What counts as a historical Jesus?

[Lowpro]

Originally Posted by Piggy

See, this is what gets me.

You say you "believe" this.

But you have no reason to. You have no evidence of this. You don't know who these people are or what they do or how they do it and you haven't read their publications, but you "believe" this about them.

This is why I can't take y'all seriously.

O.o Piggy...you know that it shouldn't matter whether they believed in Yeshua or didn't believe in Yeshua unless we are to suspect that for some reason the belief biases the evidence (the evidence and interpretation of evidence are distinct). The most devout Christians who strokes themselves to the Bible and the most un-Christian Jesus-hating nerfherders would get the same answer if they calculated the probabilities using the evidence. Now if they use a heuristic prior you may get weird outputs but the P(E) should be the same. That's half the reason why probabilities are so useful. The only time the probabilities would be different is if they sucked at math...and many probably do >.>

[Piggy]

Originally Posted by pakeha

So other than biblical texts, what things count as early Christian artefacts, Piggy?

Ah, but it's not just the Christian artifacts that matter.

For instance, something I've mentioned before, if Jesus is from Galilee, and grew up in a tiny village, no more than a few huts, and his disciples and brothers were rural Galileans, what were his cultural influences?

Was that area thoroughly Jewish, or were there outside influences mixed in?

Well, excavations in rural Galilee at that time reveal 5 important sets of artifacts.

Actually, the first two are missing artifacts, of sorts -- pig bones, and Roman Roads.

There's no evidence of anyone raising pigs, slaughtering them, or eating them. So the area was likely thoroughly Jewish.

And there were no Roman roads in Galilee at the time Jesus was supposed to have lived, so it appears isolated from influence via that channel.

Also, stone vessels are found in abundance. These were preferred by Jews for reasons of purity, an important concept in Jewish thinking and practice. In extensive digs like Capernaum and Sepphoris, every single house has them.

And stepped plastered pools for ritual immersion are found, communal ones for rural areas, and also private ones for the more well-off in wealthier locales. (The exception is Capernaum, where the lake was available for this function.)

Finally, secondary burials in shaft tombs. Bodies are laid out until the flesh rots and then the bones are placed in shafts or hollows.

What this, and other evidence, tells us is that Jesus and his closest followers come from a thoroughly Jewish background, and that's important when evaluating what his followers said his message and mission were, as we've seen.


Then there's the Pontius Pilate inscription, which is not Christian or Jewish, but which is important for a couple of reasons. It verifies that Pilate was prefect of Judea, and that there was a temple to Tiberius in Caesarea when Jesus lived, verifying encroachment of Roman customs along the coast, including some that would have been offensive to conservative Jews.

And the Tiberium is interesting, because while Herod the Great was building a rather pagan-friendly city in Caesarea, he was also building an expanded and strictly Jewish Temple complex in Jerusalem. (Gentiles were not excluded, except from the inner courts, but they had to go through purification just like the Jews.) In Galilee, he built nothing.

Herod Antipas, son of Herod the Great who became tetrarch of Galilee, built Tiberias and expanded Sepphoris in Galilee, but excavations find no pagan temples, no statues, no evidence of the emperor cult, and no coins with his face on them.

This is very telling about the attitude toward non-Jewish customs in Galilee!


Also, consider what roof construction can tell us about the gospels.

In Galilee, the homes are made of fieldstones, straw, and mud, with thatched roofs. There are no tiled roofs found until the expansion of Sepphoris starting in 4 BCE and the building of Tiberias starting in 19 CE.

So it's not surprising that our earliest gospel, Mark, describes the friends of a paralyzed man digging through a roof to lower him down to Jesus to be healed.

But Luke says they removed the tiles from the roof. Either the story had morphed by then, or Luke made the change to fit his time and place.

That tells us something about the author of Luke, whoever he was.


We find no buildings for synagogues in Galilee at that time, indicating that these local assemblies were probably just outdoor gatherings. And we find a relatively low number of inscriptions, possibly indicating low literacy.

All this helps us get a picture of Galileans from the time, and provides a baseline for evaluating later stories about Jesus. (He was not sitting in buildings poring over scrolls.)


So please understand, when I say that a theory needs to match ALL the artifacts, I really mean it. I don't just mean some narrow selection, or those that are specifically Christian.

To understand any ancient time, place, and people is very difficult. You have to look at everything, and sometimes it's the little stuff that will trip you up.

For example, I run across contrarian stuff that speculates about how there must have been strong pagan influence in Jesus's life (or the lives of the Galileans who made him up) because Sepphoris was so near Nazareth and Herod Antipas wasn't an observant Jew, and from there all sorts of speculation starts to build (including the old "maybe that's where the mystery cult influence comes from" bit).

But the archaeology doesn't bear it out.

And that's the thing, if knowing something about how roofs were built can tell us something about the difference between Mark and Luke, that shows you just how complex it is to fit these other artifacts -- the texts -- into their place in time.

History is nothing but an avalanche of detail.

[Piggy]

Originally Posted by Belz...

Piggy, this wouldn't fly on ANY other topic. Why do you think authority is going to be convincing here ?

I am sorry that some knowledge requires a lot of effort.

I apologize to you on that score.

Had I known that the evidence for a historical Jesus could be summed up in a forum post, I wouldn't have wasted hundreds of hours studying the evidence that builds the case.

I don't think authority is going to be convincing.

But you know, if you'll please stop interrupting the process with complaints, you might actually end up getting the evidence you want.

The strongest evidence for any historical theory is convergence -- that is, many different types and instances of evidence all pointing to one common solution.

For issues in Biblical criticism -- who wrote this stuff and when and why and for whom, and how was it compiled and edited, and who's real and who's a folk hero or composite or borrowed figure (that is a problem with some texts, but not so much by the time we get to New Testament literature) -- this convergence can be extremely difficult to tease out, and making the case for that teasing out to someone who's not familiar with the material, the research, or the historical context is next to impossible.

No, wait, I'll correct myself, it's probably just plain impossible.

If I want to demonstrate to you that Einstein was right when he said gravity bends light, I can do it with 10 paragraphs and a couple of links.

But there is no experiment that could possibly let you understand why scholars of the Ancient Near East accept that Jesus was a living, breathing human being who was crucified by Pilate.

I'm trying not to be rude, but if you want evidence, hang on until I've described what the theory IS first before you go demanding to see the evidence for it, and let me just get on with doing what I'm trying to do.

If what I'm posting isn't working for you, just ignore me and go read the contrarians, they have plenty to say.

[Piggy]

Originally Posted by tsig

Do you?

Yes. Didn't I already mention Lewis in a reply to one of your posts? I've been fortunate to have some very good profs. And as I mentioned to another poster, I still keep up with the reading as well as I can.

[davefoc]

Originally Posted by Piggy

Ah, but it's not just the Christian artifacts that matter.

For instance, something I've mentioned before, if Jesus is from Galilee, and grew up in a tiny village, no more than a few huts, and his disciples and brothers were rural Galileans, what were his cultural influences?

...

I thought this was your best post of the thread Piggy. But I'm not sure that it supports your view. The more Jewish and the more illiterate Jesus and his associates are the less likely it seems that any of them would have fanned out and established Christianity in the Greek speaking Mediterranean world.

