youngalexander

I think that this is very much to the point. After reading a number of JS expositions & others of the (an) historical Jesus, I was left wondering 'what's it all about Alphy?". However, since I have never really connected with the religiosi I thus supposed that it was the usual misunderstanding.

Then I became aware of the HJ/MJ debate. Well, us physicists like a few hard facts thrown into the mill (as opposed to warm and fuzzy feelings). Seriously jjr & GDon, it makes a hell of a lot of difference. When there is no consensus, nor even a recognised methodology for obtaining such, re the HJ, it makes life difficult for plebs like me.

I started from scratch, and scratch don't itch.

Doug Shaver

True. They look more like they evolved over just a few generations.

Chris Weimer

For the most part, the gospels are fairly complete upon being written initially. I would argue that Matthew is almost wholly the same as it was in 100* CE as it was in 300 CE. There are several verses which I believe to be interpolations, several which I think could be interpolations, and several which are corrupted, but substantially not much has changed.

*Not sure yet on the dating of Matthew, but I'm fairly certain it was penned before 100 CE.

Ted Hoffman

Context is everything. I have used the word "pipe" many times but it does not always mean the same thing. One who knows English can tell when I use it in a peculiar fashion. In the same sense, we can tell if Paul uses a certain phrase in a peculiar fashion. You cant just dismiss an argument without even examining it.
Plus, it is rather silly to refer to Muller's work. His critique was found to be framed and informed by a poorly instructed mind and is riddled with errors and misconceptions. Carrier, Myself, Doherty and Michael Turton have examined Muller's 'review' and debunked several of his views. You have to start with them before you can parade Muller's review as anything approaching a critique of Doherty's thesis. Muller simply presented different views from Doherty's. A rebuttal requires more effort. A scholarly rebuttal requires scholarly work. Requires reading what scholars have written about the subject. Something Muller never did. And he confesses as much.

It is not enough to show that one has a different opinion than Doherty's.
List sources contemporary to Paul that use kata sarka to refer to an earthly incarnation. If you cannot (and I know you cannot), you have no basis for claiming it was not a peculiar usage of the phrase.
An empty declaration like that does nothing to show us how Doherty's translation doesn't work.
You will do well to develop a substantive rebuttal to Doherty's Top 20 Silences.
Your glib "This is a pseudoproblem" dismissal appears inattentive to the arguments that have been advanced. I welcome you to falsify Doherty's arguments. Lets see what you are capable of.

You have not answered the question. Whether "Paul doesn't give much in the way of details to start with" does not explain why he used the OT and not eyewitness accounts. The rest of your comments are red herrings meant to distract readers from the issue I advanced.
Several scholars have worked on the meaning of archontes already and there is hardly anything you can add on this matter. There are a few conservatives who share your position but it is clear which side critical scholars favour.
In the first place, the word aeon (age/world) had a spiritual meaning.
R. Brown, J. Fitzmyer and R. Murphy in The New Jerome Critical Commentary, 1990, p.782 write that: "Contemporary Jewish theology contrasted 'this world (age)' with 'the world (age) to come.' Paul echoes that contrast and sees the former dominated by satan (see 1 Cor. 4:4). Christ's 'giving' of himself has brought about the meeting of the two ages (1 Cor. 10:11) and freed human beings from 'this age'"

In his translation of Contra Celsum, Chadwick notes that the "prince of this world" in Romans refers to 1 Cor. 2:8 (which he argues, has a spiritual meaning).
Leon Morris (1 Corinthians, pp. 53-54) also says Origen took the 'princes of this world' to mean demons (Origen Contra Celsum Book VIII, 13, Translated by Henry Chadwick, 1965)

The following scholars support the interpretation of "princes of this world" as referring to spiritual beings:

1. Paul Ellingworth A Translator's Handbook for 1 Corinthians, p.46
2. W. J. P. Boyd, '1 Corinthians ii.8,' Expository Times 68. p.158.
3. C. K. Barrett, First Epistle to the Corinthians, p.72
4. Paula Fredriksen, From Jesus to Christ, p.56
5. Jean Hering, The First Epistle of St. Paul to the Corinthians, p.16-17
6. S. G. F. Brandon., Time History and Deity, p.167
7. Buttrick G.A. (ed.), The Interpreter's Bible, Vol X, 1953, p.37-38,
8. R. Brown, J. Fitzmyer and R. Murphy in The New Jerome Critical Commentary, 1990, p.782 (see [7] below)
9. Others: Delling, Conzelmann, Thackeray, Schmiedel, J. H. Charlesworth, Ignatius letter to the Smyreans, 6:1

You are assuming what you should be proving. You have not answered the question. Historians dont choose "favourites".
Note that, anyone who had the might and authority to violently drive out moneychangers out of the temple during passover time could not have failed to catch the attention of historians.
The temple Ruckus, it has been demonstrated, was constructed using Nehemiah and other OT sources as the hypotext (see Troughton(sp?)). Plus, Fredricksen has also shown that the incident is unlikely to have happened.

