Sheshbazzar

Steve,
I have no reason to believe that there ever were any supposed eyewitness either for, or against the life of Jebus.
Celsus's stories written circa 177 AD have no more credibility than any of the Christian tales he is opposing, and could have as easily as the Christian versions been fabricated from whole cloth.
None of this Jebus tale was written contemporary with the alleged events, and there is no contemporary record or nor account that confirms or disputes any of it.

My personal persuasion is that the stories originated in hundreds of years of Jewish midrashim over the OT 'Joshua the Deliverer' + 'Joshua the Prophet' +
+ 'Joshua the High Priest' + 'Joshua the Anointed King'= "Joshua the Messiah" (Heb. "Ya'ho'shua ha' Mosiach = LXX Gr. "Iasus ho'christus")
There was a Jewish/Greek LXX 'Jesus' and 'christos' for at least 300 years before the NTs 'Jesus The Christos' was allegedly 'born'.

The Messianic Jews hoped for a heroic 'Deliverer', 'Redeemer' and 'Saviour of Israel' in the image of 'Joshua the son of Nun', and 'Joshua'...the 'man whose NAME is the BRANCH', who would like unto "Joshua" of old, be able to defeat all of Israel's enemies, rule over the Gentiles, and bring in everlasting peace.
During the Maccabeean Revolt, the 'watch word' identifying friend from foe was 'The Help of the Lord' ie in Hebrew 'Yah'ho'shua'. (or similar)
The evolvement of this Jewish cult figure was an entirely natural sociological development, in response to foreign pressures and domination.

The only 'birth' of this mythical hero/saviour/redeemer/king/messiah was when these midrash stories and 'sayings of old' were finally edited and presented in a narrative form, likely a somewhat unremarkable small text at the time, with a small following of Messianic Jewish disciples.
Until the events of 70 AD, when under strong influence by Hellenistic Jews the text was 'appropriated', taken over, revised and updated to reflect the then current political situations. And people, mostly non-Jewish, began to take it seriously as a being a true historical account.

Meanwhile the Messianic Jews, the original compositors of this tale, were increasingly marginalised and shoved into the background as being irrelevant.
(likely because they resisted and would not accept all of these continuous Hellenic Jewish/Gentile "Pauline" 'innovations' upon their form of the Jewish religion.)
'Christians' and 'Christianity' which this 'new' religion soon came to be called (in a foreign Greek city, naturally) insensately pressed on.

The Book of Revelations was the last, strongest, and lasting Messianic Jewish, ANTI-'Christian' polemic ever composed against these new 'Christian churches' and their so sucessful worldly governmental entanglements.
In Revelations chapters 17 and 18, one thoroughly disgusted and pissed off Messianic Jew named John, lambastes the 'Christian' Mega-Church of his day as being 'The Great Whore' and the 'Mother of Whores' (sects)
A view through the eyes of a real prophet!

Now a physical Jesus ('Joshua') may never return in the clouds of heaven, but the 'Christian' Church has proven to be every bit as corrupted, and every bit as avaricious, and every bit as evil, as good old Saint John the Divine painted 'her' in Revelation 17 & 18.
It only remains to be seen whether 'her' end will also be as dramatic as that which he predicts.

As for the heroic Jewish figure of 'Joshua' The Mighty Warrior appointed and anointed by Moses, The 'ga'al, Redeemer and Deliverer of Israel,
'He' will always be there for his people in their time of need. (The ancient although male, equivelent of 'Lady Liberty'.)

His Name, The living 'watchword' that will ever unite them into one people, and will bring them together into that Promised Land that flows with milk and honey.



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spin

The central support for the argument here is based firmly in conjecture, using the weight of developed christian tradition, rather than early evidence.

The tradition that built up around James being the brother of Jesus hangs on the slim thread of a phrase in Gal. 1:19, which talks of one "James the brother of the lord". The text itself doesn't help the reader know who this James was, but later tradition equates him with James the brother of Jesus. This is fairly natural based on the developing use of the term "lord", shifting from god to Jesus. However, working from Paul, it certainly is not natural. The term "lord", when used as a reference to an individual (rather than as a title or rank, "my lord", "the lord Jesus"), as is the case in Gal 1:19, is not naturally to Jesus.

Also, when Paul uses "brother", he almost invariably refers to a believer rather than to a person with a family relation.

Had the claimed brother of Jesus been so important to the early church, it's strange that the orthodox book of Acts knows nothing about the brother of Jesus.

This leads us back to the conjecture mentioned in the quote from Furiae (in which there is "an argument (Habermas & Licona) that James' (brother of Jesus) conversion is an argument for the truth of the resurrection because he had been skeptical before Jesus' death.") which has no weight whatsoever. We can see how it developed, but it can simply be dismissed as not reflective of the earliest understandings derivable from the texts.

Furiae

Thanks for pointing that out. Perhaps I'm wrong, but it seems like this is just a double problem for their apologetics, and not for the contradiction I was pointing out. If James being the brother of Jesus is merely conjecture, that takes away one of their supposedly big arguments - but the argument I was making, in the end, doesn't rely on any one specific person, like James. The same collection of people who could have known the true resurrection events would have known that the birth stories were untrue.

aspronot

I think you are still not getting it:

1. The Jesus genealogy and resurrection events never happened. No-one is going to contest stories about what has not occurred. For example, Janet Jackson isn't denying the story that Michael Jackson arose from his grave after 3 days. Why? Because it hasn't happened! (A few generations from now, when Janet is not around to object, who knows what myths might develop?). There are no contemporary accounts of Jesus for a very good reason. Of course this explanation is not going to satisfy Christians, so ...

2. Let us suppose that the characters in the gospel stories were all real people and some versions of the gospel stories were floating about in oral form before being put down on parchment decades later. Even if these individuals were disputing the legend growing up around Jesus, do you really think that the gospel writers would record this information? They were there to spread the good word, not to cast doubts on the new religion. However, again Christians are unlikely to buy into the fact that the gospels are not accurate historical works, so ...

3. You are left with the question about why Christian apologists are tenacious about the resurrection as opposed to the genealogy stories. The same scholarly criteria should hold true for both sets of stories, right? I can think of at least a couple of explanations (the lack of denial by alleged eyewitnesses can be ignored for the reasons given above):

i) As I said earlier, there are difficulties and outright contradictions in the birth stories between the gospels. The resurrection has its problems too, but not to the same extent. Some apologists can accept that the birth stories were thrown in to 'flesh' out the life of a man about whom very little was known before he appeared on the scene. (In the case of gMatthew it was a golden opportunity to throw in a few more OT prophecy fulfillment verses).

ii) The birth stories are not as critical to Christian doctrine as the resurrection. Without the resurrection, Christianity would not make a great deal of sense. Jesus would have died and stayed buried just like everyone else. Christians have to cling to the resurrection with everything they have or risk relegating Jesus to being something less than the Son of God. (Look at how Christmas is celebrated today - very little to do with Jesus - and contrast it with the Easter celebrations by the churches).