Doug Shaver

What argument leads you to that conclusion?

Zeichman

Given that he takes Q seriously, I strongly doubt that there would be any Messianic undertones to Robinson's reconstruction of the person of Jesus. I'm guessing he means more of the ethos that his historical Jesus represented.

andrewcriddle

Hoffmann wrote an interesting introduction to the 2006 new edition/re-issue of Goguel's Jesus the Nazarene (or via: amazon.co.uk).

He gave the impression of tending in principle towards disbelief in historicity, while being rather hostile in practice towards specific alternatives.

(Note 31 to the introduction is rather disparaging of Earl Doherty.)

Andrew Criddle

Biomystic

If this Jesus inquiry doesn't examine the Talmud's accounts of someone very much like Jesus complete with a mother Miriam, father Joseph, running away to Egypt, and the clincher, Yeishu's run-in with his rabbi marking a foundation for Jesus' hostility to Pharisees in the NT gospels, also the early date for Yeishu give time for Christian communities to be already formed as Paul meets them early in his missionizing trips,--if it doesn't thoroughly examine these stories as much as the NT ones, then it is lacking credibility.

But what has convinced me of the authenticity of the Yeishu accounts is the fact that in them, Jews take full responsibility for killing Yeishu and his five disciples--no Romans around. Considering how much anti-semitism has been generated by the NT Gospel accounts where Romans share the guilt of killing Jesus, why on earth would Talmud rabbis write slanderous stories of Jesus where they take all the blame for killing him?

Of course, since very few Gentiles learned Hebrew, these Talmud stories have been successfully buried from Gentile eyes for most of the last 2000 years.

I once joined the Jesus Seminar group just so I could find out what they knew about Yeishu and guess what? I knew more than they did and that's not much.

Jesus Seminar and Jesus scholars in general aren't happy to look into Jewish stories of Jesus because of the instant prickliness of "anti-semitism" popping up and maybe wrecking some scholar's career. So most Jesus scholars are ignorant of Yeishu.

Any hunt for the historical Jesus should be conducted like a crime scene investigation. All facts laid out in a single room and not spread all over the place in separate scholar's minds, papers or books.

Put all the evidence on the board and see what connects and what doesn't.

Then you'll find out that the NT Jesus Christ is composed of Old Testament prophetic verses meant to apply to Israel changed to apply to Jesus, plus the Sayings of Jesus in "Q", plus perhaps Mark's trial/crucifixion story invention taken from where? I've heard Homer's plots, a popular Greco-Roman play, what?

Here's a big clue to the NT Jesus being a spiritual being and not a human being at all:

"For I say to you, among those born of women there is not a greater than John the Baptist; but he who is least in the kingdom of God is greater than he."

Are the writers telling us Jesus is not born of women?

Toto

How would you connect Yeshu ben Pantera with the origins of the Christian religion, which doesn't make much of an impact on history until the second century?

Biomystic

Are you talking about the NT stories or the Talmud stories?

lpetrich

I think that those Talmudic stories about Jesus Christ were invented as sarcastic responses.

Like saying that JC's divine literal biological paternity was invented to cover up his real paternity: a Roman soldier named Pantera or Pandira.

Toto

I'm tlaking about history. How do you connect the Talmud stories with secular history? Do you think that the person described in the Talmud was at the origin of the Christian religion? Do you think that Christianity flew under the radar for two centuries before Pliny noticed it?

I can see that the NT stories are generally regarded as later stories that contain metaphor and symbolism and not much history. Do you see that Talmud stories as closer to history than the gospels?

I'm really asking for your theory of Christian origins. If Yeshu ben Pantera was the original Jesus, he probably lived around 100 BC. How did the Christian religion come out of his heresy? How did it develop? Do you think that Paul and others saw the spirit of Yeshu appear to them, even though he had been dead for 100 years or so?

Biomystic

Because no one on earth is in possession of knowledge o the real identity of Jesus Christ, every Christian has to create or accept a "Jesus" of their own.

Personally, I hold the New Testament stories of Jesus to be complete fictions based on a core of Sayings ("Q") and Old Testament prophesies meant to apply to Israel which are changed to apply to Jesus as the Messiah, e.g. the famous Isaiah 53 Suffering Servant verses.

I believe Mark created a play-like dramatic story plot with scenes and episodes where the Sayings and prophesies could be placed in a story context of Jesus' ministry. The other NT writers filled in Mark's story to make it more plausibly an historical account.

The Sayings of Jesus in "Q" and in the Gospel of Thomas I believe are the closest we will ever get to the authentic teachings of Yeishu/Jesus.

I do believe Yeishu ben Pantera is the historical "Jesus". The Talmudic accounts are oblique but the major elements are in them that show up in the later NT stories of Jesus, e.g. Joseph as Jesus' father, Miriam as his mother, flight to Egypt and and most important for me, Yeishu's obvious antagonism with rabbinical Judaism because of his rabbi's refusal to forgive him.

The Talmud accounts have been ignored because of their Jewishness which Christian scholars are loathe to get into because of the ever-present threat of "anti-semitism" arising out of any critical review of Jewish texts by Gentile scholars. The Talmud accounts have also been dismissed as later fabrications written no earlier than 2nd century A.D. but then that's the same case with the NT gospels. The Romans did sack Jerusalem and take away many scrolls. Evidently the Vatican still holds some of these missing scrolls, but again, fear of rocking Jewish/Christian relationships, Jews do not press for their return.

The Talmud stories of Yeishu have this key ingredient that makes me believe they might be more truthful to history than otherwise--it's the fact that in the Yeishu stories Jews take full responsibility for Yeishu's death by stoning and then hanging on a tree as per Jewish law (see Paul's reference in Gal. 3:13 to this). Look how much hatred Jews have received with the NT accounts where Jews share the blame for Jesus' death with Romans. It just doesn't compute for me that rabbis would deliberately create slanderous tales of Jesus where they kill him for blasphemy all by themselves, no Romans around. If they were going to mock the stories of Jesus they would do so in such a way as to make it plain for their audiences but the stories are really written for rabbis and are obtuse and too difficult for lay people to figure out.

And there's differences too, between Yeishu and Jesus. Yeishu acts like a real person and Jesus Christ is always on stage in stage voice and drama. I love Yeishu's mocking his rabbi by pretending to worship a brick in front of him. Now that's a guy I can relate to!

Gooch's dad

The list of fellows is rather bizarre. Including Freke and Gandy doesn't help with credibility at all, IMO. And while I'm a big fan of physicist Vic Stenger's writings on the subject of physics as it relates to religious arguments, I fail to see how he is remotely qualified to study the subject of early Christianity.

And Ibn Warraq? He's a scholar of early Islam--how does this really relate to a study of early Christian origins?