aa5874

You can believe whatever you want. I am not into faith-based imaginations. These are the facts, the core of the NT Jesus is fiction and he cannot be accounted for in the 1st century.


This is all faith-based stuff.

I have no answer for faith-based questions.

Well, you propose an absurd alternative position:

No non-apologetic source from antiquity mentions Jesus in the 1st century , and the core of the NT Jesus is fiction, therefore Jesus most likely is a figure of history. Extremely absurd logics.

But I differ completely.

The evidence, as it stands today, is stronger for non-existence and extremely weak for existence of Jesus as a figure of history.

2-J

I propose nothing of the sort. Looks like someone needs to take a 101 class in Logic, (even a 101 class in Critical Thinking would do, in fact).

I am not proposing as an alternative "No non-apologetic source from antiquity mentions Jesus in the 1st century , and the core of the NT Jesus is fiction, therefore Jesus most likely is a figure of history". I am proposing as an alternative "No non-apologetic source from antiquity mentions Jesus in the 1st century , and the core of the NT Jesus is fiction, and yet Jesus most likely is a figure of history". There is no 'therefore' involved. The fact that the non-apologetic sources do not mention Jesus and the fact that the NT contains fiction do not somehow imply or entail that there is an historical core to the gospels. Rather these facts may be, at worst, not convincing enough of a case against the evidence for the existence of a historical core, or at best, not a relevant argument against a historical core.

Dating of Christian writings and manuscript and archaeological evidence, which, taken together, people use to support the existence of followers of Jesus before the end of the first century, is not faith based, it's rationally based. These people may be wrong in the conclusions they draw. It's up to you to argue against that. But it is far from the case that all advocates of an historical core are using faith-based arguments.

That may be so. But I say again, nowhere do your posts provide real support for such an assertion. You are not going far enough. You need to supplement your account with a convincing explanation of the origin of christianity. As of now your theory is an adequate for the conclusion you wish to draw.

aa5874

I am glad you made your position clear, but it is just as absurd as the first. Since you cannot account for the history of Jesus, it cannot be that it is most likely that he is a figure of history.

It is least unlikely, until further evidence surfaces.


But, I have already stated that a religion does not need an historical figure, just faith, just belief, just a saviour to believe in, like Apollo, Zeus, Vishnu, Allah, the God of the Jews or the God of the American Indians.

2-J

What do you mean by 'you cannot account for the history of Jesus'? If the simplest explanation for the emergence of the church is the existence of a historical core to the gospel stories, then it's rationally justified to believe in a historical core to the gospel stories.

Well there are many disanalogies between the case of Jesus and the other entities that you refer to. According to many (indeed, we might say this is the prevailing view or at least *a* prevailing view) the core of the synoptics was written no later than the fourth quarter of the first century, about a person who supposedly was in existence well into the second quarter of the first century. Many mainstream scholars would even have it that Paul wrote his letters within 15-20 years of Jesus' alleged death, to an already existing church (however small). The timeframe is much loser and organised than for your other examples. Additionally with Allah and the God of the Jews, many would simply rule out the possibility of an historical core in these cases by virtue of Hume's principle regarding testimony about the supernatural (which, of course, doesn't apply to the historical core about Jesus if we take the historical core not to include supernatural material).

aa5874

So, Marcion's Jesus also existed?

According to Justin Martyr, Marcion's Jesus was not the son of the God of the Jews, this Jesus came directly from heaven, not born of any earthly parents, and only appeared to be human. There were believers in this Jesus of Marcion, so , according to you then, the simplest explanation is that Marcion's Jesus had a historical core.

And what about the Christians who followed the doctrine of Saturninus and Basilides, did their Jesus also have an historical core?

The doctrine of Saturninus and Basilides, "Against Heresies" XXIV You seem not to realise that there many versions of "Jesus" in antiquity, and it is not known which "Jesus" developed first, and you seem not to understand that the word "Christian" does not always mean follower or believer in Jesus of Nazareth. And further, the word "Church" can be extremely ambiguous.

Solo

I am not trying to change anything; and if I am headhunting Paul, so is everyone else. You will not be able to interpret anyone's ideas without first finding your context for them. Any reading of history is someone's reading of history.


No, Paul does not tell us about what the Jerusalem church thought of Jesus. But if Paul went to Jerusalem there had to be some common ground he had with the Nazarene church. Perhaps there was historical Jesus and he preached the coming of the kingdom, and since Paul had revelations about the two, his Jesus rising in imperishable body, would leave some impression, though it evidently not the big splash that Paul hoped for. This is consistent with what Paul tells us and does not need to involve Acts at all. It's interesting that you should think I am reading later church into Paul, that I assume that the Nazarenes had a sectarian messiah, or associated him with Jesus. I don't assume that at all.
Hebrews calls Jesus him a first apostle of the creed and a high priest of the order of Melchizedek, titles that do not strike me as messianic credentials. But they came from somewhere. I consider it likely that the idea Jesus was Messiah, was actually Paul's unique stamp and infected the Nazarene rump church only after it was chased out of Jerusalem, came into close contact with Paulinism and vied with it for converts outside of Palestine. It may well have been only after the Jewish war of 66-70 that the some Notzrim agreed to Paul's Jesus Messiah and the Cross as his sign. Jewish Christianity that Matthew addresses was probably the amalgam of a Jesus professing wing of the Nazarenes (roughly the Petrines) and Pauline churches.

