Steven Carr

If you believe that spinach gives you super-strength , you cannot scoff at people who claim that Popeye never existed, even though scholars have demonstrated that there was a real historical person that Popeye was based on.

bacht

So miracles are possible? Healings, exorcisms, mass feedings, resurrection - these are supposed to be plausible on the planet we live on?

Might as well be talking about alien abductions. The whole point of the mythicist approach is to be scientific about this subject (meaning social science is included but not pseudo-science).

If you believe in the supernatural aren't you admitting that a rational origin for Jesus isn't required?

jgoodguy

The HJers approach was as scientific as the JMers and see what it got them.

No Robots

The New Testament exegesis will never attain a truly scientific character unless Rabbinical literature is thoroughly studied and consulted as to the meaning and purpose of the various sayings and teachings of Jesus and the apostles, and as to the historical perspective from which alone the work of the nascent Christian sect can be understood.--"The Attitude of Christian scholars toward Jewish literature" / Kaufmann Kohler. In Studies, addresses, and personal papers, p. 424.

bacht

Sorry I don't see it. The traditional explanation is that some teacher/prophet/magician became famous enough for the authorities to want him dead. The first written material about this person comes from Paul, a mystic or apocalypticist, with no mention of a career he himself was alive to hear about.

Then decades after the fact we finally get a biography which seems to be the only record of what "really happened" ca 30 ce. But what sort of biography is this? As J Wallack points out, the stories seem to be culled from the Jewish bible, echoing Moses, Elijah/Elisha and David.

Then we get the revisionists, who were reacting to the gnostics and heretics. I don't see much science in any of this, other than psycho-social pathology :huh:

aa5874

What nonsense.

It is HJers who ACTUALLY believe that someone described as a GHOST and the Creator of heaven and earth was REALLY human.

It is HJers who use GHOST stories in the NT and try to CONVINCE others and GIVE the erroneous ASSURANCE that they are NOT really Ghost stories but of a REAL MAN named Jesus.

You even wrote the Gospel of ABE about the same character who was described as the Child of a Holy Ghost.

You ABSOLUTELY BELIEVE the BIBLE contains the history of a man when it CLEARLY describes a Ghost that RESURRECTED.

No Robots

Wallack's whole thing is that the NT is Greek tragedy, no?

You are conflating the origins of Christianity with scholarship about the origins of Christianity. They may both demonstrate psycho-social pathologies, but they are nonetheless distinct from each other.

Toto

I think this misses the point. Mythicists don't believe that Jesus was an alien.

But the constant drumbeat of" mythicism is fringe pseudoscholarship" is primarily a theme of people who believe in something that is much less likely than the idea that early Christians believed in a merely spiritual Jesus who never walked the earth.

bacht

Okay I'll bite: how is the scholarship about an historical Jesus better than mythicist scholarship? Has traditional scholarship, which assumes an historical core to the man, illuminated his life and times, or clarified his identity beyond the canonical picture?

No Robots

Mythicist scholarship shares with traditional Christian scholarship a pathological resistance to examining the New Testament and its central figure in their Jewish context. Mythicism is the last stand of non-Jewish interpretation of the New Testament.

I don't think that traditional Christian scholarship has done so, no. But I do believe that reformist Jewish scholarship has indeed clarified all the important aspects of Christ's life, times and character.