Capt_Drakes

For those of you interested, there is this audiobook for sale by the Teaching Company. A bit pricey but there are other interesting books within the website.

Historical Jesus

ApostateAbe

It is a bit pricey, no kidding. $130 for an audio download. But it is a 12-hour series. I haven't seen it, but it looks as though he is presenting about the same information as is contained in his book, Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium, which is considerably cheaper.

aa5874

But, just looking at that link, the premise of the historical Jesus is completely flawed.

There is no record or written historical evidence that there was a man worshipped as a God by Jews who would offer salvation to those who believed he was sacrificed to the God of the Jews during the days of Tiberius.

The Roman Church produced or propagated a God/man Jesus who was part of a Trinity, God the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, some three hundred years afterwards. This God/man of the Trinity is completely non-historical. invented for theological purposes.

fatpie42

This is probably the most important sentence:
"Best historical evidence", not good historical evidence.

"Seems to indicate", not 'demonstrates'.

"No intention of affirming or denying any theological doctrine." You cannot achieve that if you're going to stop at the point where you have too little evidence to make any reasonable historical claims. There's a reason why they call it the "quest" for the historical Jesus. Like the holy grail, the historical Jesus is a mythical goal in and of itself and any attempt to locate the historical Jesus is doomed to failure, but it doesn't stop scholars from trying.

Minimalist

I'd settle for ANY historical evidence....not the self-serving rantings of the so-called gospel authors.

fatpie42

The historical evidence is the gospels and any surrounding evidence about the time and place and historical figures within the gospels (e.g. the is external evidence about John the Baptist).

There's no doubting that the gospels mention Jesus and we can form a basic idea of when they were written and the historical elements they describe. As such it definitely acts as a source of evidence. The problem is that, without external evidence about Jesus, the gospels cannot act as strong evidence of Jesus as a historical figure.

All I'm saying is that there is evidence, just not good evidence. Is that a fair point?

aa5874

No-good evidence is no evidence..

It should be noted that fiction is also no-good as evidence.

The evidence for Jesus does not look good.

Therefore, Jesus can be considered fiction until good evidence surfaces to support his historicity.

Minimalist

Incorrect. They are self-serving rantings of the people who were pushing the whole jesus show. Moreover, Bart Ehrman has shown that they have steadily been revised throughout the centuries which means that they reflect what the later writers thought and not what was going on at the time.

The very fact that early xtians saw fit to try to concoct early "evidence" by slipping forgeries into established texts suggests that they had no real evidence of their own.

One comment from Pliny the Elder (d 79 AD) about a rumor of a man who was put to death by a Roman praefect in Judaea and came back from the dead would be more proof (real actual proof) then all your gospels. Alas.....Pliny never wrote of any such tale.

ApostateAbe

There are many reasons that Christians rewrite documents, not just because they don't have the evidence. In the case of the Testimonium Flavianum, there is a probability that Josephus, a Jew, said something derogatory about Jesus, namely that he wasn't really the Christ. The gospels are evidence for a historical Jesus in that the earliest gospels (synoptic gospels) have a personality profile of Jesus that fits someone expected in the proposed time and place (apocalyptic prophet). And a few of the names for the associates of Jesus given in the synoptic gospels match the names of associates of Paul cited in his writings.

fatpie42

If you'd actually read what I wrote you'd see that I only meant that the gospels count as a historical source. I didn't say they acted as a terrily good source and they certainly don't act as good evidence for Jesus. Nevertheless they (along with Paul's epistles) are the only historical source which describes Jesus. And that, of course, is the reason why we cannot reasonably posit a historical Jesus.

The gospels can act as evidence regarding the life of other people like, say, John the Baptist. (Seeing as the claims about John the Baptist are corroborated within Josephus in uncontested passages.) Can't they? If so, doesn't that make them historical sources (even if they are still no good to proponents of the historical Jesus)?