aa5874

Again, there is no Scholarly consensus for an historical Jesus.

There is a quest for an historical Jesus.

Nobody knows who Jesus was.

Scholars are just guessing because there is no writing, no evidence from antiquity about a character called Jesus of Nazareth in non-apologetic sources.

Please get familiar with writings of antiquity instead of promoting propaganda.

If there was actual evidence for an historical Jesus then there would be a Consensus.

There is NO consensus on the identity of Jesus.

Instead you have the No Tax Jesus and Ehrman has another Jesus based on admitted discredited sources.

Jesus is anything you imagine.

ApostateAbe

Sure, if you can make more sense of the evidence without a historical Jesus, then go for it. Just be aware that it is difficult to make something plausible of the evidence if the preferred explanation entails the belief that Christianity has barely anything in common with any other cult that ever existed. Not that it is impossible, but it is an uphill battle. The point that the gospels and Paul are untrustworthy is only a starting point, at best, of having a good explanation for them.

MrMacSon

The only thing the NT gospels are 'evidence' for is the ability to create literature about a series of scenarios about a central character - a narration finalized some time after the start of the 4th century.

aa5874

The very fact trhat there are many Jesuses is confirmation that there is NO consensus on Jesus.

None whatsoever.

All they have is the long held Presumption based on guessing that there was an historical Jesus although it cannot determine who he actually was.

It would have been most laughable if historians claimed Pontius Pilate was a fisherman, a Messianic ruler, a Cynic, a Apocalyptic preacher, and a governor.

It would be obvious that they would be guessing.

It is most obvious that multiple Jesuses is the most blatant indication and confirmation of speculation and guesswork.

outhouse

That's really close to factually false. Canonized yes. Finalized not so much.


From every writer after the text were created, there have been few changes by the forth century, other then a few scribal errors that Ehrman goes into detail about.

We know what Marcion wrote in 150 is CE, because so many people trashed him. For this we know, no major changed have taken place.

We also have old Papyrus fragments that match exactly, what we already have.

ApostateAbe

I forgot, you were the one who believes that the gospels were written explicitly as fiction. They must not make sense to you as Grecco-Roman biographical accounts intended for belief.

Adam

outhouse is right.
I rarely second what he says, but all of Higher Criticism revolves around what he says here in his Post #25. MrMacSon is wrong in his post #15 to deny that we have contemporary texts about Jesus. Already 19th Century scholarship established that where Matthew and Luke overlap we have the Double-Tradition we generally call Q. Yes, it is true apart from this that Matthew and Luke copy from Mark, but this is what we call the Triple-Tradition, and where all three texts agree we have a contemporary source. In both cases (Double-Tradition and Triple-Tradition) wherever we can extract the common underlying text we have First Century text about Jesus. (This is a key issue: where it not so I would never have become a Christian, because I could isolate more reliable sayings of Jesus that were free of what I found objectionable elsewhere in the gospels.) Some have even argued (as I have done at length here on FRDB without much attempt at refutation) that these two sources (and others) can be attributed to eyewitnesses.

Needless to say, few here on FRDB accept thereby that this proves that Jesus was a supernatural wonder-working Son of God, but the onus is on them to establish what else these ur-gospels (Q and most of Mark) were, variously arguing for myth, fictions, historical fraud/lies, or historicization of some person from earlier centuries.

steve_bnk

There werea number of factions and Jews claiming the title of messiah.

Prophets were common in Jewish history.

By the time the gospels were written there were a number of Christian factions.

The gospels as a composite of a movement embellished makes sense. Hence the ill defined character.

ApostateAbe

Do you think Jesus of the gospels represents many historical characters, then?

outhouse

How many of these factions had their leader placed on a cross at Passover in front of hundreds of thousands of people that generated oral traditions still read today?