Toto

sotto voce digression split off here

Sheshbazzar

:constern01:
Without Biblical TEXTS there would be no knowledge at all of this alleged figure.
And we would not be discussing that figure in a Forum titled BIBLICAL Criticism & History'

All knowledge and information on this figure derives from BIBLICAL TEXTS. And everything that has ever been said, or been written about this figure originated by being informed by reference to some measure of knowledge of the content of these TEXTS.

Without these TEXTS and what is WRITTEN within these TEXTS, there would be no Jesus known or to know. There would be no word 'Christ' or 'Christian' nor any such a thing as 'Christianity' because ALL of this, every last bit, is based upon the provision and maintainance of WRITTEN TEXTS.

'IT IS WRITTEN', & 'THESE THINGS WERE WRITTEN'
(I won't bother with supplying the verse numbers, as these statements appear well over a hundred times within the Scriptural TEXTS.)

ALL of the stories of the BIBLE are founded upon 'It is WRITTEN'
Without 'It is written' TEXTS = there is no 'BIBLE' = there is no 'ABRAHAMIC religions')

"BUT these are WRITTEN, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God;

You cannot discard or discount the importance of the WRITTEN TEXTS and have any 'Jesus' left.

Damn. It looks like aa typed this.

Diogenes the Cynic

Not true. We would still have Tacitus, and we would still have the Christian religion.

Jesus should not be defined as the character in the Gospels, but as a hypothetical real historical source/inspiration/founder at the root of Christian religion. No text is necessary. The NT is irrelevant.

Sheshbazzar

And what do you think Taticus could have had to say about any of this without any Biblical TEXTS to inform him?
Christians would have no record of what their god did or their religion is about. How would thay know they were Christians without the TEXT that explain what a Christian is? Ask a Jim Jones or Davy Koresh?
The writers of The NT certainly thought otherwise.
'These are WRITTEN that you might believe..."

No TEXTS and no one would have any traceable or consistent information about him.
As if he isn't enough of a figment already.

Removing or disregarding the content of the only surviving accounts of his alleged existence and acts will not turn a then totally unattested to figure into being a 'historical' personage.

spin

I wish you people would stop hijacking this thread. Your stuff has nothing to do the the topic at all. You should know better (with the exception of sotto voce whose behavior is so consistently appalling I can't expect anything better).

The first part of your tangent was removed from this thread and placed in a new one but still you three have crapped on here. You are not rank amateurs on this forum. You know what you are being. Please just go away.

Bernard Muller

spin:I consider my father and Jesus as being equally historical, because they lived and are both dead.
But "historical" can also mean "historic". And the problem might be right there. "historic", for me, qualifies someone who, through protracted, focussed & successful effort, changed the course of history by his/her actions starting in his/her own times.
For example Martin Luther King is historic but Rosa Parks was only historical.
In early Christianity, I would consider Paul to be historic (and also historical!), because he preached a new faith outside of orthodox Judaism, which gained acceptance among Gentiles and eventually became a world-wide religion.

Sheshbazzar

I have made my views sufficiently clear. As a courtesy to spin I will refrain from contributing anything further on this controversial subject, in this thread.

Sheshbazzar



.

Adam

This could confound historicist with mythicist. The Mythicist attributes the Christian religion to myths being concretized as Jesus in the gospels. Thus the Founder would be he who wrote about Jesus rather than the Jesus he created. (Apparently "he" wrote very different kinds of things in various kinds of styles and translated differently from Aramaic where necessary, with various pieces copied into different documents.)

aa5874

Not true. Tacitus Annals 15.44 does NOT, NOT, NOT mention Jesus.

The name Jesus is NOT, NOT, NOT in Annals.

We cannot assume the history of Jesus by presuming that Christus is Jesus.

No original of Tacitus Annals have been found and dated to the 2nd century.

Apologetic sources did NOT claim Tacitus wrote about Jesus even though they made references to the writings of Tacitus.

We cannot assume that all Christians in any century only believed the Jesus story when there were people called Christians that ONLY believed in a God alone and some in other non-existing unknown entities.

Again, NO source of antiquity up to the 5th century claimed that Tacitus wrote about Jesus--NONE--ZERO--NIL.

There is NO history, NO event, No Rumor, No Chinese Whispers of Jesus in Tacitus Annals.

Check your Histories in Josephus, Suetonius, and Tacitus--they have NO history of an Obscure preacher man of Nazareth--none--zero-nil.

Let us do History. Let us reconstruct the past.

Let us look for historical sources of antiquity that mentioned an OBSCURE preacher man from Nazareth.

There is NO history of such a man.

mountainman

Bullshit we would not - we would only have Tacitus from the 15th century onwards. This evidence makes no impact on antiquity unless it is qualified by a mass of additional hypotheses and conjectures which themselves may be critically and skeptically questioned for genuineness and authenticity.

But why didn't you cite the witness of Josephus? Because you are aware Josephus was corrupted and forged by the forgery mill of the church? All these things - evidence things - are textual and church-preserved.




Dont be silly! Would we still have the Canonical Christian religion or the Non Canonical Christian religion? One cannot separate the monotheism from its "Holy Writ". Can Judaism be separated from the Hebrew Bible? Can Sassanid Persian Zoroastrian monotheism be separated from the Avesta? Can the Islamic monotheism be separated from its holy writ the Quran?


Diogenes the Cynic you are, I believe, employing a faulty logic gate.




How nice for non contextual Jesus. The problem is the evidence, shoved down the throat of the common man and woman and child for centuries, that Jesus lives inside the attestation of the gospels. You should take your "should nots" to another planet without the terrestrial history of this planet Earth. We must learn - in history - to deal with what (the evidence) is, not with what (the evidence) should and should not be.




Three cheers for Bilbo Baggins !!! Are the texts of the "Hobbit" and the "Fellowship of the Ring" contextually required to inspire a knowledge of Bilbo Baggins and the Hobbits of MiddleEarth. Perhaps we should just dispense with the texts and use the authority of those who would proclaim that they KNOW? Perhaps we should use our imagination?


Diogenes the Cynic you are digging a hole for yourself.

The NT Canonical (and non canonical) texts are fundamental items of evidence. Very embarrassing evidence for the church in an age where Socrates critical thinking is not considered to be a menace to the state.