Demonstrate that it is loaded. I challenge you to examine Michael Turton's Historical Commentary on The Gospel of Mark (online - link below) and develop an argument against the methodology he employs.
Before you do that, you have no starting point. At best, you get to demonstrate your ignorance in spectacular fashion.
You are alluding to the embarrasment criterion. Positive criteria have been shown to be demonstraby unreliable. The nearest place to check is Turton's commentary. Then come back.
First of all, you are talking people and numbers. I am talking method.
Which is it going to be? A popularity contest or the strength of the arguments?
Hardly.
Lets have a brief rundown of these Jesuses:

N.T. Wright proposes that the historical Jesus was a revolutionary and saviour. Geza Vermes presents a historical Jesus who is a charismatic teacher, healer, and exorcist - a Galilean holy man. Robert H. Stein proposes that he was a supernatural historical miracle worker and saviour. Marcus Borg talks of Jesus as a spirit person, subversive sage, social prophet, and movement founder. John Dominic Crossan and Burton Mack tell us that the historical Jesus was a cynic sage/ landless labourer, displaced peasant. J.P Meier tells us that Jesus was a marginalized jew (a ‘blip’ on the radar screen of pagans and mainstream Jews), a radical egalitarian feminist socialist with a social agenda. Stevan Davies tells us that the historical Jesus was a healer - alternate personality as "the spirit of God,". Robert Eisenman hypothesizes that the historical Jesus was a Torah-observant and nationalistic Jew of insurrectionist leaning. Paula Fredriksen, Bart Ehrman, Theissen, E.P. Sanders, Dale Allison and Ludemann all claim that Jesus apocalyptic prophet. Richard Horsley tells us he was a social revolutionary for an egalitarian society. Stevan Davies claims he was a Galilean charismatic, Luke Timothy Johnson persuades us that Jesus as a son of god who was baptized and died for our sins. Riley tells us he was a Hellenistic hero. The Jesus seminar vouch for an uprooted, iconoclastic Jesus who is dissimilar to both the antedecent Jewish tradition and the christian one that followed it and who is a wandering cynic philosopher, and so on and so forth.
Now, if your head is not spinning, I dont know what can spin it.

If the assumption that a HJ existed is incorrect, as I argue it is, then the historical certainities HJ scholars assign to the pericopes and the HJ reconstructions they engage in are at best irrelevant; at worst they are deceptive and misleading to readers who haven't familiarized themselves well with this field of study.

I argue that this assumption inevitably informs the choices they make in their criticism. The assumption, without doubt, makes them reject alternative possibilities as they analyze historiographical evidence and taints every conclusion they draw. Like a brush soaked with paint, every stroke they make is coloured by this assumption, even when it is not intended.

This historical Jesus epidemic has spread accross the entire range of miltivaried historical constructions from the textual stratigraphy, to the archaeological examination to the sociological lens.

An important point to bear in mind is that the data does not allow us to assume, a priori, that a historical Jesus existed. Quite the contrary. But that, is exactly what biblical scholars do: they treat the existence of a HJ is a maxim. I argue that this is the untamed demon undermining their earnest efforts and damning their conclusions.

A Horrifying Profusion of Anomalous and Grosteque Jesuses

In The Historical Jesus (1991), John Dominic Crossan says regarding the unstandardized nature of historical Jesus research: "the historical Jesus research is becoming something of a scholarly bad joke".
Crossan adds that because of this comical and irregular nature "it is impossible to avoid the suspicion that historical Jesus research is a very safe place to do theology and call it history, to do autobiography and call it biography". However, Meier, as we learn below, thinks that Crossan and like-minded scholars are deluded on this and he contends that HJ scholars are doing theology, whether they realize it or not.

Crossan's observations may be correct but the only problem is that he is part of the 'bad joke'. Instead of extracting himself from the obviously flawed process and undertaking the burden of assiduously seeking and eliminating the anomaly that makes a harmony unattainable, he instead, like a moth to the flame joins the orgy.