My view for awhile has been that in fact they didn't and that Christianity was founded in a Greek speaking with little or no input from a hypothetical Jewish/Christian sect. Your archeology evidence above sort of supports this notion. But then what of Peter? You are arguing that the Peter that was a Jesus associate is also out and about competing with Paul as a proselytizer to the Greek speaking world. But is that compatible with the idea that he came from solidly Jewish area with low literacy rates?

[Piggy]

Originally Posted by davefoc

I thought this was your best post of the thread Piggy. But I'm not sure that it supports your view.

Please, if you don't mind, stop arguing with me for a while and just wait. I haven't even started. Just a little patience, please.

[The Norseman]

Originally Posted by Piggy

See, this is what gets me.

You say you "believe" this.

But you have no reason to. You have no evidence of this. You don't know who these people are or what they do or how they do it and you haven't read their publications, but you "believe" this about them.

This is why I can't take y'all seriously.

How many people have publicly stated that they began their Yeshua search that he did not exist?

What gets me is your absolute certainty based on suppositions and "maybes" and "possiblys". If just one of the "possiblys" is wrong, the whole theory crumbles and it's absurd that you refuse to admit it.

[The Norseman]

Originally Posted by Lowpro

Technically you'd have to do the same legwork you're doing to compile evidence that Yeshua existed; the numbers would be (should be) inverse. Now you may gather evidence at different rates (we're speaking practically and if people believe in Jesus they may be searching for a tomb in an area that fits the description) but if you were just throwing spades in every direction the only thing that'd change is the rate of discovery, not the evidence so much...also assumes the information is shared between the two parties)

Originally Posted by Lowpro

O.o Piggy...you know that it shouldn't matter whether they believed in Yeshua or didn't believe in Yeshua unless we are to suspect that for some reason the belief biases the evidence (the evidence and interpretation of evidence are distinct). The most devout Christians who strokes themselves to the Bible and the most un-Christian Jesus-hating nerfherders would get the same answer if they calculated the probabilities using the evidence. Now if they use a heuristic prior you may get weird outputs but the P(E) should be the same. That's half the reason why probabilities are so useful. The only time the probabilities would be different is if they sucked at math...and many probably do >.>

Yeah, it should be the same, but I see a huge bias in that it's always presented that the minuscule amount of evidence that does exist supports a preexisting assumption that Yeshua was a real person. Confirmation bias, in other words.

So what are the actual probabilities of item A and then item B and C?

[Piggy]

How Jewish were the original Christians?

One more thing before we get to the geography and politics… another pre-orientation….

For almost all folks today who have heard of Jesus, he seems like an anomaly, something unique in history.

That's not surprising, because the culture he came out of is long gone, and Jesus is the only person of his kind that all but a small fraction of people have ever heard of.

I mean, how many folks have heard of Hanina ben Dosa, or Honi the Circle Drawer, or the nameless holy men killed by Pilate for attempting prophetic stunts around Jerusalem?

Now, obviously, Jesus's followers did claim something quite new, and bizarre -- that a Jewish messiah was a dead man who had been crucified -- but Jesus himself was entirely a product of his time.

Let's start with his message. which by all accounts is this: the coming of the Kingdom of God.

Now this was not a vague thing for 1st century Jews. It was a specific future event.

It has its roots in the writings of the so-called "Second Isaiah" (chapters 40-55) regarding the repatriation ordered by Cyrus, declaring that Israel had served its punishment, and describing the end of the exile and the return to Jerusalem as if it were the establishment of a new Eden:

Quote:

I Yahweh… will open rivers on the bare heights, and foundations in the midst of the valleys; I will make the wilderness a pool of water, and the dry land springs of water. I will put in the wilderness the cedar, the acacia, the myrtle, and the olive; I will set in the desert the cypress, the plane and the pine together.

As for the pagans, it's another matter:

Quote:

They shall be turned back and utterly put to shame -- those who trust in carved images, who say to cast images, "You are our gods."

Now, there's a process that occurs with religious writings called spiritualization, which just means that writings which are important to a religious group tend to either become unimportant and are forgotten (the fate of most) or they become, to varying degrees, sacred, and as these latter kinds of documents lose their context, the parts that were immediately relevant to the time and place in which they were written (now vague or unknown) get converted into general principles or prophecies and things such as that.

This is what happened with Second Isaiah. The hyperbolic description of the return to a literal, earthly new Jerusalem was re-interpreted as a prophecy of a future event at which God would establish his Kingdom here on earth, Eden would return with Jerusalem as its capital, the unrighteous would be slaughtered, and those who accept the rule of Yahweh would bow to Israel and its God.

(One thing you quickly learn when studying the Bible, it is constructed of layers upon layers of misreading.)

There's an earlier part of Isaiah that got rolled into this vision, 24-27, sometimes called the Isaiah Apocalypse or the Little Apocalypse, and it describes Yahweh visiting horrible vengeance on the enemies of Israel, and personally ruling a joyful Jewish nation from Jerusalem.

Quote:

The kings of the earth… will be gathered together like prisoners in a pit; they will be shut up in a prison, and after many days they will be punished. The moon will be abashed, and the sun ashamed; for Yahweh of Hosts will reign on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem and before his elders he will manifest his glory.

In the middle of the second century BCE, the doctrine of the future establishment of the Kingdom of God on earth played a central role in a Hasidic scroll composed during the Maccabean wars as a broadside against Antiochus (who had essentially outlawed Judaism) which is now called the Book of Daniel. (The composition may be dated fairly accurately, not only because of the typical clues such as vocabulary, theology, placenames, politics, and such but also because Daniel's prophecies are remarkably good up to a particular point at which they go kaplooey.)

In Daniel, the Jewish God is called "God of gods, Lord of kings, and a revealer of mysteries" -- and the revelation of divine mysteries is what is known as an apocalypse.

Part of what is revealed to Daniel (7-12) is, not surprisingly, a re-interpretation and expansion of Second Isaiah and the Little Apocalypse, mixed with other influences. Daniel's imagery is so closely associated with apocalyptic literature, in fact, that the term apocalypse has come to refer to the events which the author of Daniel describes, rather than to the process of revelation itself, and to end-time scenarios in general.

The author of Daniel describes beasts given human minds and with human eyes and horrible forms, but God (the white-haired, white-robed Ancient One on his throne of flame) takes away their dominions. Then Daniel sees an angel in human form "like a son of man coming with the clouds of heaven. And he came to the Ancient One and was presented before him. To him was given dominion and glory and kingship, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that shall not pass away, and his kingship is one that shall never be destroyed."

The vision of Daniel is later echoed in the Book of Enoch, which describes a vision of the establishment of the Kingdom of God that is worth citing at length (although this is not the best translation):

Quote:

There I saw one who had a head of days and his head was white like wool and with him was another being whose countenance had the appearance of a son of man. His face was filled with graciousness like a holy angel.

And I asked the angel with me to show me the hidden things concerning the Son of Man. Who was he, where did he come from, and why did he go with the Head of Days, and he answered:

"This is the Son of Man who is filled with goodness, with whom goodness lives and who reveals all treasures that are concealed, for the Lord of Spirits chose him, whose lot is preeminent before the Lord of Spirits in goodness forever. This Son of Man whom you have seen will raise up kings and the mighty from their seats, the strong from their thrones. He will loosen the reins of the strong and break the teeth of sinners. He will throw down kings from their thrones and their kingdoms because they do not extol and praise him, nor humbly acknowledge how their kingdom was given them. He will humble the countenance of the strong, fill them with shame, and darkness will be their dwelling and worms their bed. They will have no hope of rising from their beds, for they do not extol the name of the Lord of Spirits."

