Toto

For those who think there is a scholarly consensus:

Bulletin for the Study of Religion

steve_bnk

The closest think in the gospels to a doctrine is The Sermon On The Mount.

The paucity of actual doctrine means Jesus is whatever any individual sees it to be, and claiming to be Christian has little meaning.

I watched my favorite(most entertaining) TV evangelist yesterday talk about Obama ushering a new world order as predicted by the bible.

ApostateAbe

There is no scholarly consensus because someone or other believes Jesus was Aryan? I am not going to claim that there is consensus about who Jesus was among the scholars, but here's the problem: there are also a heckuva lot of propositions about how life on Earth exists among the scientists. For example, Brigitte Boisselier, boasting a PhD in chemistry, believes that life on Earth was synthesized by an alien named Yahweh who came to Earth in a spacecraft. Does it follow that there is no scholarly consensus about how life on Earth exists? Maybe, if you define "consensus" strictly, but I think we should be more generous with our definition of consensus, or else "scholarly consensus" absolutely does not exist anywhere.

Toto

If you read the entire blog post, it makes more sense. The "elusive" historical Jesus is hard to pin down.

It's not a question of the number of possibilities, but whether there is a consensus among informed scholars. There is a broad, robust scientific consensus on many issues in the biological sciences, based on multiple experiments and observations. Historical Jesus has at most a shared conventional wisdom that he existed and was crucified, based on a few unreliable ancient documents and dubious logical conclusions.

aa5874

There is NO Scholarly consensus that Jesus was a figure of history.

The terms "majority" and "consensus" are not the same thing.

The consensus among Scholars is that the NT is NOT credible.

The Many many Scholars are Christians.

Christians believe Jesus existed even if he existed in a non-historical state like the Angel Gabriel or Satan the Devil.

ApostateAbe

Please don't ask me to read the entire blog post if it is does nothing for your point. Both your argument and your conclusion are different from that blog post. The word "elusive" was never even used. The blog post is about a diversity of Jesuses among the ideologues. You don't actually care about that, and neither do I.

outhouse

And no matter how much it is argued, there is a scholarly consensus on certain aspects of a historical Jesus.

Just because there are aspects debated, doesnt detract from the historical core not debated.

ApostateAbe

Good point. There is scholarly consensus (if that phrase has any useful meaning) that Jesus was raised in Nazareth, was the son of Joseph and Mary and the brother of James, was baptized by John the Baptist, had twelve disciples, and was crucified in Jerusalem. The aspects about Jesus that have the most diversity of scholarly opinion are his preachings. Why? Well, because many scholars are ideologues, and ideologies are most heavily invested in the preachings of Jesus, seen as authority by the ideological masses.

Toto

Don't ask you to read? I'm sorry.

The word used was "illusive" which might have been a mistake for what I read it as - elusive. If this credentialed religious scholar meant illusive, we have a mythicist on our hands.

But I do care. I think that all of the Jesuses, including both illusive and elusive historical reconstructions, are essentially ideological.

Toto

I think that the only real scholarly agreement is that Jesus existed and was crucified.