What counts as a historical Jesus?

[HansMustermann]

Originally Posted by Brainache

From the reading I've done on the subject, most of the Historical Jesus stuff relates to textual analysis like Rob DeGraves said earlier.

There are things like Paul writing about the Disciples running the Jesus show in Jerusalem. He has disputes with them over circumcision and what food to eat, but not about the existence of Jesus.

Exactly how many disputes do you think there are at the top level of Scientology about the existence of Thetans? Does that lack of a debate mean that the Thetans are literally here and arrived on Earth 75 billion years ago, according to the scripture?

Plus, we don't know in what kind of Jesus those believed, because Paul doesn't actually go into detail. Nor exactly what other arguments Paul had with them. Paul isn't exactly writing a history of his relationship with that group, but is mentioning them a couple of times about things relevant to some other stuff that he's actually preaching to his congregation.

Assuming that they were in perfect agreement about stuff that is not mentioned as debated, is exactly like assuming that Jesus never took a crap or wiped his ass, because the Gospels don't say he did.

And doubly so for stuff where Paul doesn't even say what HE thinks, much less how much those agree with it. E.g., he never says even about himself that he thinks Jesus was a rabbi or taught anything, or when he lived, etc, nor what do those guys in Jerusalem think about that. One can't just take that hole and fill it with whatever fairy-tale one would like there. Even assuming an agreement there is bogus, but doubly so also inventing what position they were agreeing about.

Originally Posted by Brainache

There is the fact that the Jews who denied Jesus was the messiah, never denied that he was a flesh and blood human. They never claimed that he was just invented.

And the Romans never disputed that Hercules or Odysseus existed either -- in fact, they treated both as very real persons -- but that doesn't make them historical.

But anyway, just because someone has a more important point to address than trying to prove a negative, doesn't mean you can assume the positive.

Originally Posted by Brainache

There is the business with having to invent an improbable nativity story to explain why this bloke that everyone knows is from Galilee, is in fact the prophesied Messiah from Bethlehem. Who was the bloke from Galilee, if the messiah is supposed to be from Bethlehem? Oh... his parents were passing through there on business... (I'll buy that for a sheckel!)

As I was saying, even as arguments from ignorance, that's weak sauce, because there are good reasons to make a Messiah which represents both provinces into which Israel had been divided. But most importantly, it still is an argument from ignorance either way.

I mean, I also can't imagine why such a staunch defender of the American Way as Superman is born on Krypton instead of in the USA, or why would they make Heimdall, the whitest of the norse gods, be black in the movie, but that doesn't mean I can assume Superman or Heimdall to be real persons

Originally Posted by Brainache

There is also something called Kerygma http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerygma
Which apparently shows signs that some of the sayings attributed to Jesus were originally Aramaic, not Greek.

There is other stuff, but it never adds up to 100% certainty.

Considering that they were working from a scripture translated from Hebrew -- a language pretty closely related to Aramaic, including in what expressions and idioms were used, e.g., "son of man" worked the same in both -- and undoubtedly had people around who could speak Aramaic, why is it surprising?

Again, it's like trying to make Superman historical, because the expressions he uses are clearly working in American English, and he's depicted as an American, so he must be real. In reality it just shows that whoever wrote the script knew English.

[catsmate1]

Originally Posted by Rougarou

I agree that appeal to authority is a weak argument. But my post was not meant as an argument (It offers no position on the thread topic.), but as an interesting aside. If the Bible is not a reliable portrait of the historical Jesus, the position Erhman held in the debate I linked to, what other reliable evidence does he have? If I remember correctly, he hinted that there were some reasons for accepting the historical Jesus, but didn't go into them.

Agreed, I was pointing out the weakness in Erhman's thesis that were was a historical figure significantly similar to the biblical Jesus.
Erhman certainly hadn't provided any evidence in his book, his research is poor and he really never gets beyond his argument from authority/popularity position that no historians of Christianity with professorships in the history of Christianity exist who doubt the historicity of Jesus. And that isn't even true.

[Dancing David]

Um considering that it is highly likely there was a messianic preacher who would fit the bill, it seems likely that you could say 'this individual is likely the historical jesus', it is part of the culture at the time.

I don't think it really matters as the majority of the NT is written at least one generation later.

[Belz...]

Originally Posted by HansMustermann

I don't see the problem. Especially if it's made up to fit a purpose, that two people would make it up differently is actually what I'd expect.

I mean, equally if you asked two fans to write the story of how Captain Kirk was born, you'd probably still get Riverside, Iowa, but they'd probably be very different stories otherwise.

Of course... but then it'd be marketed as fiction, not history, and we'd have evidence that Kirk was a preexisting character. Also, if Kirk was supposed to fit a prophecy, you'd make him fit in the first place.

[HansMustermann]

Except we do have characters which started as fiction, but then got passed around as real stuff. E.g., the story of the spammer found dead with a can of SPAM shoved down his throat. It was written as fiction, published as fiction, and trivial to check that it's fiction, but within a couple of years people were emailing it as real stuff. E.g., the story of Teddy Stoddard was published in a magazine as a work of fiction, but within years it was making the rounds in emails as a true story.

And that's just some those which were clearly published as fiction. Then comes stuff which was posted on some parody site, and is then taken as real.

Basically just because at one point it's sold as history, doesn't mean it couldn't start as fiction.

We don't even know if Mark was selling his story as allegoric fiction. Just because 100 years later some people take it for history, doesn't mean much. But that gets even shakier when we move into exactly what story would Paul's psychotic episode be based on. He might have heard something or another about a messiah, but we don't even know what, much less that it definitely started as accurate history.

Plus it's kinda silly to assume that someone selling a lie as history wouldn't use exactly the same tropes, including the leaving some room for it to not be absolutely perfect, as someone selling fiction. Pretty much any successful lie has got to not cross into being blatantly too good to be true.

E.g., Victor Lustig was successful in selling the Eiffel tower twice by pretending to be a corrupt government official who wants a bribe too. You'd think that someone working a confidence scam would on the contrary, try to seem perfectly honest and above any reproach, but what worked was exactly inserting a "nah, a scammer wouldn't make THAT up" element.

[Belz...]

A nice example, Hans, but I think we're talking bare possibility vs probability, here.

[HansMustermann]

Ok, I'm fine with probabilities. So, how do you calculate probabilities for that?

[Brainache]

Originally Posted by HansMustermann

Exactly how many disputes do you think there are at the top level of Scientology about the existence of Thetans? Does that lack of a debate mean that the Thetans are literally here and arrived on Earth 75 billion years ago, according to the scripture?

I have no idea. Maybe every top level Scientology meeting is totally taken up with debate about Thetans, I don't know. I do know that no one says L Ron Hubbard didn't exist, even though there is a lot of mythology around him.

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Plus, we don't know in what kind of Jesus those believed, because Paul doesn't actually go into detail. Nor exactly what other arguments Paul had with them. Paul isn't exactly writing a history of his relationship with that group, but is mentioning them a couple of times about things relevant to some other stuff that he's actually preaching to his congregation.

Yes, it's as if Paul didn't know much about Jesus at all. He knows a lot about starting a cult and telling people what they want to hear. He knows how to belittle his opposition while talking himself up. The fact that those others exist and have different ideas about what Christians should do (circumcision and diet etc) suggests that Paul didn't invent the Jesus character.

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Assuming that they were in perfect agreement about stuff that is not mentioned as debated, is exactly like assuming that Jesus never took a crap or wiped his ass, because the Gospels don't say he did.

But they were in agreement that James and Peter etc were disciples of Jesus. They were in agreement that Paul never actually met Jesus. Paul even claims that he is a better disciple than those guys because he got all of his Jesus information in a vision. Paul's Jesus info wasn't corrupted by the flesh, like James's who spent years hanging out with the flesh and blood Jesus who took craps and wiped his arse.

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And doubly so for stuff where Paul doesn't even say what HE thinks, much less how much those agree with it. E.g., he never says even about himself that he thinks Jesus was a rabbi or taught anything, or when he lived, etc, nor what do those guys in Jerusalem think about that. One can't just take that hole and fill it with whatever fairy-tale one would like there. Even assuming an agreement there is bogus, but doubly so also inventing what position they were agreeing about.

Why does he mention those guys in Jerusalem at all? What do they have to do with Paul if this Jesus he is selling to the Greeks and Romans is just made up? Why would the guys in Jerusalem be sending "circumcision parties" after him, telling his followers that they have to obey the Jewish Laws? What authority do these Jerusalem guys have? How can they call Paul back home and review his teachings?

Could it be that Paul wanted to claim some of their religious credibility by associating himself with them? If so, it would be totally counter-productive for him to preach about some guy who wasn't associated with that Jerusalem group, wouldn't it? Like someone trying to sell a new version of Scientology would have to claim some new revelation from LRon, because a revelation from anyone else wouldn't be Scientology.

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And the Romans never disputed that Hercules or Odysseus existed either -- in fact, they treated both as very real persons -- but that doesn't make them historical.

But anyway, just because someone has a more important point to address than trying to prove a negative, doesn't mean you can assume the positive.

There are stories in the Jewish literature about Jesus being a magician and the son of a whore etc, but none about him being fictitious. To me that suggests a failed fanatic false prophet, not a fiction or allegory.

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As I was saying, even as arguments from ignorance, that's weak sauce, because there are good reasons to make a Messiah which represents both provinces into which Israel had been divided. But most importantly, it still is an argument from ignorance either way.

By the time the gospels were written the place had pretty much been destroyed totally, so that would be moot except to people who wanted to make a real preacher match up with OT prophecies, wouldn't it?

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I mean, I also can't imagine why such a staunch defender of the American Way as Superman is born on Krypton instead of in the USA, or why would they make Heimdall, the whitest of the norse gods, be black in the movie, but that doesn't mean I can assume Superman or Heimdall to be real persons

If there was a body of literature pre-existing the first Superman comic which predicted a Superman from Krypton saving the world... Where would future fanboys say their personal superhero came from? Even if he actually came from Pittsburg, a hundred years later they would be making up stories about how he was really from Krypton and that time he saved his girlfriend from a big fire, he actually made time go backwards... Fanboys do that stuff.

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Considering that they were working from a scripture translated from Hebrew -- a language pretty closely related to Aramaic, including in what expressions and idioms were used, e.g., "son of man" worked the same in both -- and undoubtedly had people around who could speak Aramaic, why is it surprising?

What Hebrew scipture are you talking about? I thought the NT was written in Greek.

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Again, it's like trying to make Superman historical, because the expressions he uses are clearly working in American English, and he's depicted as an American, so he must be real. In reality it just shows that whoever wrote the script knew English.

Yes, but Mark didn't know anything about Palestine and the later writers knew even less, but some of the parables contain puns that only work in Aramaic.

[AlaskaBushPilot]

There are over two dozen persons by the name of Jesus mentioned by Josephus in the first century.

One was the son of a high priest. One was a leader of mercenaries against Roman forces. One was a kook that ran around Jerusalem yelling "Woe is Israel". (My favorite). Pilate had him interrogated and tortured but let him go as a harmless nutball. Etc.

None of them were itinerant preachers, and had there been one of any fame whatsoever, Josephus would have written of him. He also wrote extensively on the different sects of the Jews through the 90's CE. Christians were nonexistent.

Christianity is a second-century phenomenon and there was no historical Jesus.

[davefoc]

Originally Posted by Brainache

I guess in terms of the OP what would qualify as an HJ for me is a 1st Century fundamentalist Jewish Preacher who was opposed to the Temple as it was run under the Roman puppets, who was associated somehow with John The Baptist and got himself nailed up by the bloody Romans.

I'm not sure if anyone actually fits the description.

These are roughly my own thoughts on this also

My minimal criteria for the characteristics of an historical Jesus:

Absolute requirements:
1. Lived and died roughly in the time alleged for the biblical Jesus.
2. Spent at least part of his life as a religious proselytizer.
3. Was Jewish by birth and at least loosely by religion
4. His story was a triggering event for the creation of Christianity.

Plus I'd like to see at least one or two of the following of these kind of things true:
1. Died by execution.
2. Died by crucifixion.
3. Had some family members that had names that were roughly consistent with names in the NT.
4. Knew John the Baptist.
5. Had a brother that served as a leader of a religious movement associated with his life.
6. Had a brother that was killed around 60 AD

My guess is that there was an individual that would meet my minimal criteria. The strength of belief I have in that guess has gone up and down over the years. Right now, it's a particularly low ebb given that I've been participating in a thread with Hans Munsterman and a few of JREF's other leading Jesus Mythicists and I found some of their arguments in the plausible range.

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I don't think it would make much difference now either way.

I think this is more true than a lot of secular people might suspect. It is true because
1. The key issue is whether a Jesus with supernatural power existed. Once you decide an historical Jesus didn't matter the rest isn't all that important.
2. Almost certainly, assuming he existed, an historical Jesus didn't found Christianity in any normal sense of the word. So whether he existed or not is not very important as to the nature of Christian philosophy or to Early non Jewish Christian history.
3. Hans Munsterman made the point in another thread, that the time frame for Jesus was at the end of the time when a messiah had been predicted and it is conceivable that the most important aspect of a hypothetical historical Jesus is that he was a Jewish sect proselytizer that lived in exactly the right time. (Of course, HM also pointed out that this might have been such an important issue that the powers that be in the pre-Christian religious communities made up the Jesus character to fill the messiah niche they had created by claiming that he was coming).

[HansMustermann]

Well, just to be clear, I don't necessarily mean they started with only a messiah-shaped hole. They could have started with, say, some sicarius called anything else, and changed the details to the messiah (Christ) that was supposed to be the second Joshua (Jesus.) Or not. Then, just like in Reubeni's case, some crazy person starts having visions of him and getting messages from him, and the rest is history.

My point is merely that if they changed enough details about the character, and indeed we see that they don't actually know any details and are making them up to fulfil prophecy, presumably because their chain of information goes through something as opaque as Paul... is it still the historical Jesus? How much information can you change about someone, or be known to just make up, and still count as the same person?

I mean, if I tell you of a cat with feathers, and which swims, and flies, and goes "quack! quack!", am I still talking about a cat?

[IanS]

Originally Posted by pgwenthold

But that just begs the question of what those "basic requirements" of the Jesus figure really are.

As Hans describes above, the gospels themselves give a completely ambiguous picture of what we are even looking for.

As I've described before, if you look at very basic requirements, you can find a "historical Dorothy" from the Wizard of Oz. Frank Baum's niece fits the bill - little girl, named Dorothy, lived in Kansas, had an Aunt "M". Those are the basic requirements of the Dorothy figure. Is that sufficient to claim that Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz was a real person?

Note that the question of this thread is not whether there was or was not a historical Jesus, but what are the requirements someone would need to fulfill to be good enough to satisfy being called a historical Jesus?

OK, well just to explain why I put it that way above -

- firstly, as a matter of objective fairness/honesty, I'm just recognising that of course we do have to accept that it is perfectly possible that a single preacher named "Jesus" (ie "Iesous" or "Yeshoua", or whatever the actual name) was actually the source of what later became the Gospel accounts. That is perfectly possible.

But by "basic requirements", I just mean the entirely general idea of a particular individual preacher who might have lived and died in that general area around Palestine, roughly around that time, and who would therefore (ie, if he existed) have been known to a group of religious followers as one of many street preachers at the time. Something quite general like that. Ie, excluding any consideration of detailed written claims about what that “Jesus” figure was ever supposed to have said or done.

I have not yet read what Han’s wrote about any of that. However, one reason I have not read it, is that in general I think it’s a mistake, and likely to be highly misleading, to try making deductions about what a Jesus figure might have ever done or not done, simply from an analysis of what was written in anonymous copies of devotional documents such as any of the gospels (inc. non-canonical works), and Paul’s Letters etc.

That is - it seems to me fraught with danger, to the point of being quite worthless, attempting to draw logical deductions, from reading what is clearly unreliable writing like that. And in fact it would seem to be actually worse than useless trying to make any analysis like that, because it’s leaves you wide open to building arguments founded on what are likely to be entirely fictitious and quite erroneous claims in the first place.

It seems to me a better approach (ie “better” than trying to make deductions about any part of the Jesus story from attempting to analyse what now remains only as anonymous hearsay copies of devotional religious documents), is to simply to look first at the fact that we do actually have genuine contemporary original writing from precisely that time and precisely that location, ie the Dead Sea Scrolls. Secondly to look at what we do know about the pre-existing (before Jesus) history of religious beliefs in that region, ie the well known material which comprises the ancient Jewish Bible dating from about 500BC. And lastly, just to examine all of that writing (ie the DSS and the Jewish Old Testament) in the light of what we now know about the unreliability and inaccuracy of religious claims in general … ie (to explain that last remark), the simple fact that it’s now obvious that religious groups such as the early Christians, and indeed their forerunners described in the DSS, were clearly in the habit of believing in, and writing about, all manner of religious myths as if the myths were true … eg, (from memory, though I could check), it is clear from the DSS that people not only believed in, but frequently claimed to witness, giant flying Angels who were thought to be sent by God to procreate with the women of the region, in order to produce malevolent flying spirits …

… accounts of that sort are obviously untrue, but at the time people really did commonly claim to witness such things. And similarly, at risk of labouring the point, the same religious believers were clearly claiming to witness all sorts of miracles and miracle workers, who were quite likely to be equally fictional in their entirety.

But all that said, we do have to accept that the Jesus story might be based on a real individual figure.

Against that, the reason for doubting the existence of Jesus as a real individual, is that the evidence is almost non-existent. Whilst the history of myth making about such “Messiah figures” is rife.

[Belz...]

Originally Posted by HansMustermann

Ok, I'm fine with probabilities. So, how do you calculate probabilities for that?

I have no idea. But apparently, there seems to be a relative consensus about the subject among those who are qualified to calculate them.

[HansMustermann]

Originally Posted by Brainache

I have no idea. Maybe every top level Scientology meeting is totally taken up with debate about Thetans, I don't know. I do know that no one says L Ron Hubbard didn't exist, even though there is a lot of mythology around him.

That would be a case of affirming the consequent. If X then Y, doesn't mean you can flip it around and pretend that also if Y then X. In that case, if a bunch of people have reliable information that character X existed, then sure, they don't go saying he never existed. But you can't flip it around. Doubly so when really it's compounded by an argument from ignorance: we don't have all arguments those did, just the ones that theologians were arguing against.

But to go deeper into why the "but they didn't say back then that he didn't exist" is silly in its lack of logic even when reputable authors did it:

First and foremost, it's fully irrelevant. In fact, it couldn't be a bigger non-sequitur, if it involved Snow White and Santa Claus.

What we are interested in is actual information to confirm or disprove certain events or people. Not in the unfounded beliefs of some 2nd century rabbi. Now if that rabbi claimed to have information, e.g., "yeah, I talked to the grand-niece of Jesus and she says he was no messiah", that would be information. But just that some guy who doesn't know either way, is willing to accept a premise for the sake and scope of a discussion, WTH does that prove?

What matters is what EVIDENCE a position has, not how many uninformed people didn't challenge it.

Second, the way apologists usually make it work is by claiming that, no no no, see, there were witnesses of Jesus around, and all those people writing gospels or debating Jesus knew exactly what he did and who he was. That's when their not disputing it sounds like it means something. But actually as I've explained repeatedly, we see that not only there are no witnesses to complain about the miracles or physically impossible 3 hour long eclipse on a full moon, but there are no witnesses to even settle basic points like exactly how old was Jesus, or when was he born, or exactly what did he say or do. Not only the rabbis and philosophers arguing against the Christians have no knowledge of Jesus, but even the early Christian apologists have not much knowledge either. They're just pulling things out of the ass to fulfil prophecy.

I.e., you know why it doesn't matter what they believed about Jesus's existence? Because we don't see any evidence offered in support of that belief. You can't have a sound logical inference by taking an unsupported proposition, and using it as a premise. You can't follow an Y => Z, when Y hasn't been unsupported and hinges on an X => Y that has never been supported. As long as those people's acceptance or non-acceptance of Jesus's existence isn't grounded in some evidence to support said existence, it's unsound to use it as a premise.

Third, as IIRC Ian already pointed out in the other thread, that was not the modus operandi in those days. People also didn't dispute the existence of Zeus or Odin either. Even when IIRC Saxo Grammaticus wants to denigrate the old Norse Gods, he claims they were just some old kings. (Much as the stories about such characters as Thor or Heimdall bear no resemblance to anything a king would do.) When Justin Martyr and other early Christians attack the pagan gods and demigods, they also don't go "they didn't exist", they go "the devil did that to trick you." Etc.

