Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Juststeve · 08-10-2009, 09:51 AM

The tourism argument assumes that there were a substantial number of Christians living outside Judea who could and would have made the trip if they regarded Jesus as historical, but didn’t. Do we have evidence for any of this? My assumption is that in the early years Christians were few and far between and no particular note would have been taken of a few of them turning up in Bethlehem.

Steve

bacht · 08-10-2009, 09:54 AM

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Originally Posted by Juststeve

Why does he not appear in contemporary secular histories? I already answered that, because he wasn’t important enough to appear.

Okay, but the gospels describe large crowds of people coming to see and hear Jesus, did none of this happen? Or if it did, what happened to all these witnesses?

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You are correct that he does not conform to Jewish messianic expectations. That is because neither he nor anyone else did those things King Messiah is predicted to do. Facts can be stubborn and Jesus did not do the Messianic acts. You can see particularly in Matthew an attempt to twist Hebrew Scripture to make it appear as those Jesus fulfilled some of the prophesies, but those efforts would only convince the already convinced.

Yes, Jesus is in fact a gentile divine hero, he really has nothing to do traditional with Jewish messianic ideas

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He was elevated from preacher to son of God rather gradually and not by monotheistic Jews. His elevation was the work of Pagans who early in the history of Christianity became the overwhelming majority of Christians.

Well, the gospel of John has Jesus as co-equal with God. Paul has Christ seated at the right hand of God. Pretty impressive status for an unknown seditionist. I agree that all this would fit better in a gentile context: Jews did not divinize ordinary men

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Paul says very little about Jesus’ life because a) he knows so little about it, and b) because its not the thing about Jesus that interests Paul.

This is an old argument and one I don't understand. Why wouldn't Paul be interested in Jesus' life or his teachings while alive? Why wouldn't Paul's converts also be interested?

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I don’t know how much tourism there was in the first hundred years of Jesus’ life or whether any of it centered on the places connected with his life. I would note that even today there are vastly more Christians than there are folks who go to the holy land to see the purportedly places connected with his life. That is to say that even today the vast majority of people who think he was born in a manger never go to Bethlehem.

It's a secondary argument but worth thinking about. Every Easter and Christmas there are lots of visitors and special services in the Holy Land. During medieval times there was a thriving market for relics. But in the first couple of centuries there's no mention of any such things.

All your points support the idea that Jesus Christ was an object of worship for gentiles. The story of a divine baby descended from David appearing in Palestine to conventional 2nd temple Jews makes good reading but not necessarily good history.

No Robots · 08-10-2009, 09:55 AM

Well, Paul's letters certainly indicate that there were some very early Christians outside of Judaea. However, I agree that these would be few and of little note. I'm just saying that within 20 years of Paul's mission, it was simply out of the question for any Jew, whether Christian or otherwise, to visit the sites of the Gospel story.

show_no_mercy · 08-10-2009, 09:56 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Juststeve

The tourism argument assumes that there were a substantial number of Christians living outside Judea who could and would have made the trip if they regarded Jesus as historical, but didn’t. Do we have evidence for any of this? My assumption is that in the early years Christians were few and far between and no particular note would have been taken of a few of them turning up in Bethlehem.

Steve

If Paul is assumed to have lived in the 50s CE, then why didn't he say in Galatians:

"But when God, who set me apart from birth and called me by his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son in me so that I might preach him among the Gentiles, I did not consult any man, nor did I go up to Jerusalem to see those who were apostles before I was [or went to visit the Lord's tomb], but I went immediately into Arabia and later returned to Damascus. Then after three years, I went up to Jerusalem to get acquainted with Peter and stayed with him fifteen days [and visited the Lord's tomb]. I saw none of the other apostles—only James, the Lord's brother [and visited the Lord's tomb]."

Jesus was considered a divine "Lord" as early as Paul, which is assumed to be a very short time after Jesus' supposed ministry.