There I saw the fountain of goodness which was inexhaustible. Around it were many fountains of wisdom. All the thirsty drank from them and were filled with wisdom and they lived with the good, the holy, and the elect. At that hour the Son of Man was named before the Lord of Spirits, and his name was the Head of Days:

Yes, before the sun and the signs were created, before the stars of Heaven were made his name was named before the Lord of Spirits.

He will be a staff to the good to stay themselves and not fall, he will be the light of the Gentiles, and the hope of those who are troubled of heart.

All who live on earth will fall down and worship him, will praise and bless and celebrate the Lord of Spirits with song.

And so he has been chosen and hidden before God, before the creation of the world and for eternity.

The wisdom of the Lord of Spirits has revealed him to the holy and the good for he preserved the good because they have despised the world of evil, hated all its works and ways in the name of the Lord of Spirits. In his name they are saved according to his good pleasure.

In these days the kings of the earth and the strong who possess the land because of the works of their hands are all downcast for they know that on the day of their anguish they will not be able to save themselves. I will turn them over into the hands of my elected ones. Like straw in the fire they will burn before the face of the holy, like lead in water they will sink before the face of the good, and no trace of them will ever be found.

On the day of their anguish there will be rest on earth. They will fall but not rise again.

No one will take them with his hands and raise them, for they have denied the Lord of Spirits and his Messiah. The name of the Lord of Spirits be blessed.

In those days the earth will give back what was entrusted to it, Sheol will return what it has received, and Hell will give back what it owes. For in those days the Elected One will arise and choose the good and holy from those who died. The day has come when they are to be saved. The Elected One in those days will sit on my throne and his mouth pour forth secrets of wisdom and counsel. The Lord of Spirits gave them to him and glorified him.

And in those days the mountains will leap like rams, the hills will skip like lambs satisfied with milk, and the faces of all angels in Heaven will glow with joy.

The earth will rejoice, the good will live on it, and the elect will walk there, and the Lord of Spirits will rule over them. They will eat with the Son of Man and lie down and rise up forever and ever. The good and the elect will rise from the earth and cease to be of downcast countenance.

They will be clothed with garments of glory, the garments of life from the Lord of Spirits. Your garments will not grow old, nor your glory pass away before the Lord of Spirits.

This is what Jesus preached -- these events -- the coming of the Kingdom of God. Right then, in the lifetime of his hearers.

After his death, his followers re-interpreted their master's teaching so that his resurrection was the "first fruits" of this process, proof that the Kingdom was arriving, as well as proof that Jesus was not just any messiah (anointed one) but the Elected One himself, and that God's army would descend when Jesus returned to establish Heaven on earth.

Now the thing about this is that it's entirely Jewish. Sure, there are parallels and echoes, but this theology is specifically Jewish, based on centuries of Jewish prophecy.

Preaching the coming of the Kingdom of God, especially in these particular terms, doesn't even make sense outside of a Jewish context.

And if you've read my comments above about archaeology in Galilee, and my comments on the arguments between "blameless before the Law" Paul and those among his fellow evangelists who were insisting that even gentile believers convert to Judaism and protesting that Jews shouldn't even sit at table with gentiles….

And when you consider that Jesus's followers called him the Messiah, and the Son of Man who would come in power (with an army) on the clouds of heaven, when the low shall be made high and the high shall be made low -- concepts which also make no sense outside a Jewish context -- and that they justified all their beliefs about Jesus exclusively with reference to Jewish scripture and tradition….

There's only one conclusion to reach: The original Christians were not only Jewish, they were Jewish religious fanatics.

ETA: Except for Enoch, the citations here are not comprehensive; they are just selections of much larger sections of text.

[Craig B]

Originally Posted by davefoc

... My view for awhile has been that in fact they didn't and that Christianity was founded in a Greek speaking with little or no input from a hypothetical Jewish/Christian sect.

Does that mean that in your opinion no such sect existed and that the Jerusalem community of Paul and Acts is entirely imaginary?

[Piggy]

Originally Posted by The Norseman

If just one of the "possiblys" is wrong, the whole theory crumbles and it's absurd that you refuse to admit it.

There are possiblys that matter and possiblys that don't.

It's the same with any other theory.

There are a few pillars that have to stand for the theory to be valid, but many ways in which the theory could actually play out.

Changes were made to Darwin's theories, for example, which honed them but didn't invalidate them.

There are many, many questions still open about Jesus and his first followers. But the question of whether Jesus was a person or a persona isn't one of them.

[davefoc]

Originally Posted by Craig B

Does that mean that in your opinion no such sect existed and that the Jerusalem community of Paul and Acts is entirely imaginary?

No, my guess remains that the sect existed. I tend to believe that there is some truth in what Paul wrote.

My general theory remains however that Christianity arose out of gentile Greek speaking area with little or no input from the original Jesus sect other than it might have provided a seed that got the Christianity ball rolling in what I think might have been a God Fearer community (but I am a little less sure of that than I was before you asked me some questions about my ideas on this).

But this talk about Peter got me to wondering. Is there evidence that the Peter of the Gospels, a guy from a Jewish area with no indication of specific academic or religious training becomes a successful proselytizer for some kind of Christianity, maybe to early Jewish Christians? But he seems to be competing with Paul a bit, so what's with that? Was Paul really talking to a Jewish audience? It doesn't seem likely that it would have been mainstream Judaism kind of thing, but maybe it was a Jewish audience that was following a modified form of Judaism that was open to this idea that a messiah had come already? Awhile back somebody linked to some research done by woman who guessed that all the Gospels were written by Jews, which contradicts my theory about gentile members of the God-fearer group being the authors and I'm sure she knew a lot more about this than I do.

On a different topic:
Somebody asked how it came to be that Paul's letters were saved. I actually read a book about Paul's letters. This guy's theory was that Paul himself might have combined several letters into the epistles as we know them today. There is also the theory that Marcion wrote them or at least was the principal source for copies of them.

[davefoc]

Originally Posted by Piggy

Ah, but it's not just the Christian artifacts that matter.
[long, interesting and relevant post about archeological evidence associated with Jesus]

Originally Posted by davefoc

I thought this was your best post of the thread Piggy. ...

Originally Posted by Piggy

Please, if you don't mind, stop arguing with me for a while and just wait. I haven't even started. Just a little patience, please.

Just for the record, I meant the above as a genuine complement. And although my post might have been argumentative, I was genuinely interested in your thoughts about this, especially with regard to the idea that Jesus associates may have really contributed to the spread of Christianity when your evidence seems to provide support for the general view that Jesus and his guys were probably illiterate, non-worldly, Aramaic speaking folks unlikely at least on the surface to be the sort of fellows one would expect to have much traction with a Greek speaking audience far away from the Palestinian area.

[Aepervius]

Originally Posted by HansMustermann

You have to understand, though, that the ancient world was VERY different from ours.

Quote:

Plus, people didn't really check stuff anyway.