Fourth, they argued their own domain. The guys arguing the theology about whether a certain character fits the requirements to be a messiah, were theologians, not census records keepers, and AFAIK nor even historians. Which directly determines that:

Fifth, they had more important stuff to argue. Whether Jesus actually existed or not, would be a relevant point if he DID qualify as the messiah and indeed God. But when, as those guys argue, the stories about him don't add up to someone they should give a damn about, then whether he existed or not is an irrelevant point for someone discussing theology (as opposed to, say, reconstructing the history of a cult.) Even if he did, so what? If he wouldn't qualify as the messiah you should worship anyway, and that's the point you're trying to make, why would you devote more pages to also disputing his existence?

But again, one can't just take their lack of showing any interest in a topic, and definitely not showing any evidence either way, as confirmation of anything.

Originally Posted by Brainache

Yes, it's as if Paul didn't know much about Jesus at all. He knows a lot about starting a cult and telling people what they want to hear. He knows how to belittle his opposition while talking himself up. The fact that those others exist and have different ideas about what Christians should do (circumcision and diet etc) suggests that Paul didn't invent the Jesus character.

It depends what you mean by "invent". Awaiting a messiah (Christ) who's the new Joshua (Jesus) was definitely there long before Paul. If you mean the actual person, then, no, you don't have enough information to base such a claim on. And we've been over both aspects before.

Originally Posted by Brainache

But they were in agreement that James and Peter etc were disciples of Jesus. They were in agreement that Paul never actually met Jesus. Paul even claims that he is a better disciple than those guys because he got all of his Jesus information in a vision. Paul's Jesus info wasn't corrupted by the flesh, like James's who spent years hanging out with the flesh and blood Jesus who took craps and wiped his arse.

Again, you don't know that. Paul in fact never says that anyone was a disciple. He doesn't even use the word disciple. Nor does he ever say that anyone there knew Jesus while alive.

He speaks of missionaries, of which were obviously more than 500, and nowhere does he mention at all that anyone even knew Jesus. He says that Jesus revealed himself to some people after his death (see 1 Corinthians 15), but that's just the thing: after his death. Paul never says that any of those knew Jesus before.

Maybe they did. Maybe they didn't. We don't know. Paul certainly isn't saying.

Originally Posted by Brainache

Why does he mention those guys in Jerusalem at all? What do they have to do with Paul if this Jesus he is selling to the Greeks and Romans is just made up? Why would the guys in Jerusalem be sending "circumcision parties" after him, telling his followers that they have to obey the Jewish Laws? What authority do these Jerusalem guys have? How can they call Paul back home and review his teachings?

First of all, and what is really the important part why I don't have to give a damn about that: it's still an argument from ignorance. If you don't know why Paul mentions them, then you don't know. It doesn't mean you can just fill in the gaps with whatever fairy-tale most appeals to you.

But again, you introduce distinctions and details that aren't there in the the text.

E.g., he doesn't say they're sending "circumcision parties" after him, he uses the term "circumcision party" for the faction that favoured circumcision. There's an important difference there.

E.g., he doesn't say that Peter or the others from Jerusalem gave his congregation ideas about circumcision. In fact he never says who was it. You can't just play madlibs with it and insert whatever names you wish into it. That's the realm of pious apologetics, not of honest historical scholarship.

Originally Posted by Brainache

Could it be that Paul wanted to claim some of their religious credibility by associating himself with them?

Maybe, but we still don't know exactly what this group believed, nor even really who they were, nor even much about exactly what Paul discussed with them. Even if they believed in some form of that new Joshua The Messiah, we don't know their details, nor exactly how many details did Paul change. One can't simply assume agreement between them and Paul, and much less between them and the later gospel writers.

Originally Posted by Brainache

If so, it would be totally counter-productive for him to preach about some guy who wasn't associated with that Jerusalem group, wouldn't it?

Maybe, but "associated" is such a weak term. Even taking it for granted that there is some association (as opposed to, say, Paul just making up the agreement or even the whole group), that's such a vague claim. We don't know exactly how closely Paul's Jesus mirrored their ideas of Jesus, much less how closely do the gospels mirror it.

Plus, by now you're going into the territory of the argument from personal incredulity.

Originally Posted by Brainache

Like someone trying to sell a new version of Scientology would have to claim some new revelation from LRon, because a revelation from anyone else wouldn't be Scientology.

Except that's both

A) a bogus analogy, since after all Paul still had the same OT to base his Jesus on. So it's nothing like that.

B) such things occasionally do happen. E.g., Mormonism introduces a new revelation that isn't from any existing Christian group in its founder's time, but it's an invented group of ancient Christians.

Originally Posted by Brainache

There are stories in the Jewish literature about Jesus being a magician and the son of a whore etc, but none about him being fictitious. To me that suggests a failed fanatic false prophet, not a fiction or allegory.

Again, that's irrelevant. What matters is what evidence those guys have, not what unsupported fanfic of their own they were willing to write on the topic. The existence of fanfic which makes Jesus a magician and SOB, is no more making him real, than the existence of gay fanfic about Spock makes Spock real.

Originally Posted by Brainache

By the time the gospels were written the place had pretty much been destroyed totally, so that would be moot except to people who wanted to make a real preacher match up with OT prophecies, wouldn't it?

Or to invent a new preacher.

Originally Posted by Brainache

If there was a body of literature pre-existing the first Superman comic which predicted a Superman from Krypton saving the world... Where would future fanboys say their personal superhero came from? Even if he actually came from Pittsburg, a hundred years later they would be making up stories about how he was really from Krypton and that time he saved his girlfriend from a big fire, he actually made time go backwards... Fanboys do that stuff.

Bingo. And a bunch of fanboys of a certain interpretation of the OT as a prophecy of the upcoming Jesus Christ, would write their Jesus Christ to match the prophecy. Just like Superman in your example.

But just as that doesn't automatically make Superman a historical person, it doesn't do that for Jesus either.

Originally Posted by Brainache

What Hebrew scipture are you talking about? I thought the NT was written in Greek.

The Tanakh, a.k.a., the Old Testament. That's the "scripture" that Paul uses, and what the later Christians quote-mine for stuff to support Jesus with.

Originally Posted by Brainache

Yes, but Mark didn't know anything about Palestine and the later writers knew even less, but some of the parables contain puns that only work in Aramaic.

Actually, in Mark's case, it's more like just his mis-understanding the Greek translation.

But anyway, I still don't see the relevance. There were early apologists who knew Aramaic. E.g., Paul himself. I just don't see how you can get from a pun working in Aramaic, to it pointing out at specifically Jesus.

It's like finding a pun that actually works in Russian in Chekov's lines in Star Trek and using it to argue that therefore it must come from a historical Chekov. Why? Why can't it simply be some Russian saying that the screenplay writer heard somewhere?

[HansMustermann]

Originally Posted by Belz...

I have no idea. But apparently, there seems to be a relative consensus about the subject among those who are qualified to calculate them.

Fine. Then point me at where those calculate the probabilities.

Otherwise, I hope I can be excused if I'm less than impressed if you just postulate the existence of some probabilities, but you don't know what they are, what they're based on, or even who exactly calculated them. Just postulating that some evidence or calculation must exist somewhere that supports your position, isn't the same as showing the evidence.

I mean, if I just postulated that a document exists somewhere making me the new owner of your house, you wouldn't just believe it and start paying your rent to me, right? You'd want to also see that said evidence exists, not just me postulating that it's there somewhere, I'm just not telling you where

[davefoc]

I wonder if it would be better to reserve this thread for a discussion of what is meant by the term historical Jesus. And perhaps people could give an appraisal of their personal view right now on whether such a fellow existed.

There is an active thread right now to discuss the issue of whether an historical Jesus existed.

On this question from the OP:

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Suppose instead that the Jesus-as-rebel hypothesis is true. That is, the idea that Jesus was really a rebel/bandit/revolutionary (who could well have claimed to be the Messiah as such, like Simon bar Kokhba) who was crucified by the Romans, and the legends then remade him into a Messiah who preached peace. Would this be a close enough fit to talk about a historical Jesus?

Simon bar Kokba would not meet my personal criteria since he lived in the wrong time period. But, a militarily oriented Jesus that met the criteria I laid out above would qualify as the historical Jesus to me. Over the years I have tried to pin down facts about the earliest stages of Christianity and I haven't had much success. There is an enormous amount of speculation about this period but there just aren't hard facts floating around to constrain the speculation. So even if some kind of historical Jesus existed the available evidence isn't reliable enough to know much about him and if we restrict the definition of an historical Jesus very much the chances that he actually existed fall off quickly.

Ians's approach is to look at the possibly reliable DSS information and make guesses about what an historical Jesus might have been like. Perhaps there is something there but from what I saw of the Eisenman theories that Brainache discussed in the other thread there is no hard connection there between an historical Jesus and what is in the DSS and all we are left with again is speculation that isn't built upon hard facts which is basically like all the other speculation about this issue. i.e. speculation built on speculation built on speculation. Almost nothing is knowable.

[IanS]

Originally Posted by davefoc

Ians's approach is to look at the possibly reliable DSS information and make guesses about what an historical Jesus might have been like. Perhaps there is something there but from what I saw of the Eisenman theories that Brainache discussed in the other thread there is no hard connection there between an historical Jesus and what is in the DSS and all we are left with again is speculation that isn't built upon hard facts which is basically like all the other speculation about this issue. i.e. speculation built on speculation built on speculation. Almost nothing is knowable.

Absolutely. And that's one of the reasons why I think it's safer not to accept the Christian claims that Jesus must have existed, ie because as you just pointed out - the actual genuine evidence that we do have, such as the DSS, does not seem to describe any particular figure who could be confidently identified as "Jesus".

Ditto my remark about the beliefs and prophecies set out in the ancient Jewish Old testament stretching back to at least 500BC ... that work was already describing a belief in the coming of a figure just like Jesus, ie 500 years and more before Jesus himself was subsequently claimed to have lived ...

... so that Old Testament writing appears quite obviously to be the source of much of description of the figure later identified (though never witnessed) as Jesus. On that basis it would appear that Jesus was a mythical figure prophesised centuries before in the ancient Jewish religion of the region.

I should perhaps take this opportunity to say that re-reading my previous post it might sound as if I am dismissing the analysis given earlier by Han's. Actually that was not the impression I meant to give. What I was trying to say is simply that I don't think it's worth expending a great deal of effort reading in detail any of those ancient religious scripts such as the Gospels etc., because it seems to me that they are so unreliable that it will inevitably lead us into all sorts of mistaken arguments if we try to formulate logical deductions drawn from the detail in texts such as those ...

