jakejonesiv

"Paul" nevers says he knew anyone who knew the alleged Historical Jesus.

It has been 1800 years and counting, and no one has produced an eye witness or a shred of evidence that Jesus lived.

Jake Jones IV

reddish

Huh?

There is nothing there that says Bolland rejects a historical jesus.

(I do read dutch, even the archaic pompous dutch as written by this fellow.)

Amaleq13

You think Paul met the living Jesus?

I agree it is likely an exaggeration but that still suggests a group experience of an "appearance". That Jesus appeared to 5 or 50 is no more mysterious (or credible ) than appearances of the Virgin Mary to crowds today.

jakejonesiv

What does it say in your opinion?

Jake

reddish

In exceedingly woolly language, it discusses whether the names "Josua", "Ieesoûs", and "Jezus" (Dutch version of Jesus) refer to the same person. There is no discussion of the historicity of Jesus in this citation.

So your original claim here is not supported by this.

Biff the unclean

To me they bring to mind another crowd who were witnesses to a "Super" natural event. You know the ones. They were calling out, “Look, up in the sky!!…It’s a bird…it’s a plane…”
Not really witnesses to the story so much as part of the story.

Llyricist

Look out, someone's gonna pull out definition 3(b)* of "fiction" and claim that by definition, Paul's letters were NOT fiction, and therefore, everything in them has to be taken at face value.

ETA:
*as found at dictionary.com

jakejonesiv

The Gospel Jesus
An Attempt to Indicate the Origin of Christianity
By G.J.P.J.Bolland
Leiden 1907

Bolland begins his essay by laying the groundwork that the Diaspora in Alexandria had developed an allegorical reading of the Old Testament that incorporated a pre-gospel figure of Jesus.

In the beginning of the era Jews and Jewish sympathisers at Alexandria (and elsewhere around the Mediterranean) had a translation of the books of Moses in Greek. In Genesis 49:18 we find the exclamation: "I look for your deliverance, O LORD.!” and in Numbers 13:17 one sees that “Moses called Ausees the son of Nun, JESUS.” This change of name to Jesus is very significant, as we shall see.

Philo the Jew of Alexandria writes in Chapter 21 of his essay concerning the change of name: “Ieosus means the Lord’s Salvation being the name of the most excellent possible nature.”
(see http://www.earlyjewishwritings.com/t...lo/book20.html )

Bolland then adduces from Chapter 3 of an essay on the virtues, more on the excellent character of Joshua.
“For when Joshua, being his most excellent pupil and the imitator of his amiable and excellent disposition, had been approved of as the ruler of the people by the judgment of God…”

http://www.earlyjewishwritings.com/t...lo/book31.html

Bolland makes several other references to Philo found here (i.e. Allegorical Interpretation 1)
http://www.earlyjewishwritings.com/t...ilo/book2.html

“On the Embassy to Gaius” 13:99 “announcing the gospel” (albeit in reference to pagan gods) to mankind and 16:118 “it would be easier to change a god into man, than a man into god”
http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/yonge/book40.html

And he deduces among others, that god sometimes adopts one man, to come to the aid of them that have prayed to him. (I am guessing Bolland had in mind http://www.earlyjewishwritings.com/t...ilo/book8.html
It is sometimes a little difficult to pipoint the passages in Philo that Bolland cites. I am guessing that he might mean, "Let the Lord, the God of spirits and of all flesh, look out a man who shall be over this assembly, who shall go out before their faces, and who shall come in, and who shall bring them out, and who shall bring them in, and so the synagogue of the Lord shall not be like unto sheep which have no Shepherd"

Bolland then turns to the Exodus tale of Moses. It is noted that Moses did not succeed in bringing the people of God all the way to the destination, and there was a time in which the leader to accomplish this was still to come. The expected leader was indeed named Jesus (Ieosus).
Moses could not yet have brought the people of god, where actual coming had; to this end.

The epistle to Hebrews 4:8 says, “For if Jesus (Ieosus) had given them rest, he would not have spoken of another day.” This day have been automatically understood to mean the Day of the Lord announced by the prophets (Amos 5.18 and elsewhere), that to in Openbarring/Revelation 22:20 (“Amen! Come Lord Jesus”) it is still expected and even in Jesaja/Isaiah 49:22-23 to the people of Yahweh a day of national satisfaction had been promised.

Although the land of Canaan for Israel was a resting place, in this nevertheless their supreme good had not been lain; it was for this reason a temporary rest only. The true resting place is heaven, so the expected deliverer Jesus is yet to come.

To Moses the LORD had said: “I will raise up a prophet from among their countrymen like you, and I will put my words in his mouth”. (Deut. 18: 18; vgl. ACTS 7.37.) Ieosus of the Jewish scriptures tale accompliches that deliverance. A reflection of this is found in Matthew 1:21 “you shall call his name IEOSUS, for he will deliver his people from their sins." Bolland notes that Ieosus came from Egypt.

