DCHindley

Then what exactly were the gospel writers trying to say? They don't neatly conform to any of the conventional categories of genre (like "bio"/life or "history"). Are you in the fiction camp? If so, what possible purpose could such a fiction serve?

I've been suggesting that they were really the first Christian apologies to outsiders, intended to present their founder in a non-threatening manner (i.e., as a teacher of wisdom, not a subversive). The purpose would then be to defend their continued existance as a social group.

DCH

Toto

I think the origins are lost and not recoverable with any degree of certainty.

I suspect that the original story behind Mark's narrative was allegory meant to convey a higher truth, not grubby reality.

aa5874

It is extremely important to know what Christians believe since some of them expect to be compensated by their historical Jesus when they go to heaven and receive eternal life from their Lord and Saviour.

It would appear that some Christians may have a motive to claim that there was an historical Jesus long before they have any supporting evidence.

GakuseiDon

Right, thus "probably". Assuming the "in the flesh" statements are original to Paul, then Paul probably regarded Jesus as historical. AFAIK the consensus is that the "in the flesh" statements were in the originals.

Have you or anyone else ever mounted a case for them being interpolations? I'd like to see how they handle statements like this:

Romans 9:3 For I could wish that I myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my *countrymen according to the flesh, 4 who are Israelites, to whom pertain the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the service of God, and the promises; 5 of whom are the fathers and from whom, according to the flesh, Christ came

Just throw them on the pile and see how high we can build it. What about Popeye? What about Sherlock Holmes? What about the works of Dickens and Jane Austen? With so many fictional works, how can we tell if any work is historical?

One method might be to see how they were treated by their near contemporaries. If they were treated as fictional, then that is a great clue. So how many does that knock out? We can then start looking at the ones that are left.

I agree that the Gospel writers weren't trying to write history like Josephus, but so what? The OP isn't about how much recoverable history we can find in the Gospels, but whether there is enough to assume that there probably was a HJ.

spin

Certainly Paul would have done no such thing as regard Jesus as historical. You might have a 20th century view in which you find you can easily call Jesus historical, but that simply seems inappropriate for a writer of the first century. Paul may have seen -- and I think, did see -- Jesus as a real figure. This is irrelevant to Paul's inability to be a witness to a historical Jesus. He plainly says he wasn't a witness. He did not meet Jesus -- except through his vision of Jesus revealed. The people he persecuted he does not indicate as being Jesus believers, merely messianists. He doesn't show the people in Jerusalem as Jesus believers. They seemed to have little interest in Paul's gospel and were apparently more interested in Jewish religious praxis, as was clearly the custom of the time. Paul is very clear about where he got his information about Jesus from (Gal 1:11-12, 15-16).

The kata sarka discourse is only for mythicists. They may have trouble with the fleshliness of Jesus, but if Paul's conception of Jesus required self-sacrifice then it needed to be real sacrifice requiring a real flesh and blood Jesus -- whether in reality that Jesus ever existed or not.

As Paul is not a witness to Jesus he cannot be used as a source for the historical Jesus, just for the belief which may have started with him that Jesus was real.

On interpolations, certain passages in Paul are used to indicate Paul's knowledge of the Jesus story as it later unfolded in the gospels. The whole Jesus and the sacraments scene in the lord's supper discourse (1 Cor 11) is highly controversial and I have argued elsewhere that this is an easily discernable interpolation, as are the apocryphal appearances to the 500 and the twelve -- unless of course the gospels got the tradition wrong and it originally had twelve rather than lacking Judas (1 Cor 15).

A real Jesus is par for the course set by Paul (in my mind at the moment). That is a religious belief of Paul and helps us in no way in our search for historical evidence for a historical Jesus.


spin

GakuseiDon

I'm not sure that I understand the difference here. Do you mean that Paul saw Jesus as being a real flesh-and-blood figure, but not necessarily a historical one? Can you explain how that it possible?

aa5874

It is virtually useless to use the Canonised writings, gMark and the Pauline writings included, to support an historical Jesus, this would be like using the writings of Marcion about the Phantom Jesus to support the teachings of the Essenes.

You have to look outside the Gospels for your historical Jesus. The Gospels assume a God/man.

Toto

I don't think you can speak of a consensus on this question. There is one camp that rejects the idea of interpolations in Paul, and another camp that believes Paul is heavily interpolated. William Walker tried to find some common ground with a methodology.

...


This way lies madness.

We know that many fictional works are based around real historical figures, prominent or obscure. (E.g., Zorba the Greek is a fictional work by Niko Kazantzakis, but he based the character of Alexis Zorbas on his friend of that name.) I think that most liberal Christians think that the gospels have the same relation to Jesus as Kazantzakis' novel has to Zorba - they reflect a charismatic personality, although the events are fictional. This is what is meant by a historical core.

So treating the works as fiction, or something other than history, does not mean that the characters are fictional. But it doesn't give us any guidance for figuring out what is history.

Then the OP certainly has to be about how much recoverable history there is in the gospels. Are you saying that with absolutely no history in the gospels, that they still count as evidence for the existence of Jesus? If the gospel writers were not trying to write history, what makes the main character historical?

mountainman

The short answer to the OP is that historical probability analysis cannot operate on empty or null sets. Historical data is required as input to the process in order to perform its computations, and that since there is no historical data in the source texts of Park and Maul then no historical probability analysis or computation is possible. We are not dealing with history in these texts. We are dealing with Eusebius' researched sources supporting the transcendental and authoritarian legend of apostolic authorship. The texts remain undated and anonymous. Nobody was interested in the history of the impossibly historical jesus before Nicaea. Eusebius admits he is the first to tread on this lonely and untrodden path (of Christian History Writing)

spin

You are projecting the notion of "historical" onto Paul. This is a mistake that has constantly been made in these discussions. (It's analogous to people who project the big bang onto Gen 1: the writer knew nothing about such ideas.) The notion of a "historical Jesus" is a modern idea and it requires at least a naive notion of historiography -- an approach to the study of history. We have a culture where history is even part of the entertainment. But in ancient times writing history was the process of putting down real stories. Few practised it and the notion of historiography was an abstraction hardly touched on by even the great historians such as Polybius.

Talking about Paul recording the historical Jesus is like talking of Sophocles portraying the psychology of his characters. You might understand what you mean by "historical Jesus", but Paul would not have. If something is historical, it means that it has somehow been sourced to a past reality. The notion of a historical anyone is a 20th century idea.


spin