Doug Shaver

That is my impression, too. While I would vote for total forgery myself, I don't have a problem with those go for partial authenticity.

Except . . . I think it indefensible to argue that whatever is not certainly forged must be considered certainly authentic. This is reminiscent of the apologists' mythical "ancient documents" rule. It is an argument from ignorance to claim that some of it must be true if only part of it is provably false.

Evidence that we know has been tampered with is not good evidence. It can't be. It might be evidence, but it isn't good evidence.

Clivedurdle

Haven't been able to get back to this thought provoking debate and not in a position to respond fully.

Which model HJ is a very important question. We do have a complete range from all singing dancing Maclarens and Ferraris to Trabants!

it is important to compare these model Jesus's with other ones. I would posit Arthur as a fascinating direct comparison.

We must bring in our psychologies, our need for stories that give us meaning, help us to dream dreams.

I went to Universal Studios a few years back and was very depressed because I was shown how the magic of films was done - I do feel the reaction to the mythical ideas is like that - it is putting forward ideas of how "the greatest story ever told" was produced, directed, acted and rolled out.

What are the headlines of this story?

God becomes man. New heaven and earth, eternal life, swords into plowshares, weep no more, the poor shall inherit the kingdom of heaven.

Seriously, I am not aware of a more powerful, beautiful story.

But a story.

A story that in fact does not require the lead character to have produced and directed it. A story that fits well with the various hopes and dreams and beliefs of the time, and in which the earliest versions of the screenplay reflect these beliefs - especially about people meeting god in visions and dreams and other altered states of consciousness, and then - as we all do - trying to rationalise these fragments of dreams and fit them into our world views.

Clear evidence all over the place that we are looking at psychological matters - statements about overcoming death, statements about transmuting wine into blood.

A possible error is to assume discussion of astrology and magic equals new age. OK these subjects have been taken over by the nutters, and people like Conan Doyle did not help - as modern university para normal people - Sheldrake - also confuse the water.

I see myth and legend and astrology as legitimate areas of study - what we are looking at is how people thought and believed and how those world views have changed.

To conclude my ramblings, this pearl very probably did not require the grit of an HJ to grow - HJ makes far more sense as a character invented for the purposes of the story. Whether it was Seneca or Titus or Paul or whoever is a further question that may be the more interesting one - I am not sure we have asked that many questions about the evolution of an MJ because of these assertions - jesusdidit.

jjramsey

Does he? We have a purported Messiah who does not do what a Messiah is supposed to do. The Messiah is supposed to herald in a new age where God rules with power, not merely in a "spiritual," metaphorical sense, but visibly, for all to see--at least all in Israel. The Jesus offered by the Church didn't do that. Instead, the story we have looks like the results of spinning a failure. His death was spun as an atonement, and the resurrection a further spin to take some of the sting out of the crucifixion. Neither of those things characteristically Messianic. Meanwhile, the new age that Jesus was supposed to usher is roughly 1,900 years behind schedule, and it was already past due by the second century, so the one thing I mentioned that really would be Messianic hasn't happened yet. So the core of Christianity is a Messiah who did things a Messiah wasn't necessarily supposed to do while not yet doing a Messianic thing that should have happened a long time ago. And on top of this, Jesus's fulfillment of the OT prophecies is sketchy. Just take a look at the birth narratives. They have him born in Bethlehem but growing up in Nazareth, and each narrative's plot device to get him from Bethlehem to Nazareth conflicts with the other. On top of this, Matthew says that the prophets predict that Jesus would be a Nazarene, but such a prediction has yet to be found, though there are some straws about branches and nazirites that have often been grasped. The bulk of the OT prophecies about him are quoted grossly out of context. If Jesus was a character invented for the story, why is he such a clumsy fit when examined closely?

The ideas that Christianity is from a lost play of Seneca or was an invention of Emperor Titus are speculation on the thinnest of grounds. Not even Richard Carrier liked the latter, and his biases would predispose him to like such a thing: http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=141098

Knife

I have to admit, I have only read Price, Wells, and Doherty.

Can you provide me the name of a good book that discusses this evidence critically?

No Robots

Try this and this.

jjramsey

If you visit this page,

http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/theories.html

you'll find several books named which you can check out. IMHO, a good one-volume work that has a little bit of everything is The Historical Jesus: A Comprehensive Guide by Gerd Theissen and Annette Merz. Peter Kirby reviews it here:

http://www.christianorigins.com/theissen.html

Theissen and Merz book is essential a survey or review of the scholarship pertaining to various issues of the HJ, and it is probably better as a reference than as something to just read through.

No Robots has linked to the work of Constantin Brunner. I can't say that I'm too impressed, myself.

Julian

Warning to Knife: You asked for critical sources. Use the references that jjramsey gave you instead of these two quoted above. Apparently, No Robots doesn't understand the word critical. Both sources are complete and utter crap, useless in every way, don't waste your time.

Julian

gstafleu

We don't. And that's not the point. The point is the following. There always have been lots of stories about wonder doers, messengers from the diverse deities and so on. These are all assumed to be mythical. Then along comes Jesus as one more wonder-doer-with-divine-purpose. Connected with him is a very unusual hypothesis: he is real. Such an extraordinary hypothesis should be substantiated with lots of evidence. The evidence isn't there, hence the hypothesis gets shelved (until more evidence arrives).

That is SOP: no evidence for a hypothesis (certainly an extraordinary one) means it gets shelved. It does emphatically not mean it gets accepted until it is proven false. It also does (equally emphatically ) not mean that we now say Jesus never existed. We just say we will not proceed on the assumption he did.

No Robots

Kirby's page covers only contemporary writings. It even gives a neutral presentation of Freke and Gandy. The prejudice on all sides of historical Jesus discussion is against older writings. The cult of the new really does create strange bedfellows.

Doug Shaver

Considering that the Messiah was a Jewish idea, that could explain why Christianity never attracted very many Jews.

Yes, that is exactly what it looks like -- if we assume that it began among the followers of a charismatic rabbi who met an ignominious death. Drop that assumption, and other possibilities abound.

Would it have been so hard to convince non-Jews that they were Messianic?

Probably another reason why hardly any Jews ever showed any interest in Christianity.

Yes, they're obviously pure inventions. Maybe that's because there was no birth, because there was no such man?

Because the people who made the stories up were no better at critical thinking than the people who have believed them for the past 2,000 years. Why assume that the people who invent a religion are any smarter than the people who follow that religion?