spamandham

I'm sure you're partial to your particular story, but is there any reason from Pullmann's perspective that he should pick that one over the 10,000 competing creations of historical Jesus scholarship?

Doug Shaver

I'll take that as a no.

ApostateAbe

Not really, and so I said it would be even better if he models his Jesus after one of the models most predominant among those who know and can evaluate the subject best. The most predominant two models among critical scholars are the apocalyptic prophet Jesus of Bart Ehrman and the wise sage Jesus of the Jesus seminar. I find the apocalyptic prophet Jesus more likely, and it would make better fiction to boot.

spamandham

I guess I'm not convinced these are predominant models. From what I can tell, the only common denominator among the thousands of available models is the one that states:

- Jesus existed around 0CE to 40CE as a real human
- Jesus was really crucified on a cross, probably by Pilate

aa5874

But, those are the very things that must be proven and yet cannot be done by HJers. Their models are based on assumptions or imagination.

1. HJers must prove or demonstrate that there was a real man who lived between 0-40 CE and was called Jesus Christ of Nazarerth who was believed to have walked on water, was believed to have transfigured, resurrected and ascended to heaven.

2. HJers must prove or demonstrate that Jesus called Christ of Nazareth was really crucified on a cross and was believed to have died for the remission of sins of the Jews.

HJers already have models before they have any real data for their models.

I am afraid that it must be data first and then models based on the data.

ApostateAbe

Similarly, the only common denominator among the sciences and pseudosciences of physics is that the universe exists. This is not relevant to the reality of what is generally accepted among qualified experts. Among critical scholars of the New Testament, they generally agree, for examples, that Jesus was a traveling Jewish preacher from the town of Nazareth in Galilee, whose father was a wood smith, who had four brothers, who was a follower of John the Baptist, who had a small number of lower-class disciples including Peter, James and John, who preached against the Pharisees and the Sadducees, who preached for the benefit of the poor and oppressed, who was betrayed by his disciple Judas, who was executed on a cross in Jerusalem by Pontius Pilate, whose leadership was succeeded by his disciples.

When I said this before, Toto, having researched the subject aboundingly, gave me individual examples of scholars who disagree with each of these points. For example, there is one scholar who thinks that Jesus was originally a Pharisee, which means that Jesus' tendency to preach against the Pharisees was merely myth. Mythicists often take those examples as evidence of disorganized scattered anarchy in the field. I hope you don't you fall for this apparent fallacy.

Toto

What apparent fallacy?

Do you realize that the story you gave of what critical experts belief is really the Sunday School story of Jesus, not something that you would read in a scholarly journal?

I think if you tried to find a real consensus, NT scholars would agree that Jesus was crucified by Pilate, but would not agree on the reason(s) or on whether the Temple ruckus was either a historical event or related to the crucifixion. They would not agree on Nazareth, or that Jesus' father was specifically a wood worker, and would not claim to have reliable evidence of the number of brothers he had. They would not agree that Judas was a historical figure.

aa5874

But, agreeing that Jesus was crucified has no historical value. Such an opinion, that Jesus was crucified, has NO HISTORICAL SUPPORT WHATSOEVER.

You cannot find any credible historical source of antiquity that can corroborate any opinion that Jesus of Nazareth was actually crucified under Pilate.

And further one has to assume, without any credible historical source of antiquity, that Jesus first did exist so that he could have been crucified.

The opinion that Jesus was crucified is seriously flawed.

ApostateAbe

The fallacy is to take disagreements of a minority as evidence for a lack of majority agreement. Yes, I am aware that my story of Jesus is not likely to be found in a scholarly journal, mainly because articles very much tend to focus on specifics.

Any specific point is something you are likely to find all over the place in scholarly journals. For example, you are not likely to learn that Jesus was a disciple of John the Baptist in Sunday School (I went every Sunday as a child), but try doing a search in Google Scholar. Here it is. Most of the results give you only brief quotes and first-page glimpses except for paying a large fee for the full article, but some of the quotes are telling. For example, one quote from K Grobel, "He That Cometh after Me", Journal of Biblical Literature, 1941, reads:

"...brought into relationship with the widely recognized probability that Jesus once was a disciple of John?"

aa5874

Again, all we have are IMAGINATIVE ASSUMPTIONS of the historicity of Jesus used as historical facts.

HJers FIRST ASSUME and then historicise their speculative assumptions with the same source that claim Jesus was the offspring of the Holy Ghost, walked on water, transfigured, was raised from the dead and went through the clouds.

How absolutely bizarre!

What kind of historians are we dealing with when their authoritative historical source is the Bible?

HJers seem to be promoting inerrancy, that is, whatever is in the Bible about Jesus is essentially true and is not in any need of any external corroboration.