GakuseiDon

There are a few threads similar to this, but I'd like to concentrate on why the assumption that a HJ (a Jewish guy crucified in the time of Pilate) probably existed cannot be established by Mark and Paul alone.

Yes, I've seen the rhetorical questions about Popeye, Sherlock Holmes and Superman. And that Spiderman lives in a real place like New York doesn't make Spiderman real.

And I've seen more appropriate examples like William Tell and Ebion, people who are assumed to have been historical but in fact there are reasons to believe that they were not. So it is possible that Jesus falls into either of those categories. There are any number of other possibilities that can be listed as well, and we see people pushing them from time to time on this board.

But it seems to me that Paul and Mark provide a good basis to assume that there probably was a HJ. Not 100% certainty, but the best possibility, simply based on the fact that they appear to be describing someone who they thought was real, and that everyone else following them thought was real.

Again, I take the point that we have examples like Sherlock Holmes and Ebion, which opens up the possibility that we can't be certain about a HJ existing. Personally I don't think there is enough evidence to conclude that as a certainty. But I am not claiming certainty here, just what is most probable.

Is there any reason why the statement "Paul and Mark is enough to conclude that there most probably was a HJ" is not valid?

mountainman

Who was the author of "Paul" and when did the author author? Who was the author of "Mark" and when did the author author? If these two questions cannot be answered with any form of historical reliability then how valid does the HJ hypothesis become? To make matters worse apostolic authorship in the first century has been generally ruled out, and of the 14 letters of Paul all but a few have been ruled out as late forgeries (although I think the Dutch radicals rule out the genuineness of all of Paul's letters). These reasons suggest that the statement that "Paul and Mark is enough to conclude that there most probably was a HJ" is not able to be historically validated in any objective fashion.

show_no_mercy

Has it been established what type of story or genre "Mark" is writing in? Objective history? Pious fiction? Theology? Entertainment? Allegory? Midrash? Polemic? Is the relationship between Mark and Jesus the same as Plato and Socrates?

Do we have Paul's [seven authentic] letters exactly how Paul wrote them - as in, without interpolations or deletions? These seven letters don't even give us a time period that Jesus was supposed to have lived (crucified under Pilate is in the Pastorals).

I don't know if these two questions have been answered, or even if they can. Without an answer beyond reasonable doubt for those two questions, trying to establish a historical Jesus from these two is mere speculation.

GakuseiDon

It is usually assumed that Paul wrote around 50 to 60 CE, and Mark around 70 CE. It is a good question: are these assumptions valid? What are the earliest/latest possible dates? I know what you would say, so let me ask: According to your own theory: when Eusebius wrote Paul and Mark, what date was he pretending that they were written, and why do you think that?

GakuseiDon

It certainly comes down to possibilities, if not speculation. But I am talking about assumptions here. Mark was taken as presenting historical information by those who came after him, therefore I assume Mark was written to be historical. I acknowledge I could be wrong, but what is the evidence for that? Why isn't the assumption that Mark was written around 70 CE as presenting something historical not the most probable explanation of Mark, given that Paul was writing about a "Jesus Christ" earlier?

aa5874

The assumption that the PAULINE writings were early does not help the argument for an historical Jesus whatsoever. Once Paul is considered a supposed contemporary of Jesus, then this writer has totally failed to write about actually seeing Jesus alive anywhere. This writer showed no interest in the biography of Jesus, his Lord and Saviour, Christ and Son of God.

The Pauline writer is a disaster for the historical Jesus. This is his "re-collection" of his Jesus. And he repeats his confusion. He can't recall.

2Co 12:2-3 - Paul is useless as a supposed contemporary of Jesus.

Now, in gMark, the author claimed Jesus transfigured, and was resurrected. This author has failed to be of any historical value since he cannot account for the body of Jesus and the year Jesus died for the last time.

Toto

I don't think you have a "probability" of a HJ. You have a "possibility" of a HJ. To make this a probability, you need to quantify things, as Richard Carrier is trying to do using Baysian statistics. But I don't think there is enough data to come to any real conclusion.

What is the probability that someone referred to in an ancient document is historical, as opposed to legendary or fictional or mythic? Can you put a number on that?

graymouser

Well, the more interesting mythicist theories - I'm thinking mostly of Doherty here, who actually lays out and deals with quite a bit of what would ostensibly be evidence - work not by saying "there is no evidence," but rather by saying "what evidence there is would support a mythical invention."

