GakuseiDon

I haven't read through this thread, but Josephus in "Jewish Wars" describes how a prophecy that someone from that area would become 'governor of the habitable earth' encouraged people into undertaking war against the Romans:

... what did the most elevate [to] them in undertaking this war, was an ambiguous oracle that was also found in their sacred writings, how, "about that time, one from their country should become governor of the habitable earth." The Jews took this prediction to belong to themselves in particular, and many of the wise men were thereby deceived in their determination... these men interpreted some of these signals according to their own pleasure, and some of them they utterly despised, until their madness was demonstrated, both by the taking of their city and their own destruction.

Doug Shaver

That is certainly possible.

Well, my thinking on that point is not based on my guesswork about early Christians in particular. It is based on my observations about how people in general tend to think during the period after the death of someone they care about, and on the assumption that there was nothing special or unique, in that respect, about early Christians.

It is not my observation that people in general have any tendency to imagine that people they wish were not dead are actually no longer dead.

There was more than that to Jewish theology. There was also a pretty intense commitment to monotheism. If the disciples were so powerfully influenced by Jewish theology, they would never have deified Jesus.

And what would have possessed the disciples to believe that Jesus' death was for the forgiveness of sins? His mere say-so? They believed it just because he said it? But, he was not charismatic? That hypothesis does not look the least bit coherent to me.

Uh huh. And that belief, along with a corollary belief in his divinity, was engendered by nothing more than his having said, "I'm going to die for the sins of the world."

Without the gospels, you have no evidence from which to infer the existence of any Jesus of Nazareth. All you have left is Paul's Christ Jesus.

They wondered if he was the messiah, and from that wonderment inferred that he was surely a god?

Can you document the existence of any Jewish sect from that period whose members expected the messiah to be a god?

Yes, it is.

aa5874

But, it was not at the time of Pilate that Josephus referred to.

There is no mention of a prophecy in Josephus for JESUS of Nazareth to be born in Bethlehem at around the census by Cyrenius.

There is no mention in Josephus that there was a MESSIAH named Jesus except for the forgeries in Antiquities of the Jews 18.3.3 and 20.9.1.

arnoldo

The Dead Sea Scrolls ( 4Q246/4Q521) state the following respectively;

aa5874

The first part of the passage seems to confirm Josephus "War of the Jews" 6.5.4.

The expected Messiah would make war, unlike Jesus, who told the Jews not to make war but to forgive those who did evil against them.

The expected Messiah was to be a WARRIOR.

TedM

Yes in general. But where there is desire, there is the potential for a vision. I think people could be strongly loved without being extremely charismatic.

This seems a bit off point. I assume with all the diversity you could have a group that believed in the resurrection but not the deification of Jesus, and another that believed differently.

Sorry, I think I'm not explaining myself well. Let me try again:

Here are some scenarios in which I think a historical Jesus would not have had to be extremely charismatic, and could still have been believed to have been resurrected in body or spirit, even without an empty tomb.:

For those close to him:
1. He was deeply loved (perhaps for having a gentle nature)
2. He was some kind of teacher/healer, but not necessarily extremely charismatic
3. He had talked about dying for the sins of mankind
4. He had talked about being raised from the dead
5. He was crucified during Passover

1 creates the desire. 2 creates a belief that he is 'different'. 3,4or5 can spark the idea of resurrection

For those not close to him:
1. Knowledge that some thought he had been a religious figure some considered to be gifted and having had some following--so a level of charisma but not necessarily to an extreme.
2. He was crucified during Passover

1&2 could be enough to convince someone like Paul to conclude he was the Messiah and had been resurrected

There are other combinations that work, but these are a couple examples that seem plausible for the birth of the resurrection 'superstition' without requiring a highly visible or extremely charismatic individual at the core.

aa5874

IF there were many Jews who were innocently crucified why would some non-charismatic character be called a Messiah after he was crucified for blasphemy and that the commandments of God concerning circumcision could be abolished?

Why would Paul call a non-charismatic Jew, crucified for blasphemy, the Creator of heaven and earth, and equal to God?

Plausibility is NOT history. You cannot re-write the fiction story in gMark.

You need to deal with the EVIDENCE supplied by those who seemed to have worshiped Jesus as the Creator of heaven and earth.

Those supposed Jesus worshipers are the people who should know what Jesus did.

And, just as you can propose that Jesus did not have to be charismatic for people to believe he was the Messiah or was RAISED from the dead, it is far less complicated for people to have just believed a Jesus story written perhaps 60-70 years after the reign of Tiberius.

People today believe the Jesus story without ever proving that Jesus was a Messiah or was resurrected.

Belief in the Jesus story did not require an actual God/man just BELIEF.

spin

Who were exactly? You just don't know. What percentage? 10%? Did the Am ha-Aretz (the people of the land, the ordinary Jew) even care about the messiah? You just don't know. You just have your amorphous n.t. idea of "the Jews".

And what does expecting a messiah necessarily have to do with desperation? There are lots of people today expecting a messiah, but are they desperate? Expecting a messiah does not entail being desperate.

It is wise to talk about what you have evidence for.

So you admit that you are retrojecting your ideas onto the past. All you need to do is recognize the fact.

What's a lot for you to make such a comparison? There were obviously not going to have been any before the rise of the expectation. And there were going to be very few after Simeon bar Kochba was crushed. So this idea of yours has no value: comparison with other times is meaningless.

I'm not talking about stretches. I'm talking about what happens in your fantasies. This is just plain bullshit on your part: "desperate for a messiah" indeed. English theater flourished at the time of Shakespeare because it was economically viable and there were no laws to forbid such activity. You wouldn't say that the people were desperate for drama.

I don't care about mythicists. They are your fixation, not mine. I just find it strange that for a reasonably intelligent person you can go from one blunder to another with such gay abandon: assuming your conclusions, retrojecting ideas into the past, butterfly logic, ideas that you cannot test.

I suppose that if you had some aim in doing so, you could conclude that the Italians were "desperate" for football, the Dutch were "desperate" for tulips, the English "desperate" for tea. They are just as meaningful as your "the Jews were desperate .. for a Messiah."


spin

maryhelena

And how about this quote from Slavonic Josephus (translation date is one thing - dating the tradition behind this quote something else....)


Perhaps the issue is not whether one Jew, half a dozen Jews - or a thousand, were on the lookout for some messiah figure. The major issue is, surely, that the Jews, as a nation, collectively, did not find such a figure to meet their expectations leading up to the events of 70 ce - whatever national or group speculations were doing the rounds.

That some people, somewhere, did speculate re a messiah/anointed figure prior to 70 ce - we do have the gospel storyline after all - might well suggest that one should be looking outside the Jewish religious and secular context. Looking outside of this context for historical events that could have inspired the creation of the gospel Jesus messianic storyline.

Doug Shaver

You and I clearly have different notions as to what is plausible. I think we'll just have to leave it there, at this point.