spamandham

Most scholars are Christians and can not be expected to be unbiased.

Is there any scholarly work that has actually examined the evidence objectively and arrived at this conclusion?

fatpie42

E.P. Sanders? Yeah, I know that he isn't perfect as far as scholars go, but his view is this. He reckons that, if Jesus is historical (which he seems to think very likely on the sole basis of the Bible *sighs*), Jesus would most likely be an apocalyptic preacher who was executed for the ruckus he made in the temple.

The explanation is as follows:

1) The gospels all describe a prophecy of a great event which will happen soon and it is described as happening within their own lifetime. There are clear signs that this prophecy became somewhat embarassing later on as we have Paul explaining why so many people have died while still waiting for the event to come, we have John's gospel saying that actually Jesus hadn't said that any of the disciples would survive to see this event, and we finally have 2 Peter reminding us that a day for God is 1000 years for us as an explanation for why it is taking so blooming long (and I'm sure even he doesn't envisage it taking as long as 2000 years for this event to happen.) This prophecy is clearly an embarassment so Sanders suggests that this makes it likely to be one of the original teachings, not something added later. As such, if the main teachings come from an actual historical Jesus, it's not so controversial to claim that Jesus expected a cataclysmic event to come soon, probably involving bringing the 'kingdom of God' to earth.

2) Jesus is described as being hated by the pharisees and the high priests. In the case of Jesus' arguments with the pharisees, even what we read in the gospels is not any more controversial than the kinds of debates they would have with one another. It's absurd to claim that the pharisees would want to kill Jesus on the basis of it and in any cases the gospels claim that the high priests were responsible for Jesus' death anyway.

The high priests are said to charge Jesus with blasphemy, but we are also told that the trial had a problem with conflicting witnesses. Jesus is eventually condemned on the basis of some only mildly controversial comments. As such we might reasonably gauge from the described events that the trial was somewhat rigged. They wanted Jesus to be condemned for the start. The high priest, before sentencing Jesus, tears his garments, which is seen as a sign of mourning and might have been a way to convince the audience that what Jesus had said should be taken as a grave slight against God.

Since at the trial people keep making reference to destroying the temple, the event most in line with the temple in all of the stories concerning Jesus would be knocking down the stalls of the money changers. As such, Sanders suggests that the high priests worried that Jesus might cause a riot on the basis of this event. As such, they would have wanted to kill Jesus because in the event of a riot Roman troops would come to break it up and they would use a great deal of force in doing so, leading to much loss of life.


Objective enough for you? Whether right or wrong, surely it still counts as a scholarly work?

J-D

Why on earth are you asking us whether Dawkins has read this article or not? How on earth would we know? If you actually want to know the answer to this question, why don't you try asking Dawkins? That's the sensible course of action.

And if you don't actually want to know the answer to this question, I can't think of one good reason for asking it.

Clivedurdle

I'm in must correct errors on internet mode, so apologies!

What is this about Mark being least mythological? Did I fantasise stuff about voices in clouds, doves, going to mountains, feeding thousands with fish and bread, talking with the devil?

How can you have degrees or proportions of mythology?

I think there is a real need to look in detail at the history of the historical Jesus.

The xian Jesus - please read any statement of belief, creed etc, is on the lines of fully god fully man. That is not a historical formulation.

Next question, where and when did these ideas of variations on a what sort of bloke from Palestine - son of high priest, carpenter, nutter, radical preacher etc is this bloke arise? Where and when is this first discussed, why? What is the co-evolution of these ideas? Who proposed what, who responded, so that we ended up on the hj track?

It looks to me like an assumption - there has to be a person - a historical core - to explain this.

But it is only a working hypothesis. There is an alternate - myth.

Logically both hypotheses should be treated equally and studied to see what happens.

But they are not. There are huge assumptions and repetitions of gossip - like execution records and x says Chrestus, with no open look at all of the evidence.

Why is all the earliest archaelogical evidence of fish symbols and similar again? Who did the Assyrians say were critical in passing knowledge to humans? Why are fish stories so prevalent in the gospels?

I'd be very cautious with historical cores.

Clivedurdle

Oh and I really must defend the pharisees again! They were not as portrayed in the gospels! That is a propaganda position! Which raises - why is this Jesus character portrayed as giving such a misleading view of the pharisees?

