lpetrich

I wonder what historical-Jesus advocates here consider historical in the Gospels -- and what they consider unhistorical. And why they come to those conclusions.

I'm sure that most of us here consider the miraculous parts to be something other than 100% literally true history, and that the parables are pure fiction, but what about the non-miraculous, non-parable parts?

Tartantyco

-I generally don't see anything as historical unless there are alternative sources and that pretty much means the bible does not contain historical facts.

Vorkosigan

Let's see. There's quite a bit that's historical Many of the locations are real locations. Pilate and other officials named in the gospels and acts are known to have existed. Some of the Jewish entities are also known to have existed, even where incorrectly portrayed. Many of the practices of both Judaism and Hellenistic civ are known to be true.

Vorkosigan

mountainman

The parables IMO may be argued to have existed BCE,
as is indicated by the correspondences between the
parables and other (earlier) extant authors of antiquity,
specifically Philo of Alexandria. Thus they are not fiction.
They represent a breach of copyright.

See this page on the The Essenic Philosophy

The non-miraculous, non-parable parts of the core of the gospel
message is simply the plot. The plot is that the god of the universe
incarnates in a backwater diocese of the Roman Empire, performs
a stack of miraculous acts and speaks the extant Essenic wisdom
sayings. (See above reference).

The plot ends with the supremacy of the Roman Empire
over the god of the universe, a tidy reminder for its
citizens to render unto Caesar.

In a nutshell, imperial propaganda.




Pete Brown

rlogan

I am very anxious to see what the "historicists" come up with.

No swipes will be taken from this quarter. I just want to know.

lpetrich

I think that we can distinguish background and foreground details. Background details would include what Vorkosigan had described; foreground details would be stuff separate from that like Jesus Christ's and Paul's actions.

I note that a common Xian apologetic argument is to leap from background details to foreground details -- Pontius Pilate existed, Jerusalem and its Temple existed, etc. -- to Jesus Christ being accurately described, miracles and all.

aa5874

Well, let's look at one location, Nazareth. Was Nazreth a city in the first century? Was Jesus supposed to be a Nazarite or a Nazarene?

If I said San Diego is a city in the state of New York, would that be a historical fact?

The NT has a history of putting officials in chronological fiasco, King Herod and Cyrenius, relative to the birth of Jesus is an example of such problems.

And this point lends to the credibilty of the NT, along with previous points. If a book contains obvious errors of location, obvious errors of known personalities, obvious chronological defects which should have been known to be erroneous at the time of writing, why weren't the errors corrected.

And now we known the obvious errors were not corrected, is it because no could have known there were errors, because the date of the writings were far removed from the events and were done in countries where the populace could not verify their veracity.

Vorkosigan

Why shouldn't an apologist be allowed to argue from background to foreground details?

Vorkosigan

Malachi151

What I like is the argument made by Christians that Philo supports the existence of a real historical Jesus because he describes and confirms the existence of Pilate as a ruler of Judea.....

Clivedurdle

They may, so long as they show a connection. Problem is if someone else can argue the connection is a literary or plot device.