Kapyong

Gday,

Oh please !
Earl Doherty has addressed these scholars at length - they eschew him; you eschew Earl's work, and you just assume an HJ.


How many of those "experts" are Christians, or work in a Christian establishment? Experts whose work and reputation and friends and social life depends on assuming an HJ. Like 95% - the most biased sample you could find.


K

spamandham

That's not much of an analysis. Come on, give it a go, but take it seriously. Presupposing that the story is 100% literary, what does it signify?

The story as it stands is not plausible, even if we dismiss with the miraculous and obviously self serving aspects.

Suppose Jesus did not have massive crowds following him, but instead had only a handful of followers. What then did he do that pissed off the priests while still remaining unknown to them? It's inexplicable. Once you remove the mass of followers, he becomes just another of the swarms of micro-cult leaders. Ok, so he pissed them off by personally insulting them. Why can't they remember what he looked like? Better yet, why didn't they arrest him on the spot? The Jewish leadership had both religious and civil authority over Jews in Jerusalem in ~30 CE. They didn't need the silly cat and mouse game depicted in the gospels. That's a post Hadrian anachronism.

What else would you like to add or remove before I have another go at it?

show_no_mercy

There is primary evidence (like his own writings) that Lincoln existed that stands apart from their interpretation of what he did. No one has to assume that he existed.

The only evidence we have for the existence of Jesus are religious writings.

Juststeve

Kapyong:


First, are you suggesting that honest scholarship is not possible for Christians?

Second, a good number of the scholars I am referring to if Christian at all would certainly not be in any way orthodox.

Third, I am quite willing and think we ought to disregard scholars at Bible colleges and the like since they are often required to pre-commit to certain views on historicity.

Let’s just consider scholars from the top 50 or so universities in the world.

That seems fair to me but it won’t help your cause much.

Steve

bacht

The problem is that most biblical scholars work only with Christian texts. The NT and patristic literature may be useful in some ways but they can't be the only evidence, they're just too biased.

The official story is that a real Galilean Jesus was executed in Jerusalem by the Roman governor. After his crucifixion he was seen risen by his followers. The Church's explanation is resurrection, the firstfruits of the dead.

Is this really more believable than a story written about unorthodox Jews by gentiles after their country was destroyed? Why aren't human creativity and gullibility any less relevant in this scenario than supernaturalism?

spamandham

How many of these authors would disagree with whether or not Lincoln was President, or whether or not he lived during the time of the civil war? That's closer to the level of basic disagreement we see within the HJ scholarly camp. It's not just interpretive or superficial aspects.

Juststeve

Bacht:

I think you know that the scholars that are trying to identify the historical Jesus do not deal with resurrections and the like. They consider those things outside the realm of history. Don’t confuse serious scholars with Christian apologists. There are fringe folks on both fringes, Doherty on your side, Gary Habermas on the opposite fringe. Serious scholars don’t take either seriously.

Those people I call serious scholars use the evidence that is available. In the case of Jesus that is largely evidence preserved in what are now the Christian corpus. That is really unfortunate but not surprising if as I have postulated Jesus was a fellow who took on much more importance after he was dead than while he was alive.

Finally no one on this thread has argued that the followers of Jesus saw him alive and risen after the crucifixion. That is not the proposition I defend, it is not the proposition defended by the vast majority of mainstream historical Jesus scholars defend. Kind of a straw man, isn’t it?

Steve

Juststeve

Spam:

Document if you can controversy within the HJ camp, among recognized scholars, with respect to the approximate years of Jesus' life. That would be like not agreeing about whether Lincoln was alive during the Civil War. There is no comparable dispute. There is a dispute about how to interpret the person of Jesus, not whether or when he lived.

Steve

spamandham

Considering that most scholars in this field believe Jesus actually rose from the dead, I don't think "mainstream" is really the word you're looking for. Mainstream BH is theological quackery.

John P. Meier summarizes this aptly here.
http://www.americancatholic.org/Mess...7/feature3.asp

I think a lot of the confusion comes from the fact that people claim they are doing a quest for the historical Jesus when de facto they’re doing theology, albeit a theology that is indeed historically informed. Go all the way back to Reimarus, through Schleiermacher, all the way down the line through Bultmann, Kasemann, Bornkamm. These are basically people who are theologians, doing a more modern type of Christology [a faith-based study of Jesus Christ].

Even the scholars admit that most Biblical historians are engaged in theology rather than critical history. You can not expect these people to seriously consider the idea that their god did not exist.

show_no_mercy

What about the Christian apocrypha? The insane variety of these writings - from around the same time period (late 1st, early 2nd century) - don't make sense under a historical Jesus scenario. The only thing that all of these Christian writings agree on is that the guy's name was Jesus. That's it. It seems as though 2nd century Christians were in the same boat of uncertainty that modern HJ scholars are in. Both 2nd century Christians and modern scholars all build a Jesus in their own image (because Matt, Luke, and John are rewritten versions of Mark, these authors also built a Jesus in their own image).

Some of these writings don't even say that Jesus was from Nazareth. They say that he was from Capernaum (or his ministry started in Capernaum).

Some of these other "heretical" materials say that Jesus had the name "Nazarene" because it means "truth", not because he was "from Nazareth".

The only reason that the apocrypha is not part of the "evidence" is because of 2,000 years of inherited church dogma. There's no methodogical reason for relying only on the canonical gospels. Jesus being a vegetarian is out of consideration (which is in one of those heretical gospels), but him instituting a ceremony to symbolically eat his flesh and blood is seen as authentic.