paul did NOT say he met Jesus' brother.
He gives the TITLE "Lord's Brother' to James, and makes it clear that he, Paul is JUST AS MUCH an apostle as James.

First, you just made up the idea that Paul gave him this title and that it didn't mean brother. That is pure speculation. Second, you made up the idea that if James was really Jesus' brother, Paul should not have said he was an apostle just like him. I guess you think he should have called him a super apostle or something.

Meanwhile, we see a Jewish name "Ahiyah" (IIRC) which means "Brother of Jahveh", we see a culture that calls itself the "children of God".

Really, that's your argument? There is a Jewish name that means brother of God, therefore Paul wasn't really saying James was Jesus' brother?

Can you explain why YOU think a title "Lord's Brother" overcomes the obvious implication that James NEVER met Jesus? (because Paul says he is just as good an apostle as James - he has "seen" Jesus just like they did.)

What are you talking about? Paul doesn't say anything like that in this passage.

Darth Vader died, he was once alive.
Do you really still not grasp this simple point?
Fictional people DO live.
Fictional people DO die.
Just NOT in history.
Yes, Paul believed Jesus died - in heaven.
No - Paul does NOT place Jesus in history - no place, no date, no people.

Jesus died in Heaven? You're just pulling this out of your butt aren't you? Anyway, fictional people die, therefore Jesus was fictional. Good argument.:rolleyes:

No he doesn't. WHich is why you didn't quote any such.

Verse 8 says "For I say that Christ became a minister of the circumcised to show God's truthfulness, to confirm the promises to the patriarchs..."

Wrong again. Why do you think you can get away with this? Paul attributes it to THE LORD, but you falsely claimed he "says that Jesus preached". The LORD could just as easily mean revelation, or God.
Paul SAYS specifially he got his Gospel from NO MAN - a clear point you keep ignoring.

Paul refers to Jesus as lord numerous times. I don't see any reason to think he is not referring to Jesus here. I also am not ignoring the fact that Paul said he got his gospel from no man. I understand that Paul claims to have had a vision and went about spreading his version of the story before coming back to Jerusalem to consult with Peter. That doesn't mean that all of the information Paul writes about Jesus came through revelation.

Yes, he does. But why do YOU think he is referring to a historical event? He does not give a place, or time, or mention any person. Why do YOU think this is historical, please tell us?
You repeatedly make the same error - that anything about Jesus must be historical. When we see time and time again that Paul is referring to spiritual things.

Lando Calrissian betrayed Luke and Han - does that make it historical?
Edward ate with the witch - does that make him real?
No.
So why do you think this other story is real?
Because you BELIEVE, and eveything you say is subordinated to that BELIEF.

What exactly is your criteria for establishing that someone probably existed in the past? Simply saying that fictional books exist, therefore we can't know if books written in the past were about real people or not is a bad argument. It pretty much rules out the possibility of anything written being used to study history. Paul was writing letters, not fiction. He seems to have clearly thought that what he was saying was true. We have no evidence that Paul was writing what he intended to be fiction akin to Star Wars. Now, this doesn't mean that what Paul said was true. He could have made it up, there could have been a myth circulating at the time that he picked up on, etc... Of course, any number of explanations are possible. But what is most probable?

Also, I am not sure what you intend to imply when you say I "BELIEVE" stories about Jesus are real. I am not a "believer" if that is what you mean.

Yes, but why do YOU think he refers to a historical event ?
How about these references :

Gal. 2:20 "I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I that live, but Christ living in me."
Does Paul here mean HE was historically crucified? Of course NOT!

Gal. 5:24 "Those who belong to Christ have crucified the flesh with its passions and lusts. "
Does Paul here mean the flesh is literally "crucified" ? Of course NOT!

Rom. 6:5 "For if we have become united with him in the likeness of his death, we will also be part of his resurrection; knowing this, that our old man was crucified with him, that the body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be in bondage to sin. "
Does Paul here mean his old man was "crucified" ? Of course NOT!

So Paul repeatedly uses "crucified" allegorically, why do YOU simply CLAIM that every reference to Jesus is HISTORICAL? Without any argument at all ?
All you are doing is ASSUMING Paul means everything historically, by ignoring all the allegorical comments he made, then claim "see - it's historical".
How silly.

I didn't claim that all references to Jesus are historical. I am giving references in Paul where it seems that he thinks Jesus is historical. Pointing to other references where Paul used the word crucified symbolically does not mean that this reference to Jesus being crucified is also symbolic. What makes you think that this reference is symbolic?

No they don't. They show Paul believed in Jesus as a real "life giving spirit".
But Paul does NOT mention :
* when Jesus lived
* where Jesus lived
* who Jesus lived with etc.

So that is your criteria. If an ancient source does not say where a person lived, when they lived or who they lived with, then they aren't talking about an historical person?

