aa5874

You are talking about Jesus of the NT.

Jesus of the NT was NOT described as human with a human father so it is of no real value to assume Jesus was human when you will NOT be able to provide any credible source to support the assumption.

You cannot argue that Pilate in the NT was a Fisherman in Galilee because there are NO sources that make such a claim.

You cannot argue that Gabriel the Angel was the Christ there is NO source of antiquity that make such a claim.

It is wholly unsubstantiated to make claims about Jesus of the NT that are NOT even mentioned by Apologetic sources.

All the stories that have SURVIVED about Jesus are FICTIONAL so it is completely useless to assume that there was a real non-fictional Jesus.

You MUST, it is IMPERATIVE, that you FIRST find a credible non-fictional story of Jesus BEFORE you proceed to argue for a non-fictional Jesus.

Evidence FIRST---Argument LAST.

Source FIRST---Argument LAST.

Where is the Evidence, Where is the Source that was FIRST needed to argue Jesus was human???

There was NEVER any evidence, never any source in the FIRST Place to make the argument that Jesus of the NT was Embellished.

The Human Jesus argument is based on IMAGINATION and Speculation.

The human Jesus argument was NEVER valid in the first place.

I no longer accept imagination and speculation as evidence for a human Jesus.

Tom Sawyer

No, I'm talking about the potential real person whom Jesus of the NT may have been based upon, either loosely or otherwise.

Jesus of the NT is a fictional character - everyone agrees on that. It's whether or not that fictional character is based upon a real person or is simply entirely made up which is the subject of the HJ vs MJ debate.

aa5874

Of course, you are claiming that Jesus of the NT is an EMBELLISHED human Jesus. That is all.

HJers use the the very same NT and the very same DATA to claim their Jesus was from Nazareth, Baptized by John was a Apocalyptic preacher man and crucified under Pilate.

HJers use Galatians 1.19 to claim THEIR Jesus had a brother called the Apostle James which they assert is also mentioned in the Gospels.

Please, please, please!!! Even the so-called Historian Ehrman use the Bible for His Jesus.

HJers are claiming Jesus of the NT is THEIR Jesus ONLY that he was FICTIONALIZED.

But, again they cannot yet provide the Non-fictional source of antiquity for THEIR Jesus.

A human Jesus can only be argued WITH sources and evidence from antiquity NOT with imagination and speculation.

Jesus of the NT was described as the Son of a Ghost.

Gabriel was called an angel.

Satan was the Devil.

Pilate was governor.

Tiberius was Emperor.

You can't change the story now.

The Jesus story has already been written.

The MYTH has been invented 1800 years ago.

You cannot re-construct the past with Imagination.

The Jesus Myth Fables have already been Believed by people of antiquity.

Sheshbazzar

Potential Pecos Bill.
The Pecos Bill of yore is a fictional character -everyone agrees in that. It's whether or not that fictional character is based upon a real person or is entirely made up......
One might well wonder whether any other character so mythically embellished character might be just as well be lacking in historical substance.

Pecos Bill allegedly lived in Texas, and there is a real historical Texas, and Texas did have horses's, which argues that there must have been a real historical Pecos Bill that inspired the myths.
As I recall, Pecos even had a brother named 'Cactus Pete', so that must prove that there was a real-life historic Pecos Bill and Cactus Pete...



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Tom Sawyer

You and I appear to be having two separate and unrelated conversations. :huh:

Tom Sawyer

Yes, one might imagine it but it doesn't therefore follow that there's a rationale for it. Something happened to start the Jesus stories and we have ourselves some third-hand accounts of what that something might have been, so there are flimsy and unsupported conclusions which we can draw from that. For other mythical characters, we don't have these third-hand accounts from a couple generations later made by people with a distinct political agenda behind spreading the stories, so the potential historical nature of their existence isn't as well supported as Jesus's is.

We know that characters are made up and we know that stories about people can get embellished. What we don't have evidence of either way is which of these was the case with Jesus and all that we have is whatever unsupported supposition we decide to put too much weight on.

maryhelena

And not just one real person - since the JC figure is a fictional character - there is no necessity to search for just one real person as being the model for the fictional character. A composite fictional character opens up much more scope for a historical search!

The HJ side need to accept that the gospel fictional character does not have a corresponding flesh and blood figure. However, their insistence that some historicity lies behind the fictional gospel character is well founded. Ideas need to have some basis in reality in order to have some 'legs' upon which to run.

As for the MJ side - they will, sooner or later, have to accept the reality that history matters. Without a foothold in reality, ideas are just pie in the sky and have no inherent claim on longevity...

steve_bnk

Buddhists hve the same issue, there re no accounts from the time of Bhuddha. But I do not think it is an issue for them.

rlogan

In statistics we have what are called "model selection criteria" where instead of having an Historical Jesus theory compete against no explanation, we have a Historical Jesus theory competing against an alternative explanation.

When every critical aspect of Jesus has been copied straight from the Hebrew Bible, most commonly from Isaiah, that theory of origin to the Jesus story does a far better explanation than the just-so story of Jesus being an itinerant preacher unworthy of historical note that had all these additions to him made over time.

What the Historical Jesus adherents do is remove everything from the story that can be used to reject him as a historical person. So you remove all the miracles and anything else that obviously can't be true - and you are left with "Jesus was an itinerant preacher".

But the explanation that Jesus came from Isaiah and other books of the Bible can not only be proven, but we know the Septuigint version of the Hebrew Bible was used instead of the original Hebrew. So this school doesn't throw all the evidence out the window like the historical jesus school does. Their methodology is to actually get rid of the evidence instead of explaining the evidence.

That is the exact opposite of what a statistician is supposed to do. You have to explain the evidence instead of removing it. The historical jesus people say "There, I have removed all the evidence. So with no data left, disprove my theory."

What model selection criteria do is force both competing models to explain the data. You are not allowed to remove data to make your model "explain" what is left, which in the case of the Historical Jesus is nothing.

Tom Sawyer

True, but there does have to be a line at which "based off of a true story" becomes incorrect thing to say. I think that if you're talking a composite of multiple people, then you're into MJ territory. You're not talking about a person who's tale has become embellished at that point, but someone who never existed in the first place. The fact that this fictional character had various aspects of real people pulled together into a composite of his personality and story doesn't change that there wasn't ever any historical Jesus in this scenario.

There is an argument to be made that the term could still apply, but personally I find it going a bit too far.