GakuseiDon

Two things counter that:
1. What Paul actually did write on Jesus
2. Examples of other writers -- apparently historicists -- who seemed to have had the same lack of interest as Paul in historical details.

I'm calling it "the elephant in the room" precisely because it hasn't been discussed AFAIK. Where was it discussed?

What then is the evidence for believing this?

"Orthodox" Christians who believed that Jesus wasn't historical? Is that what you are saying?

They don't, but as you acknowledged earlier, this is just a minor part of the puzzle. We still need to look at what Paul DID say, and when we do, IMHO the mythicist case falls apart.

dog-on

GDon, what is so unlikely about the original Christians having believed that Jesus came in the flesh simply because they believed that the scriptures said he did and not due to any particular reason other than that?

rlogan

I am hearing a style of argument that has been baffling to me G Don -

I don't know if you will remember this. It was a while ago. We were talking about how there had been no 1st or 2nd century tradition of gathering at any site where Jesus was allegedly crucified. No pilgrimages to this "famous" and by the way unknown spot. *snicker*

Well that is pretty damning IMHO. It wasn't until very late - like 4th century, even, before it got going.

And if I recall your argument against this mythicist talking point, please forgive me if I remember wrong, was that observing the absence of pilgrimages in the 1st and 2nd century failed to explain the absence of pilgrimages in the 3rd century.

I don't know what to call this technique. It makes no logical sense to me and I see it here again. The admission that there is no historical details in one place about Jesus "fails to explain" the absence of historical details in another place.

It's nonsensical. It is what we expect, and trying to make a paradox out of it is what's baffling.

Can't speak for Toto - but one of the most impressive features of people who front this story is how LAZY they are.

Sure, no need to actually read through Josephus to catalogue the roughly two-dozen Jesus' in this important set of Jewish historical works covering the alleged period of Jesus' ministry. In order to propose one.

If you did that you would see there is no Jesus in that set of two-dozen candidates that fits the bill in any meaningful way.

I know before you write what your excuse is going to be. And before getting to it - note it will be just that: an excuse.

Proponents of this "under the radar" Jesus are like O.J. Simpson saying he is looking for his wife's killer. They aren't looking. They have no intentions of looking.

The definition of Jesus for them is found by successively giving up all of the most patently ridiculous miracles and easily disproven things.

Whatever troubling thing they run into, Jesus is re-defined around the problem.

And it puts you, instead of being a researcher who looks positively for evidence, to be one who defines Jesus as the one who cannot be disproven.

A "Jesus who can't be contradicted": A Jesus who left no evidence. A Jesus so remarkably invisible that we can't trace any kind of linear heritage.

until when? It isn't even a positive theory. It does no explaining of particular events in christian development. It is reactionary to evidence. Meaning you just re-define Jesus whenever there is some contradiction with the maintained hypothesis.

And what is exposed beneath this way of thinking is that it is merely a blind faith in Jesus. It isn't something you arrive at with evidence. It is impossible to falsify with evidence because the definition of Jesus is based on evading whatever evidence is put in front of you. Not in Josephus? OK, so let's make up a story why he would not be in Josephus.

It can't be anything based on what the bible actually says about Jesus, because in there he is spectacularly noticed. To change Jesus from the person overthrowing the money tables and threatening the religious establishment to a Jesus nobody noticed is to have no Jesus at all.

What do you even mean by "teacher"? Start giving us something that is actually more than a sentence. Do you mean in a Jewish synagogue? An itinerant wanderer? What is the scenario you are actually proposing? Give us the explanation for how it got started and where, when - why it isn't in Josephus' chapter on sects of the Jews...

but wait... that isn't how "under the radar" HJ proponents work, is it. You don't actually propose anything more than a vague sentence.


There will always be a Jesus for you. Because it is not an idea about a fixed Jesus who actually lived and can be looked for. It is what we call "endogenous" in statistics.

Not a fixed jesus who can be proposed and tested with evidence. It is a Jesus you define as a reaction to the evidence. It is exactly the opposite of the way hypothesis testing works.

And no, there is no way to argue against it. Because you define him around every argument brought to you instead of positively arguing a case yourself.

aa5874

There you go again with your theory.

