Bill

I've never heard anybody defend this interpretation of that reference. Where (or who) do you draw it from? Or is it your own invention? If the latter, I'd like to have the full exposition of the problem to read.

== Bill

Secular Pinoy

Well, I was directing my response to Asha'man's post directly before mine, wherein he/she quoted your post about Fredriksen. I merely pointed out that just because Fredriksen doubted the idea that Jesus was an insurrectionist does not mean that she believed that Jesus was a blasphemer. She, rather, believed that Jesus may have been identified by the crowd, and then by the Roman authorities, to be an apocalypticist, and had to be dealt with swiftly.

Rick Sumner

It's based largely on the culmination of this thread on XTalk a few months ago (that's the second time today I've mentioned that thread!).

Regards,
Rick

Bill

This doesn't really fit the model of a messiah-type figure directly, but on pp. 124-125 in Eisenman is the story of the crucifixion of the sons of Judas the Galilean (who led a rebellion circa 4 BCE, beginning shortly after the death of Herod the Great and shortly before the beginning of direct Roman rule). These two sons are named James and Simon. This coincidence of three names, each of whom is the name of a Brother of Jesus (James, Judas and Simon/Peter), is quite curious to me.

== Bill

HelmetWB

Frankly, we need more evidence in order to be sure of any of this, but we aren't likely to get any such evidence without a great deal of luck. Still, on balance, I remain convinced that when Saul/Paul spoke with James, there was a real Jesus that was being discussed, and that is all that is necessary for me to decide the question of the existence of an historical Jesus

I voted 'no' and remain unconvinced. However, my 'no' vote is tentative. I'm of the opinion that some of the stories concerning Jesus appear to reference a 'real' person. But is this person, only one person or more than one person? And what are we supposed to make of all those miracles? Since I'm of the rather firm opinion that miracles don't happen, I'm left with the following options (if Jesus existed):

1) Jesus was a charlatan, essentially ‘selling’ snake oil.
2) We should ignore the miracles, but accept everything else concerning Jesus.

I think that option one so changes the essence of the ‘historical’ Jesus that he becomes a different person than the New Testament Jesus, which justifies my ‘no’ vote.

And option 2 leaves me wondering -- Isn’t ‘Jesus -- the miracle worker’ -- also a major part of who Jesus was in life? Don’t the miracles make the man, so to speak?

Thus, I’m left with a very slippery ‘historical’ character, at best.
Truth is, if I was able to travel through time (and had the appropriate linguistic ability) I would be very surprised to find anyone that resembled the Biblical Jesus close enough to qualify as 'the' one. Thus, my 'no' vote.

GakuseiDon

Peter, I've always wondered about that. Which groups are they?

Peter Kirby

There is usually a debate over whether there could be a mustard seed of historicity, but several figures come to mind. In each case, at best almost everything by way of biography is fictional.

Eleusinians and Demeter

Mithraists and Mithra

Greek Physicians and Asclepius

Hindus and Ram (and Krishna)

Jews and Moses

Some Jews and Enoch

Egyptians and Isis

Romans and Aeneas

Confucianists and Confucius

Zoroastrians and Zoroaster

I'm not all that interested in getting into an argument over whether a person possibly could have existed behind these legendary figures. (Or whether there is better evidence for a historical Jesus than the above figures, about which I haven't commented.) I would simply suggest that at least one of the above can show precedent for the existence of myth-making processes.

best,
Peter Kirby

Bill

Well, if that is the only criteria you are interested in, then you could pick virtually any Roman Catholic saint in order to demonstrate "the existence of myth-making processes." In fact, I would assert, categorically, that the process of making a Roman Catholic saint is intrinsically a "myth-making process." It is just a very organized and predetermined sort of a "myth-making process."

And there are a number of Roman Catholic saints who are good candidates for being entirely legendary, including St. Patrick and the Mexican peasant that they recently made into a saint because he was supposed to have seen the Virgin of Guadalupe.

You don't have to get into the foundings of complete new religions in order to clearly understand "the existence of myth-making processes" with respect to religious persons.

== Bill

Bill

The answer to this question depends entirely upon exactly which layer of New Testament material you wish to deal with. If you restrict yourself to the admittedly genuine writings from the Pauline corpus, then the few references therein to Jesus would appear to refer to a single person. But once you move as far out as the gospels, then it is quite apparant that any number of stories have been inserted for theological reasons, and these stories generally began by referring to other people, both real and imagined.

As a "for instance," I've always been intrigued by the idea that the story of Jesus predicting the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem didn't have anything at all to do with the figure we would call the "historical Jesus," but was rather drawn from a story in Josephus (Eisenman asserts that many aspects of the gospels, and in particular Luke/Acts, display familiarity with the writings of Josephus). On page xxv of his Introduction, Eisenman writes these two paragraphs: Now, Eisenman doesn't really make clear whether there is just one or two different characters named 'Jesus ben Ananias.' (But see Jewish War 6.288-315 for the story of the oracle/prophet character, interwoven with other events.)

On page 357, Eisenman again refers to the oracle/prophet character and discusses when this character is brought before the Roman authorities in a scene clearly reminiscant of the gospel story of Jesus and Pilate. This happens about 62 CE, around the time of the death of James. Thus here, Eisenman finally makes clear that the arrest and release of this character happen long before the Jewish War itself. So, those two stories really do mesh together quite well out of Josephus.

And we can clearly see that the gospel material, if it is drawn from Josephus as Eisenman alleges, has adopted the story of this poor oracle/prophet character who lived after James into the story of Jesus, who must have died before James. So, if this is all true, the gospels clearly do mix together the stories of multiple people into the character of Jesus Christ. Well, the question asked allowed you to make up your own definition for what the phrase "historical Jesus" means, so nobody can say you are wrong for adopting the analysis which you did.

However, since the book The Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark came out, I think it is extremely difficult to claim the gospel stories as "early" in any real sense. The gospels are clearly a very-evolved legend, deliberately constructed in the form of an inverted Homeric epic. This necessarily required that the original author assemble a great deal of material in order to be able to draw out the many incidents that would become necessary to the story as it progresses along the lines demanded by this literary form. Thus, anybody who bases their decision about an historical Jesus based upon the gospel stories themselves would almost necessarily need to decide, as you did, that there was no historical Jesus because, as you say, you cannot expect to go back in a time machine and view any substantial part of the story described in the gospels as it actually happens in the first century.

Again, I follow Eisenman's thesis (from his Introduction) to the effect that modern Christianity is descended from Paul and his associates, while the followers of James left no recognizable legacy for us to compare with modern Christianity in order to discern the Jewish view. But it seems clear to me that James thought of this Messianic character as a real person (whose true identity is now unknown) who lived and died in James' own past (perhaps even a distant past; before James himself was born). James clearly discussed this person with Paul, and while Paul sets that person up as the founder of modern Christianity, Paul tells us virtually nothing about him! As Eisenman writes (on page xxiii): Of course, the word "brother" has at least two distinct possible meanings: 1) the usual family relationship; or 2) a relationship such as belonging to the same religious order (such as the modern day Franciscans or Dominicans). My personal theory is that it is in this second sense that we need to take the "brother" relationship between James and Jesus, as I expect that Jesus himself was long dead by the time that James was born. This places the historical Jesus even more remotely distant from Paul, and tends to explain even better why so little of that historical character manages to make it through the myth-building process and appear in the form of the modern-day legend.

== Bill

premjan

many many of the mythological stories of Jesus actually originate from the prechristian religion called Mithraism.