EarlOfLade

Not really important since nobody claims that Socrates was divine and son of god and that everyone should follow him.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence etc...

dongiovanni1976x

The historical Jesus position is not limited to making a claim of true divinity. All it is saying is that a person existed that others may or may not have later worshiped AS DIVINE.

The HJ position does not make any extraordinary claims. None. How else do you think an atheist like Chris Weimer can simultaneously hold an HJ belief? I myself am a militant agnostic. But I love history and respect it's methodological limitations.

Biff the unclean

If the scholarship is as shoddy as you present it as being then sure. Is there some sort of emotional attachment you think I have for Socrates that would make me cling to an HS over an MS? It doesn’t matter what I want, it matters what IS.

We have the information that we have. If all we have of these figures from antiquity is a mythology then so be it, that’s all we have. Honesty demands that we do not pretend to know more information than we actually do.

Nobody ever met him. That’s why Paul is useless. I’m a contemporary of Indiana Jones and I’ve never met him either.

I did run into Indy’s cousin, New Jersey Jones, in a bar once.

All we have is baloney from a church with a tremendous political agenda and no evidence.

Paul supports something he didn’t see?

[quote] by the archaeological evidence of the Plaque of Pontius Pilate in Caesarea Maritima [quote]
That’s evidence of Historic Pilate… so what? I’ve got evidence of historic Hitler but it means nothing for Indiana Jones.

You are still in crypto-zoology.

As opposed to what?

Who was born a Jew? You are assuming an individual instead of detecting one.
That’s part of the story, but it’s not historic.
Who did this? Where are you getting this other than the myth itself?
Which we can discount because it’s a magic number. Although these merry men are always referred to in the bible as the 12 the names of 14 are given. The disciples are part of the story not part of history.
Which is a ridiculous thing for a Jew to do as it was a Zoroasterian ceremony.
We are still solely in the province of the story and not of history
Again taken from Dionysusian cults at Byzantium. In the story Jesus is removed from the cross. As the purpose of going to all the trouble and expense of a crucifixion is to let the body rot in public view for weeks we have now gotten into a fairy tale.

Most of what you are presenting as evidence of the historicity of the story is the story itself and not evidence.

Because you haven’t established that there was a human being that even this minimal story applied to. You just have a story.
You are still in the story and not in history. You are saying parts of the story aren’t weird so they must be history. That isn’t enough. It’s like saying that there must be an historic Superman because he lived in Kansas and ordinary Martha and Jonathan Kent were his relatives. And what’s so strange about being a mild mannered reporter anyway?
The mundane parts of the Jesus story are just as easy to concoct as the more outlandish and do not suggest an historic character.

Question: if HJ is this nobody with nothing known about him that you present, why is it so important to you that he exist? The MJ doesn’t change one way or the other if there was an HJ or not.

dongiovanni1976x

Because it is far easier to explain that Paul actually met James and got into an argument with him than that it is a big made up conspiracy or that he was lying about this given that he would look better to his audience if he didn't have to justify himself all the time.
Because it is far easier to explain that Josephus was recounting an historical event (the execution of this James) than to posit that it was all made up or that he was intentially lying to give credibility to a religion that he doesn't espouse. Also textual criticism supports that this is authentic whereas the TF is an interpolation.
Because the earliest gospel of Mark gives embarrassing details that Jesus was not accepted by his family and friends and it is only with the advent of Matthw/Luke and finally John that we see him evolve from Jesus to Christ.
Because of the accuracy of the New Testament when mentioning Pontius Pilate who was decried byt eh MJ camp as mythic as well until the Caesarea Maritima plaque was discovered.
Because Tacitus, though reporting far from the events gives an account of this crazy superstition and ties it to an executed criminal under this same Pontius Pilate who we can confidently assume was depicted on the Alexamenos Graffiti.

dongiovanni1976x

James, his brother undoubtably did. So Paul is a second hand source who is certainly valuable. You toss him out as if he has nothing valuable to say when in fact he our closest link to the early Jesus movement.

aa5874

Are you now claiming to know how other persons think, so that makes you know Jesus Christ is historic. So if an atheist, like Chris Weimer, holds a view that Jesus Christ is historic then that's good enough for you.

