No Robots

For the same reason art critics were oblivious to Van Gogh during his lifetime: genius exists in spite of the world, and only gradually and in spite of itself does the world recognize genius.

spamandham

It's just coincidence that Christianity emerged on the scene shortly after the annihilation of the temple as a new way of looking at Judaism no longer requiring Temple sacrifices?!

I don't get this 'world transforming power' argument at all. Are you suggesting that the world was transformed by Jesus in his lifetime? If not, if the transformation came later, then how does that in any way suggest a historical core?

bacht

I think this is an interesting phenomenon. Most people seem to want to believe in an HJ regardless of confessional stance. Maybe people want to believe that there really was a Jewish "hero" at the root of the story? The alternative, a mythic origin, may be too abstract for people to relate to.

A third possibility would be that some Jew living before or after 30 CE was the real inspiration. I don't remember which but one of the non-canonical books uses the Alexander Janneus timeframe. If the dating of Mark is towards mid-2nd C it's conceivable that some person after 70 CE was the model.

No Robots

Rabbinic Judaism and the synagogue system also displaced the Temple and also took form prior to the destruction of the Temple. The early pre-destruction synagogue system clearly facilitated the spread of Christianity. The destruction of the Temple is what severed Christianity from Judaism, as you have pointed out.

What I am saying is that the manifest power of the Gospels in human history is derived from their content, namely, the genius of Christ. It is like a cone: we live at the ever-widening end, and when we look back at the single point of origin, we see one man of genius.

patcleaver

Can you give me a couple of examples of atheist historians who understand the case against the historical Jesus who are still Jesus historicists.

I can not speak for all atheists and I have not taken a scientific pole, but here is my guess.

Most Christians who become atheists rejected the belief in God in general rather than specific beliefs in Jesus or the Bible. There is no God, so the Bible and Jesus are irrelevant.

People who are brought up atheist very rarely care about ancient religious history at all.

Most atheists do not care at all about the historical status of Jesus and just assume that their high school history book is likely to be correct. Once you do not believe in God, then usually you're POV is that the historical status of Jesus is irrelevant.

The only reason that I am interested in the issue is that I have always had a fleeting interest in Greek history, and I have friends who are Christians who have the annoying habit of wanting to talk about it, and we are all trying to reduce the evil in the world - and I think religion is evil.

Ben C Smith

Sure, no problem, just as soon as you either (A) answer my question or (B) admit that you made your original statement about Christian apologists without knowing for sure whether there there were nonapologists of any stripe who would make the same argument.

This is what I am getting at. Your original statement...:

...can easily be taken to imply that Christian literalism is the only reason to postulate an HJ. But I think it fair to say that, if there are nonapologists who postulate an HJ (especially unbelieving nonapologists), then Christian literalism is not the only reason, but rather one of perhaps several.

Would you agree?

Also, please note that you are now steadily narrowing the field to atheist historians for some reason, when there are a lot of nonapologists who are neither atheists nor historians. Of the scholars I have in mind, some are atheists, and some are not; some are historians in the specific sense of the word, while others are biblical scholars of various kinds; a couple are even Christians. All that they have in common, as per your original statement, is that they are not Christian apologists.

I myself think that a lot of religion is evil (including vast tracts of Christendom), but not all.

And I am sorry that your Christian friends are an annoyance to you. I too have Christian friends who can annoy me.

Ben.

show_no_mercy

A fourth possibility is that there wasn't just one wandering charismatic Jewish preacher/political activist who got executed, but multiple. And that Christianity today is really just a fusion of the many "Jesuses" the original Jesus followers (or Christians) were actually following. I'm not sure if that position fits in with HJers or MJers, but it's a possibility.

show_no_mercy

This doesn't make sense. The destruction of the 2nd Temple (and the Bar Kochba revolt) is directly responsible for the popularity of Pauline/Gentile Christianity. You agree with me in the first quote but then immediately disagree in the same breath. If the "Judaizers" hadn't been marginalized by both the emerging Rabbinic Jews and gentile Christians, then Pauline Christianity would have been at perpetual odds with the Jewish Christians and the Gnostics.

This "world transforming power" I have yet to see, other than Christianity just happening to become popular in the most powerful country in the world at the time. You might as well say the "world transforming power" of the English language means that there's some sort of inherent "genius" in English.

The gospels are actually pretty sophomoric.

eheffa

I think this analogy fails at several levels.

First of all Van Gogh left artifacts called paintings that demanded one ask: "Who painted them?" We have self-portraits and eye-witness accounts from his friends & contemporaries who all seem to agree that he was a genuine flesh & blood person.

Jesus the Christ of the NT has none of these.

Secondly; The Book of Acts & the Christian accounts of its beginnings are full of stories of powerful & miraculous transformations of large groups of people. These people, these Christians, supposedly attracted the attention of the authorities & were seen to be a controversial & disruptive element in both Roman and Jewish society. Yet, apart from the NT accounts, we have no evidence of anyone noticing their existence in the first century.

This apologetic argument that the group of Jesus followers was too small & insignificant to be noticed by the historians or authorities of the day is like the Peasant Christ of Elijah (from the Absence of Evidence thread). We are supposed to understand that this real historical Jesus was an anonymous nobody who somehow inspired a revolutionary religion & yet did & said nothing of note to anyone. He then inspired a tiny group of followers who, just like him, did nothing to attract anyone's notice until the mid second century.

These anomalies demand some sort of explanation. Hypothesizing a "nobody" Peasant founder and a tiny group of anonymous & unnoticed first century followers, renders the subsequent claims of this same founder's greatness and deity laughable. If this is the Historical Jesus, he has no claim to anything resembling the Christian understanding of who he is & the argument is irrelevant.

One can't have it both ways. If you postulate a real flesh & blood Historical Jesus, then Jesus & his followers were radical, powerful transformative influences on the first century world of Palestine & noticeable by any contemporaneous observer or they were so insignificant that they were and are completely irrelevant to the great claims made by their religious followers.

The evidence would suggest that the latter option is the only viable historical option. A mythical source for the Jesus of Christianity is a much more likely possibility than this rather incredible option.

-evan

GakuseiDon

Also, Jesus didn't cut off his ear. So the analogy fails there. Jesus wasn't Dutch. So the analogy fails there as well. I hope you see where this is going. (Sorry, but stretching analogies to go beyond the point being made, and then saying "therefore it fails" is one of my pet peeves).