spin

In much of the debate in this forum, we find people supporting the notion of a figure they refer to as the historical Jesus, ie the real person behind the gospel accounts.

Have you seen any of the supporters of the Historical Jesus actually give scholarly evidence for such a person as Jesus?


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rlogan

Five feet six inches, muscular build, shoulder length hair, rapid gait, gravely voice, large ears, distinctive mole on left cheek...

mike_decock

I think we're all familiar with the evidence. In my opinion, it's pretty much inconclusive. If you work from the assumption that there was a real person behind the gospel accounts, the evidence seems to fall into place well enough to make the assumption reasonable. It also appears to me that you could assume the mythicist position and make a reasonable argument that the mythicist assumption is also valid.

So far, I just haven't seen enough evidence to convince me that the mythicist position has more explanatory power to account for the insufficient evidence we have than the historicist position does.

Is the claim that there is a human, historical person underneath the mythical onion of evidence such an extraordinary claim?

-Mike...

GakuseiDon

I'm a HJ proponent, and I would vote "No, supporters of HJ have not shown there was a HJ".

There is very little evidence for a HJ, so the MJ position should be seriously regarded. But as Mike says, the question is, what best suits the evidence that we do have?

spin

In your case, aren't you a Hypothetical Jesus proponent?


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spin

I wonder how many are familiar with a scholarly presentation of evidence.

This isn't the question. When one argues froma substantive position, one needs the substantive evidence to back that position. It's ok to have a hypothetical Jesus, but it's not ok to build on it as though it were historical and therefore justified logically. This is not an either/or situation.

Whether it is extraordinary or not is beside the point. Is there an animal underneath the mythical onion of evidence for the notion of a unicorn such an extraordinary claim?

Claims are not the food for this survey. I'm sure you've seen the Josh McDowell presentations, but I would like to know if you've seen a presentation of the evidence for a historical Jesus that you would consider scholarly, ie worthy of serious analysis.


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mike_decock

I agree. I just think that this applies to both the historicist as well as the mythicist position.

Yeah, it's called a horse .

But seriously, I'd rather use the Santa Claus analogy: Is there a real person underneath the myth? In the case of Saint Nicholas, I'm pretty certain there was, in the case of Jesus, I'm not as certain.

I haven't read Josh McDowell, but I did read The Jury is In which evaluated the evidence McDowell presented. My impression is that it's simply inconclusive.

I consider Bernard Muller's Jesus, A Historical Reconstruction to be scholarly and worthy of serious analysis but that's just my opinion.

-Mike...

spin

The mythicist position isn't actually a substantive position. And this is an error in dealing with it. It is usually hard to prove for certain that there's no such thing as a unicorn.

My problem is with those who think they don't have to do the scholarly work of providing the substantive evidence.

Then you'd have to show that a horse was part of the Hebrew culture at the time of the formation of the idea of the unicorn.

McDowell attempted to use external indicators to sustain the historicity of Jesus. The first and major problem is that he never seemed to show any desire to evaluate the veracity of his sources, hence we get the Flavian Testimony from Josephus given unflinchingly as serious evidence, which is fine, but he doesn't deal with the literary analyses of his Josephus quote. The quotes from Suetonius and Tacitus he gives for his case are given with no critical apparatus to defend them. And we get the myriad of non-historical sources such as Thallus.

You cannot make a historical case simply by pushing internal content around based on modern ideas of inconsistency. History involves historical pegs, ie attached to the real world.

This stuff is not my field of interest, but I get sick of seeing debates here on built on foundations which aren't sound.


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mike_decock

I see the mythicist position as forcing me to assume there is a mythmaker at the root of Christianity. I haven't seen the mythicists offer any evidence of who this might be, just some speculation of who it could have been.

I can understand that.

I'm not sure what you're getting at here. Are you referring to the King James mistranslation of Ra'am into unicorn? Are you saying that the historicist would have to show that a Rabbi or Messianic figure was part of Hebrew culture at the time of the formation of the Jesus myth?

McDowell is an apologist, not a historicist, but I would say that his unqualified submission of Josephus is inexcusable. Josephus is either authentic, interpolated or inserted. IMHO, considering the Arabic version, I lean towards interpolation. Josephus mentions many different Jesuses (or is that Jesii ). I think the original passages were probably evidence for the HJ, but were embellished later on. I think Seutonius and Tacitus are too late to be good evidence for the HJ.

I think the historicist's only option is to make a case that historicity is the "best explanation" for the evidence we have. I simply haven't seen a scholarly, comprehensive presentation of all the evidence in that manner.

-Mike...

spin

I'm not sure that that is necessary.

When discussing the Ebionite xians, Tertullian talked of one Ebion as the founder of the group -- as all groups had founders, right? Well, the term Ebionite actually comes from a Hebrew word meaning "poor". One could have accepted Tertullian's (or his source's) error as representative of reality.

With messianic expectation amongst Jews of the diaspora, what do you get when someone hits on the idea that the messiah had already been (just as Wisdom had walked the streets and was rejected)? Is there a mythicist to actively falsify reality here?

I wrote:

"Then you'd have to show that a horse was part of the Hebrew culture at the time of the formation of the idea of the unicorn."

mike_decock responded:

I was merely illustrating what is expected of someone doing historical research on the matter. The negative to the substantive case is always much harder, in the case that no evidence has been provided for the substantive case. If we have a report like that of the unicorn, well, maybe no-one has found one recently, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. The old adage "the absence of proof is not proof of absence" is so very true. How does one go about really demonstrating that Jesus did not exist? I guess the mythic Jesus is a sorry attempt, though it does give a substantial "other way" for the story to have come about.

You thought it was easy to cough up the horse as an antecedent for the unicorn, well, you then have to show it was the case. But this is a further sophistication, isn't it?

Neither have I. That's why I was shocked when I saw so many people getting away here with being able to simply assume it as obvious.


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