It is for this very same reason we have fiction in the NT and it is believed to be true because some persons have decided that what others think is more important than the truth and honesty. It is time persons begin to think for themselves.Billions of people now believe that Jesus Christ is historic because some one else thinks for them.

To claim that Jesus is historic because he had a brother named James is extremely weak. Gods regarded as myth also have brothers. Your source, the NT, is not credible, Josephus writings have been interpolated. The interpolation mentions 'the Christ', any other passage which mentions ' the Christ' must be viewed with suspicion.

The unknown author of Matthew claims that Jesus Christ was in Egypt while Herod killed all children 2 years and under, now isn't that an extra-ordinary claim when Luke says Jesus Christ was in Nazareth after birth. The NT is an extra-ordinary book filled with myths and other strange events. Jesus Christ is an extra-ordinary character and any claim about this character is extra-ordinary.

Some may think that it is beyond the authors of the NT to fabricate events and characters, but that does not appear to be true, the killing of the children by Herod is a good example of such fabrication on a international scale.

gnosis92

Bart Ehrman and Elaine Pagels and Dominic Crossan and other academic historians would agree with you, which was the topic of my original post.

Your post is what Ehrman had in mind when he states academic historians have layed out the criteria for studying history: independent attestation, dissimilarity, and contextual credibility would be best.

gnosis92

Paul states he met with James, "Brother of the Lord" and Josepheus writes how this James lost his position to Caiphus.

Chris Weimer

You keep alluding to the "Jesus story" and "the Gospels". That is bunk. That is for Christians to keep. A real historian knows that they must pick and choose out of the selected works to find out what really happen.

You don't think that Alexander the Great was really the son of Zeus, do you? Yet ancient sources say he was. But if he wasn't the son of Zeus, then does that mean he didn't exist?

You are employing a double standard here.

This is your claim. Now prove it. Where's the evidence that it is traced back to India? How do you know that the story in India is older than the Hebrew version?

Hebrew isn't an Indo-European language.

I'm sorry, where do you see

Sure it is. But Romeo and Juliet comes from an older tale, the oldest being Pyramus and Thisbe. But that doesn't mean that West Side Story came from Pyramus and Thisbe, or any number of the "star-crossed lovers" stories that predate Romeo and Juliet. Moreover, it doesn't exclude the possibility that something akin to Romeo and Juliet really happened in history before. Chances are pretty good, actually, that a man killed himself because he thought his beloved has died. If you were to watch a movie that began "based on true events" but seemed awfully similar to Romeo and Juliet, what would you think and why? What if you read a news article earlier stating that indeed the story was striking, but that it really happened. What would you think?

Do you know what historicity means?

It's still entirely irrelevant. You must be confusing this with Christianity.

As a matter of fact, I'm a classical scholar first and foremost. But you, on the other hand, seem to be devoid of either.

But you never mentioned spreading and evolving. You said it "came from India" without showing who did what, where, when, and how. A blanket statement is the epitome of sloppy "parallel" scholarship, a joke in every academic community.

Yeah, Christians do that sometimes.

It has been given. Reread the thread, then read a book.

Toto

The alternative explanation is that "Brother of the Lord" was a title - an easier explanation than trying to reconcile James' status in Mark with his leadership of the later church.

Textual criticism has little to say about this reference to the brother of Jesus - it is an awkard turn of phrase that might have been an innocent interpolation.

The details are not so embarrassing to Jesus, and might have a theological purpose. And while some theologians see an increase in Christology from Mark to Matthew to Luke to John, Paul's Christology is higher than any of these.

Sorry - this is not true. No mythicist has been located who ever thought that Pontius Pilate, who is mentioned in both Josephus and Philo, was mythical.

Any confidence in anything in this area is entirely unwarranted.