aa5874

The temptation in both Matthew and Luke does not even appear to be a real event, so to claim the authors are in agreement that Jesus was actually hungry is just bizarre.

GakuseiDon

I agree that it is possible that Tacitus's source was wrong, for one reason or another.

rlogan

Good Lord. You leave for a bit and there are HJers in felony possession of a Tacitus passage and a TF.

Once you acknowledge that Christians as a group forged their heritage (following the same tradition of the HB scriptures they hijacked) then you are forced to contend with how far it went.

You have to put together a coherent and compelling case for how the forgery happens.

We know where and when christian motive, means, and opportunity coalesce most decisively: at the time of Eusebius when the canon was formed as literal history as a matter of official state policy.

Josephus is obviously the highest priority for forgery. It is something they MUST do because it's absence in Josephus' works is the most damning silence. The HJers like to pretend that the historical Jesus was just really a nobody who said nothing to no-one of consequence so of course Josephus would never write about him.

But the church and Constantine have a big problem with posing Jesus as this bright comet blasting into history and yet no mention of him.

It is untenable to propose the Testimonium Flavianum is independently forged at some random time and is just picked up accidentally by the hapless historian Bishop Eusebius. Coincidentally at the same time they are agreeing in political conferences what the official history of Jesus was?

No, the most tenable proposition is that Eusebius would be involved in that forgery and that it was a political imperitive to establish Jesus as history to prevail over competing doctrines. All of which were religious gibberish to begin with.

But as forgers they weren't so expert. These are people with the official power of the state behind them as opposed to on their tails to arrest them as you would be forging coins or bills of credit. So they left us the telltale evidence.

The TF is so ludicrous they are basically confessing to it on the face of it. In the Tacitus case they showed ignorance of procurator vs prefect.

There is another problem with the Tacitus passage. Eusebius did not cite it, and he had tremendous motivation as he did with the TF, if it had existed. He's writing an official state history of christianity. One in which suffering persecutions and martyrdom are lauded.

So that passage did not exist and Eusebius did not forge it. A decent story line is given by Earl Doherty here:

http://www.freeratio.org/showthread.php?t=248025

A later forgery leaves us in harmony with the Pliny-Trajan exchange - one in which there is no historical Jesus.

Ben C Smith

I know even less now about how you think the synoptics portray Jesus than I did beforehand.

Are you seriously suggesting that the synoptics portray Jesus as a spirit, not as a man?

Ben.

GakuseiDon

aa5874

This is not the birth of a man.

Mt 1:18 - This is not the conception of a man.

Mt 1:20 - And certainly this also is not the birth of a man.
Lu 1:35 - In the Synoptics, the creature that was born was not human.

GakuseiDon

I don't know. I can make guesses. The problem is that Paul depicts Jesus as an earthly man, not a spirit, until after the crucifixion. So why does he not give the marriage status of such a person? I don't know.

And yet he must have learned something from them, regardless of whether Jesus was mythical or not. What did he learn from them? What did they talk about? I mean, if Paul described what they talked about, and it was about everything EXCEPT historical details relating to Jesus, that would be one thing.

So, what did they talk about?

No, not equally, given what we know of Tatian. I argued with Doherty on this here. Once you start looking at the time-lines for when those works were produced, you get an interesting picture of ahistoricists and orthodox living at the same time, without seemingly being aware of each other.

Yes, that's exactly right! And the same situation existed in Paul's time as well.

Well, I think my point becomes clearer when you start looking at all the letters, not just Paul's, to see that Paul simply wasn't unique in this regard. THAT's the elephant in the room.

Interesting, isn't it? Why can't we pinpoint when Paul wrote from internal evidence, in your opinion?

And Paul isn't a lone case here. It is difficult to pinpoint when many early letters were written.

"Paul does not include historical details" -- isn't that what I've been saying all along? He give a few, but they are sketchy. He just isn't interested in giving historical details.

As for other details: he was writing occasional letters, so the contents were tailored to the specific problems he was writing about. There are details thrown into there, but very few.

What personal details does he give about himself? "Thorn in his flesh"? "Zealous for the law"? Another one is Paul describing how the Israelites were Paul's countrymen "according to the flesh", and how Christ came from the Israelites "according to the flesh":

Rom 9:3 For I could wish that I myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my countrymen according to the flesh,
Rom 9:4 who are Israelites, to whom pertain the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the service of God, and the promises;
Rom 9:5 of whom are the fathers and from whom, according to the flesh, Christ came, who is over all, the eternally blessed God.

It might be interesting to lay Paul's descriptions of himself, Jesus, Peter/Cephas and James together, side-by-side, to see (1) how much he talked about them, (2) how he talked about them.

GakuseiDon

Excellent! I'm looking forward to the next few years.

True enough, though this seems to be more of an impact on the Gospel Jesus rather than on questions of historicity. The challenge to a historical Jesus last came a hundred years ago. The Jesus Project may offer another challenge eventually, but from a question of historicity, what do historicists need to do? The evidence is right there, in Paul, Tacitus, Josephus, etc. It isn't proof, but then I think most understand that proof is not forthcoming. It is the most likely possibility, though.

Ben C Smith

Ben.

Amaleq13

You should have kept waiting because there is no apparent conflict or contradiction between the comments.

It seems reasonable to claim that the Gospels, as compared to Paul, depict a non-mythical individual on earth and to claim that those same accounts depict him eating for symbolic reasons. :huh: