J-D

I'm not sure whether it's what you meant, but what that sounds like is: 'I don't mind if people disagree with me, so long as they don't say so.'

GakuseiDon

Why? Critics like Celsus accepted that Jesus performed miracles, but they believed that he was a sorceror and a "juggler". The Pharisees in the Gospels are portrayed as seeing Jesus perform miracles, and their response was "hey, you can't do that on the Sabbath!"

Would the literati and the Roman authorities beyond Palestine have even cared? How do you even go about making a case for such a position?

Again, would the literati and the Roman authorities beyond Palestine have even cared?

If I said that they would have just assumed the stories were nonsense, and just the tales of a superstitious province, how do we go about resolving this?

I can point to Celsus (and the stories in the Gospels) to show that even people who believed that Jesus performed some kinds of miracles didn't believe that Jesus was the Son of God. What do you have?

Besides, why even bring it up? Isn't that just a strawman? You were responding to jjramsey, who certainly didn't. This is what jjramsey said (my emphasis):

The answer to the question "How do we know Jesus really existed" is more like this: Because the contents of the New Testament, especially the Gospels, are trivial to explain if there was a real first-century Galilean Jew from Nazareth named Jesus whose story was embellished, but are problematic to explain if this Jesus were made from whole cloth. That is a straightforward application of Occam's razor.

Part of your response is:

3. Of course, if he were the real thing, a descended and ascended god who ACTUALLY raised the dead and walked on water, well, his name would have been immediately emblazoned on everything from Roman coins to the imperial mace.

Why bring this up at all if no-one was arguing it? (Perhaps you'd like to defend some MJ statements by Acharya S?)


I already have, and I don't think that I need go any further than Richard Carrier on that point, as I pointed out here in my review of "The God Who Wasn't There":
http://members.optusnet.com.au/gakus..._Part3.htm#3.2
"First, we have no reason to expect any historical record of a HJ [historical Jesus]. We are lucky to have any sources at all from that time and place, and those sources do not record every movement or its founder."

Can you now supply a historian who can support your statement?

jjramsey

Unlikely, especially since his Gospel is built up from the kind of self-contained stories that one would expect to be the stuff of oral tradition.

If Paul can casually refer to the Pillars as if he expected the Galatians to know who they were, the likelihood that Mark wouldn't know roughly who they were and what they were about is pretty small. Making up unverifiable legends about movement leaders is one thing, and a common thing at that, but making up a history about them that would be false on its face to fellow Christians is quite another.

J-D

Possibly my choice of the word 'organisation' was misleading. In a few places I've used the word 'movement' as an alternative, but that has drawbacks too. I certainly didn't mean by 'organisation' something as elaborately organised as the typical modern church. The earliest organisation of Christianity would have been more rudimentary, but even a rudimentary form of organisation must have an origin. If I circumlocute further, my question is something like: 'what was the origin of Christianity-in-the-sense-of- "a group of people with a mutually recognised common group membership"?' If this is 'organisation' (and I still think it's a defensible way of using the word), it's organisation in the minimal sense required for it to make sense for a Christian to arrive in a new town and be able to seek out 'the-Christians, as-a-group' in that town and recognise them as 'fellow-Christians' and be recognised by them as a 'fellow-Christian'. It would have been from/within this rudimentary form of organisation that the more elaborate forms of organisation we know now would have emerged/developed.

I'm suggesting that a common way for a religious movement, or organisation, in this sense, to get its start is from an inital group of a leader with followers. I don't think that this model requires much specifically organisational work from the leader, although in some cases it may do. It might possibly be just as much a case of followers choosing to gather around a leader as of a leader consciously choosing to gather followers, although in most cases I suspect it would probably be a bit of both. Thus I'm not necessarily suggesting an explanatory role for the organisational work of Jesus, only for his existence, which is an essential feature of the conventional account (not that I accept the conventional account, I hope that's become plain).

I'm not insisting that a single original leader is an essential feature of the origin of an organised religious movement. But it is a common pattern, and I'd just like to know a little more about what the alternative is supposed to be that could apply to the case of Christianity.

Doug Shaver

Not really. I have seen it used. I grant that few historicists use it, but there are those few.

If it were alleged that all historicists use it or that it is their primary argument, then that would be straw man, but I didn't see that allegation.

That is another answer that historicists offer. It is not the only one that they have offered.

Sparrow

And if the oral tradition did not contain the names, but Paul's letter did, why not mine them for info? From what I've read here, there is some question as to whether the author of GMark knew Paul's writings or not. I have seen some who say that the whole reason for writing GMark in the first place was to start making Paul's spiritual Jesus a real historical person.

These are the same Christians that were supposedly so illiterate that they could not write down the amazing things their leader had done? Yet they are so attuned to the minutiae of such stories that there could not have been any errors or omissions? Since they were so illiterate, how would they even know if the stories written down said what they were told they said?

False on their face? Are you kidding? The three synoptic gospels can't even triangulate the date of Jesus' birth. Bethlehem or Nazareth? Given the sorry state of the 'facts' as recorded by the gospel writers, what is even the meaning of the word false?

J-D

Whatever anybody else may have said historically, if somebody hypothesises now along the following lines:

'A following gathered around a religious leader/teacher/preacher and developed a sense of corporate identity as his followers. This movement, continuing to exist and develop after his death, developed into what we now know as the Christian religion--or one branch of it did.'

--I say that that is a clear explanation, in the sense of being easily comprehensible. I don't mean that it is clearly established that that is what happened. But I haven't seen any alternative explanation presented with the same clarity. 'Christ is a classic superhero figure' is a clear answer to a different question: 'where did the stories about Christ come from?', not 'where did the religious movement come from?' I have yet to hear of any defininite instances of religions arising around a comic-book character.

J-D

I didn't say it was unreasonable. What I do say is that I haven't seen an explanation of what made them collect and what made them like-minded (or of the emotionally charged atmosphere mentioned earlier).

J-D

I see I shall have to make good on my offer of further elucidation.

It seems to me that some people are arguing from the nature of the gaps and inconsistencies in the traditional accounts to their complete historical unreliability: in other words, people seem to be saying that the nature of the Gospel accounts is incompatible with their having been based at all on historical events. I mentioned those ballads as evidence that there is no such incompatibility. The balladists were writing about real historical events, but (for whatever reason) their accounts played fast and loose with the historical truth about those events.

If you think my logic is flawed, are you suggesting that there never was any battle of Otterburn? What makes you think that? Why would Macaulay fabricate that?

Obviously, I am not suggesting that the ballads are reliable sources for the events of the battle. I am not even suggesting that they are important evidence that the battle happened (I don't know how historians would view this point). I am only suggesting that their existence, despite the unreliability of the accounts they give, is nevertheless compatible with the historical factuality of the battle.

Likewise, I don't suggest that the Gospels are reliable sources for the events of the life of Jesus. I am not even suggesting that they are important evidence that he lived (I don't know how historians would view that point, either). I am only suggesting that their existence, despite their unreliability, is nevertheless compatible with the historical existence of Jesus.

Amaleq13

Since it seems ridiculous that you would need an explanation why people who share a common interest in reinterpreting traditional messianic expectations would be called "like-minded" or why such individuals would seek each other out, I have to conclude I have no idea what it is you don't understand.

The emotionally charged atmosphere would be created by the report of one of their number that the risen Christ had appeared to him. The "charge" might even have started sooner if the experience was preceded by the group studying Scripture for reinterpretation clues and someone felt they were on to something (eg Suffering Servant, for example).