spamandham

If we can not make even one demonstrable claim regarding the historical person Jesus, then we can not legitimately declare that there is such a person. What you are doing is no different than insisting that there was a historical Adam simply because there are stories about him. You are totally ignoring the purpose of those stories.

yin_sage

Discrediting? You make it sound like a smear campaign. Not the most constructive use of language, Mr. Doherty.

show_no_mercy

The thing that I see getting glossed over in these debates is that there are two issues ususally getting discussed as one:

1. The New Testament describes a mythological character
2. Christianity began with a mythological character

Most of us are not Christians, so we all agree with number one. The only reason that I see that number two is scoffed at is because of the assumption that there's a historical Jesus.

If all of our evidence that we have describes a mythological character, option two should be on the table for discussion. The only reason that we attempt to recover the historical Jesus from the myth is the assumption that there's a historical Jesus to find, not because our evidence (which we've already deemed as either mythical or insufficient) points to a historical person.

Most of our depictions of Socrates are not at the level of a god-man able to forgive sins, but an archetypal philosopher. Some scholars question whether Socrates even existed, yet the evidence for the existence of Socrates is better than the evidence for the existence of Jesus. So if we can doubt the existence of Socrates, we can doubt the existence of Jesus.

EarlDoherty

Discrediting is a perfectly legitimate word, not intended to "smear". A courtroom attorney will discredit a witness's account by pointing out its flaws, without casting aspersions on the intentions of the witness. Mark Goodacre is thoroughly convinced of his position and is no doubt an honorable scholar. But his arguments are often problematic and flawed, with a lot of special pleading. There is nothing wrong with me seeking to "discredit" those arguments.

Your bristling reaction suggests you are a supporter of the no-Q position. Are you aware of its problems, and have you addressed/countered them yourself?

Earl Doherty

aa5874

Once you have NOT recovered any external corroborative evidence for your historical Jesus then you are simply wasting time.

You are involved in FUTILITY.

The fact that you admit that you have DIFFICULTY in your recovery demonstrate that the HJ theory is in fact EXTREMELY WEAK and has been known to be in such a state for as long as the theory has been proposed.

You MUST NOW either admit that HJ is a HOPELESS theory or based on HOPE alone.

The difficulty of HJ INHERENTLY means the MYTH Jesus is far easier to argue.

Once Jesus was mythical/fictional then it would be EXPECTED that it would be EXTREMELY DIFFICULT to recover the historical Jesus.

Examine the STRENGTH of the MJ theory.

MJers have NO difficulty in showing the EVIDENCE or written statements to SUPPORT their MJ theory.

1. Jesus was described in a Mythical/fictional manner by Jesus believers from conception to ascension.

2. Jesus believers up to the 3rd century could NOT agree on the physical nature of Jesus.

3. Jesus believers AGREED that Jesus had a SPIRITUAL nature.

4. There is NO external corroborative source for an actual Messiah called Jesus BEFORE the Fall of the Temple.

5. There is NO external corroborative source that Jews worshiped an actual Messiah called Jesus as a God and asked him to REMIT their sins BEFORE the Fall of the Temple.

The HJ is DEAD.

You ALREADY KNEW IN ADVANCE of posting that The HJ was DIFFICULT to RECOVER. You ALREADY KNEW IN ADVANCE of posting that HJ theory was EXTREMELY WEAK.

You ALREADY KNEW IN ADVANCE of posting that NO HJer, NO SCHOLAR have recovered a SINGLE piece of external corroborative evidence or written statement of antiquity about a Messiah called Jesus.

There is NO HOPE for the recovery of the HJ or the HJ is based on HOPE at this time.

There is NO difficulty for MJ theory.

We have EVIDENCE.

We have HUNDREDS of written statements from the NT, the Church writers, the non-canonised writings, and secular writings of antiquity.

Juststeve

There were ancient writers who wrote attacking the Christian movement. Did any of them do so by denying that Jesus actually existed? A genuine question, I don’t know.

Steve

aa5874

But, is not my reasoning EXACTLY the very same used in the main competitor to the "Q" theory? Look at your own words.

My reasoning is in PERFECT order.

Once you do NOT have an actual document independent of the common material in gMatthew and gLuke then you have ASSUMED that there was a "Q" document.

After all there is common material in gMatthew and gMark not found in gLuke and it can also be ASSUMED or "theorised" that there is a document that contained the common material in gMatthew and gMark.

But, you must admit that one needs evidence or DATA to support any so-called theory and that without any supporting DATA what was initially proposed as a theory would have to be abandoned.

It must be note that my proposal is that the common material in gMatthew and gLuke MAY MEAN that gLuke simply used gMatthew.

Examine my original statement.

I have not at all proposed that gLuke MUST have copied gMatthew. The author of gLuke MAY HAVE used the "Memoirs of the Apostles" as found in the writings of Justin Martyr.

I may not be AWARE of all the difficulties but I am aware of the some of the difficulties in arguing that there was a "Q" document.

The primary difficulty is that NO actual independent "Q" has been found.

Well, the people who put forward the theory that the earth traveled around the sun did come empty-handed with ONLY ASSUMPTIONS.

They did NOT merely say we see sun and stars move therefore it was the the earth that moved.

They had to GET DATA and make OBSERVATIONS some using a Telescope.

