mg01

I'm finishing Ehrmann's previous book and still struggling to get my head around something in it. About a third of the way into the book, there is a single paragraph refering to Jesus as a historical figure. (I looked to quote but can't find it quickly.) It says little more than Jesus was a Jewish teacher who after his death by the Romans a religion was founded in his name. The whole premise of his book however is that Christianity emerged as a phenomenon over the process of centuries, was extremely varied, based on earlier ideas from both Jewish and Greek philosophy/theology, at a time when Jewish ideas were splintering into multiple factions.

Nothing here requires a single founding figure. Isn't the intellectually honest thing to do is simply admit we don't know if a historical figure existed or not? Scholars talk around the issue of historicity, dismissing any notion of a mystical origin, while at the same time tracing the roots of many Christian trains of thought to Jewish an Greek concepts, but either fail to recognize a single figure isn't necessarily required, or simply won't admit it.

That's the question I would like to see addressed: Demonstrate why a historical figure is necessary for the development of Christianty. Even if some strand was influcened by an individual either claiming to be the Messiah himself or considered so by his followers later, had that individual not existed, or had the impact that he is presumed to have had, we would still have some version of Christianity today. Perhaps one not so prerequisite of a historical figure.

show_no_mercy

Even if there was no historical Jesus, it would be necessary to invent him. I think that, for scholars, implying that there was no historical Jesus would be academic suicide. So it's just a safe, uncontested assumption that there was a historical Jesus.

aa5874

Well, if that was the case, it would be expected that there would have been many persons who would have eventually been worshipped as Gods with the power to forgive sins.

There must have been many Jewish teachers who had died in the first century.

But, there is no historical evidence that there was any other person who was a Jewish teacher who was worshipped as a God with the ability to forgive sins.

And further, there is no historical evidence that the Jews would have worshipped Jewish teachers as Gods at any time.

Minimalist

Was a historical figure necessary for Zeus? Or Osiris. Or Wodin. Or Quetzalcoatl. etc., etc.

Xtians love to claim that their religion is different. But it isn't.

BTW, there does not seem to be a hell of a lot of actual historical evidence for Mohammad, either.

Toto

This is the modern history of Jesus studies. New Testament scholars and historians who say they believe in a historical Jesus keep doing work that undermines the existence of such a person. Eventually someone will pull out the lynchpin that holds the whole edifice up, and the historical Jesus will vanish like the ether in physics.

hatsoff

I'm not sure I understand your complaint. The book is about early Christian beliefs, not the historical Jesus. Why should he go into some tangent about the Jesus myth hypothesis?

ApostateAbe

Lost Christianities is a great book, but it isn't about Jesus himself, only the various religious myths that surround his figure. Ehrman writes more directly about the inferred life of Jesus in his book Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium. He sort of presumes that Jesus existed, but his argument about the type of person that Jesus was serves as evidence for his existence. Ehrman's theory, which he claims his shared by the bulk of critical scholars, was that Jesus was a end-times doomsday prophet of a radical Jewish sect. I would use the word, "cult," because of the apparent analogy to doomsday cults we see around today and through history, but Ehrman does not use that word. It too easily draws rebuke, I suppose. The evidence is the passages in the synoptic gospels (the earliest surviving biographies of Jesus) where Jesus claims, "...this generation will not pass away before all these things are fulfilled..." or "...some standing here will not taste death until they see the son of man coming in his kingdom." These prophecies were found to be embarrassing in later Christian writings, so Christians tried to re-explain them, such as in the Gospel of John 21:20-23, and in 2 Peter 3:3-8.

Ehrman was a guest on the Infidel Guy radio show some time ago, and he argued with a caller who thought that Jesus started as a myth. He was strongly dismissive, almost like it was a viewpoint that didn't deserve recognition. But he did give one point of evidence, that the authentic Pauline epistles (the earliest Christian writings) contain a passing reference to James, the Lord's brother.

Ehrman is probably right about the Jesus-myth thing. The original existence of Jesus is the presumed truth until we have pretty good evidence that he didn't exist, because we have so many other examples of religions starting as cults led by a genuinely existing person. We don't have examples of religions started by a mythic human leader, at least not that I can think of.

vid

Also, this book seemed to me to be as christian-friendly as possible in order to spread its message (informing about various sorts of christianities). That might be another reason why no to mention mythical Jesus hypothesis, to date all "heresies" to 2nd century and later, or not to call mathew/luke "falsifications" as he does with all "heretical" christian texts. One step at a time.

aa5874

First of all, it cannot be proven or shown to be true that any person called Jesus in the first century did make any claim about "...this generation will not pass away before all these things are fulfilled..." or "...some standing here will not taste death until they see the son of man coming in his kingdom."

It is illogical to use assumptions as evidence.

The very same authors who wrote that a character called Jesus made predictions also claimed Jesus was the offspring of the Holy Ghost, resurrected and ascended through the clouds.


There are no such thing as authentic Pauline epistles. It is not certain when any of the epistles with the name Paul were written, or when the writers called Paul lived.


If Ehrman did make such a statement it is most obviously wrong.
It is illogical to assume Jesus of the NT existed when the very existence is being disputed. It should be obvious that the historicity of Jesus, once under investigation, must assumed to be not certain.

GakuseiDon

I don't know that there was a historical Jesus, and I call myself a Christian. I guess if you asked most people on this particular board -- theist and non-theist -- only a few would say that they know or can prove whether Jesus was historical or not.

I think this terminology of the other side "know" or "prove" things is not helpful, since it may obfuscate the fact that the evidence tends one way more than another.

Does Ehrmann claims he "knows" that there was a historical Jesus in his book?

IIRC there was a train of thought around 100 years ago that Mithraism would have eventually developed into something approximating Christianity, had Christianity not taken off.