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The gospels make claims about their Jesus which fits no known person of the period. This Jesus was alleged to have had huge peaceful meetings of thousands of people. He was supposed to have healed the sick and insane. He is even attributed with a raising from the dead. Look at what Josephus tells us about other popular figures of the period; there is nothing comparable in the sense of manifestations. They swayed people in a demagogical sense, while Jesus is said to have done things in a big way out of the physical norms. If Jesus existed and did those things the gospels claim, then I would expect that history would have recorded him with wonder. If those things in the gospels didn't happen then what else didn't happen and what exactly is reflective of the past in them?

I think that the fact that his wonders didn't make it into history is good evidence that the gospel Jesus didn't exist. Perhaps there was a Jesus who was a historical kernel, who didn't do those things. Who knows?


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Jayhawker Soule

Could you elaborate on this, spin? I am, of course, aware of Kirby's observation:

Opinion on the authenticity of this passage is varied. Louis H. Feldman surveyed the relevant literature from 1937 to 1980 in Josephus and Modern Scholarship. Feldman noted that 4 scholars regarded the Testimonium Flavianum as entirely genuine, 6 as mostly genuine, 20 accept it with some interpolations, 9 with several interpolations, and 13 regard it as being totally an interpolation.

In my own reading of thirteen books since 1980 that touch upon the passage, ten out of thirteen argue the Testimonium to be partly genuine, while the other three maintain it to be entirely spurious. Coincidentally, the same three books also argue that Jesus did not exist. In one book, by Freke and Gandy, the authors go so far as to state that no "serious scholar" believes that the passage has authenticity (p. 137), which is a serious misrepresentation indeed.

On what grounds is the position of partial interpolation "totally unsustainable"? I'd also be curious as to your views concerning the 20.9.1 refererence to "the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James". Thanks.

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Hey ConsequentAtheist,

Thanks for the cut about Wells. I know he's an academic in another field and usually when one is ensconced in academia one usually knows about what is necessary as evidence when one makes reasoned arguments. I don't think I would use the term "babble" about reasoned argument based on some sort of considerable evidence.

Having dealt many times with the "evidence which suggests" lines of arguments, it all starts to seem like contentless babble to me, contentless in the sense that it appears to be nothing more than unreasoned opinion. Conjecture does indicate a little interaction with evidence, doesn't it?

I'm not sure that the info about Wells's ideas are really helpful to the specific topic, but it does have a lot of points with which I agree, such as the connection between Jewish wisdom speculations, the logos and Jesus.

I have little to argue about Q. It is a reasonable hypothesis and explains the data better than all other hypotheses, though Goulder does have good ideas about the problems with Q. However, the very notion of what Q is, a hypothetical document claimed to have been a shared source for both Mt and Lk, makes it unacceptible as source material for historical argument. It is a (conjectured) literary text of unknown provenance and thus not the basis for historical claims.

I have dealt with both texts about Jesus found in Josephus just a couple of days ago. One, on 20.9.1, was partially waylaid because the full analysis I made was not adhered to, but the inital post should give you some better idea of what I thought. The TF is clearly a totally unacceptible insertion, not a rewrite, as I argue in the thread on the TF.


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Amaleq13

Amaleq13:Jesus in Q is depicted as God's Wisdom incarnate but not as the Messiah.

Paul names three apparent leaders of the group in Jerusalem but never identifies or refers to these "Pillars" as former disciples of a living Jesus. In fact, he essentially dismisses their reputations as irrelevant.

The disciples of the Q Jesus, on the other hand, are never identified but Jerusalem is disparaged.

Why would the wandering Galilean prophets of Q decide to completely change their ways and settle down in Jerusalem?

In Q, the Law is respected but those who adhere to it too strictly are criticized. How does this turn into the Jerusalem group that required gentiles to be circumcised?

Legion

I've never claimed otherwise.

Actually, it was for the benefit of the OP. The person asked what evidence there is; I presented some of the evidence, as have others; no one has said what conclusions must be drawn from that.


"Suggest" in this case is an opinion and nothing more; it doesn't mean proves or establishes to a level that another person is likely to agree with or anything of the sort. Why do you really even care whether I think he exists or not?

I haven't studied it in enough detail to know whether you are correct about your conclusions; however, I never lifted that passage up as evidence or said that my suspicion is anything more than my opinion. Feel free to discount it if you feel that evidence you have examined does not support that opinion.


Regardless of your opinion of what an opinion on the existence of Jesus in the affirmative is comparable to, I still fail to see why you care what anyone else thinks about it.


I've never said that I am a Christian, and knowing a bit about the Bible and Christianity doesn't make one Christian. If you think that my opinion that Jesus existed is meaningless and your opinion is that the evidence does not support that conclusion, then don't change your opinion and just ignore my conclusion. I'm not asking you to adopt the same one.

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I missed this post, it seems.

They are literary figures just as Jesus is. You mean they are not real?

History has different and higher standards than it seems you are prepared to admit.

Oh, I agree. This is also true for Jesus as well.

That's why literary reports are not usually seen as primary historical evidence.

We admit figures as historical when evidence permits it. We can often accept a figure as historical without having done the footwork to know. This is acceptible laziness for we can't check everything. We just don't have time. When necessary we can go and check though. We can look into the evidence for a figure we held on trust as existing or having existed. Figures from with a religion are often held as real on trust and the checking for the vast majority is never done. The fact that a figure is widely held as having existed, is no substitute for evidence. Errors can be just as widely held as not.

And I usually give, as an example of a figure conjured up, one Ebion, held by church fathers such as Tertullian to have been the founder of the Ebionite xian movement, a life later expanded upon by other church fathers, yet Ebion did not exist. He was the figment of someone's imagination to explain how we got Ebionites, when the term "ebionite" comes from a Hebrew word ebion, meaning "poor". We are fortunate here to know why this figure was conjured up, because we had sufficient background information to do so. I don't think, therefore, that it is necessary to ask "why would they have been conjured up". The task of the proponent of the figure is to demonstrate the figure's historicity. (And I'd never attempt to do that for Zeus!)


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Jayhawker Soule

Did you intend not to answer my question?

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Thank you for your clarifications and sorry if I mistook you for an apparent xian. I find it more puzzling that a non-xian would find compelling the existence of Jesus based on the absence of evidence.


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Jayhawker Soule

A great example.

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ConsequentAtheist asked Amaleq13: Would you therefore argue that the existence of a Jerusalem sect does not suggest a sect leader?

And to the response he received he replied: Did you intend not to answer my question?

I think, given the difficulty of doing history in this area, Amaleq13 did give an answer to the question that he thought you were asking, for it appears to me, and both he and I may be wrong, but you were making assumptions about the Jerusalem sect that were entailed in the question. I agree with him that it would seem that the Jerusalem sect cannot be equated to a first xian sect.

However, to answer your question literally, I don't know if the existence of a sect necessitates the existence of a leader of that sect.

If the sect indicated in Galatians is not the sect indicated in (hypothetical) Q, is your question relevant? This is part of what I think is involved in a response to your question.


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