Originally Posted by stephan huller

God, I am so sick of hearing all these stupid white people arguing the historical Jesus including Bart Ehrman. To an informed outsider it seems to be such a waste of time. Some points:

1. There is no early Christian tradition which understood Jesus to be a historical individual without presenting t have been a divinity first - i.e. that 'Jesus' was present with Abraham, Moses in various Pentateuch narratives.
2. The notion of Jesus being born from a woman developed after the idea that Jesus came down from heaven as a God - i.e. there is no Church Father who argues POSITS Jesus as being human in some form without at the same time arguing against the heretical interpretation of the gospel (i.e. that Jesus was NOT human, that he had no human mother, that he really die on the cross etc.)
3. The argument about the shape of the present gospel cannot be used to determine the understanding of how those heretical traditions understood Jesus. This is my basic difficulty with Doherty's research. I haven't commented on it before but it's like trying to determine the truth about the Whitewater investigation from the Drudgereport or the whether affirmative action is fair from Rachel Maddow. These are biased sources. We are not getting the original material to reconstruct the position of those who held the view that Jesus was a God and not human. Their NT had different readings, omitted different passages and added new information we no longer have access to. To use the Catholic canon to reconstruct these opinions is hopelessly flawed.

Yet above and beyond any of these considerations most of the people who argue over the historical Jesus do so without any working knowledge of Judaism at the beginning of Christianity. They are principally white evangelicals (lapsed or otherwise) who have kein gefühl for other forms of Christianity which are principally based on mythicism via the liturgy.

It is so annoying to continue to see what is principally an American lapsed evangelical vs American evangelical debate. You're both American so right off the bad you know we are watching the equivalent of two pit bulls fighting - full of ferocity but beasts whose brains could fit in the palm of most people's hands

Here is the Jewish argument against the historical Jesus. The Qumran literature makes it very apparent there was an active expectation that God would visit his people. There is repeated evidence in the gospels that Jesus was condemned for claiming he was the Son of God or some such divine epithet. Yes there is also the 'son of David' or Christ sayings. But the Marcionites are repeatedly identified as interpreting these passages as if Jesus himself rejected these claims. Moreover nothing about Jesus is messianic nor would there be grounds for the Jewish authorities to kill someone for falsely claiming to be the messiah. The Pentateuch does present grounds for stoning someone who is a wizard calling the people away from the God of Israel. This may well have been grounds for Jesus's execution. Nevertheless this does not settle whether Jesus was a human being only that the narrative assumes that the Jews THOUGHT he was an enchanter.

So then we are back to the same problem. Jesus did not claim to be the messiah. This was most likely imposed on the text by later interpreters. The original claim by default was that he was taken by Peter to be the Son of God (see Clement of Alexandria's version of Matthew 16:18) and condemned for being an enchanter (hence his identification as Balaam in rabbinic sources). There is nothing to suggest that any tradition ever identified Jesus as a historical person before the middle of the second century.

Originally Posted by stephan huller

Daniel understands the son of man to be a supernatural being. Mark had to have been aware of.this

Originally Posted by No Robots

The New Testament is Jewish literature. To say that Jews have nothing to say about it is the very epitome of white arrogance.

Originally Posted by stephan huller

Jesus does appear as the Christ expected by the Jewish tradition.

Originally Posted by stephan huller

Jesus does appear as the Christ expected by the Jewish tradition. So what was the literary purpose of the gospel? It is more likely than not to say that we have to believe Jesus was the son of god

Originally Posted by Diogenes the Cynic

One of the best indications to me that the books of the NT (including the letters of Paul) were not directed at a Jewish audience is their blatant misuse and distortion of the LXX. Jewish crowds would have been calling bullshit at every turn.