Vinnie · 08-10-2009, 10:18 AM

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Originally Posted by ph2ter

Good case against Jesus historicity can be built on the foundation which says that OT prophecies about Jesus where used to construct his character. In other words, the prophecies about Jewish Messiah are not applied to some historical character, but rather, that character is constructed by using them. By definition, prophecies are not possible and fulfillment of some of them is possible only by chance. When I was believer I was again and again astonished by some OT prophecies about Jesus, and those prophecies then served to me as a proof that Jesus is really what NT says about him. But when I rejected all the miracles and prophecies as impossibilities, then those same OT prophecies served to me as a proof that Jesus is nothing more than a construct and imagination.
If character of Jesus came into existence in that way, then it is reasonable to suppose that Christianity started with some document which was a compilation of OT prophecies about Jewish Messiah. That document was growing and prophecies were added to it side by side with the interpretations.
Eusebius concerning Papias said something which looks very close to that idea:

These things are related by Papias concerning Mark. But concerning Matthew he writes as follows: "So then Matthew wrote the oracles in the Hebrew language, and every one interpreted them as he was able."
From Eusebius, Hist. Eccl ., 3. 39.

According to Irenaeus those Oracles of Matthew were written before the Gospel of Mark, because Irenaeus in Against Heresies 3:1 records :

'Matthew also issued a written Gospel among the Hebrews in their own dialect, while Peter and Paul were preaching at Rome, and laying the foundations of the church. After their departure, Mark, the disciple and interpreter of Peter, did also hand down to us in writing what had been preached by Peter. Luke also, the companion of Paul, recorded in a book the Gospel preached by him. Afterwards, John, the disciple of the Lord, who had leaned upon his breast, did himself publish a Gospel during his residence at Ephesus in Asia.'

It seems more natural to me that mentioned oracles were not 'oracles of the Lord Jesus', but rather 'oracles (prophecies) about the Lord Jesus'. The Greek word here used for oracles by Eusebius is 'logia' which is in the LXX used for words coming from God and likewise in the NT of the words of God in the OT. Logia comes to be used in the early Church of the sayings of Jesus, but here we maybe should understand the word rather as 'prophecy' than 'saying'.
Then the remark of Papias that every one interpreted them as he was able comes into place and means that oracles about Jewish Messiah taken from the OT where interpreted by emerging Christians in different ways, but which finally resulted in the Gospel story of Jesus. Gospel according to Matthew which we posses today certainly is not the document about which Papias speaks. Original document was written in Hebrew language and probably bears no resemblance to the actual Gospel. But there exist something very important which is common to both of them. They both heavily use the OT prophecies about Jesus. When we extract only specifically mentioned OT prophecies about Jesus from the Gospel of Matthew we can construct almost his whole life. The Gospel of Matthew specifically put into Jesus mouths:
5.17."Think not that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets; I have come not to abolish them but to fulfill them."
Fulfillment of the prophecies stayed in the center of that Gospel.

According to that idea the oldest parts of the Gospels are OT prophecies around which the Gospel story started to grow.

How would you explain the fact that most of the "oracles" attributed to Jesus appear so tenuous and strained that they look like after-the fact attributions based upon existing beliefs? It might be easier to explain them in terms of a person, thought to be God's agent, shamefully crucified, and then vindicated with all sorts of OT parallels. That they still accepted Jesus and were missionaries requires accounting for the "foolishness of the Cross and the stumbling block to the Jews" which went by saying hey, let me dig up every tenuous parallel I an find between Jesus' life and sacred scripture...I'll even make up a few. That is the process I see at work, not the reverse. I simply think the parallels are too tenuous to go the other way for the gospel writers. They stem from historical beliefs, they do not create all of them. Some of them definitely were, however. For example, "out of egypt I called my son" is probably one example.

Vinnie

bacht · 08-10-2009, 10:22 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by No Robots

Well, Paul's letters certainly indicate that there were some very early Christians outside of Judaea. However, I agree that these would be few and of little note. I'm just saying that within 20 years of Paul's mission, it was simply out of the question for any Jew, whether Christian or otherwise, to visit the sites of the Gospel story.

I think you're right that after 70 there were restrictions on the Jews' movements in Judea. But what about the Corinthians or the Ephesians or the Thessalonians, wouldn't they want to walk the same soil their saviour did? What about Roman Christians, or the Syrians Paul studied with? Surely by the 2nd C there would be some sort of visitation from converts (assuming that the apostles had spread the word all over the empire by the 60s).

