PhilosopherJay

Hi Huon and Apostate,

Also, many Greeks, Romans, Egyptians and Jews, in fact, most ancient peoples were/are apocalyptic. For example, Hesiod says,

It would have been surprising to have a non-apocalyptic mythical character. Apocalyptic stories are a category in themselves of mythology. The Norse had their Ragnarok (Doom of the Gods) story.

As far as Jesus' false prediction, this just indicates that the original text did not have an historical situation assigned to it. When the Jesus character was historicized, somebody must have realized that the text now contained a false prediction. That is why they added Jesus saying, (Matthew 41:36) " But concerning that day and that hour, no man knows, not the angels of the skies, but the Father alone." Thus Jesus repudiates his own prediction, a little anti-climatic and absurd if we think of the text coming from an historical Jesus. Imagine a man carrying a "sign saying the world will end in 2012." You go up to the man and ask, "Will the world really end in 2012?" He answers, "Who knows, it may or it may not. Only God knows." Wouldn't such a man be perfectly absurd?

Can we really argue that Jesus must be real because the character is so absurd, he could not be fictional?

Warmly,

Philosopher Jay

Steven Carr

ABE
Paul wrote of Cephas (Peter), James and John as “reputed pillars” (Galatians 2:9), who are the same three disciples who were core disciples of Jesus according to the gospels (Mark 5:37 and Matthew 17:1).

CARR
Abe makes more mistakes. This James was not a disciple.

Paul never claims Jesus had disciples.

God appointed apostles. Not Jesus.

Sorry, we should look at the whole of the case, which somehow means you can't look at any of the pieces.

ApostateAbe

I explain each of those things as myths that developed after the death of Jesus. For example, the resurrection myth was attested by the delusional wishful thinking of a few women, and the apostle Peter upheld it and turned it into a messianic expectation. The elements that I focused on are more difficult (not impossible) to explain as mere myths.

ApostateAbe

We have what I take to be a bad habit of empirical language, of saying that the evidence for one theory is better than the other evidence for the other theory. But, we all have the same evidence, the same basic set of facts. What we should be saying is that one explanation is better than other, or one theory fits the evidence with greater probability than the other theory. If the explanation for HJ is far better than the best MJ, then that is all it takes for HJ to be the established winning theory. Nothing in history is "proved," nor can we assign numerical probability estimates to any theory (probable or not), nor should we, and I don't like to use language like that, either.

EDIT: Shoot, I was aware of that bad habit even when I was typing the title to this thread, but I decided to stick with the bad habit for the sake of brevity.

show_no_mercy

This is the critical step you're missing in your reconstruction. We have no reason to trust these sources, to think that they contain any valid data.

Who wrote these gospels? When did they write them? Who are they writing to? Why did they write them? The answer to these questions are critical to your assessment - because they establish whether we can trust them to contain any meaningful historical data.

I like how you repeatedly bring Josephus into this equation, yet never address why Josephus would call someone the brother of someone called the messiah. The only two times that Josephus' entire corpus writes "christ" are the two times that are talking about the Jesus of Christianity. Because of that, this passage is just as suspect as the Testimonium - even moreso because its language depends on the earlier presence of the TF.

You need to first establish that you are working with slam-dunk data before going about your slam-dunk summary. As it stands now, your data is not slam-dunk, so your summary falls flat.

ApostateAbe

One way or the other, the writings contain valid data, but the issue is which explanations for them are the best. I know it is common for many of us to think, "No provenance, therefore, we know absolutely nothing and can't trust this data for anything at all." They are right about the premise--we really don't have any provenance, not even for where the documents may have been found, with only a time of last copying, in the second, third or fourth centuries. The conclusion does not follow from the logic nor the premise, however, because we apparently do have data--the contents of the writings. From those contents, we can be almost completely certain that the gospels were written with an intent to evangelize and preach the religion of Christianity. We may also make estimates (less certain ones) about when they were composed, from what events are contained (the destruction of the temple or the exile from the synagogues) and the attestation of the apocalyptic deadlines or excuses for the failure. Those would be the arguments I use to date the gospels. I don't know all of the argumentation that the scholars use to date the gospels, but my own estimates seem to fit. Conclusions of any sort are about the best explanation, or at least they should be. There are many skeptical lines of attack where we can say, "You can't really be sure about this. Therefore, we know little or nothing, and you can't draw conclusions." That isn't the way history is done, but it is the way that hollow criticism is done if there are conclusions that we would rather avoid, and I see it in many other debates.

