JoeWallack

JW:
Let me try to speed things up here. HJs usually say crucifixion is the single most Likely Historical information about Jesus. Now what is your Evidence that this is Likely? To get you started let's consider the best Possible evidence and work from there. Do you have anything from Jesus stating that he was crucified?



Joseph

http://www.errancywiki.com/index.php/Main_Page

aa5874

Marcion claimed his Jesus was total supernatural but just appeared to be like a man, a phantom. The Jesus of the NT is claimed to be fully supernatural and still a real human by birth.

Both Marcion's Jesus and the Jesus of the NT are said to have existed, but originating from different Gods, during the reign of Tiberius, teached in the synagogues and performed miracles.

Now, if Marcion's total supernatural apparition, called Jesus, can do anything the Jesus of the NT can do, how can I tell who is real, if they can be real at all, when all the information about these figures called Jesus cannot be trusted?

The Jesus of the NT is described essentially as some type of supernatural god- like creature with abilities to raise himself from the dead, even in Josephus, a Jesus called Christ pulled off this miracle. Maybe it was a magic trick.

I cannot find anything to support the existence of these weird beings. I think these stories are just a pack of lies.

TedM

This is for you too Freethinkaluva.

You keep trying to change the focus here. As I stated in another answer, it isn't as simple as saying it is impossible to prove a negative. The fact is that if there was no HJ as founder then one of two things likely happened:

1. Christianity existed without a HJ as a foundation and then "created" or "evolved" to a HJ

2. Christianity BEGAN with belief in a HJ who never actually existed.


We would logically EXPECT that at least SOME evidence would support either one of these things if they are true.

We have LOADS of information/evidence, call it what you want. It is confusing, conflicting, and full of outlandish claims, and it is controversial in terms of dating, and meaning. Nevertheless it exists.

How can what we HAVE be used to support #1 or #2, as opposed to argue against the orthodox view or the view I have presented here of a HJ as founder?

ted

Toto

OK, we have the earliest identified Christian, Paul, writing about Christ as a god, with almost no biographical detail; later we have Mark filling in details of his ministry, trial, and death; later we have Matthew and Luke adding more details of a birth, going to the Temple at age 12, and post-resurrection activities. Then we have the apocryphal gospels adding details of his childhood; and much later, we have people filling in the empty space between age 12 and 30 with a trip to India, etc. This looks like evidence for theory number 1, especially when many of the gospel details are fashioned from Septuagint references.

If there is a historical Jesus here, he lived and died, and people forgot all of the mundane details about him, until for some reason, his followers started to spread his worship, and then someone had to make up the details. This seems like an improbable turn of events. Perhaps the original Jesus was a rather unpleasant person, and they had to hide all of the real details of his life? Otherwise why does it look like a story was built around an idea of a crucified savior?

JoeWallack

JW:
I'll take that as a no. I understand your complaint though. You are saying that there is evidence for HJ, poor evidence, but still evidence. Enough that the default position is HJ. In the absence of corresponding poor evidence for MJ you want to declare victory for HJ. I think this/your reasoning though is misleading. Just because the evidence for HJ is better/much better than the evidence for MJ this does not guarantee HJ. There's no avoiding establishing a Minimum HJ via evidence. Otherwise AJ (Agnostic Jesus) is the conclusion. Therefore, your Assumption of a default position for HJ is fair game here. My previous question to you and the reaction I've gotten from every HJ to it is representative of the difficulty in establishing Minimum HJ. So, continuing:

Do you have anything from anyone who knew Jesus stating that he was crucified?



Joseph

http://www.errancywiki.com/index.php/Main_Page

aa5874

The HJ is a fiction of imagination, the authors of NT and the Church Fathers did not try to establish an HJ, they claimed Jesus was God that became man, and considered the HJ as heresy and totally false. A god-man Jesus is not an HJ, just like the God of Moses is not a figure of history.

"Church History" bk1.2.1, "Since in Christ there is a two-fold nature, and the one in so far as he is thought of as God....while the other.......in so far as he, for the sake of our salvation, put on human nature with the same passion as our own....."

Even the Jesus in the TF is a God-man. The HJ has no known history but a lot of fiction.

TedM

I suppose that is my position, but I'm really interested in knowing what people here believe is the most compelling evidence for MJ, because maybe it isn't so poor. I get the impression here that quite a few people think the evidence for it is quite strong, and it is never very clear to me what they are using for evidence.

Since I consider this to be a different type of topic, I'll answer you on another thread.

ted

ph2ter

I am referring to Paul's theology about Jesus. According to you Paul divinized some preacher because of belief that he was resurrected.
First of all it is strange that from Paul we can't hear anything about that preacher's preaching. We read about preacher, but almost nothing about his preaching. What a preacher!
We can be pretty sure that his Jesus was not a preacher. What was his HJ if not a preacher?

Your HJ has only crucifixion in common with Gospel's Jesus or Paul's Jesus. This is too little for divinization to be possible.

Mythra

I'm going with preacher / philosopher. Fairly obscure, particularly after the fall of Jerusalem. Primary reason: the first century silence concerning Jesus. Which, in and of itself isn't that convincing. Except when the passages about the gospel Jesus' fame are compiled:

News about him spread all over Syria

Large crowds from Galilee, the Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea and the region across the Jordan followed him.

When he came down from the mountainside, large crowds followed him

Such large crowds gathered around him that he got into a boat and sat in it,

At that time Herod the tetrarch heard the reports about Jesus,

Hearing of this, the crowds followed him on foot from the towns.

A very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road, while others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. The crowds that went ahead of him and those that followed shouted, "Hosanna to the Son of David!"

News about him spread quickly over the whole region of Galilee.

Yet the people still came to him from everywhere.

When they heard all he was doing, many people came to him from Judea, Jerusalem, Idumea, and the regions across the Jordan and around Tyre and Sidon.

They ran throughout that whole region and carried the sick on mats to wherever they heard he was.

A large crowd of his disciples was there and a great number of people from all over Judea, from Jerusalem, and from the coast of Tyre and Sidon

Meanwhile, when a crowd of many thousands had gathered, so that they were trampling on one another

The next day the great crowd that had come for the Feast heard that Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem
Look how the whole world has gone after him!"

Mythra

And the reason I don't buy the JM position, are the evidences in the authentic Pauline epistles of a Jesus tradition that pre-dates Paul's conversion.