While he complains that there is "acute scholarly subjectivity" pervading the Historical Jesus studies, a neutral observer can easily discern that, in the midst of the melee of the Jesus Wars (as some Americans refer to it), Crossan too, with his face glistening with sweat and chest heaving with exertion, suffers from the same bias he accuses his warring colleagues of suffering from. Perhaps not the exactly in the same fashion, but it nevertheless contributes to the malaise in HJ research.

What are the symptoms that indicate to us that HJ research is in serious jeopardy? Its output. HJ scholars have come up with a horrifying profusion of anomalous and grosteque Jesuses.
Read more here.

Muller has been examined and found wanting as I have stated. Doherty has specifically responded, blow by blow, to Muller's work. Muller has not mustered a response.
If you are going to rely on him, quit while you are ahead. Kata Sarka was debated about here, fully, in a discussion involving Carrier, Doherty and Jeff Gibson. It ended up with Gibson imagining what certain professors thought.
Now, if you can get someone whose Greek credentials are better than Goibson, someone who also passionately discredits the MJ hypothesis, name him. When push came to shove, Jeff was incapable of dealing with the issues. He instead solicited opinions from professors. They refused to agree with him about Carrier's competence. He then chose to read their mind and state what they never stated.
If you get someone more competent in Greek than Carrier, and one who has a passionate dislike for MJ hypothesis, bring him here and we'll have his guts ripped apart.
Until then, dont even start.
If what you do is "google around" then dismiss issues, Why dont you stick to what you can say then.
Turton writes:
Read more here.

Yeah, right. Divide and rule at work.
The point is, anything that compromises Mark as a historical source undermines the validity of believing that the events described in it are historical.
Red Herring. One "straightforward" aspect of a worldview, does nothing to salvage the rest of the nonsensical aspects in that worldview.
Ascension of Isaiah, for example, does not provide the exact location where the demons were fighting. Paul does not provide the exact location of the second and third heaven. Or whether there were toilets there.
Yet what apologists keep asking Doherty when he provides his interpretation of kata sarka is to provide precise, logical details.
Do you even know that that is what has been happening?

Clivedurdle

I am half Welsh so that may be an insult! (hint - my first name!)

And the history of who has claimed Arthur is fascinating.

On the play, have a read of Nazarenus, authorship is debatable but the descriptions of the tooing and froing are convincing!

Xianity has always evolved its doctines -trinity, christology, Mary etc.

It may be centuries if Jesus is modelled on the teacher of righteousness!

Whatever model Jesus we have, is the lack of writing important? Looking at the gospels we have a picture of someone well able to argue, who knows their Bible, who is said to have spent time when young with the priests.

Would we not expect some writing from someone - who with the cynic arguments and the parables, feels highly educated? The Roman Empire had reasonable standards of literacy.

Have forged writings of Jesus been produced? We have bits of the cross, why not something more substantial? The pentateuch is ascribed to Moses, why nothibg to Jesus?

No Robots

Well, the Welsh are the true Britons, right? And Arthur was their champion against the invading Anglo-Saxons, right? So I should have said, "spoken like a true Briton".


Look, we don't have any writings directly from the Stoic philosopher Epictetus (c.55–c.135) . His student, Arrian, gives us the only account we have of what he said. Epictetus was a famous teacher in the Imperial capital. Jesus was a nobody from nowhere. So, no, it isn't surprising that we have so little from him. We should be grateful to his amme haaretz followers for how much they managed to preserve.

Spenser

I'm a layman in this field but from what I am reading here and the kind of evidences I would require, I am leaning towards the mythical Jesus. The whole story makes perfect sense to me in this light as opposed to how utterly amazing it would have been for Jesus to be an actual human that had all this religion fall into being because of him, literally change the world yet have no historical significance at the time of his walking as to bear any real eyewitnesses. Even if he wasn't the son of God this would be amazing...

No Robots

It is amazing. Simply put, this is a case where a person of tremendous abilities is grossly misunderstood. The complexity lies in properly assessing the man and his abilities, and in understanding the process which leads others to such gross misunderstanding. As for how neglected he was in his own time, look at Mozart, a mere couple of centuries ago, in one of the world's great capitals, being dumped into a pauper's grave.

Spenser

The amazing part is the affect he had on so many people and yet no mention outside Xian sources which lends credence to the MJ stance...

No Robots

You find it amazing that a great man suffers obscurity in his own lifetime only to receive wide fame after his death? You should read more history, I think.