aa5874

But, the Jesus stories as recorded in the Gospels were deduced to have been written no earlier than 3 decades from his supposed death, and there are no external sources that can corroborate that Jesus was even alive or was believed to have done miracles.

It is not unusual for a fiction writer to make up stories that appear plausible, so for an accusation to be made in a work of fiction is not an indication that miracles did occur through sorcery.

A simple explanation would be that the Jesus miracle stories were written as fiction anonimously long after the supposed events and were believed to be true by believers who may have wanted to go to heaven when Jesus comes a second time.

gstafleu

I don't get that. The accusations are clearly used as a literary device to say something about evil and hence, indeed, that Jesus cannot be evil. Now a literary device can of course be based on a historical event, but it does not need to be. Isn't the simplest explanation then: literary device, maybe with a historical basis but we don't know that?

Gerard Stafleu

andrewcriddle

Why, on your view, did the author feel it important to convince people that Jesus is not evil ?

Andrew Criddle

gstafleu

Because people had been portraying him thus? Agreed, but that does not necessarily mean he had been consorting with evil spirits, or even that this portraying happened at the alleged time of Jesus ministry. I would expect that when some movement posits a new Holy Man, Son of God, Generalized Savior, then an opposition claiming that either the putative Savior, and/or his followers were in fact bad guys would not be far behind.

Gerard Stafleu

neilgodfrey

How small minded. Miraculous healings are so passe. We hear of miraculous healings and miraculous recoveries from this or that condition all the time. Everyone knows how little we still know about our bodies and minds.

The conference I would break my leg to get to is one that offered to explain how Jesus walked on water. And how he transfigured and brought down voices from heaven, and how he raised Lazarus, and did that trick with the pigs. Now that one would be most enlightening!

Neil

spamandham

We can't even figure out how Criss Angel did that, and we watched him do it.

Clutch

Then why talk factively about how he did it, as opposed to why the belief that he had done it may have become entrenched? The latter explanatory category, notice, includes the possibility that he performed miracles -- but it also properly leaves open the full range of explanations appropriate to the phenomenon (viz., documents dating from substantially later that talk about the actions). These explanations include everything from the placebo-style prospect that you raise, to full confabulation of the events. That would be a scholarly approach; and recognizing this is not some subtle or difficult matter. Again, Stephen is correct to note that the phrasing of the talk's abstract begs important questions.

I don't understand your confidence in this conclusion. You seem to be paying too little attention (viz., none) to the bog-standard phenomenon of urban myths that propagate virally, despite always being related as something that happened to a friend of a cousin of a guy... etc. Nothing could be less surprising, to someone attentive to the social dynamics of information, than the prospect of anecdotes that spread without any testimony from the alleged principal actors -- on account of, they don't exist.

I don't say that Jesus didn't exist, but I can't see any reason to consider it particularly unlikely that stories would circulate about his healing powers without there being specific people who even claimed to have been healed by him. (Still less that there need have been people who had actually come to feel better following contact with Jesus, whether "organically improved" or not.)

andrewcriddle

IMO a claim that a real specific person is doing certain things on a regular basis is not a particularly likely candidate for an entirely baseless urban myth. Although specific stories about a named living person may be entirely imaginary there is usually some basis in reality for why this sort of story becomes attached to this person.

The really baseless uncheckable urban myths tend to involve members of a class of people doing something rather than a specific identifiable person.

Andrew Criddle

PhilosopherJay

Hi Andrew,

I entirely agree, "IMO a claim that a real specific person is doing certain things on a regular basis is not a particularly likely candidate for an entirely baseless urban myth."

If we accept this, we have alternatives. One is to consider that Jesus did these certain things.

On the other hand, one may consider that the person is a character in a series of fictional narratives. Let us consider Batman. He does certain things that seem miraculous on a regular basis (although perhaps slightly less miraculous than Jesus) and is an entirely baseless (or at least a relatively baseless) urban myth. We know that mythological characters in the ancient Greco-Roman world were widely accepted as historical characters. Scientific knowledge was so poor in those days that people's judgment on what was fictional and what was non-fictional was severely impaired.

We seem to be faced with the choice that Jesus' miracles were real or Jesus was a fictional character like Batman.

Warmly,

Philosopher Jay

spamandham

Claims of the miraculous were commonplace in those days. Even Josephus records flying chariots around Jerusalem as well as the crazy Jesus son of Ananus who can see the future.

The thing that makes Gospel Jesus different, is the degree of the miraculous attributed to him, but not the fact of it. This is a point I'd like to see addressed.

How and why did so many miracle stories come to be attributed to Gospel Jesus? The extent of miraculous attributed to him implies either intentional construction, or a sufficient period of time for myth making.

So then, outside of Jesus, is there any contemporary evidence for rapid (~a few decades) legend building? If not, then 'construction' is the simplest explanation. ...or, we need to punt on the typical dating for the texts.