gstafleu

In several other threads, the concept of "another historical Jesus" (other than the Scripture one), OHJ for short, has come up. I'm reading Robert Price's Deconstructing Jesus, and I thought I'd share a relevant passage.

In the chapter "The Historicized Jesus" he has a section "Joshua Messiahs." The section title is based on the Messianic claimants Theudas and the Egyptian. Theudas threatened to part the river Jordan for his followers, the Egyptian threatened to bring down the wall of Jerusalem (they didn't get very far, the Romans got wind of the plans and scattered the crowds). Both these acts are things that Joshua also did, be it that his walls were Jericho's. Price, in his inimitable way, concludes from this that "there was some currently available category like a 'Joshua Messiah,' a 'Jesus Christ.' (Joshua and Jesus are variants of the same name.)

He then extends this, to give the following little list of OHJs:
(I'll hope you'll forgive me my Price-like header ).

There are quite a few actual Jesuses in the list, so there is no shortage for OHJ candidates. I think this strengthens my point: if you want to talk about an OHJ, you have to be specific.