spin

Here's the gamut:

1. HJ: Jesus was real (in some shape or form);
2. MJ: Jesus was myth (he didn't exist in this world but performed in a mystical plane);
3. FJ: Jesus was fiction (there was some conspiracy to foist a made-up religion on the minions); and
4. TJ: Jesus was tradition (he probably didn't exist, but the tradition evolved on the basis he did).

I'm agnostic on the issue, but I proposed the TJ model as it seems the most reflective of the evidence, so there are to my knowledge no supporters of the TJ theory.

It mattered early enough on.

The MJers repudiate that, as do the FJers. Hypothetical TJers would argue that the death was part of the earliest understanding of Paul's Jesus. It's just those stuck with trying to explain things as though they were fundamentally kosher that have to manipulate texts and try to justify things. Jesus died to save sinners according to MJers, hypothetical TJers, and most christians. It's just that the christians believed it really happened. The non-christian section of the HJ contingent have to cut out what they don't like and rewrite some of the rest to make it conform to their views of how it must have been.

Paul indicates that he got his gospel through revelation (Gal 1:11f). If this is true then your rationalization is crap, isn't it?

Yet you put yourself squarely in the camp that says he did. Why not be coherent and claim to be agnostic on the matter?

A final rationalization as to why Jesus didn't rate history... but was still somehow historical!?


spin

aa5874

There are no such facts recorded in the extant works of any non-apologetic writer of antiquity. No non-apologetic writer of antiquity wrote anything about Jesus of Nazareth as the center of any movement at around 60-110 CE.

No credible independent source have written about Jesus of Nazareth, his thousands of followers, his doctrine, or his disciples including Paul in the 1st century.

And based on Justin Martyr, there were probably hundreds of thousands of Christians who were NOT believers or followers of Jesus in the first century.

All you are doing is cherry-picking plausible events and then re-label these events as historical events.

Since you do not believe Jesus turned water to wine, it is also reasonable for anyone to believe that there was NO wedding, and that there were NO guests and the whole gJohn was made up.

To believe certain parts of the NT and reject others, just based on plausibilty, is not history, maybe hysteria.


The authors of the Gospels may have done like the HJers, they just presented a modified plausible fabricated Jesus based on their imagination.

And further the manufactured human Jesus of the HJers have already been discarded over 1800 years ago by the early christians, like Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Origen and Eusebius.,

spin

You should have read those previous threads.

The fire is attributed to christians through an interpolation in Tacitus stuck on the end of a long polemic against Nero for his possible cause of the fire (A. 15.44). Suddenly this christianizing stuff to screw up all Tacitus's insinuations about Nero.

Your source was being wishful and confusing christians with Jews who were recorded to have been in Trastevere (Trans Tiberim), ie Lampe was bullshitting.

Notice there's notion about the fire here? Suetonius knew nothing about christians and the fire. In the passage cited he is interested in minor control public order, so the execution of christians is way out of place ("execution" is how the same phrase is translated with the Tacitus interpolation about christ).

For historical purposes both Tacitus and Suetonius are secondary sources as they were written long after the events and, if the reports were genuine, had to be relying on earlier reports whose veracity we couldn't test.


spin

Toto

This passage has been discussed here frequently. It is a bit suspicious, and appears to be a later addition.

They would be if you could date them. But the basis for dating Paul's letters is the Book of Acts.

From Paul to Valentinus: Christians at Rome in the First Two Centuries (or via: amazon.co.uk) can be previewed on Google Books.

Lampe seems to accept the Book of Acts as historical. Otherwise, I'll have to look at that, but his early reconstruction appears to be a bit speculative.

lpetrich

First, about

http://www.textexcavation.com/anatestimonium.html

Biographies of Jesus Christ in a few sentences are almost inevitably going to look rather similar, so I am not very impressed with that argument.

No Robots, would it really be a great calamity if it turned up that Jesus Christ had not been Jewish?