... hence, my suggestion that it's probably better to stick with whatever was written in genuinely contemporary original material such as the DSS, and/or from reading the much earlier religious writing of that region which was already describing prophecies, acts and sayings which 500 years later turned out by "coincidence" to be very similar to what was then attributed to Jesus.

[pakeha]

Like other posters here, before reading these threads I'd never imagined questioning Jesus' existence was an option.

Originally Posted by IanS

...But all that said, we do have to accept that the Jesus story might be based on a real individual figure.

Against that, the reason for doubting the existence of Jesus as a real individual, is that the evidence is almost non-existent. Whilst the history of myth making about such “Messiah figures” is rife.

Why do we have to accept " that the Jesus story might be based on a real individual figure"? Especially since the evidence is "almost non-existent"?

[Brainache]

Originally Posted by pakeha

Like other posters here, before reading these threads I'd never imagined questioning Jesus' existence was an option.



Why do we have to accept " that the Jesus story might be based on a real individual figure"? Especially since the evidence is "almost non-existent"?

Because it is the hypothesis with the fewest assumptions. We don't have to accept that it is based on a real person, only that it might be.

We know that there were a lot of apocalyptic Jewish preachers at that time in that place.

We know that a movement grew around stories of an apocalyptic preacher called Jesus.

We can either assume that those stories started from an actual preacher or they grew from something else.

What was that something else? The Old Testament? But without someone to hang the old Testament prophecies on, you run into problems like why parts of the Jesus story are not compatible with the OT prophecies. Where do these incompatible elements come from?

If as Hans and others suggest, the whole story was just cobbled together from OT Scripture, a man crucified by Romans wouldn't have been called the Messiah by anyone. The Messiah was supposed to unite the tribes and defeat the enemies of Israel.

I think Paul chose a (locally) famous failure to hang the label "Messiah" onto to try and subvert the messianic rebels who were threatening war against Rome. A war they couldn't possibly win. Paul's strategy didn't work, the Zealots took over the Temple and Vespasian's legions wiped the floor with the Jews.

The churches outside Judea grew by attracting slaves and poor people who liked the idea of getting rewarded in heaven for their suffering on earth. And whoever the real Jesus was (if he existed at all) he probably wouldn't recognise the religion that eventually became the state religion of Rome.

[Darat]

Originally Posted by Brainache

Because it is the hypothesis with the fewest assumptions. ...snip...

Why? I'd say it has at least one additional assumption based on what we do know about how religions/cults are founded i.e. they are made up and not based on anything real.

[HansMustermann]

Originally Posted by Brainache

If as Hans and others suggest, the whole story was just cobbled together from OT Scripture, a man crucified by Romans wouldn't have been called the Messiah by anyone. The Messiah was supposed to unite the tribes and defeat the enemies of Israel.

Actually, not really. Some people were building a completely different prophecy than you seem to imagine. One in which the messiah isn't in fact the one who'll conquer the world for them, but one who'll be executed although innocent, and that will make GOD finally get off his ass and do what he promised all along.

You have to understand that Judaism was the product of an accretion of BS propaganda stories, invariably showing the one-two punch of:

A) pretending to be from a couple hundred years earlier and make some amazing predictions that came true. Sorta like if I were to forge a prophecy from 1500 describing in reasonable detail the American Revolution. This gave it credence as a genuine prophecy.

B) using that credence to give some encouraging prophecies about what will happen in the near future. Like that God will totally kick everyone's ass and put the Jews on top, and burn everyone who doesn't come sacrifice (and thus pay tax) to the Jews' temple.

The thing is, B usually didn't quite go as prophecised. Combine that with some very concrete promises God made in the first 5 books about what he'll do if they obey Him, and that's basically even more broken promises.

So why doesn't God keep his word? Well, the answer they had, including in those forged prophecies was: because you're all a bunch of unworthy sinners, and God would rather punish you than help you.

Yeah, the tendency of Judaism to wield guilt like it's a military flail, was already in full swing.

So some people were already getting ideas that it's impossible to satisfy God, no matter what you do, and everything they do to please God, only gets them another kick in the balls for being sinners. Hence they must need someone to take that sin away somehow.

Basically, really, it's the kind of divergence you get when people start looking at past texts to figure out what the messiah would be like... and some go into dada land and start finding cryptic prophecies everywhere, like an early Bible Code. You can't assume that everyone would get the same.

I mean, even Christians today, knowing exactly who and what they must support with those phrases taken out of context as "prophecies", still can't agree about which they are and how many of them there are. Now picture some people trying to do that before Jesus, without knowing what they must arrive at.

Plus, really, I think even the "great military leader" faction is a bit mis-represented. I think it was perfectly clear to everyone that by themselves they're no match for Rome's might. It doesn't matter what leader you get, when you go against an empire which has more professional soldiers than you have total male population, and whose economic might can crush you several dozens of times over, you WILL lose.

Plus, if you expect to win by military action, you make allies and whatnot. Whereas these guys were the kind of fundamentalists that were more into antagonizing any possible ally for being heathens, and turning against the few allies they manage to get at the dumbest possible moment. It doesn't quite sound to me like what you'd do if you expect to win by having a great general, even if he is inspired by God or whatnot.

Or see the sicarii destroying the food supplies in Jerusalem, to force a disastrous open ground confrontation with the Roman army. It makes no sense if you expect that to work militarily, but it's the kind of stonking stupidity one would do if one believes that God just needs such a desperate final show of faith to do a spectacular miracle and win the war for them.

And that's really what it was about. What everyone actually expected was really that God will win the war for them. Whether with the messiah at the head of the army, or the messiah sacrificing in the temple, or with the messiah killed beforehand so God would be pissed off at the Romans, or whatever, still it wasn't the messiah per se that would win them the war. God was supposed to do that. The messiah was more or less just a marker or catalyst, sorta like in Isaiah.

And, really, if you look at even their pseudo-history in the OT, that's the pattern. They don't credit Moses or Joshua with being great generals. They just do what God commanded them, and God is the one who gives victory and/or performs whatever miracles are needed to secure that victory.

In that setup it's not very clear why one sort of messiah would be less believable than another sort. If what you're expecting the messiah to do is just to mark or trigger God's intervention, then why would you specifically need a great general messiah as opposed to any other imaginable messiah.

[HansMustermann]

Originally Posted by Brainache

Because it is the hypothesis with the fewest assumptions. We don't have to accept that it is based on a real person, only that it might be.

Just to address that too, that's not what Occam's Razor is about. Occam's Razor is about the theory with the least entities, not with whatever bogus stuff you can count as assumptions to pad one side vs the other.

I.e., if you end up arguing that Santa must be real because the opposite has the extra assumption that dad would lie to you... you're doing it wrong.

And in fact, being based on a real person has more entities than it being made up. Not only it has the extra entity called "historical Jesus", but all the people needed for a reliable chain of information in between. When you have person A writing about person Z who lived 50 years before, for it to not be pulled out of the ass, you also have to have person A learning it from person B, who learned it from person C, who learned it from person D and so on. All those persons B, C, D and so on, in that telephone game, are needed extra entities, because without them person A has no way to know anything about person Z and is back at making stuff up.

Or I guess he can learn it from census records, history books, newspapers in our day, etc, but those too are extra entities you need if it's not just made up. If person A was reading about person Z in history book H or in newspaper N, then those H and N are extra entities you have to assume, because without them you're back at "Person A was making it up."

Basically imagine I told you that know through some secret oral tradition that Washington was a pagan and gay. Which of them do you think has fewer entities, and thus is more Occam conform:

1. It's made up.

2. It must be based on something.

If you picked #2, congrats, you don't understand Occam at all.

In reality #2 needs all the people involved in transmitting that oral tradition, as extra entities. Whereas #1 doesn't need any.

[IanS]

Originally Posted by pakeha

Why do we have to accept " that the Jesus story might be based on a real individual figure"? Especially since the evidence is "almost non-existent"?

Oh, simply because it's obvious that there were numerous street preachers in that region at the time. And clearly any one of those individuals might have been the source of what appeared some centuries later in the gospel accounts.

So just on that basis alone, the story is not impossible.

There is also the added complication that, the word "Jesus" seems to be of middle-English 12th cent origin. So that whoever "Jesus" was, it seems he would not have been known by that name in biblical times.

He might have been known by a name such as Yehoshua or Iesous, but afaik, those are "theophoric" names anyway. Ie, names composed of two parts, the second part of which is actually intended as a direct reference to God or "YHWH".

So, I'm not sure how a name like "Yehoshua" would have been used in biblical times. And I wonder if perhaps it was often used simply as a way of describing an individual as being directly descended from God, eg as in the "Son of God"?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_a..._New_Testament

[pakeha]

Originally Posted by Brainache

Because it is the hypothesis with the fewest assumptions. We don't have to accept that it is based on a real person, only that it might be.

....

Originally Posted by IanS

Oh, simply because it's obvious that there were numerous street preachers in that region at the time. And clearly any one of those individuals might have been the source of what appeared some centuries later in the gospel accounts.

So just on that basis alone, the story is not impossible. ...

Thanks for the answers!
I appreciate your thought and consideration in posting.
The subject is new to me and I'm still trying to sort out my own ideas.
To tell the truth, nothing I've seen thus far convinces me there was an historical 'jesus'.
That said, I read everything pro and contra that's posted up.
Somehow I find it rather sad to think the faith of my fathers is based on complete jive.
But I'm one of those people that prefer the truth.
So I'll keep reading and asking questions.

[HansMustermann]

Originally Posted by IanS

Oh, simply because it's obvious that there were numerous street preachers in that region at the time. And clearly any one of those individuals might have been the source of what appeared some centuries later in the gospel accounts.

So just on that basis alone, the story is not impossible.

Actually there are several possibilities there, including it being a mashup of different wannabe messiahs.

But even inventing someone based on a job description isn't impossible, because we actually have a character that is just that, AND ended up believed by many to be a real historical character: Robin Hood. If you look at the earliest mentions of "robin hood", actually there are dozens of them spread across more than a century, and at least one is referred to as a "robin hood" even though he has a different name. In fact, it's painfully obvious that it was a generic term for a highwayman. Then around the time that that term stops getting used, it suddenly is used as a real name in a moralizing story, where a bandit called Robin Hood is still an evil guy, but he's so devout that he stays in church for Mass even while knowing the posse is coming for him, and God lets him escape the law as a reward. Then over time, the stories about him get more and more heroic, AND he's moved back in time to a different century too, so he can act as a honourable fighter for the rightful king instead of his original role as a highwayman.