You just ignore the many claims when Paul says he is referring to a spiritual being "Christ in you, the hope of glory"; then just insist a few other vague spritual comments MUST be historical.

I am not ignoring the other claims. You are taking the times when Paul does use spiritual or symbolic language and saying that therefore Paul is always speaking spiritually or symbolically.

Rubbish.
There are different versions of the Hercules myth - does that make him historical ? No.
There are different versions of the Krishna myth - does that make him historical ? No.
There are different episodes written about Sherlock Holmes - does that make him historical ? No.
Why do YOU think it makes Jesus real?
Why?

Again with this argument. Characters exist in fiction, therefore Jesus was fictitious.

Your argument always boils down to "I find it hard to believe" but you don't bother with any actual argument.

You keep repeateding the SAME MISTAKE over and over :
Paul said XXX.
therefefore Jesus was real.

Without making ANY connection between XXX and Jesus being historical. All you are doing is reading your BELIEFS into Paul's words.

If you think Paul actually intended to write a Star Wars like fiction, then the burden of proof is on you to demonstrate that. It makes more sense to me to think that he was a religious zealot who was writing things that he believed to have actually happened.

But the vast majority of your alleged "facts" are actually just claims that are FALSE.
We already know "what you think". But you don't support it with solid evidence.

Nonsense. Let's add another point.

h. Paul said in Galatians 4:4 "When the fullness of time came, God sent forth his son who was born of a woman, born under the law."
I suppose you'll just say that he meant all that symbolically without offering an argument for why this is the case or you'll make some reference to a character in fiction who was born and then claim that Jesus was therefore fictitious. A pattern is emerging here.

Ah, so you haven't actually READ the Gospels. Now it all starts to make sense.

I have and I stand by my statement. Do you have an actual argument to offer against it or was that it?

Rubbish.
The 2nd one has big problems.
Not that you'd know.

That's a good argument. "You're wrong and don't know stuff, nana na nana."

But that's NOT the subject!
Did you think we would not notice your attempt to change the goalposts?

What are you talking about? Here is how the conversation went:
Me: The gospel of Thomas is a possible source on the life of Jesus.
Crank: The gospel of Thomas never says that Jesus was alive.
Me: It claims he was alive in the first line.
Crank: You are moving the goalpost

You actually have to know what "moving the goalpost" means before you use it in a sentence.

The issue is whether any specific, identifiable person claimed to have met Jesus.

You said G.Thomas did.

I pointed out that G.Thomas did NO SUCH THING at all - his claims are :
* Jesus spoke
* Thomas heard
Without the author identifying himself - which is what YOU claimed at first, but now can't admit your mistake.

I never claimed that Thomas wrote the gospel of Thomas or that the author claimed to have met Jesus. Can you find a quote where I made either of those claims? I only said the GT is a possible source and that it claims that Jesus was alive.

So now, you CHANGE the subject to whether this book refers to a "living Jesus" - a completely different subject.

You are seriously confused.

Yes, this anonymous book makes a CLAIM that Jesus was "living" - so what?
So was Hercules and Harry Potter and Gollum.
In the stories.
Not in history.

Oh good, I was hoping you would use this argument again.

Once again - you keep repeating the same error over and over :
Jesus is referred to as X
therefore I believe Jesus was historical.
Which is complete nonsense.

Once again, we can never know anything about ancient history using your criteria.

No, because it coantains nothing historical :
* no dates
* no places
* no people

That's how you know if a source is historical? So, if we find a letter from Thomas Jefferson and it isn't dated and doesn't talk about specific places, we should just throw in the trash because historians shouldn't care about stuff like that.

99.9% of whom are Christian believers working in Christian establishments whose job and reputation and friends all DEPEND on them keepng that belief.

This is the MOST BIASED sample you could find on the whole planet.

First of all, you just pulled that out of your butt. I am sure most, but not all Biblical scholars are Christians, but I the statistic for historians of the subject is all that high. I really don't know though, so I would rather not speculate or make up statistics. You, on the other hand, don't seem to mind.

How many atheists believe in Jesus, bluskool?

Believe that he existed? I would be one and the only statistics I can find say that about 86% of atheists in America and 60% of atheists in the UK agree with me.

But that's exactly what it is - just like saying :
"I'm not a racist but..."

It wasn't an argument for the existence of Jesus. That would have been an argument from authority. It was an argument against the idea that historians have looked at the evidence and concluded that Jesus didn't exist, which makes it not an argument from authority.

bluskool

14th April 2010, 11:12 AM

Rubbish.
You're just making it up as you go.

K.

Hogwash.
I have no argument, but you're wrong.

bluskool

14th April 2010, 11:19 AM

Gday,

False.
You BELIEVE this with an overwhelming passion.

But sadly, your evidence does not stand up to scrutiny at all.

K.