No Robots · 08-10-2009, 10:24 AM

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Originally Posted by bacht

Yes, Jesus is in fact a gentile divine hero

Jesus was a Jew. Everyone knows that, don't they? Well, it would seem that they do and they don't. It is certainly not the view of most Christians, nor is it common knowledge among atheists or even Jews, that Jesus was to the brim a Jew, not incidentally or as a matter of temporal accident a Jew, not, in Jonathan Miller's joke, Jewish, but a Jew by faith, by temperament and by spiritual ambition; a Jew in his relentless ethicising, in his love of quibbling and legalistics, in his fondness - frankly, to the point of tiresomeness sometimes - for extended metaphors and sermons wrapped in parables, and in the apocalyptic urgency of his teaching. A Jew, in other words, on unambiguously Jewish business.--Howard Jacobson

bacht · 08-10-2009, 10:27 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Juststeve

Paul says very little about Jesus’ life because a) he knows so little about it, and b) because its not the thing about Jesus that interests Paul.

There's also the question of the other epistles. Why wouldn't John, James or Peter make reference to their teacher? The gospels are all about Jesus' actions and words, yet the epistles only talk about the heavenly Christ. Granted there's a before-and-after timeline here, and the gospels don't try to describe the post-resurrection situation in much detail, but still one would think that Jesus' closest disciples would have something to say about this unique person.

bacht · 08-10-2009, 10:48 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by No Robots

Quote:

Originally Posted by bacht

Yes, Jesus is in fact a gentile divine hero

Jesus was a Jew. Everyone knows that, don't they? Well, it would seem that they do and they don't. It is certainly not the view of most Christians, nor is it common knowledge among atheists or even Jews, that Jesus was to the brim a Jew, not incidentally or as a matter of temporal accident a Jew, not, in Jonathan Miller's joke, Jewish, but a Jew by faith, by temperament and by spiritual ambition; a Jew in his relentless ethicising, in his love of quibbling and legalistics, in his fondness - frankly, to the point of tiresomeness sometimes - for extended metaphors and sermons wrapped in parables, and in the apocalyptic urgency of his teaching. A Jew, in other words, on unambiguously Jewish business.--Howard Jacobson

I don't see how this quote illuminates the Jesus of the gospels, it seems vaguely insulting. The arguments with Pharisees and others are unconvincing, they usually set up a straw-man challenge, or the answer given is just clever word-play. There's nothing highly original in the gospel teachings (when they don't contradict each other), especially if the source was an apocalyptic preacher anticipating the imminent reversal of the status quo social order.

But the world didn't end did it? So the messianic prophets were wrong, and their credibility suspect. Jesus might've had a novel interpretation of the Law (depends which passage you look at) but otherwise what was so special, his miraculous deeds? Maybe he was a prophet, but what was he offering to Judaism?

No Robots · 08-10-2009, 10:54 AM

We Israelites claim Jesus of Nazareth as our own, as one of our best and greatest masters, as one of our immortal fathers, as one of our saintliest heroes of righteousness and love.--Adolph Moses

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08-10-2009, 09:51 AM	#11
Juststeve Senior Member Join Date: Nov 2004 Location: Dallas Texas Posts: 758	The tourism argument assumes that there were a substantial number of Christians living outside Judea who could and would have made the trip if they regarded Jesus as historical, but didn’t. Do we have evidence for any of this? My assumption is that in the early years Christians were few and far between and no particular note would have been taken of a few of them turning up in Bethlehem. Steve

08-10-2009, 09:55 AM	#13
No Robots Veteran Member Join Date: Jan 2006 Location: Edmonton Posts: 5,679	Well, Paul's letters certainly indicate that there were some very early Christians outside of Judaea. However, I agree that these would be few and of little note. I'm just saying that within 20 years of Paul's mission, it was simply out of the question for any Jew, whether Christian or otherwise, to visit the sites of the Gospel story.

08-10-2009, 10:54 AM	#20
No Robots Veteran Member Join Date: Jan 2006 Location: Edmonton Posts: 5,679	We Israelites claim Jesus of Nazareth as our own, as one of our best and greatest masters, as one of our immortal fathers, as one of our saintliest heroes of righteousness and love.--Adolph Moses

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