So essentially what we have is a combo of:

- inventing a real person by treating a generic term as a name, by people unfamiliar with it. It's like, if you had a time machine and went to the year 2112 and saw murder stories written about a guy called John Doe or a victim called DOA, because those guys no longer have a clue what those used to mean.

- replacing all details with fiction anyway. Not only we can be pretty sure there was no Robin Hood that matches our story (as opposed to just that there were highwaymen in late medieval England), but the modern one doesn't even resemble the one from the first story that invented Robin Hood as a proper name for a person. The modern one isn't even in the same century as the original fiction character, nor has the same character, nor anything else.

But that brings me back to my point about what I'd call a historical Jesus or a historical Robin Hood.

Even if there are a bunch of preachers who may have served as inspiration for the Jesus story, or a bunch of highwaymen who collectively may have served as inspiration for the Robin Hood story, that's not what I call the historical Robin Hood. I might call them the inspiration for the story, but not the historical person. But to be the historical Robin Hood, I'd expect the person to, you know, match the guy in the story. Like actually be a minor noble disowned by an usurper king and resorting to guerilla tactics only to try to restore the rightful king and weaken the usurper's rule.

Incidentally, the Robin Hood story also shows how much details can mutate and drift when people write their own fan-fic about a given character. Robin Hood the evil but devout robber, turns into Robin Hood the honourable fighter for the rightful king and protector of the oppressed.

Originally Posted by IanS

There is also the added complication that, the word "Jesus" seems to be of middle-English 12th cent origin. So that whoever "Jesus" was, it seems he would not have been known by that name in biblical times.

I'm not sure why that would be a problem though. We KNOW that in the Greek version he is called Ἰησοῦς, i.e., Iesuos. Which in turn is the Greek version of the Hebrew name Yehoshua, or "God saves".

In Latin, that becomes Iesus, a term which would be used all over Catholic Europe.

Then eventually the letter J goes from being a fancy way of writing an I, to being a new consonant. And Jesus as just a fancy way to write Iesus and read Iesus, becomes Jesus read as Jesus.

It's hardly a mystery, nor much of a problem if we were to look for a historical character. We already know what Paul called him in Greek, and what Aramaic names would be transliterated as that.

Originally Posted by IanS

He might have been known by a name such as Yehoshua or Iesous, but afaik, those are "theophoric" names anyway. Ie, names composed of two parts, the second part of which is actually intended as a direct reference to God or "YHWH".

So, I'm not sure how a name like "Yehoshua" would have been used in biblical times. And I wonder if perhaps it was often used simply as a way of describing an individual as being directly descended from God, eg as in the "Son of God"?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_a..._New_Testament

It was an extremely common name at the time, actually. Just look at all the Jesuses in Josephus.

[Brainache]

Originally Posted by HansMustermann

Actually, not really. Some people were building a completely different prophecy than you seem to imagine. One in which the messiah isn't in fact the one who'll conquer the world for them, but one who'll be executed although innocent, and that will make GOD finally get off his ass and do what he promised all along.

OK, that makes sense. Were there any prophecies about a Messiah who wasn't a flesh and blood human?

Before 70AD, (I'm old fashioned like that, I still think in terms of BC and AD. Sorry if that offends anyone) various individuals were touted as a Messiah including a Roman General. After 70AD they were still proclaiming various individuals as Messiah ("this time for sure!!"). One thing all of these Messiahs had in common was that they were flesh and blood humans. Not one of them was a metaphor for the national psyche or whatever the Jesus myth is supposed to be about. They all had myths and prophecies applied to them. Why would Jesus be any different?

Quote:

You have to understand that Judaism was the product of an accretion of BS propaganda stories, invariably showing the one-two punch of:

A) pretending to be from a couple hundred years earlier and make some amazing predictions that came true. Sorta like if I were to forge a prophecy from 1500 describing in reasonable detail the American Revolution. This gave it credence as a genuine prophecy.

B) using that credence to give some encouraging prophecies about what will happen in the near future. Like that God will totally kick everyone's ass and put the Jews on top, and burn everyone who doesn't come sacrifice (and thus pay tax) to the Jews' temple.

The thing is, B usually didn't quite go as prophecised. Combine that with some very concrete promises God made in the first 5 books about what he'll do if they obey Him, and that's basically even more broken promises.

So why doesn't God keep his word? Well, the answer they had, including in those forged prophecies was: because you're all a bunch of unworthy sinners, and God would rather punish you than help you.

Yeah, the tendency of Judaism to wield guilt like it's a military flail, was already in full swing.

So some people were already getting ideas that it's impossible to satisfy God, no matter what you do, and everything they do to please God, only gets them another kick in the balls for being sinners. Hence they must need someone to take that sin away somehow.

So you are saying that Jesus was someone who had all of that foisted on him? Sounds like an argument for an Historical Jesus...

Quote:

Basically, really, it's the kind of divergence you get when people start looking at past texts to figure out what the messiah would be like... and some go into dada land and start finding cryptic prophecies everywhere, like an early Bible Code. You can't assume that everyone would get the same.

I know that. Just look at the DSS Habakuk Pesher for a great example of reading prophecies into contemporary events.

Quote:

I mean, even Christians today, knowing exactly who and what they must support with those phrases taken out of context as "prophecies", still can't agree about which they are and how many of them there are. Now picture some people trying to do that before Jesus, without knowing what they must arrive at.

Before who? I thought you were saying he never existed...

Quote:

Plus, really, I think even the "great military leader" faction is a bit mis-represented. I think it was perfectly clear to everyone that by themselves they're no match for Rome's might. It doesn't matter what leader you get, when you go against an empire which has more professional soldiers than you have total male population, and whose economic might can crush you several dozens of times over, you WILL lose.

Plus, if you expect to win by military action, you make allies and whatnot. Whereas these guys were the kind of fundamentalists that were more into antagonizing any possible ally for being heathens, and turning against the few allies they manage to get at the dumbest possible moment. It doesn't quite sound to me like what you'd do if you expect to win by having a great general, even if he is inspired by God or whatnot.

Or see the sicarii destroying the food supplies in Jerusalem, to force a disastrous open ground confrontation with the Roman army. It makes no sense if you expect that to work militarily, but it's the kind of stonking stupidity one would do if one believes that God just needs such a desperate final show of faith to do a spectacular miracle and win the war for them.

You and I think it is stupid, they thought it was being Zealous. Being Zealous was what they thought God would reward with victory. They were totally wrong of course, but that doesn't mean they weren't deluded enough to believe their own mythology.

Quote:

And that's really what it was about. What everyone actually expected was really that God will win the war for them. Whether with the messiah at the head of the army, or the messiah sacrificing in the temple, or with the messiah killed beforehand so God would be pissed off at the Romans, or whatever, still it wasn't the messiah per se that would win them the war. God was supposed to do that. The messiah was more or less just a marker or catalyst, sorta like in Isaiah.

And to fulfill that role (whichever role you prefer) he had to actually exist as a flesh and blood human.

Quote:

And, really, if you look at even their pseudo-history in the OT, that's the pattern. They don't credit Moses or Joshua with being great generals. They just do what God commanded them, and God is the one who gives victory and/or performs whatever miracles are needed to secure that victory.

In that setup it's not very clear why one sort of messiah would be less believable than another sort. If what you're expecting the messiah to do is just to mark or trigger God's intervention, then why would you specifically need a great general messiah as opposed to any other imaginable messiah.

OK. Whichever Messiah you pick, General or Suffering Servant there is still one basic requirement: He has to be a real person.

Paul couldn't sell the idea of Jesus as Messiah unless people already accepted that he had lived and died. He can't pin the Messiah tale on thin air. It looks to me like he pinned it on a guy that no one else was calling Messiah. It also looks to me like that guy (Jesus) was associated with a group of Zealots in Jerusalem who didn't particularly like what Paul was saying about him.

Again I reiterate that I'm not putting this out there as a 100% cast-iron fact, only that it seems more probable to me than the alternatives.

[HansMustermann]

Originally Posted by Brainache

OK, that makes sense. Were there any prophecies about a Messiah who wasn't a flesh and blood human?

There weren't any in which God chooses to save the gentiles instead of doing for the Jews what he had promised, yet Paul pulls exactly that stunt. And if you think of it, that's an even more incredible deviation than inventing an extra actor in heavens. (Philo invents a whole second God just fine, for example, without even being a Christian.)

You can't pick one detail and argue "they couldn't make THIS different from the normal expectations", when you have bigger changes that WERE done just fine in the same story.

Plus, there's just one flavour of mythicism. Other flavours that still get you no historical Jesus include, for example, a plain old lie. You can have a story about a character on Earth, who is simply made up.

Originally Posted by Brainache

Before 70AD, (I'm old fashioned like that, I still think in terms of BC and AD. Sorry if that offends anyone) various individuals were touted as a Messiah including a Roman General. After 70AD they were still proclaiming various individuals as Messiah ("this time for sure!!"). One thing all of these Messiahs had in common was that they were flesh and blood humans. Not one of them was a metaphor for the national psyche or whatever the Jesus myth is supposed to be about. They all had myths and prophecies applied to them. Why would Jesus be any different?

Because, if you apply even minimal serious thinking to it, you'll see a major difference: Jesus is presented as a messiah who has already come and won. Whereas those were messiahs who still have to do their stuff.

So, yes, it's just common sense that different rules would apply. You have to explain how he was a messiah without doing the Earthly stuff expected from the messiah, for a start. Don't you think it will necessarily be different from a messiah who is all about doing the actually promised stuff?

But on the bright side, it's a messiah you can make up, because it's unverifiable anyway. While people may want to meet a messiah who is still about to do his shtick, a messiah who's already in heavens is an untestable claim.

Originally Posted by Brainache

So you are saying that Jesus was someone who had all of that foisted on him? Sounds like an argument for an Historical Jesus...

It's a possibility, but my whole point is that I wouldn't call it a historical Jesus if he's nothing like the one in the gospels. If, for example, it's some sicarius called Jeremiah ben Nathaniel, who didn't preach any of that, and got nailed for knifing people who refuse to get circumcised, and just got all his details changed later to be our Jesus then how the fork would that count as the historical Jesus?