Overwhelming passion? Could you be more dramatic? I think it is an interesting topic and I think that the arguments for a mythical Jesus are terrible, but I have absolutely no vested interest in one side being right. Hell, I'd prefer that the mythical Jesus proponents were right.

bluskool

14th April 2010, 11:25 AM

No, it's Pontius Pilot !

Okay, you're right, that was pretty dumb.:o

bluskool

14th April 2010, 11:29 AM

Jesus, you had yourself a little crankgasm last night huh?

Gday,

So, you support Q.
Whose existence is based on clear commonalities in the texts of the different Gospels.

But you reject the argument that the authors read each other.
Which is based on the clear commonalties in the text of the different Gospels.

Yup,
you just make it up as you go.

I explained the reasons for this already. I see no need to explain them again since you aren't really offering an argument here.

bluskool

14th April 2010, 11:45 AM

So, those whole paragraphs which differ from Mark in the same word, in the same position are... coincidence? All over 300 of them?

And they managed to write Christian stuff some decades after Paul spread Christianity... completely without being influenced by Paul's protagonist or ideas?

Plus, it seems to me a bit disingenuous to accept what is exactly conjecture about the document Q, but essentially scoff at conjecture when it's not what you want to believe. One or the other. If you want more evidence than just matching paragraphs, fine, but then please do provide similar evidence for that document Q for example.

I provided a link with a detailed argument against the "minor agreements" and for the existence of Q. Did you look at that?

But basically what it says is that you're basically more Catholic than the Pope, so to speak. Even the RCC doesn't consider the four gospels to be independent confirmations.

I am not Catholic at all. And I didn't exactly say that the four gospels were independent confirmations. That's an oversimplification.

bluskool

14th April 2010, 11:52 AM

That Jesus is historical IS the consensus.
But so was the Demon Theory of disease.
So was the belief that smoking was good for you.

Evolution IS the consensus.
But so was the demon theory of disease.
So was the belief that smoking was good for you.

bluskool

14th April 2010, 12:00 PM

The answer is that "persecuting the church" is not what he says at all, and not about the church of Jesus at all. He proclaims himself a "dioko", from "dio" = to pursue, or prosecute or persecute. Essentially what he's actually telling us there is that he was no passive follower of Judaism, but quite active in pursuing it. And a pursuer of Judaism, not of Jesus, at that.

In Galatians 1:13 Paul says that he persecuted the church and tried to destroy it. What would you say about this "trying to destroy" it business?

bluskool

14th April 2010, 12:05 PM

Outside of her birth certificate, you mean?

You appear to be missing the point. I am not asking whether there was a "historical Dorothy," as in a girl who inspired the stories of the Wizard of Oz. I'm telling you, there was one. She had some things in common with Dorothy of the books, in that she was from Kansas and had an Aunt "M." Moreover, what I haven't said is that we also know that the author of the WoO knew her (she was his wife's niece).

There have been literally dozens of authors who have written hundreds of stories about this girl in the hundred or so years since she lived. Not so many before the Baum's first book, although in 2000 years, one might not be too surprised to hear people talking about some girl named "Alice" as REALLY being about "Dorothy" (kind of like "he will be called Immanuel"). Although others will contend that the stories about Alice predate Dorothy's birth certificate, and hence are not about her.

I should also mention, that not one of the 100s of books that have been written about her tell us anything reliable about her life aside from the fact that her name was Dorothy, she lived in Kansas, and she had an Aunt Em.

That sounds reasonable. I don't really know much about WoO, but if what you are saying is true, then your analogy is better than I had thought.

Moochie

14th April 2010, 12:32 PM

Actually, his name was Jose -- Jose Jiminez. One of his pals had a speech impediment and "Jose" came out "Jesus," and it kinda stuck.

He was a good guy -- give you the coat off his back, he would. He ended up marrying his childhood sweetheart, Mary something or other. Word had it she was the town bike, but he didn't seem to mind.

He used to throw great barbecues. I don't know how he did it, given his income. He was barely able to rub two shekels together yet always had enough food on hand to feed his guests.

There's this great story of how, while out fishing with his friends, the boat capsized and he seemed to walk on water and got help, but we put it down to the grappa they'd been imbibing in copious amounts that afternoon. Still, it makes a great story.

M.

HansMustermann

14th April 2010, 12:54 PM

In Galatians 1:13 Paul says that he persecuted the church and tried to destroy it. What would you say about this "trying to destroy" it business?

That's another verse than I was commenting on. But if you ask, sure, we can talk about that one too.

The thing is, there is no indication at the time that any particular sect was singled out for persecution. Once you get outside the power plays between Sadduccees, Pharissees and Essenes, pretty much any messianic pretender or false prophet or I guess their followers if they insisted too much, would be persecuted pretty brutally. And apparently there was no shortage of wannabe prophets to persecute if they got too loud. But there is no evidence of any minor sect which would be worth the notice or made itself a big enough threat to be singled out.

So I doubt that Paul would have particularly specialized in one sect or religion there, or study their teachings in depth. If he actually was active in persecuting heresies at all, most likely he'd just be against any deviation whatsoever from the canon, rather than just specialize in proto-Christians.

Hence it's likely that he just lumps his newfound religion with all the heresies he's been hunting, rather than necessarily mean that he even knew about them at all before.

You'll also notice that basically he never places such a sect, or almost anything pertaining to Jesus, in a particular time and place. Even when he namedrops the Lord to support some point of view, he doesn't say basically "as said to X, in town Y on date Z" nor "as we learn from his parable P", nor even "as we learn from apostle A" or anything. The later theologians would be just itching to support their point of view with some citation from a previous, more influential church father or gospel author or just figure of authority. Paul doesn't seem to actually have any material from an existing sect to support his assertions with, or at least never does so.

He mentions some mysterious scripture, but never actually quotes any verses from it, nor appeal to any figure of authority such a sect would likely have. In fact, he does the exact opposite, in saying that he received his scripture from no man.

So really, where _is_ this pre-existing sect and what do they do? Or is Paul just extrapolating that he must have persecuted his imaginary christians too?

HansMustermann

14th April 2010, 01:17 PM

I provided a link with a detailed argument against the "minor agreements" and for the existence of Q. Did you look at that?

Yes. I wasn't really going to go into that much detail about it, because, well, let's face it, I'm not gonna convince you any time soon, but since you ask...

It's still basically linguistic conjecture and plain old supposition.

E.g., they pretty much just postulate that Mark must be earlier because it's shorter and uses a more offensive language, but both are basically non-sequiturs. The Gospel Of Peter for example was later than all others and is the most offensive of the lot.

E.g., they pretty much just postulate that Luke was conflating some events with some other source, but I see no real evidence that he wasn't more like confabulating on his own. Basically that's one source that's just handwaved in.

It's just that kind of opinions pulled out of the hat all over the place, with little more rhyme or reason than that they lead to the conclusion the author wants.

Furthermore, even if I were to accept the existence of Q, the problems still aren't over. E.g., what was the element that linked Q to Mark? How did they know it's about the same guy?

Was it the name Jesus? Out of the thousands of Jesuses running around at any given time, how do you know if it's independent confirmation of the same Jesus, and not the wise sayings of a completely different one?

Or maybe it was by the title of Christos? Well, that title may be unique enough to take as proof that someone is talking about Jesus nowadays, but back then it was anything but. "Christos" simply meant "annointed", and was used in several religion for their top-level initiates, _centuries_ before the alleged Jesus. Even Pharaohs were annointed, and so were a lot of people in Mesopotamia, etc.

To see how common and widespread the "annointment" was, even one of Odin's titles, "Grim", is derived from the same proto-Indo-European root meaning "to rub". It's basically a variant of "annointed".

So did they copy the sayings and wise parables of a priest of a completely different religion actually?

Or was it maybe about a "Chrestos"? The confusion between "Chrestos" and "Christos" was even widespread among Christians for centuries to come, and some even considered it the proper form. E.g., IIRC Lactantius argued that they should call themselves Chrestians and only by confusion some call themselves Christians.

But Chrestos was an even more common title. It could mean a neophyte who wasn't annointed yet (at which point he would become a "Christos".) It could mean the person who interpreted the cryptic sayings of an oracle, or merely was in the service of an oracle. It could mean a seeker of the truth in the more general sense. At it's used even in the NT in a couple of places to mean just "good" (person.)

So if someone was confused enough, we could have Q be just the sayings of a good man (in much of the same way as Confucius just means "the master", and his analects are just what the nameless master said), or an initiate, or a seeker of the truth, or whatever.

Without actually seeing what's in that Q document, it's just an unsupported leap of faith to postulate that it's about the same Jesus and independent proof of a historical Jesus. We don't actually know what was the connection they saw between Q and Mark. And again it seems to me like some people are just too eager to pull postulates out of the hat there.

Kapyong

14th April 2010, 02:31 PM

Gday,

So Christians already existed and Paul didn't make the whole thing up, right? And you get the idea that Christians existed prior to Paul from?

No, Paul did not make the whole thing up, like I keep saying, and you keep ignoring.

First, you just made up the idea that Paul gave him this title and that it didn't mean brother.

No, I did not make it up - it's a well-known view among modern NT scholars - not that you'd know.

Second, you made up the idea that if James was really Jesus' brother, Paul should not have said he was an apostle just like him. I guess you think he should have called him a super apostle or something.

This makes no sense at all.
Paul and James WERE just the same in Paul's mind - they had both seen Jesus in a vision, they were just as much apostles. Have you ever actually READ Paul? It appears not.

But IF James WAS the actual brother of Jesus, then Paul WOULD be subordinate. But that's NOT what he says, so it's clearly NOT a literal reference.

Really, that's your argument? There is a Jewish name that means brother of God, therefore Paul wasn't really saying James was Jesus' brother?

