aa5874

Jesus existed because you say so. Hats off to you.

Solo

So, if I understand you correctly, since you have shown several instances where a historical event (Judah's exile, the fall of the temple) was not chronicled until centuries later, I should take the reporting of the temple incident with Jesus, also reported late, as unhistorical. Right ? Or are you saying that the fall of First Temple is a fiction tradition comparable to that of the Infancy Gospels ?

I simply asked you to show me why this event should not be considered historical. (Sample answer: the synoptics show it happening just before Jesus' arrest while John places it at the start of the ministry.) Why should I throw it out the assault on the temple as originating in someone's imagination ? Because John has Jesus crack a whip ?

The "historical fabric" is there for all to see. The temple incident evidently brought about, or heavily contributed, to Jesus' condemnation within the narrative fabric of the synoptics. John evidently had some sources which also told him of the second charge, sorcery or desecration of graves (which the synoptic tradition had a vested interest in concealing), which he thought theologically more important. Why would this not be history ? Is it because the narrators for all their cunning and craftiness are not that sophisticated bunch compared to us ? Or because you are unable to make any historical sense of it ?


But I showed you - the New Testament; it's just that you don't want to believe that the outline, i.e. the story of a failed small-time social reformer, who was executed, and who posthumously rose to Godhead after serving as a martyred apostolic idol in a reformist church of James, is historical material.

Could you translate that into a more conventional English for me ?

1) The word is spelled germane.

2) I don't care whether you get really sick but I note that saying something like fits well with the obsessional tone that you have taken here and relates to evidence contrary to your favourite pet theory.
Naturally, I can't produce historical evidence that is not there. But I can probe the texts for consistency of the idea the author of the text wishes to convey and then gauge whether he is pulling stuff from thin air and creating a fictional story, or whether he is overwriting some other narration with his own theology. Now if I find a variant cognitive content within the writing, such that the pericope yields a different, internally consistent narration, I am entitled to reject the latter material as derived. Right ? And then, logically, you would have to explain the mythical import of the earlier story ?

So why don't you ? Instead of doing a snake dance...:huh:

Interesting. Can I quote you on that ?

In other words, you do not know where to begin. But it was I believe around this issue that the most erudite, and accomplished mythicist of our time, G.A.Wells, has waved the white flag. Beside the issue of embarrassment (in parading the view of J. by his own family as insane, his losing unloading on well-meaning, protective Peter at C-P, going for figs out of season), the psychological marker of high dominance and originality (in calling the forbidding YHWH "Father") which points to a founding figure of the movement, the re-Judaization problem is perhaps the most daunting and intractable, in postulating mythical origin. Wells' old buddy Schmithals finally prevailed on the old fox.

Oh, no my friend...FAIR PLAY is gospel to me !

Have I not repeated that several times ?

Let me summarize my position on historicity: I do not trust any of the external sources that testify for Jesus existence. The documents are either tampered with (as in Josephus), or reflect the view of contemporary Christian community (Tacitus, Suetonius, Pliny the Y.). Judging on internal evidence, I believe historicity better explains a number of things in the New Testament. I believe even Paul's silence on HJ is better explained by historical Jesus. He was embarrassing: outrage to the Jews - folly to the Greeks. Paul was much more comfortable with him in necro.

Please, read what I wrote, make sure you understand what I am saying and then argue. Any other order in your exertions will not be very effective.

Jiri

spin

What you should do is irrelevant. The question is, given the tradition, how do you separate this event couched tradition from any of the others.

You have to deal with the tradition and the problem of epistemology. Get it?

This is your hurdle: assuming historicity won't give you history. Can you get over it?

Sorry, but your bundle of assumptions is creaking. Deal with your epistemological problem and then we can talk.

You really believe in chasing your tail.

When you don't know the context in which a text is written, when you don't know who wrote the text, when you don't know where the text was written, when you can't date the text, when you don't even know how many authors were involved in a text and, if so, when each wrote and where, etc., you don't know anything about the texts. If you use the texts to form your historical opinions, your opinions are not based on anything but conjecture.

You're ever so kind.

Cutting through the facile rhetoric, all we are left with is you blabbing about mythicism instead of doing history. Shame.

Yup, you got it.

You turn your back on the traditions that the texts evince when they claim to be in the Jewish world, knowing nothing about the authors or the history of the texts as we now have them. How can you discern consistency of ideas of an author when you can't even tell how many authors were involved? -- though at least two gospels show obvious signs of multiple authorship -- and all have probably gone through many hands.

Still hung up on mythicism. If the world seems good in black and white, wait until you get colour TV.

I'd rather you dealt with the issue. The tradition you are trying to take at face value requires you to check it out before you do.

No. You don't know where to begin. History is the subject, not plausibility. You get plausibility in the political news every night.

If you check the archives, you'll find that you are arguing about things that don't interest me. I am not a mythicist. Read my lips. I -- am -- not -- a -- mythicist. Please stop this irrelevance and deal with what you have to deal with, ie the substantive history and not change the subject onto mythicism.

