aa5874

Your claim is erroneous. I have NOT FORCED any one to defend any position that they do NOT hold.

Why are you making such statements?

I am DEFENDING my position as an MJer.

I do NOT want to be associated with any claims that the earliest Jesus stories do not show any human involvement in the crucifixion of Jesus.

gMark is considered the earliest Jesus story in the Canon and it does claim Jesus was crucified on earth, in Jerusalem, under Pilate after the very Jesus was found to be guilty of death for Blasphemy by the Sahedrin.

It is Doug Shaver who have FORCED me to DEFEND my position as an MJer.

Examine what Doug Shaver wrote.

As an MJer I am FORCED to dis-associate myself from such statement.

I have NOT asserted that when the Jesus stories were were first told that no human being had anything to do with the crucifixion.

I, as an MJer, ASSERT the Complete opposite based on the earliest Jesus story found in gMark.

The earliest Jesus story, gMark, do show that it is claimed that Jesus was crucified because of the Jews under Pilate in Jerusalem.

Mark 15:1-15 -

Sheshbazzar

This well illustrates the problem; '...Mythicists can and do assert...' Many things that are contrary to aa's views.

aa is an MJer. aa disagrees with what other Mythicists do assert.

Because HE aa, has not asserted the exact same thing.

All other MJrs opinions that may differ in the any detail from HIS, are invalid in aa's little world.

As an MJer aa is FORCED to dis-associate himself from such statement.

As an MJer I am FORCED to dis-associate myself from aa, and from his strange and egotistically exclusive little world.

No one individual is RIGHT -ALL of the time- About EVERY SINGLE THING-. NO matter how much they try to FORCE the claim.


.

.

aa5874

So you have demonstrated that quite clearly that Toto was completely wrong.

I cannot and have not forced posters who do not support a historical Jesus to defend the possibility that there was a historical Jesus.

I detest Toto's unsubstantiated statement.

What is going on here?

Sheshbazzar

The context of the question that Toto raised was one of, 'What are you trying to pull?'

And I detest your 'I am RIGHT -ALL OF THE TIME- About EVERY SINGLE THING.'
NO matter how much you try to FORCE the claim.

Hell, it would make more sense to believe in Zombie Jebus, than to accept that you are an omniscient and infallible being.

Doug Shaver

My statement was meant only to define the term "historical Jesus." I intended no comment on what it would take to prove his existence.

Claudius reigned from 41 to 54. If there existed unimpeachable evidence that Christians during those years "claimed to be following an itinerant preacher called Jesus who was crucified by Pilate," then I think ahistoricism would be in deep trouble.

Doug Shaver

Maybe. If there were independent contemporary evidence that Pilate crucified a popular preacher known as Jesus, that would help the historicist case quite a bit. The extant evidence is certainly not contemporary, probably not independent, and arguably inauthentic.

judge

Well I guess that wipes out much of what ancient historians call history. Many ancient sources are suspect, and many are not exactly contemporary.
We have about what we would expect for a guy who was another apocalyptic jewish preacher from that period.

aa5874

Your CLAIM is not really valid.

But we can examine what you claim by referring to the Jesus stories.

In the Jesus stories of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John there are many characters.

Let us list some of them.

1. King Herod the Great.

2. Augustus Caesar.

3. Tiberius the Emperor.

5. Cyrenius

6. Pontius Pilate the Governor.

7. Herod the brother of Philip the tetrarch.

8 Caiaphas the High Priest.

9. Lysanias

10. Jesus Christ.

11. Peter the disciple of Jesus.

12. James the disciple of Jesus.

13. Andrew the disciple of Jesus.

14. Judas the disciple of Jesus.

15. John the disciple of Jesus.

Only Jesus Christ and the disciples of Jesus in the Gospels cannot be accounted for.

ALL other characters from 1-9 are CORROBORATED by external non-apologetic sources of antiquity whether or not they are contemporary.


HJ of Nazareth has ZERO corroboration from non-apologetic sources of antiquity.

All of history will REMAIN intact without Jesus and the disciples.

archibald

Nos 1-9 are all, as far as I can see, public figures for whom we might expect, or not be surprised by, at least some more evidence. To compare Jesus objectively, we might want to compare him with similarly minor figures. Even Acts, possibly full of untrustworthy exaggeration, says he only had 120 followers initially, and perhaps that is an exaggeration also. What evidence do we have for figures of that stature in Israel around those times?

Were he to have existed, it's unlikely he would have been as renowned as those you have listed, and I think we would then have as much evidence as we should expect in the circumstances. It's not conclusive evidence, and may not be correct, and isn't sufficient to arrive at a definite decision either way, IMO.

Doug Shaver

Quote:

Originally Posted by fatpie42 It sounds like you know what I meant by that quote.

