Elijah

Again that is just super vague. Some Jewish folks wrote some story for some reason because of the end times that some gentiles picked up sometime after the destruction of Jerusalem. It doesn't explain how the 2nd generation of Christians got from mythical to historical so easily. And I'm not sure of your understanding of the gnostic/orthodox split or how you think it fits into the myth theory by what you've written.

No Robots

They are based on early eyewitness accounts. You have to take into account what was possible in the literature of that time and place. You have to compare the Gospels to their closest literary relative, the Talmud. The Talmud was completely oral until a.d. 200. You have to understand the nature of oral societies and how they transmit their literature. Mythicists seem to have no interest in this subject whatsoever.

Yes, it is an old game. But it has rarely been effectively played. The fact is that a rational understanding of Christ, and of his representation in the Gospels and of the subsequent scholastic distortions is arrived at only through some intense intellectual work, which few seem truly prepared to invest.

bacht

Yes there are two parts to the question. But accepting an historical Jesus who was not divine doesn't make it easier to explain the elevation of his status from nobody to Son of God. Starting with a mythic pre-existent Christ in heaven is a better match with the NT titles, especially in the epistles if they're early.

Starting with a Galilean prophet just shifts the burden to mundane biography, which we don't have any evidence for. The story as first told by Mark is that Easter is the turning point: Jesus is resurrected and then recognized as Christ.

So what is a historian supposed to do with this? Resurrection is supernatural/metaphysical. We can assume that the disciples believed in resurrection but that leads us to psychology rather than concrete reality. If we moderns reject the supernatural then we're back to the equivalent of the mythicist idea that nothing "really" happened except in the minds of believers.

No Robots

And, so? That is what I think, and I'm not a mythicist. I know many people who hear in their heads the voices of their beloved dead.

bacht

So Jesus wasn't the messiah except in the belief of some unnoticed Jewish sectarians. I think these folks can be considered sane if they started with an idea rather than an executed criminal so uninteresting that Josephus didn't think he was worth mentioning.

No Robots

How many art experts found Van Gogh interesting enough to write about during his lifetime?

bacht

[The Mishnah is your reference here I think, The Talmuds are later]

We don't know if the gospels were "straight" reporting or fiction, that's part of the problem, even if they were based on oral accounts. My understanding is that even Mark is packed with references to the Old Testament, much more than can be explained by coincidence.

The Jews were already literate also, they were not strictly an oral culture like primitives. In fact the oral Torah was in direct dialog with the written scriptures.

No Robots

Well, yeah, it was the Mishnah that was first written down at the end of the 2nd century, with the Gemara following later, and it is the Mishnah and the Gemara together that comprise the Talmud.

You seem to be answering your own question: the Gospels are a presentation of Christ as understood in dialog with the written scriptures.

Now, of course, while these scriptures were written, they were known to over 90% of the Jews of the time only orally.

spamandham

Here is the reasoning against him being a peasant:

1. It makes no sense that a peasant who was not deamed important enough to be recorded by his peers is deemed important enough by his peers to be the basis of a new religio9n.

2. There is nothing in Paul - the earliest source - to suggest Jesus was a peasant.

3. There is nothing in Mark, the first canonical Gospel - to suggest Jesus was a peasant.

All you've done, is pick a position based on nothing of substance, that you think is the easiest to defend. But it isn't, because it neglects #1.

...yet you have no problem with this same unimportant ordinary peasant being rapidly elevated to god status?

This is consistent with the level of thought you put into your claim that there is a historical core to Adam.


This doesn't explain anything at all. Regardless of why, you still have the problem that his peers thought highly enough of him to start a new religion, but not highly enough to record anything about it. This is the point at which the apologist starts realizing it makes no sense and usually claims they were all illiterate.

aa5874

Again, I do not regard Jesus as a cartoon character like you, I regard Jesus as non-existent. There is no reality in the NT with respect to Jesus.

You imagine that there is reality in Jesus although the evidence clearly depicted Jesus as an implausible character.

You do not care about the evidence, only what you imagine.

The evidence, the written statements of the authors of the NT and the written statements of the church writers are there already, there is nothing left to be imagined.

The evidence presented claimed Jesus was the son of the God of the Jews that rose from the dead and ascended through the clouds and WITNESSED by the disciples.

This must be fiction, it just cannot be real. There is nothing really philosophical or spiritual with respect to erroneous and false information presented as credible evidence.