teamonger

Well, Paul does refer on occasion to the "word of the Lord", as in advice about divorce in 1 Cor 7:10-11 (parallelling Jesus in Mark 10:9, Matt 5:31-32), also seems to in 1 Thess 4:15-18, getting at least some of Jesus' teaching on the second coming. He also repeats some of Jesus' words at the last supper (1 Cor 11:23-5). Scant material, and I'm sure you can dispute it, but it is there.

As I said, for things under dispute it would do him little good to quote Jesus, who apparently had nothing to say about circumcision anyway.
t

teamonger

Yes, I am waiting for that. It appears there will be plenty of myth theorists at the Dec conference, hopefully there will be some mainstream historians offering rebuttal. I do note that the opening panel is subtitled "receding conclusions?"

t

teamonger

To begin with, I'm an atheist and no apologist. I put no faith in these writings whatsover, I recognize their bias. I also recognize items in the writings that run against the grain of that bias, which argues for the authenticity of those items.

The pre-existent Son is the theme of the 4th gospel, a writing that even patristic writings term a "spiritual gospel". Few historians find much value there.


Most unlikely due to the imminent end-times, as I've argued before. His Jesus declares the end will come before that generation dies off, so it appears Mark believed such people were still living when he wrote. If Mark were writing a hundred years later, his Jesus (who he sets in the time of Pilate) would have very obviously been wrong in his imminent end-times prediction. But if he wrote around 70 AD, just after the war (which perhaps seemed to be the beginning of "the end"), that would be scarcely enough time for a whole-cloth fabricated myth.

Note also Papias, who can himself be dated to 110-135. He queries people who claimed to know apostles first-hand. He puts Mark back in the time of Peter, and there's no real reason to doubt him on that score. Not that his Mark was necessarily the final redactor, but that the sayings of Peter may have been first put down by him.

But why invent someone else, when this Galilean preacher fits the evidence? Why multiply entities unnecessarily?

We have more than one witness. We have Mark, Q, Paul, Hebrew gospels, Thomas, all of whom directly or indirectly describe a Galilean teacher. We have no evidence pointing to a phantom; even Jewish opponents never questioned Jesus' existence, only his legitimacy.
t

teamonger

Try also Gal 4:4, where Jesus was "born of woman, born under the Law". The last supper (1 Cor 11:23-5) where Jesus eats bread, drinks wine, and speaks words, apparently to followers. The prohibition against divorce as a command "from the Lord". Paul's dealings with James, whom he calls "brother" of the Lord... which relationship gets confirmed by Josephus.

Paul expects to be part of a general resurrection himself, and this was evidently due to his belief in the recent resurrection of Jesus... who came in the "fullness of time". The crucifixion is an embarrassment to his gospel (a "stumbling block" and "foolishness"), and so of course he has to spin it into something positive and symbolic.

Certainly Paul prefers the Jesus in his head, who doesn't argue with him like other apostles do. But are we to believe no Jesus information at all was exchanged between Paul and his predecessors, the "pillars"? Yes, Paul proclaims knowledge directly from Christ, and it was on that basis that he could argue with them. He does admit that his gospel was checked up on by them, lest he had "run in vain" (Gal 2:2).


Once the real man is "resurrected", it's no longer a problem. Mark wrote decades later, and the final form was perhaps decades later still.

I don't see Jesus having god status in Mark. Messiah status perhaps, designated as such at the baptism. Well developed legends didn't appear till Matthew and Luke.

The datings are based on internal and external clues, which dovetail nicely. Hardly apologetic. I point out to apologists that biased believers writing 40 years later are not good enough evidence for the extraordinary claims made for Jesus. But good enough to establish the guy's existence? Highly probable. Certainly probable enough to be unworthy of debating with the apologist, who should be made to defend extraordinary claims instead.

40 years is plenty of time for legends to arise about someone who once lived, but too short a time for whole cloth fabrication. A charismatic guy could easily give a magical impression to gullible people, unlikely a phantom could do the same. Anyway, I think you're overstating the magical aspects of Jesus in Mark.

But as it turned out, the fall of the temple was not the end. It would only make sense for Mark to think it was if he was writing shortly afterwards.

I wouldn't claim Jesus accurately predicted anything, although it is possible he had a lucky hit with the temple prediction. But assuming he didn't, it would make sense to put the temple prediction into his mouth at the time the apocalyse appeared to be in process, i.e. 40 years later. It would appear to Mark that the "this generation" prediction was indeed coming true.

