spamandham

Really? And yet the majority opinions that Jesus; existed in the first century, came from Nazareth, was a poor traveling sage, with a group of followers (including Peter) and was crucified under Pilate pretty much result from exactly that process.

Solo

Funny, I on the other hand, see no reason to think it was not Jesus or his personal entourage. There is of course a psychological motive of aversion to all things religious, a sort of a knee-jerk through which one expresses one's disdain and sense of intellectual superiority. It is that which makes people hopelessly overstate their skepticism in sayings like "I see no reason to think Jesus existed; it's an article of faith which I do not share".

No, it is not an article of faith. We have, somewhere in 40-50 CE the evidence of Paul passionately arguing for a cosmic figure in a home-made cosmology, arguing apparently against an apocalyptic judaic sect which idolizes someone by the same name (Jesus) even though Paul tells us (in a mytho-poetic style) that that idol was executed by (earthly) authorities and executed perfectly legally. Where such an argument, and a setting for such argument originated if the Nazarene Jesus was a purely mythical construct, needs to be explained. This is a different type of endeavor than attempting to make ideological hay of the general historical obscurity in which the first Jesus-professing communities operated.

Jiri

aa5874

It doesn't need any faith to believe a cosmic figure was crucified on earth?

Don't you need faith to believe a cosmic figure was buried and ROSE from the dead as stated by Paul?

Don't you need faith to believe that Paul was completely wrong about the crucifixion, resurrection and ascension of the cosmic figure?

You can only have faith to support your position, and even if you deny your faith, you still cannot provide any evidence to contradict Paul's claim that Jesus ROSE from the dead, and ascended to heaven.

In effect, you cannot contradict Paul's claim that Jesus was a God, a cosmic figure.

jjramsey

Your reasoning process seems to be something like this, AFAICT :huh: : The HJ is like the Jesus of the NT with much of the fantastical elements removed. Therefore, the conclusion that the HJ existed merely comes from stripping away the fantastical elements. This simply doesn't follow. Rather the real reasoning is more like this:

1. We know that the process of humans making stuff up can lead to legends can accrue in the reported histories of real people.
2. We also know that process of humans making stuff up can lead to accounts about people who never existed.
3. Trying to explain the contents of the NT and related documents as the by-product of the process in item #2 of this list leads to very forced or convoluted scenarios, often involving fallacies and distortions of fact.
4. Therefore, the contents of the NT and related documents are probably the by-product of the process in item #1.

You can see shades of this sort of reasoning all the way back to 1912, in S.J. Case's The Historicity of Jesus, where he (?) writes:

Among the HJers at IIDB, who've seen more modern mythicists, you can definitely see the kind of reasoning that I have described. For example, you've seen Ben C Smith, Chris Weimer, and GakuseiDon argue mythicists' scenarios.

Toto

Exactly how does your process number 1 differ from stripping the supernatural elements from the gospels and assuming that the rest has some basis in fact?

It is quote possible to support process number 2 without any forced scenarios or distortions of fact. It is also true that supporting process number 1 has involved many forced scenarios, with fallacies and distortions of fact.

Shirley Case is male.

I'm not sure what that quote is supposed to prove. If you assume that Paul's letters were second century forgeries, where two competing factions wrestled with the text until the proto-orthodox church won out, you have a simple, neat, uncomplicated explanation of the text, which does nothing to support a historical Jesus.

jjramsey

You misread entirely (though I did have a typo; the second "can" should be a "that" :blush. Process number #1 is the accruing of legendary material. The point is that both processes have occurred in history, and the question is which process applies to Jesus, which is where points #3 and #4 on my list come in.

If you are talking very generally, yes, that is obviously true. For an extreme example, it would be very forced to explain the myths about Alexander the Great in terms of process number 2, and likewise forced to explain the myths about Hercules in terms of process number 1. Obviously, which process explains the evidence better is a case-by-case matter.

