maryhelena

"...whacked by Roman authorities..". So, the Romans did it? Did what is the question. What did the Romans do that has spawned a 2000 year old christian story? Crucified a man. Most likely dozens of men. Why the interest in one man? Physical resurrection is fiction not reality. So people back then were a dumb lot who were easily taken in by tall stories. And today - same story
Tall resurrection stories aside - and anyway why a resurrection for this one man, what did he do that won him top prize?

Stories need a dash of reality to catch on. Which takes us to history. No, not the gospel pseudo-history - actual real flesh and blood history. Yes, one can take the essence of that gospel story - the Romans "whacked" a man and this action was of such magnitude that it triggered a retelling in stories. Embellished to be sure and retold in a new time slot - undercover if you like. Rome always at the ready for any resurgence of troublemakers. And all this for a carpenter??

Ah, but this carpenter claimed to be a king of the Jews. Really? And Rome would sit up and pay attention to a carpenter and his handful of followers? Turn the other cheek, forgive, forgive for 70 times 7 (or something like that...). But he upset the Jews did he not. Then let them stone him. But the Jews wanted clean hands and turned him over to the Romans. That's it; that is the basic storyline. Rome "whacked" this King of the Jews.

Roll back the story; run past the pseudo-historical reconstruction. Consider Cassius Dio. Consider Josephus:

That's the Jewish history. The death, via Roman hands, of the last King and High Priest, Antigonus, in 37 b.c. That's the trigger, the seed if you will, from which has sprung the gospel story of the King of the Jews being scourged and hung on a cross.

The ahistorists/mythicists can stand on their heads all day long re no historical gospel JC - and the JC historicists will continue to beat their drums re the gospel story containing an historical element. Both need to come down to where reality lies - Jewish history.

(And no, the gospel JC is not Antigonus in fancy dress - the gospel JC is a composite figure in which the history of Antigonus is only one part.)

Steven Carr

After all, according to Paul, the Romans were God's agents who did not bear the sword for nothing.

They held no terror for the innocent, as they were God's servants, agents of wrath to bring punishment to the wrongdoer.

They had the means and the opportunity to kill Jesus.

Paul has just supplied the missing element - the motive. The Romans were sent by God to punish wrongdoers.

Means, motive, opportunity - the classic MMO. I think we can close 'Cold Case Jerusalem'. We have found our killers.

aa5874

What NEW time slot you are talking about??? Surely you can't be relying on the MOST Contradictory invention by HJers.

They say one thing and argue another.

HJers are arguing Paul is early but that Jesus was Embellished Decades Later.


What a Load of BS.

HJers NEED to get their story straight.

If Paul preached all OVER the Roman Empire that Jesus Christ crucified, and resurrected since the time of Aretas, c 37-41 CE then there was NO new time slot--the Embellishment, the Fiction and Lies began WITHIN a few year of the supposed death of Jesus.

And if Paul preached a Mythological Jesus Christ then you can forget about Antigonus.

In Slavonic Josephus was Antigonus a man or a Myth?

maryhelena

Now, now, aa5874 - why bring Slavonic Josephus into this thread???? You complained re your own thread re Pliny - and now you want to bring Slavonic Josephus into this thread.......:hysterical:

spin

Any evidence is better than none. Adam may learn that one day. Railing against MJers is no substitute for cleaning up one's own house.

The emergence of the notion of a historical Jesus is a reaction to a slow intellectual awakening that began to manifest itself in the renaissance, expanded during the enlightenment and blossomed with the rise of science especially in the latter half of c. 19. A greater rigor had become the standard of intellectual pursuits, a rigor that was turned by more scholarly christians caught up in the cultural change toward making their understanding of the christian religion more coherent in the light of the new scientific approach to the world. The notion of the historical Jesus was born under these circumstances: the rigor of the age was used to repackage Jesus. By discarding the dross of the more unscientific and incoherent elements Jesus was given a shiny new intellectual face. It was ultimately doomed to scholarly failure due to the lack of historical raw materials of any significance. The harder one looked at the available sources the further away Jesus moved. When one looked beyond the ontological commitments the epistemology was not transparent. What we know today is just a subset of what we knew yesterday, for we have Jesus through inheritance. Our culture passed him on as a burden we must protect. It is perhaps too hard for us to be coherent about the reality of Jesus because he has always been of our culture's intellectual property (as Allah has been in muslim culture). Claiming that Jesus didn't exist given the available sources is not very different from the claim that he did. Either way it is a case of our desires hindering our understanding.

Sheshbazzar

If the defense of the existence of a HJ becomes reducted to the point that it consists of little more that the claim that the Romans actually did put some religious Jew on a torture stake, any HJ becomes meaningless because the Romans put a lot of religious Jews on their torture stakes.

There is nothing else within these religious tales, or in any other sources, pertaining directly to any HJ, that can be verified by history.
None of the scenes nor dialog of the Gospels can be demonstrated to have actually occurred or originated with the person that they, by way of the writers, came to be attributed to.
In that sense there is no evidence that there ever was a HJ, and if no person ever actually did the things reported within the Gospels, then no HJ could be identified, as any HJ would need to be one demonstrable to have done a significant portion of those things to be identifiable as that one and only HJ of the NT.
As it stands any HJ is still as mythical as the Golem.

maryhelena

Sheshbazzar, my concern is not the debate over the HJ or the ahistoricist/mythicist position. I made the decision in the negative 30 years ago. Yes, one can leave things there. No historical gospel JC - and get on with ones life. One can sit back and cross-fingers that maybe in some future time - even maybe when one has oneself hit the dust - that the whole HJ phenomena will die a natural death. A new generation will just grow up with no interest. Perhaps that is what will happen. On the other-hand, symbols and icons seem to have a power beyond logic. A nations flag can bring forth deep seated feelings of loyalty etc. The christian symbol of the cross has a resonance far beyond the church door.

The debate over HJ verse MJ, while interesting in its own right, is only the starting line not the finishing line. I'm in the 'race' for the long-haul....

Sheshbazzar

Same here mary helena. I have made quite a few post pointing out that a million years from now this stupid subject will have totally lost its luster.
The premise of this thread is that its insane methodology is already dying off.

Oh I do expect that the crosses and such will hang around for a long, long time, but will become ever increasingly disassociated from any genuine beliefs in, or acceptance of the old myths that brought them to such prominence. Until finally, those few that do recall these ages of primitive superstition and needless bloodshed over these crude symbols will only shake their head, and see them all as nothing more than quaint anthropological relics of humanities bloody and shameful past.

No Robots

Burn that cross, Bubba!

tanya

Amen