aa5874

Please state exactly what you believe and the historical evidence of ANTIQUITY that support your belief.

Let's not guess anything.

There are no historical facts about a character called Jesus and his disciples external of the NT and the Church writings.

You constantly mention experts but no sources from ANTIQUITY.

As I have pointed out to you before, experts may disagree, but historical evidence is either present or not present.

As of now, there is no historical evidence external of the Church and the NT that there was a deified Jew who was executed under Pilate that the Jews worshiped as a God, asking him through supplication in a resurrected state to forgive their sins and abandon the Laws of Moses, including circumcision, while the Temple was still standing.

I will give you the entire NT and the Church writings to work with.


How can I present historical evidence from ANTIQUITY of a non-existent character of the same time?

It is the very lack of historical evidence and the mythological description of Jesus and his disciples that have FUELED the notion that Jesus was indeed a myth.

And again, you constantly mention experts but never the actual historical source of ANTIQUITY.

You are confirming, perhaps inadvertently, that you have no external historical sources of Antiquity to support the HJ.

I don't think that you will examine anything. You will just repeat the same refrain, "the majority of experts........."

You may sound like a cracked record but actually that is all on your record, the sounds of a cracked record.

The majority of experts.....the majority of experts....the majority of experts.... There is nothing at all wrong with your HJ record, that is all that was or can be recorded, at this present moment.

ercatli

But some of them are "locked away", in libraries, in obscure books, etc. It took 50 years from their discovery for the Dead Sea Scrolls to be fully translated. If it was as simple as reading and "getting a feel", all of us could maybe be experts, and those who spent years getting PhDs, mastering ancient languages, publishing papers, visiting archaeological sites, etc, would be wasting their time. But I doubt many people would think that!

I know a little Greek (not much more - though I once passed an exam in it, most of it's long gone from my mind) but I could not see anything in your comments here. If it is important, can you please explain it in simple propositions.

Nothing else? Surely they can express observations of events? Or are you a historical sceptic who thinks we can know nothing of history for certain, or an epistemological sceptic who thinks we can know nothing at all for certain?

Please see my reference above (#53) to "Jesus and Archaeology" edited by James Charlesworth. Of course, there is not a gravestone marked "Yeshua bar Yosef", or anything so direct, but there is plenty of archaeology that supports the historical nature of much of the NT, and thus supports the existence of Jesus indirectly. For example, John's Gospel is generally thought to have been written in the last decade of the first century, long after Jesus' life and two decades after the destruction of Jerusalem. Yet several significant finds appear to confirm that the source(s) of John had accurate knowledge of Jerusalem, lending strength to the conclusion that John reports history, at least in many places.

What would you say?

There's a lot there that I don't see any evidence for.

(1) That John was "refuting" the synoptics - one moment you're being sceptical that what the authors say in a document is factual, now you are reading between the lines to an inference about what they don't actually say, and we can believe that to be factual?
(2) Are there any of the earliest writings, especially those in the NT, that describe Jesus as "a spirit being that only looked human"?

We agree about your first sentence then. But documents aren't necessarily just one thing or the other. Of course, when doing hsitory, "we shouldn't treat everything they write as 100% factual reporting", but neither can we simply discard them as 0% history. The gospels are a mixture of history, personal reminiscence, theology, whatever, and historians try to separate them out.

I agree with you here. The Jesus Seminar is pretty much a thing of the past, and my amateur assessment is that it was a blip in NT studies that has not ultimately influential. And I agree that scholars and (more so) popular writers, come up with different, and sometimes amazing, interpretations. But note that these are their summaries of the historical evidence. There is broad agreement about a solid core of historical knowledge about Jesus, and about other matters which cannot be decided by history alone, and of course argument about details. This is what we should be looking at first, not the interpretation each scholar gives to those facts. Would you agree?

Thanks again for your comments. Where have we got? We have discussed some matters, but I'm not sure if you have put forward a definite statement to answer my original question.

ercatli

G'day Spin. In the OP I invited you and others to present a case. You came on this thread by your own choice, but haven't presented a case nor offered any historical evidence. Instead, you have offered gratuitous insults, like the above, and you have offered general scepticism about what scholars can know while expecting me not be equally sceptical about what you assert.

Many other people are engaging me in good and pleasant discussion. I think I'll spend my limited time on them. Best wishes.

ercatli

Hello again. Perhaps I should, though I think I may have a general understanding of what he says already (see below).

I've never come across that myth. From my earliest reading (several decades ago) I always understood there to be variant readings. The question is, granted the much greater number of extant copies than of any comparable writings, how much variation could be expected and how much is thrown into doubt by them? My understanding is that the changes are generally minor.

