spamandham

And straightway in the morning the chief priests held a consultation with the elders and scribes and the whole council, and bound Jesus, and carried him away, and delivered him to Pilate.

Huh? This tells you that the intent of the author is to assert Jesus as a historical figure?

I don't think we can have meaningful dialog if this is your starting point.


That's a fine speculation, but that's all it is.

Sure. We have not only the Gospels, but also all other early Christian material, possibly Josphus, and even nonChristians talking about Jesus later on.

Let's try two different premises:

1. There is a historical core to Jesus

There is nothing in this body of evidence that precludes this.

2. There is not a historical core to Jesus

There is nothing in the body of evidence that precludes this.

The evidence is consistent with either premise. All we can do is see if one explanation is less contrived than any other.

...uhm ok. ...not sure where the attitude is coming from.

You haven't impeded my multiple acknowledgments of this in any way. Hopefully you weren't trying to.

Solo

Multiple choice: there is one historical figure in the verse (and a few that follow) with whom Jesus is made to interact and who is better attested historically than John the Baptist.

Who is it ?

1) Jesus
2) the elders
3) the scribes
4) none of the above

Oh, I see now why I missed the point you were making: I was talking about the intent of the gospellers and you were counterproposing something else.

Ok, one Jesus mystery has been solved today.


Mt 7:3-5


The correct answer to the multiple choice question above is : 4

Best,
Jiri

badger3k

And Spider-Man saved Barack Obama. Guess that means the writers meant to write history?

ETA - trying to assume intent is pretty hard. People can say anything, and we can read virtually anything into it, and even then, if we want to agree that the authors were attempting to write history, that in no way says anything about the truth of what they write.

badger3k

I'm still just curious as to why the default assumption is that a historical character existed? Do those who do so have the same default with the Historical Herakles, or Achilles? They were written, apparently as historical as the writing of the time could be given the standards. People assumed they did exist. Did they have a historical basis? Did a real Samson exist, or was he a folk-tale as real as Paul Bunyan? Was he the remnant of a Canaanite (perhaps) solar deity or a Hebrew version of Hercules, as some have suggested?

Was there a Historical Buddha? Was his teaching based on a real person, or was it done through a group of people putting a tradition together that became ascribed to one person (ie the Great Man, basically). This is what scholars think about Lao Tzu (Lao Tze? The writer of the Tao Te Ching?).

It was stated that the default position should be neutral, so wouldn't that be to say that perhaps someone existed, perhaps not, and let both sides present their evidence? No one gets a pass? Both sides affirm something, so let's see the evidence for each. Saying someone wrote this as history is meaningless if what they thought of as history wasn't.

I agree that the absence of expected evidence (or evidence that should exist if the case were true) is evidence of absence (ie - the "sometimes" part). To me that seems the most straight-forward way. I've stated elsewhere that the mythicist position is somewhat persuasive in that it explains things that historicists can't, but they haven't proven their case either, for me. I can see one person, probably a cynic-style preacher, starting a movement that was hijacked and heavily mythologized just as easily as I can see a group of people taking a lot of teachings and deciding to put it together as a religion, using a mythical founder to give it more authority. Either way, someone started it.

Solo

There is no default assumption that Jesus existed. It is the simplest explanation for the sudden appearance of religious movements and mystery cults in history that pointed to him as the founding figure.

:strawman:

:boohoo:

The teaching was done through a group of people ...hmmm :constern01:.... I suppose that would take care of trifles like 'who taught what to whom'.


Most scholars now think Tao Te Ching was written and edited over extended period of time by a number of people. However, the historical existence of Li Dan ('Lao Tzu' is generally thought to be a honorific title) has not been seriously doubted TMK, though the first record of him came 400-500 years after his death. So, I don't see a parallel to what we have been discussing here.


It is not possible to have an intelligent discussion with someone who cannot or will not see the difference between the statement:

'Jesus was asserted to be a historical figure by the gospels' i.e. they placed Jesus in a concrete, historical setting in a time frame fairly recent to the writers,

and

'the gospels were written as history'. i.e. Jesus' words and deeds were chronicled in a disciplined and accurate fashion.