No, that's not my argument at all, you have real touble with English comprehension.
I showed that the local culture was happy to call themselves "children of God",
I showed they had a name meaning "Jahveh's Brother" or "Lord's Brother" (Ahiyah)
So therefore calling James the "Lord's brother" is far more likely to be a title, not a literal reference.

Or do you believe all the Jews called "Ahiyah" were ALSO the actual literal brother of the lord?
Or do you believe all Jews were literally the children of God?
Of course not.

But you are CONVINCED a phrase "the Lord's Brother" means a literal brother, when we see clear examples of usage which is ALLEGORICAL.

What are you talking about? Paul doesn't say anything like that in this passage.
No, he says it elsewhere, so you just ignore it. You haven't read Paul, have you?

Jesus died in Heaven? You're just pulling this out of your butt aren't you?
No, it's quite clear in various passages, such as Hebrews. But it appears you have read almost none of the NT and have no idea what it contains.

Anyway, fictional people die, therefore Jesus was fictional. Good argument.:rolleyes:

What rank idiocy!
YOU argued that a Jesus who lived and died must be real - I pointed out that this is a completely false argument by showing fictional people live and die. Now you pretend you didn't make that argument. How dishonest.

Verse 8 says "For I say that Christ became a minister of the circumcised to show God's truthfulness, to confirm the promises to the patriarchs..."

Yes, "Minister of the circumcised" - a lovely vague religious phrase. Why do YOU think this is an argument for a historical Jesus?

Paul refers to Jesus as lord numerous times. I don't see any reason to think he is not referring to Jesus here.

Paul refers to God as Lord many times - you just ignore that.

I also am not ignoring the fact that Paul said he got his gospel from no man. I understand that Paul claims to have had a vision and went about spreading his version of the story before coming back to Jerusalem to consult with Peter. That doesn't mean that all of the information Paul writes about Jesus came through revelation.

Sure, a lot of it came thru scripture. But none of it came from man - says Paul.

What exactly is your criteria for establishing that someone probably existed in the past? Simply saying that fictional books exist, therefore we can't know if books written in the past were about real people or not is a bad argument. It pretty much rules out the possibility of anything written being used to study history. Paul was writing letters, not fiction. He seems to have clearly thought that what he was saying was true. We have no evidence that Paul was writing what he intended to be fiction akin to Star Wars.

You really have no idea how ancient books are evaluted?
Wow.
That explains it.

I didn't claim that all references to Jesus are historical. I am giving references in Paul where it seems that he thinks Jesus is historical.

The seems is your opinion.
I showed examples were crucified MUST be allegorical.
You cannot show ONE that must be historical.

Pointing to other references where Paul used the word crucified symbolically does not mean that this reference to Jesus being crucified is also symbolic. What makes you think that this reference is symbolic?

The references I cited are CLEARLY symbolic, and there are none that are clearly historical. Ergo - it's all allegorical or symbolic. Hebrews makes it clear it happened in the heavenly planes.

So that is your criteria. If an ancient source does not say where a person lived, when they lived or who they lived with, then they aren't talking about an historical person?

No, but it's another data point that clearly argues for NON historicity.

I am not ignoring the other claims. You are taking the times when Paul does use spiritual or symbolic language and saying that therefore Paul is always speaking spiritually or symbolically.

They are ALL symbolic or spiritual. You have failed to show ANY that are clearly historical.

Again with this argument. Characters exist in fiction, therefore Jesus was fictitious.

Blithering idiocy!
That's not the argument - how sad you can't comprehend English :-(

If you think Paul actually intended to write a Star Wars like fiction, then the burden of proof is on you to demonstrate that. It makes more sense to me to think that he was a religious zealot who was writing things that he believed to have actually happened.

Nonsense.
If YOU believe these fanciful legends are true, it's up to YOU to provide evidence. So far you have failed spectacularly.

h. Paul said in Galatians 4:4 "When the fullness of time came, God sent forth his son who was born of a woman, born under the law."

Who was the woman?
Does he say Mary?
NO !
He says it's the "free Jerusalem, the mother of us all" right there a bit further down at verse 26. Not that you'd know - you appear to have never read Paul.

First of all, you just pulled that out of your butt. I am sure most, but not all Biblical scholars are Christians, but I the statistic for historians of the subject is all that high. I really don't know though, so I would rather not speculate or make up statistics. You, on the other hand, don't seem to mind.

I'm glad you agree that the majority are believers - in fact it's a HUGE majority.
But of course, you waved the issue away with sillines about numbers.

The facts are clear - tha vast majority are believers - the most biased sample you could find.

K.

Kapyong

14th April 2010, 02:36 PM

Gday,

Evolution IS the consensus.
But so was the demon theory of disease.
So was the belief that smoking was good for you.

It never fails -
in any post about the historicity of Jesus, some believer will bring up evolution.

