gurugeorge

In the course of chatting away to people here, some ideas have been firming up in my mind about this business of the historical Jesus. (Hurrah for forums!)

There are (very roughly speaking) two kinds of people on here arguing for the historical Jesus. There are interested atheist or agnostic rationalists who just find the evidence tends that way, and there are believing Christians to whom it's obviously important that there be a historical Jesus, and to whom the evidence tends that way.

What I've found more and more peculiar, thinking about it, is why Christians support the idea of a historical Jesus as that is usually meant. For the way it's usually meant doesn't seem to support Christianity as I understand it. (Full disclosure: I was raised a Roman Catholic but ditched Roman Catholicism when I was 5 or 6, Christianity as a whole when I was 10-ish.)

As I understand Christianity, whether of the Protestand or Catholic varieties, it's based on the idea that there was a human being on Earth in Palestine 2,000 years ago who was also God, and God's Son, who worked miracles, cured peoples' ailments, raised people from the dead and raised himself from the dead.

As I understand the New Testament, it's supposed to be all the proof any thinking person would need that this happened, that a miracle-working God-man walked the Earth 2,000 years ago. For nearly 1,600 years the NT was considered by most people to be sufficient evidence of a miracle-working God-man walking the Earth at that time and place. But then, with the invention of printing, and the translation of the Bible into sundry native languages and its wide dissemination in those languages, people started to notice discrepancies, problems, with the NT.

Eventually, by the end of the 19th century, it was realised even by most Christian biblical scholars of the day that, even with the best will in the world, it was impossible to take those texts as literal proof of the existence of a miracle-working God-man walking the earth 2,000 years ago. They found that most of the God-man stuff was mythical. What biblical scholars did profess to find in the NT, however, was evidence that there may well have been some human being behind the myth - they professed to find, variously, an obscure preacher or some kind of revolutionary zealot, who through some concatenation of circumstances came to be believed to have been a miracle-working God-man.

So, in one sense, there is a "historical Jesus" (some obscure guy who got blown up into a myth). That's the "historical Jesus" about whom there's pretty much a consensus in the field of biblical scholarship. In another sense there's no historical Jesus. It looks like there was no miracle-working God-man walking the Earth 2,000 years ago.

Now what bugs me is this: it's fine for rationalists to believe in the "historical Jesus" (the obscure guy who got blown up). That makes sense, and it's one way of making sense of the evidence, quite rational.

But why do believing Christians accept this "historical Jesus"? Why do we find apologists fighting tooth and nail on this board over the slightest shred of the possibility that this "historical Jesus" might have existed?

Surely, as believing Christians, they can be satisfied with nothing less than the miracle-working God-man, and if it turns out that the NT isn't the historical proof they believed it was and hoped it was, then that's too bad: either they have to ditch Christianity, or carry on believing purely on faith?

But how can they carry on believing even on faith, when it seems so clear that the God-man is a myth imposed on an ordinary human being?

Where is the Christianity, even if there was a "historical Jesus", if the God-man stuff is mythologisation of an ordinary human being? Maybe they like the morality - but why don't they just think of that as a philosophy, like any other? Why do they still think they are part of a religion?

Looked at in this light, the debate between people who uphold a "historical Jesus" and people who uphold a totally mythical Jesus (i.e. who uphold the idea that there wasn't even an obscure guy behind the myth, and that it's "myth all the way down") is small beer.

The real damage was done in the late 19th century when it was admitted by scholars that the purported evidence for the God-man Jesus Christ wasn't actually evidence of a God-man, but, at most, of some obscure preacher or revolutionary who was deified.

IOW the "historical Jesus" has already killed the historical Jesus, and in light of this, the debate between "historical Jesus" and mythical Jesus is trivial.

So I would ask again: why do Christians still uphold a "historical Jesus"? Is it because they think somehow, any historicalness about the "historical Jesus" sort of rubs off on the historical Jesus? (It should be clear it doesn't.)

Why?

(And why can't you edit the subject of a post when you realise you've made a stupid typo??? )

<Done>

Riverwind

Two things...

(1) Some Christians are obviously arguing for a much more 'Historical Jesus' than what you've presented. The ephemeral scholarly 'consensus' that you've talked about is non-existent anyway. If you are under the impression that a consensus of scholars have believed since the 19th century that Jesus was myth, then you would be wholly incorrect.

(2) Some Christians, in order to do secular history, are able to separate the 'Jesus of their faith' from the secular concept of a 'Historical Jesus'. Thus, they approach the 'Historical Jesus' with as little bias as any non-Christian. The 'Jesus of their faith' allows them to believe, outside the secular realm, that even data that appears negative is only due to the fact that not all has been discovered yet.

gurugeorge

I'm not saying that "Jesus was a myth" full stop according to scholars (clearly most scholars believe in a historical Jesus of some sort), but rather that the mythical Jesus (the full-on, miracle working God-man) seems to be believed by most reputable scholars to be non-historical (i.e. there doesn't seem to be proof of that Jesus to be found in the materials, by serious scholars, Christian or not). IOW, the mythical element in the Jesus story seems to bulk up the Christian material, and indisputably historical nuggets are hard to find. (The argument between "mythicists" and "historicists" here is actually an argument further down the line - i.e., the mythicist questions whether even this obscure historical nugget is non-existent. But even historicists in this argument accept that a large proportion of the Jesus story is "myth" of one kind or another.)

