No Robots

These are unwarranted slurs on Klausner's scholarship. His reasons for asserting Christ's historicity are derived from his reading of the Gospels, which, in Klausner's view, reveal the presence of a single outstanding personality. For example, of Christ's parables, Klausner writes:

almost all are stamped with the seal of one great, single personality, the seal of Jesus, and not the several seals of many and various disciples. (more here)

It would be better if you were to take issue with these assertions directly, rather than make unsubstantiated insinuations of Jewish and idolatrous (ie. plumping for Alexander) biases.

It seems that many people believe that critical reading requires a priori a defensive posture when approaching a text so that the reader's critical outlook doesn't become contaminated through accepting the arguments that are in the text. This is not critical reading, but radical unreading: it is an attempt to keep ideas at bay by pre-emptively assigning them to a category of bias.

Laura D.

Fair enough. Which primary source using, non-popular ancient historian do you consider most qualified to address this issue who most strongly advocates your view?

I see sufficient basis to accept that Josephus wrote something about Jesus while fully accepting at least by 240 A.D., Christians had interlineated his text so that it would adhere to their view of Christ. I get your disagreement. We just disagree. As for Tacitus, he is a reliable source for his era. I feel you overstate the case for rejecting him as an authoritative source.

But ultimately, we are not the only ones to clash on this material. And thankfully, we have Wiki now. So we may all revel in the debate. Quite simply, I find nothing intrinsically improbable about a historical Jesus. Many scholars will consider the New Testament alone (or at least portions of it) as reliable enough to provide evidence of a historical Jesus.

To clarify, you comfortably base your claim for an historical Alexander on the fact that numerous coins bear what is arguably a title, the “Protector of Man” and carry a pictograph of a figure alternatively dressed as Zeus, Hercules, or Hermes, which coins were struck from a few years before Alexander's purported death to more than 100 years after his death. Well, you also rely on the fact that cities exist where Alexander is supposed to have founded them, which facts we know from the ancient biographies of his life.

I admit, it’s sexier to believe a single man conquered the known world in nine short years and was then struck down while tragically and beautifully young than to argue for a slow growing empire that expanded over years while governed by a series of Caesars or in this case, Alexanders.

In any event, I appreciated your warm welcome to the forum.

God bless,


Laura

gurugeorge

YW! - and very civil and courageous of you to say so.

Agreed, but the closest we have I suppose.

Laura D.

No Roberts,

I apologize for what you feel was an unwarranted slur on Klausner's scholarship. In you, he has an able defender. Your persuasive explanation of the rock solid foundation that underlies Klausner's scholarship must lay to rest any insinuation that he is other than an authoritative, neutral, candle-burning truthseeker. I appreciate your desire to focus on the quality of scholarship rather that the motive or bias of a particular source.

In closing, I want to make two things clear. First, I do agree with this particular advocate for the historicity of Jesus. And second, I equally reject any insination that Klausner is a histrionic mumbler (even if Spin's commend did make me laugh).

God bless,


Laura

Godless Raven

"Jesus Weren't No Monkey!"

andrewcriddle

As The Bishop said, In this case one would expect James to be introduced as James the son of Damneus and the new high priest to be introduced as Jesus brother of the aforementioned James or something similar

James the brother of Jesus the son of Damneus would be a decidedly unusual identification particularly since Jesus son of Damneus has not yet been mentioned. I can't think of any parallels; does anyone know of any ?

Josephus is more likely IMO to have expected his audience to know who Jesus called Christ was (a messianic claimant whose followers were currently making a nuisance of themselves in Rome) than to know who Jesus son of Damneus was (a very obscure high priest.)

Andrew Criddle

The Evil One

Two things that have always puzzled me about "brother of Jesus, who was called Christ":

Firstly, doesn't it seem a bit odd that Josephus would use such an important religious term simply as a means of distinguishing one Jesus from all the others?

Secondly, doesn't identifying James as the brother of X imply that X has been mentioned somewhere in the preceding text, which "Jesus called Christ" does not seem to have been?

Willing to be corrected on these points by anyone with a better knowledge of Koine and Josephus than me (i.e. any knowledge at all...)

Godless Raven

It seems to me to be very odd... with all of the multiple Jesus references in Josephus which are not refering to a historical JC it does seems bizzare that he would make such little reference to the one who supposedly made the largest impact.

Much more likely to be completely misinterpreted - IMO.

Cheerful Charlie

Because it is reasonable. Jesus gas mucg more writtten about him than many other historical figures, gospels and Paul. Within 25 years after hgis death, his cult had spread across the Roman world.

Messiahs were a dime a dozen then, so no big deal, Jesus was hardly unique here. That he
ws slain for his pretensions, well so were others. At his time the Essenes were still awaiting the resurrection of their teacher of righteusness, dead a century then.

The messianic Jews of his time rejected Jesus. Ge was not of teh stock of David,
and he was no born at Bethlehem, requirements then by these messianics. So we see the infant narratives and other bits and pieces dealing with that problem with fake geneologies and infant narratives. This all indicates Jesus was real, and not born at Bethehem. He was crucified but
but the body disappeared. We get the gospels confused on that point as to what happened next.
Typical for a criminal crucified for sedition. We know he was a Galilean, because that was again
a problem. Messianics rejected him for that fact. Galilea was not really part of Israel until long
after days of Judges, an inconvenient problem for gospel writers.

So you gave a dead Messiah, wg did nt do the expected messiag take over of the physical world as expected. He was promoted to a Osirian style soter god. Later trinitarianism made him a real god, not just a dead prophet nor a demi-god like Hercules.

There is just for me, too much inner detail that tells us who he was and why he failed at the regulation messiah business. Paul made Jesus a hit with Pagans looking for a more sophisticated
yet simplified religion. Again, no big deal, several new rival religions did well too.

I see very strong evidence that as a man, he lived.
Jesus does not smack of total mythology.

Cheerful Charlie

Clivedurdle

Michael Wood, in Search of Myths and Heroes (or via: amazon.co.uk) does not tackle Jesus but makes a couple of interesting comments.

"In what we call the Hellenistic age (from 300 BC to the first century AD) (sic) Greek culture became internationalized and mixed with Jewish, Egyptian, Indian and Persian influences.

Like today's Americans, the Greeks created an international civilisation, and many local cultures aped it....coveting their brilliant advances in technology, art and politics." p168.

What language is the New Testament written in? Is it similar to other Greek literature?

P 148

"'I'd be very careful about historical kernels if I were you' said Yair Zakovitch with a twinkle in his eye.'The whole story sounds very much like a fairy tale to me." (About Queen of Sheba!).

What genre do the gospels and New Testament belong to?