Let's see -
over the last century or more, there have been thousands of scientists in dozens of countries who have done millions of tests, experiments and observations which support evolution.

Millions of observations of evolution.

But, there are ZERO tests or observations or experiments that have DISAGREED with evolution - NONE.

NOT. ONE.

Evolution :
Millions of tests that agree.
Zero that disagree.

Jesus:
* no contemporary evidence
* no archeological evidence
* no evidence of ANYONE who EVER met Jesus

* plenty of evidence AGAINST Jesus being historical.

But to a believer - Jesus is more real than evolution.

K.

Kapyong

14th April 2010, 02:39 PM

Really, that's your argument? There is a Jewish name that means brother of God, therefore Paul wasn't really saying James was Jesus' brother?

Paul does NOT say "Jesus' brother".
He said "the brother of the Lord".

But believers like you keep changing it to "Jesus's brother".
Why the falsehood?

K.

Kapyong

14th April 2010, 02:58 PM

Grrr...

What are you talking about? Here is how the conversation went:
Me: The gospel of Thomas is a possible source on the life of Jesus.
Crank: The gospel of Thomas never says that Jesus was alive.
Me: It claims he was alive in the first line.
Crank: You are moving the goalpost

bluskool - that is not true at all.

My argument was whether anyone "MET WITH JESUS".
I used those words.

I did NOT say anything about whether G.Thomas said Jesus was "alive".
(Jesus is "alive" in the hearts of believers to this day.)

I said G.Thomas did NOT contain a claim to have met Jesus personally - a clear and specific claim.

You were wrong.

K.

Kapyong

14th April 2010, 03:03 PM

Gday,

"I never claimed that Thomas wrote the gospel of Thomas or that the author claimed to have met Jesus. Can you find a quote where I made either of those claims? I only said the GT is a possible source and that it claims that Jesus was alive."

Indeed.
I see I confused your comments with brainache's.
My apologies.

K.

Bill Thompson

14th April 2010, 03:05 PM

I have read the jewish text about Jesus. Like the Xenu story to Scientologyists, the Jews do not like to talk about it. But the text exists. But your conspiracy theory suggests that I was lied to and conned.

I have also found on the internet Roman historians mentioned who mention Jesus. But your conspiracy theory suggests that I was lied to and conned.

If there was no Jesus, it does not fundamentally change anything. All it means is that we should be praising Peter and Paul, who did exist. We know where they are burried.

Unless you want to extend your conspiracy theory and say they were made up and not burried where some say they were.

Is that what you are going to do?

HansMustermann

14th April 2010, 03:10 PM

Kapyong, you clearly know your stuff well, much better than I do in fact, but... no offense, but you'll have to do something about that short fuse :p

HansMustermann

14th April 2010, 03:17 PM

I have read the jewish text about Jesus. Like the Xenu story to Scientologyists, the Jews do not like to talk about it. But the text exists. But your conspiracy theory suggests that I was lied to and conned.

Well, that's very promising. Can you provide a reference please?

I have also found on the internet Roman historians mentioned who mention Jesus. But your conspiracy theory suggests that I was lied to and conned.

Then I don't doubt that you can provide references? And that it's not the same passages we've _already_ discussed repeatedly.

The "conspiracy theory" appeal to ridicule fallacy is duly noted -- and not even unexpected I would say -- but you get to support your case before you get to call "conspiracy theory" on whoever doesn't automatically believe you.

If there was no Jesus, it does not fundamentally change anything. All it means is that we should be praising Peter and Paul, who did exist. We know where they are burried.

So, I trust then you have no objection to our discussing it anyway. I mean, you just said it won't make any fundamental difference.

Unless you want to extend your conspiracy theory and say they were made up and not burried where some say they were.

Is that what you are going to do?

So, more snark and fallacies? They still don't support your case.

Kapyong

14th April 2010, 03:18 PM

Gday,

I have read the jewish text about Jesus. Like the Xenu story to Scientologyists, the Jews do not like to talk about it. But the text exists.

What text Bill?
Why didn't you cite it?

In fact there are several references in Jewish texts, all late, all different, with all sorts of bizarre stuff,
such as Jesus :

* the bastard son of a Roman soldier

* who was conceived during menses

* who worshipped a brick

* is now in a boiling vat of **** for eternity

* had five disciples (Matai, Nekai, Netzer, Buni, and Todah.)

* was stoned to death in Lydda

* who learned black magic in Egypt
(he escaped the secret vault with the black magic words inscribed in a tiny scroll hidden in a cut on his thigh so he would not forget them when he ran past the fearsome magic animals whose bark would clear all memories. Great story :-)

Do you think that is confirmation of the Gospel Jesus, Bill ?

K.