You ought to apply this stuff to Finnegan's Wake.

OK, so you just aren't doing history. I get it now.

Post hoc hind-quarters defence is not convincing to the least.

Thanks for the conversation. Don't let me interrupt your speculations further.


spin

rlogan

That is most clearly not the "outline" of the so-called New Testament.

It is you taking exception to it in a most fundamental way and then claiming your completely different version is "historical material".


Noted.

A lot of hornswoggle for "I make up what I want to".




Well, at least that's a novel approach.

Reject extrabiblical references and invent biblical "references" where there are none.

It's a first on IIDB that I know of.

Amaleq13

IMO, there are much better reasons to question the historicity of that particular scene. First, Josephus gives us reason to believe that extra guards were stationed in that location so as to specifically prevent and/or immediately respond to exactly that sort of disruption. Given that, immediate arrest or death is far more likely that escape. Second, the scene is arguably based on Scripture.

For more details, see this earlier thread on the subject:

Found: the OT source for Jesus' Temple Ruckus

aa5874

What internal evidence are you referring to? You have not contributed any substance to support your view, just mystical ramblings. Your summary is pathetic. You have discarded information that may show that Jesus was not historic, on the pretense of lack of trust, and in return expect others to trust your judgement.

Put your internal evidence on the table, so that it can be scrutinised.

spamandham

This is a good point, unless the practice can be demonstrated to have originated elsewhere. I don't start with the assumption that Christianity happened among orthodox Jews (who, I understand, didn't exist as we know them yet in the 1st century). The texts were clearly originally penned in Greek, suggesting Christianity was a Greek pagan movement that latched onto Jewish ideas and syncretized them. So I suppose the place to look would be among Greek paganism, to see if the idea of calling any of the gods "father" preceded Christianity. If not, you have a valid point that one (or more) charismatic leaders were involved early on. I don't doubt that likely. The question is whether Jesus himself was one of these leaders.

Paul's letters were not newspaper articles, they were letters of persuasion to other Christians. Even if Paul was embarassed to talk about Jesus to Jews and Greeks, why would he muddle the point in his private letters to fellow Christians?

Solo

No, I thank you ! Your generosity is greatly appreciated.

Jiri

Malachi151

To me it just becomes increasingly clear that the "Jesus movement" was nothing but one of many hundreds of various mystery religions that was entertained throughout the diaspora community (as said, probably basied on the John teh Baptist movement origionally), which mixed both mysteries, Greek paganism, and Jewish ideas. This is what "Paul" and the early community were all about, and this was probably not even worth taking notice of, again one of hundreds like it.

What set the whole thing in motion as we know it ttoday, was the destruction of Judea by the Romans. That's what kicked off the writing of Mark, and the responce of Matthew, and Luke, both of which took the ball and ran with it, adding even more to the story and further implicating the Jews for being fools and further providing more "proof" they they had brought their problems on themselves by further trying to bolster the evidence that "Jesus was the messiah, and they missed him".

The "recognition" that "Jesus was the messiah" really happened AFTER the destruction of the temple.

This was really a searching for explanations.Judea was destroyed, so they asked why, why was it destroyed? Oh, because the separatist Jews screwed themselves. That's what the whole Jesus story is about really, the story of Mark anyway, its about the Jews being fools and bringing destruction on themselves.

I suspect that it was written by a "liberal Jew", much like a Noam Chomsky type or something, it was a self criticism from a liberal "paganized" Jew.

Solo

There were several strands of Judaism in existence at the time, and they are described by Josephus. When I talked about "(otherwise) orthodox" James, I meant, "traditionally observant" (and also ascetic). Many of the Jews in Jerusalem were Greek speaking, more Hellenized than others. If you accept the Galilean origin of the mission -with or without HJ - you will sonner or later stumble on what I have - that it was a Jewish borderland with a strong Greek influence. Therefore when Paul went ballistic over Cephas' "hypocrisy" at Antioch, he himself was missing the point, not understanding that Cephas repaired from a region which had (ouside rigidly observant outposts) a form of relaxed observance. This openness to things external in the Galilean Cephas stands in contrast to the James' wing of priestly ascetics (who I believe adopted Jesus as a martyr for political purposes), and possibly explains the original meeting point between the Jesus-worshipping Galilean culture and the Jerusalem Greek-speaking Jewish community. The expulsion of the Hellenic Jesus worshippers from Jerusalem after Stephen's death in Acts 8 probably is a somewhat mythicized original export of "Jesus" into the Diaspora.

If Paul can be believed, it was he who was charged with the Gentile (pagan) mission. So, the Gentile mission would be a secondary development to a movement which was originally Jewish, and soon after the presumed death of Jesus, became predominantly Greek-speaking (Jewish).

He did not muddle anything. Saul, a staunch Pharisee Jew, hated the Jesus-mongers who to him were un-civilized idol worshippers. Then something happened to Saul (which is an interesting question medically) that changed his mind about a few things. I have touched on it it few times on this board. Here is a brief introduction to my view of Paul's attitude to historical Jesus.

Jiri