aa5874

There are no known arguments by HJers that the Historical Jesus was NOT a real human being so it is futile and of no real significance to suggest that "historical" may not be equivalent to "real".

steve_bnk

You are mincing words so to speak. Regardless of how you pick apart word usage, there are three versions of Jesus that are debated.

1. A mythical Jesus with gospels being a complete fabrication, no basis in any flesh and blood human.

2. The divine Jesus, the gospels being the gospel absolute truth supernatural and all.

3. An historical Jesus upon which the gospels were spun and embellished.

True there is no evidence of an historical Jesus, but given Christianity exists there is no proof an historical flesh and blood character did not exist. The door is open to either possibilities.

Invoking ontology vs epistemology does not change the substancof what is being debated.

aa5874

The Jesus cult NEVER needed an historical Jesus. It is actually documented in the NT.

1. The Jesus cult writers of antiquity argued that Jesus had No human father and was born of a Holy Ghost for hundreds of years.

2. The Jesus cult started because of the Advent of the Holy Ghost on the Day of Pentecost.

3. The Jesus cult required FAITH not reality.

4. The fact that there are people today who are called Christians is PROOF that Christians do NOT need actual evidence of a real human Jesus but just FAITH--BELIEF.

ficino

hello aa and steve, I must disagree with the tenor of your replies. It's one thing whether Spin's distinction accomplishes useful work. It's another, whether he has pointed out a difference in semantic value betw "real" and "historical" in this context. If there is such a difference, we may learn something worthwhile, for it always matters how we frame and talk about problems. That's my take - I think something useful is at stake, although perhaps not huge.

Spin, I noticed one scholar who seems to employ what amounts to your distinction, sc. Scot McKnight, here:

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/...2.html?start=5

I have to think about it more, because I think problems in the use of the qualifiers "real" and "historical" are tied to the question, what is the reference of "Jesus" in these phrases? An example: it seems that someone can say, "It is false that the real Jesus rose from the dead." But can one even say, "It is false that the historical Jesus rose from the dead" without committing a category mistake--since events like resurrections don't fall within the purview of historical method?

Anyway, I will shut up for now.

aa5874

The HJ argument or the Quest for HJ was precisely to show or find the REAL Jesus.

HJers have always BELIEVED there was a REAL Jesus but will not ever produce or locate the evidence from antiquity.

In effect, the argument and Quest for HJ is based on REAL FAITH.

It is most fascinating that the Jesus cult has argued and documented their arguments that their Jesus had NO human father and was REALLY born of a Ghost.

HJers have MORE FAITH than Christians.

For the last 1800 years, from the Bishop Ignatius to Pope Ratzinger, it is documented that there is NO REAL Jesus.

If there is NO real Jesus in the very Church where will we find the REAL Jesus??

Ignatius' EphesiansJesus is God in the very Church.

Gods are Myths in the HJ/MJ argument.

Jesus is a Figure of Faith based on the History of the Church itself.

ficino

Definition of "the historical Jesus" by Scot McKnight in his Jesus and His Death: Historiography, the Historical Jesus, and Atonement Theory, p. 29: "the historical Jesus is a narrative representation of the existential facts about Jesus that survive critical scrutiny... a complete narrative representation of those existential facts. It puts all things together into a robust, engaging story... " p. 30 "a narrative is needed to give existential facts their appropriate meaning.... I know of no other way of putting this. Historical Jesus studies tend to construe existential facts into a new narrative, and a new narrative adds up to a new Gospel."

http://books.google.com/books?id=GLv...page&q&f=false


Whoa! So this is in line with McKnight's giving up the HJ business properly so called in his later Christianity Today article. It's not because he thinks historical research can come up with no facts about what Spin calls the "real" Jesus. It's rather because McK accepts some of the tenets of what he calls postmodernist historiography, by which he accepts that all writing of history is the composition of narrative, even the imposition of an ideological structure of representation, upon the "facts" so as to create meaning from them. All this doesn't stop him from writing about Jesus or from collecting a salary as a seminary professor.

ficino

Adding: disagreeing with McKnight's article in Christianity Today (cf. #10 above), big-name HJ scholar N.T. Wright insists that "historical" has two legitimate senses, not one, i.e. having to do with past events, and having to do with what people write about past events. He faults McKnight for insisting that "historical Jesus" employs the adj. "historical" only in the second of these two senses.


http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/...ril/16.27.html

Grog

I can see where you are coming from, but is there a way to estimate the probability of a false positive or a false negative? In other words, concluding that there was not a "real" Jesus when actually there was one or, the converse, concluding that there was a "real" Jesus when, actually, no such person ever existed.

