rlogan

Not stated positively enough.

If the NT Jesus is fiction, there can be no disciples. There can be no apostles.

There are "apostles" who are either deluded or frauds.


And for the HJ types, the knee-jerk reaction is to say that well, the Jesus we are talking about is the "historical kernel" that we derive by subtracting everything that makes him Jesus in the first place.

That approach requires blinding yourself to where they actually got the final version of Jesus. There is a non-earthly Jesus competing with an earthly one in the Bible. The non-earthly Jesus of Paul. The flesh and blood one in the gospels.

The gospel jesus is the "Historical Jesus". He was patched together out of Hebrew Bible quote mines. In a clash for pre-eminence over creeds, the linear descendants of "authority" from the living Jesus have an advantage.

Such a common thing right from the start in Genesis with doublets on creation or the ten commandments or whatever. Separate traditions being merged (in this case by state force ultimately).

The final version is a political settlement so of course it has these inconsistencies between gospels, acts, the mythical paul's letters from different hands.

There is no historical jesus to look for. We see where he came from. Not from a person, but from a process of mining the Hebrew Bible for alleged credentials.

storytime

Would you argue against the Jews who evidently have recognized Jesus as an historical person throughout their history? Isn't that "proof" enough? Jews disagree with Christian interpretation of laws, but not the person Jesus as a Jew in those days.

Toto

The Muslims also recognize Jesus as a prophet, but that doesn't make him historical. Some Hindus think Jesus survived the cross and traveled to India, or else he traveled to India in the missing years between the ages of 12 and 30, but that is religious belief, not history.

There is no independent Jewish record of Jesus from the first century.

The Jewish and the Muslim Jesus are just reflections of the Christian story about Jesus, not independent sources.

Solitary Man

Considering Josephus, this is more than just a little disingenuous of you.

storytime

Well, I'm confused on this. Why did the Jews meet with the first "creedal" writers in the church at Nicea to conclude beliefs about Jesus? Did they not disagree and this disagreement cause the final split between Jews and Christians?

aa5874

To continue to reinforce my position that "Paul" was a fictitious or invented character, I will go to "Church History" 2.22.6 and 3.4.8.
Church History 3.4.8 So, based on Eusebius, it was already established in the history of the Church that a person named Luke wrote a Gospel and that "Paul" knew Luke, was a very close associate of Luke, and knew that Luke wrote a Gospel, and sometimes refered to the Gospel of Luke as "my Gospel".

In Romans 2.16, Romans 16.25 and 2 Timothy 2.8, "Paul" used the words "my gospel" which according to the tradition of the Church meant to refer to the gospel of Luke.

Romans 2.16 But Eusebius goes further and claims that Luke probably wrote Acts of the Apostles when "Paul" was in prison as written in the epistle to Timothy, and that "Paul" died under Nero.

Now , the earliest dating for gLuke and the Acts of the Apostles are about 80 CE extending to 130 CE, and NERO died 68 CE.

These dates indicate that Eusebius' history of the Church is bogus or completely erroneous.

"Paul", if dead under Nero, could NOT have have known about gLuke, written many years later, and Acts of the Apostles was not written when "Paul" was in prison or even alive.

Eusebius was wrong about Jesus, Mark, Matthew, Luke, John and Peter, and the evidence clearly indicates he was wrong about "Paul".

The CHURCH had no history as described by Eusebius in the 1st century before the fall of the Jewish Temple.

The notion that there were Jews, before the fall of the Temple, who worshipped a man crucified for blasphemy, and called him the son of the God of the Jews, equal to God in every respect, and preached to other Jews that the law should be abolished on behalf of this crucified criminal, again, while The Temple was still functional, is simply outrageous nonsense.

I will change my position only when evidence to contradict me is found.

The NT is fiction, written to propagate the false claim that there was a God living on earth during the days of Pilate.

Toto

Even if you assume that the two references to "Jesus" are not later Christian interpolations, in what way is Josephus an independent witness? At best, he seems to be recounting what Christians have told him about their history. He's not giving the Jewish point of view, from the Jews who allegedly opposed Jesus.

Toto

I'm confused about this. Do you have a source for any Jews attending the council at Nicaea? My impression was that Jews and Christians were clearly separate groups by the second century, but any disagreement that led to a final split is entirely hypothetical. Some scholars used to try to date this split to 90 CE at the 'Synod of Javneh (Jamniah),' when prayers against the minim (heretics) were added to Jewish prayer; but I think this view is in disfavor now.

Solitary Man

How do you know this? What methodology did you use to come to this conclusion? Especially about the Antiquitates 20.9.1?

Toto

Is there any support for an opposing point of view?

The TF reads so much like a Christian interpolation that Meier had to work very hard to extract something that might have been a more neutral account, which lacked any particular details about why Jesus was opposed by leading Jews.

And would Jesus' Jewish opponents have referred to him as the Christ, or even "called Christ?" After all, the Messiah was a meaningful term to them, unlike the Romans who might have mistaken it for a title. You would expect Jesus' Jewish opponents to have referred to him as the heretic, or the blasphemer, or some other term.