spamandham

From a secular historical perspective, what aspects of the life of Jesus can we pin down, and what is the basis for them?

coloradoatheist

Nothing really and since we don't have the gospels writers to cross examine them then it won't ever be settled.

Mike

Toto

Most secular historians say that not much can be known about Jesus except that he was crucified and somehow inspired others to found a new religion.

Malachi151

Right, and the basis for this claims is bogus.

The reason that "secular scholars" give for this claims is that Tacitus confirms Jesus' crucifixion, but that isn't really true. Tacitus, writing in 109 CE, just confirms the already widely disseminated Christan story.

spamandham

What I am looking for is the "why do they believe this" part more than the "they believe this" part.

I'm trying to determine if the current concensus is based on assumption or or on solid (or at least gelatenous) evidence.

Malachi151

I would say both, at least in their minds.

I think that the majority of scholars just assume.

There are other scholars who specifically address this issue in detail, and these base their view on gelatinous evidence, which they believe supports a HJ.

aa5874

That scenario can not be verified. No one have specified and have pointed out with any certainty, when this specific Jesus was crucified and who were inspired by that specific character.

Even if a person named Jesus was crucified, that in no way authenticate the NT, since we have evidence of forgeries ,interpolations and the Christian Bible itself lacks credibility.

Toto

In modern academia, it's not cool to be too entranced by "facts." Hard evidence tends to turn gelatinous even for more recent history, and any "facts" about 2000 years ago will be more vaporous than gelatinous.

For older scholars, Jesus is an important cultural figure, and it's easy to just go along with the "consensus" that he existed as a human, etc. Scholars don't have to be Christian to think that Jesus is good.

For younger scholars, there isn't enough evidence to work into a doctoral thesis, and no one is going to get tenure trying to establish that Jesus didn't exist.

Gamera

I guess I'm somewhat unsure what you mean by a "secular historical perspective". Verification of historical "facts" has been consigned to a somewhat naive version of historiography since the rise of postmodern thought, and in particular Foucault's revolutionary historical studies.

We have texts. That's what history is. We can evaluate those texts for agendas (they all have them), authenticity, contemporaneousness, and other indicia of interest to us. But historians cannot reconstruct historical persons since historical persons exist only as texts and nothing more.

We have a number of texts on Jesus -- that's what history is. Only the texts can be evaluated, not some putative historical person.

We do the same every day with Socrates and Pericles and Nero, it's odd that the Christian scriptures raise such problems for historiography.

I guess your question can be interpreted to ask what nonchristian text exists that mention Jesus. The answer is precious few. But that's true of most historically significant persons of the classic period. Without Plato there would be precious reason to believe that Socrates ever existed, and I don't think any modern scholar thinks that the dialogs have anything to do with what Socrates ever said. Yet, most of us think Socrates existed. How is that different from Jesus?

spamandham

I mean, history that can be supported with real evidence that is not simply rooted in assumptions based on a heritage of religious claptrap.

I have no problem using Christians texts as evidence, but great care must be used. For example, I have seen the argument that Jesus was represented as a Galilean rather than being from Bethlehem (per the prophecies), and so the fact that a contrived birth story shows his parents having to race to Bethlehem just in time for his birth is actually evidence of a historical man from Galilee.

This would add to the body of evidence in support of a historical Jesus, until you see how badly the word Nazarite is transliterated such that it becomes necessary for him to also be from "Nazareth". Once you see that, it becomes more likely that both the locations of his birth and his childhood are fictional, adding weight to the MJ position again. But hopefully you get the idea of how it is possible to extract nuggets even from stories that are clearly mostly (or possibly entirely) myth.

So we have a magic god-man with a contrived birth, a contrived childhood home, a contrived genealogy, whos death is written in the form of a play, who taught pre-existing wisdom and is attribued to pre-existing miracle stories and astrological symbolism.

And out of all this, somehow the concensus is that he was a real human itinerate preacher who was crucified and started a great religious movement. I don't think it's unreasonable to expect justification for that concensus!

The difference is that Socrates entire character is not tightly coupled to obvious myth and legend. The evidence of Socrates shows him to be an ordinary man.

The preponderance of evidence for Jesus shows him to be a magic god man, and possibly even a pure spirit being.