James The Least

Except that we don't actually know when the proposed historic Jesus lived. So the gospels and epistles that appear to be "early" may not be early at all. Because some of them say that Jesus lived in the early part of the first century does not make this a fact, and if a legendary Jesus was historicized then it becomes meaningless.

James The Least

There is nothing in early Christian literature that leads one to conclude that the crucifixion was viewed as an embarrassment. As far as OT prophecy goes, the Jesus character himself tells the reader that everything that is happening, no matter how harsh, is because of prophecies that have to be fulfilled.

True, but the people inventing the Jesus mythus didn't limit themselves to interpreting within Judaic parameters.

No evidence of starting in Judea. Instead, all evidence points to Asia Minor, Alexandria, and Rome. What happened was non-Jews began adapting Jewish monotheism to their own uses.

All part of the legend. Jesus's ministry is "obscure" because Mark needs it to be obscure.

graymouser

And these are clear parallels to the Gospel story how, exactly? Just posting a single Amazon link to an out of print book does not function as an argument.

The phrase is not "brother" which is used in a specific sense but "brother of the Lord." The fact that Paul used "brother" to mean a fellow believer does not mean that he was incapable of using it as its ordinary meaning of a sibling. He uses "brother of the Lord" only to specify certain specific people, as in Gal 1:19 and 1 Cor 9:5 (where Doherty has to invent a religious order for this tendentious misreading to function).

No, because he doesn't use "false brothers of the Lord." This is clearly a different phrase than his use of the unadorned "brother."

And do you have a postgraduate degree in either NT studies or ancient literature? If not, why should I care what your opinion of the genre of Mark is?

And precisely what non-fundamentalist modern NT scholars consider the epistle of James to have been written by the brother of Jesus?

graymouser

The person revered as Jesus Christ in the Christian religion was crucified while Pontius Pilate was the Roman prefect of Judea. There is no evidence to support any other time; therefore, Jesus died sometime between 26 and 36 CE. It is not "some of them." Every single piece of evidence we have points to precisely this time period, and it's consistent with the timing of the epistles we have from Paul. You can't just wave your hands and say we don't know as if every wild conjecture was perfectly equal.

aa5874

Your statement is highly illogical and reveals a most absurd concept of historical sources.

The very stories that claim Jesus was crucified also claimed the character was the Son of a Ghost, walked on water, was transfigured, raised from the dead and ascended to heaven.

You cannot employ obvious Myth Fables for biographies or history.

The stories in the Bible about Jesus MUST, MUST, MUST be FIRST corroborated by Credible sources.

You come across as some one who has very little appreciation for CREDIBLE sources.

Your reliance on Myth Fables for history is most appalling. Virtually every thing in the NT Canon about Jesus is ABSOLUTE Fiction, that is, they are NOT true whether or not Jesus did live.

Atheos

Ironically, the story about Jesus' trial and crucifixion is possibly the most unlikely part of the story (historically speaking) of the whole thing (apart from the walking on water, healing blind people, etc). The absurdity of this trial scene where the Sanhedrin council violates nearly every principle of their assembly by (1) holding a trial at night, (2) spitting on and slapping a defendant (3) finding for a death sentence in a one-day trial or (4) requiring permission from Pilate to execute someone when they by law had that right on their own is enough to leave any reasonable historian skeptical about the validity of the story.

Passover was not a time for holding executions. It would be orders of magnitude more offensive to the sensibilities of the Jewish people to do this than it would be for a public execution to be held in the modern United States on Thanksgiving Day or Christmas Day. Once again, totally absurd. Had these things actually happened as described one would expect to see mounds of evidence of the public outrage associated with the event. Nothing but silence.

But let a few decades pass, let the people who were alive at the time die off and these details can be woven into the fabric of the developing myth without ruffling any feathers.

I'm not saying there wasn't an historical Jesus, but to appeal to historical markers like the date/specifics of the crucifixion story without considering the consequences they engender seems a bit self-destructive to your argument.

spin

The person revered as Jesus Christ in the Christian religion was baptized by John, who died at the beginning of the public ministry of said Jesus. Josephus relates the death of John to the brief war between Herod Antipas and Aretas IV of Petra which was close to the end of the life of Tiberius (17/03/37), putting the war about a year before T's death. We have the execution of JtB not long before the war in early 36 CE for Josephus relates the result of the war to retribution over the execution of John (AJ 18.116 = 18.5.2) and the connection between the events would not make sense with an elongated timeline. Postulating a death of John long before the war invalidates any meaningful relationship between the two events. Josephus places the recall of Pilate before the death of Tiberius, which happened before Pilate reached Rome. (AJ 18.89 = 18.4.2)

We can throw out the chronology of three passovers in the ministry of Jesus according to gJn as completely unrealistic when compared to the historical data from Josephus. If JtB died in 35 CE Jesus according to gJn would still have been alive when Pilate was removed. As it is we have difficulty trying to make the chronology work when Pilate was gone in 36 CE. What we are doing is trying to fit the gospel story to the historical events and we are pushed into a short ministry in the last year of Pilate's prefecture. (Most pundits just ignore Josephus and work from the fanciful birth narratives to get a death circa 30 CE. That would be five years before JtB died.)

It appears as though the data have been marshaled for the story rather than the story being based on historical events.

Sheshbazzar

1 Clement (as we have it) actually 'quotes' from the Gospels and Pauline Epistles extensively.
_But some of these 'quotes' may well have not originally been 'quotes' at all.

