Originally Posted by Chaucer

Which means, therefore, that you erred in claiming earlier that "The most likely fit is a story about the son of God who was crucified by the Romans and arose from the dead." Plainly, inasmuch as the "extra Biblical sources are about what we would expect from the outside society interpreting what they heard from Christians", that interpretation only accommodates a "human troublemaker who gathered a few followers and finally made enough trouble for himself to be nailed by the Romans, period". It does not accommodate your claim. Thus, my point stands.

Chaucer

Originally Posted by Chaucer

Which means, therefore, that you erred in claiming earlier that "The most likely fit is a story about the son of God who was crucified by the Romans and arose from the dead." Plainly, inasmuch as the "extra Biblical sources are about what we would expect from the outside society interpreting what they heard from Christians", that interpretation only accommodates a "human troublemaker who gathered a few followers and finally made enough trouble for himself to be nailed by the Romans, period". It does not accommodate your claim. Thus, my point stands.

Chaucer

Originally Posted by Juststeve

Is that really your theory, Toto? That in the absence of a historical Jesus there was one or more Christians who, inspired not by Jesus because he didn't exist, made up a story about a Jesus who was crucified. Why would they do such a thing? Was it in the way of a joke? Perhaps a hoax. <snip insults>
Steve

Originally Posted by No Robots

Here is how one Jewish scholar deals with the question of whether Christ was a myth or a man:

I have indicated that neither Graetz nor Geiger espoused the skeptical view of Bauer that Jesus never existed. One cannot know why they did not; one can only speculate. Perhaps they sensed danger to the well-being of German Jews in the elect of Jewish scholars joining in with a radical like Bauer; perhaps Bauer’s anti-Semitism repelled them. Perhaps they may have taken a certain pride in Jesus and therefore they did not want to negate his having existed. Yet the likelihood seems to be in a different direction, and to involve a consideration of much greater profundity. It might be phrased in this way: A Jew versed in Scripture and in Talmud who enters into the pages of the Synoptic Gospels finds himself in familiar territory. He can be irked, annoyed, or aghast at the ferocity of the anti-Jewish sentiments, but he is nevertheless in a geography which does not seem strange to him. Scripture is cited in ways like the citations in the Talmud (though, of course, for a very different purpose), the parables of Jesus either duplicate or overlap rabbinic parables, and the “conflicts” which Jesus has with Pharisees and chief priests bring to mind both the animated discussions of the Talmud, and recall intra-Jewish conflicts between Pharisees and Sadducees. Such a Jewish person, for all that he would agree with Strauss that the Gospels are replete with legends and contradictions, would nevertheless hold to the opinion that Gospels and Talmud are similar weavings of similar threads, and such a person would say to a Bauer that no imagination could out of the thin air create so authentically the religious scene and the flavor of Palestinian Judaism. Such a Jew would be prone to say that, however wrong this or that detail of the Gospels may be, the general, over-all impression of a conformity to the general facts is indisputable. To this opinion I myself subscribe.—We Jews and Jesus / Samuel Sandmel, pp. 65-6.

Originally Posted by maryhelena

I really don't understand why anyone would want to hang on to such a useless and irrelevant to history figure.

Originally Posted by Chaucer

You mean as in looking at a variety of no fewer than _thirteen_ Pauline references* in the seven authentic Paulilnes, plus similar references in the EXTRA-BIBLICAL Josephus and Tacitus and the Mishnah and Pliny and Suetonius, and in then seeing that the most likely fit for all of these _half dozen_ sources is an entirely human preacher called Jesus who was nailed by the Romans? Now please don't try moving the goalposts here as many a myther would by responding that "Oh, but in this one case, you surely see the ambiguity of bla bla bla, and that one reference is clearly interpolated, and anyone with brains can see that over here we have a special case of simple misunderstanding, etc., etc., etc." To do that is to fall into exactly the kind of thing you are critiquing here. You've said, "Serious historians look at a variety of evidence and see how the pieces fit together". How right you are. You are referring to the principle of consilience. And if you want to question all _half-dozen_ sources, then you can't get away from a de facto questioning of all _half-dozen_ as a _group_(!), which is precisely what a responsible historian would never do. S/He may question one or even two in a pinch, but to question all of the _half-dozen_ for whatever multiple reasonSSS, thereby stubbing one's toe against the principle of Occam's Razor, gets us into the realm of sheer comedy and away from serious history.

Once and for all, kindly address the ludicrousness of coming up with ad hoc argumentSSS for an ARRAY of DIFFERENT sources -- mostly _extra-Biblical_ -- AS A GROUP.

Thank you,

Stein

* Born into a Jewish family of a Jewish mother.
Galatians 4:4 But when the time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under law

The family may have been partly related to the David line, or "descent from David" may have simply been an emblematic way of saying he was of David's people -- i.e., a Jew.
Romans 1:3 regarding his Son, who as to his human nature was a descendant of David

He was born into a family with at least two brothers, one of them named James.
Galatians 1:18 Then after three years, I went up to Jerusalem to get acquainted with Peter and stayed with him fifteen days.
19 I saw none of the other apostles—only James, the Lord's brother.

1 Corinthians 9:5 Don't we have the right to take a believing wife along with us, as do the other apostles and the Lord's brothers and Cephas?

He preached that a wife could not leave her husband.
1 Corinthians 7:10 To the married I give this command (not I, but the Lord): A wife must not separate from her husband.

He preached that those who taught the gospel should earn their living from it.
1 Corinthians 9:13 Don't you know that those who work in the temple get their food from the temple, and those who serve at the altar share in what is offered on the altar?
14 In the same way, the Lord has commanded that those who preach the gospel should receive their living from the gospel.

To the day of his crucifixion, he maintained a humble station in life.
Phillipians 2:7 but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.
8 And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death — even death on a cross!

On the last night of his freedom, he and his followers instituted a custom of memorializing his time with them through bread and drink.
1 Corinthians 11:23 The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread,
24 and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, "This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me."
25 In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me."

He told his followers he'd come back miraculously after his execution, and those who might die in the interim would join him in the resurrection when he'd return.
1 Thessalonians 4:15 According to the Lord's own word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left till the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep.

He was crucified.
1 Corinthians 2:8 None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.

1 Thessalonians 2:14 You suffered from your own people the same things those churches suffered from the Jews
15 who killed the Lord Jesus and the prophets and also drove us out.

He was buried.
Romans 6:4 We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death

After he was buried, a few traumatized followers thought they saw him raised from the tomb.
1 Corinthians 15:3 that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures.

Originally Posted by No Robots

Because this figure is neither useless nor irrelevant, as another scholar of Jewish background makes clear:

Christ was a Jew, his religion was and remained the Jewish; and if now we Jews protest – more thoroughly protestant than under you – against the entire Christianity, against the Augustinian-Thomist and against the Augustinian-Lutheran Christianity and against all and each type of Christianity, old and new? How, if we protest in the name of Christ, in the name of the real Christianity of Christ because this is the real Judaism? More powerful today is our protest than ever formerly. Today Judaism protests no longer without Christ, but rather Judaism with Christ; today Christianity protests against Christianity: our true Christianity, i.e. the real Judaism of us real Jews against your false Christianity. We come to the point of saying that we alone are Christians, as soon as we want – and come to it also through what we did not want and do not want: through our renunciation, through our passion story and via dolorosa! – We are Christians as soon as we give this doctrine of Jesus and the apostles its true Jewish interpretation and acknowledge its place.--"Rede der Juden: Wir wollen ihn zurück!" ["Speech of the Jews: We want him back!"] / Constantin Brunner. In Der Judenhass und die Juden, p. 435. My translation.