Chris Weimer

What are the standards set for a Historical/Mythical Jesus? Does one man saying a few verses constitute a historical Jesus? Can one man responsible for much of the narrative/quotes still be mythical?

This is my position so far. The sayings of Jesus are twofold, one set belongs to pure literary fiction while the other belongs to sayings of various people incorporated into the religion.

Diogenes the Cynic

I've been following the thread entitled Jesus: entirely nythical or a historical person?, in which Clutch makes a couple of interesting comments:
I think Clutch has raised a very relevant point for the HJ/MJ discussion and that is whether there is an agreed upon minimal level of requirements for a real person to qualify as HJ.



Is it enough for him to be a preacher named Yeshua who was the source of a core sayings tradition?

How necessary is the crucixion?

Does there have to be any historical truth at all to such accessories as the 12 apostles, "healings" and/or exorcisms*, or any of the anecdotes (like the Temple incident) in order for a genuine historical figure to be reasonably identified as "the" historical Jesus?

I think that Clutch makes a good point that HJ and MJ proponents may actually agree on virtually everything and simply bog down on a semantic point about whether the agreed upon hypotheticals would be sufficient to call the Jesus of the Gospels "historical" rather than "mythical."

So I think we should try to define a ground level set of requirements for a person to be identified as HJ?


Personally, I would say that at a bare minimum he should have said at least some of what's attributed to him and that he should have been crucified. I would also prefer that he be named "Yeshua" but I don't insist on it.

Basically, I'm going to define HJ as follows:

A 1st century Jewish preacher who was crucified, some of whose sayings and teachings survived after his death (and are preserved in the gospels...along with a ton of spurious attributed sayings) and whose initial movement was transformed into (or at least contributed to) the cult that became Christianity.

I would like to know how others would define HJ. What would you require, at a bare minimum, to call him HJ?






*I'm speaking in a strictly ritual sense when I use those terms. Ritual healing and exorcism are common enough phenomena even now (Chinese folk religion is full of it) that I think it can at least be considered historically plausible without necessitating any supernatural connotations.

GakuseiDon

For me, the HJ is the person who inspired Paul and the gospel stories, regardless of whether he was crucified or not, or those sayings were attributed to him or not. (That's not to say that there aren't other possibilities, e.g. the MJ thesis, or that there were multiple people on whom the gospel Jesus was based).

While the gospels aren't generally regarded as reliable history, Paul's epistles certainly describe a person who was Jewish and crucified. So we can be fairly certain of that as the basis for a HJ (unless Paul was referring to a MJ).

Ulrich

I think we need to back the truck up a bit here. If by 'generally regarded as reliable history' you mean 'little or no historical evidence that the events occured' I would agree with you. Also, it is not evident that Paul believed that Jesus was ever a physical person.

Ulrich

Oops, sorry I misread your previous post, I see now that you actually said "aren't generally regarded". My stand on Paul, however, is still valid.

GakuseiDon

Actually, I did initially, by mistake, but corrected it a few minutes later - you must have seen the uncorrected version.

Yes, it comes down to whether Paul believed in a HJ or an MJ. But the OP was discussing the requirements for a HJ. If Paul were referring to a HJ, then we can reconstruct some historical elements of Jesus's life from Paul's statements.

Chris Weimer

Ah, sigh, am I always missed? Did I not post enough? Though it is weird he came up with this thought but a day after I came up with mine. Anyways, mods, a merge?

{edited to remove link to thread which has now been merged into the one started by Diogenes the Cynic}