'1 Clement' and 'Matthew' presents a 'which came first, the chicken or the egg' dilemma.
DID '1 Clement' depend on 'Matthew'? or did the written 'The Gospel Which is According 'Matthew' come into being as the result of 'Clement'?
Church Father Justin Martyr 100-165, shows no knowlege of any 'Gospel Which is According to Matthew'.....
or 'Mark', or 'Luke', or 'John' or 'Paul'. He claims he got his gospel from some unidentified 'old man'.)

First of all, the original author of '1 Clement' was anonymous and is actually unknown, the popular title attributing the work to have been written by one Clement of Rome was only applied much latter in a invented version of a 'traditional' church history.
Likewise 'Matthew' is actually an anonymous writing of uncertain date and origins to which the name 'Matthew' was only applied by latter church 'tradition'.

All of the so called 'evidence' that a 'Clement of Rome' was the writer of this anonymous epistle are only 'traditions' either reported or manufactured by latter church writers, and none of it is comes from or is supported any contemporary evidence, witness, or sources, apologetic or non-apologetic.
It just kind of appears on the radar, and latter writers glomed unto it (Clement of Alexandria, '2 Clement', Eusebius)

Secondly, as no original copies of this anonymously produced epistle survive, there is no way of determining exactly what it contained before passing into the hands of the 'orthodox' church, and underwent hundreds of years of additional Christian tampering and editing.

__that is allowing that the core of this anonymous writing even existed at an early date to influence the subsequent development of Christianity.
The contrary position which is advocated by aa5874, places its total production after the 5th century CE.

Certainly, the text of '1 Clement' as it now stands is an absolutely anachronistic ringer. Purporting to be a first century text, by some strange quirk it contains references to texts and to religious ideas that were apparently unknown, never mentioned, or unaccepted by other church writers well into the late second century.

So it comes down to the chicken or the egg. Either this basic anonymous epistle was early and influential and -led to- the composition of the Gospels and the Pauline epistles,
Or the other way around, the Gospels and 'Paul' were first and authentic which led to the composition of this anonymous epistle.

Or this epistle was entirely fabricated at a later time (after the 5th century CE per aa5874) __But that presents a problem of hundreds of references to 'Clement' having to have been latter interpolated into myrid 3rd through 5th century Christian writings.

My personal persuasion is that an anonymous epistle did exist in the first century that became influential and in time led to the composition of the fully developed Christian canon.
In fact I would bet that there were hundreds, if not thousands of very similar anonymous religious writings being circulated during this developmental stage of what eventually came to be the recognizable and 'authoritative' version of the 'Christian' religion and its 'history'.




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sotto voce

There is no good reason to believe that all of the New Testament bar Revelation was not written within forty years of the alleged resurrection. Some of the reasons given for necessary later authorship are evidently born of desperation rather than scholarship.

Oral transmission, which in a world of smaller populations than today was liable to be more reliable than the written word, not less, makes dating and indeed authorship of far less importance than many seem to believe; or perhaps need to be believed, if their pet theory is to stand up. The lore of the gospels was the events witnessed by many thousands of people, many of whom had taken their experiences around the Mediterranean and as far as Persia. There must have been many private, part accounts of Jesus' activities, and those of his disciples, around the known world, probably stretching to Britain before the end of the first century, that perished through the action of the elements, as well as the actions of immoral opponents. Moreover, there was a deliberately formed nucleus of witnesses of Jesus' whole ministry available for reference. It is therefore unintelligent beyond belief to suppose that written 'gospels' were anything like crucial to the understanding of the gospel— that is, the message, usually spoken, that changed people's lives.

It is said that the letters do not recognise the gospels, but there is no more fatuous notion. The letters could not possibly exist if the crucifixion and resurrection had not occurred; and the gospels would not have been worth writing if there was no resurrection! Without it, the disciples would have gone home and supposed that they had dreamed it all. The letters were written to those who already knew the 'ministry' lore; they would not have been recipients if they were not familiar with it. It is childishly difficult to expect Paul and Peter to mention the detail of Jesus' ministry in their letters— though there is more of it than many suppose.

It is also said that the gospels display some sort of progression in the attitude to Jesus, with absurd ideas of the order in which they were written. The order makes no difference, because each canonical gospel treats Jesus in exactly the same way, as the manifestation of deity from his birth, though with personal emphases that are perfectly legitimate and to be expected. If they did not treat Jesus as the Son of God, they would not be accepted by the church; that is, by the only people who matter. People who live by the NT matter, because they are those who define it, and the whole Bible, and the reason it even exists. The opinions of others are usually not worth attention, and not infrequently are political interference.

Do not be taken in by loud noises of protest, dear reader.

Atheos

Sorry, I've heard that schtick about oral transmission supposedly being more reliable back in the good old days and I just don't buy it. It didn't add up when I was studying textual criticism in college 30 years ago and it still doesn't.

First of all it's a categorically unfalsifiable claim. The only way to verify that oral transmission in ancient times was reliable is to have some evidence of what was being said in an earlier time and what was being said in a later time. The existence of that evidence alone would by definition render it impossible to know if the story stayed consistent solely through oral transmission or if it was buttressed by the other evidence. Lack of such evidence leaves us with no record of the earlier version of the story and no way to verify if it changed. Catch-22.

The discovery of the Qumran texts gave us insight into the reliability (or sometimes lack thereof) of scribal transmission but that's not the same thing in any sense of the word.

Meanwhile, we know that in modern times orally transmitted information is nowhere near as likely to remain intact as printed information. The evidence is staggering. What possible reason could be given to assume that what appears to be a basic function of human interaction now somehow wasn't a factor 2000 years ago?

This claim of reliable oral transmission in ancient times appears to me to be nothing more than a shortcut taken by apologists to avoid having to come to terms with the fact that supporting evidence for many of their claims is non-existent.