aa5874

It is because HJers are literalist why they depend on the NT for the only evidence of their Jesus.

A person who considers Homer's Achilles as mythology is never deemed to be a literalists. It must be the same for those who regard the NT as mythology.

Hjers cannot deny and must believe that the gospels contain literal history, and literal historical events with respect to Jesus.

HJers cannot deny the gospel's claim that Jesus literally lived in Judaea.

HJers cannot deny the gospel's claim that Jesus literally preached in Galilee.

HJers cannot deny the gospel's claims that Jesus was literally crucified during the reign of Tiberius.

Hjers cannot deny that their so-called historical core is derived from taking the gospels literally.

It is most amusing to see HJers try to evade or deny their position, that they must take the gospels literally to claim Jesus did literally exist.

GakuseiDon

Sorry, my mistake then.

Not just one made by rookies. Doherty and others do that also. I think people are drawn to the fact that the information in the Gospels aren't in Paul, and that this is what convinces them that Paul didn't have a historical Jesus in mind. But this particular argument loses its force once you start to question the historical information in the Gospels (though that may raise other questions).

I believe that some have in fact done exactly that.

I recognise that there is very little evidence for a historical Jesus. But is it lower than others for whom we believe are also historical? The answer is no, AFAIK. If you take Josephus and Tacitus as the general consensus does, that in itself would be enough. Of course, some would argue that the general consensus is wrong, and that's fair enough. But the myth that people just assume that Jesus existed is just that: it's a myth. It's wrong. There is good evidence -- Josephus and Tacitus -- to suggest that Jesus was crucified by Pilate in Jerusalem.

Now, a well constructed case by mythicists that explains the data better could overturn that. I haven't seen such a case, and I think mountainman is the only regular here who has tried to construct such a case. The other mythicists more or less just dispute various points of evidence that may point towards historicity. That's fine, but then no-one here KNOWS that there was a historical Jesus, it is built on a cumulative case. It can be defeated by another cumulative case. Mythicists don't appear to be accumulating, I'm afraid. Where are the mythicists working on improving Doherty, or Wells, or others? Weeding out the weak bits, building on the strong bits. They don't. They just take pot shots while the historicist bandwagon moves triumphantly along!

Thus endeth this rant.

From what I can see, the author builds on existing patterns of oral tradition to propose a methodology that may provide insight into how the early Christians passed on their oral traditions. I don't see anything wrong there at all, other than the title of the book.

GakuseiDon

It depends on what they are claiming. The sheer brute fact of Jesus's existence can be reasonably regarded as being highly probable via Josephus and Tacitus, for those who go with the general consensus. But for more details, I agree that we don't have much more to go to than the Gospels, except for what we find in Paul.

What do the Gospels tell us about Jesus being married? Nothing, AFAIK. Can not fictional people be married? IYO, why didn't the Gospels talk about this?

As for why Paul didn't mention more details about Jesus, it's a good question. I just don't see it as impacting on historicity. That is because we have plenty of examples of other letters written in the same 'style', going beyond the Second Century. That's why Doherty had to propose that some writers writing towards the end of the Second Century were ahistoricists: it was because they didn't mention such details. He was trapped, really. How could he declare that it was strange that Paul didn't do so, yet here were examples of writers doing the same even after Gospel details appeared to be in circulation? Tatian is the dagger into Doherty's thesis's heart, IMHO.

So, no, I don't know why Paul didn't include those details. But the elephant in the room is all those other letters that do the same. (What would be interesting is to build a time-line for when all those letters were written, to see how much overlap there was between orthodox and 'ahistoricist' writings.)

And once we start looking at what Paul DID write, the ahistoricist case simply falls apart. (I think I was channeling aa__ there for a moment. I had a sudden urge to bold those last two sentences).