The fourth gospel has IEOSUS to say: “For if you believed Moses, you would believe me; for he wrote about me” (John 5:46). Certainly Moses wrote of Joshua, this exposes the identity.

Bolland then indentifies Joshua son of Nun as Jesus Christ. In the Greek of the Septuagint and the New Testament it is one name, Ieosus. The translations obscure this identity by substituting “Johua” in such texts as Hebrews 4:8 and Acts 7:45.

"De naam Jezus is de naam Ieesoûs en de naam Ieesoûs is de naam Jozua"

The name Jesus is the name IEOSUS and the name IEOSUS is the name Joshua, such as to start the ALEXANDRIAN (Bolland means the Septuagint) translations of the Jewish books.

According to Acts 18:24-25, Apollos of Alexandria knew nothing more than John’s baptism but taught accurately concerning IEOSUS merely from reading in the scriptures. Alfred Loisy also commented on the incredible implications of this passage.

The primitive gospel preached from scripture alluded to in Acts indicate that Jews of first century Alexandria taught Jesus as a figure of imagination.

Er is echter meer in begrepen of te begrijpen; er
ligt al aanstonds in, dat een Alexandrijnsche Jood
of Jodengenoot van de eerste eeuw zijn voorjesuaanschen
Jezus heeft gehad als eene gestalte van de
verbeelding,G.J.P.J.BOLLAND: DE EVANGELISCHE JOZUA page 8.

Bolland also argues that the author of 2 Clement (also of Alexandria) considered Jesus to be an incorporal being. In 2 Clem. 9: 5 we read, that “Christ the Lord who saved us, being first spirit” and in 2 Clem. 14:2 the church appears be considered as his body.


====
A few comments. G.J.P.J. Bolland’s work is remarkable
considering that it was published almost one hundred
years ago.

To summarize, G.J.P.J.Bolland considers Christianity to derive from two sources, although both somewhat
Gnostic in nature. The gospel arose from an allegorical interpretation of the Septuagint in Alexandria. It seems to me that this was the basis of Justin Martyr’s Logos Christianity that had nothing to do with Paul. (Justin Martyr also identifies
Jesus/Joshua in Dialogue with Trypho the Jew, Chapter 75).
http://www.ccel.org/fathers/ANF-01/j...html#Section71
http://www.ccel.org/fathers/ANF-01/j...tintrypho.html

The Alexandrian gospel had a view of God as the creator, which came to be at odds with the Marconite/Pauline view of two God’s with the creator being an inferior Demiurge. Bolland considered all the Paulinics to be second century creations.

References:
http://www.egodeath.com/BollandGospelJesus.htm
http://tinyurl.com/5cuc3
http://www.radikalkritik.de/Bolland.htm

Further reading:
Titel: Gnosis en evangelie : eene historische studie
van G.J.P.J. Bolland

Auteur: Gerardus Johannes Petrus Josephus Bolland
1854-1922
Jaar: 2001
Uitgever: Moerkapelle : Jan Börger-Bibliotheek
Annotatie: Fotomechanische herdr. van: Leiden :
Adriani, 1906. - (Geschriften ; 1:9)
Omvang: 175 p. ; 21 cm
ISBN: 90-76033-13-7
Trefwoord Depot: gnosticisme; exegese
Koninklijke Bibliotheek - National library of the
Netherlands

Jake Jones IV

Clivedurdle

My pentecostal upbringing consisted of a huge amount of sermons on and Bible studies of texts like this.

Apollos was told everything by the Holy Spirit. The fact that Jesus is foretold by Moses is taken as crucial evidence that this is God's Word.


Little things, like love your neighbour being in the Pentateuch.

Like the above comment about the Church being the body of Christ - that idea is from Revelation, and actually it is another blow against an HJ.

Think about it. We are discussing the Almighty. Why is the job half finished? We have had god morphing as a human, we have had a death and resurrection. Why isn't the church already the bride of Christ? (Are the gospels apologia themselves? Wedding at Cana as a story to show how Jesus would treat the church when it becomes his bride?)

Why all this groaning for the revelation of the son of man if as the last words of Jesus are reported "It is finished"?

Apologist is the wrong word! Story loose thread fixers? Are the two endings of Mark actually a very early example of what happens with some stories now, you get to chose the ending you want?

TerryTryon

The question is: Is there any rational reason for an informed materialistic atheist to accept the person described in the New Testament as Jesus Christ as a historical person. Of course, one, if one is a materialist, has to first strip away all supernatural claims. Doing that, alone, doesn’t leave much to work with. Then one must examine other historical documents from the purported place and time of the events of Jesus’ life and take away the historical, geographical, and cultural errors that expose the ignorance of the writers of the various books. There is almost nothing left. Then one needs to strip away the stories in the corpus that are clearly the reforming of myths and legends originating in earlier times. Is there anything left? Perhaps, some shadowy figure scurrying away into the night before one has a good look at him. Certainly not enough to spill gallons of ink or to hang several gigabytes of memory on.

It is no wonder that some folk are questioning motives rather than assessing reason.