Plus, a lot of early Christians were slaves, who couldn't do such fact-finding trips anyway.

So like today ? Because I dunno for you, but I don't see a lot of people doing fact checking today. In fact the minority to fact checking, the crushing majority take the first hearsay as facts.

So if it is not done today when the frigging encyclopedic info can often be at 10 second typing of "<subject> Wiki" in google or "<subject> britanica"..... And there is no reason to think people in the past had a better access to info or a greater will to double check facts....

Also for most of history and even nowadays majority of people don't travel much. Lack of means, lack of will. And today's travel even in conflict zone are much easier.

Add to that lack of real scholarity discussion. How often discussion on a point of religion ended into an auto-dafé of the heretic in Europe ? What we are discussing RIGHT NOW would be a suicide note a few hundreds year back.

I dare say people started discussing the real fundemment of christianity critically maybe only in the last 100, 150 years, and by that time most of the evidence to say whether MJ or HJ are gone forever. Baring newfound document cache.

[davefoc]

Originally Posted by Aepervius

...
I dare say people started discussing the real fundamentals of christianity critically maybe only in the last 100, 150 years, and by that time most of the evidence to say whether MJ or HJ are gone forever. Barring new found document cache.

I think the chances of a significant new found document cache relevant to the historical Jesus approach zero. Over the years miscellaneous documents have turned up, dead sea scrolls, Nag Hammadi finds, Gospel according to Judas, miscellaneous Codexes, etc and they all significantly post date the time frame of the life of a hypothetical Jesus and the time immediately following it or have nothing to say about an historical Jesus beyond their silence on the matter. I think there's a reason why nothing from the critical years for Christianity between about 30AD and 100 AD has been found. Nothing exists. The Jesus sect was a very small time affair if it existed, it is doubtful the members wrote anything, but if they did there was nobody around to save their work, because the people who might have were savaged by the Romans in two disastrous wars. The early Christian writings that have come down to us were by the people that created Christianity as we know it and they probably didn't know much about the history of the Jesus they wrote about or his associates.

[maximara]

Originally Posted by Piggy

But this is changing the subject and isn't at all on the topic of what we were discussing, which is whether or not historians draw conclusions based on propaganda, or whether instead they simply ignore it

Watch Myth of the Spanish Inquisition for how true historians deal with propaganda. They go back to the contemporary records .

This same method has been used to disprove popular 20th century propaganda such as the Bermuda Triangle and Tanaka Memorial as well as the antisemitic wonder of that century The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

Taking the Gospels as history is insane and yet that is just what many "historians" (actually biblical scholars) do.

[Craig B]

Originally Posted by davefoc

... Awhile back somebody linked to some research done by woman who guessed that all the Gospels were written by Jews, which contradicts my theory about gentile members of the God-fearer group being the authors and I'm sure she knew a lot more about this than I do.

Regardless of what she knew, I find it hard to accept that for John, unless he was a Jew who had utterly rejected his Jewish origin, like Karl Marx.

Quote:

The Gospel of John collectively describes the enemies of Jesus as "the Jews". In none of the other gospels do "the Jews" demand, en masse, the death of Jesus; instead, the plot to put him to death is always presented as coming from a small group of priests and rulers, the Sadducees. John's gospel is thus the primary source of the image of "the Jews" acting collectively as the enemy of Jesus, which later became fixed in the Christian mind.
For example, in John 7:1-9 Jesus moves around in Galilee but avoids Judea, because "the Jews" were looking for a chance to kill him. In 7:12-13 some said "he is a good man" whereas others said he deceives the people, but these were all "whispers", no one would speak publicly for "fear of the Jews". Jewish rejection is also recorded in 7:45-52, 8:39-59, 10:22-42, and 12:36-43. 12:42 says many did believe, but they kept it private, for fear the Pharisees would exclude them from the Synagogue. After the crucifixion, 20:19 has the disciples hiding behind locked doors, "for fear of the Jews".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisem..._New_Testament
Your post contains other interesting things, which I hope I may comment on in due course.

[HansMustermann]

Originally Posted by Belz...

Source ?

YouTube Video This video is not hosted by the JREF. The JREF can not be held responsible for the suitability or legality of this material. By clicking the link below you agree to view content from an external website.

I AGREE

... around 21:16, citing William Harris, "Ancient Literacy".

Though it seems like my memory was faulty, it was "only" the equivalent of 30 dollars from 1989, not 60. Though I suppose in 2013 dollars I was probably not too far off. Also (and probably the thought that made me remember it double) nowadays you'd write on both sides, while a scroll was only written on one side.

So, yes, not only most people didn't go on fact finding trips, or read books, but they either couldn't write a letter to someone from Jerusalem to ask about stuff there, or they couldn't afford to write letters for every detail they want checked. And then probably the person at the other end wouldn't write a 20 page letter like Paul to cover all the details and all your thoughts on the topic, because that's like spending $600 in 1989 just to tell some guy that he's wrong.

Not to say that people didn't write letters, but more like you had to be pretty wealthy before writing a letter started to sound like a sane idea. Even a literate freedman would have more pressing issues to solve with that money, like, dunno, buying food.

Originally Posted by Aepervius

So like today ? Because I dunno for you, but I don't see a lot of people doing fact checking today. In fact the minority to fact checking, the crushing majority take the first hearsay as facts.

Not entirely. Today the majority are just too lazy or gullible to even check Wikipedia. Back then they had the excuse that the crushing majority were illiterate and of those literate, the crushing majority just couldn't afford to spend the equivalent of hundreds of dollars just to check a rumour.

ETA: I mean, even myself, I wrote a lot of text here about Jesus and why I don't think he's a real guy, but if I lived in 100 CE and had to pay the equivalent of some tens of thousands of dollars from my own pocket for that? I'd say, "Screw those Christians, let them worship their false god."

[maximara]

Originally Posted by davefoc

I think the chances of a significant new found document cache relevant to the historical Jesus approach zero. Over the years miscellaneous documents have turned up, dead sea scrolls, Nag Hammadi finds, Gospel according to Judas, miscellaneous Codexes, etc and they all significantly post date the time frame of the life of a hypothetical Jesus and the time immediately following it or have nothing to say about an historical Jesus beyond their silence on the matter. I think there's a reason why nothing from the critical years for Christianity between about 30AD and 100 AD has been found. Nothing exists. The Jesus sect was a very small time affair if it existed, it is doubtful the members wrote anything, but if they did there was nobody around to save their work, because the people who might have were savaged by the Romans in two disastrous wars. The early Christian writings that have come down to us were by the people that created Christianity as we know it and they probably didn't know much about the history of the Jesus they wrote about or his associates.

Well the Dead Sea Scrolls are kind of odd one because based on coins found with them they seem to date from 135 BCE to 73 CE and there is reference to what some people call Crucified Messiah scroll (4Q246) and then you have the Teacher of Righteousness scroll (1QS) with its Messiah like figure c100 BCE.

Claiming 7Q5 (50 BCE - 50 CE) is a variant New Testament Gospel of Mark 6:52–53shows the total disregard for logic these guys have. The correct way of writing that is the mid point (1 BCE or 1 CE) with a -+ (which assumes ONE standard deviation ie 66% chance)

[IanS]

Originally Posted by Piggy

Ah, but it's not just the Christian artifacts that matter.

