Iskander

Thank you, Davka
Yes, I have added a PS; I meant to ask what Jesus might have said. I have already read about what people know he ought to have said.
For evidence I accept the gospel of Mark, such as it is.

Rabbi Cook explains how the breakaway sect expanded and progressed at the expense of Judaism...Like a parasitic infection wasting away the host body
What say you? Cook’s model looks good to me.


Rabbi Michael J. Cook PhD, Modern Jews Engage the New Testament. Jewish Lights Publishing, Woodstock, Vermont.2008, ISBN 1580233139. In pages 38, 39 he writes,

TedM

One reason I don't buy into the Eusebius fraud conspiracy theories is the JTB passage. If Eusebius = Josephus, he never would have written the JTB passage found in Josephus. It isn't Christian enough. And I don't buy into the idea that he was trying to not sound 'Christian', because that doesn't explain the TF passage. Why doesn't TF mention JTB? Why doesn't JTB mention the TF?

Toto

TedM - I think we've had this argument before, and I don't think we will convince each other on how putative forgers might have worked in the 4th century.

TedM

That's why this is called an 'argument'. I put forth a reasonable scenario, and if the only response is "well I'm not sure forgers behaved with any rationality with respect to their forgeries in the 4th century" then you are right: we won't convince each other because from my perspective that's a cop-out response. Why analyze/discuss anything regarding motives of people in history if that is going to be the default response when rationality doesn't work?

Davka

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. There is precious little evidence for Christianity whatsoever prior to the 2nd century CE.

The NT does contain a couple of interesting clues, however. The Gospels of Matthew and Luke are at pains to establish a Davidic lineage for Jesus, something that would have been of great import to a Jewish audience, but of little consequence to a Gentile one. And the Book of Hebrews is quite openly written to a Jewish audience.

Whether these passages are written for the edification of an early Jewish Christian audience, or in an attempt to convince non-Christian Jews, however, is open to debate.

Another interesting clue in the NT is the fact that numerous passages read more like Hebrew or Aramaic than like Greek. If you've ever read something translated clumsily into English from another language, you know what I mean. The sentence structure is oddball, not the sort of thing a native speaker would say. This has led some scholars to posit an original Hebrew manuscript, although no such manuscript has ever been found. I find it just as likely that the writers were non-native Greek speakers, and although they were writing in Greek, they were thinking in Hebrew or Aramaic.

aa5874

You constantly ignore how Jesus was described in the Gospels. Why?

The very same Gospels described Jesus as the product of a Ghost, God the Creator and a Transfiguring Sea water walker.

Why have you side-stepped how Jesus was conceived in the Gospels?

Why have you side-stepped the implausible accounts of Jesus in the Gospels?

The authors of the Gospels did claim Jesus fed 4000 and 5000 people with a few bread and fish and had baskets of left-overs.

Mark 8:19 KJVPlease, we already know how Jesus and the accounts of Jesus were described--they are products of fiction or implausible.

How in the world can you say Jesus was just "too quick to expect much record in the history books"?

In the Bible, Jesus supposedly lived until he was about 30 years old and a Pauline writer was supposedly "all over" the Roman Empire tellling Roman citizens in MAJOR CITIES that Jesus was the Son of God and made of a woman who was EQUAL to God and that Jesus was Lord to whom EVERY knee should Bow, even the Emperor of Rome.

You very well know that there should have been more stories and letters [Gospels and Epistles] about Jesus than even the Emperors of Rome in the 1st century and yet we have Zero corroboration for a single miracle of Jesus and his conception by a Ghost.

We have attestation from non-Apologetics for the claim that Vespasian was the Prophesied Messianic ruler and Savior who carried out miracles when he made the blind see with spittle and the lame walk by Josephus, Tacitus and Suetonius.

The Jesus story and the Pauline writer had ZERO influence on the Roman Empire in the 1st century.

And in addition, the first non-Apologetic writer, Lucian c 160 CE, to mention Christians who worshiped a Crucified man did not claim the Christians were Jews. See Lucian's Death of Peregrine.

There is simply no documented corroborative evidence for Jesus Christ and Jewish Christians of a Jesus cult.

There is no evidence at all from antiquity that Jews worshiped a man as a God.

Davka

Correct. In fact, there is evidence that the split between Christianity and Judaism was a direct result of fallout from the Bar Kokhba revolt. The Christians refused to join the revolt, possibly because Rabbi Akiva declared Shimon Bar Kokhba to be the Messiah, and the Christians were convinced that Messiah had already come and died. After Rome crushed the revolt, the Rabbinic Jews were bitter at having been abandoned in their time of need, and began to seriously demonize the Christian sect.

Toto

You put forward a *possible* scenario based on your assumptions about how a forger would have operated. I do not think your assumptions are necessarily rational, or the only rational ones. You cannot meet my objections - you just dismiss them. So we are at an impasse.

To make any progress, we would need actual data about how a 4th century Christian forger or interpolator would have operated. I don't know of any surveys, but it appears that interpolators had various motives and skill levels,and that there were occasional accidental interpolations, where a scribal comment on the margins of a text was copied into the body of the text.

So I don't see how you can answer this question with your approach. You want to oversimplify things so you can turn your analysis into a simple logical syllogism. History is too uncertain and complex.

Duvduv

Davka, can you please identify a single source in the Talmuds, midrashim, Zohar or anywhere else that suggests that there were any "Jewish Christians" anywhere at that time in Judea or during the period of Bar Kochba?
You will not find anything about them. Nothing. Gornisht. Nada. Niente. Nichevo.

aa5874

What absolute absurdity you post!!! Absence of evidence is a fundamental condition to argue for non-existence of Jewish Christians.

If you were charged with a crime--absence of evidence is extremely important for your acquittal.

It is completely acceptable and known throughout the world that absence of evidence is a primary and fundamental factor to argue for non-existence.

It is most logical that once there were no Jewish Christians there would be absence of evidence.