Julio

Well, in that context, Jesus would have been ONLY a revolutionary militant bent on overthrowing some despotic ruler, whatever.
The REAL problem with that immature youngster was that later some “enterprising faction” converted him into a god to merchandise superstition and earn a parasitical living for itself!
I don’t care whether Jesus lived or not, but when “evangelists” come knocking at my door in the name of a Triune Godhead where that amateur Jew is the third element I can resort to justified rage!

aa5874

Why do you assume Christians re-wrote documents of Jesus and why do you assume there were documents about an historical Jesus?

It is virtually impossible to look at any of the gospel stories and think that it is possible to know exactly what was originally in any of them.


But, the TF is consistent with mythology or legendary fables, Jesus of the TF was found alive after being dead for three days.

And further, a deragoratory statement of Jesus by Josephus would have had more historical significance that a mythological resurrection.


It is not true that Jews expected Jesus of the NT. The so-called prophecies are all out-of-context-misinterpreted passages of Hebrew scriptures.

Isaiah 7.14 was erroneously interpreted as a prediction of his conception.

Numbers 24.17 was erroneously used as a fulfilled prophecy about the Star.

Micah 5.2 was used in error to claim Jesus should be born in Bethlehem.

Exodus 4.22 was erroneously used to claim Jesus should flee to Egypt.

Jeremiah 21.15 was used to claim wrongly that Herod did kill the young children.

And Psalm 22 was used in error to claim that the crucifixion of Jesus was predicted.

However at around 135 CE, almost 100 years later, the Jews still expected a Messiah like Simon BarCocheba, not at all like Jesus the blasaphemer.

razlyubleno

Okay, well I can comment on that audio course. People like aa, who disagree with the premise of finding a historical kernel within the gospels (or, God forbid, within the Pauline epistles) will absolutely hate it. If you've studied the subject and come to you're own conclusions, you'll find the course very annoying, it will grate on your ears, and you won't learn much from it at all. If, like me, you hate scholars who rely heavily on Q to corroborate information about Jesus, then Ehrman will drive you absolutely insane. But on the other hand, if you agree with the premise and think that Q + gMark = multiple witnesses = historical fact, or if you haven't studied the subject very much already, then you'll love it. I'm guessing that most people here would be better off with something else.

razly

Underseer

That doesn't mean there was no historical Jesus, just that Jesus as described in the Bible didn't exist. It's entirely possible that the character in the Bible was based on a real person and the stories significantly modified by the time anyone thought to write any of it down.

fatpie42

It's entirely possible that the character of Achilles was based on a real person too. But what of it? We know nothing of these hypothetical historical figures, including whether they ever existed.

Minimalist

No. They do not. There may be an occasional historical tidbit slipped in but Gone With the Wind has the Civil War, the Burning of Atlanta and Reconstruction. It is still a novel.

IF you think that is history, well, you're wrong. It's religion and therefore propaganda.

aa5874

Of course the lack of evidence can mean there was no historical Jesus. The lack of evidence means it is entirely probable that no Jesus existed that was actually worshipped as a God after being sacrificed for salvation.

It is utterly inconceivable that Jews would have worshipped an executed blasphemer as a God and asked him for salvation before the Fall of the Temple.

The historical Jesus is just plain non-sense.

fatpie42

I never said it wasn't propaganda. However, propaganda is still an historical source. Just because Nazi propaganda posters are one-sided and give a very distorted picture of the events of time does not mean that they do not tell us a great deal about that period of history. As such, propaganda can still act as an historical source.

The big difference between the gospels and Gone With The Wind is that the writers believed that they were writing about real events of a real person. The fact that they may well be mistaken naturally means that the gospels tell us more about the people writing the gospels than they do about any actual events during the time. Then again, the events they mention regarding John the Baptist would seem likely to be historical since they are corroborated by Josephus (though oddly the two accounts have the events in a different order and I think that we can fairly safely guess that Josephus is more likely to have them the right way round). As such, I would wish to suggest that the book is a historical source but, as I already noted, not a very reliable one.

It is daft to claim that the gospels were novels. They were not. Propaganda? Yes. Totally unreliable? Yes. But historical sources are often unreliable and often feature a great deal of bias.

So what does this mean for the historical Jesus argument? Their only historical sources are totally unreliable propaganda. That doesn't mean they are not historical sources. It simply means they are entirely useless sources for any historians wishing to say anything about an historical Jesus figure.

Steven Carr

What is the difference between the Historical Jesus and the stone that turns base metal into gold?

People have been looking for the historical Jesus for longer.

Steven Carr

Like Barabbas?

Why then would Jesus have been crucified?

And not just languish in jail, as Barabbas did before he was released?