I know what you could have meant. Had I known what you did mean, I would not have asked what you meant.

Quote:

Originally Posted by fatpie42 Perhaps now you know my intention was not to be controversial, it'll make a bit more sense.

Sorry, no. You seem to be suggesting that there either is no controversy or ought to be none. That there is one is patently obvious. It is not clear to me what it would mean to say there should not be one.

Of course the debate should not get as nasty as it often does. There is no call for the insults that each side makes against the other. But just because we can disagree reasonably doesn't mean there is nothing to disagree about.

Quote:

Originally Posted by fatpie42 However, the OP simply handles the problems with HJ not the arguments for MJ (except so far as one implies the other).

I don't understand this.

Quote:

Originally Posted by fatpie42 But what if there was a wise figure (possibly a pharisee himself) who argued with other pharisees in a way that was inspirational, gained a god-complex after a baptism by John the Baptist (whose historicity I'm rather more willing to accept) and led a small yet moderately significant cult movement as one of the many self-proclaimed messiah figures of the era?

What if? If so, then nothing, unless Pilate crucified that wise figure and that particular "small yet moderately significant cult movement" evolved into what history knows as Christianity.

Quote:

Originally Posted by fatpie42 but it has also been pointed out that there are other historical figures who are accepted with rather less fuss. Still, I am interested to know how many of those other figures are connected to such outlandish mythology....

I have not studied enough history in detail to comment on such a generality. I think I can respond adequately to any particular instance that somebody might offer, but I'd have to take them one at a time.

I'll note this, though. Any reference to "other historical figures" is begging the question.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Doug Shaver It is the historicists who need to demonstrate that the relationship did exist. Otherwise the historicity argument boils down to "could have happened, therefore probably happened."

My formal training in historiography is minimal. I'm not a historian. I'm a philosopher (amateur, so far) and former journalist. Speculation is certainly an unavoidable part of doing history, but it's only a part. At the end of the day, you have a body of evidence to account for and a theory that is supposed to do the accounting, and there are principles by which competing theories can be judged.

Quote:

Originally Posted by fatpie42 The MJ argument should not be regarded as an extreme position. The figure in the gospels is (uncontroversially) a mythical figure.

I have no problem with people calling it extreme. It fits the usual definitions as far as I can tell. What I have a problem with is the inference from "extreme" to "unreasonable."

To say there is no controversy about the gospel Jesus being mythical is to pretend that conservative Christians either don't exist or should be treated as if they didn't exist. Of course there are contexts in which it is appropriate to ignore their arguments, but a universe of discourse in which millions of real people don't even exist is not the real universe.

Quote:

Originally Posted by fatpie42 To suggest, considering the level of evidence we have, that he probably never existed at all seems far from a big deal.

It may seem like no big deal to you. That doesn't make it not a big deal. You might need to get better acquainted with the world outside your head.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Doug Shaver I agree that Paul's silence about Pilate is anomalous on the historicist hypothesis, but otherwise I see no problem for either side. Historicists can easily enough claim that the only true statement in the gospel accounts of the crucifixion was "Pilate did it." Mythicists can and do assert that when the stories were first told, no human being had anything to do with the crucifixion.

Yes, of course it does. That does not create a problem for historicity.

Quote:

Originally Posted by fatpie42 If the followers of Jesus knew of that much and had that kind of direct historical connection, who's to say they did not know more about this crucifixion victim?

Nobody is saying they didn't. To qualify as a historicist, all that is necessary is to claim that his followers knew at least that much. Most historicists will claim that they knew quite a bit more than that.

Perhaps you are conflating what the early Christians knew about Jesus (assuming he was real) with what got written in the gospels. There is room for substantial disagreement about how much overlap there was, and every square inch of that room has been occupied by at least one scholar.

Quote:

Originally Posted by fatpie42 If the crucifixion was purely a story then Pilate was not involved.

If it didn't really happen, then there was nothing for him to be involved in.

Quote:

Originally Posted by fatpie42 Are you perhaps agreeing with my earlier suggestion that when later followers presumed the stories about Jesus (or "Christus" or whatever) were true, they recognised that the only figure who could have been responsible for that crucifixion was Pilate? Or do you have a different theory to this?

Christians never had any reason to think Pilate did it except that it said so in the gospels. Before they were written, which was probably in the early second century, there is no telling for certain what Christians would have believed about the crucifixion other than that there was one. "Christ was crucified and resurrected" was all they needed to know.

My theory is that the stories originated as works of fiction. The first people who put them in writing didn't expect anyone to read them as factual history. The stories were about a charismatic teacher who was martyred and then resurrected. For verisimilitude, the authors had to pick a time and place for these things to happen. For the place they picked Palestine because the teacher was Jewish. For the time they went back about a century before their own time. Once that much was settled, the bad guy had to be Pilate.