Clivedurdle

We have several hypotheses.

JC is the actual son of God who created the universe and died for our sins etc (the big bang model?) But is he begotten and equal to the father? What of docetism?

Several variations on a bloke in Galilee who knew some classic shaman type techniques and got deaded

Variations on gnostic milleniarist ideas leading to the slow evolution of a mythical heavenly christ that then took off with acceptance by Constantine ( is that the point that xianity took off from, in much the same way as wahhabism, because of the alleged clarity - I am the way - of a puritan ideology, declaring everything else heresy - slash and burn strategy.)

Add in two thousand years of assumptions - like the gospels are historical documents.

And surely the first principle of any historian is to look at all the evidence and check assumptions. Which is in fact what non religious historians have done - and come to the conclusion if it looks like a myth....

Amaleq13

That is because it isn't my position to defend.

aa5874

The word now is 'plausibilties'. We have several plausibilties.

Now, if we strip the character called Jesus Christ of prophecies, miaculous birth, miraculous healings, the resurrection and ascension, we have many plausibilties.
1. Jesus may have never existed.
2.Jesus existed.
3.There was a person named Jesus who died and is now falsely called the Christ.
4.Many persons were called Jesus and one of them was arbitrarily called the Christ.
5.A person had some other name but called himself Jesus afterwards was thought to be Jesus Christ .
6.Many persons called themselves Jesus Christ and one was chosen at random to be the Christ.
6.The plausibilities are endless.

Only evidence can determine the outcome, but if the Bible can be shown to be not credible. who are we really searching for, just a name?

lpetrich

I'd decided against doing a Jesus-historicity poll for now, because I needed some clarification on historical-Jesus concepts that involve rejecting part of the Gospels as unhistorical.

Has anyone done a collection of historical-Jesus concepts? I could work from that.

gurugeorge

Erm, not if he didn't exist ... correct?

The movement called "Christianity" had tremendous impact, but whether there was some tremendous initial impulse from either (at one side of the scale) a living man-God or (at the other end of the scale) some chump change prophet or revoloutionary (all three of these being possible "historical Jesus"s), is what's under investigation.

How the movement had an impact if its supposed founder figure didn't exist historically, but was rather some kind of mythic god or symbolic entity or something of that nature (akin to dying-and-rising gods in other cultures, a Hellenized Jewish version thereof), is another question.

And how such a mythic god accreted this psuedo-historical encrustation, and a dogma so intimately linked with, and staking all on, historical truth, is another.

gurugeorge

It would be a good thing for a scholar to get their teeth into, methinks.

Clivedurdle

Search for jesi under posts!

http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?p=3651699

http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?p=3489495

http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?p=3393926

http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?p=3276535

Clivedurdle

We are also possibly in a position to delineate how these jesi concepts evolved....

( I forgot the post Constantine Emperor Jesus!)

TrueMyth

Let's be clear here:

1. The movement called "Christianity" is not necessarily identical to the historical Jesus.
2. Christianity has had enormous historical impact (for good or ill).
3. Christianity was highly influenced by the teachings of Jesus.
4. If (2) and (3) are true, then it is reasonable to assume that while Jesus' historical impact is not necessarily equal to that of Christianity, his historical impact can only be perceived as "great", if only in virtue of his character as the impetus for Christianity.

The understanding of Jesus which can most blatantly ignore his historical impact is to claim that he never existed, and attribute Christianity's genesis to either a mythic construction; an amalgamation of writings by others, put into Jesus's mouth a la Socrates; or some combination of the two.

The thesis that Jesus never existed is absurd and is certainly an extreme minority position. Josephus, a man who was not a Christian convert by any means, mentions him in two places in his Antiquities. One might have the gloss of later Christian tampering (the Testimonium Flavium), but the other is almost universally accepted by historians as authentic. In this one, Josephus calls this man "Jesus, the so-called Christ". There are two very important features of this passage: 1) Josephus, a person considered to be a reliable record of history, mentions the existence of Jesus and connects him to the movement which would later become known as Christianity, and 2) He acknowledges that for whatever reason, enough people believed that he was the Messiah and gave him that moniker. Josephus himself might have had doubts about Jesus's Christ qualifications, but he in any case acknowledged that Jesus had done sufficiently to convince enough people so that he obtained this title.

Thus, the only way to deny the historical impact of Jesus the man is to 1) commit historical ideological bias by admitting the impact of Van Gogh, Dickinson, Mendel, and Bach, but denying the impact of Jesus; 2) display willful historical ignorance by denying he existed; or 3) again commit willful historical ignorance by denying Josephus and stating that Jesus, as he existed, was a minor figure to whom great things were attached at a later point. As a side note: it is entirely possible to deny all elements of the supernatural and still acknowledge Jesus' enormous historical impact. "Great things" need not mean miracles; they might just as well mean his revolutionary approaches to life, ethics, politics, and God.

Clivedurdle

Few contradictory words in your profile, liberal xian college, shadowlands, mere xianity. Not sure if CS Lewis can be described as liberal, but what is interesting is how an English Literature professor confused myth and reality.

Methinks for example of Spong, and Sea of Faith, and gay bishops when I see the word liberal.

I cannot work out which model jesi you are asserting - sounds like a revolutionary moral teacher. Ok, so what. Why did he not clearly condemn slavery for example? There are loads of moral teachers, actually all the thinkers who have developed human rights law over the last century are light years ahead of this alleged 2000 year old revolutionary jesus you put forward.

Couple of lines in Josephus about the saviour of mankind? Pull the other one, especially as the evolution of a christ figure is a far better fit to the facts than reactive apologia.

Which jesus are you arguing for, where is your evidence?