It's not even as far fetched as it sounds, because, as some people point out, what if Jesus Bar Abbas IS a character duplication, i.e., the bad Jesus? He was an insurrectionist and a confirmed murderer in the story. Would some crazy Zealot and murderer still count as the historical Jesus, even if he was nothing like the peacenik rabbi in the gospels?

I keep asking this in all earnest: how many details CAN you change before someone is not really the historical literary character? Is Lovecraft's mom the historical mad Arab?

But if your standards are such, that you're willing to accept that Lovecraft's mom IS the historical Abdul Al Hazred, then yes, there is a fair possibility to find a "historical Jesus" that is just about that much related to the one in the Bible

Originally Posted by Brainache

Before who? I thought you were saying he never existed...

From their point of view, they were before the coming of the messiah. In the same way as we're before the 2012 Mayan apocalypse. That it's not going to happen, doesn't change that the people believing that BS think they're before it, not after it.

Originally Posted by Brainache

You and I think it is stupid, they thought it was being Zealous. Being Zealous was what they thought God would reward with victory. They were totally wrong of course, but that doesn't mean they weren't deluded enough to believe their own mythology.

Maybe, but my point was merely that there was more than one way to look at that messiah.

Originally Posted by Brainache

And to fulfill that role (whichever role you prefer) he had to actually exist as a flesh and blood human.

I don't see how any of that even follows. There were plenty of heavenly actors in other prophecies and stories, so I fail to see why every interpretation of the messiah had to put him on Earth.

In fact, we can know it's an illogical expectation, because several 2nd century sects were perfectly ok with a purely heavenly messiah. So wth, even a minimal knowledge of history will falsify that rationalization.

But my point is merely that it's also possible to make up a past messiah. Even if you want to cling to the "flesh and bones" idea, it's possible to just make up a flesh and bones character.

Originally Posted by Brainache

OK. Whichever Messiah you pick, General or Suffering Servant there is still one basic requirement: He has to be a real person.

Paul couldn't sell the idea of Jesus as Messiah unless people already accepted that he had lived and died. He can't pin the Messiah tale on thin air. It looks to me like he pinned it on a guy that no one else was calling Messiah. It also looks to me like that guy (Jesus) was associated with a group of Zealots in Jerusalem who didn't particularly like what Paul was saying about him.

Again I reiterate that I'm not putting this out there as a 100% cast-iron fact, only that it seems more probable to me than the alternatives.

Again, I'm actually not very sold on the purely heavenly Jesus version. That's more Kapyong's domain. I just see that as a possible reading, but not much more.

My point is more like that Paul and/or the later gang could just make up stuff.

That said, arguments from what would be a more believable or palatable story, do miss a basic point: Paul's new religion actually was NOT a smashing hit. In fact, we even have his word that everyone wise and educated considered it retarded, but that thankfully his congregation weren't exactly wise. And in other places we get glimpses in an early Christianity where a whole congregation could fit in someone's living room.

And even later, Christianity was actually off to an awfully slow start, and it took several revisions AND things starting to go to Hell in the Roman Empire, before it started to really catch.

So, really, if you're trying to say that Paul wouldn't make a story that's hard to swallow, that's falsified by Paul himself. He did have a story which was hard to swallow, and caused all sorts of diverging opinions even in those small communities.

He really only managed to convert a tiny fringe minority, and probably a lot of those schizophrenics too. So that his story would be unbelievable to normal people, isn't a refutation. It's a fact.

[Brainache]

Originally Posted by HansMustermann

...
My point is more like that Paul and/or the later gang could just make up stuff.

That said, arguments from what would be a more believable or palatable story, do miss a basic point: Paul's new religion actually was NOT a smashing hit. In fact, we even have his word that everyone wise and educated considered it retarded, but that thankfully his congregation weren't exactly wise. And in other places we get glimpses in an early Christianity where a whole congregation could fit in someone's living room.

And even later, Christianity was actually off to an awfully slow start, and it took several revisions AND things starting to go to Hell in the Roman Empire, before it started to really catch.

So, really, if you're trying to say that Paul wouldn't make a story that's hard to swallow, that's falsified by Paul himself. He did have a story which was hard to swallow, and caused all sorts of diverging opinions even in those small communities.

He really only managed to convert a tiny fringe minority, and probably a lot of those schizophrenics too. So that his story would be unbelievable to normal people, isn't a refutation. It's a fact.

The problem I still have with this is that group in Jerusalem that had power over Paul. Those people who Peter was afraid of. If Paul just made it up, then who were they and why were they trying to tell him what he was supposed to preach about Jesus?

[HansMustermann]

Hmm? Where do you get the vibe that Paul is afraid of them? I must have missed that. Annoyed that they don't see some things the same as he does, ok, I can see that. But afraid? Have power over him? Where are you seeing that?

[fuelair]

Jesus Alou is reasonably historic! http://sabr.org/bioproj/person/e8c21d8d

[Brainache]

Originally Posted by HansMustermann

Hmm? Where do you get the vibe that Paul is afraid of them? I must have missed that. Annoyed that they don't see some things the same as he does, ok, I can see that. But afraid? Have power over him? Where are you seeing that?

Here is one bit. I'll look up more as time permits
http://biblescripture.net/Romans.html

Originally Posted by Romans 15: 25-32

but now, I am going to Jerusalem serving the saints. 26 For Macedonia and Achaia have been pleased to make a contribution for the poor among the saints in Jerusalem. 27 Yes, they were pleased to do so, and they are indebted to them. For if the Gentiles have shared in their spiritual things, they are indebted to minister to them also in material things. 28 Therefore, when I have finished this, and have put my seal on this fruit of theirs, I will go on by way of you to Spain. 29 I know that when I come to you, I will come in the fullness of the blessing of Christ. 30 Now I urge you, brethren, by our Lord Jesus Christ and by the love of the Spirit, to strive together with me in your prayers to God for me, 31 that I may be rescued from those who are disobedient in Judea, and that my service for Jerusalem may prove acceptable to the saints; 32 so that I may come to you in joy by the will of God and find refreshing rest in your company.

[Finn McR]

Originally Posted by TimCallahan

Though this is only indirect evidence, we have the two conflicting Nativity stories in Matthew and Luke. Both of them go through rather embarrassing story-telling acrobatics to explain why Jesus really came from Bethlehem, even though he actually came from Galilee. If you invent someone out of whole cloth, and he's supposed to come from Bethlehem to fulfill the prophecy in Micah 5:2, then you simply have him come from Bethlehem. If, however, you're stuck with a real guy who came from Galilee, you then have to go through all these contortions to make him born in Bethlehem, so he can "fulfill" Micah 5:2.

Thus, I tend to see a historical Jesus around whom were wrapped myths of Jewish messianism and apocalypticism, as well as pagan hero myth motifs. The latter include Jesus turning water into wine - borrowed from the myth of Dionysus - and Luke's nativity, based on that of Hatshepsut and Egyptian pharaohs in general.

Mr. Callahan,

I respect your work, enjoy your books, and I am glad that you continue to post on this forum. However, aren't Matthew and Luke both part of the synoptic gospel set? How independent are they? If the authors got stuck with a story of a Jesus out of Nazareth, then they would (either serially or individually) have to come up with a way to link that savior with the line of David as Messiah. There may have been a couple of Jesuses making wild claims at the time (e.g., Josephus, Wars of the Jews 6.5.3) or at least, the Nazarathean connection may have been some kind of early confabulation that was then subsumed into a Davidian, Messianic interpretation after Paul got his hand in, no?

This question of a historical Jesus seems to me to hinge on what subsequent values are subscribed to the putative historical Jesus.

Look, thousands of years in the future, all of quantum mechanics could be attributed to Richard Feynman, with maybe an acolyte role ascribed to Schroedinger and Heisenberg. That would not be correct, but would contain a nugget of truth. To then say that Richard Feynman existed and contributed to quantum mechanics would be a true but incomplete description of the story.

How can we say any more about a putative historical Jesus? Well sure, maybe/probably there is more to the "biblical" story than is made up out of whole cloth, but so what?? Can we pull out a signifiant philosophical message from the chaff? What did the "real" Jesus believe? Was it important? Or was it (if it existed to begin with) subsumed into and overwhelmed by the later precepts of Father Church?

[HansMustermann]

Originally Posted by Brainache

Here is one bit. I'll look up more as time permits
http://biblescripture.net/Romans.html

Hmm? I still don't see how he says he's under any obligation to that group, much less that they're some kind of bosses of him. He says he'll carry some donations there for the poor. Which is no different from what he claims to get donations for in other epistles, such as 2 Corinthians.

And 31 is also generally interpreted to mean that he hopes the recipients of those donations will accept that. You know, that the Jews would be willing to accept alms from the Gentiles. In fact in some manuscripts it even says "gifts" instead of "service". At any rate, there is no indication that he expects some kind of job performance review, nor that those guys are in command of him.

Plus, if you think of it, you can't really mean that the group in Jerusalem was both such a group which has some authority over Paul and gives him job performance reviews, AND the the supposed "Damascus" group which is bitterly hostile to Paul and considers him to lead people astray with lies. And probably doubly so if, as Eisenmann (quite baselessly) interpolates, Paul had even attacked James and broke his leg, and Peter is such a zealot about the Law and purity that he'd even antagonize a king over it, and so on.

Paul would obviously not be answering to a group who is wholly and bitterly opposed to his ministry or version of the story, or nor would they have him collect donations and report to them for a job review. I mean, if they could do that, they'd have told him to stop doing it in the first place.

Plus, really, it's supposed to be the same group of which the sicarii were the militant arm, in Eisenmann's identification. You know, those guys who caught some poor soul in some dark alley or on the road, and give him the choice of either getting circumcised or getting stabbed. I mean, they already had the knife for it either way Does that sound like a gang which would be OK with Paul's insistence that circumcision isn't necessary any more? I think they'd knife him on sight.

So, really, it seems to me like you have to decide for one or the other, not both. You can't have a group which both is bitterly whining about Paul leading people astray with lies, and considers him and apostate, AND at the same time is in charge of him as he does the same ministry

[IanS]

Originally Posted by HansMustermann

I'm not sure why that would be a problem though. We KNOW that in the Greek version he is called Ἰησοῦς, i.e., Iesuos. Which in turn is the Greek version of the Hebrew name Yehoshua, or "God saves".

In Latin, that becomes Iesus, a term which would be used all over Catholic Europe.