"I like how you repeatedly bring Josephus into this equation, yet never address why Josephus would call someone the brother of someone called the messiah. The only two times that Josephus' entire corpus writes 'christ' are the two times that are talking about the Jesus of Christianity. Because of that, this passage is just as suspect as the Testimonium - even moreso because its language depends on the earlier presence of the TF."

The presence of the earlier Testimonium Flavianum, as I explained, is made probable by the writing of Origen. At the least, the original TF stated that Jesus was NOT the Christ.

The last time we talked about Josephus using the word, "Christ," I quoted a third passage in the writing of Josephus where the word "Christ" is used and does not refer to Jesus. You apparently missed it, because I got no reply from you. That is OK--I'll just cite and quote that passage again. I have a large text file containing all of the writings of Josephus, so it is easy for me to do a word search. If you like, I can send that text file to you--just give me your email over pm.

An Extract Out Of Josephus's Discourse To The Greeks Concerning Hades, 6.

For all men, the just as well as the unjust, shall be brought before God the word: for to him hath the Father committed all judgment : and he, in order to fulfill the will of his Father, shall come as Judge, whom we call Christ. For Minos and Rhadamanthus are not the judges, as you Greeks do suppose, but he whom God and the Father hath glorified: CONCERNING WHOM WE HAVE ELSEWHERE GIVEN A MORE PARTICULAR ACCOUNT, FOR THE SAKE OF THOSE WHO SEEK AFTER TRUTH. This person, exercising the righteous judgment of the Father towards all men, hath prepared a just sentence for every one, according to his works; at whose judgment-seat when all men, and angels, and demons shall stand, they will send forth one voice, and say, JUST IS THY JUDGMENT; the rejoinder to which will bring a just sentence upon both parties, by giving justly to those that have done well an everlasting fruition; but allotting to the lovers of wicked works eternal punishment.

show_no_mercy

This might be true, but we have to determine what it's valid for. The gospel narratives are good data for analyzing what the writers were thinking, but bad data for history about WWII.


Again, they are good for answering some questions, but bad for answering other questions. It's the question that's important.


You should explicitly state your assumptions like you do here, instead of having them go under the radar. If your assumptions are challenged, then you have to defend them.

Again, all of these assumptions are about the nature of the writer(s) of the gospels, not the historical Jesus. So your conclusions in your OP should be even more tentative. At the most, you can say what the gospel authors believed. But is what they believe in grounded in history? That is the case you have to make.

Maybe that's the way NT scholars do history, but for every other field of inquiry if you don't know something, then you should be honest about it. Not knowing something is no excuse to make up any story just so you have a story. That's entertainment, not scholarship.

And all we have is the testimony of Origen, and he makes a mistake concerning his reading of Josephus. He says that Josephus claims that the Jewish war made a turn for the worse because the high priest Ananias killed James. But in Josephus' works, Josephus says that the war made a turn for the worse because the Zealots killed the high priest Ananias (the guy that ordered the execution of James).

So for one, Origen is mistaken in his recollection of Josephus, and two you still have Josephus writing the word "christ" which is still unlike him.

Yeah, it's probably buried in these threads somewhere. But check the wiki'd link

Toto

Josephus's_Discourse_to_the_Greeks_concerning_Hade s

See also Gary Goldberg's Josephus HomepageThere is more there on exactly how this obviously Christian passage was attributed to Josephus.

bacht

I'll give you full marks for perseverance Abe.

Your key point seems to be that we can trust the NT texts to provide reliable historical information. This is in fact the traditional position, though I realize you do allow for mistakes, interpolations, theological refinements etc.

I'll just say that, if the NT writers were consciously emulating the OT then the presence of pseudepigraphy, historical distortions and outright mythmaking must be part of the mix. I don't think there are many scholars left who read the Hebrew scriptures as literal history. Similarly the NT can't be read that way either imo.

ApostateAbe

Egg on my face.