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Reload this Page "How do we even know that there WAS a Jesus who said anything?"
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Old 09-28-2009, 10:27 AM   #31
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You're falling over your gullibility level.
Guns off the table, in hand, and firing wildly.
What, because you want to believe in the accuracy of Jewish oral traditions??



Christian written traditions weren't as accurate as you'd like Jewish oral traditions -- given the variety of early manuscript traditions in christian literature.


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Old 09-28-2009, 10:35 AM   #32
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What, because you want to believe in the accuracy of Jewish oral traditions??
If the same interpretative technique is applied to the NT that is applied to the Talmud, then there is no more question about the historicity of Christ than there is of Hillel the Great.
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Old 09-28-2009, 10:43 AM   #33
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What, because you want to believe in the accuracy of Jewish oral traditions??
If the same interpretative technique is applied to the NT that is applied to the Talmud, then there is no more question about the historicity of Christ than there is of Hillel the Great.
I don't pin too much on the existence of Hillel.


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Old 09-28-2009, 10:51 AM   #34
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I don't pin too much on the existence of Hillel.
Do you mean that the question of Hillel's historicity isn't important to you, or that you don't think that his historicity is certain? If the former, why do you zero in on Christ without operating on the basis of a general theory of determining the historicity of historical figures? If the latter, what criteria do you use to assert that there is room for doubt about the historicity of Hillel?
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Old 09-28-2009, 11:02 AM   #35
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I don't pin too much on the existence of Hillel.
Do you mean that the question of Hillel's historicity isn't important to you, or that you don't think that his historicity is certain? If the former, why do you zero in on Christ without operating on the basis of a general theory of determining the historicity of historical figures? If the latter, what criteria do you use to assert that there is room for doubt about the historicity of Hillel?
I don't have an established contemporary context to place Hillel into. He may have existed, but how do you get past that mere possibility? History works from the basis of what has been established and validates "new" information from there. What is established in the Judean context include Herod's family, Roman chief officials, figures from the Jewish War, Simeon ben Kosiba and his supporters. How do you connect Hillel in there? On what grounds?


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Old 09-28-2009, 11:13 AM   #36
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People who do not take such a reductive approach to historical questions have no more reason to doubt the historicity of Christ than of Hillel, and the traditions regarding these two figures are best analyzed by using similar interpretive techniques. This seems to be the core of Goodman's position. I think there are better, stronger arguments for Christ's historicity; but these aren't bad.
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Old 09-28-2009, 11:14 AM   #37
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If the same interpretative technique is applied to the NT that is applied to the Talmud, then there is no more question about the historicity of Christ than there is of Hillel the Great.
...especially if Hillel is the historical Jesus.
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Old 09-28-2009, 11:23 AM   #38
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IBelieveInHymn digression
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Old 09-28-2009, 01:08 PM   #39
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On-topic: Goodman asks us to consider the text given the historical impact, but doesn't seem to establish any kind of methodology or criteria for what would be authentic from a HJ if one existed. This seems to be a pretty general problem: I don't know of a solid methodology to figure out what, if anything, would have been said by the "original Jesus" in the Gospels and what was incorrectly imputed to him by later authors. You could build up any number of interesting speculative cases, but wouldn't they all be just speculation? (BTW I would consider Doherty-style mythicism one of several speculative cases that I think are interesting but not definitive.)
I think this is the most obvious problem when trying to reconstruct a historical Jesus. In order to find him, you have to assume the type of Jesus that you're looking for and simply ignore what you assume is inauthentic. It is hopelessly circular, which is why I think it's actually pretty useless to try to find any sort of "historical" Jesus.

With the dearth of evidence and this type of circular reasoning, the best we can say about any sort of "historical" Jesus is "who knows". Because of this circularity, people have come up with a multitude of "historical" Jesuses - like hippy Jesus, apocalyptic prophet Jesus, messiah claimant Jesus, social revolutionary Jesus, Pharisee Jesus, Essene Jesus, ad nauseum.

The "historical" Jesus is really anything that historical Jesus proponents want him to be.
There is even the suicidal Jesus.
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Old 09-28-2009, 10:16 PM   #40
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People who do not take such a reductive approach to historical questions have no more reason to doubt the historicity of Christ than of Hillel, and the traditions regarding these two figures are best analyzed by using similar interpretive techniques. This seems to be the core of Goodman's position. I think there are better, stronger arguments for Christ's historicity; but these aren't bad.
You haven't read what Goodman said carefully enough. He is more ambivalent than you seem to think.


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