No Robots

One to whom Jesus is but a miracle-monger, a controversialist on the obligatoriness or futility of the law, or a metaphysical concept, might neglect the study of his Jewish environment. But he to whom Jesus is the great dreamer, the spokesman of the spiritual ideal, the appraiser of the essential values of life, the man who discerned the difference between show and reality, between the fleeting and the eternal, and tried to fix the eyes of his fellow-men on the real and the eternal, — to such, an appreciation of the environment of Jesus is an inevitable prerequisite to an appreciation of Jesus himself.--Hyman Gerson Enelow

Juststeve

Bacht:

I don't take the epistles you mention to be authored by the persons to whom they are attributed or any other companions of the historical Jesus. In fact I don't think we have any writings from actual companions of Jesus. What they know is what they heard from others.

Steve

aa5874

When will you provide the evidence for your simplest hypothesis. That is the next step. Everyone understands your hypothesis.

You must immediately realise that historical data or corroborative evidence for George Washington and Babe Ruth can be found and that none can be found for Jesus of the NT.

It has been found that your simplest theory cannot be defended by any sources of antiquity, so it may after all be the worst hypothesis.

The simplest hypothesis that can be defended is that Jesus was fabricated from Hebrew Scripture taken out of context.

Let us examine the evidence for the hypothesis that Jesus was fabricated using out of context scripture.

The conception of Jesus was based on Isaiah 7.14, but Isaiah 7.14 has nothing whatsoever to do with any Jesus, if Isaiah 8.3 is examined, the son was born 14 verses later.

Isaiah 8.3 Every single so-called prophecy about Jesus was taken out-of-context, but amazingly Jesus fulfilled all the non-prophecies.

It is just hardly unlikely that such a character could have actually lived whose life was totally contrary to Hebrew Scripture, was executed for blasphemy, and then to be worshipped as a God by the same people who caused him to be killed for blasphemy.

The simplest hypothesis is that Jesus was just a story written long ater the supposed events in a region well away from Judaea.

Toto

We are also familiar with fictional heros who become historicized. It doesn't take a conspiracy.

The Romans crucified political agitators and rebels, not wandering rabbis.

For any item in the gospels, there is some reason to doubt that it is historical. What do you do then?

bacht

Well, regular scholars as well as mythicists tend to doubt the authorship of most of the NT material. I was just responding to No_Robots on the plain text level. Personally I think all the early books are pseudonymous, with maybe some bits and pieces of someone who became Paul datable earlier than 130. I have no idea about the Johanine epistles but the Logos idea could've been around in the 1st C, though the books as we have them seem to be reacting to gnostics.

As for Jesus, what exactly was he teaching? If the Kingdom of Heaven was an apocalyptic event then the message was clearly wrong. If the Kingdom of Heaven is existential then Jesus was some sort of philosopher or mystic. I don't believe in resurrection so there's nothing in his rising from the tomb that speaks to me, and that's after his earthly career anyway (unless his teaching to the disciples after Easter was not recorded, a convenient omission). The message of Jesus seems to be his person rather than anything he said: the divine Son or Word finally revealed to bring salvation to all mankind.

Juststeve

Aa5874:

Were I to agree with the proposition that neither the Gospels themselves, nor the well documented existence of a Christian community during the first century C.E., count as evidence that there was in fact a man Jesus, then I suppose we would agree on everything else. We just don’t agree on the first proposition. It is my view that the actual existence of the man Jesus is the best explanation for his appearance in the Gospels and the advent of a community which seemed to regard him as recently alive.

Further, I simply have no reason to doubt the non-fantastic aspects of the story, that the man lived, that he was a preacher, that he had a group of followers, that he got crosswise with the Roman Occupation and ended up crucified. The fact that such a man does not appear in secular history is of no weight since most of the people living in first century Palestine do not appear in contemporary histories.

I attach no credibility at all to those matters which would have made him noteworthy had they occurred because they are too fantastic to be accepted on the basis of the available evidence. Accordingly I regard them as legendary or apologetic in origin. If I were defending the proposition that his Jesus was followed by great crowds, hailed during his life as the Messiah and rose from the dead is absence from contemporary history would need explaining. I don’t defend those propositions.

Steve.

bacht

It's always the same problem:
If Jesus was a nobody then how did he become the Christ?
If Jesus was famous then why was he invisible outside the church?

Juststeve

Bacht:

Your how did Jesus a nobody become the Christ question is very interesting. It is like how did Joseph Smith, a swindler, come to be regarded by millions as a Prophet of God? In both cases I don’t know the answer.

In the case of Jesus however one thing we know is that he became the Christ over a long period of time and even then only for some. We know it was the fourth century before the divinity became established church doctrine and even then was only accepted by some Christians. Even today the Unitarians deny the divinity of Jesus.

My inability to explain how Jesus and Joseph Smith came to be elevated does not however seem to be a good reason to say they were purely fictional. The more sensible conclusion is they both lived and a lot of nonsense is being talked about them by their followers.

Steve

No Robots

We are dealing here with a case of genius. Genius is difficult for people to grasp. They tend to distort it into categories that they are familiar with.

aa5874

There is no well documented corroborative information about Jesus believers in the first century anywhere. Please name a document external of the Church that mentions Jesus the Messiah or believers of Jesus in the 1st century.