ph2ter

Good case against Jesus historicity can be built on the foundation which says that OT prophecies about Jesus where used to construct his character. In other words, the prophecies about Jewish Messiah are not applied to some historical character, but rather, that character is constructed by using them. By definition, prophecies are not possible and fulfillment of some of them is possible only by chance. When I was believer I was again and again astonished by some OT prophecies about Jesus, and those prophecies then served to me as a proof that Jesus is really what NT says about him. But when I rejected all the miracles and prophecies as impossibilities, then those same OT prophecies served to me as a proof that Jesus is nothing more than a construct and imagination.
If character of Jesus came into existence in that way, then it is reasonable to suppose that Christianity started with some document which was a compilation of OT prophecies about Jewish Messiah. That document was growing and prophecies were added to it side by side with the interpretations.
Eusebius concerning Papias said something which looks very close to that idea:

These things are related by Papias concerning Mark. But concerning Matthew he writes as follows: "So then Matthew wrote the oracles in the Hebrew language, and every one interpreted them as he was able."
From Eusebius, Hist. Eccl ., 3. 39.

According to Irenaeus those Oracles of Matthew were written before the Gospel of Mark, because Irenaeus in Against Heresies 3:1 records :

'Matthew also issued a written Gospel among the Hebrews in their own dialect, while Peter and Paul were preaching at Rome, and laying the foundations of the church. After their departure, Mark, the disciple and interpreter of Peter, did also hand down to us in writing what had been preached by Peter. Luke also, the companion of Paul, recorded in a book the Gospel preached by him. Afterwards, John, the disciple of the Lord, who had leaned upon his breast, did himself publish a Gospel during his residence at Ephesus in Asia.'

It seems more natural to me that mentioned oracles were not 'oracles of the Lord Jesus', but rather 'oracles (prophecies) about the Lord Jesus'. The Greek word here used for oracles by Eusebius is 'logia' which is in the LXX used for words coming from God and likewise in the NT of the words of God in the OT. Logia comes to be used in the early Church of the sayings of Jesus, but here we maybe should understand the word rather as 'prophecy' than 'saying'.
Then the remark of Papias that every one interpreted them as he was able comes into place and means that oracles about Jewish Messiah taken from the OT where interpreted by emerging Christians in different ways, but which finally resulted in the Gospel story of Jesus. Gospel according to Matthew which we posses today certainly is not the document about which Papias speaks. Original document was written in Hebrew language and probably bears no resemblance to the actual Gospel. But there exist something very important which is common to both of them. They both heavily use the OT prophecies about Jesus. When we extract only specifically mentioned OT prophecies about Jesus from the Gospel of Matthew we can construct almost his whole life. The Gospel of Matthew specifically put into Jesus mouths:
5.17."Think not that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets; I have come not to abolish them but to fulfill them."
Fulfillment of the prophecies stayed in the center of that Gospel.

According to that idea the oldest parts of the Gospels are OT prophecies around which the Gospel story started to grow.

Juststeve

Why isn’t it the case that the simplest hypothesis is that Jesus was an actual man around whom a great deal of legendary material accreted, some of which was inspired by the Hebrew Scriptures? There are legends about people like George Washington and Babe Ruth, but they were never the less existent people.

Steve

Toto

Why is this the simplest hypothesis? Is it even detailed enough to be counted as a hypothesis? When did this person live, why is there no trace of his real historical personage, how did legends displace every aspect of his life so quickly?

yalla

T.T. Thompson in his book 'The Messiah Myth" gives a wealth of material dating up to several centuries BC from the mid east region that uses common motifs which were used to 'construct' characters such as David and JC.
He cites many examples and shows the antecedents in religious literature and royal propaganda that provides the basic bricks for a HJ edifice.
Very interesting book.

bacht

Because when you examine this hypothesis there are problems, starting with the lack of any reference to this man except in Christian writings

Then you have to explain why this man was the messiah when he bears no similarity to traditional Jewish messianic expectations

Then you have to explain how this man was elevated from preacher to the only begotten Son of God by monotheistic Jews

You also have to explain why the earliest Christian writings we have (Paul's letters) say almost nothing about the earthly career of this man and focus on his spiritual/heavenly activity

Then there's the lack of "Jesus tourism": there's no indication that primitive Christians were curious about the places Jesus lived, his appearance, artifacts he used (the Holy Grail legend is much later) etc - one might expect pilgrimmages or shrines or whatever right from the beginning, but they don't show up until many generations after the first followers

Juststeve

Toto:

My best guesses would be that Jesus lived early in the first century of the common era. Secular history is silent about him because except for a few devoted followers he just wasn’t important during his life. Those things that would make him seem important were legendary and added after he was dead. There are traces of the historical personage in the Gospels although you have to dig through a lot of legend and apologetic material to detect it.

I view this as the simpler explanation because we are familiar with legend growing up around dead historical personages. I gave you two examples, many more exist. The theory that he was real but aggrandize by legend requires no creative conspiracy, just the functioning of a process with which we are well familiar.

Generally I agree with what the Gospels say about Jesus unless I have good reason to doubt it. I have good reason to doubt things like his resurrection or his walking on water so I reject those. I have no reason to doubt the existence of an itinerant Jewish preacher who ran afoul the Romans and got crucified. That’s what the Romans did to people like that.

Steve

Juststeve

Bacht:

You make some valid points but I don’t think they support the conclusion that Jesus was totally a historical.

Why does he not appear in contemporary secular histories? I already answered that, because he wasn’t important enough to appear.

You are correct that he does not conform to Jewish messianic expectations. That is because neither he nor anyone else did those things King Messiah is predicted to do. Facts can be stubborn and Jesus did not do the Messianic acts. You can see particularly in Matthew an attempt to twist Hebrew Scripture to make it appear as those Jesus fulfilled some of the prophesies, but those efforts would only convince the already convinced.

He was elevated from preacher to son of God rather gradually and not by monotheistic Jews. His elevation was the work of Pagans who early in the history of Christianity became the overwhelming majority of Christians.

Paul says very little about Jesus’ life because a) he knows so little about it, and b) because its not the thing about Jesus that interests Paul.

I don’t know how much tourism there was in the first hundred years of Jesus’ life or whether any of it centered on the places connected with his life. I would note that even today there are vastly more Christians than there are folks who go to the holy land to see the purportedly places connected with his life. That is to say that even today the vast majority of people who think he was born in a manger never go to Bethlehem.

Steve

No Robots

Re: lack of tourism, don't forget that Judaea was the scene of considerable and protracted turmoil shortly after the life of Christ.

show_no_mercy

Not really. That area didn't start going into upheval until the reign of Nero. Josephus calls the time period before the war (7 years, or 59 CE, when he was in his 20s) a time period of unprecedented peace and prosperity.

No Robots

I am of course referring to the period from the start of the Jewish War in AD 70 to the razing of Jerusalem in 135.