jbernier

I am not entirely convinced that there is positive evidence showing that Nazareth did not exist. To the best of my knowledge there is no positive evidence outside of the gospel accounts that it did but the absent of evidence is not necessarily evidence of absence. Moreover the gospel accounts themselves are positive evidence for the existence of Nazareth (after all, they are historical documents). Lack of collaboration is not necessarily evidence that they are incorrect. Is there positive evidence of the non-existence of Nazareth of which I am unaware that would warrant the conclusion that Nazareth definitely did not exist in the first century CE?

jbernier

I am not certain that there is sufficient evidence to state that the church traditions surrounding the apostles' martyrdom are 'frauds.' Is there information of which I am unaware?

jbernier

No, it would not. This idea would have been nonsensical to your average Galilean fishermen in the first century. Many forms of Jewish thought, unlike Greek or Roman thought, do not have a body/soul dualism (particularly in the first century). I very much doubt that such a concept of dualism - as a "spiritual" rather than a "bodily" resurrection would require - would have been a common idea among the 1st century Galilean "working class." It is not easier to do something that would never occur to oneself.

Let us assume that the apostles were martyred. Why would knowledge of Jesus' resurrection c. 30 CE lead them to sacrifice their lives c. 60 CE? What would it have been about Jesus' teachings and the resurrection event that would lead to such a determination. Moreover why did the state care if a bunch of crazy Jews thought that an executed criminal rose from the dead? Why was that sufficient cause to kill them? Was this simply a battle over the existential meaning of the life of Christ? Martyrdom must be explained by something more sophiscated then "They saw Jesus on Easter Sunday."

penumbra

At the risk fo going to far off-topic from the OP, I found this web site relating to Nazareth:

http://www.jesusneverexisted.com/nazareth.html

Haven't had time to check out the references and claims contained therein, but it might be a place to start.

Mageth

I don't know many people that think Jesus was a fraud, exactly.

It's quite possible that the earliest believers did believe that Jesus rose spiritually and not physically, and that the resurrection was interpreted as being a physical resurrection later. The written accounts of physical resurrection come much later, in the Gospels written after the fall of Jerusalem and the Temple. Paul's writings, the earliest we have, are almost silent on the subject, only vaguely reporting the alleged sightings of Jesus after the Crucifixion and not reporting any of the details that are found in the Gospels (and note that the post-crucifixion accounts in the Gospels contradict each other on many points).

The belief may have started out as spiritual resurrection, which was much later "mythologized" or "legendized", put into an historical context, a "true story", that people could identify with and understand. Jesus' followers, disappointed, devastated perhaps, when the one they really believed was the Messiah actually died, and worse yet was crucified, may have come to believe that Jesus was "resurrected" spiritually into Heaven to help them overcome their disappointment. And, along with that, the belief that the first time the Messiah came, it was to suffer and die for us, but that he was coming back to perform the rest of the Messiah's appointed tasks some time in the near future.

After the Temple is destroyed in 70 CE, the early church was in crisis. Before the fall of Jerusalem, Chrisitians were seen as just another Jewish sect, and tolerated if not accepted by the other Jewish sects such as the Pharisees. After the Temple was destroyed, more orthodox Jews were no longer so tolerant of radical sects, recoiling into orthodoxy, and so the Christians, rejected by most Jews, turned more to the Gentiles for converts. In addition, or as a result, Christianity became more Hellenized. This is the period when the Gospels were written. The earlier, mystical/spiritual beliefs about Jesus were put into the form of the Gospel legends we have today. The resurrection belief was concretized into the form we see in the Gospels, a form that could be understood by your average Gentile.

Well, that's one possibility, but there are others.

This makes a couple of big assumptions - that the early Christians were seen as a threat of some sort that someone would feel the need to disprove, and that the early Christians were teaching a bodily resurrection. There is little or no actual evidence that they were seen as a threat, and some evidence that they weren't. Gamaliel, for example, a prominent first Century Pharisee and contemporary of Jesus and Paul, was quite tolerant of the Christian sect of Judaism.