Kapyong

14th April 2010, 03:20 PM

Kapyong, you clearly know your stuff well, much better than I do in fact, but... no offense, but you'll have to do something about that short fuse :p

Thank you for your kind words Hans.
I do, I really do :-)

So sorry to all, I'm a boiling hurricane inside.
:-(

bluskool

14th April 2010, 03:23 PM

Yes. I wasn't really going to go into that much detail about it, because, well, let's face it, I'm not gonna convince you any time soon, but since you ask...

It's still basically linguistic conjecture and plain old supposition.

E.g., they pretty much just postulate that Mark must be earlier because it's shorter and uses a more offensive language, but both are basically non-sequiturs. The Gospel Of Peter for example was later than all others and is the most offensive of the lot.

That's not what the link I posted said. Streeter gives five reasons for Markan priority.

1. Matthew reproduces 90% of the subject matter of Mark in language very largely identical with that of Mark; Luke does the same for rather more than half of Mark.

2. In any average section, which occurs in the three Gospels, the majority of the actual words used by Mark are reproduced by Matthew and Luke, either alternately or both together.

3. The relative order of incidents and sections in Mark is in general supported by both Matthew and Luke; where either of them deserts Mark, the other is usually found supporting him.

This conjunction and alternation of Matthew and Luke in their agreement with Mark as regards
(a) content,
(b) wording,
(c) order,
is only explicable if they are incorporating a source identical, or all but identical, with Mark.

4. The primitive character of Mark is further shown by
(a) the use of phrases likely to cause offence, which are omitted or toned down in the other Gospels,
(b) roughness of style and grammar, and the preservation of Aramaic words.

5. The way in which Marcan and non-Marcan material is distributed in Matthew and Luke respectively looks as if each had before him the Marcan material in a single document, and was faced with the problem of combining this with material from other sources.

E.g., they pretty much just postulate that Luke was conflating some events with some other source, but I see no real evidence that he wasn't more like confabulating on his own. Basically that's one source that's just handwaved in.

Well, I wouldn't say he "just" postulates this. He does make an argument for why he thinks this.

Furthermore, even if I were to accept the existence of Q, the problems still aren't over. E.g., what was the element that linked Q to Mark? How did they know it's about the same guy?

Was it the name Jesus? Out of the thousands of Jesuses running around at any given time, how do you know if it's independent confirmation of the same Jesus, and not the wise sayings of a completely different one?

Or maybe it was by the title of Christos? Well, that title may be unique enough to take as proof that someone is talking about Jesus nowadays, but back then it was anything but. "Christos" simply meant "annointed", and was used in several religion for their top-level initiates, _centuries_ before the alleged Jesus. Even Pharaohs were annointed, and so were a lot of people in Mesopotamia, etc.

To see how common and widespread the "annointment" was, even one of Odin's titles, "Grim", is derived from the same proto-Indo-European root meaning "to rub". It's basically a variant of "annointed".

So did they copy the sayings and wise parables of a priest of a completely different religion actually?

Or was it maybe about a "Chrestos"? The confusion between "Chrestos" and "Christos" was even widespread among Christians for centuries to come, and some even considered it the proper form. E.g., IIRC Lactantius argued that they should call themselves Chrestians and only by confusion some call themselves Christians.

But Chrestos was an even more common title. It could mean a neophyte who wasn't annointed yet (at which point he would become a "Christos".) It could mean the person who interpreted the cryptic sayings of an oracle, or merely was in the service of an oracle. It could mean a seeker of the truth in the more general sense. At it's used even in the NT in a couple of places to mean just "good" (person.)

So if someone was confused enough, we could have Q be just the sayings of a good man (in much of the same way as Confucius just means "the master", and his analects are just what the nameless master said), or an initiate, or a seeker of the truth, or whatever.

Without actually seeing what's in that Q document, it's just an unsupported leap of faith to postulate that it's about the same Jesus and independent proof of a historical Jesus. We don't actually know what was the connection they saw between Q and Mark. And again it seems to me like some people are just too eager to pull postulates out of the hat there.

Those are pretty good points.

bluskool

14th April 2010, 03:45 PM

Gday,

It never fails -
in any post about the historicity of Jesus, some believer will bring up evolution.

Let's see -
over the last century or more, there have been thousands of scientists in dozens of countries who have done millions of tests, experiments and observations which support evolution.

Millions of observations of evolution.

But, there are ZERO tests or observations or experiments that have DISAGREED with evolution - NONE.

NOT. ONE.

Evolution :
Millions of tests that agree.
Zero that disagree.

Jesus:
* no contemporary evidence
* no archeological evidence
* no evidence of ANYONE who EVER met Jesus

* plenty of evidence AGAINST Jesus being historical.

But to a believer - Jesus is more real than evolution.

K.

What is your deal with thinking I am a believer? I have already told you that I am an atheist and have no vested interest in this. The comparison with evolution was to show how silly your argument was, not to cast doubt on evolution. Yeesh!