For instance, something I've mentioned before, if Jesus is from Galilee, and grew up in a tiny village, no more than a few huts, and his disciples and brothers were rural Galileans, what were his cultural influences?

Was that area thoroughly Jewish, or were there outside influences mixed in?

Well, excavations in rural Galilee at that time reveal 5 important sets of artifacts.

Actually, the first two are missing artifacts, of sorts -- pig bones, and Roman Roads.

There's no evidence of anyone raising pigs, slaughtering them, or eating them. So the area was likely thoroughly Jewish.

And there were no Roman roads in Galilee at the time Jesus was supposed to have lived, so it appears isolated from influence via that channel.

Also, stone vessels are found in abundance. These were preferred by Jews for reasons of purity, an important concept in Jewish thinking and practice. In extensive digs like Capernaum and Sepphoris, every single house has them.

And stepped plastered pools for ritual immersion are found, communal ones for rural areas, and also private ones for the more well-off in wealthier locales. (The exception is Capernaum, where the lake was available for this function.)

Finally, secondary burials in shaft tombs. Bodies are laid out until the flesh rots and then the bones are placed in shafts or hollows.

What this, and other evidence, tells us is that Jesus and his closest followers come from a thoroughly Jewish background, and that's important when evaluating what his followers said his message and mission were, as we've seen. .

Piggy, come on, you are not telling us that you believe the above is good evidence of Jesus?

Are you talking here about a place called “Nazareth” and the surrounding area?

Afaik, despite various claims by religiously interested archaeologists/investigators, there is no good evidence that any remains found in that area are actually from a settlement which can be identified as the place named in the bible as the birthplace of Jesus.

And the idea that because those self-interested investigators did not find such things as pig bones or a Roman style road, that somehow adds any credence to the claim that Jesus was born in this place and therefore lived as a real person, is transparently absurd in it’s naivety.

I think we discussed the claimed discovery of Nazareth before in this thread? And iirc, there is very clearly a dispute about what, if anything, has actually been found at that actual location.

Afaik, although various remains have been found in that wider geographic area, there is considerable dispute about the dates at which any of those places were settled, and similarly disputes about the date and cultural origin of the artefacts themselves (such as oil lamps and various pottery sherds).

That sort of evidence, coming from self-interested religious sources, might influence you, and might impress religious scholars, but it would not be admissible as scientifically valid even in a primary school science class.

[Belz...]

Originally Posted by Piggy

I am sorry that some knowledge requires a lot of effort.

Don't be coy with me. You are making a special case of this topic by telling us we should each get a doctorate in first century Jewish history in order to understand the evidence. No one in the other topics says this. We don't want to _work_ in that field, Piggy, we just want to understand what convinces the historians that it's the case, and see our objections addressed.

And "why would this be ?" isn't quite convincing enough.

Quote:

Had I known that the evidence for a historical Jesus could be summed up in a forum post, I wouldn't have wasted hundreds of hours studying the evidence that builds the case.

Or dozens of posts telling us you can't do it.

Quote:

But you know, if you'll please stop interrupting the process with complaints, you might actually end up getting the evidence you want.

Interrupting the process ? What ? When you see a post by me asking a question you reboot and start over ? We'll get answers from you once everybody stops posting ? What are you talking about ?

Quote:

The strongest evidence for any historical theory is convergence -- that is, many different types and instances of evidence all pointing to one common solution.

Indeed.

Quote:

But there is no experiment that could possibly let you understand why scholars of the Ancient Near East accept that Jesus was a living, breathing human being who was crucified by Pilate.

That's odd, because there's plenty that could do that for other, real historical figures.

[eight bits]

Lowpro

Quote:

The only time the probabilities would be different is if they sucked at math...

The interpretation of probability that ordinarily pertains to evidentiary reasoning about contingent uncertainty (often called subjective or Bayesian) represents belief. If the representation of beliefs is accurate, then it follows that if two people have different beliefs, then having the same probabilities would be the indication that they suck at math.

In certain situations, there can be widepsread agreement about physical models that describe some experimental and quasi-experimental set-ups. In those cases, you can have practically "objective" likelihoods relating different outcomes to each of the contending hypotheses. As (suitably independent) evidence of this kind accumulates, opinions will converge and individuals will become more nearly certain about which hypothesis is correct.

This topic, unfortunately, isn't even remotely like that. The "found" (that is, neither experimental nor quasi-experimental) quality of all, or nearly all, of the available evidence eliminates any chance of satisfying the usual prerequisites of an "objective" course of probabilistic inference.

Hans

Quote:

And really, we're talking the kind of people who didn't check out whether there was a world-wide (i.e., happened in their own city too) hours long solar eclipse on a full moon.

They checked that to which the report referred: a lunar month that began with a solar eclipse (complicated visibility pattern, but dark enough to be remarkable at midday in Jerusalem) and a lunar eclipse at mid-month (visible to about half the planet, weather permitting). That happened during March and April of 33 CE. Check completed successfully.

We are in agreement that all references to these events that reach us were decades old when pen met papyrus. We would expect, then, that reports of these events would agree with known features of human long-term memory, which routinely conflates near-simultaneous events. That the resulting conflation is "physcially impossible" is uninformative about whether the recorded recollection is grounded in events that actually occurred, reported long afterwards by superstitious poeple who might not have known much about eclipses.

Quote:

they can trust him because look how much he suffered from Jesus, that's the kind of logic the average ancient guy seemed to apply.

And, John McCain's qualifications to be President of the United States were promoted as...? The argument is perfectly reasonable. People know that other people lie. An indication of telling the truth against interest, then, is reasonable evidence favoring sincerity.

It doesn't follow from sincerity that a report is factually accurate, but it is a useful heuristic filter for some inference tasks, such as deciding whom to believe in a swearing contest.

Quote:

what sealed the deal was his "admitting" to being a crooked government employee that actually asks for a bribe.

Selling public landmarks isn't my specialty, but lore is against you. The heuristic is "You can't con an honest mark." Compare most any example of the "Nigerian" bank transfer scam, easily located on the web, if not in your e-mailbox. The millions and millions are typically, to some extent, ill-gotten and the transaction itself is described as unlawful.

I do agree in general, however, that Piggy is quick to play the "He couldn't make that up" card, but the problem is a naive theory of incentive, IMO. Coke may rot your teeth, and Pepsi competes with Coke, but Pepsi has no incentive to question whether soda pop is healthy. In the case before us, Paul is seeking a market sharing agreement with Cephas. Paul may have little or no incentive to impeach Cephas' potentially useful witness to a real Jesus. Their conspicuous rivlary contributes to an impression of recirocal independence as information sources.

In other words, there was a deal to be made here. Apparently, such a deal was made. Profit.

[tsig]

Originally Posted by IanS

Piggy, come on, you are not telling us that you believe the above is good evidence of Jesus?

Are you talking here about a place called “Nazareth” and the surrounding area?

Afaik, despite various claims by religiously interested archaeologists/investigators, there is no good evidence that any remains found in that area are actually from a settlement which can be identified as the place named in the bible as the birthplace of Jesus.

And the idea that because those self-interested investigators did not find such things as pig bones or a Roman style road, that somehow adds any credence to the claim that Jesus was born in this place and therefore lived as a real person, is transparently absurd in it’s naivety.