I am sure you have and everyone paid close attention. :wave:

Jiri

spamandham

Wow. It mentions Pilate. It mentions historical places, it discusses coins of the time, and even some traditions. You got me all right. The story is definitely set in the 1st century, which means the intent of the author must be to record history as he knew it, because it's an established fact that people didn't ever make up stories for other reasons in the first and second centuries. Nope. They were all historians...the lot of 'em.

This is pathetic, but sadly, not uncommon.

aa5874

John the Baptist was described as a human who was executed while practicing the ritual of baptism, Jesus was described as the offspring of the Holy Ghost of God, who walked on water, transfigured, resurrected and ascended to heaven.

Jesus needs all the help he can get. And he did not get any. At least Josephus wrote John the Baptist. Who wrote about THE offspring of the Holy Ghost of God?

It is not expected for Philo to have mentioned people who did not exist or had no impact on him.

Based on "Embassy to Gaius", Philo would be expected to make comments about a Jew who was worshiped as God with the ability to forgive sins while the Temple was still standing and where his disciples taught that circumcision was useless.

Based on Philo, Jews would not worship men as Gods, they would rather die.

And even though Philo lived in Egypt, he did mention Pilate.

Rick Sumner

Well, except that Jesus was never a head of state. It's probably a little closer to someone writing a history of 20th century California, but not mentioning Charles Manson. Which happens. Yet Charles Manson was real. And his impact is probably unparalleled by any other cult figure in North America in the century.

But the mass media element doesn't exist then either, so let's drop it down from the person who got most the attention from that mass media.

Sadie Atkins? She might get mentioned, but she's less likely to be. Tex Watson? Moving down a bit, though his name is a little more renowned, in no small part due to his prison ministry.

How about Linda Kasabian?

This was an absolute huge media event. Everybody in North America knows who Charles Manson was and what the Manson family did. Bugliosi made "Helter Skelter" a household term. The world was saturated with it in a sense that was absolutely impossible in the ancient world.

What was the name of the ranch the family lived on? What was Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme's involvement in the family, and what did she do later? How did they get caught?

I'd venture you can't answer most of those questions without googling it. Now imagine you didn't have google. Or any other method of quickly checking. Or any mass media outlets to make you aware of the information in the first place. Yet in terms of publication, more has been written on Charles Manson alone, this century, than is likely to have been written in the entirety of the Levant in the entirety of the first century.

Philo, by the way, can only generously be described as an "historian" in the sense you're using the term. One must wonder if you've read the man.

The historicity of Jesus stands or falls on the New Testament. The gospels and Paul. The argument from external sources might be a fun excercise in which the results tell us something about that external sources. It doesn't comment on the historicity of Jesus one way or the other.

aa5874

The writings of Philo is extremely important with respect to the historicity of Jesus. Philo lived at the same time of the supposed Jesus and was selected by Jews to meet with the Emperor Gaius to ARGUE against the worship of men as gods and the placing of statues in the sacred places of the Jews.

Philo's "On the Embassy to Gaius" fundamentally contradicts the NT.

This is absurd. The lack of external corroboration for Jesus is not funny.

And, it is the exact opposite to what you have claimed. The Jesus of the NT, the transfigured resurrected offspring of the Holy Ghost of God and water-walker as described did NOT exist, only external sources can tell us about other people called Jesus.

Solo

:strawman:

To sum up: Jiri claims there was an intent on the part of Mark to portray Jesus as a historical personage by placing him in a historical setting, and spamandham swears it means that Mark recorded history as he knew it.

There is no other possibility, right ? What I say you believe excludes the scenario where Mark would assert Jesus as a hero of a historical romance ? It excludes the possibility that Mark referenced some historical traditions about the figure of Jesus, by creating new contexts for them and packaging them as fulfilment of OT prophecies.

You are sure that there are only two possibilities, i.e. Mark recorded authentic history or he made it all up. And in that intellectually squalid scenario, of course I am easily dismissed as the idiot who only thinks there is only one possibility.

And why do you think I should be interested in having this conversation ?

Jiri