John A. Broussard

As you indicate, the prophecies concerning a Messiah anticipated the coming of someone very, very different from the Jesus who was god, who came back from the dead and who finally ascended into heaven.

Since the early Christians couldn't find support of these key concepts of Christianity in the OT, I'm still puzzled as to where the ideas came from.

You seem to indicate that they may have had a Hellenistic origin.

Could you tell me where I might look for more indications to that effect?

Thank you.

mikem

Do you know, Ive just spent over an hour responding to this post, and I've lost it all!! And after I'd logged on too!! I am so bloody infuriated you can't believe!!

Anyway, I'm sorry, but my reply will have to wait another day because I just don't have the heart to retype it all now. DAMN!!!!

mikem

John,

Type Christology into your search engine and click on "Bibliography - Christology". It will come up with a list of books on this subject. Most of the stuff I've read is by English authors, and I don't know if it would be readily available where you are. How is it in Hawaii? It's bloody freezing here!
Hope this helps.

John A. Broussard

Thanks. I've been searching. No luck. Seems that the OT mentions none of these essential Christian qualities of the Messiah. And, though I'll do more exploritng, there doesn't seem to be much Hellenistic backing for same.

38 degrees F. here--14,000 feet up on Mauana Kea.
Temp where I am at the moment is 84 F.

mikem

Amaleq
Well, Ive just spent another hour typing a response and lost it, so I'm going to keep my responses lamentably short because I don't thing that my ageing fingers can take the strain.

On the trials of Jesus. Yes I do think that Jesus had interviews with both men. Jesus was executed on a political charge. It would have taken time and manpower to carry out an execution when it would have been much simpler to lock him up until after the festival. So what did Jesus do to warrant execution?

The gospels I think give us the answer. During most of the last week, Jesus was in the temple, (Caiphas' jurisdiction) preaching and disputing with whoever cared to dispute him. Jesus first action was to overturn the moneychangers tables, either as a protest against corruption, or a symbolic act. Caiaphas did not have him arrested at the time. Why not? Because I think he was gathering evidence that could be used against Jesus to silence him completely. The only capital charge they could bring against him was blasphemy, and even then Caiaphas did not have the power to execute Jesus. So the religious charge had to be converted into a political one.

Hence the need for a hearing. Only Mark portrays it as a full formal trial, so it may have been an informal meeting with just enough council members present to bring in a verdict. They needed to get Jesus himself to say something that could be construed as blasphemy and translated into a political threat.

Peter figures prominently in the narrative. I don't think that the early church would have created such a discreditable story about the august apostle, and we know from othe rsources that others wrote down his reminiscences, so I think it likely that Peter himself may have been the primary source of information about the sequence of events.

mikem

Your remaining questions pertain to reliability. Reliability is a slippery concept, and depends upon context. My wife is reliable, so is my car. My computer alas, is not. So in the case of a written document, what constitutes reliability? I hope that I have said enough in previous posts to indicate that accuracy (whatever that means!) and reliability do not amount to the same thing.

Personally I prefer the term trustworthy. Are the gospels trustworthy? I think that the answer to that is a qualified Yes. We have a product in England called Ronseal - it's a wood sealant. The advert ends with the words "Ronseal - it does exactly what it says on the tin" delivered in a matter of fact, no nonsense masculine voice. The gospels do exactly what they tell us they are going to do - tell us the good news of Jesus Christ. They don't tell us how they are going to do this. They could have been written as Herodotian style histories, they could have been written as Homeric poems or Aeschylan dramas. But they weren't.

Actually, they could not have been written in any other way than they were, because although they are a unique genre, a mix of history and theology, they are also constrained by the fact that they were written as the latest and last of a series, the writings of the Old Testament being their precedent.

The Jews had a history, and to them it was not just any old history, but sacred history. They did not write unbiased accounts of their past. Read the books of Kings for example, with their refrain of "good king", "bad king". Ahab for example is described as a very bad king indeed! From our more secular point of view he was in fact a very good and competent king. There was peace and prosperity, at least for a while, under his benign rule. However he was a bad king because he allowed other religions to operate in his territory. One of the refrains of the OT, especially when the Jews were suffering oppression, (which they put down to their own religious failures) was that a time would come when all nations would acknowledge their god, and their would be an everlasting era of prosperity,freedom for all, when oppression would be a thing of the past.

The gospel authors picked up on this theme to show that Jesus was the fulfilment of these OT hopes and longings. Sometimes this was done by making him fulfil specific "prophecies", but by and large it was done more indirectly by portraying Jesus as the "new Moses", or some other significant character from OT history. Matthew is particularly fond of the Moses motif, and the "Sermon on the Mount", in which jesus "sits down" (signifying teaching authority) to deliver his new teaching, is a deliberate echo of Moses delivering the 10 Commandments to the people.

