outhouse

Problem with Gjohn is that while most of it isn't all to historical, some of it has lined up with older sources. I would not call that a general term or usage of Gjohn.

If we read the article, it makes a great case for all 4 gospels, and picks out evidence to justify this position. His main point which I have always followed Is that in this light of a tax rebel/ seditionist, the gospels all make sense.

We really don't need Gjohn for this at all. I don't use Gjohn for anything and still get the seditionist view.

Entrance into the temple
Temple incident
"doesn't your teacher pay tax's"
Swords
Buy sword

Jesus has always mirrored a Zealot in my eyes.








I spent over an hour looking for it and couldn't find it, sorry.

I would ask is it really needed, knowing Roman oppression demanded it?

I guess one source would be the gospels themselves that say they had to hide the swords.

It may have been Yale's Professor Martin in one of his youtube vids.

outhouse

That's not what the article states in any sense.

It was good article though

Yes. A certain amount of Jesus legend is mythology and creative at that.

Most scholars have always claimed this.

Biblical Jesus, has never been Historical Jesus.

Much more complex then you stated, he fits much more then just the two roles you mentioned. With all the parallels used by ancient writers, and the ones we see with the Emperors divinity, Moses, and Herod, Your not even scratching the surface to the mythological influence of others. Each unknown author used different parallels to portray his version.

mountainman

Yes it is really needed.

All posters making claims have an obligation to provide their sources.





εὐδαιμονία | eudaimonia

wordy

I should not be active here because I don't read in Greek and so on.

but what you take up here is something I ahve first hand experience of
only that that did happen to me 1983 and not way back when Paul is
supposed to have lived.

What did work was the story of Jesus as Christ. The Historical Jesus
though is important part of the story of how God cared about us enough
to send his Son to make it possible for the Holy Spirit to enter into Paul.

Remember that Saul hunting the believers got slain to the ground
and Jesus Christ ask him Why do you hunt me and those that believe in me?

That was after Jesus got resurrected so it was the heavenly Jesus Christ
that he thought to talk to him. I think that story wants to tell the believers
that even if you like Saul has been a persecutor of believers you can still
repent and get saved by the love of Jesus and that allow the Holy spirit
to enter your heart and that way you get saved.

And remember them say that only the name Jesus can save you
and that even if you say the name Jesus but not open you heart
then it does not save you. so the most important they say is
that one need to openly admit one have Jesus as Lord
and that one has open ones heart to receive the Holy spirit.

Then some believers ahve a test that one should see the good fruit
or else the believer is a cheater and to give 10% of income is one such test
They killed a couple that cheated with not giving 10% IIRC.

so I think you are very right about what you write there.
I only disagree on details.

ApostateAbe

I think this hypothesis is better than most hypotheses about Jesus out there. It is not completely loony, which is really all it takes to be better than the majority. Still, the hypothesis is beset with two key problems. (1) There is nothing in the early Christian records that have a specifically-anti-Roman bent. (2) On the contrary, in all gospel accounts, the Roman governor Pontius Pilate was portrayed as a reluctant executioner, giving in to the political force of the blood-thirsty Jews (Matthew 27:24-25).

So when Pilate saw that he could do nothing, but rather that a riot was beginning, he took some water and washed his hands before the crowd, saying, ‘I am innocent of this man’s blood; see to it yourselves.’ Then the people as a whole answered, ‘His blood be on us and on our children!’

This is very much unlikely to follow from a cult founded by a pro-Jewish anti-Roman zealot, though of course you can speculate and fiddle around with alternative explanations as always.

The best competing explanation I take to be similar--that Jesus was an apocalyptic prophet, or, in my words, a doomsday cult leader. But the author does not seem to acknowledge this hypothesis, instead portraying the main competing theory to have Jesus as "a harmless and innocent man." A Jewish apocalyptic prophet, however, is not harmless, especially not in Jerusalem approaching the Passover holiday. Passover was a time when Jews from all over the region gathered in Jerusalem to celebrate the liberation of their forefathers from foreign imperial oppressors (Egypt). The irony of carrying out this celebration under another imperial yoke was deeply insulting to the Jews, and the Romans knew it. So a Jewish doomsday cult leader, who predicted the downfall of all political authorities and not just the Romans, was a significant threat during Passover. There is no puzzle.

And, of course, the early Christian records reflect Jesus predicting the imminent doomsday (i.e. Mark 9:1 and Mark 13:30). Speculation is not necessary when the evidence is plain.

outhouse

Its not a problem at all, for either.