HansMustermann

14th April 2010, 04:03 PM

bluskool

14th April 2010, 04:10 PM

Yes, I have read that text, that was just a couple of examples of what I consider rather debatable assumptions. I wasn't going to write a whole thesis about it. Let's just say why I can't say he's flat out wrong (I don't have more evidence either way than he does either) I'm not quite convinced to take it as gospel either. It's a decent conjecture, actually, but still not much more than conjecture, that's all I'm saying.

On that point I will totally agree with you. We are talking about history so more subjectivity is going to play a role than in other scholarly fields. I think the Jesus myth is quite possibly true, but am not sold on it yet. It certainly would make it easier to argue with believers. No reason to get into the nuances of whether Jesus did this or that if we could just say he never existed.

Kapyong

14th April 2010, 05:36 PM

Gday,

What is your deal with thinking I am a believer? I have already told you that I am an atheist and have no vested interest in this.

Fair enough.
I'm NOT an atheist.

The comparison with evolution was to show how silly your argument was, not to cast doubt on evolution. Yeesh!

But I showed your comparison was faulty -

There is a VAST difference between evolution with millions of actual supporting observations and NO disproofs;
vs
a majority of believers who BELIEVE, (and many reasons NOT to.)

It's chalk and cheese.
Your comparision fails.

K.

Kapyong

14th April 2010, 07:45 PM

Gday,

But your conspiracy theory suggests that I was lied to and conned.

I'd like to remind people that this 'conspiracy theory' of Carotta's is generally NOT widely believed. Not even by Jesus mythers. I don't think Hans would call it 'his conpiracy theory'.

Generally, the Jesus Myth argument does NOT rest on a conspiracy (an agreement to commit a crime or evil act.)

(Of course, these days, 'conspiracy theory' is often used to mean 'crazy stuff I don't believe'.)

I have also found on the internet Roman historians mentioned who mention Jesus.

None contemporary.
It's just some later Romans who record Christian BELIEFS about Jesus in the 2nd century. Not actual records of Jesus.

So what? Everyone agrees there were Christian in the 2nd century who believed in Jesus.

All it means is that we should be praising Peter and Paul, who did exist. We know where they are burried.

Nonsense.
The alleged 'tomb of Peter' turned out to be a pile of old rubbish in a gap in some ancient masonry which included bones of several people, NO head, and some animals bones such as pig bones.

Paul's alleged tomb is no better - it's actually just an empty sarcophagus from almost four centuries after Paul.

K.

Brainache

15th April 2010, 03:27 PM

Gday,

Fair enough.
I'm NOT an atheist.
...
K.

I hope you don't think I'm being rude, but I'm curious about what your religious beliefs are. Is this Jesus Myth (which I find fairly convincing BTW) the basis of your personal theology?

To me, the question of Jesus' existence as a flesh and blood human v a spirtual being is moot, because you will not convince the majority of Christians.

Kapyong

15th April 2010, 05:39 PM

Gday,

I hope you don't think I'm being rude, but I'm curious about what your religious beliefs are. Is this Jesus Myth (which I find fairly convincing BTW) the basis of your personal theology?

I wouldn't say that, no.

I was reading Homer and the OT when I was 5 or so (in kids versions) and they were obviously the same category of story.

Oddly, I recall in this period of lapping up those lovely books with colour engravings by Drurer (maybe) of great biblical scenes, that there seemed to be two differen threads to these stories :

1. One set of people and stories which was about tabernacles and wandering and the Ark.

2. Another set was about other people and Jerusalem and a Temple.

They didn't seem to connect to my childish mind.

Then much later, after various bizarre spiritual experiences, I came to look hard at the Jesus problem - coming at it from a magical and/or mythical approach.

It's seems pretty clear that Paul had various spiritual experiences, that influenced him greatly, he wrote about it - and many listened to him - just like seekers today read all those spiritual and esoteric books to find the truth.

Have a look at 1 John - it's obvious the guy has just been out of body and initiated into the 'Christ' and he can't wait to tell everybody. Then people read that book and get goose-bumps and say "wow, that guy saw the god worlds".

Have a look at Clement - he talks about Christian initiation :
"rise oh sleepr and the Christ will shine on you".
What on earth is that?
Nothing to do with anything in the Gospels - it's a person being initiated into an out of body experience called 'Christ' in some way.

Have a look at The Golden Ass "I saw the sun shine at mid-night and worshipped the Gods face to face".

It's the same stuff - they were all having out of body spiritual experiencxs, maybe drug induced - who knows.

That's how it started.

To me, the question of Jesus' existence as a flesh and blood human v a spirtual being is moot, because you will not convince the majority of Christians.

Yup.

But I would be happy to say Christ is "real".
He is a real spiritual being.
No idea what that really means.

I would disagree with almost every specific Christian belief.
But I would still never call myself an atheist because I have travelled myself in at least 3 of my bodies and met some of the others face to face, and seen physical magic done for me.

K.