PhilosopherJay

As far as I recall, Michael Grant, was the last historian to write a biography on Jesus over 30 years ago in 1977.

Grant went to England's most prestigious British Boys school - Harrow.

Here is a description of its religious culture by Christopher Tyerman from his "A history of Harrow School, 1324-1991"


If you have ever seen the movie "If" with Malcolm Mcdowell, you'll have a pretty good idea of what Harrow, home to 27 British Prime Ministers, was like.


Warmly,

Philosopher Jay

Joan of Bark

Okay, all you MJers, answer me this ...

You say that there are no reliable historical accounts of a historical Jesus.

How do you know this? Have you read every document from 1st century Palestine in the original Greek, Aramaic, and Hebrew? Or do you know because you've been told there are no accounts? Told by ... scholars. The same scholars who you so casually dismiss when they say they believe in an HJ.

In other words, you only trust scholars when you feel like it.

Huon

Well,so far, the (christian) scholars have not produced better documents than those which can be found in the catholic source called New Advent. BTW, New Advent has inherited of a long tradition of examination of the NT, and of the Church Fathers. They know very well how Suetonius, Pliny, Tacitus, and tutti quanti, should be advantageously shown. But these sources are still 2nd century sources.

Transient

Have you actually read that page - I just did and it refutes your case quite nicely - why did you quote that one?

Steven Carr

Popeye is based on a real person.

So there is no doubt that Popeye existed.

And there is nothing inherently implausible about the idea that a sailor could get into fights. Scholars have established that many sailors existed in the first half of the 20th century who got into fights.

So there is no scholarly support for the ludicrous position that Popeye never existed.

Nobody has ever written , naming himself in a document as ever having seen or , met anybody who saw, Sweepea,Bluto, Olive Oyl,Wimpy.

But that is not an argument against the historicity of Popeye.

After all, nobody ever wrote a document naming himself as ever having seen Judas,Thomas, Lazarus, Nicodemus, Barabbas,Simon of Cyrene,Mary Magdalene, Joanna,Salome, Joseph of Arimathea,Jairus, Martha, Bartimaeus etc.

bacht

As I understand it, the problem is a general lack of material from the 1st C, whether HJ or not. There just isn't a lot to work with, which is why the same stuff from Suetonius, Pliny etc gets repeated emphasis.

The mythic Jesus position is a reasonable analysis of the surviving evidence. But it's a special case isn't it? Jesus is the central religious figure for two millenia of Western culture. Many people, both theist and not, WANT to believe that this person really walked the earth. There's tremendous pressure on biblical researchers to produce material that supports the historical reality of both OT and NT characters and events.

Personally I see humans as more irrational than rational, so the likelihood of people making up stuff that's emotionally satisfying rather than empirically coherent suggests to me that an MJ is just as plausible as an HJ. I can walk down the street and get a hundred theories from average people about reincarnation, UFOs, ghosts, Holocaust denial etc. Why should I have unguarded faith in humanity's ability to tell the truth when it seems to be almost unnatural for us?

gdeering

OK, I'll give you that. But there is no way that the miracle of the spinach happened in real time/space/history. I think it can be documented that the supernatural power of spinach post dates Popeye's earliest accounts in Thimble Theater. It is a later addition probably the work of animators.

Again, the "real" Popeye fades into insignificance if one removes the fiction that developed around him.


Gregg

Doug Shaver

And therefore . . . ?

Doug Shaver

Not until I have good reason to think it is a fact. "Nobody in academia doubts it" is not a good reason.

Doug Shaver

Any standard encyclopedia, such as the EB, does nothing but summarize the scholarly consensus. We already know what the scholarly consensus on Jesus' historicity is.