Something your reply fails to realize is that the unknown author's were Hellenist writing to a Roman audience, about a very Jewish man.


Unless you would like to posit that Jews loved Roman oppression and welcomed it, we dont have a problem at all.


Jews were starting wars with Romans and these Hellenist authors wanted to distance themselves from Judaism.


These books were not from a Jewish culture in Galilee writing about Roman oppression.

DCHindley

Toto,

This is not a new idea, of course. Bermejo-Rubio offers several critics who advanced similar ideas in the past: H.S. Reimarus, Ch. Hennell, K. Kautsky, R. Eisler, S.G.F. Brandon, H. Maccoby). These critics flourished in the late 19th, early 20th, or in Macoby's case, late 20th century.

As the Philosopher of History Hayden V White has described*, one of the factors of any historical explanation since the Renaissance is the ideological implications inherent in the writer's historical narrative. (have I ever mentioned how much I like them big words?)

Ideology is a coherent set of socially produced ideas that lend or create a group consciousness. Time and place specific, ideology represents the dominant mode of explanation and rationalism that saturates a society, transmitted through various social and institutional mechanisms such as media, church, education and law. Some commentators find ideology imbedded in all social artifacts such as narrative structures (like written history), codes of behavior and patterns of belief. Can be viewed as a means employed by the dominant class to maintain its dominant position by obscuring the reality of its economic exploitation of other classes.

Ideology suggests to readers the import of their studies of the past for the comprehension of the present:

ANARCHISM: Demands rapid, perhaps even cataclysmic, social change in order to establish a new society. ["Who cares about the Historical Jesus, it is time to throw off the shackles of religious hegonomy."]

RADICALISM: Welcomes imminent social change, but are more aware of the effects of inherited institutions, and are thus more exorcised by the means to effect change than are anarchists. ["Jesus needs to be understood in the context of the needs of modern society."]

CONSERVATISM: Oppose rapid change by supporting the evolutionary elaboration of existing social institutions. Are most suspicious of change than the other ideologies. ["The idea of a seditious Jesus is a plot to break down the social fabric that the bible has brought about."]

LIBERALISM: Prefers the fine tuning of social institutions to secure moderately paced social change. ["It may be true, but the layperson is not yet ready for such a different understanding of Jesus."]

Nobody except the liberals really likes the idea, because it doesn't fit neatly into their ideological perspectives, and even then liberals will only seriously discuss the possibility in bite sized bits. As a liberal myself, I see the exposition of Jesus as a revolutionary as a necessary thing (although the effectiveness of this introduction hinges on being careful how it is done so that it does not come across as threatening) in order to illustrate how our traditional understanding of Jesus has evolved, so that individuals can come to terms with that evolution and integrate it into their personal philosophies.

DCH

*See the 40 page Introduction to his Metahistory (or via: amazon.co.uk) (1973). It sells new for $24-$29, or used for as low as $8. IMHO, the Introduction, which explains the elementals of his methodology, is the most valuable part of the book. However, if anyone has an interest in how he illustrates these elements of historical narrative by commenting on specific well known historians, the rest of this book can be very interesting. Just be ready to do a lot of Googling or Binging as you almost have to be a Grad Student in literature, history or philosophy of history to keep up with him.

PhilosopherJay

Hi Pete,

Your post, saying "the story is just a fable, a "monstrous tale,"
got me thinking about the Kevin Costner post-apocalyptic sci-fi Western, "The Postman" (Costner, 1997).

In the year 2013, after an apocalypse, only small bands of isolated, frightened humans are still alive in the western United States. Apparently all electricity and electrical communication is gone. People are suspicious of each other and live in fortress-like towns. Loner Costner discovers an old mail truck with a dead mailman inside. He takes the clothes of the mailman and carries his mailbag filled with mail. Desperately needing food, he approaches the guards at the gate of a nearby town and tells them that he is a postman appointed by the new President of the United States, Richard Starkey, from Minnesota to deliver mail. The people of the town believe his story and are excited that civilization is starting again. One of the town's young men demands that Costner tell him how he can become a postman like him. Costner appoints him the postman for the town. The town's sheriff discovers Costner's deception and kicks him out of town.

The following year, Costner returns again. He is astonished to find a fully functioning post office with dozens of new postmen and women delivering mail to different towns in the region. Costner gets welcomed back as a hero and nearly a God. Everyone now believes Costner's fable about the United States starting up again and the new president living in Minnesota. Costner's great lies about a new country starting are ironically actually causing a new country to be started.

