gurugeorge

If you mean simply that scholarly analyses of the texts, so far as they may reveal a historical Jesus at all, reveal a non-God-man historical Jesus, that's exactly what I'm saying, and you still have the problem that most Christians today believe in in the divine God-man.

(I assume you are including Christians all over the world, not just comfortable, white, liberal middle class people in Europe and the US, who enjoy and want to keep their Christian rituals and morality but are otherwise rational and secular minded, and who ignore the cognitive dissonance implicit in thinking of themselves as part of a tradition that has for 2,000 years largely accepted the God-man as being historical fact, while not themselves believing in that God-man.)

gurugeorge

You might be right Peter, or I might have mis-worded to give a stronger meaning than is warranted, but my impression of the field (from layman's browsing here, general reading, etc.) agrees with what Toto said on page 2 of this thread:

Is your question whether there was a historical Jesus, or a historical Messiah who died for your sins and who will throw you into a lake of burning fire if you do not believe in him? There is NO scholarly consensus for the latter.

The only scholarly consensus is that there was a guy named Jesus (or something else) who inspired the Christian church. There is no scholarly consensus that it makes any difference at all whether you believe that this person existed or not.

There is also no scholarly consensus about what the guy named Jesus said or what he wanted you to do.

My impression is that, amongst serious (I know! I know! - who defines that?! ) biblical scholars, the commited "God-man"-believing scholars, though by far more numerous than MJ-ers, are considered to be just as cranky. But I admit that's just an impression of the field from an interested layman's point of view.

However, if it's right, then it's a scholarly bombshell (the implications of which are I believe truly vast and horrific, if you think about it) that's having a very slow-motion impact on the rest of the world, and (as I said) if it's true it's hardly less destructive of Christianity as the grand tradition we know, than any MJ position would be. (I say that as someone who prefers MJ because it seems to me more realistic and, looking at religions as a whole human phenomenon, without Christian "exceptionalism", just obviously makes more sense of the material.)

And again, at the risk of tediously restating something I've already restated a dozen times in this thread (I know, it's too late! ), the Gospels, the NT in general were supposed to be, and have been taken by the vast majority of Christians throughout history to be, the very historical proof of Jesus the God-man that one might require. If scholarship has shown that they are not, and that they only provide evidence of, at best, some obscure little nobody spouting rehashed Cynic wisdom mixed with oddball Jewish apocalypticism (or whatever, I'm just telescoping a couple of varieties there), then this is something very big indeed, and I can only guess that the reasons it hasn't really sunk in are because of a) the obscurity of the scholarship and b) the enormity of the conclusion, and resultant cognitive dissonance (the mind can't quite focus on it, falls into an abyss as soon as it thinks of the human waste involved if this is true, so it's easier to just brush it aside).

Amaleq13

Preached
Attracted followers
Was crucified

I think the "mainstream" agrees on at least those three details.

Koyaanisqatsi

I said Christians. Mark was not a Christian. He was a Roman propagandist, remember?

No Robots

This is quite right. I would go further and say that an accurate reading of the Gospels reveals an Historical Jesus who is far more of a bombshell than any Mythical Jesus; meaning a bombshell not just for religionists but for secularists as well. Just as the God Incarnate was a way for the religious to evade the Historical Jesus, so the Mythical Jesus is a way for secularists to evade the Historical Jesus.

Toto

For gurugeorge: There is an opinion by David Brooks in the New York Times that relates to your question about how Christians deal with modern scholarship. Unfortunately, it seems to be blocked for non subscribers, but fair use allows me to quote a few paragraphs:

eta: you may be able to access this copy: The Catholic Boom

gurugeorge

Thanks for the heads-up Toto, unfortunately I can't access either, but it does sound like a good article (heh, maybe it's time to subscribe anyway ). "Quasi religious" is a good term.

I don't know what the situation is like in America with intelligent, rational people who still like to stick to their Christianity, but in the UK it's basically identity and a sort of a pride in a tradition - it really is about sticking with a religion that has an ancient history, has built loads of great churches, had many great thinkers and great artists, etc. There's also a lot of "Englishness" attached to being Church of England - lots of the "establishment" (toffs, high level academics, people who go to university and get into politics, etc., etc.) are Christian in this sort of way. They tend to go for cute, highbrow (but ultimately tenuous and metaphysical) arguments for Christian exceptionalism ("Christianity's so great because it has this terribly subtle but terribly profound way of looking at things and no it's not in the slightest bit like Buddhism or any of the other countless nice moral religions there have been").

It has been said that we need religion in some way, but a rational kind of religion. My belief is that art, the passionate and serious way art has been revered in the West, has been a kind of religious substitute; also love of Nature, etc. These are both fine, but we could probably do with more of a solid social cohesion around our attitude to the "unknown unknown" or transcendent, or Absolute or whatever one might call "it". But maybe that's just me. (I'm a rationalist who has had spiritual and mystical experiences without seeking them, and like Sam Harris I see a lot of value and beauty in spiritual experience, although divorced from cosmology and not so tightly connected to morality. But that does make me kind of sympathetic to seriously religious Christians - I mean the really nice ones whose belief gives them moral strength and a noble demeanour - which is why this business of Christianity being a walking corpse does disturb me. Anyway, enough digression from me.)

Zeichman

Burton Mack has varied from accepting the historicity of the crucifixion to agnostic about its authenticity. I doubt that anyone else considered "mainstream" would place it in doubt.

Depending on one's definition of preaching, any non-mute person would be a preacher. I'm also curious as to whom spamandham thinks denies this historicity of this.

jjramsey

Sorry to comment on an oldish post, but ...

I don't know how the scholars can handle the dissonance, but they can and have done so. These are the guys who brought us the Documentary Hypothesis (i.e. JEDP) or pointed out various inconsistencies in the Resurrection narratives (e.g. Reginald Fuller). So, somehow, there are plenty of Christian scholars for whom religion has not apparently stunted honest inquiry.

darstec

Christian simply means oiled one, and even oiled thing. Do a word search and you will find the word christos applied to more than just the Joshua character.

And judging from the way Christians were described one could well make a case that they were simply a people (likely of various theologies) who doused themselves with an hallucinogenic oil. Eventually, through murder and destruction of writing, one group won out above the others and for a millennium held absolute power over much of the world through control by the State.

Joshua was as nondescript a name as John Smith is to Americans, most likely chosen for its anonymity. Now if they were called Joshuanites (or Jesusites if you prefer) maybe you would have an argument.