IGExpandingPanda

Near as I'm aware, she doesn't KNOW there was a historic Jesus. I'll have to re-read the blogs to find the entry, but it seemed clear that what the "believed" and what she knows are two different things.

For example, I happen to believe that the existence of a man about 2000 years ago who was outspoken, turned a good parable, and had a modest following is more likely than his being a pure invention a few hundred years after the fact. Keep in mind that a historic Jesus isn't required to be much of anything other than a guy who wrote a few parables. Further more, any inconsistency in the bible can be explained by there being many Jesuses, many outspoken Jews who each may have had a modest following.

Can I prove this? No way in hell. That's the nature of belief. I don't pretend the above is fact. But I can look at the Scientology model and see how one man can start a religion in a relativly short period of time. What has it been, some 50 years and it's already a reasonably powerful organization with thousands of followers. They have even had a few splits.

But just because I think it's one of the more plausible explanations doesn't mean I think it's a fact.




http://forbiddengospels.blogspot.com...s-project.html

Steven Carr, please reread the above. Thinking something is so and KNOWING something is so are different things.

IGExpandingPanda

What someone "thinks" isn't their "position".


Arrrgg!

I happen to agree, it's slightly more likely that there was a dude named Jesus who wrote a few parables than it was a conspiracy. This is my "belief". I don't pretend it's fact, I don't pretend I can prove it. This is different than one's position, facts are independent of one's beliefs.

wordy

Take a modern myth. The Shaman of the alleged anthroplogical books in Juan the Shaman by Carlos Castaneda. He describe how he travel and meet this Shaman Juan living in a desert? or almost. And he is a pupil of him and he describes what he is taught and so on.

Then a guy got interested in mapping the places he visited in the books about Juan and setting up a time table and realized that the old car Castaneda used could not have drive drove driven him to those places and doing those things there and back in time to do what he also writes. And he even asked people around Castaneda and they told him that Castaneda was in the Library during that time and here is a list of books he was reading and lo and behold, those books was about three different Shamans and the stories there was almost identical to the stories Juan was supposed to have let his Carlos Castaneda through. But none of these three Shamans was Juan.

So there existed three Shamans in real life with a real documented history what they have done and so on but the Juan of the Castaneda books seems to be a total fabrication but Castaneda got his exams on them. Despite no evidence that Juan ever existed.

So apply that to Jesus. There could have been one or two or three or a handful or hundreds of these kind of preachers going around and telling the time is near and repent and God will forgive you and so on.

But at same time there could also have been groups who only talked about a heavenly Christ that you meet in visions and much later that some creative imaginative person payed by Constantine merged all these into one symbol Jesus Christ to be the hero of Constantin's army getting the political power for him.

So not a Jesus that was exactly like the story but many such that people referred to often enough to make a physical relation possible.

I only ramble

Steven Carr

And the aliens in Scientology are myths.

I can look at the religion of Share International and see that the Maitreya is a myth.

So what probability would you put on the myth hypothesis? 10% 20% 80%

And what probability would you put on thsre being a historical Jesus of Nazareth? 10%, 5%?


I can see why April regards people as mistaken who claim to know there was a historical Jesus.

They can think there was a historical Jesus, but it is going beyond the evidence for anybody to say that they know there was one.

Steven Carr

So Jesus existed in much the same way that Sherlock Holmes existed?

After all, the historical Sherlock Holmes is a fact as the character was based on a real person - Dr. John Bell.

That is all you need to be an historical person, according to the historicists. Provided you are based on a real person, you are historically attested.

In fact, Sherlock Holmes is even better attested to than Jesus , as the character of Sherlock Holmes was only based on one person, while it seems this 'Jesus' was based on possibly a 'handful' or 'hundreds' of people.

Wonder Woman is also a real person , according to the (at first glance suprising) standards used to determine the historicity of Jesus of Nazareth.

After all, Wonder Woman was based on a real person by William Marston.

Admittedly Wonder Woman could walk on water , but that is not a strike against historicity.

All we need for historicity is for the character to be based on a real person.

That is the standard that supporters of HJ use.

So Sherlock Holmes and Wonder Woman are as much historical characters as Jesus of Nazareth, somebody who appears to be a composite of 'hundreds' of preachers.

IGExpandingPanda

But L. Ron Hubard was a real person. We know this. His autobiography is largely crap, and what he came up with was crap, but that doesn't mean the person who came up with the crap didn't exist.

We can look at the Scientology model and see how crap can spread reasonably quickly over two generations.



Jesus of Nazareth? I have no clue. I don't preclude that a historic Jesus was Jesus of Nazareth. For all I know there were a fist full of Jesuses, and actually various prophets spanning 100 or so years would make more sense to me than a singular founder.

But the myth hypothesis as presented by Rook, the idea that during the time period, about 15-50CE or so it was popular to create fictional stories about amazing street prophets, I rank that as less likely than the existence of one street prophet that had a few notable parables and a modest following.