(ETA) BTW, you said in another thread that you dated Paul's letters to before 120 CE. What is the evidence in Paul's letters for this? I think this goes towards what I said on the other thread, and also above: it isn't just that Paul doesn't provide historical details about Jesus, it is that he provides few historical details about anything. We have the same problem with many other letters of that time, which is why it is so darn difficult to date many of them.

aa5874

The fundamental problem with the writer called Paul is that although the writer made a claim that made him a contemporary of the so-called Jesus, the writer Paul did not write one single word about actually seeing Jesus alive anywhere before he was assumed to have died.

I repeat.

The writer Paul did not write a single word about seeing Jesus anywhere alive before he supposedly died.

But he will see him after he is resurrected.

Now, the writer Paul wrote that he saw Jesus after he rose from the dead. The writer called Paul claimed his gospel is based on the resurrection.

1 Cor.15.3-8 The writer called Paul is a WITNESS to the resurrection. The writer is a witness to fiction, not a witness to historical Jesus.


What is the general concesus of Josephus and Tacitus? It is not true that the TF and the passage in Annals confirm the existence of an historical Jesus.

You provide mis-leading information and it may be deliberate to confuse those who are not aware that the "TF" was not used in antiquity to show that Jesus did exist until Eusebius in the 4th century, and that the passage in Annals was not used at all.



But you have not presented a case for an human Jesus to contradict the church writers, the authors of the NT ot the non-canonised writings.

There hundreds of writings that show Jesus as mythological and none that show him as just human.

The mythological case has been presented by the Church itself hundreds of years ago when they claimed Jesus was truly the offspring of the Holy Ghost and truly resurrected.

To this day, the Church admits that Jesus was born without sexual union.

You seem to have ignored the facts of the case. It is the writer Paul who wrote that Jesus rose from the dead and was seen by the writer himself and over 500 people.

HJers are fighting with the the mythcal presentation of the church writers. HJers have to show that there is real history to Jesus, instead they show a passage in Josephus, the "TF," that confirms the writer's mythology that Jesus rose from the dead on the third day.

Ben C Smith

:notworthy:

Please, GDon, continue to resist the urge to boldface entire sentences.

Ben.

Solo

You don't understand the meaning of "literal" as it used in the matters at hand, i.e. (quoting New Oxford English Dictionary))..."taking words in their usual and most basic sense, without metaphor or allegory, free from exaggeration or distortion". Hence your confused amusement.

Jiri

fatpie42

We both know that this is not true. Tacitus's reference is too late to confirm Jesus' crucifixion and Josephus' reference to the crucifixion can only be viewed as reliable if we also presume that Josephus was a Christian - which he clearly wasn't.

I don't see much triumphant in the HJ arguments. I see a lot of clutching at straws with no real evidence. The MJ argument is a lot more challenging because it actually expects silence on the historical evidence front and, of course, silence is not positive evidence. However, the more we discover the accounts of Jesus that exist to be contradictory, politically motivated and mythological, the more likely the MJ argument becomes.

fatpie42

The point is, where do we find the HJ view that Jesus was historical? The only accounts we can use are in the NT because Jesus simply isn't mentioned anywhere else. As such, the ideas concerning where Jesus lived, what he did, etc. all rely on the gospel accounts having a literal truth to some extent (which is entirely unsubstantiated). Nevertheless, as I have shown in my earlier list, not all HJ arguments rely on such a stance.

bacht

I dunno GDon, hasn't the general trend of scholarship over the last few centuries been away from accepting historicity in both the Old and New Testaments? I grant that there may not be an airtight case yet for the Jesus mythers, but don't they represent a possible future consensus? Haven't the skeptics been kept at bay mainly by tradition?

aa5874

So are you claiming that HJers do not believe Jesus literally existed, but amusingly believe he existed metaphorically?

Are you claiming that HJers do not believe that Jesus was literally crucified during the time Pilate, but believe he was metaphorically executed?

I don't think you understand the position of HJers.

Unless you think a literalist is someone who can show the written statements of the church writers, the NT and non-canonised writers where they presented Jesus as the offspring of the Holy Ghost, resurrected and ascended.

Or perhaps, you think a literalist is person who can show you the wriitten statements of Homer who presented Achilles as mythology.

And can you name a literal figure of history of whom there cannot be any exaggeration?