I can see where we could be in a situation where we can't attempt to make such an estimation. I do not think that is the case here, though. The evidence very closely aligns with no real Jesus (I am not going to recount that all that evidence here, though). There is almost no bit of evidence that one would not expect if Jesus were a made up figure (I don't mean invented out of whole cloth, by the way, but produced out of human imagination and beliefs). On the other hand, proponents for a "real" Jesus are faced with mounds of evidence to explain away.

Each piece of evidence that supports the evolution of Jesus versus each piece of evidence that historicists must explain away diminishes the likelihood of obtaining a false negative, concluding no Jesus when there really was a Jesus.

One example: If there really was a Jesus, we would not expect Paul to leave a disputable trail of evidence regarding that person. In every single place that Paul could possible be alluding to a "real" Jesus, it is actually, under examination, ambiguous. Galitians 1:19 is a prime example. If Paul wanted to be clear, he could have said "James, the brother of the Lord Jesus Christ" or something to that effect. It's possible that he does mean Jesus in that passage, but the fact that he is not clear added to all the other places where he is NOT clear, such as 1 Cor 2:8, such as his praise of civil authority in Romans 13, plus 1 Cor 15, plus all the talk of hidden mysteries, etc., etc, each place where Paul could make a more concrete affirmative statement regarding the actual real Jesus from Nazareth, including where he could reference the teachings of Jesus, each of those places diminishes the likelihood that our conclusion of not real will be a false negative.

We can look at this statistically (I am not going to do a Bayesian analysis here, but I think if we could discuss some lines of evidence we could come up with something collectively). Let's say that Paul there is a 50-50 chance that Paul would, at each point, select less ambiguous language at each point where he has an opportunity to refer to the "real" jesus.

Gal 1:19
more ambiguous "brother of the Lord" (Paul selects--.5 probability)
less ambiguous "brother of Jesus" (Paul does not select)

1 Cor 2:8
more ambiguous "rulers of this age...they would not have" (Paul selects---.5 probability)
less ambiguous "Romans," "Jews," "Pilate," or any other concrete possible (Paul does not select)

1 Cor 15:1-10
more ambiguous--Jesus "appears" to followers following resurrection including Paul, but no mention of actual ministry or teaching (Paul selects--.5 probability)

less ambiguous--reference to Jesus' teaching prior to crucifixion, reference that any of those appearances were to people who had ever walked the earth with Jesus, anything to ground Jesus to an existence in historical time on earth (as opposed to on Mars, I guess).

1 Cor 1:18-2:16
more ambiguous--the "message of the cross" is a hidden secret only now revealed through the spirit (Paul selects--.5 probability)

less ambiguous--concrete references to the teachings of Jesus (Paul rejects)

Romans 13
more ambiguous (puzzling)--civil authorities extolled (Paul select, .5)

more concrete--explanation of how civil authorities can be extolled even when responsible for the unjust crucifixion of Jesus. (Paul does not select)

Galations 4
more ambiguous--Jesus is "born of a woman" "from the seed of David" and other language often used in reference to other spiritual, heavenly beings in an argument that talks about births that are metaphors (Paul selects)

less ambiguous--Jesus is the son of Mary/Joseph, he is from Nazareth, born in Bethlehem (no mention from Paul)

1 Cor 13:7
more ambiguous--the "Lord's commandment" (Paul selects)
less ambiguous--teaching of Jesus, commandment of Jesus, as the Lord Jesus taught us (Paul doesn't use, ever)