Gal 6:12.....a typo

It's very simple point of logic, spin. Paul's account of Jesus is mystical and / or unreal. That does not guarantee human Jesus was unreal. That does not guarantee at all that there was not human Jesus in Paul's life time.


spin, you are preaching to the choir. Remember, this is solo, the guy who says that Paul's view of Jesus is grossly misunderstood because of the later christologies of which Paul was largely innocent.

2-J

I do realise it. How about this - maybe they all have the same historical core?

The thing about the historical core is, for most historians (or for at least one prominent historical approach) the miraculous is ruled out on other grounds (we could invoke something along the lines of Hume's argument against miracles, that the existence of a miracle would demand an almost miraculous level of proof).

Thus the 'historical core' will not contain things that can't be accounted for by current science, e.g. someone coming directly from heaven with no parents, e.g. a virgin birth, e.g. a being that only 'appears to be human', e.g. a resurrection from the dead on the third day.

Taking this into account, the historical core we might expect from, say, Marcion's Jesus and the historical core we might expect from the Jesus of the synoptics is not so very different, if at all. Maybe it even makes sense to postulate one historical Jesus to account for them both.

spin

Dumb. I stringently talk about the necessity of context, but that context isn't retrojected. You cannot go from later to earlier and expect to say you understand the earlier because of what the later says. Earlier influences later, so there is no necessary connection from the later manifestation to the earlier as there is from earlier to later.

?

I mentioned only the messiah in my first question. You think of inserting Jesus automatically. That's endemic.

You equate Jerusalem with the "Nazarene church". It doesn't come from Paul. You are retrojecting it. You just will not do your job.

True.

That is not. You conflate Paul's Jesus with the later Jesus.

Have you seen here what you've been doing... which certainly doesn't come from Paul?

There is nothing messianic about Jesus.

There is nothing messianic Paul's messiah -- except the name. Jesus is not a Jewish military leader who works god's will through temporal means of battle in Paul's writings. Paul's christ a salvific figure.

About the only thing we can say about the Jerusalem bunch is that they were probably messianic (and probably in a Jewish sense) and that was certainly a conflict point with Paul.

I'd be wary of using the term "Notzrim" just yet. As I've pointed out elsewhere the terms nazarhnos and NCR ("netzer") are not liguistically related. In nazarhnos came from Hebrew (a good bet) it would have been NZR and the assorted connections with Nazarites. Paul shows no knowledge of Notzrim or Nazarenes, neither directly nor with any allusions. When Mk was written, the term nazarhnos had significance to his sources. Strangely, when Mt was made out of Mk, its first writer(s) didn't know about nazarhnoi and got rid of the term. It gets further complicated before we get to the Hebrew references.

I don't think you'll be able to steer a course through that quagmire.

You'll notice that Paul doesn't use the name "Jesus" in the context. You'll also notice that you can't discern from your reference what the view of those "who want to make a fair show in the flesh" was regarding the christ that Paul may solely have been responsible for in the 6:12.

You insinuate Jesus into a period prior to Paul.

Yet strangely this solo commits similar crimes of retrojecting Jesus into the theology of those Paul is in conflict with.


spin

aa5874

Maybe, based on what? Maybe!

How about this - there is no evidence that they all have an "historical core" and we can identify fiction in all of them.

The "historical core" is the weaker alternative to the "fictional core".

This is a partial list of the elements of the "fictional core":

• The conception of Jesus.
• The baptism of Jesus.
• The temptation of Jesus.
• The miracles and raising of the dead people by Jesus.
• The transfiguration of Jesus.
• The prediction of his own death and resurrection.
• The resurrection of Jesus.
• The ascension of Jesus.

What is this "historical core" you keep talking about? Where is it? Is it just in your head?

Amaleq13

The only conflict point we know of was in regard to whether Paul's gentile audience had to conform to all Jewish rules of behavior. If your position were correct, wouldn't we expect to find evidence of far more conflict than this? Wouldn't we expect to find this group of messianic Jews completely rejecting Paul's ridiculous beliefs? And, before you remind me that we should not simply take Paul at his word when he describes the nature of the conflict, wouldn't his readers be very much aware that messianic Jews rejected Paul's messiah as having nothing to do with the messiah Jews expected?

It seems to me that, given any degree of acceptance of Paul's beliefs by a group of messianic Jews, we are required to assume that this group did not hold with the traditional expectations. Yes?