The problem with using Mark to do history is that it's drawn primarily from reference to the Hebrew Bible. That is, the amount of content in Mark that isn't drawn from the HB is minimal, which should give us pause before using it as history. Was this midrash, taking the life of an actual apocalyptic sage and using it to illustrate certain ideas from the Hebrew Bible? Or was it a sacred piece of a gnostic or mystery cult, perhaps, using an allegorical story to demonstrate esoteric, mystical ideas? In the first case, which I personally think is completely possible, there's still no background from which to draw a line between what a putative historical Jesus said or did, and what was midrashic creation or embellishment (facts being changed to fit the story within the Elijah - Elisha narrative, for instance). In the second case, there's no need for a historical core at all. In either, there is no good ground to say anything certain about the putative HJ, other than that he would've lived under Pilate and been crucified. As for the sayings of Jesus, I don't think there's any good criterion for separating "Jesus material" from "Jesus as Markan mouthpiece."

Paul is even less help for an HJ. What do the authentic Paulines say about Jesus? That he was crucified? Their utter lack of detail adds nothing other than an attestation of a Jesus - even that isn't exactly a rock solid case.

If you're comfortable with an extremely minimal HJ, then Mark and Paul don't strictly contradict that. But saying almost anything about the person is pure speculation, through and through.

aa5874

Both the Pauline Epistles and gMark support a God/man Jesus, their canonisations are indications that they do not represent an human only Jesus.

The failure of both the Pauline writers and the author of gMark is that they did not ever mention that they ever saw Jesus alive before his supposed death anywhere, or interacted with Jesus before his body vanished [resurrected].

Using the Pauline Epistles and gMark to find an human only Jesus is like trying to use Galileo's writings to show that the Sun revolves around a stationary Earth.

The Church writers have already claimed Jesus was fully God and was the creator, who transfigured, resurrected and ascended through the clouds, and they have used gMark and the Pauline writings to propagate their teachings.

To counter the claims of the Church writers ONLY sources external of the Canon and Church writings must be used.

It would be absurd to use the teachings of Marcion to prove his Phantom Jesus was really human, likewise it is just as ridiculous to use the Canon of the Church to contradict the very information in the Canon.

In antiquity, crucifixions and resurrections were plausible, it would appear that even the Emperor Constantine believed Jesus resurrected, so the crucifixion of Jesus as found in the Canon may have been a non-event just as the resurrection when it is taken into account that the Jesus in the NT was the offspring of the Holy Ghost of God.

What is most bizarre is that HJers have been forced to use the very writings of the Church whose God/man Jesus they reject since they cannot find any writings of antiquity to support their human only Jesus.

Some HJers, in order to use the Church writings and their Canon, have put forward a most laughable argument that the Church writers and canonised authors simply forgot that Jesus was only human.

How absurd it would be to claim that Homer really forgot that Achilles had a real human mother and just claim that she was a sea-goddess?

Or that everybody, including his followers, forgot that Martin Luther King, the black-civil rights leader, was human or the year he died.

PhilosopherJay

Hi GakuseDon,

Good topic post, thanks.

Would it rather not be more appropriate to ask why Mark and Paul are not suffient evidence that Jesus Christ is a myth?

Paul calls himself a slave and an apostle of Jesus Christ. There is nothing about Christ having slaves in Mark. Mark uses the word "disciple" some 60 times, but the word "apostle" is found only once in the King James version of Mark, in chapter 6 --

Since, we find the term "disciple" used three more times in the story of the feeding of five thousand, we may presume that the term was not in the original story but was substituted for "disciples" to harmonize Mark with other texts saying that Jesus had apostles.

Likewise Matthew only contains one use of the term "Apostles" in 10.2 in an apostles list, which we may take also as a later addition to the text.

On the other hand, in 1 Romans, Paul shows that his idea of apostles have nothing to do with the disciples whom Mark talked about:

The Gospels of Mark and Matthew do not mention any apostles named Andronicus or Junias in their lists, lists themselves which may be suspected of being later additions.

Paul says that the Corinthians made him an apostle:
The Gospels do not mention the possibility of City Churches giving approval (putting a seal on) apostles.

Paul says to the Corinthians:
Here we read that the body of the Christ whom Paul is talking about is the Church of Corinth. Mark never talks about Corinth or any place outside of Judea, let alone designating it as "the body of Christ". In Mark, the only body of Christ belongs to a man from Galilee.

An analogy to the idea that "Mark + Paul = evidence of an historical Jesus" would be the idea that Nietzsche's abstract description of a Superman destined to replace "man," plus Jerry Siegel's fabulous story of a Superman from planet Krypton provides evidence for an historical Superman. Paul's abstract description of Christ (the church at Corinth) plus Mark's fabulous tale of Jesus the Christ provide much evidence for a mythological Christ, but little for an historical Chirst.

Warmly,

Philosospher Jay