Doug Shaver

Whether those mentionings, however many there are, could refer only to a physical human Jesus is the question at issue.

The only thing that needs the best explanation is the totality of evidence, not a subset thereof. For any hypothesis about what happened at some time and place in human history, there can be evidence both for and against that hypothesis. A judgment as to whether the hypothesis is true should depend on which way the evidence points on balance when it is all taken into consideration. But no matter which way the judgment goes, the evidence against it still exists.

The Pauline corpus and other first-century Christian writings, taken in their entirety, are evidence against a historical Jesus. That is not going to change, even if irrefutable conclusive proof of his historicity were to be discovered tomorrow.

I'm not talking about ad-hocness. I'm talking about parsimony. They're related, of course, but they're not the same thing.

It seems to me you're conflating how many Jesuses there could have been with whether early Christians at different times and places could talking about different Jesuses. You're assuming that they must have all been talking about the same Jesus. I'm not making that assumption.

It is a fact that, ever since the Council of Nicea (or sometime not long before), Christians have insisted that all their canonical writings have always referred to the same Jesus. That is because, for that same period of time, Christians have assumed certain things, based on a particular interpretation of those writings, about how their religion got started. Among the things they have assumed is that Paul and the gospel authors (a) were talking about the same Jesus and (b) believed the same things about that Jesus because (c) they got their information about Jesus ultimately from the same sources, i.e. Jesus' disciples and others who had known the man during his earthly sojourn.

It does not follow that Christianity actually originated that way. Parsimony in no way forces the assumption that Christians could not have been mistaken, for all these centuries, about how their religion got started.

The question of whether Christians have been correct in what they have believed about their origins ever since the Council of Nicea.

If Paul's writings were the only evidence pertaining to early Christianity that had survived into modern times (no gospels, no Josephus, no Tacitus, etc.), we would not be discussing JtB because nobody nowadays would ever have heard of him. What Christians would be claiming about Jesus is anybody's guess, but no responsible scholar would claim to have any definite notion of when or where he lived, what his teachings were, who crucified him, or why they did it.

aa5874

But, it would be found in the Pauline writings that Jesus was RAISED from the dead on the THIRD DAY and that over 500 people saw the [b]resurrected Jesus, including the Pauline writer.

And that is precisely what the Pauline writings are about. Not, John the Baptist, not Jesus on earth but the resurrected Messiah who was given a name above every other name, the Creator of heaven and earth, equal to God, whose resurrection was for the REMISSION of the sins of ALL mankind.

The Pauline writers made John's baptism obsolete.

In the Synoptics, John preached this.

Mr 1:4 - And sometime LATER, a Pauline writer preached this.

1Co 15:17 - Now, the Pauline writer even made the Synoptic Jesus obsolete or look plain dumb.

The Synoptic Jesus did not even teach his disciples that without the resurrection they would have no remission of sins.

And these are some of the last words of Jesus in gMatthew.

Matthew 28.19 The Pauline writers made John the baptizer and Jesus of the Synoptics obsolete with the gospel he received later from the RESURRECTED Jesus.

Doug Shaver

I don't care what the synoptics say. I don't regard them as historically reliable.

aa5874

The Pauline writings are historically reliable? You seem to care about the Pauline writings.

But, you MUST care and you do care about the Synoptics and what is written in them.. That is precisely why you have read them and tried to analyze or understand them.

Please don't try and give the impression that you "don't care what the synoptics say."

Who are you trying to fool?

It MUST be that the Synoptics are EXTREMELY significant and it can be seen that they show almost ZERO influence of the Pauline writings.

The name John the Baptist cannot at all be found in the Pauline writings and a Pauline writer claimed he was NOT sent to baptize yet Jesus in the Synoptics claimed his disciples were SENT to BAPTIZE in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost.

1Co 1:17 - But, in the Synoptics Jesus SENT his disciples to BAPTIZE.

Mt 28:19 -

ApostateAbe

Gotcha. If you ask the question like that, then you win. Such passages could refer to some other kind of Jesus, not just a physical human Jesus. The phrase, "born of a woman," could refer to maybe a spiritual woman in the heavens. The phrase "human nature" could be an interpolation (I don't know how else you could possibly explain that one). The phrase "descendant of David" could be a metaphorical lineage of adopting the virtuous character. Maybe the Jews or the rulers of this age "killed" or "crucified" Jesus in only a spiritual sense, and maybe he was buried in the spiritual realm.

I know I keep on saying this, but we should be thinking about probability, not possibility. The evidence is a subjective medium, and absolutely anything can have any interpretation that you prefer. Any interpretation is possible. The relevant question is not how you expressed it. The relevant question is which general explanation fits best.
I am with you on the relevancy of the totality of the evidence. If the totality of the evidence truly indicates that Jesus was not historical, then that is where the debate needs to be. I wrote another thread where I laid out a summary of my complete case for what the totality of the evidence indicates (I don't know if you have read it yet). I encourage you to do the same for your own case, then we can criticize each other's arguments on the level that it ought to be.

Abe’s Summary of the Slam-Dunk Evidence for the Historical Jesus

Yeah, I do think about parsimony and the ad hoc principle differently. I am not sure how we can resolve this issue between us. To me, two Jesuses that are only slightly different between two sources is much more parsimonious than two Jesuses that are extremely different. It is a difference in fundamental logic. If I can find a philosophical or a historiographical authority that agrees or disagrees with me on this issue, that may be the only way to move forward.
OK, the answer to that question is no. The myth of Jesus evolved considerably from the original until the Councils of Nicea. I take it that you think such a point makes the explanation that Paul's Jesus was probably only moderately different instead of extremely different from the Council's Jesus to be begging the question.

Since I have thought about the problem more, I think an analogy may be best. In paleontology, there are two camps that differ about the ancestors of birds. One camp, the majority camp, believe that birds descended from theropod dinosaurs. Another camp (the slim minority) believe that birds descended from the clade Avicephala, which have bird-like heads. The debate rests largely on the decision of which ancestral clade has the closest similarities to early birds. If it is an evolutionary thing, then we much more expect the changes to be small, not large.

Hell, even if the changes can be sudden and large, as in the evolutionary steps of religions can be, we still expect small changes much more than large changes, because that has been the most common pattern of history. If we have seeming evidence on top of that, that the difference in the two Jesuses were small and not large (see the link at the top of this post), doesn't that make the explanation even more parsimonious?
Losing all evidence of Christianity does not require losing all of the writings of Josephus--only a few passages would need to be lost. The passage of Josephus featuring JtB does not pertain to Christianity (at least not directly). That means, if we completely lost all knowledge of Jesus and the Christian religion, we would still have evidence of JtB. Read it.

Doug Shaver

I agree. They are very significant. But significance is not the same as historical reliability.

aa5874

Well, you do care what the Synoptics say.

Who are trying to fool?