aa5874

The historicity of Jesus the Christ has no basis, it is fundamentally flawed. There are (3) fundamental failures of the HJ position.

(1) Jesus the Christ, based of extant extra-biblical writings, is unheard of, and cannot be located in the century in which he was reported to have lived.

(2) The multitude of followers of Jesus the Christ, based on extant extra-biblical writings, are unheard of and cannot be located in the century in which Jesus lived.

(3) The teachings of Jesus the Christ, based on extant biblical writings, are also unheard of and did not affect any extant writings of contemporary extra-biblical writers.


Now if we examine extra-biblical writings, there is a sect called the Essenes, unheard of by extant biblical writers. This sect had no effect on the authors called Matthew, Mark, Luke, John or Paul, however contemporary writers, Josephus, Pliny the Elder and Philo gave detailed accounts of this sect, their method of worship, the way they dressed, the type of food they ate, the type of dwellings in which they reside, their working habits and other details.

Now, if writers of that time can provide such details of a religious sect and not write anything about what, according to biblical source, was the most charismatic revolutionary, who disregarded the Sabbath, yet preached in the synagogues, who was hated by the chief priests, Pharisees and Sadducees yet asked them to pay taxes to the Romans, then the historicity of Jesus has fundamentally failed.

Again, based on extra-biblical source, the Essenes can be placed in the century in which they lived, a competing charismatic religious group, the followers of the Christ, according to biblical source, with thousands of adherents and whose crucifixtion trial they witnessed , are never mentioned outside biblical sources in the century which they lived.

The corroboration of the Gospel stories, even within biblical source, is a chronological and even geographical nightmare, and such confusion added to 'the silence' makes the historicity of Jesus the Christ incredibly.

Malachi151

I would also add that the idea that a "marginal Jew" who went unnoticed by the other writers would have been so quickly elevated to the status of Messiah, Lord, and Savior, equally problematic.

Also, as I'm digging and further and further into, having already tackled lot of the "Old Testament" texts and now moving on to the Dead Sea Scrolls, all of the ideas in the Jesus story existed for 200 years prior to the story of Jesus Christ and the story itself is clearly sourced from extant writings.

Likewise, why did Matthew and Luke copy so directly from Mark, adding to it basically minor narrative elements of the virgin birth and extending the post resurrection, but mostly just the sayings from "Q"? Why did John probably base his story on Matthew or some Matthew like story to which he, the latest of the writers added a few narrative elements?

Basically, because Mark was the only source of narrative type information for Jesus, hence everyone used it directly or indirectly because there was nothing else to use.

GakuseiDon

If you are right about expecting references to Jesus to appear in extant extra-biblical sources, then that would be a blow against a historical Jesus. But as one historian wrote:

"First, we have no reason to expect any historical record of a HJ. We are lucky to have any sources at all from that time and place, and those sources do not record every movement or its founder. Indeed, consider Josephus: though we know the names of about thirty sects of Judaism, Josephus only mentions about six (and says next to nothing about most of them, and neglects to discuss the founders of any of them, except perhaps the Zealots)."

I'm tempted to do a "Steven Carr" here, but I won't: the quote above comes from Richard Carrier. I think your "silence" argument is not as obvious as perhaps you think it is, at least in this case.

aa5874

You have inadvertently strenghtened my position, the thirty sects of Judaism does not include Jesus the Christ or his followers. Let the historian release the names of all 30 sects and you will see if Jesus the Christ or his followers are mentioned.

And, is that historian claiming that there were 30 other religious sects that were as charismatic and revolutionary as Jesus the Christ and his followers, that were in direct conflict with the chief priests, and whose leader preached in the synagogues while at the same time disregarded the Sabbath?

Were there 30 other sects that had conversion rates of thousands a day, according to the book of Acts, thousands following the leader all over the region, followed by house to house persecution?

Jesus the Christ, his followers, his teachings are not known and had no effect on any historian, writer, poet, philosopher, king or emperor during the 1st century.

It is interesting to note that Josephus in 'War of the Jews' described the severe beating and death of a solitary individual who constantly shouted, 'Woe unto Jerusalem" but did not write a single word about the thousands of followers of the Christ that were being converted and persecuted on a daily basis according to Acts.

mountainman

Feel free to call anyone who subscribes to the unexamined
postulate of an HJ in the formation of a theory of history,
an historian, if you so wish, but I dont think so.
History and theological romance are two separate fields mate.

GakuseiDon

Why weren't Jesus's followers not mentioned IYO, then? At what date do you put the start of Christianity?

No, I don't think the historian is claiming that.

I don't know. It's possible, I guess, based on the quote I give below.

That IS interesting. What should the number of followers have been, to reasonably expect Christianity to have been mentioned by Josephus, IYO?

I found this concerning the number of Jewish sects at the time (my emphasis):
http://www.philipharland.com/Blog/20...judaism-nt-23/

"Rather than go into the details of what Josephus says about each, what I want to emphasize here is that the ones he mentions in these substantial passages were by no means the only groups. In fact, it seems that Josephus has in mind only the more educated classes in his discussion (hence his use of the designation “philosophies” for his Greek-speaking audience). All four of these groups consisted primarily of the literate, probably less than ten percent of the population at the time. In fact, Josephus explicitly states that the Essenes numbered only in the thousands (he says four thousand in Ant. 18.1.5 [20]), and it is likely that each of the other three were likewise in the thousands at most. So what about the remaining population of Judea, Samaria, and Galilee, which would have been into the millions?

Once again, Josephus happens to give us hints in his incidental stories of this or that prophet or “king” (messiah), though he tends not to like these other popular movements within Judea, Samaria, or Galilee. He gathers together a number of cases in just one time period alone, in a collection of what he calls a sampling of “ten thousand disorders” (Antiquities 17.269-285). "

At a certain point, Christianity became its own sect. But it may have been part of the general wash of popular movements for quite a few years. I suspect that it depended on how the early Jewish Christians saw Jesus. From memory, Christians weren't kicked out of synagogues until the end of the First Century CE.

Gamera

Using this as the standard, most of antiquity would be effaced.

Most historical personages I suspect you accept as "real" occur in single texts written by noncontemporaries or alleged contemporaries with every reason to fabricate, that survive only in mss that are often 1000 years or more younger than the alleged author.

Pericles, for instance, is "unheard of" in the century he allegedly lived except in a single work by Thucydides (by his own admission an Athenia partisan) in a ms copied almost 1,500 years after the alleged author supposed witnessed this alleged Greek paragon.

Johann_Kaspar

The best evidence of a HY is to be found in the slavonic version of the War of Josephus.

Malachi151

And no doubt the details of his life are not accurate either, but we do have a Parthenon that someone must have directed to be built.

We have much better sources really on the time and place in which Jesus supposedly existed, however we have dearth of information on 5th century BCE political life in Athens, but we don't have a dearth of information on political and religious events in the area of Judea in the 1st century, indeed we have quite a good bit of information.

I agree that absence from history alone is not enough to conclude that this person didn't exist, but the case is built on much more than that.

spin

You still haven't checked your evidence, Gamera, and so you remain ignorant of it. Why don't you search out which literary witnesses there were for Pericles instead of shirking your responsibilities. Would you like me to help you?

And then you might reconsider your theatrics about what we know about the text of Thucydides, for as you should have known there are numerous fragments of Thucydides from the 1st century to be found among the textual remains from Oxyrhynchus which guarantee that the work existed by the first century.

So you've backed away from Alexander and Socrates. When are you going to back away from Pericles and look for someone even more obscure for your game? The more obscure you get, the better the company for your stuff.


spin