But perhaps you could mention one notable example?? That might be helpful. And a summary/quote of his conclusions would still be good - if we are going to discuss, we need some statement to look at. Otherwise, we cannot address the OP. I'll leave it up to you.

(1) Gone with the Wind is one book, the NT is many. The different books provide independent confirmation of each other, and to a degree not common in documents of the period. I don't think many historians would disagree with that.

(2) There is evidence for Jesus outside the NT, admittedly small compared to the evidence in the gospels, but still quite enough for scholars. But even if there wasn't, how does lack of evidence suggest "fictional"? Surely, in a world where everyone agrees that many, many documents are lost to us, lack of evidence simply demonstrates uncertainty?

spin

Let's contextualize this thread for clarity. You were in another thread thinking you were trying to argue a substantive case (by citing tendentious opinions) and discovered you couldn't make a case. This led to you abandoning that attempt and starting again in a way that you don't have to do any work.

After you extricated yourself from an earlier thread without responding to issues.

I've offered you the gospels as undatable, unprovenanced, of unknown authorship and context, as the principal sources against Jesus historicity. How can you change the status of these works from the level of historical usefulness of the Satyricon to something from which you can obtain specific historical indications from? Both contain trivial information which agree with historical facts, but lack support for the main concerns of the works.

This is a methodological issue that must be dealt with in a historical Jesus investigation: what can the main sources provide?

Do tell me what exactly I did assert. I expect you to be skeptical, but I also expect you to do some investigative work.

I can understand that. You don't have a case for a historical Jesus and don't want to investigate what the realities for such a Jesus are. You will always get some discussion here, but tell me how would you go about proving there are no unicorns or triffids? Working from the substantive case is more reasonable. Whoever claims that there is a unicorn needs to demonstrate the basis for the claim. The alternative is to look at every animal in the world ... ok, so you've looked and haven't found one: that just shows that they are now extinct, not that there are no unicorns.

You have a responsibility to yourself regarding the substantiation of the claim for a historical Jesus. What you are trying to do here won't change that.


spin

aa5874

What is that small amount of evidence for Jesus outside of the NT? And in which source of ANTIQUITY can it be found?

Not even the so-called disciples and authors, Matthew and John, or the Pauline writers claimed they personally saw Jesus or spoke to him before he supposedly died.

The authors of the NT CERTAINLY described Jesus mythologically and lack of evidence for his historicity demonstrates that the HJ is most uncertain!

ercatli

I'm sorry if I've aggravated you Gregg, I certainly didn't mean to. I answered your first question (which was the first gospel) and I didn't answer the second (how old was Jesus when we first meet him) because I didn't really understand it. Were you referring to the fact that Mark starts with Jesus as an adult (as your second post suggests)? If that is what you meant, then of course I understand that.

And the only other question I can see was "what kind of a guy Jesus might have been", and I thought that was too general to answer without some further input from you.

You'll have to judge for yourself what kind of person I am, but I don't think I've given you any reason to think the worst. (And I'm sorry if I have.) But I want to engage with something specific, hence my seeking clarification.

No, of course I didn't come here to change my mind - I said at the start that I was simply trying to re-frame the discussion to something specific, which I invited you (collectively) to nominate.

I too am interested in what you think. Let's proceed shall we? Would you like to make a clear point about my OP that I can respond to? Thanks.

ercatli

I went to your site - thanks for the link. Are you still updating it? Do you get many visitors, do you get any feedback?

I see you are studying philosophy, with an emphasis, I gather, on epistemology. I considered doing something like that too once, for I am interested in epistemology, but I'm afraid busyness, laziness and other priorities got the better of me. :constern02:

I can see there's much there that we could discuss. But, as you say, forums are not the place for extended discussion. Is there anything in my OP or on your site you would particularly want to raise?

ercatli

Yes, there probably are similarities. But I don't see how they could ever be sufficient to make a historical judgment, either way. I think the mythical themes are everywhere - through history, popular culture, etc - and they help explain perhaps why we respond emotionally to certain stories, or not, but they 'work" just as well in historical stories as in fiction.

aa5874

The DIVINITY of Jesus was settled over 1800 years ago.

Why do you reject the information about Jesus in the NT and Church writings? You seem to want to re-write history of Antiquity concerning Jesus.

The NATURE of Jesus was undisputed according to Tertullian. His SPIRITUAL or DIVINE nature was not questioned.

This is Tertullian in "On the Flesh of Christ".

Again, this is Tertullian on the Divinity of Jesus in "On the Flesh of Christ" 18

It has been settled about 1800 years ago that Jesus was of the seed of God with no human father.

Where did you get the idea that Jesus was strictly human?

It was not the NT and the Church writings.

The "guy" was a mythological.