joedad

Well, we’re told to strip away the supernaturalism and that a genuine person could therefore reside at the core of these Jesus stories from a couple thousand years ago. We actually have plenty of examples that would suffice, and they've been argued and discussed at length.

So I think we miss the forest for the trees. Jesus is mythical because we can plug lots of historical folks into that role and they can be made to work. Jesus is an amalgam of characteristics, up to and including being a god.

gurugeorge

Exactly, this is it. There's a curious parallelism between gung-ho historicists and gung-ho mythicists.

What we have is a story, in that story there are fantastical aspects and quotidian aspects.

The presence of quotidian aspects no more proves historicity than the presence of fantastical aspects proves mythicism.

So far, there is a symmetry.

However, there is (as I said in my reponse to the OP) also an assymetry too: the mythicist has positive evidence in Paul that there is at least a strong mythical (in the sense of visionary and mystical) aspect to the whole thing. What the historicist has to show, to counter that (i.e. to make it plausible that the mystical/visionary element was in response to a human being, and not just sheer vision/mystical experience) is that the Jerusalem people, the "apostles", actually eyeballed someone, a human being called "Jesus". Spoke to him, received teachings from him, etc.

Absent the discovery of fresh, conclusive texts, or archaeological evidence showing there was a human Jesus, that's the thin thread on which the historicist case hangs. Because we know FOR SURE that there was a mythical Jesus (the one who spoke to Paul in vision), whereas we don't know for sure that there was any human Jesus that the apostles knew (until something internal in the texts we have can reasonably be construed as an example of eyeballing).

joedad

Good point.

Steven Carr

So Spin demands that people produce evidence for a mythical Jesus, when he himself cannot produce evidence that there was no Jack who climbed a Beanstalk.

And now he misrepresents mythicism by implying that mythicists question the existence of Jesus because of miracle stories.

The first mention of the Jesus of the Gospels is in an anonymous, unsourced novel.

Steven Carr

I see historicists don't like defending their idea that Judas existed.

Domino-theory, anyone?

spamandham

I never thought of it like that, but you're right.

andrewcriddle

Why do you think it so improbable that there was a historical Judas ?

Andrew Criddle

The Dagda

I think you answered your own question by definition history is subjective and by nature science is objective. There has never been a historical anyone, just a scientific someone. Judas as you define him and Jesus as I do are no more objective than Santa.

andrewcriddle

Eusebius has various references to Jesus' family eg the grandsons of Jude the brother of Jesus who supposedly came to the attention of the Roman authorities towards the end of the 1st century. See also the rather strange references to the Desposyni, the relatives of Jesus, in a letter by Julius Africanus quoted by Eusebius.

Andrew Criddle

Steven Carr

Judas is part of a vast cast of Gospel characters that no Christian in the first century put his name to ever seeing or hearing of.

His existence is as well-documented as that of the second gunman who shot JFK