aa5874

Exactly. The early Church fathers established and affirmed this Jesus as the son of a Holy Ghost, as a fundamental characteristic. They, the Chucrh fathers, vehemently rejected as heresy that Jesus existed as a mortal man only.

The Jesus scholars, non-christian or not, have not addressed this fundamental issue with any historical facts.

The Niicene Creed of 381 declared, "We believe in one God.........And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds (aeons), Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten not made, being of one substance with the Father; by whom all things were made; who for our salvation, came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary, and was made man;........

gstafleu

If he were a regular guy to whom this soter business got attached it would still be interesting to find the historical person beneath the soter, given that such a large religion got built on top of him. But that brings us to the eternal question: once we drop the soter business, what else do we drop? If he wasn't a son of God, what else was he not? What are the criteria for dropping certain bits and not others?

So, in order to qualify for an HJer, a person has to specify:

1) Which model Jesus, which bits from the gospels are and which are not included in his/her model.
2) The reasons and rules that pertain to the in- and exclusion of these bits.

Somebody who doesn't provide this does not qualify as an HJer.

Gerard Stafleu

Magdlyn

Robert Price, in The Incredible Shrinking Son of Man, has stripped away the legends and OT quote mining in the gospels and found... nothing.

The Jesus Seminar, using laxer methodology, have found 18% of the sayings of Jesus to be probably authentic.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_Seminar

Leave out the "signs" (commonly mistranslated as miracles) and the rising from the dead stuff and what have you got? Some rabbi from Galilee (a heavily Hellenized area). :huh: Why say you "believe" this rabbi existed? To keep your tenure? Sad, really.

No Robots

Constantin Brunner suggests that, "one should rely only on the sayings coming undoubtedly from Christ, on those great and pure statements which can only be his, and not on those popular distortions and additions which are to be found already in the oldest gospels."

Joseph Klausner provides some examples:

• "They that are whole have no need of the physician but they that are sick."
• "Let the dead bury their dead."
• "Blind leaders of the blind."
• "Who strain out a gnat and swallow a camel."
• "Whited sepulchres."
• "It is easier for the camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven."
• "The rich man giveth alms of his superfluity, and the widow—of her lack."
• "The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak."
• "Let him that is free from sin cast the first stone."
• "It is better to give than to receive."

These proverbs, as Klausner states, "are stamped with the seal of one great, single personality, the seal of Jesus, and not the several seals of many and various disciples."


Not everyone who argues for a historical Jesus is a tenured professor.

Roger Pearse

I agree, and I do think that this would be the normal definition. To qualify as professional you have to earn your living from a paid teaching and research post, more or less by definition.

There certainly are independent scholars, of course. But their status is less certain.

Agreed. I detest people who make claims of authority on controversial subjects anyhow. Such subjects need to be argued rationally; and their 'authority' so often turns out to be rather less than it appears to be.

It's all rather medieval, really: "I am an authority so I can tell you that the Immaculate Conception did/did not occur". I always feel a temptation to ask, medieval style, for evidence of holiness of life and ability to work miracles before accepting such 'authority'. That's what a medieval would do, after all! Away with such nonsense.

Agreed. Mind you, we amateurs can make a serious contribution. It is not often realised that the constraints of the academic career debar the professionals from certain, highly useful activities.

The 19th century series of translations of the Fathers were universally done by amateurs. This is because making a translation, even today, is not 'research' and so doesn't help your career if you're an academic.

Likewise the compilation of handbooks is something that isn't really research, and can be hazardous, unless these are very advanced or definitive.

Agreed.

I found it highly convincing, unless one stepped back and started to frame his statements explicitly *as* statements -- he insinuates a lot -- and then tested them objectively. But then I thought the same about Eric von D (who had better artwork).

All the best,

Roger Pearse

gstafleu

If the Jesus Seminar got it right then there is nothing wrong with saying that this 18%-er existed. Problems do arise of course if Price is right, and there essentially is nothing that can, with any level of certainty, be ascribed to an HJ. Even more problems arise if Doherty is right, and one can show a development of Christianity that started with a non-earthly Jesus. It is important that Jesus was an earthly figure for the standard Christian mythology. But according to Doherty, Jesus as a "real," earthly person wasn't even important for Christian mythology in its early stages.

Gerard Stafleu

gstafleu

Thanks No Robots, that at least provides something to discuss. In this case, Jesus is defined as someone who originated certain ideas. One can the try and find out if these ideas are indeed original to him, or if they have been stated before. This makes the HJ hypothesis falsifiable: should it turn out they are not original to Jesus, then the HJ hypothesis will be falsified. Falsifiability is a criterion that has to be met before any hypothesis can be seen as valid.

Gerard Stafleu

No Robots

You have to take into account the nature of genius and its relation to originality. For example, Mozart didn't invent the musical system. He may have taken elements from other pieces. The point is that the genius transforms that which he finds. Likewise, there is little that Christ says that cannot be found in some form in Jewish tradition. The crucial thing is how this is all transformed through his genius.

aa5874

All I need from Jesus scholars, those who believe he existed as a mere mortal, are historical facts that contradict the NT and the Nicene Creed of 381 which all claimed Jesus existed on earth as an offspring of a Holy Ghost.

Biblical scholars, I would imagine, form their opinions of existence of this Jesus on credible historical data. That historical evidence, once produced, will settle the issue.

Magdlyn

Of course, many of the Jesus Seminar fellows may be Christian, and so not relevant to this thread. The Christian JS fellows will just assume a flesh and blood Jesus sage existed and go from there.

Heres a list. Many are also not "scholars" strictly speaking, or not in the proper field, as insisted upon by Antipope...

"someone with relevant qualifications working in a field relevant to the subject of the origins of Christianity with a teaching or research position at an accredited university and publishing peer reviewed material in academic fora."

...so also not relevant to this thread on that criteria.

http://www.westarinstitute.org/Fellows/fellows.html

No Robots, your Joseph Klausner seems to be a devout Xtian and to take the gospel narratives at face value. His opinions are not relevant to this topic of thread either (non-Xtians who belive Jesus existed).

Klausner from your link:

2 of his "authentic sayings" which you list are screamingly falsifiable. Jesus' fight with the Pharisees are ahistorical, so whited sepulchres is out. The aduterae pericope is also out (cast the first stone).