I think we discussed the claimed discovery of Nazareth before in this thread? And iirc, there is very clearly a dispute about what, if anything, has actually been found at that actual location.

Afaik, although various remains have been found in that wider geographic area, there is considerable dispute about the dates at which any of those places were settled, and similarly disputes about the date and cultural origin of the artefacts themselves (such as oil lamps and various pottery sherds).

That sort of evidence, coming from self-interested religious sources, might influence you, and might impress religious scholars, but it would not be admissible as scientifically valid even in a primary school science class.

Apparently his evidence makes up in volume what it lacks in veracity.

[HansMustermann]

The problem is mostly that it is tooth fairy science, rather than volume. (ETA: And the volume actually isn't there either. It's more like a whole lot of handwaving based on very little evidence, none of which actually supports a HJ anyway.) It just assumes the tooth-fairy... err... Jesus to be real, and then proceeds to explain everything else about it. Sometimes with evidence, but sometimes again just assuming stuff along the way.

E.g., yeah, we have no pig bones (or pretty much anything else, really) from Nazareth, but tacking that detail onto Jesus assumes that

A) there was one, and

B) that we can trust a source removed by 80-90 years from his birth, and another one removed by almost a century from his birth, that he actually was in Nazareth at all.

Never mind that it conflicts with archaeology and the other sources in the bible itself about whether his family actually was from there or there moved later, in what year it was, whether there was a trip to Bethlehem (another place that actually doesn't seem to be there in the archaeological record in the 1st century), what was the geography of the place (Luke makes it on a cliff, while the place we call Nazareth is in a valley), what was the place like, or really EVERYTHING. Did those guys actually talk to reliable sources about Jesus's activities in Nazareth? And those sources actually told Luke that they hauled Jesus to chuck him off a cliff... that was several miles away? Really?

But anyway, those are things that must be supported first, before we start basing things on them. And they're not. What's done is just trusting the gospels about those details, for no supportable reason at all, and then proceeding to build on that non-existent foundation.

[tsig]

Originally Posted by Piggy

Ah, but it's not just the Christian artifacts that matter.

For instance, something I've mentioned before, if Jesus is from Galilee, and grew up in a tiny village, no more than a few huts, and his disciples and brothers were rural Galileans, what were his cultural influences?

Was that area thoroughly Jewish, or were there outside influences mixed in?

Well, excavations in rural Galilee at that time reveal 5 important sets of artifacts.

Actually, the first two are missing artifacts, of sorts -- pig bones, and Roman Roads.

There's no evidence of anyone raising pigs, slaughtering them, or eating them. So the area was likely thoroughly Jewish.

And there were no Roman roads in Galilee at the time Jesus was supposed to have lived, so it appears isolated from influence via that channel.

Also, stone vessels are found in abundance. These were preferred by Jews for reasons of purity, an important concept in Jewish thinking and practice. In extensive digs like Capernaum and Sepphoris, every single house has them.

And stepped plastered pools for ritual immersion are found, communal ones for rural areas, and also private ones for the more well-off in wealthier locales. (The exception is Capernaum, where the lake was available for this function.)

Finally, secondary burials in shaft tombs. Bodies are laid out until the flesh rots and then the bones are placed in shafts or hollows.

What this, and other evidence, tells us is that Jesus and his closest followers come from a thoroughly Jewish background, and that's important when evaluating what his followers said his message and mission were, as we've seen.


Then there's the Pontius Pilate inscription, which is not Christian or Jewish, but which is important for a couple of reasons. It verifies that Pilate was prefect of Judea, and that there was a temple to Tiberius in Caesarea when Jesus lived, verifying encroachment of Roman customs along the coast, including some that would have been offensive to conservative Jews.

And the Tiberium is interesting, because while Herod the Great was building a rather pagan-friendly city in Caesarea, he was also building an expanded and strictly Jewish Temple complex in Jerusalem. (Gentiles were not excluded, except from the inner courts, but they had to go through purification just like the Jews.) In Galilee, he built nothing.

Herod Antipas, son of Herod the Great who became tetrarch of Galilee, built Tiberias and expanded Sepphoris in Galilee, but excavations find no pagan temples, no statues, no evidence of the emperor cult, and no coins with his face on them.

This is very telling about the attitude toward non-Jewish customs in Galilee!


Also, consider what roof construction can tell us about the gospels.

In Galilee, the homes are made of fieldstones, straw, and mud, with thatched roofs. There are no tiled roofs found until the expansion of Sepphoris starting in 4 BCE and the building of Tiberias starting in 19 CE.

So it's not surprising that our earliest gospel, Mark, describes the friends of a paralyzed man digging through a roof to lower him down to Jesus to be healed.

But Luke says they removed the tiles from the roof. Either the story had morphed by then, or Luke made the change to fit his time and place.

That tells us something about the author of Luke, whoever he was.


We find no buildings for synagogues in Galilee at that time, indicating that these local assemblies were probably just outdoor gatherings. And we find a relatively low number of inscriptions, possibly indicating low literacy.

All this helps us get a picture of Galileans from the time, and provides a baseline for evaluating later stories about Jesus. (He was not sitting in buildings poring over scrolls.)


So please understand, when I say that a theory needs to match ALL the artifacts, I really mean it. I don't just mean some narrow selection, or those that are specifically Christian.

To understand any ancient time, place, and people is very difficult. You have to look at everything, and sometimes it's the little stuff that will trip you up.

For example, I run across contrarian stuff that speculates about how there must have been strong pagan influence in Jesus's life (or the lives of the Galileans who made him up) because Sepphoris was so near Nazareth and Herod Antipas wasn't an observant Jew, and from there all sorts of speculation starts to build (including the old "maybe that's where the mystery cult influence comes from" bit).

But the archaeology doesn't bear it out.

And that's the thing, if knowing something about how roofs were built can tell us something about the difference between Mark and Luke, that shows you just how complex it is to fit these other artifacts -- the texts -- into their place in time.

History is nothing but an avalanche of detail.

No pigs = no Jews?

Yet the bible says that where Jesus lived there were pigs.

Your evidence seems to be consuming itself.

[Piggy]

Originally Posted by davefoc

Just for the record, I meant the above as a genuine complement. And although my post might have been argumentative, I was genuinely interested in your thoughts about this, especially with regard to the idea that Jesus associates may have really contributed to the spread of Christianity when your evidence seems to provide support for the general view that Jesus and his guys were probably illiterate, non-worldly, Aramaic speaking folks unlikely at least on the surface to be the sort of fellows one would expect to have much traction with a Greek speaking audience far away from the Palestinian area.

I know, and thank you.

Sorry if I was brusque, but please hear what I'm saying, too.

Just let me get this all presented, please. If I stop to deal with arguments along the way -- which wouldn't be arguments after the HJ theory is described -- then the whole thing stops again.

I hope you'll understand.

Please be patient, if you care to read my posts.

And thanks again.

[Piggy]

Originally Posted by maximara

Watch Myth of the Spanish Inquisition for how true historians deal with propaganda. They go back to the contemporary records .

This same method has been used to disprove popular 20th century propaganda such as the Bermuda Triangle and Tanaka Memorial as well as the antisemitic wonder of that century The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

Taking the Gospels as history is insane and yet that is just what many "historians" (actually biblical scholars) do.

