ApostateAbe

I guess that would be a logical conclusion given what I said, but, by the same token, it is strongly in their religious interests that Jerusalem exists, or that the Jewish scriptures exist, or that the human race exists. Religious interests and other biases must be weighed against likelihood.

bacht

I know. This is the basic problem with all the Christian texts, no external corroboration. There may be dozens of possible ways to explain the origins of Christianity.

The reason I'm still leaning towards accepting some of the material as authentic is the question of the creative limits of post-1st C forgers. Should we believe that every single story, every character, every theological detail was concocted from whole cloth? It's possible, but how likely? Or was the raw material already available, and the 2nd C writers simply compiled it with their own agendas in mind?

Maybe Marcion and his opponents sat down with a Septuagint in one hand and their adversary's work in the other, and figured a way to interweave the ideas :huh:

aa5874

Again, you have destroyed your own arguments.

Look at your own post. There is corroboration for Jerusalem.

Jerusalem exists.

There is no corroboration for Jesus.

Jesus did not exist.

It's all over.

ApostateAbe

Yeah, you just nailed me, and your criticism would be a huge blow if I were writing a highly-researched carefully-structured thesis paper, but I am not. I am sorry I am not careful enough to list all the conditions of all the rules I give you. In the end, the argument is won by the most objectively likely theory, not the rhetorical gotchas. The existence of Jesus is in the interest of Christians, and they are the only ones who corroborate his existence. But the statements written in passing, and in conflict with other Christians, without an apparent intention to persuade people of the existence of Jesus, matters a lot. In addition, the details of Jesus' supposed life that match a likely personality profile of the time and place, details that don't match a model of a mythical figure, that are not apparently in the religious interest of Christians, are very important. Christians are the only source for the existence of the apostle Peter and the apostle Paul. It is in their religious interest that they exist. That is no good reason to start with the presumption that they never existed. It is your responsibility to provide the evidence for your theory at this point.

bacht

I don't follow you here. I agree that without Xtian lit there would be no evidence for the existence of Peter & Paul. We would all agree that the NT writers had an agenda which was not driven primarily by historical accuracy. Why should we accept their witness when it's just as reasonable to see P & P as symbols for conflicting Christian ideologies?

A conservative evaluation would focus on how the Gospels or Acts reflect the concerns of their 2nd C authors, and be neutral or skeptical about the purported history they present.

aa5874

You have nailed yourself and you just won't stop.

Now, Peter and Paul don't exist.

ApostateAbe

I actually agree with you. I am telling aa5874 that it is no more reasonable to demand extra-Christian sources for the existence of Peter and Paul than for the existence of Jesus.

bacht

Sorry, I missed that. Double-a is on a mission

Topher

Richard Carrier has argued[1] that, in his view, the JM position better explains the current evidence, and it explains things that the HJ position doesn't. Furthermore, most serious people who are for ahistoricity do not (or at least they shouldn't) pretend that it is proven proven, only that there is enough of a foundation to the hypothesis for it to be taken seriously, which it should. I think part of the problem here is there is so much poor scholarship from the past on this topic that it's not surprising that the mainstream has rejected it, however there is some good serious stuff out there. It certainly is not any more radical than other ideas about the historicity of Jesus; it has a basis in history (for example, the idea of initiates receiving the hidden interpretation of texts, while the outsiders were told something else is not a new idea.) The JM position is not just founded on the negative argument from silence (which is in of itself still a problem for Christians and the historicity of Jesus the Christ), but rather the positive claim that Christianity started as a mystery religion, based on a reinterpretation of OT scripture.

The problem with the HJ position is people will tend to work backwards from the Jesus they wish to find. First they decide who Jesus 'probably' was (based on what?) and then they comb the Bible to try to find that version of Jesus.

I think for all sides, if we're honest with ourselves then the only conclusion we can really make is that we simply don't know if Jesus existed.

[1] How Not to Argue The Mythicist Position: http://media.libsyn.com/media/infide...Jesus_Myth.mp3

The problem with this argument is it simply isn't Biblical; it isn't supported by the only documents we have, so what is it possibly based on? Jesus was a miracle working god-man who amassed witnesses into the thousands. To suggest he was an insignificant, unnoticeable fellow simply isn't supported by the information that we have, furthermore, as someone else mentioned, how can it be said that Jesus was well known enough to built a following and to be noticed by the authorities while still remaining outside of the writers of the time?!

To suggest that he must have been a insignificant cult leader is just an ad hoc explanation created in order to explain why no one noticed this god-man. As said above, this is simply working backwards.... the Bible describes Jesus as a significant person who would have been noticed, but yet no one does, but because there must have been a real Jesus (why must there have been?) we have to say try to explain why no one noticed, so we turn this Jesus into a person which no one would have noticed, despite the fact everything we 'know' about this man say he should have been noticed.

While it is certainly possible that Josephus mentioned Jesus, but didn't think he was worthy of more than a few line, there are some problems with the idea. Josephus’ work is cited numerously by early Christians yet none ever cites the Testimonium, at all, not even when they were in need of extrabiblical historical proof of their claims. For example, Justin Martyr wrote “Dialogue With Trypho the Jew”, an account of a dialogue between himself and a Jewish rabbi named Trypho in which they discuss whether Jesus was the messiah. Justin makes no mentioned of the Testimonium, despite the fact that 1) he was well versed in the works of Josephus, 2) the passage was directly relevant to their discussion, and 3) having the support of his argument from the most famous Jewish historian would have certainly impressed the rabbi.

We can conclude that they never referred to the Testimonium for two possible reasons: because it didn’t exist, or, at best, because the short account was actually just a second hand reference to just a human Jesus, which of course would have been an embarrassment. Jeffery Lowder writes on this: "If the original passage contained only the non-italicized text, then it becomes quite easy to explain why the passage was not widely quoted during early Christian history. In its "pure" form, the passage would have only proved that Jesus existed, not that he performed miracles, rose from the dead, etc."

What Origen cites is the second passage, not the TF, however there there is reason to believe that passage was tampered with too, and that Josephus is originally speaking of another Jesus.

This could simply be a prophecy created by the author(s), only made into the words of their spiritual saviour, alternatively it could have been said to have been a prophecy received from Jesus/god. In either case, it doesn't require Jesus to have physically existed to give the prophecy, or have it presented in his name.

I don't see why the lack of a real Jesus would be a problem, since outsiders aware of the gospels would have known that Jesus had gone to heaven. You say: "if it is a myth that started in the same generation as Jesus" however this doesn't make sense. If the Jesus was mythical, spiritual character rather than a historical person, then it doesn't make any sense to ask whether the myth of Jesus started in the same generation as Jesus.

And? They could have written in or near the area, or had been aware of these issues by other means. The fact they made many errors suggests they may not have been in the area, or if they were they were certainly not familiar with it.

Joan of Bark

Isn't it strange that a scholar like Bart Ehrman (an evangelical-turned-agnostic) is an HJer? So who do I believe ... him or the MJers?