As others have mentioned, most of the martyr accounts of the Apostles are church traditions, and not generally accepted as historical fact. Whether they are or not, I see no reason to doubt that, whatever the early Christians believed, they really believed it, and did not think their beliefs were a lie. History is full of people dying for beliefs that are not necessarily true.

And very few people I know put much stock in the stolen body hypothesis. It's simply not necessary, in my opinion. If Jesus was crucified, then it's most likely that his body was left to rot on the cross or tossed into a trash heap to be eaten by dogs; the tomb account in the gospels is highly unlikely, and even if his body was put in a tomb, that would only have been temporary, and his body would soon have been disposed of elsewhere. Chances are that the body was lost, not recoverable or identifiable at all, not long afterwards.

Well, you're arguing against a strawman. I don't think it's necessary to assume that the apostles knew their beliefs were a lie. I think they really believed them.

And all we have are second-hand accounts of those who claimed to see Jesus after the resurrection, save Paul's. And Paul reported a spiritual presence. And some of those are so vague as to be useless as evidence, e.g. the "500" claim. The different accounts in the Gospels contradict each other so much as to be unreliable, indicating that these were various versions of legends recorded, or even embellished by, the writers of the Gospels.

First, that verse does not really say "virgin", but "young woman". Second, Jesus was not called Immanuel.

As for this and the rest of the "prophetic" verses you quote, there is a simple explanation. The authors of the Gospels had at their disposal the Hebrew scriptures, so to support their belief in Jesus as the Messiah, they could easily embellish their accounts with scriptural references. Before you cry "why would they lie?", note that this kind of reinterpretation of earlier scripture, applying scrpiture to new contexts, is (was) an accepted practice in Judaism. It's a form of midrash. Thus, if you look at Matthew, you can see that the life of Jesus mirrors the life of Moses in several details; Jesus was portrayed as the new Moses.

The Gospel accounts should not be read as literal history; plainly put, they are not literal historical accounts, and were not intended to be literal historical accounts. They are faith documents, documents meant to explain fundamental concepts of Christianity to members of the church and potential converts. Ideas and beliefs about Jesus were legendized into what you see today.

This is a highly unlikely account, given the nature of Pilate and the Romans. It's not bloody likely that they would give the body of the rabble-rouser Jesus over to be properly buried, but instead would have left it on the cross to rot or tossed it on the junk heap with the rest of the crucified bodies.

And even if true, it's possible if not probable that this would have been a temporary arrangement, that Jesus' body would soon after have been moved to some other, less auspicious, grave.

Heh. If not an embellishment by the author, then what would be so surprising about Jesus quoting scripture?

Again, there's little evidence of that. Persecution started much later. And note that an early belief among Christians that persecution, even to the death, was a good thing; one was emulating Christ's suffering. Being martyred was often even seen as the surest way to salvation.

Well, of course they did. But the same could be said of any other number of sects, cults and religions.

Mageth

That's a very good point. However, the concept of body/soul duality was available to educated, Hellenized Jews (such as Paul), and had already been adapted to some degree into Judaism at the time. This may actually lend support to the hypothesis that the accounts/legends of physical resurrection were adaptations of the idea of spiritual resurrection into a physical form that was compatible with the beliefs of the common people.

Common_Cents

http://www.geocities.com/metagetics/Nazareth.html

Common_Cents

I am not here to bash Islam or Mohammed but Islam for the very early stages was spread in conquest. Christianity was spread in the early stages despite persecution. Mohammed the "leader" was a general and a hero to them. Christianity was springboarded from a man who died like a common criminal. I think that the differences in their early stages are striking.

Common_Cents

How many people have been killed for King Arthur?


http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/christians.htm

Common_Cents

I think that it is logical to say that during the time of the apostles christianity was persecuted and the leaders of that movement would by all means be killed if captured. I don't think that is a huge stretch personally.