Everyone knows what HJers believe.

There is nothing wrong with your theory except that you are not supplying any historical evidence at all.

Let's get some historical evidence. What's so strange about producing evidence for your scenario.

Historical evidence, please.


What if the NT did not exist?

You cannot argue for historicity on "what if". Use the what is there. You will lose your argument based on what we have right now.

GakuseiDon

I honestly don't know how to judge how unlikely it is, as AFAIK the idea is unprecedented. But unprecedented events do occur all the time.

Where would they have gotten the "Jesus came in the flesh" idea from in Scriptures?

gurugeorge

But the reason they are called "historicists" or "proto-orthodox" or whatever by mythicists is because, overall, they do increasingly show some interest in historical details, more than Paul.

i.e. you go from "almost no historical details" in Paul, through "minimal but doctrinally important historical details" in Justin Martyr and Ignatius, to "full on historical details, doctrinally central" with the gospels, Acts, etc. It's like one of them whachamacallit, exponential curves.

It's the "historical detail/doctrinal importance of historical detail" creep that's interesting.

Your argument is cunning, but ultimately it seems to me to be a strawman argument.

GakuseiDon

Really? From what date was Jesus generally thought to be historical, in your view? Let's say it was around 160 CE. So, assuming you are correct that the pilgrimages didn't get started until the 4th C CE, why didn't they get started between 160 CE and the 4th C?

It's a good analogy to the situation in Paul. If there were few pilgrimages in the 3rd C (I can't remember the details myself, so I am just going by what you wrote above), well after historicity was accepted, then we shouldn't be so surprised if there were few pilgrimages in the 2nd C.

Now, the reasons may well be different for the lack of pilgrimages between centuries, but the 3rd C lack of pilgrimages becomes "the elephant in the room" if it is ignored.

GakuseiDon

My argument is actually derived from Earl Doherty (my bolding):
http://www.jesuspuzzle.com/

Something extremely odd is going on here. If one leaves aside Justin, there is a silence in the second century apologists on the subject of the historical Jesus which is almost the equal to that in the first century letter writers. Commentators on these works, like those studying the earlier epistles, have scrambled to come up with explanations.

This is where time-lines start to become important. Did some ahistoricists survive until the end of the Second Century CE, in your opinion?

Let's assume for a moment that they didn't, and that the Second Century writers were orthodox. How would that affect how we see the silence in the First Century writers?

aa5874

So, where would Homer have gotten the idea that Achilles was the son of a sea-goddess?

Where did Joseph Smith get idea of the angel "Moroni"?

Where did Marcion get the idea of the phantom Jesus ?

It is clear that the conception or idea of Jesus of the NT was partly based on Isaiah 7.14 and paganism where a God mates with a virgin to produce a God/man.

The idea of "Jesus in the flesh" is shown in Matthew 1.22-23.

We know where the idea came from.

Isaiah 7:14 -

Solo

I can't speak for the other presumed wife-beaters but I can tell you that I am in that company and I am looking. I looked and there was nothing outside of mystical allusions of Paul and the gospels within sixty years of J's death. So basically I am left with two scenarios: mysticism exploded in a few heads that argued about everything but the name of their simultaneous invention and it dragged Jesus to earth, OR a poor wretch got nailed and some very busy people made a big deal out of it. In my books, there are no other viable options, and with these ones it's not even close.

In your resolve to caricature you are missing whole bunch of things. Here, you claim preposterously and against all evidence that the miracles cannot be read as metaphors and symbolical allegories.

I have a feeling that it bothers you. Do you know why it bothers you ?

Objectively speaking, the 'historicists' and 'mythicists' are looking at the same evidence. Personally, if you can show me where you looked and I didn't I'll be thankful.

I am not sure what 'linear heritage' means or whether it's just another way of convincing yourself you are smarter than somebody who for whatever reason believes something else than you believe.

G.A.Wells, the nestor of the mythicist school, dealt with the same accusation, i.e. that he was obssessed with the idea of non-historical Jesus, and that the idea was discredited by the silly errors of his predecessors. He replied cooly that even if the Dutch radicals and Drews argued poorly for the mythical origin, it wasn't a proof that such a theory could not be argued well.

Jiri