1 Cor 11:23
more ambiguous--I learned from the Lord (Paul selects)
less ambiguous--Jesus said the night before he was betrayed, as Jesus Christ taught the apostles (Paul does not select)

As we can readily see, Paul universally selects language that can only be stretched to include a vision of a human man, Jesus from Nazareth who lived and taught recently. He had at his disposable more concrete language, but never uses it. Any one of these would not be too much of a cause of concern for the historicist position, but added together, the likelihood that in every case where Paul could have made a less ambiguous statement, he does not. Even if we hedged the odds to a 90% chance for each case, we would quickly get to the point where it is less likely that Paul is referring to a recently existing man, an illiterate peasant from Nazareth, than a spiritual, heavenly being. If there are even 7 instances of this that we can identify and agree upon, it becomes less likely (just on straight percentages) that in each case Paul would select less ambiguous language over more concrete language [.9*.9*.9*.9*.9*.9*.9=.478]. I identified 8 above just off the top of my head. If we agreed that it should be a 50-50 chance, then we are really at a statistically significant finding with a less than 1% chance that Paul always selects ambiguous language where he could use more concrete language.

To state another way: If our hypothesis is that there is a significant difference in Paul's selection of language between his actual use and what we would expect (let's say 50% chance in each case), then our null hypothesis is that there is no difference. Looking at 8 examples above (cherry picked, so feel free to add to the list on both sides--but let's be clear: if there is even a single instance in Paul that that virtually falsifies the mythicist argument--unless we follow aa), we obtain a probability that Paul would always select the more ambiguous language of 0.004, which is significantly different than what we would expect. We could go through each case and assign different values for each. But it is nearly uniform in Paul. And this is only considering Paul. Here is another: What is the likelihood that if there was a "real" Jesus that Josephus would not mention him and that a later Christian would have insert a passage to establish the place of Jesus in history? What is the likelihood that no other ancient writer, such as Philo, would mention Jesus? Maybe the odds are in favor of no mention, but when the "no mention" is universal, the odds start working against historicism.

I hope I am making some kind of sense here. That's just from Paul. Add to that the diminishing likelihood that there is an oral tradition that is traceable to eyewitness or anyone with any direct knowledge of what actually occurred either in the Temple or in front of Pilate or anywhere in the Jesus story. Add to that the diminishing likelihood that any part of the passion story is based on a memory of a "real" event. We go on and on. At each step, each piece of evidence diminishes the likelihood of a false negative.

On the other side of the ledger, there is very little to mitigate the situation for the historicists. It seems there is a very large chance of obtaining a false positive. Historicists grasp at straws like Galatians 1:19, the TF, stray disputed references in later writers like Tacitus, weak methodologies actually designed to confirm bias (they actually only work at all if there is a presupposition that Jesus was "real").

Based on this line of thinking, I think it is safe to make a qualified conclusion that Jesus was not a real person. If we could do this with a statistical analysis, I think we would find significant results in favor of non-existence. I do think that if we are going to follow the methodology of bible studies, there is no way to say one way or another about an historical Jesus. The Gospel evidence can't help us either way. On the other hand, I would Paul, assuming an early Paul, is different as a first hand observer of supposedly first generation Christianity.

PS and off subject, how do you make those fancy tables. Do you have to code those in?

Grog

Yes, I think this is what spin is getting at: historical reconstructions of a plausible Jesus versus the "real" Jesus. Of course, the former presupposes the latter.

The project is similar to reconstructions of the face of Jesus. Of course, we have no idea and no way of know what the real face of Jesus looked like. But we still attempt sketches.

aa5874

But that is precisely the same as saying we don't know what an historical Jesus looked like.

A 'plausible' Jesus as the phrase implies is NOT the historical Jesus.

It must be noted that all events in the story of Jesus were PLAUSIBLE and it was for that very reason why it is stated that Jesus was born after his mother was made pregnant by a Holy Ghost.

After all, the very people who accept the Plausibility that Jesus was God's own Son are the same people who accepted that it was plausible that Jesus the Logos created Adam and Eve and heaven and earth.

The Plausible Jesus of antiquity was a Myth.