Koyaanisqatsi

Very cool. Thanks all.

:thumbs:

Diogenes the Cynic

When I answered the question about evidence for a Christian movement in Jerusalem, I guess I missed that you were asking specifically for extra-Biblical evidence. In that case, the evidence is indeed late and sketchy. Other than apocryphal Christian literature, it would boil down essentially to those passages in Josephus and Tacitus (for whatever they're worth) which indicate that the movement started in Judea.

Damian

I have a question.

It seems that the "mainstream" conclusion of modern scholars concludes that there was a historical Jesus. My question is "why?" What about the evidence leads to the conclusion that "there probably was a historical Jesus?"

It seems to me that if the first written evidence we have of someone called Jesus is ~20 years after his death, from someone that never knew Jesus or anyone that knew Jesus, that a conclusion of a historical Jesus would be a stretch.

I'm in the middle of "The Mythmaker" right now, and while I don't necessarily lean toward the mythical Jesus position, it appears to me that the non-existence of a historical Jesus is a very real possibility. What am I missing?

Julian

What are you missing? My guess would be a traditional christian upbringing and a tendency to make assumptions.

This is not a hard and fast question so the answer won't be either. I suspect that people assume a historical Jesus because they are christian and/or because they cannot fathom how a movement like christianity could start without a historical founder.

I think my position, I am an agnostic on this point, is probably the safest place to be. If there was a historical Jesus he has become so marginalized by the religion itself so as to be completely irrelevant at this point. Unless you are a christian, of course...

Julian

Damian

So....what is the most mainstream "rational" conclusion? Maybe rational is not the best word. What is the most mainstream conclusion that can be said to be formed according to truly skeptical reasoning?

RUmike

Damian, the biggest argument is favor of a historical Jesus is that the early Christians claimed that Jesus was both crucified and messiah. Anyone making up a messiah would not have invented his death as one of crucifixion. NO ONE in the 1st century CE expected the messiah -- the one who was supposed to overcome the gentile enemies and reunite the kingdom -- to be crucified by the very powers he was prophesied to overcome. This is the exact reasons the Jews had such a difficult time accepting Jesus as messiah.

Other claims are made about Jesus that no follower trying to glorify Jesus as the Son of God and Messiah would invent, such as: Jesus was baptized for the forgiveness of sins, Jesus called John (the Baptist) the greatest man ever born, Jesus admitted to a reputation of being a drunk and a glutton, opponents labeled Jesus an agent of Beezelbul, etc.

This is probably the strongest evidence that scholars have. I know many will object because many at this forum find no weight in the above evidence, but again I am giving what I believe to be the mainstream opinion of historical Jesus scholars.

Diogenes the Cynic

The mainstream consensus that Jesus was historical is largely based on the assumption that Paul was talking about a historical figure, that the Josephus "James" passage is authentic and that Tacitus is authentic.

There are other arguments as well, such as multiple independent attestations of sayings and the crucifixion but there isn't really any smoking gun. A lot of the reason for the consensus, in my opinion, is simply inertia. A lot of the scholarship has historically been done by Christians and much of it still is. The assumption of historicity has always been so ingrained and so endemic that it's difficult to overcome without some very powerful, persuasive evidence against it. It's not enough simply to point out how tenuous the evidence really is. Fair or not, the burden in academia is presumed to reside with the Mythicists. To be fair, some JM theories (always published in popular books rather than peer-reviewed journals) really are idiotic and have served to allow the entire movement to be dismissed as lunatic fringe when such is by no means the case.

Doug Shaver

Diogenes beat me to it: Inertia.

I think it's a slight oversimplification to suggest that it's because everybody who has studied the issue either is or at one time was a Christian. I think the primary obstacle is the apparent parsimony of assuming Jesus' historicity. Superficially, it does seem like the easiest way to explain how Christianity got started. You have a charismatic rabbi with an anti-establishment message of some kind, he gets himself killed by people whose privileges would be threated if his message became popular, and his followers proceed to turn him into a god who couldn't really be killed. Knowing how gullible people can be, that is not exactly a preposterous scenario.

To see its shortcomings takes the sort of digging that Doherty has done into the intellectual climate in which these things are supposed to have happened. It also takes a willingness to acknowledge that even Christianity's detractors have been making a lot of unwarranted assumptions for lo these many centuries. We have tended to suppose that as long as we have rejected Christianity's supernaturalism, whatever is left must be close to the truth. Christians have said for almost 2,000 years that Jesus was man and God, and we say, "No way he was God, but we'll let you have the man."

Awmte

How about "Tatian" and "Papias"? "Flavius Josephus"? I couldn't find these names in the links posted.

Awmte

"Euthyphro"?