You'll have to ask her. I think a fist full of Jesuses is more likely, and you could say this is going beyond the evidence. But I don't presume this is fact. Beliefs are often independent of facts. I wouldn't even call my wacky opinion as a hypothesis.

Richard Carrier uses Bayesian Analysis IIRC. That's nothing more than a sniff test.

dog-on

OK, Ben.

The ground rules I am playing by (for the purposes of both this discussion and the prior one with G-Don) are the following:

1. Paul is the first extent Christian writer

2. Mark wrote the first Gospel

3. The remaining Gospels came after Mark and are based on Mark's original.


Now, as a matter of fact, I have concerns with some of these premises, but they all seem to be the current "scholarly" position.

Please correct me if I am mistaken.

If I am not mistaken, then every work you cited above is later than either Paul or Mark.

They all have at their root either a very obvious common source, or if you can show any other possible sources that are in any way supported by some iota of evidence, some other source/s.

There is no evidence of any other source/s that I have ever seen. If some exist that would begin to support your view, please present them.

You tell me then, based on any corroborating evidence you would like to present, where exactly did Hegesippus get his information?

And Ben, I know you don't like to admit this, but "simply making it up" is a very successful, tried and tested way of writing stories. One admits as much when they want to make the claim that Jesus was just a man that was mythicized, (ie. fantastical claims were fabricated to make a common man become the divine savior, by his followers).


Tacitus may well depend on Josephus, or some guy off the street and Josephus or the street guy may well depend on their sources and so on, which, in the end, based on all currently available evidence, could have only come from two places, Paul and or Mark.

We can invent any number of other possibilities, but how many of those would be supported by the available evidence.

(btw. I do know that the real answer is that we have no current way to ever actually know, but what fun would that discussion be.)

Ben C Smith

Those three premises are the basic scholarly consensus with one exception. For number 3, there is no consensus on whether the gospel of John is based on the other gospels; scholars are divided on that issue.

Yes, I think those works are later than Paul and Mark.

This is the fallacy you are continuing to engage in. It is one thing to comment on, say, Matthew using Mark, and I have no problem saying that most or all of the overlapping material between Matthew and Mark came from Matthew using Mark; but it is quite another thing to comment on the parts of Matthew that do not overlap with Mark. Where did those parts come from? Did Matthew make them all up? That is possible. Did Matthew get them all from a source other than Mark (Q or M or what have you)? That is possible. Did Matthew make some of them up and get others from another source? That is also possible. Your position is forcing you to choose one of these options over the others. Mine is not. You are assuming that Matthew had no sources other than Mark (and possibly Paul) and asking me to show evidence to the contrary. But that is fallacious.

Have you read Theissen et alii (pre-Marcan passion narrative)? Have you read Kloppenborg and Tucket et multi alii (Q)? Have you read Fortna (signs gospel)? Have you read Garrow (the Didache as a source for Matthew)? Have you read anybody on proto-Luke? On proto-Mark? On an early date for the gospel of Thomas?

You do not have to agree with any of those source hunts. I know I tend to disagree with at least some of them and remain undecided about others. But in order to claim your one-source-fits-all theory as the default you have to make an argument that takes these serious hypotheses into account.

The answer is the same this time as the last time you asked: I am not sure. I am currently agnostic on the matter. You are the one making the claim on this thread that requires you to know where Hegesippus got his information, not I.

This shows that you do not understand my position at all. It gives me no pause at all to affirm (not admit) that making stuff up is a tried and true way of writing stories.

The burden is on you to demonstrate that this information could have come only from Paul or Mark. Present your case.

Ben.

dog-on

Fair enough.

OK

Here we get away from evidence into speculation. If we agree as to Paul and Mark, then imagining other sources to fill in the rest of these questions doesn't exactly help. Could there have been other sources? Sure. Do we have any evidence for them? No.

Whether any of these are correct or not, the issue is that these are speculative, at best.

I can also be agnostic on this matter, or I can simply look at the available evidence and form an opinion. Of course, that does not make it correct.

So, for lack of any better evidence, is making stuff up as good an answer as any?

Like I said earlier, the correct answer is that there is no way to really know, based on the available evidence. This does not mean that we cannot look for a "most likely" possibility.

To me, the most likely possibility is that Paul and Mark are the originating sources, based on the available evidence.

There is no evidence of any mention of Jesus or any sort of "Christians" prior to Paul and/or Mark.

After Paul and Mark, there is.

So, Paul and Mark seem to be, based on the evidence, the originating sources for Jesus and Christianity.

Paul is clear about his sources being revelation and scripture.

Mark doesn't say, but a scriptural source seems to be quite obvious.

...

Ben C Smith

Then you would have to agree that to assume they did not exist is fallacious.

How do you know? Have you read them? The point that you are missing is that it is also speculative to insist that the other material was invented wholesale. You have to mount a specific argument on the point.

This is false. Several of the scholars I listed offer evidence of Christianity prior to Mark and contemporary to, if not prior to, Paul. Whether that evidence is convincing to you will depend partly on whether or not you have read those scholars.

Ben.