The end Mark refers to is the apocalyse, where God steps into history and sets everything right. A Mark writing many decades after the temple fall would know that 70 CE wasn't the end, and so his Jesus (set in 30 CE) would be wrong in predicting "this generation" would see the apocalypse.

I don't think Mark would purposely fabricate a mistaken Jesus, do you?

t

spin

This is quite a wayward view of the meaning of "witness". Paul rules himself out as a witness, never having had any contact with his Jesus and having learnt of him through a revelation. Hebrew gospels you basically know nothing about. The relation of Q and Mark to what came before them you cannot know therefore you have no way of distinguishing these sources from any n^th iterations of a gossip variant. Thomas claims nothing that is helpful for you. You simply don't know anything about the sources you want to pretend are witnesses. This is not how you can do history. Witnesses are sources you can validate and show to be relevant. Grabbing sources that mention Jesus willy-nilly is like grabbing "Boys' Own Robin Hood", "Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves" and Mattel Robin Hood Action Dolls as witness to a real figure from 13th century England. The best you can do is show that there was a literary tradition, but how the source relates to the real world you have to show for each source. People are vetted to become witnesses. So do sources. For example, Josephus as a source has shown to represent the past relatively well in many details, often confirmed through archaeology, such as the siege of Masada. (Still we have to read Josephus with care, having been preserved by christian scholars, and shown to have received at least one interpolated passage and probably a second.)

If you know anything about manuscript families, you know that having large numbers of exemplars isn't in itself very useful. Though much supported in numbers, the Byzantine tradition isn't accepted as more authoritative than the Alexandrian tradition with far fewer exemplars. You must know relevant information about your sources to make them witnesses.


spin

aa5874

You do not know when the author of gMark wrote his Jesus story.

There is no evidence that gMark's Jesus existed as a real human being, therefore all the so-called words of Jesus came from the author.

Any so-called prophecy of Jesus came from the author or whoever wrote it, any failure is a failure of the author itself.

You cannot show that it is not possible for the author of gMark to have written his Jesus story because the author thought that some apocalyptic event would have occured at around the time of writing.

Kapyong

Gday,

Where does Paul indicate it was "recent" ?


Kapyong

Kapyong

Gday,

Pardon this little nit pick -
But several early writers/sects actually claimed Jesus was exactly that - a "phantom".


Marcion claimed Jesus was a PHANTASM :

“...they deny ... His humanity, and teach that His appearances to those who saw Him as man were illusory, inasmuch as He did not bear with Him true manhood, but was rather a kind of phantom manifestation. Of this class are, for example, Marcion...”
(Hippolytus)


Basilides claimed Jesus was a PHANTOM :

"Christ sent, not by this maker of the world, but by the above-named Abraxas; and to have come in a phantasm, and been destitute of the substance of flesh"
(Tertullian)


So too did Bardesanes claim Jesus was not a physical being :

"...Bardesanes assert that the body of the Saviour was spiritual"
(Hippolytus)



The various sects and writers who specifically DID claim Jesus was just a PHANTOM, or an illusion, are collectively called "docetics" (Illusionists? Illusionistics?) from the Greek word for "to seem".


Kapyong

spamandham

I think in the end you're right, but I'd like to see the idea run to ground one way or the other in my lifetime. The idea is not new, it just hasn't ever been taken very seriously by most scholars, even though no cohesive arguments against it have really been given.

I don't know how to change the default position from "there must have been a historical core" to "we have no god damned idea really". I do see a ray of hope in the stated objective of the Jesus Project to finally consider the mythical Jesus idea.

spamandham

Recent? I'm not sure what that's supposed to mean here, but there're certainly multiple ancient textual attestations of Aeneas.

Jesus is a myth.

There you go. You finally have prima facie evidence that the NT is false, that is of higher quality than the prima facie evidence that it is true. It's higher quality because it does not invoke the impossible, nor is it inextricably intertwined with the impossible. Just because someone writes something, does not make it the least bit compelling when what is written is horrifically implausible!

Good god man, you do realize the NT talks about miracles and magic as if they were real don't you, and that those concepts are not mere window dressing, but are both central to the character of Jesus as well as prolific?!! You call crap like that prima facie evidence!? No wonder we're at an impasse.