Then eventually the letter J goes from being a fancy way of writing an I, to being a new consonant. And Jesus as just a fancy way to write Iesus and read Iesus, becomes Jesus read as Jesus.

It's hardly a mystery, nor much of a problem if we were to look for a historical character. We already know what Paul called him in Greek, and what Aramaic names would be transliterated as that.

It was an extremely common name at the time, actually. Just look at all the Jesuses in Josephus.

Well Josephus was written a century after the time when Jesus was believed to have lived, right? But how common was the name, lets' say it was actually Yehoshua, in say the Dead Sea scrolls which actually do cover the entire time of Jesus from about 170BC through to 70AD? .. . and/or how common was the name Yehoshua in the old testament?

What I'm getting at is this - because Yehoshua is not a normal name like, David or Paul, Mathew, Mark Luke, John, etc., but instead a word which imbeds a theophoric reference to God, I'm wondering whether that name, and it's several variations, were actually used not only as a common name, but also as a generalised reference to God or to an assumed Son of God or a predicted Messiah or messenger of God ...

... that is - apart from any instances of ordinary children being named Yehoshua, was that same word/name also used as a way of referring to someone (living or not) who was thought to be a divine messenger of God?

If that was the case, then the fact that Jesus was actually referred to as Yehoshua, might be an indication that the whole idea of Yehoshua/"jesus" was simply a reference to ancient historic belief in the coming of a divine messenger from God ...

... that is - the name is not straightforward, and may have been used as a reference to God or an exaltation invoking the spirit of God, rather than being used as the name of any actual individual ... that's what I am suggesting, or more accurately that’s what I'm wondering about as a possibility.

[Aepervius]

Originally Posted by Rougarou

According to Bart Ehrman, most biblical scholars accept a historical Jesus even if they disagree on the biblical portrayal.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Oh1S...eature=related



I personally find the monster, 80-page threads tough to jump into, so I would prefer a fresh thread every six months or so over one giant thread.

There is a difference between "accepting" int his case, and , say, physicist accepting gravity. Even Ehrman admit the best he can state is the existence of J was probable. Not exactely the same rock solid acceptance, as say, stating that Alexander existed or similar.
There is actually no solid evidence of J existence, but frankly even if there was : who care ? Even if he existed he would have been only a human. A simple, very mortal, and very flawed, non divine. non miraculous , human.

[HansMustermann]

Originally Posted by IanS

Well Josephus was written a century after the time when Jesus was believed to have lived, right? But how common was the name, lets' say it was actually Yehoshua, in say the Dead Sea scrolls which actually do cover the entire time of Jesus from about 170BC through to 70AD? .. . and/or how common was the name Yehoshua in the old testament?

What I'm getting at is this - because Yehoshua is not a normal name like, David or Paul, Mathew, Mark Luke, John, etc., but instead a word which imbeds a theophoric reference to God, I'm wondering whether that name, and it's several variations, were actually used not only as a common name, but also as a generalised reference to God or to an assumed Son of God or a predicted Messiah or messenger of God ...

... that is - apart from any instances of ordinary children being named Yehoshua, was that same word/name also used as a way of referring to someone (living or not) who was thought to be a divine messenger of God?

If that was the case, then the fact that Jesus was actually referred to as Yehoshua, might be an indication that the whole idea of Yehoshua/"jesus" was simply a reference to ancient historic belief in the coming of a divine messenger from God ...

... that is - the name is not straightforward, and may have been used as a reference to God or an exaltation invoking the spirit of God, rather than being used as the name of any actual individual ... that's what I am suggesting, or more accurately that’s what I'm wondering about as a possibility.

Well, it IS a religious name. But, well, see all the names straight out of the Bible you see parents giving their kids anyway. James, Joseph, Jeremy, Judith, etc, and that's just the letter J. In Mexico, you have a ton of people called Jesus too. In fact, you could even have a replica of the holy family: Jesus, son of Maria and Jose

Just because a name was symbolic at some point, doesn't mean people wouldn't give it to their kids anyway. Regardless of what it meant, good or bad. (See Isabel, Isabela, Elisabeth, and other variations of queen Jezebel, a.k.a., queen Slut. Ok, ok, queen Unfaithful. Yeah, that name actually meant something)

On a more serious note, more generally Semitic populations did use such names lots. Not only the Hebrews, in fact. The Phoenicians around them had a LOT of names mentioning Ba'al, for example. Hannibaal meant "Ba'al has been gracious" or "Grace of Ba'al". Hasdrubal was actually Azruba'al, or literally "the help of Baal". Or Hannibal's cavalry commander Maharbal is, you guessed, another name mentioning Ba'al. Heck, even the aforementioned Jezebel, is probably an insulting corruption of a name mentioning Ba'al. (She was a Phoenician.)

The Hyksos dynasty in Egypt also has a metric buttload of names mentioning their god.

And of course among the Hebrews, names mentioning El or Yah were common too. Heck, Elijah actually has a name mentioning BOTH. It means "Yah(weh) is God".

So, yeah, they used theophoric names lots.

To be fair though, so did for example the Greeks. Theodora or Theodorus mean gift of god. Theophilus means one who loves god. Timotheus means one who fears god. Theodosia or Theodosius means god given. Etc.

And technically it's not entirely gone extinct to this day. Anyone called Christopher, well, that name means literally "Christ bearer." And that's in addition to English variants of the names in the previous paragraph, e.g., Timothy or Dorothy.

But anyway, to return to Jesus, well, the interesting part isn't just that it's theophoric. It's a combination of what it means (basically "God saves") and who they expected the messiah to be (the second Jesus, i.e., Joshua from the OT.) Basically it's not just that it's a theophoric name, but that it's specifically who they expected their messiah to be. A guy could be actually called, dunno, Immanuel, but "be" Jesus because that is what they expected their messiah to be. It's as much a name as a job description for the messiah.

Which really brings me to my point that at that point, one could just make a Jesus up. If you have already figured out what bits the messiah must fulfil, and what's the name that encapsulates who you expect it to be, you don't really need a real guy to build a gospel on. You already have a guy: that fleshed out concept of who you expect. It's no harder to build a story from a concept guy like Superman or Captain Kirk or Han Solo, than it is to build it from a real guy. Once you have enough of a concept of what that character would be like and what he'd be expected to do or say, you can just go ahead and write the novel.

[Brainache]

Originally Posted by HansMustermann

Hmm? I still don't see how he says he's under any obligation to that group, much less that they're some kind of bosses of him. He says he'll carry some donations there for the poor. Which is no different from what he claims to get donations for in other epistles, such as 2 Corinthians.

And 31 is also generally interpreted to mean that he hopes the recipients of those donations will accept that. You know, that the Jews would be willing to accept alms from the Gentiles. In fact in some manuscripts it even says "gifts" instead of "service". At any rate, there is no indication that he expects some kind of job performance review, nor that those guys are in command of him.

Well, he does refer to them as "Saints" and prays that they'll be happy with the donations he is bringing them... Saint isn't a term one uses for people lower on the pecking order, is it?

Quote:

Plus, if you think of it, you can't really mean that the group in Jerusalem was both such a group which has some authority over Paul and gives him job performance reviews, AND the the supposed "Damascus" group which is bitterly hostile to Paul and considers him to lead people astray with lies. And probably doubly so if, as Eisenmann (quite baselessly) interpolates, Paul had even attacked James and broke his leg, and Peter is such a zealot about the Law and purity that he'd even antagonize a king over it, and so on.

Sounds like two factions both trying to claim that Peter was on their side...

Quote:

Paul would obviously not be answering to a group who is wholly and bitterly opposed to his ministry or version of the story, or nor would they have him collect donations and report to them for a job review. I mean, if they could do that, they'd have told him to stop doing it in the first place.

They told him to stop doing it to Jews. Telling lies to Gentiles was perfectly acceptable. As was accepting cash donations from Gentiles:

http://www.essene.com/History&Essenes/md.htm

Originally Posted by Manual of Discipline

No one is to go into water in order to attain the purity of holy men. For men cannot be purified except they repent their evil. God regards as impure all that transgress His word. No one is to have any association with such a man either in work or in goods, lest he incur the penalty of prosecution. Rather is he to keep away from such a man in every respect, for the Scriptures says: 'Keep away from every false thing' [Exodus 23:7]. No member of the community is to abide by the decision of such men in any matter of doctrine or law. He is not to eat or drink of anything that belongs to them nor receive anything from them except for cash, even as sit is written: 'desist from man whose breath is in his nostrils, for as what is he reckoned:' [Isaiah 2:22]. All that are not reckoned in the Covenant must be put aside, and likewise all that they posses. A holy man must not rely on works of vanity, and vanity is what all of them are that have not recognized God's Covenant. All that spurn His word will God blast out of the world. All their actions are as filth before Him, and He regards all their possessions as unclean.

(my bold)
Just because they were Zealots, doesn't mean they weren't hypocrits.

Quote:

Plus, really, it's supposed to be the same group of which the sicarii were the militant arm, in Eisenmann's identification. You know, those guys who caught some poor soul in some dark alley or on the road, and give him the choice of either getting circumcised or getting stabbed. I mean, they already had the knife for it either way Does that sound like a gang which would be OK with Paul's insistence that circumcision isn't necessary any more? I think they'd knife him on sight.

IIRC, when Paul took all of those donations back to Jerusalem he was set upon by an angry mob and had to get his buddies the Romans to rescue him.

Quote:

So, really, it seems to me like you have to decide for one or the other, not both. You can't have a group which both is bitterly whining about Paul leading people astray with lies, and considers him and apostate, AND at the same time is in charge of him as he does the same ministry

Remember these guys were only worried about Jews. The Gentiles were all going to Hell anyway, so as Paul isn't preaching to Jews, he can say whatever he likes... as long as he keeps sending them cash. Organising a rebellion costs money you know...

[HansMustermann]

Originally Posted by Brainache

Well, he does refer to them as "Saints" and prays that they'll be happy with the donations he is bringing them... Saint isn't a term one uses for people lower on the pecking order, is it?

If you're a catholic, I can see how that would trip you, but see the Protestants for an interpretation more in line with Paul's usage: every bloody believer is a saint

Originally Posted by Brainache

Sounds like two factions both trying to claim that Peter was on their side...

That or Eisenmann being a bit too eager to connect two people based on just the first name Simon. Which really is like trying to make George Washington and George Of The Jungle be the same person because they're both called George, and both were in some forest area or another at some point

For bonus points, note how Paul never calls Peter anything but the Peter translation or the Cephas transliteration. He never says Peter was called Simon, and probably he wasn't. So really, it's trying to identify two people who don't even have the same first name.

Originally Posted by Brainache

They told him to stop doing it to Jews. Telling lies to Gentiles was perfectly acceptable. As was accepting cash donations from Gentiles:

http://www.essene.com/History&Essenes/md.htm

(my bold)
Just because they were Zealots, doesn't mean they weren't hypocrits.

Maybe, but if you look at who Eisenman identifies Paul with, they bitterly hated that guy. I doubt that they'd let HIM come and go just because he brings a handful of donation money.

Originally Posted by Brainache

IIRC, when Paul took all of those donations back to Jerusalem he was set upon by an angry mob and had to get his buddies the Romans to rescue him.

That's in Acts, but it's still debatable exactly how accurate Acts is. It makes a complete hash of just about everything we can check, and contradicts Paul all over the place too.

Originally Posted by Brainache

Remember these guys were only worried about Jews. The Gentiles were all going to Hell anyway, so as Paul isn't preaching to Jews, he can say whatever he likes... as long as he keeps sending them cash. Organising a rebellion costs money you know...

Not really. The Zealots are mentioned as ambushing people and giving them the choice to be circumcised or be stabbed to death. Unless you're willing to believe that you can somehow circumcise a guy repeatedly, the people they were ambushing were not already Jews.

Plus, really, these guys were as xenophobic as it gets.

Which, incidentally, also got in the way of their organizing a rebellion. They alienated every ally they ever had, to the extent that even Samaria initially preferred to join Rome against them. Assuming that extremist religious fanatics would think logically and know when to make a deal with the devil, and when to accept a useful idiot, is generally an unwarranted assumption

But as I was saying, the more important aspect if you want to go by Eisenmann's identification, is that then these guys frikken hated Paul's guts. So it's not just a matter of what they thought of gentiles, but of what they thought of Paul specifically.

So, you know, it's like Salman Rushdie or that guy who drew the Muhammad cartoons taking a trip to see the Al Qaeda. Regardless of how may concessions some Muslims do to foreign infidels, I wouldn't bet on specifically that cartoonist and Al Qaeda getting along particularly well

[Brainache]

Originally Posted by HansMustermann

If you're a catholic, I can see how that would trip you, but see the Protestants for an interpretation more in line with Paul's usage: every bloody believer is a saint

...

Maybe, but if you look at who Eisenman identifies Paul with, they bitterly hated that guy. I doubt that they'd let HIM come and go just because he brings a handful of donation money.

This was his first trip back home in a while and everyone warns him against it, but Paul thinks he is going to buy his way out of it...

It's just like one of those Scorsese Gangster movies. Paul comes in to see the Boss with a sackful of money. The Boss takes the money and says "I been hearing you do great things for our people out there... You got all those guys following our rules, right Pauley?..."
"Sure Boss... um those rules are flexible, for outsiders I mean..."
"Yeah Pauley, whatever. Thanks for the loot. See ya round... Hey while you're in town, if you need to get around, take my wife's ass... please!"
Paul leaves. The Boss turns to his buddies: "Whack that ****"...

Quote:

...

But as I was saying, the more important aspect if you want to go by Eisenmann's identification, is that then these guys frikken hated Paul's guts. So it's not just a matter of what they thought of gentiles, but of what they thought of Paul specifically.

So, you know, it's like Salman Rushdie or that guy who drew the Muhammad cartoons taking a trip to see the Al Qaeda. Regardless of how may concessions some Muslims do to foreign infidels, I wouldn't bet on specifically that cartoonist and Al Qaeda getting along particularly well

He was called to account for the rumours they had heard about him preaching against the Law...

Originally Posted by Acts

18 And the day following Paul went in with us unto James; and all the elders were present.
19 And when he had saluted them, he declared particularly what things God had wrought among the Gentiles by his ministry.
20 And when they heard it, they glorified the Lord, and said unto him, Thou seest, brother, how many thousands of Jews there are which believe; and they are all zealous of the law:...

Sounds more like he had bought one of the Piranha Brothers' fruit machines and was being treated to a bit of Doug's Sarcasm...

He goes on acting as if everything is OK until:

Originally Posted by Acts

...
27 And when the seven days were almost ended, the Jews which were of Asia, when they saw him in the temple, stirred up all the people, and laid hands on him,
.28 Crying out, Men of Israel, help: This is the man, that teacheth all men every where against the people, and the law, and this place: and further brought Greeks also into the temple, and hath polluted this holy place. ...

This could be the event that earned Paul the title "Spouter Of Lies" in Eisenman's theory. The reason they hated him was because he preached against the Law in the midst of the congregation.



Remember that Acts is pro-Pauline propaganda. The Author of Acts was keen to show Paul in a good light. Can't have been easy.

[HansMustermann]

Originally Posted by Brainache

This was his first trip back home in a while and everyone warns him against it, but Paul thinks he is going to buy his way out of it...

Maybe, but then essentially he's on his own all that time. The whole reason I brought that up was basically because I don't see them really having any authority over him. He can make up any BS, no matter how conflicting it is with their version.

Originally Posted by Brainache

He was called to account for the rumours they had heard about him preaching against the Law...

Hmm? I'm not getting the impression in either Paul's epistle, nor in Acts that anyone summoned him, or indeed that anyone could just summon him.

In fact, IF you believe Acts, and that's admittedly a huge IF, he does a whole tour of half the Mediterranean between when he last was in Corinth (the generally assumed place where he wrote the epistle to the Romans) and when he finally gets to Jerusalem.

In fact we see him going to Ephesus, in Turkey, where he dicks around long enough to cause a whole commotion (see pretty much the whole Acts 19) then he goes BACK to Macedonia (Acts 20), then to Greece, and then finally he can be arsed to go to Jerusalem. And really, even saying that doesn't to it justice. His way from Ephesus to Macedonia sees him going first to Philippi, waay to the west on the other side of the isthmus, then back to Troas on the Turkey side again, then for some weird reason NORTH-WEST to Assos, then instead of going south-east, he actually goes NORTH-EAST to Kios, before finally getting in a sane direction through Samos and Miletus.

If you look at a map for those cities, the guy is all over the frikken map. He seems to be in no real hurry to report to Jerusalem or anything.

In fact, he pulls such a... weirdly stupid stuff as bypassing Ephesus on the way to Miletus, supposedly because he's in a hurry to get to Jerusalem, but then he has time to send someone back to Ephesus to tell the church elders there to come to him in Miletus and wait for them.

I mean, if you think about it, compare these two possibilities, from the time he was passing by Ephesus:

A) stop in Ephesus for how long he needs to talk to those elders, then go X miles to Miletus, vs

B) go X miles to Miletus, send someone X miles back to Ephesus to call those church leaders, add some more delay as those probably didn't have a boat ready to leave within the hour, then those go X miles from Ephesus to Miletus to meet him.

B is three times the journey, fer fork's sake. Far from being something you'd do when you're in a hurry, it's a way to wast at least 3 times as much time.

Plus there are all those intervals in days he stops in each point. It's five days here, seven days there, and so on. This guy spent months dicking around the map, according to Acts.

Seriously doesn't sound to me like someone they can just summon to report. Ask to come, maybe. But he's definitely taking his time, and is coming when he wants to come. It doesn't sound like they actually have any authority over him.

Originally Posted by Brainache

Sounds more like he had bought one of the Piranha Brothers' fruit machines and was being treated to a bit of Doug's Sarcasm...

He goes on acting as if everything is OK until:



This could be the event that earned Paul the title "Spouter Of Lies" in Eisenman's theory. The reason they hated him was because he preached against the Law in the midst of the congregation.



Remember that Acts is pro-Pauline propaganda. The Author of Acts was keen to show Paul in a good light. Can't have been easy.

Well, Acts is basically a lie anyway. It's written as if it were first person by someone travelling with Paul and seeing this all first hand. But we know that whoever Luke was, he's not actually an eyewitness. He makes a hash of cities which supposedly was with Paul and saw first hand, and I don't mean like getting it wrong whether first street is north or south of second street, but he invents stuff that archaeologists are pretty sure wasn't there. And other events we're pretty sure he didn't really know even from Paul, because he's getting them from Josephus and getting them wrong, or is copying them from Mark who wasn't an eyewitness, and so on.

So, really, whoever wrote Acts was a forger and a liar, same as most early Christian proselytizers seem to have been. He's writing his own BS story, but pretends to be someone else, to give it more weight.

It's the same as if, dunno, instead of just inventing some BS quote where Jefferson endorses prayer in schools, someone were to write some memoirs of Alexander Hamilton in which he testifies hearing Jefferson say that.

And, really, the early Christians did that lots. When they weren't ascribing their fanfic directly to some apostle, they were inventing guys like Peter's personal secretary, or Paul's personal physician and companion, or whatever. Or promote some nobody who was a minor rabid zealot to some early church father to write rules in his name.

But anyway, ok, so Luke is lying about who he is and how he knows that, but the only question is how well did Luke research that stuff anyway. Turns out that not so good either. Well, to be fair, he's head and shoulders above Mark in that aspect, as he seems to have at least tried to figure out the geography, customs and history of the place, and he IS using Josephus extensively. Plus he seems to have had SOMETHING resembling court transcripts at some point, which, you know, is one more source he's using. So the guy at least tried.

Does that extend to the events too, though, or only the setting? I mean, Josephus certainly didn't write about Paul's roundabout trip from Corinth to Jerusalem, so does Luke have any reliable information about that? Probably not, I'd say, judging by how that stuff resembles pious fiction more than any historical stuff. (Actual historical stuff tends to be lighter on miracles and prophecies)

So, yeah, if you ask me, Acts is a novel, and Paul is either a liar or a schizophrenic or both, so that kinda leaves us with a big question mark as to WTH really happened there. At any rate, I have no problem with disbelieving them both.

The problem then though is that that's not an excuse to just fill in the gaps with one's own fairy tale, and pull identifications out of the ass. One can't just invent what really happened in one place, if there is no corroboration to be found in those documents. If source 1 says X, and source 2 says Y, that's not an excuse to postulate just knowing that it was actually Z. That's just pulling stuff out of the ass. If source 1 is probably a propaganda lie, and source 2 doesn't actually say anything matching anyway, one can't just invent a match.