Doug Shaver

You might not be cheating, but you are certainly being disingenuous. An exchange implies reciprocation. You are repeating a handful of ideas over and over again but ignoring everything that comes back at you.

aa5874

You can ignore me, I don't control your thought process. I do not accept your HJ position, there is nothing disingenuos about that. I have stated that Jesus Christ is fictional, I can not find any verifiable evidence to support his historicity, do you have any?

Doug Shaver

You also don't pay close attention to what other people say. I have never claimed to accept Jesus' historicity.

gnosis92

That's true for a lot of people in antiquity.

aa5874

So what exactly is your position? Make your position clear, you seem to be upset because I accept the MJ position.

aa5874

So, Jesus Christ is historic because a lot of people in antiquity that you regard as historic, have no verifiable evidence to support their historicity.
I do not share that view. I use the writings in the NT and extra-biblical information to determine whether Jesus Christ is fictitous.

Just recently, I was reading articles about Marcion, a Christian, the son of a Bishop, who developed a religion, claiming Jesus Christ was totally mythical, as early as the 2nd century. Marcion even rejected the OT and all the Gospels except certain parts of Luke. His rejection included Jesus Christ's birth and ressurection. The Marcionites was a very popular religion, rivalling other religions of Christianity, and lasted possibly until the 10th century.

Now, if Jesus Christ was a person who actually lived, it appears, as early as the 2nd century, there was no verifiable evidence known to Marcion, to support the historicity of Jesus Christ. It is also interesting to note that those who contradicted Marcion only did so from a theological point of view, not from historical facts, and this I remind you happened in the 2nd century.

Jesus Christ is fiction.

Aeron

I think it would be interesting to look back one thousand years from now and see people worshipping Holden Caulfield. He "lived" an interesting life, and i am sure there are many lessons to be learned in his book. I am sure people, at that point, would insist he is the one true god.

After all, he was in a book and there are countless references to him in other places. Ergo, count me in as an early HH (historical holden)

Chris Weimer

That is a distortion of what he said.

How do you know the extra-biblical information isn't fictitious? Do you use the Bible?

According to Marcion, Jesus was not totally mythical, but a godbeing who descended to earth and actually existed. Marcion thought that Jesus Christ actually walked the earth. Nevermind that he was decades later than the gospels, and even longer than Paul, who was even after the James crew.

Did you actually read the ancient texts about Marcion, or merely an article in Wikipedia? I'm betting on the latter.

So far you've shown nothing to prove this assertion except the rewording of some article which distorts the historical truth. You still have nothing.

Chris Weimer

Same with Alexander, right? I mean, no one would believe that Alexander son of Zeus the Greatest God conquered all of history, right?

dongiovanni1976x

I completely agree. To clarify I was merely attempting to demonstrate the degree to which Suetonius used common gossip and unsubstantiated stories and why just because there are unbelievable stories in them it does not mean that the whole thing is fictional. For example, in another story, Augustus's mother was supposedly worshipping in the temple of Apollo when she fell asleep and was impregnated by the god (Augustus, 94). This sounds very similar to the Virgin Mary but just because it is likely fictional it doesn’t mean that Atia or Mary did not exist- though I am prepared to admit that there is far more evidence that Augustus existed than Jesus.

The phrase might mean a lot of things but since you yourself admit that the common or “usual” meaning is kinship, it should be assumed unless a better reason is provided to demonstrate otherwise. The “better” reason you suggest is that “brother of the lord” should be read as a title of a believer and not someone who is kin to Jesus. However the verse says, “Then after three years I did go up to Jerusalem to visit Cephas and stayed with him fifteen days; but I did not see any other apostle except James the Lord’s brother.” (Gal 1:18,19) This specific reference certainly doesn’t “smack of a title” like saying James was “a” brethren in the community of believers, but is rather clear that he is the “brother of the Lord” and thus one of Jesus’ kin (see also Mark 6:3; Matt 13:55).
Had this been just one isolated reference it would be a rather weak form of evidence for an historical Jesus, but as I demonstrated it is corroborated by at least two independent sources- that being Josephus and Mark.
Whatever subjective term you apply to this “evidence” it does not require as many “could of meant’s” and “might have meants” as your scenario. All I am attempting to demonstrate is why respected historians like Dr. Bart Ehrman, to whom this thread was initially singled out, accept a Historial Jesus and reject the cumbersome Mythical Jesus hypothesis.
The burden is upon you to demonstrate that we should take the premise “there were a lot of people named James back then” and then from that conclude that the James Paul claims to have met in Jerusalem and the one that Josephus recounts as being delivered by the high priest Ananus to be stoned and the one that the author of the gospel of Mark states independently confirms was one of the brothers of Jesus are not one in the same.
This is all I am attempting to demonstrate. There was an historical figure from which all this originated. Itw asn’t all a big conspiracy under Constantine or some Da Vinciesque conver up…Tacitus’ report of Jesus being crucified by Pontius Pilate and the plaque fragment at Caesarea Maritima which independently verifies Tacitus’ literary account (by confirming Pontius Pilate as Prefect under Tiberius), along with the Alexamenos Graffiti and the account by Suetonius which seems to compliment Tacitus (though some try to argue that Chrestus was not just a mispronunciation etc) only augment the fact that someone named Jesus, called the Christ (Josephus, Antiquities 20.9.1) was more than likely a real person.

We seem to be in agreement. What was it you thought I was trying to demonstrate?

Again I see some common ground here between us.

How many of his followers would you suspect as being literate? How many of them were wealthy enough to hire a scribe or had friends that were scribes? How many of his followers thought it would be so long before the kingdom would finally come? Even Paul is convinced that it is imminent: And the evolution from Mark to John shows how their intended audiences were coping with the delay of this kingdom- hence the need to redefine their beliefs and document the importance of the cultural meme that was started with the earliest followers…It seems like an odd objection to say that sucha scenario makes NO SENSE. What would you expect an insignificant, poor and illiterate group of Jews would spend their time doing, if they believed the day of judgment was imminent? We only begin to see writing when groups started squabbling about what was meant by this “teacher” and the need to convey this message made writing paramount.

Perhaps a definition of HJ and MJ is in order here. Our area of disagreement seems rather small…If you can accept that the best explanation is the minimalist Jesus you described, are you just suggesting that most of the stories attributed to him (miracles etc) are mythic? If so then you are a HJer IMHO.