MCalavera

It's also said he was raised by Joseph. Joseph was no ghost.

jakejonesiv

Hey, that is fine by me. With historists like you and GakuseiDon, who needs mythicists? There was absolutely nothing about Historical Jesus to build a religion around.

Jake

MCalavera

Glad to have you on our side then.

jakejonesiv

Every single thing that makes Jesus worthy as the object of religious worship is derived from myth. And without the mythical/religious element, no one would have so much as heard of any so-called Jesus of Nazareth or had a religion that centered on him.

The world of the NT is only the real world superficially; it is a fictional construct in which impossible things are imagined to happen routinely. In what sense can Jesus be human, who even before the alleged resurrection walks on water (Mark 6:49), reads minds, and cannot be grasped by his enemies (Luke 4:29-30)?


The very idea of a "Historical Jesus", a Jesus stripped of all divinity and pre-existence, conceived as a mere man whose mission had failed, is an idea that the Church Fathers and heretics alike would have rebelled against with all vigor. This is a conceit of the "Quest for the Historical Jesus" movements. Are we on now on the third or fourth quest?


The Jesus of the early Christians was not conceived of as a human failure. He was believed to have pre-existed in heaven in some sense. He ascended as surely as he descended. He rose as surely as he died. He was glorified as surely as he was humbled. This is the language of faith, it is the world of myth.


Whether this was deemed to have occurred in the heavens or on the surface of the earth, it is a mythical construct. The world that Jesus descended to is not our world. It is an imaginary construct similar to our world, but that is dominated by spirits, and has a cosmology completely at odds with science. Fantastic events are reported as common place. It is over this framework that the alleged deeds of Gospel Jesus are accreted.


Modern researchers into the Historical Jesus meet with a daunting challenge. The "Historical Jesus" must be wrenched from the text, regardless of the violence done to the stories. They just ASSUME whatever they want to in the text is historical without a shred of textual evidence to back up their deconstructions. MCalavera demonstrates this with every post.

For example, they will claim that Joseph was the step father of Jesus while in the same breath denying that Jesus was the miraculous child of Virgin Mary “overshadowed” by the Holy Ghost. Yet these are both integral parts of the same text in Luke and it is presumptuous to rip selected bits out as “historical” while selectively consigning other parts to the trash can of myth.

If you will forgive an analogy, it is like shattering a vintage Ming Dynasty vase, and trying to put together a coffee cup from the shards. Anything that offends the sensibilities of the modern scholar (i.e. miracles , the supernatural) must be discarded. Here we have met meet the real criteria of embarrassment!

The mythicist and the true believer have much in common. Both can retain the integrity of the stories in the context we read them, the difference being that the mythicist do not have to position the incredible or mundane elements within reality. It is the skeptical historist who is odd man out. He must bring his modern conceits to tales of wonder and pick over the bones like a vulture.

Jake Jones IV

Sheshbazzar

Historical Jebus was a nobody that did nothing.

Mythical Jebus was a FAMOUS person in the first century;

"his FAME went throughout all Syria:" (Mat 4:24)

"And the FAME hereof went abroad into all that land." (Mat 9:26)

"But they, when they were departed, spread abroad his FAME in all that country." (Mat 9:31)

"At that time Herod the tetrarch heard of the FAME of Jesus,..."(Mat 14:1)

"And immediately his FAME spread abroad throughout all the region round about Galilee."(Mat 1:28)

"And Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit into Galilee: and there went out a FAME of him through all the region round about." (Lk 4:14)

"And the FAME of him went out into every place of the country round about." (Lk 4:47)

"But so much the more went there a FAME abroad of him: and great multitudes came together to hear, and to be healed by him of their infirmities." (Lk 5:15)

"And they that had eaten were about five thousand men, beside women and children." (Mt 14:21)

"And they that did eat were four thousand men, beside women and children." (Mt 15:38)

'Historical Jebus the man, was only an obscure 1st century Jewish rabbi, that no one really noticed, so we shouldn't expect that there would be any Jewish or Roman mentions or accounts.' [/HJ Apologists]

A nobody that actually never did anything is the ever invisible HJ.

There is no identifiable man at the root of the religious legends to be found.
There never was, and never will be. [/HJ Skeptic] (Me.)

jakejonesiv

Hi Shebazzer,

I call this the Historicist Limbo.

Many of the alleged deeds would be so noteworthy and notorious that they could never had escaped the notice of the Romans or the historians including Josephus.


This leads to the dilemma that HJ proponents often find themselves in. If the Historical Jesus had indeed performed such outrageous and noteworthy deeds, we should expect to see reports of it in sources independent of the gospels, which we do not. I mean, not only are they not mentioned in the secular texts of the historians, but they also are not mentioned in any of the NT epsitles. How wierd is that?

The naïve historicist shrinks the event to "explain away" the lack of independent confirmation. We see this again and again with the healing miracles, feeding of the multitudes, the Triumphal entry, the Cleansing of the Temple, etc. If there were a shred of historicity to the way these events are described in the gospels, the fame and notoriety of the alleged events could never have escaped notice.

But rather than come to the reasonable conclusion that we are dealing with ahistorical material (which we have seen is based always on "midrash" of the OT, i.e. prophecy historicized), certain historists assume the gospel version is an exaggeration of a historical core. But the “core” turns out to be so trite and pointless that no one would give a hoot about it.

Be we have hardly finished with the Historist Limbo. Once they have passed under the bar that they have deemed is sufficiently low enough, they immediately start to "dance" the incident back up again, investing it with much significance by appeals to hidden meanings, politics, Romans, secrets, and whatnot. But without realizing that they have inadvertently raised the level of the Limbo bar so recently passed under.

Jake

MCalavera

Those verses are theologically driven and not to be trusted much.

MCalavera

Jesus was relatively famous locally in Galilee (specifically).

But there were others like him. So he didn't stand out much in the long run.

Also, his disciples are going to exaggerate and make it sound like he achieved much more than he actually did. Doesn't mean it's no exaggeration.

mountainman

Have you heard of C14?
Do you trust the physicists or the Pope?

Toto

Pete: there is no point in talking about C14 dating when we do not have the originals. Please drop this diversion.