The movie is quite well done, at least as good as any of the Mad Max movies, but it got generally terrible reviews. The people who give the Razzie awards nominated it as worse picture of the decade. I think the extreme negative reaction was only because the movie presented the idea that total lies can be believed and start new movements. It is an offensive thought for many true believers. The movie at one point makes the connection to Christian ideology transparent. Costner asks his companion Abbey why everybody believes the nonsense he made up. She answers, "You made Mrs. March feel like she could see again. You made Ford believe he was part of something. You give out hope like it was candy in your pocket."

Warmly,

Jay Raskin

mountainman

Hi and thanks Philosopher Jay,

I found myself thinking about, and identifying with, your response in the thread The Exoneration of Pilate and and Blaming of the Jews, to Dr Jeffrey Gibson's flying visit where you made the comment "As for my agenda, it is always to find and tell the truth".

Now there will always be those people who are convinced that the new testament was somehow personally authored by the "flaming hand of an angry god" and is not to be questioned, or even compared to modern scripts and stories.

Yet out of the balance of people there will increasing be those types of investigators who are capable of asking questions, and answering questions based on the hypothetical angle that the books of the new testament were all somehow "cooked up" somewhere in antiquity, and essentially represent an ancient fiction story that just happened to be in the right place and the right time to skyrocket up the charts and become the holy writ of the Graeco-Roman empire. A bit like the selection of a national anthem.

Culturally and psychologically we are generally well equipped to face all different sorts of core historical Jesus figures, and to a certain extent also entertain the notion that many mythological attributes have been added to an historical core of some size.


We are not so equipped however to deal with the possibility that Jesus had no historical core, and that the Jesus story is just a fable and a "monstrous tale", even if written evidence supporting this opinion were to be found in the ancient sources.

If in fact the Jesus story is not some historical puzzle to be solved, but instead a fiction of men, and subsequently used as a holy writ to unite the ancient Roman Empire under one True National Anthem, we will never determine that this is not so, or so, without asking questions about the evidence and earnestly investigating the answers of the evidence.

Was the Historical Jesus an armed seditionist?
Was the Historical Jesus a wandering healer?
Was the Historical Jesus an itinerant prophet?
Was the Historical Jesus a country peasant?
Was the Historical Jesus a naught boy?
Was the Historical Jesus a guru for Hellenised Jews?
Was the Historical Jesus an armed seditionist?
Was the Historical Jesus a genuine miracle worker?
Was the Historical Jesus in charge of all the Angels and Daimons?
Was the Historical Jesus a PR man for Caesar?
Was the Historical Jesus a misunderstood religious leader?
Was the Historical Jesus an undercover Messiah?
Was the Historical Jesus an influential figure?

All of these are not necessarily the right line of questions.
We may add thousands more in this line but it may not help.

These other questions may be typified by ...

Was the Historical Jesus a fiction of men?
Was the Historical Jesus a fable?
Was the Historical Jesus a monstrous tale?
Was the Historical Jesus a Big Lie?

And already we have hit on questions the discussion of which are highly discouraged.

If the agenda is to seek the ancient historical truth and honestly report the findings, then these questions must be explored. The problem encountered however is that a multitude of people jump up and down shouting that these questions represent an agenda that amounts to "hatred of Christianity", "hated of religion", "malice", "dishonesty", "pseudo-scholarship" and a whole host of other equally similar negatives.

I have been working on a 3rd century Christian origins in which the key player is Ammonius Saccas, whom Eusebius tells us authored the Ammonian Tables to the New Testament. Some of your references in other threads to script revisions and below to movies and their themes present fascinating parallels to the maxim that "truth may be sometimes stranger than fiction".

Best wishes



Pete





εὐδαιμονία | eudaimonia

aa5874

Those questions were answered hundreds of years ago and it was published and declared publicly in the Roman Empire that Jesus was born AFTER his mother was made Pregnant by some kind of Ghost and it is multiple attested by writers of the Jesus cult in and out the Canon.

In fact, virtually all questions about the Jesus character are answered.

It can now be deduced that the Jesus story and character is a 2nd century invention.

We have the DSS and the recovered NT manuscripts.

There is Zero about Jesus of Nazareth in the DSS,

There is Zero About the Apostles in the DSS.

There is Zero about Paul of Tarsus in the DSS.

The writings of Philo, Josephus, Tacitus, Suetonius are compatible with the DSS. Those writers also wrote Nothing of Jesus of Nazareth, his Apostles and Paul,

Effectively, the supposed Entire cast of the Jesus story was unknown to the 1st century writers.

This is also implied by Julian the Emperor,

No well known author wrote about Jesus and Paul. See Against the Galileans.