But, my position that gLuke may have copied gMatthew is the MAIN COMPETITOR to the "Q" theory. I guess there are others who have written many chapters to support the competition.

But, in passing, it is my view that the "Memoirs of the Apostles" as found in the writings of Justin Martyr predated the Gospels as found in the present day Canon.

Once Justin Martyr is a credible source then he established that the "Memoirs of the Apostles" was READ in the Churches around the middle of the 2nd century.

Justin Martyr has tended to confirm that the Jesus story was really ANONYMOUS and was believed to have been written by apostles and those who followed them.

The Gospels in the present day NT Canon appear to be very LATE. NT gMark has the long-ending.

It is extremely difficult to argue for "PRIORITY" using documents that may be from the 4th century.

The "Memoirs of the Apostles" should be at least from the early 2nd century or the time of Justin Martyr.

EarlDoherty

By the time even Christians were claiming that there was an HJ (early to mid 2nd century), it was too late for anyone to be in a position to deny it. The earliest known pagan or Jewish writer to do so, Celsus, wrote in the 170s, when at least some Gospels and Christian tradition based on them were in circulation; he had no basis or means by which to make such a denial.

The letters of Ignatius (even if forged in his name not long after his death) were earlier, however, and they provide clear evidence that the writer's claims about Jesus' basic biography (born of Mary, baptized by John, crucified by Pilate) were not being preached by other Christian prophets. Nor was this a simple issue of docetism, it also seems to have involved the actual historical aspect of these alleged biographical elements. (See my website article "Jesus in the Apostolic Fathers at the Turn of the Second Century".)

If someone claimed that my great great grandfather was an outlaw in late 19th century western Canada and had been hung for murder and thievery, I would have no way (or at least nothing easy and inexpensive, even if feasible) to disprove it. And I might well take the speaker's word for it, especially if he had some writing of uncertain date and authorship which made that claim. If that writing had originally been a novel, but this had been lost sight of and now it was being treated as an historical work, I would have had no basis on which to suspect there was no foundation to the claim about my great great grandfather.

In a related observation, it is telling that the handful of so-called references to Jesus in the late Talmud do not go back into the 1st century, and are actually reworkings of earlier references of the 2nd and 3rd centuries which can be shown not originally to have related to a Jesus at all but to other Jewish figures. Can we really believe that those oral-oriented rabbis would not have preserved something relating to the human Jesus that had arisen in the 1st century and passed them on to be used in the Jewish-Christian hostility of the later Talmudic times? This is one of the great overlooked "silences" on an HJ in the entire ancient literature. While it is not a "denial" it has a similar effect.

Earl Doherty

GakuseiDon

I suppose if you start with your answer ("Jesus existed"/"Jesus didn't exist"), then you will be forced to come down on one side of the equation or the other with regards to the Gospels. GA Wells would be as close to being on the fence as anyone, I guess.

But what if you don't start with your answer? Then you will see every piece of data pointing towards a historical Jesus Christ. Some will interpret that data to find a non-historical Jesus (e.g. Paul's strange silence), but that hardly seems to be the case for the Gospels. Celsus raised doubts about the contents of the Gospels (without doubting that there were a Jesus and his disciples), and it's clear that without outside verification it's difficult to ascertain any historical details: still, that's a long way from saying the Gospels were supposed to be fiction.

So, Popeye, Superboy, William Tell, Ebion: I get the point. But what actual evidence is there that the Gospels were fiction? Would it be safe to say that there is none, OTHER than starting from the answer "Jesus didn't exist"?

EarlDoherty

You are still confused. The “assumptions” predated humans ability to examine their theories about the movement of the heavens. You are imputing the same situation to the people who advocate the existence of Q, which is hardly the case. Rather, the theory has been tested and backed by abilities to examine texts and make rational deductions. So it is not in this case an “assumption.” Nor was there ever an "assumption" phase, since the theory arose from an examination of the evidence.

So your “position” is based on your assumed work of others? You only “guess” that such work has been conducted? And you rely on it anyway without examining either it, or the work of Q supporters who have actually read and countered that position? Is that how you approach the subject matter of this board?

No one is denying this, including me. Of course the versions used by Justin were earlier than our canonical versions (we can see evidence of that in his texts).

It depends on what you mean by “very late”. But this is still beside the point.

And yet, the later you make them, the more infeasible becomes the idea that “Luke” used “Matthew”. If these Gospels came from the 4th or even 3rd century, this was at a time when the Gospel story itself was well established as we can see from pre-Nicene Fathers' writings. Someone like mountainman even claims that they were written whole cloth as a set in the time of Constantine. Why, then, would there be any situation in which one Gospel “used” another, especially to reflect the relationship we see between the various Synoptics? Why, when the writer was fashioning “Luke” did he go to the one fashioned as “Matthew” and ‘copy’ certain elements of it to give us the situation which has created the theory of a Q? If you have read even the basic book on Q by John Kloppenborg (have you? I doubt it), you will see that there are relationships between the various Q verses which can only have arisen at a stage prior to the composition of either Matthew or Luke; they can’t be Matthew’s product. But then, you only “guess” at what has been written on either side (or actually, only on one side) of the debate. And you have no inkling of the problems created by your sort of position, let alone dealt with them.

No wonder I come close to losing it when I read the uninformed nonsense on the Q issue which characterizes so much of what is said about it on this board.

Earl Doherty