What are you talking about?

Have you actually read what I've written, or do you just read the first couple of sentences and reply? (That's a serious question, not snark, because it sure seems like that's what you're doing.)

The methods you describe which have been used to disprove the Protocols, for example, are precisely the methods I'm talking about. Who do you think examined those documents?

Nobody thinks the Gospels are history. Not in the academic community, nobody there reads them that way. Only the confessional apologists do that, and we've never been discussing their ideas here.

What I said -- which is true -- is that historians do not discard sources just because they are not accurate and ignore them.

Everything that everyone writes, even the lies and propaganda -- sometimes especially the lies and propaganda -- tells us something about who they are and the times in which they live.

The gospels are a treasure trove of information about what different communities of early Christians believed, or said they believed.

And that tells us a lot about them, and in turn, about the man who founded their movement.

That is what I am saying. And it is accurate. I have no idea why you think I've said anyone should read the Gospels as history. I don't think you've actually been reading what I write.

[Piggy]

Originally Posted by IanS

Afaik, despite various claims by religiously interested archaeologists/investigators, there is no good evidence that any remains found in that area are actually from a settlement which can be identified as the place named in the bible as the birthplace of Jesus.

As far as you know?

So, who have you been reading on the subject. Which journals have you been consulting?

In any case, we don't even need to find Nazareth in order to know what such places were like in 1st century Galilee… it's not like there was a whole lot of variation.

I believe I made reference to a claim about Sepphoris being near Nazareth -- see Levine on that, along with Jonathan L. Reed for possible sources on that idea -- and there being possible pagan influence there, but in any case that's a mythicist claim, not mine, I certainly wasn't endorsing it.

So no, it doesn't matter whether or not Nazareth has been positively or even possibly identified. We still have a pretty good picture of what rural Galilee looked like in the early 1st century.

[Piggy]

A couple of notes I want to get out of the way….

Thousands of scholars

I've been called out for the claim that "thousands of scholars" have worked on this stuff, but I hope the post about Galilee demonstrates what I mean.

The cartoon version of Biblical research is that a bunch of Christian zealots sit in offices reading the Bible as history.

The reality is that research on Biblical texts and cultures is a continual cooperation among the researchers handling the physical manuscripts themselves (who may be Christian, Jewish, atheist, agnostic, Buddhist, Muslim, whatever), archaeologists working in the field (ditto), and historians who use the evidence to construct and continually improve our larger picture of the time, place, and people (ditto).

So yes, there are thousands of scholars involved in this process, which involves thousands of ancient manuscripts and countless digs, and innumerable artifacts from those digs.

History is pieced together, very slowly and painstakingly, from this avalanche of detail, which constitutes "the evidence" -- and the evidence about the historical Jesus is inextricably tied up with the evidence about all of Jewish religion and culture and history and the Hellenistic environment of 1st century Judea and Galilee.

Within the academic environment, a historical Jesus is broadly accepted (see Levine's summary upthread), and no mythicist ideas have ever passed the sniff test.

Which brings me to…

The mythicists

This thread is about the historical Jesus, and shouldn't be about contrarian mythicist claims which have never passed muster.

But I hope it's becoming clear why I've decided not to respond to further mythicist objections.

Up to now, we've seen every one of their significant contentions, and quite a few of the trivial ones, debunked.

Paul does, in fact, describe Jesus as human. You can do interpretive gymnastics to try to explain it away, but regardless, he does describe Jesus as human -- a Jew, born of woman, of the line of David, born under the law, who ate and drank, was crucified by the powers of this earth, and was bodily resurrected.

The early Christians were not just Jews, they were fanatical Jews. What they said about Jesus, and what they said he preached, makes no sense without reference to Jewish beliefs and culture, and all of their claims were backed exclusively by reference to Jewish scripture and traditions. And they argued about how to keep the Law and whether even gentile converts had to do it, too.

There is no evidence of mystery cult influence in 1st century Galilee, and the early Christians behaved nothing like a mystery cult. The supposed smoking gun of the table ritual wasn't even a gun… it's a revised seder in which the sacrifice of the martyred prophet is remembered. The bit about remembrance wasn't dropped til we see it in Mark's gentile community.

We've seen that it doesn't work to propose that the Pillars weren't real people.

The notion that some people claimed that either a god or a folk hero was someone they knew, who preached publicly and died a very public death in view of thousands of Passover festival attendees… well, it's absurd on its face, and there are no known parallels to this anywhere in the history of the world, much less any evidence that it happened in this case. Which means it's nothing but idle (and rather silly) speculation.

And that kills every mythicist scenario I've ever read.

Every one that I've seen depends on at least one of those ideas being true, but none of them are.

This is why Bart Ehrman, for example, was baffled to find himself cornered by mythicists one year at a convention for the American Humanist Association (yes, he's one of us, not a fundie or anything like it).

Baffled because these ideas aren't just wrong on some details -- they are profoundly, absurdly, totally bass-ackwards wrong.

Getting involved in discussions of mythicist points is a tar baby that there's no point getting stuck in.

I'm sure the mythicists here will have reposts for all of those points, and justifications gleaned from websites and pop paperbacks and online videos and their own seat-of-the-pants opinions, but at this point there's no reason to engage. Let them rage.

[tsig]

Originally Posted by Piggy

A couple of notes I want to get out of the way….

Thousands of scholars

I've been called out for the claim that "thousands of scholars" have worked on this stuff, but I hope the post about Galilee demonstrates what I mean.

The cartoon version of Biblical research is that a bunch of Christian zealots sit in offices reading the Bible as history.

The reality is that research on Biblical texts and cultures is a continual cooperation among the researchers handling the physical manuscripts themselves (who may be Christian, Jewish, atheist, agnostic, Buddhist, Muslim, whatever), archaeologists working in the field (ditto), and historians who use the evidence to construct and continually improve our larger picture of the time, place, and people (ditto).

So yes, there are thousands of scholars involved in this process, which involves thousands of ancient manuscripts and countless digs, and innumerable artifacts from those digs.

History is pieced together, very slowly and painstakingly, from this avalanche of detail, which constitutes "the evidence" -- and the evidence about the historical Jesus is inextricably tied up with the evidence about all of Jewish religion and culture and history and the Hellenistic environment of 1st century Judea and Galilee.

Within the academic environment, a historical Jesus is broadly accepted (see Levine's summary upthread), and no mythicist ideas have ever passed the sniff test.

Which brings me to…

The mythicists

This thread is about the historical Jesus, and shouldn't be about contrarian mythicist claims which have never passed muster.

But I hope it's becoming clear why I've decided not to respond to further mythicist objections.

Up to now, we've seen every one of their significant contentions, and quite a few of the trivial ones, debunked.

Paul does, in fact, describe Jesus as human. You can do interpretive gymnastics to try to explain it away, but regardless, he does describe Jesus as human -- a Jew, born of woman, of the line of David, born under the law, who ate and drank, was crucified by the powers of this earth, and was bodily resurrected.

The early Christians were not just Jews, they were fanatical Jews. What they said about Jesus, and what they said he preached, makes no sense without reference to Jewish beliefs and culture, and all of their claims were backed exclusively by reference to Jewish scripture and traditions. And they argued about how to keep the Law and whether even gentile converts had to do it, too.