Did the event as described actually happen? Unlikely, because Jesus taught in parables, and adapted the "Socratic method" of question and answer rather than deliver long sermons, but there is no reason why the individual lessons were not delivered at some time or other.

That is the sort of thing I mean by a theologically inspired portrait. They were not primarily meant to impart information about historical Jesus but to serve as a tool for personal devotion and evangelisation among people who shared the same world view. Clearly there is a substrate of historical information there, which has been orally transmitted, and no doubt undergone some elaboration in part, and simplification in other parts, but I think that by and large maintained it's overall integrity. One of the ways that scholars can sometimes tell between what comes from Jesus and what comes from later concerns is that there are "awkward bits" that if it was up to the church, would have been removed - things like Jesus pronouncement that the kingdom was imminent amd that "this generation" would not pass away. Well it did, but the gospel authors retained something that was important to defining Jesus. This I think reveals a respect and consevatism with regard to the tradition.

John's gospel indicates that there was a wealth of oral information circulating about Jesus that never got written down. What we have in the New Testament is I think only the tip of an iceberg. It is the scholar's inenviable task to try and determine the contours of the rest of the mountain that is hidden from view.
Enough for now.

Amaleq13

On what basis do you hold this opinion?

The Gospels give us nothing that is credible. The Temple Disruption scene is absurdly unbelievable. We know from Josephus that extra guards were placed around the exact area described specifically to address disruptions. Had the scene described in the Gospels actually taken place, Jesus would have been killed where he stood. The fact that John feels free to move the entire scene from the end of Jesus' career to the beginning as well as the fact that there is no evidence for this scene prior to the first story also do not suggest we embrace this tale as history. If any further reason is needed to doubt the story, the Gospels provide one in the fact that none of the depictions of the trials ever mention this clearly damning charge!! The Jewish leadership, instead, brings false charges!! It simply makes no sense except as a fictional scene heavy with symbolic meaning.

This makes no sense. No additional evidence beyond a public disruption during Passover would have been necessary for the Romans to take action.

Mark consistently discredits all of the "disciples" and this is a primary theme in his story. If the triplet denial isn't enough to establish this scene to be a literary construct, the fact that Paul never mentions Peter's betrayal should be sufficient to, at the very least, call into question the historical reliability of it.

Amaleq13

Identification of the source and supporting evidence for the claims given.

I agree and that is why I do not understand why you would ignore this to consider the texts as attempting to relate reliable history. Sharing the "good news" is the primary consideration of the author and, as I've mentioned before, that makes historical reliability necessarily secondary. That, alone, calls into question any assumption of historical accuracy and clearly requires that each claim be carefully considered before being accepted.

This assumes what you are trying to prove (ie that the Gospel stories contain reliable history) and is, therefore, circular reasoning.

Yes, and because of this, we would be wise to be cautious in accepting any of those claims as well. In fact, the evidence shows that significant portions of this "history" appear to be fiction (eg The Flood, The Exodus). Discovering any "historical kernel" for these stories is speculative at best and does not change the simple fact that reliable history cannot be assumed but must be established with supporting evidence.

This and much of what followed shows that you are clearly aware of the many reasons to question the historical reliability of the Gospel stories. All of what you say is true of the authors but none of it requires or even implies a desire to accurately represent historical events.

In order to establish that the authors were also recording accurate history, you have to get your hands dirty and try to find support for the individual claims.

I understand this to be your opinion but I'm really only interested in the evidence and arguments you use to support it.

This is essentially the "embarrasment criterion" but it has extremely limited use in establishing historicity. What came to be embarrassing to later Christians was not necessarily embarrassing to those who first made the claim. With regard to the failed prophecy, this criterion fails to differentiate between a false prophecy actually spoken by Jesus and a false prophecy placed in the mouth of Jesus by people who firmly believed it was true.

Yes and we can see from Papias why "oral traditions" cannot be assumed to be reliable. Or do you believe that Judas, contrary to either Gospel story, grew so bloated that he was squished by a chariot?

Vorkosigan

The whole scene is fiction. I have analyzed it in detail here:

http://users2.ev1.net/%7Eturton/GMar...tml#11.p.15.19

Be sure to read past the verse notes to the Commentary on the passage.

The flaw in this is that (1) there was no Church until long after this period (2) the bits were not awkward when written (3) the gospel authors were fiction writers and thus (4) scholarly methodologies that rely on dissimilarity and embarrassment criteria are deeply flawed. If it is all fiction, then no scholarly criterion will work.

Vorkosigan

RUmike

If it is all fiction, yes. But can you demonstrate that it is? You cannot. And although I cannot demonstrate that it is not all fiction, it seems historically plausible that elements of the gospels originated with a man named Jesus, whether it be sayings or actions. And keeping in mind the phrase that people around here love so much -- "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" -- the claim that a man Yeshu bar Yosef, who lived and died in 1st century Palestine, ultimately lies behind at least some elements of the movement that was made in his name, is NOT extraordinary in any sense.