lmbarre

Allow me to submit this essay on the historical Jesus:

http://freewebs.com/lmbarre

The essay is about 12 pages.

dockeen

A synopsis might be nice.

jonJ

I don't see any evidence in your essay that Jesus ever existed at all. Shouldn't you try and clear up that minor point first? Maybe here, though, not in this forum.

Vorkosigan

Just read the first page. Please explain how you know that J's last words on the cross actually come from J and not from the hand of Mark. They are easily accounted for as literary development from Ps 22.

Vorkosigan

Steven Carr

Oh dear. The argument from embarrassment makes the first page.

Would Christians have invented stories of the child Jesus killing people?

aa5874

You have just invented a FIFTH Gospel. That is all.

You have merely extracted and rejected events from the Canonised Gospels WITHOUT any corroboration from non-apologetic sources of antiquity which appears to have been done by the authors of the very Gospels.

You have invented a human Myth.

Solo

I am afraid I have not found a reasoned argument for historicity of the named events in your essay. Obviously you take your faith seriously, which is commendable. But I seriously doubt you will find people here buying into your analysis-by-acclamation. There is frankly nothing in your writing to justify the blanket endorsement. Jesus' last words echo a Psalm of David (22:1) - they are a theological statement, which may be renouncing radically the idea of Davidic messiahship, i.e. the idea of God's kingdom on earth, in favour of faith in Paul's Jerusalem above. The interrogation of Jesus before the High Priest, shows the same theme of Jesus referencing by 'messiah' his service as Isaiah's (and Paul's) suffering servant where the high priest inquires whether Jesus believes himself to be 'messiah' as in pretender to the Davidic throne. The cleansing of the temple, is an incident which employs Nehemiah's imagery (Neh 13:7-9) sandwiched by the withering of the fig tree symbolizing of the apostasy of Israel in the days of punishment (Hosea 8). The triumphal entry, as you yourself note, follows Zech 9:9. So, to a sober, disinterested, reader, if there is any cohesion in the Markan passion structure (on which the other gospels depend) it is unmistakably originating with a narrative schema of the gospel writer. This, at best, obscures the real history.

Best,
Jiri