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/...55129/Pharisee

Jesus in fact is portrayed as a confused Sadducee - not one jot not one tittle, but eating corn on the Sabbath. It would be the Sadducees - not the Pharisees - who would complain about that.

What does this sort of error say about how much the authors actually know about Judaism and therefore their authenticity?

Why exactly are we not looking at a Greco roman play set in a romantic war torn location using major themes of oriental cults and evolving into a worldwide cult?

Solo

Would it not be be fair to say, Toto, that the "new and complicated" idea of the origin of the Jesus myth has not yet been presented in a way acceptable to academic specialists ?

But the point is that Dawkins is a bright academic who would know which sources he should consult on a given subject. Why would he even consider embracing a theory which has no academic backing at present ?


I do not know why the Jesus of faith has to be "defeated" to begin with. In case you haven't heard, you don't have to buy into it. You live in a society where it's ok to believe anything you want. You have no more right to take away holy biscuits from others because you believe they are not holy, than they have the right to tell you what your kids will learn in school. God provided us with a solution to himself and religion a long time ago. He put reason into our heads which tolerates foolishness, and makes him unnecessary for the chores of everyday living. To simplify things for us, he removed the religious content from words like respect and decency.

So, I would want to take a close look new idolatry which were to replace Jesus Christ expiring on the cross which symbol evidently allows the freedom to make of it what you will. And if you think human psyche can exist without "idols" you are seriously misinformed. You only have to read the history of the French Revolution to understand what I am telling you.

Live and let live, Toto.

Jiri

Clivedurdle

Is the idea of the one god the problem?

Reason

That Dawkins would be ignorant (not likely) of the controversy of Jeebus' existence is not really relevant. After all, Dawkins' day job is evolutionary biologist, not theologian.

Chili

But in a world where gnostic is opposite to agnostic one should never accept what a scholar thinks as fact.

Solo

No. The problem - if there is a "design" problem - may be in the way our brains have evolved. Arthur Koestler was an entusiastic proponent of the idea that our brains' wiring has a serious defect. (Ghost in the Machine (or via: amazon.co.uk)) The human brain, and the species, has unergone a rapid change within the last half a million years, far in excess of what has been anatomically recorded in any other animal. With this rapid expansion of the cranial mass, the older brain was overlaid by the new cortical structures without much communication going on between them. The result has been what Koestler calls "schizobiology": the interactions of the external world have been isolated into the cortical-intellectual functions (which are dorsal in orientation), and the internal 'ganglionic' nervous functions (which are ventral-visceral), supplying internal data of the organism "feelings". These two sides of us, the theory goes, do not fit well together. It is interesting that in medicine, the "separation" of emotion from reasoning has been observed since Galen (who held that thoughts were brain functions but emotions circulated in the vessels of the body). Descartes vaguely intuited the disconnect in the philosophy of the 17th century. There is a more complex, recent model from the 1960's (called Papez-Maclean) which actually separates the brain into three functional entities (archi/meso/neo-cortex) based on phylogenetic acquisition of function. The oldest stratum (a so-called limbic system) for all intents and purposes is actually the old reptilian brain. It forms the inner envelope of the brain stem.

The neo-cortex, in the words, of Paul Maclean, creates an image of the world, which is - as it were - a composite of the external world and internal "states" of the organism. Most of us - when we talk about something happening "out there" do not realize that our brain, while analyzing the outside mixes in (or projects) our imagination into the world. A simple example of this - familiar to all drivers of motor vehicles - is the brain working on an uncertain object lying ahead on the road which the car is approaching. It first suggests - almost always - it is a road-kill, a carcass, and when the car approaches, it "re-assesses" the identity of the object - and its usefulness !

The problem with our brain operating in this way, Koestler thought, is that there is no clear hierarchical subsuming of the emotional to the intellectual. The emotional side of us - having a shorter and more discreet access to our innermost selves, in certain matters always predominates. Among other things, the conative side of us projects our wishes, hopes, and need for security, on symbolic structures and dominant individuals, combining the two into IDOLS.

So, it does not really matter whether the symbolic psychic representation is a Pantheon, and whether the Pantheon sits on Mount Olympus or in Hollywood, or whether the psychic structure is organized around one God, or an idiot who somehow became the president of the United States. Idols will always be there. If we are reasonable, we will not be trying to overthrow idols but manage them : eg. by presidential election, movie selection and by keeping the fire and brimstone limbic fanatics as from access to our civic edifice. Not by waging a war of extermination on them.