Solo

The slight problem with this theory is that there was no Christ to be found in the scriptures.

Now, I wonder why would it not have been the other way around ? Why would it not have been then as it is with religious psychotics now ? They have an experience (a high) or they try to (para)rationalize their lapses in cognitive function which makes them believe their pronounced/protracted experience of deja-vu is a prophetic faculty given to them by God. They go to the scriptures and they find all sorts of 'proofs' that their visions are fulfilment of what prophets were saying for ages. They find explanations everywhere for what their strangely functioning brain tells them: the chaotic world of frustrated desires is going to end soon and the embryonic promise of peaceful harmony will come back.

Jiri

aa5874

But the truth of the resurrection story is actually extremely important when you trying to establish the historicity of Jesus.

Once there was no actual resurrection then all four Gospels are prone to write about fictitious events as though they did happen.

And once it is known that the Gospels authors did fabricate the resurrection then there may be many more events that were fabricated and were just believed to be true.

And the invention of the resurrection may be considered deliberate once the story was written and intended to believed by others as the truth when the authors knew in advance that no resurrection occurred.

Once Jesus did exist as human, the resurrection story must have been fiction and since people eventually believed that it did occur the authors of the fiction achieved their goal. They were successful in getting people to believe fiction was true.

What absurdity! How can a man kill a God? What nonsense! Your belief that the Son of a God was killed is just so ridiculous.

Imagine for a moment that a person was charged with murder and that during the trial the supposed actual murdered victim was to appear at the trial to give evidence of his own death when now he is alive.

Please, your belief that Jesus was killed and then actually resurrected makes no sense whatsoever.

Once Jesus did live and was crucified, he must have survived the crucifixion.

The destruction of brain tissue cannot be reversed when a person has been lifeless for three days.


See the writings of Josephus in the "Life of Josephus" where three crucified victims were taken from their crosses alive and only one survived with the aid of a doctor.

This is Josephus on the survival of one who was crucified.

"The Life of Flavius Josephus" 75 See http://wesley.nnu.edu

Toto

Mark was written after the destruction of Jerusalem. Why do you think there were any witnesses still alive, and why doesn't Mark mention any witnesses?

This is not true, but you keep repeating it.

There was a phase in the "third quest" for the historical Jesus when non-apologetic scholars thought that they could extract some historicity from the gospels, but that turns out to have been a pious hope. The current trend is to see the gospels as literary creations with at best some tie to early traditions.

Larkin31

You're welcome.

But you did not really answer my question, so I will rephrase:

Do you believe that there was a man called Jesus who performed miracles (basically, those in the Gospels) in Galilee and developed a group of followers and who was killed on a cross and whose followers were the antecedents to the Christian church?

spin

Yo, Eliyahu! Welcome.
Part of the matter we deal with here is whether he who we refer to in English as Jesus was a real person from Judea or a concept from the diaspora. If the former then he may well have been named Yeshu -- only two gospels supply the name of Joseph as the husband of Jesus' mother and they make sure you know he was not the father, so "ben Yusef" is a stretch. However, our knowledge about Jesus comes from Greek texts whose knowledge of the Levant is quite patchy, which is not odd as the earliest gospel, Mark, indicates that it was written in a Latin culture, providing explanations in Latin, using Latin idioms in Greek. How does one discern that the basic gospel material originated in Judea and not in the diaspora? And if the latter is true, how do we know that we don't simply have a literary figure called ιησους from which Jesus is a transcription via Latin?

As there are no early written records that use the name Yehoshua ben Yoseph one can only conclude that you have fabricated it out of hope that it is derived from a hypothetical original Hebrew (not Aramaic) name and that the person didn't use the prevalent short form of the name, Yeshua, but the anachronistic long form.

That assumes you can tell that the gospel indications are veracious.

OK, how can you tell?

This seems so far to be a false dichotomy between Jesus and Yeshu. Is it based on particular unstated motives?

Paul is the first person in the historical record to know anything about Jesus (assume if you must Yeshu). He may have introduced Jesus/Yeshu to the world, so it is rather premature to talk about identity theft.

How do you know??

If there was a "Yehoshua ben Yoseph haMashiach" who liberated his people and led the way to the millennium, the Jews would have recognized his achievement. However, there was no recognition: the kingdom didn't come. The grass grew out of the cheeks of the people of the era.


spin

Doug Shaver

I don't think so. I put the "If" there for a reason. According to the rules of logic, the assertion "If A then B" is never equivalent to asserting the truth of A.

I would, given an appropriate context. I think it's true of everybody.

Loomis

But how is Matthew’s claim that Jesus rose from the dead significantly different from Matthew’s claim that the zombies (27:52) rose from the dead?

Stay focused. Answer honestly. An honest/ straightforward person must admit that Matthew treats the two resurrections with the same degree of seriousness and the same degree of literalness. That is to say that if Matthew thought that the zombies’ resurrection was symbolic then it follows that Matthew also thought that Jesus’ resurrection was symbolic.

So your back is against the wall. And now whether you like it or not you are going to show us - by your own actions, if your are genuinely seeking the truth with all your heart, or if you are like the swine in Matthew 7:6.

Loomis

Same deal here. Please don’t take my comment about the swine personally. I simply meant it like Jesus meant it; as a synonym for filth.

Toto

The swine were probably meant as a parable of resistance to Roman rule.

One interpretation (this is a common idea - I just picked this cite from here):

William Harwood, Mythologies Last Gods: Yahweh and Jesus (or via: amazon.co.uk).

Another:

Legion_(demon)

ercatli

I too believe. I too try to understand him rationally (I actually don't know any other way to understand something). And I think in this context superstition is an emotive word we apply to things other people believe and we don't, and they apply to things we believe and they don't. I'm not concerned about that jibe.

I don't think so.

No, I never wanted to do that, I just think he made space and time and remains able to act within it - after all, he is generally defined as omnipotent!

Ouch! That really hurt!

I don't think this discussion is heading anywhere useful so I'll say farewell to you. Best wishes.