There is no evidence of mystery cult influence in 1st century Galilee, and the early Christians behaved nothing like a mystery cult. The supposed smoking gun of the table ritual wasn't even a gun… it's a revised seder in which the sacrifice of the martyred prophet is remembered. The bit about remembrance wasn't dropped til we see it in Mark's gentile community.

We've seen that it doesn't work to propose that the Pillars weren't real people.

The notion that some people claimed that either a god or a folk hero was someone they knew, who preached publicly and died a very public death in view of thousands of Passover festival attendees… well, it's absurd on its face, and there are no known parallels to this anywhere in the history of the world, much less any evidence that it happened in this case. Which means it's nothing but idle (and rather silly) speculation.

And that kills every mythicist scenario I've ever read.

Every one that I've seen depends on at least one of those ideas being true, but none of them are.

This is why Bart Ehrman, for example, was baffled to find himself cornered by mythicists one year at a convention for the American Humanist Association (yes, he's one of us, not a fundie or anything like it).

Baffled because these ideas aren't just wrong on some details -- they are profoundly, absurdly, totally bass-ackwards wrong.

Getting involved in discussions of mythicist points is a tar baby that there's no point getting stuck in.

I'm sure the mythicists here will have reposts for all of those points, and justifications gleaned from websites and pop paperbacks and online videos and their own seat-of-the-pants opinions, but at this point there's no reason to engage. Let them rage.

If you spent more time expounding your points and less time pounding others you'd be better off.

[IanS]

Originally Posted by Piggy

As far as you know?

It's a "caution". I don't claim to "know" things as a matter of definite fact.

Originally Posted by Piggy

So, who have you been reading on the subject. Which journals have you been consulting?

We discussed it earlier in the thread. There are numerous refs all over the net., inc. a lot of stuff in Wiki and lists of refs therein.

But I don't need to consult research journals on absolutely every claim ever made ... and especially not claims about Jesus from biblical scholars. Eg, nowadays you can get a pretty good idea of the evidence for, and explanation of, quantum theory and subatomic particles from reading any of hundreds of popular-level books on the subject. And that's a far more complex subject which requires a great deal more expertise and attention to detail. In fact, as it happens, I learned more about that subject from books like that, than I ever did from a PhD in theoretical physics.

Originally Posted by Piggy

In any case, we don't even need to find Nazareth in order to know what such places were like in 1st century Galilee… it's not like there was a whole lot of variation.

I believe I made reference to a claim about Sepphoris being near Nazareth -- see Levine on that, along with Jonathan L. Reed for possible sources on that idea -- and there being possible pagan influence there, but in any case that's a mythicist claim, not mine, I certainly wasn't endorsing it.

So no, it doesn't matter whether or not Nazareth has been positively or even possibly identified. We still have a pretty good picture of what rural Galilee looked like in the early 1st century.

We have very good information on all sorts things from thousands of archaeological excavations all over the world. But just because we find evidence of people living in the wider area of Galilee (it would be amazing if there was no such evidence of people and buildings in that area), that provides no evidence at all to support claims of a real HJ ...

... unless of course you can show that the archaeological remains include items from the early 1st century AD with clear inscriptions and dedications to Jesus? That would still be far from a proof, but it would be some help at least.

However, if this sort of discourse is diverting you from what you wish to post as a relatively complete summary of your case for a real HJ, then I’m more than happy to hold off on replies like this and just let you get on with what you want to do.

[Craig B]

Originally Posted by Piggy

... these (mythicist) ideas aren't just wrong on some details -- they are profoundly, absurdly, totally bass-ackwards wrong ... at this point there's no reason to engage. Let them rage.

Well, I don't think it's desirable to be so dismissive, at least in the context of this thread. I am not a mythicist, but I agree with Dawkins on this point, who IIRC states that he thinks Jesus did indeed exist, but it is intriguing that a case can in fact be made that he did not. The reason is of course the complete absence of any attestation outside the writings of his followers. And anyway I find engaging with mythicists useful and instructive. They're not all mere headbangers.

[Belz...]

Originally Posted by Piggy

So no, it doesn't matter whether or not Nazareth has been positively or even possibly identified. We still have a pretty good picture of what rural Galilee looked like in the early 1st century.

It doesn't matter if Jesus' birthplace and hometown existed. It doesn't matter if anything in the gospels happened. There's still a HJ. One had to wonder, however, exactly what he has in common with the biblical Jesus.

[Belz...]

Originally Posted by Piggy

The notion that some people claimed that either a god or a folk hero was someone they knew, who preached publicly and died a very public death in view of thousands of Passover festival attendees… well, it's absurd on its face, and there are no known parallels to this anywhere in the history of the world, much less any evidence that it happened in this case.

Er... are you arguing for or against the MJ thing, here ?

And who claimed to have known Jesus, exactly ? I know of one guy who claimed to have had a vision of him.

[IanS]

Originally Posted by Piggy

Within the academic environment, a historical Jesus is broadly accepted (see Levine's summary upthread), and no mythicist ideas have ever passed the sniff test.

Which brings me to…

The mythicists

This thread is about the historical Jesus, and shouldn't be about contrarian mythicist claims which have never passed muster.

I think you have said things like the above in a dozen or more posts now. But can we just be clear what you are claiming here. Are you claiming that not a single paper in what you are describing here as the academic journals, has ever raised the same doubts that have been expressed by your opponents in this thread?

None of those papers have ever agreed that the gospels are unreliable as historical evidence?

None of them have ever raised concerns about alterations to the non-biblical texts? Or expressed concern over the lack of any original writing contemporary with either the lifetime of Jesus, or even with the lifetime of any of the claimed authors?

None of these papers have ever expressed any concern about any of that?

How many of these scholars have in fact published papers expressing very real concerns about those and numerous other problems with the written contents of extant copies of all these ancient MSS?

[pakeha]

Originally Posted by Piggy

Ah, but it's not just the Christian artifacts that matter...

Thanks for a most interesting post, Piggy, that was bookmarked.
I admit to being disappointed in the lack linkable sources.
I'm looking forward to reading about specifically Christian artefacts, when you can get around to posting about them.

[Belz...]

Be reasonable, Pakeha.

[eight bits]

Pigg

Quote:

and was bodily resurrected.

Pneuma bodily resurrected, whose properties Paul is visibly working out even as he writes about them.. But yes, resurrected, and so Jesus is now alive, leaving a logical problem with:

Quote:

it's a revised seder in which the sacrifice of the martyred prophet is remembered.

A martyr is a dead person who died for a cause. Jesus isn't a martyr according to Paul, he's a sacrificial victim, a sacrifice for redemptive or sin atonement effect, not for the advancement of any cause. And, as you just told us, as fas Paul is concerned, Jesus is alive. Paul's even talked with him since the sacrifice, as have hundreds of others, he says.

There is no Jewish tradition of remembering living people as martyrs, is there?

Quote:

The bit about remembrance wasn't dropped til we see it in Mark's gentile community.

1 Corinthians 11: 24

and, after he had given thanks, broke it and said, “This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me."

The next verse, 25, also has the instruction "Do this...in remembrance of me."

So, what are you saying? These verses are a later interpolation?