I think that it is very likely that he was Jewish, at least if he was historical, but I don't see why it would be a great disaster for him not to have been Jewish.

brianrein

Thanks for making this comment about Lampe. It confirms to me that my frustration from this thread derives not from my being in over my head, but from your eagerness to dismiss any evidence which does not suit your claims. Paul's letters (at least the real ones) - dismissed as evidence of an early Christian community, because they're in the Bible. Peter Lampe's landmark volume, seen by scholars as a foundation for all future study of early Christians in Rome - dismissed because he thinks Roman Christianity originated in the Jewish neighborhoods. (His argument is much stronger and subtler than either of us has said - he takes in many other bits of evidence to make his claim. Incidentally, Toto, you're right about Lampe being a bit speculative - he is primarily concerned with roping all the evidence and datum we have from various sources together rather than drawing conclusions based on them.) Nero's blaming of Christians - dismissed because Suetonius wrote about it 60 years later. Any religious studies scholar - dismissed because they aren't a "historian". Any historian - dismissed because they are "spokespersons of Christian hegemony". (I shudder to think what you'd call someone like Karen Armstrong who actually has a religious background.)

Incidentally, it was my bad about Paul. Hey, I'm still learning, too. For a time I definitely flirted with the Jesus-myth hypothesis, reading up on Doherty and Wells and even a few bits and pieces right here on SecWeb, but as I started taking religious studies classes and it became clear that even the most skeptically minded scholars, even a few who think Christianity is silly, see arguments for Jesus-myth as being painfully weak, I started to branch my reading out from the atheist circle and see that the Jesus-Myth case has yet to really be made convincingly. And that Jesus doesn't have to be a myth for the religion built around him to be a man-made crock.

brianrein

Well, I haven't exactly met anyone who thinks Paul's letters weren't the first Christian writings...

No Robots

The only thing I don't like about your position, brianrein, is where you say that Christ himself is historically insignificant in comparison with the religion that purports to represent him. I think it rather more the case that Christ's personality shines forth in spite of the distortions of the Gospels and the Christian religion. That so much gold remains despite so much overlaid dross is a testament to the great individual genius, and proof-positive of his historical reality.

Toto

Hey - spin can be a bit gruff. But part of his frustration is that this material has been gone over so much here.

No - Paul's letters just cannot be reliably dated. If they could be dated, they would definitely be good evidence of the existence of some sort of Jesus movement, although not necessarily one based on a historical Jesus.

That's not what anyone said. If the standard version of Christianity were true, Christians and Jews would have been indistinguishable at that point in history. It's just that Lampe is so speculative, relies on Acts, and seems to have started with the premise that there were Christians in Rome in the first part of the first century, and found the evidence to confirm that.

Exactly. Speculative.

Nope - dismissed because the passage in Tacitus appears to be a much later forgered interpolation, and even if it were not, is not based on first hand information, and the vague reference in Suetonius is just too vague.

Only one instance of this. . .

Why don't you show where this is wrong, instead of just dismissing it as prejudiced? (I can think of other reasons to take what Karen Armstrong writes with a grain of salt.)

Which skeptically minded scholars are these?

And there are some versions of the Jesus Myth hypothesis that are painfully weak. This does not make the case for a historical Jesus very strong.

spin

Talking about eager to dismiss.

Paul started communities. He was also in conflict with the Jewish messianic assembly in Jerusalem.

I like your efforts to bolster your expert through rhetoric.


Evidence for christians in Rome in the 1st c. is so thin on the ground the only primary source we have is Paul.

I personally dismissed the citation from Suetonius as an interpolation, having little to do with the list it is in.

History requires transparent methodology. It is not just text manipulation.

Do you really have problems with the notion of christian hegemony?

It is not relevant in the context you use it here.

Shudder away.

Most people don't understand the mythical Jesus concept. They confuse it with the fictional Jesus. The latter is for me a waste of time dreamed up through disenchantment.

I don't think the mythical Jesus is convincing, but I don't think it's had the opportunity to develop the apologetic framework that credent christianity has, so it will obviously not be prepared for various assaults.

TJ requires no fraud, no mysticism, no Jesus and an open reading of Paul's claims to the origins of his new beliefs. The process is just people receiving, personalizing and passing on tradition.


spin