spamandham

This seems to me a safe approach for nonexperts in most fields, but in a field where most of the experts have historically been paid theologians who are highly biased, I'm not so sure it's a good bet.

The nice thing about history, is that although it requires quite a bit of expertise to translate ancient texts, etc., once the experts have done their job, the rest of us are perfectly capable of understanding their arguments, since history is just human activity in the past.

If you investigate the *reasons* for the datings of the NT texts, you may find those reasons without significant merit, as many of us here do.

For example, the writings of Paul are usually dated to the mid 1st century based on arguments from Acts!

The Gospels are aware of the razing of the temple (not one stone on top of another), so they're dated to after that razing, right? Wrong. They're dated to 65 years earlier! The temple was not razed in 70 CE, it was ruined. The razing didn't happen until the Bar Kochba revolt.

No Robots

On the contrary, there are many works inquiring into the historical Moses.

PhilosopherJay

Hi Spamandham,

Good points all. I would like to add that it is not until around the very beginning of the 3rd century, 200 C.E. that we get writers who are independent of Eusebius confirming the existence of the gospels. These writers are Tertullian and Clement of Alexandria. We need to be skeptical of the Eusebean dating of both Bishop Irenaeus and Justin Martyr who are traditionally used to place the gospels before the second half of the Second century. Most likely the writers of the works attributed to these two characters by Eusebius also wrote in the early Third century. Since Celsus appears not to know of the gospels as late as 180, the safest bet is that Mark, Matthew and Luke were written in the second half of the Second century. They certainly could have been using earlier material, including cult of John the Baptist material written in the First Century. We may presume that the temple predictions came from First century John, the Baptist, material that was clumsily changed into Jesus of Nazareth material.


Warmly,

Philosopher Jay

spamandham

I suspect your 'many' is the same as my 'few'. For every fool's errand, there are willing fools to tend to it. But, from the wiki you linked,

Although there have been various attempts at placing Moses in a historical context of the Late Bronze Age or the Bronze Age collapse, his historicity cannot be established. Archaeological surveys of ancient settlements in Sinai do not show a great influx of people around the time of the Exodus (given variously as between 1500–1200 BCE), as would be expected from the arrival of Joshua and the Israelites in Canaan. According to Prof. Ze'ev Herzog, Director of the Institute of Archaeology at Tel Aviv University "This is what archaeologists have learned from their excavations in the Land of Israel: the Israelites were never in Egypt, did not wander in the desert, did not conquer the land in a military campaign and did not pass it on to the 12 tribes of Israel.... The many Egyptian documents that we have make no mention of the Israelites' presence in Egypt and are also silent about the events of the exodus.

No Robots

The Wikipedia passage continues:

The views of the mainstream archaeological community can be represented by Israel Finkelstein and William Dever.... Dever agrees with the Canaanite origin of the Israelites but allows for the possibility of some immigrants from Egypt among the early hilltop settlers, leaving open the possibility of a Moses-like figure in Transjordan ca 1250-1200.

Emphasis added.

In any event, I primarily wanted to draw attention to the further reading list on the wikipedia page.

The denial of the historicity of figures like Moses and Homer is similar to the denial of the historicity of Christ, and is rejected for similar reasons.

DCHindley

What we do know is what others have told us about him, or what others say he said. Hearsay evidence is not known for its accuracy.

However, you can try to identify unique events. Then compare and contrast accounts to see where we have correlations and anomalies, and work out tentative chronologies. Then, based on what we think we know about other events going on in the region and time, we can attempt to evaluate which reported evens and sayings are more likely to have occurred in that environment and maybe confirm bits and pieces of the chronologies.

From the accounts, I do think he was likely crucified by the prefect Pontius Pilatus. From the context of the region (Judea, ruled by a Roman Prefect, and Galilee/Perea, ruled as a client kingdom by a Herodian prince, in the mid 1st century CE) it would seem that Jesus was executed for a political crime (any act against the authority of Rome to either rule or appoint rule over its subject peoples). This crime was likely related to predictions of or agitation for the establishment of a "legitimate" national government, probably not a Herodian one, without Roman approval.

The rest is interpretation, ancient & modern, about the significance of these facts.

DCH (break time, boss)

spamandham

I can buy this, and it maps well with the time period I think Acts belongs to (Luke and Acts being predominantly penned by the same author). Acts looks to me just like all the other noncanonical 'acts' texts we see in the late 2nd century.

aa5874

But, this is just guessing. Jesus in the NT paid his taxes and asked his disciples to pay dues to the Roman authotities

The extant information found in the NT do not support the notion that the crucifixion of Jesus was for a political crime. No such information is available anywhere at all.

The NT and the Church writings are sources for the trial of Jesus before Pilate and it is repeatedly written that the crucifixion was because of the Jews after Pilate found no fault with Jesus.

And even in the NT, Stephen in Acts was stoned to death for saying the same words as Jesus. It is likely then that if Jesus did exist and said the same words as Stephen, that Jesus could have been stoned to death.

In Antiquities of the Jews 20.9.1 some character called James was stoned after a trial before the Sanhedrin.

Also based on the writings of Josephus, if Jesus was acting mad or was deemed a false prophet, he could have been beaten to a pulp or Pilate could have sent soldiers to kill Jesus and his followers.

show_no_mercy

Right. The abomination (statue of Jupiter erected by Hadrian), the diaspora (eviction of the Jews from Judea), false Christs (Bar-Kokhba), and the no stone left on top of another all fit the events of 132-135.

Besides, why would someone standing in the company of his supposed disciples say "let the reader understand"? I don't know any historical apocalyptic prophets who break the fourth wall.

It's as though Mark is a play...

spamandham

Heh. I never thought of it that way. Maybe Mark was originally a comedy...intended to poke fun at the bumbling Jews who are depicted as universally silly even to the extent of killing their own messiah or failing to recognize a god walking among them even when he performs miracles before their very eyes, and failing to notice all the links to their own scriptures. Did the author break the 4th wall on purpose for comedic value?