Toto

After consideration, I have removed this thread to storage. The Jesus Mysteries list is a private list, and Sally Ride did not consent to publishing her post here. Many of the responses picked up on phrases that should have been read in the context of the original thread and did not make sense otherwise.

But if people want to discuss the issue, I have pulled out the essential issues. The basic challenge is to find a figure regarded as historical where

1. no contemporary attestation (as is admitted - no records from 1-33 CE in Palestine) and no attestation in the figure's homeland. (For the purposes of this exercise, assume that both Josephan references are interpolations or are unreliable, and the gospels were written outside of Palestine. There may be good reasons for this lack of documentation, but that is another question.)

2. The sources for this character are not standard histories or other records normally treated as historical.

3. The figure's existence is originally reported only by foreigners, writing from well beyond the subject's social and cultural milieu, long after he or she is supposed to have lived.

You may disagree that some of these claims are accurate if you think the gospels are biographical, but that is another topic.

John the Baptist is not a good example, because he is described by Josephus, a fellow Jew, in a standard history. Abe also mentioned Apollonius of Tyana, Pythagorus, and King David. Apollonious had a standard biography written about him, however enhanced it might have been, in the area that he lived. Pythagoras and David are both known through souces that are part of their own ethnic group, or, if you base your opinion of David on the stele that mentions him, on a contemporary source.

No Robots

Hector of Troy. In fact, all the Trojans.

Toto

Is there a historical Hector?

No Robots

The question was if there was someone who meets the criteria and is "regarded as historical," without any caveats on who so regards him and on what basis. I certainly regard Hector as historical, as do others.

PhilosopherJay

Hi Toto,

Basically, it is just Homer's say so. The Greeks believed Homer when he talked about Zeus, Hera and Ares too, so the belief in an historical figure based on large numbers of people believing in him/her does not work so well.

The John the Baptist passage in Josephus is probably as fraudulent as the TF. It assumes prior knowledge of a baptism ceremony.

This passage would make no sense to anybody who had not already known who John the Baptist was from the New Testament. Imagine you don't know who John the Baptist is. The text just says that John the dipper says you must wash to be pure. One would assume that readers of Josephus would imagine that John was telling each Jew to wash in his own home, but wash what? Your head? Your Feet? Your genitals? Wash your whole body? Any reader unfamiliar with the New Testament would be mystified.

Saying that he was a good man who told people to wash doesn't tell us who he was. Was he a prophet, a priest, a farmer, a God, a rich man,a messiah, a zealot, a general? Saying he was a good man is just the interpolater's way of telling us that Josephus approved of him.

Suppose Josephus had written "John was a good man, he urged people to sit on a duck to please God and get rid of their sins. He was popular among the Jews and Herod feared him and killed him.

The reader would say WTF. Anybody who reads the passage without knowing who John the Baptist was and what baptism was from the Bible would be similarly mystified.

Warmly,

Jay Raskin

Toto

Historical Hector

It doesn't sound as if most people think that there was an identifiable historical Hector, as opposed to some faint echoes of history in the Trojan War story. And in any case, the legends of Hector seem to originate in his own ethnic group.

But that is an interesting comparison.