steve_bnk

I agree in general. Given the geo-politics of the time a composite of who he may have been is not hard to develop. He did not get honorable mention in Roman history, but that could just mean he was one of many who were crucifed for any number of reasons. Crucifixtion was the rule, not the exception.

mountainman

On the contrary we are well informed by reliable sources that
the advent of Jesus was clearly predicted in the verses of at
least two Roman poets in the epoch BCE - Virgil and Cicero.

If these two important Roman poets were inspired to write
about the future historical visitation of your man Harry Jesus
Potter then we could make a case for "honorable mention".

steve_bnk

Huh?

My man? Hardley. I have not read Cicero or Virgil.

Again considering the geo-politics of the Roman empire, it would hardley take psychic powers to predict that a radical trouble maker would appear in Judea.

JC would have been one of many people claiming to be the Hebrew messiah, some were bandits and some were militant anti-Romans.

In the context of the Jewish situation, JC was not predicting the end of the Earth, but correctly predicting the downfall of the Jewish state and the destruction of the temple. And again, with a knowkedge of the Roman Empire and the discoimtent brewing in Judea, that would not be a hard prediiction.

I believe there was likley an hiostorical JC who would appear to be counter to Jewish militancy, he was calling the Jews back to the old ways, a Jewish reformer rabi.

I believe it is likley Greek influence molded the tale as it spread, the educated of the day would know Greek and history. The undeducted majority woyld be illiterate or close to it. The overall story matches up against prior messianic stories from many cultures.

For a similar context you only have to look at the current turmoil within Israel and the Arab states., and the rise of Muslim religious leaders claiming a moral authority with a following, there are many. Bin Laden represents the militant side.

The juxtaposition is Rome and Israel in loose way.

aa5874

I did not ask you to repeat all the CLAIMS in the NT about Jesus.

I am asking you for the truth about Jesus.

You have posited that the NT contains a mishmash of truth and falsehoods about Jesus.

Please tell me what is true about Jesus in the NT. You must know the truth about Jesus of the NT. You believe he lived.

ApostateAbe

Jesus had a brother named James, he had a mother named Mary, he had a father named Joseph, he was baptized by John the Baptist, he made many prophecies that the end of the world would happen within the generation and lifetime of his listeners, and he was crucified under the leadership of Pontius Pilate. Those are the claims in the earliest gospels that are conventional and are neutral or contrary to Christian interests. Because of that, those claims are the likely truths.

Solo

That is what I would call a theory going to pot !

Jiri

premjan

The consumption of Jesus's body and blood is strikingly similar to the myth of Purusha in the Vedas. I have a feeling Jesus had a run-in with some Hindu sect or perhaps this myth was borrowed by him from someone.

aa5874

Jesus was an odd Hebrew messiah then, he was neither represented as a robber or anti-Roman, but as a Roman taxpayer doing magic tricks or miracles.
Again Jesus was an odd Hebrew messiah. He was predicting the downfall of the Jewish state and cursing the Jews calling them vipers instead of finding ways to irradicate the Romans from Judaea.

Not at all. Jesus was doing the unprecedented. His disciples were calling him the Son of God and he was performing magic or miracles claiming he would rise on the third day. That's not the old way.

Which prior messianic story matches the Jesus story?. I don't know of any messianic story where the messiah was called the Son of God and transfigured after doing magic or miracles regularly and encouraged the Jews to pay tribute to the Romans.

But, there are no magicians on either side. I think they both need Jesus, the greatest magician there ever was.

If he existed.

Toto

This seems to be based on the criteria of embarrassment, which the NT guild has used to separate out the parts of the gospels sayings that are likely to be true, as opposed to later additions.

This is a methodology that is unique to NT studies, and is not relied on by professional historians.

When you try to apply it to claims of historical fact, it turns out not to be very useful, because you don't know what was embarrassing to the writer, or whether the apparently embarrassing fact serves some other purpose.

But I know of no one who claims that a conventional claim in the gospel that is neutral to Christian interests is therefore likely to be true.

This has been discussed here often enough before. There is no call to repeat the assertion in bold type as if it were a recognized fact.

aa5874

You have just repeated virtually the same claims as before and now have simply stated that they are likely to be true without any external corroborative support.

All the claims you repeated could very well be falsehoods, you have offered nothing to show that your claims could not have been false.

And based on Jerome, Jesus really had no brother, perhaps cousins.
This is Jerome Now, Joseph was the supposed father of Jesus. If Jesus did exist and was human, based on the NT, the real father of Jesus was not Joseph, perhaps it was the man who people thought was an angel. He was a man disguised as an angel. A real man named Gabriel, perhaps.