Koyaanisqatsi

I concur with gurugeorge and driver8; the Christian doesnt care about an HJ or an MJ, they care about a God Incarnate (GI).

HJ doesn't get you to God Incarnate no matter how you slice it, so it's a misnomer to be arguing for an Historical Jesus "as depicted in the Gospels," because the Gospels don't depict an historically existing human being; they depict a God Incarnate, which is axiomatically a fictional character from the start, regardless of whether or not there was a Rabbi named Yeshua who was crucified by the Romans around 30 C.E. (aka, "HJ").

So, neither HJ nor MJ have anything whatsoever to do with a GI being a non-fictional entity.

No Robots

This is very close to the way things are. However, the Historical Jesus "as depicted in the Gospels" is profoundly ungodlike. That is why many Christian religionists sympathize with mythicism: they despise the Jesus that accurate reading of the Gospels reveals.

Chris Weimer

Argument? Do I look like your teacher? Go to earlychristianwritings.com - educated yourself first. Jeez, how can I argue with someone who doubts the existence of gnostic sects?

"I doubt it" "they obviously didn't read the gospels"

Who cares?

The OP was about what a layman is supposed to believe. It has absolutely ZERO relevance to Christianity.

Chris Weimer

Where does Mark argue for God incarnate?

aa5874

I think the Christian would prefer the HJer over the MJer. The Christian can then accuse the HJer of cherrypicking, believing certain parts of the NT and rejecting others that he doesn't like.

spamandham

I'm curious what you think the scholarly consensus is regarding Jesus. As far as I've been able to ascertain, the consensus is "there was a historical figure we call Jesus".

Every detail of his life is disputed in the mainstream. It's almost as if the mainstream were all saying "assuming there was a Jesus, what can we determine from what we know".

If that really were the case, what do you suppose would be the single common thread?

gurugeorge

It is, if I may say so, a bizarre interpretation of Gnosticism that holds Gnostics didn't believe Jesus was God incarnate. What were all those baroque breakdowns showing precisely how Jesus came into the world about then? (Emanations from the Pleroma, Aions, etc.?) That their theological interpretation(s) (there are loads of varieties of Gnosticism, as you know) were different from the orthodox mainstream, that some of them didn't believe he was the one and only incarnation, that some of them thought of him as more distinct and his own being, I'll grant, but the picture is still, one way or another, of God made flesh, and the Gospel image and stories are still used.

It's what we in the UK call "irony". Those are implicit questions.

Well you seem to, for one, judging by how upset I seem to have made you. (Really, not my intention - I think you've misread me from the get-go as being gleeful about this. I'm not, I'm aghast, horrified at the implications about how 2,000 years of human striving may ultimately have been farcical if either the Historical Jesus that biblical scholars have found, or the Mythical Jesus that some other scholars have found, are the only Jesi that can be found; and I'm deeply sympathetic to Christian believers who may lose a firm psychological anchor in this world if the truth of this sinks in; and I'm genuinely puzzled at what scholars who are also commited Christians think they are doing when they unearth these possible anaemic nobodies from the historical record.)

Well I agree what I'm talking about is kind of tangential, sort of a "meta" to the topic, but I don't believe it's as totally irrelevant or off-topic as you would like to make out, and I believe it would address some of the thinking behind a Christian who is a layman (in scholarly terms, which is what I thought the OP meant) asking this kind of question.

You often see the OP's type of qestion coming from Christians (~M~ seems to be a Christian, though I'm not sure). It's a genuine, heartfelt inquiry: Christians often think they can get some "juice" or "ammo" out of the historical enquiry. What I'm trying to point out is that it seems hopeless, at least it's hopeless for those Christians (who I still think are the majority, and have been throughout history) who have a religious (as opposed to moral, political, liberal, etc.) view of Jesus as God incarnate, as God made flesh, as a divine being who walked the Earth at a specific time, performed miracles, was crucified and rose from the dead.

As Toto pointed out on the first page, there's very little comfort in historical study, for someone who believes in that Jesus.

gurugeorge

Yeah I think that's a good point, and you sometimes see that reaction. But as against that, if you're talking about somebody looking for a scholarly consensus, then such a seeker would be forced to admit that whichever historical Jesus respected scholars may plump for, none of them seem to plump for the miracle working God-man of traditional Christian faith.

Doug Shaver

You're partly right. I agree that historically -- i.e. for most of the past 2,000 years -- most Christians have believed that Jesus was "God incarnate, who came to earth to show us the way/deliver us from sins." I also agree that most of them have believed that that is the "Jesus of the Gospels." However, while that is arguably the Jesus of one gospel, John, most modern scholars don't agree that the Jesus of the synoptic gospels fits that description, and plenty of modern Christians accept their judgment on that point.

Peter Kirby

I'd like that to be true, but it's not strictly true, unless "respected scholar" is rigged so as to define itself to the exclusion of those who believe that the evidence bears out a traditional Christian interpretation of historical New Testament origins.

I know that you started your sentence with something about "consensus," but then you went on to state that there is a negative consensus--i.e., none of them--plump for a miraculous Jesus, and that's not accurate.