Steven Carr

This is the name of a blog http://blog.bible.org/bock/node/266 by Dr. Darrell Bock

'Now the responses beginning with Point 1: Point 1 is very misleading. We have writings of the apostle Paul from the late fifties that are autobiographical and show his belief in a historical Jesus who was physically raised from the dead'

Ted Hoffman

I have responded to that post. Let us see whether he lets it through.

Toto

A very superficial response by Bock to Doherty, but there is no bad publicity, they say.

Darrell_Bock has spent his time recently attacking the Da Vinci Code. I guess he's moving on to mythicism.

Doug Shaver

Looks to me like the usual historicist question-begging. Paul talks about Jesus Christ. We know that Jesus Christ = Jesus of Nazareth. Therefore, Paul affirms the existence of Jesus of Nazareth.

aa5874

Or the claim that the Pliny letters to Trajan and Tacitus mentions Christians so that means Jesus Christ lived. The historicity of Jesus is a bogus claim without almost no merit.

Amedeo

ALMOST NO MERIT?

I was about to ask you, What exactly is the "some merit" which the claim has???

But there is a more fundamental question, prior to that about the degree of merit that the claim of the historicity of Jesus has:

WHO is exactly this Jesus who may or may not have existed?

I can think of at least 4 (FOUR) JESUSES:

(1) Jesus, son of Joseph, in the bloodline of king David, who was born before the death of Herod the Great [4 B.C.] and was almost killed by the king's massacre of the innocents, because the retrospective story of the Magi tells us that Herod learned that a new king was born... who would have been a thread to the Herod dynasty.// What else we know about the royal Jesus is that he was tried and crucified as "JESUS OF NAZARETH KING OF THE JUDAEANS." This happened at a time when, Herod Archelaus being dead [in 6 A.D.]. Judea was administered by Roman procurators and practically governed by the High Priest and by the Sanhedrin. (The trial about his messiaship and the crucifixion of his royalty do not jive, but one may suspect that the Judaean authorities were not quite happy about a Galilean from Nazareth who claimed to descend from the Judean king David and was virtually ready to fill the shoes of the Herods or their own shoes.)

(2) Jesus, born in Bethlehem (in Judea), literally son of God and of the virgin Miriam, at the time of the Roman census (probably around 7 A.D.), who preached the imminent end of the world and his mission of salvation of Israel, to be attained through him (the truth and the way) and moral edification. The apocalyptic Jesus and savior was never on trial, and there is no evidence that he performed the miracles that he said he performed, while the stories about the devil's temptations of him, his words in the garden of Getsemani, etc., could have been revealed only by him [or a Jesus-narrator] to his listeners.

(3) Jesus, a human being who was not really procreated by God [as per Jesus # 2], but was incarnated by God's Word or Logos, which John the evangelist personifies. Indeed the spirit which Jesus said he would send, was also personified by Christian theologians, wherefore the ONE God consists of the Father/Creator, the Son/Word, and the Divine Spirit. (Jesus = a man + the Divine Word.)

(4) The Jesus of Saul of Tarus, who never met any Jesus, but also formulated his own Jesus: The royal Jesus is as good as non-existent. The apocalyptic Jesus is as good as non-existent. The Jesus who is also the second divine person was not as yet formulated in his time. His Jesus came with the mission to save, not Israel, but mankind. Mankind is afflicted by the original sin; so, Jesus came to rescue mankind by atoning for it with his life. So, the crucifixion [which is one of the two "facts" he uses from the Apostles he was with] is the redemptive death for mankind, which has nothing to do with the King of the Judeans.// But notice that, after Jesus' supposed death and resurrection, the Apostles and Paul in convention decided, NOT to spread the Gospel, the good news, to the Gentiles, but to recruit Gentiles into Judaism, FOR A LIMITED PERIOD OF TIME. This limitation and Paul's theory of universal salvation do not jive. What was the real reason for the recruitment???
The Gospels don't say anything about the life of the royal Jesus, and the rest of the Scriptures ignore the royal Jesus completely. Probably a certain royal Jesus was the only historical one, and the royalists continued an undercover mission, which came to an end in 70 A.D. Afterwards, there survived only the Gentile Christianity, which grew while accepting all four Jesuses as one.

Minimalist

No surprise, there!

Toto

It looks like Ted's comment made it in, and a suggestion by "Jay" that Bock and Doherty engage in an online debate.

Bock says: Gal 4:4-5 says that Jesus was born in the fullness of time (when?)

1 Cor 7 does not attribute the advice on spousal abandoment to Jesus, but to "the Lord."

Phil 2: [7]-11 talks about Jesus being equal to God and taking on human form and humbling himself "and became obedient to death - even death on a cross!" a mystical sounding poem that is hard to tie down to history.

1 Cor 2 "For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified." Crucified when and where?

How is this clearly about Jesus of Nazareth?

Roland

I don't understand how Paul saying that Jesus was crucified proves that he believed Jesus was a real person.

One could just as easily say that Prometheus was tied to a rock and had a bird of prey eat out his liver. Does anyone think that means Prometheus was a real person who lived on the earth?

The truth is that fictional and mythological figures are always spoken of in real-life terms simply because that is the only way we can truly identify with them.

Now if Paul had said Jesus was crucified on a hill called Golgotha in the city of Jerusalem at the time of Pontius Pilate, THEN we might have something meaningful to talk about.

Amedeo

There is one significant episode, in Matth. 21, that makes a case for the royal Jesus and ties with his crucifixion as the king of the Judaeans: Jesus and his disciples are going to Jerusalem for the Passover. He sends two of them ahead to get a donkey. At this point, the narrator [Matthew] remarks that this happened in order that the prophesy might be fulfilled, "Say to the Daughter of Zion: See, your king comes to you.... riding on a donkey..." And Jesus will make his "triumphal entrance" into Jerusalem, obviously as the claimant to the throne of Jerusalem. (This and not the charge of blasphemy and forgiveness of sins is what is behind the arrest, trial, and crucifixion. Paul's theory of the crucifixion is all wet.)