To see what I'm getting at, consider: it could have been otherwise, the gospels might well have turned out to be good eyewitness reports by people who knew the God-man personally, of his doings. If they had turned out to be serious eyewitness reports, corroborated by external events, by archaeology, by external, non-cultic contemporaries, then any rational person would have been under an obligation to take them seriously as some kind of pretty good evidence for a miracle working God-man on this Earth 2,000 years ago. That's how they were thought of for a long time. But nobody serious believes that now, not even most Christians.

But if they don't believe that, what do they believe? (Your answer below is one option.)

It looks to me like a kind of "cognitive dissonance". Christians would like to have the emotional benefits of belief in the God-man, but since there's not much proof of Him, they settle for an obscure preacher/revolutionary who somehow or other was blown up into the God-man.

But if that's the case, then the "religion" isn't really a religion, more a philosophy.

But (understandably) Christians would still like their belief to be "special" in some way, and would still like to be connected to the tradition (with its great history, moving rituals, texts, etc.).

So they're constantly falling between the two stools.

Yes that makes sense and I can see that it's reasonable from a position of faith (although it's kind of on the outer edges of reason - it seems unlikely that if there had been better evidence Christians of the past wouldn't have presented it; so clearly what they did present they thought sufficient until scholarship advanced to the stage where it was seen not to be so).

But at the same time, it's not going to convince anybody who isn't already convinced.

lpetrich

Trying to put the "historical Jesus" and the "Jesus of faith" together seems to me like a version of certain medieval philosophers' "double truth", in which one thing can be true in philosophy and its opposite true in theology. Perhaps not surprisingly, the medieval Church declared "double truth" to be heretical.

gurugeorge

Yes. In some recent conversations I've been strenuously assured that some early Christian sects, and some sects today, didn't think of Jesus as a God-man, but as merely another kind of prophet.

But that's kind of irrelevant really, since the Christianity that has informed our culture, and still influences it, is largely about a God-man. (And on the technical side, there's no reason not to believe that this was just a possible logical move taken by some sects, as soon as the historicisation trend set in. And I think it's clear that the all-human-prophet idea comes later, where it comes, and the divine archetype idea - with possibly some vague human at the root of it - comes first.)

Any "historical Jesus" such as respected scholars find, is surely in itself a blasphemy against that Jesus? Never mind the mythical Jesus - the "historical Jesus" alone is enough to upset the applecart. A totally mythical Jesus would just be the cherry on top, or the straw that broke the camel's back.

The damage has already been done, but like one of those huge dinosaurs, the transmission from the brain to the rest of the body is just taking a long time.

However, actually, I'm with some of the more radical Christian thinkers on this: I think if Christians just ditch the whole historical thing altogether, and more or less say "oops sorry", then the mythical Jesus is reborn as in fact both the original and the most truly inspiring form of Christianity. The story in itself has tremendous emotional pull, and inculcates good moral lessons. There is mystical depth to the symbolism, etc. It's all perfectly fine, and Christians who really believe in a living, present Jesus and "talk to" Him can carry on doing so, for the deepest irony is that that's probably exactly how the earliest Christians did it anyway!

IOW if Christians ditch the "hard" historicisation as what (to me) it obviously was (an attempt by certain bishops to put themselves in a position of authority in the early Church by pretending they had a lineage connection to the cultic deity - the so-called "Apostolic Succession"), then Christianity in all its glory is still left over, still as powerful as it ever was in the emotional and truly religious sense. (i.e. it's something that can stretch all the way from Evangelical to Gnostic Christianity, with something for everyone, all hooked on the powerful central figure, who represents that in us which is deeply connected to "God", that in us which is already "divine" and can be leaned upon and "consulted" in times of need - I use quotes because, to mix metaphors horribly, I myself am falling between two stools here, in talking to rationalists out of one side of my mouth and to religious people on the other )

gstafleu

I think I've argued much the same thing before: for the religion the full-blown Jesus is important, so who cares about historical cores? But the problem goes deeper. If you are not a fundamentalist Christian, you probably don't believe in the full-blown miracle worker. But nevertheless you believe in something, and your belief is, at least in professed theory, based on the bible. That puts non-fundies in a rather difficult position which can only be solved by ignoring it.

The atheist HJers are also in a difficult position. Their HJ, even if one is ever found, doesn't really matter for anything, except a historical footnote. So, if an HJ is--for whatever reason--important to an atheist, then the best thing this atheist can do is the same as for the liberal Christian: ignore the issue.

So I doubt if you'll get many good responses to the OP.

Gerard Stafleu

No Robots

Wrong. One can be an atheist and still see in the life, words, deeds and personality of Christ an absolutely crucial tool for assisting in the conduct of life.

gurugeorge

Is that the Christ of the Gospels, the God-man, about whom we know a great deal, but whose historicity is dubious, or the Christ of the scholars, about whom we know very little for sure?

The curious thing is that it's the God-man that presents the inspiring exemplar, but the obscure figure who may or may not have been at the root of the God-man myth is so covered over with the God-man myth, and with words that have been put into his mouth by early Christians, that we have no idea if what he said or did was inspiring and worthy of attention and emulation or not!

No Robots

One wonders if you have ever understood, or even read, a single word that the man said. And don't bother shooting back with the usual mythicist shtick about, "No one can prove that he said it." Someone said it, and whoever it was deserves to be called our Christ.

gurugeorge

There are many good things said by "Christ", but they're no more super-special than many good things said by many great people and great divinities in other religions.

If you think they're so good that they must have been said by God in some way, well fine. Everything is said by God in the end.