Johann_Kaspar

Fau, Dubourg, several writers of the Cercle Ernest-Renan.

Ideologist

My understanding of the current consensus on that passage is that some mention of Jesus was included in the Testimonium, even if the version we're familiar with is heavily corrupted.

Which makes sense, really; even if you accept that Jesus was a myth (which is questionable), I really don't think it's seriously questionable whether Christians in some form were around in the 1st century.

Like... the Gospels?

Keep in mind that a wholly surviving document from that time is the extreme exception, not the rule. One would equally expect the Q document to have survived beyond the first few centuries, but obviously it did not despite how treasured it might have been; it simply didn't happen, though.

Malachi151

I think that my treatment of the case addresses all of his points, except perhaps some of the issues about Paul, but those had been debated ad infinitum.

http://www.rationalrevolution.net/ar...th_history.htm

I think that I have answered this question.

The humanity of Christ developed out of the "flesh" and "blood" eucharist rituals and the theological concept that the shedding of real blood was required to create a new covenant.

Likewise, we also have these tie-ins Jesus Christ as the new Adam, the Adam for the end of the ages. The first Adam brought sin into the world, and Jesus Christ is the last Adam, to cleans the world of sin just prior to its final destruction. In order to cleans the world of sin, the last Adam has to come in the flesh, to be a sin offering for the world.

So, there is very much a theological reason for the development of the historicist of Christ Jesus.

we don't need to have the documents preserved, all we need is to see that "real" evidence was used to defend his existence in the 2nd and 3rd centuries in the apologetic works that we have,

See my coverage of this:

http://www.rationalrevolution.net/ar...history.htm#14

In all of the apologetic works that we have, which is a lot, we can point at hundreds of defenses of the humanity of Christ, and in all of those defenses, almost all of them rely purely on scripture and theology. Of those that don't, they either rely on unsupported claims, such as "Check your own records, you will find him there", type stuff, or on false claims, such as Origen's attempt to use Josephus to attest to Jesus, but he mistakenly references the Christian apologist and chronicler Hegesippus instead (their names were almost the same in Greek).

We also have the vain attempts to use the Gentile Phlegon to confirm the blackout of the sun and earthquake after the supposed death of Christ, but Phlegon's account is of an earthquake over 500 miles away from Judea in 35 CE, and Phlegon is like the most unreliable writer of the entire ancient times, a know teller of tall tales and intentional deception, who who fantastic histories based on various stories he collected from around the empire.

So, we know they made defenses of his humanity, and that most of those defenses relied on scripture and theology, and of the attempts to use "real evidence" that they did use, they failed every time, either saying things that weren't true, misquoting, or stretching sources past breaking.

Johann_Kaspar

Summary: from the pagans and jewish testimonies we can't even be sure that "Jesus" lived.

Further: the discussion about the historic non-existence of "Jesus" is legitimate...

It is funny to see CG discarding any valuable testimony about the life of Bryan "Jésus", even xian, but to conclude that he existed nevertheless. The "mythologization" was the later work of the xians.

But at the origin, he existed because he existed...

Case open.

Johann_Kaspar

It is questionable. There were no xians until 888 auc.

Malachi151

No it doesn't. The majority claim now is one of Christian apologetics, and it has ZERO evidence in support of it, only conjecture.

I analyze the problem here (you have to scroll down to the part on Josephus):

http://www.rationalrevolution.net/ar...history.htm#10

My conclusion, and rightly so I believe, is that the best explanation is the full innocent insertion of a marginal note that was written next to the point in the writing where some later reader thought that Jesus fit into the timeline of events.

Toto

It is a shakey consensus, but once you admit that the version we have is corrupted, you have no way of establishing what the original said. It might have been a passage about another Jesus entirely, or another crucified leader who did not leave followers.

And it is questionable whether there were Christians around in the first century. We have no evidence of Christianity then, except for Christian legends.

The Gospels were written after 70 CE, possibly after 132 CE. There is no indication that they were written by anyone who knew Jesus.

Q is a hypothetical reconstruction which very well might not have existed.

There is, of course, one possible reason for the lack of documents that I could not argue with: if Jesus were a revolutionary thug, thoroughly dispicable, his followers might well have destroyed any contrary evidence. Or if Jesus were a thoroughly Jewish leader who clearly indicated he did not want to break with Judaism, all of that evidence could have been erased.

Malachi151

I think that there were people we would call Christians in the 1st century, but they weren't called Christians. I think the first book in the Bible (only one of two) that uses the term is Acts, written in the early middle of the 2nd century.

Johann_Kaspar

Toto is making progress.

Johann_Kaspar

Which gospels? Which parts of those gospels?