It is a historical example of someone discussing the sort of reasoning that I had outlined. Case is examining a part of Drews' argument for process number #2, specifically the part relating to Paul. Case's assessment is along the line of point #3, where he finds Drews' treatment of Paul to be contradictory and arbitrary.

aa5874

You have boxed yourself in a corner from which you cannot escape.

You have concluded that the contents of the NT and related documents are probably the by-products of the process in item #1, but you have failed to produce the REAL PERSON to satisfy item #1.

You have no real HJ. You are still in the GUESSING stages. You don't really know what happened during the days of Pilate.

All I am hearing from HJers is the same CIRCULAR refrain: "Jesus was probably human so he was human."

spamandham

Yet, your list item 3 does not lead to any of the usual assumptions about Jesus, such as I listed before.

The approach you're suggesting would lead to no more than what many reconstruct from Antiquities 13:3:

"Jesus, a wise man. For he was a doer of startling deeds, a teacher of people who receive the truth with pleasure. And he gained a following among many Jews and among many of Gentile origin. And when Pilate, because of an accusation made by the leading men among us, condemned him to the cross, those who had loved him previously did not cease to do so. And up until this very day the tribe of Christians (named after him) had not died out."

Of course, you can remove this entire aside about Jesus from Antiquities, and the flow is even smoother than it is with this reconstruction of an otherwise known to be heavily edited (if not completely fraudulent) paragraph. But then you would be left wondering why Josephus referred to James in terms of Jesus, but does not explain who Jesus is.

Unless, 'Jesus Christ' is one of the other Jesuses, like the one killed by his high priest brother John in the temple (Ant. 11:7), or the high preist named Jesus in Ant. 12:5 & 15:3, or the son of Phabet deprived of high preisthood (15:9), or the high priest Jesus son of Sie of 17:13, or the high priest Jesus son of Damneus (20:9), or the high priest Jesus son of Gamaliel (20:9), or the high priest Jesus son of Josadek (20:10), or Jesus (who irritated a great many) the son of the high priest Sapphias (Wars 2:20 and life 12) who was also governor under Tiberius, or Jesus the head of a band of robbers (wars 3:9 and 3:10) at the time of Aggripa, or high preist Jesus son of Gamalas (wars 4:3), or the high priest Jesus of Wars 4:4 & 4:5 who held up in the temple and was killed, or the high priest Jesus of wars 6:2, or the crazy Jesus son of Ananus of wars 6:5, or Jesus the son of the high preist of wars 6:8.

The three most famous Jesuses in Josephus are Jesus son of Sapphias, the Jesus of wars 4:4 and 4:5, and the crazy Jesus of wars 6:5, not the barely mentioned (if at all) Jesus of Ant. 13.

The typically assumed HJ does not come from Josephus (as it should), but rather, from the Gospels.

Toto

PLEASE explain exactly how I have misread that. If you argue that there was legendary accretion around a historical figure, how do you find that historical figure other than assuming that the gospels have some historical core and stripping away the less credible parts?

This is the problem with the historicist case. You take one particular mythicist and dispute the particular formulation. (And I think that "contradictory and arbitrary" overstates the case.) But you cannot prove that Jesus was a historical figure by disproving all of the mythicist formulations. Historicism is not the default. Agnosticism is.

jjramsey

To quote you: "Exactly how does your process number 1 differ from stripping the supernatural elements from the gospels and assuming that the rest has some basis in fact?"

To quote myself: "1. We know that the process of humans making stuff up can lead to legends can accrue in the reported histories of real people."

If one is reasoning along the lines of my "four steps," and one is only at step 1, one isn't at the point of deciding that stripping supernatural elements leads to a rough reconstruction of the real history. That comes after that four-step reasoning is done. All "process number 1", or "step 1" if you will, is about is noting that humans have in the past made up legends about real people. Whether that process likely applies to the contents of the NT or not isn't discussed until in the third and fourth steps.

Furthermore, establishing the likelihood of a historical core does not need to involve stripping the supernatural elements. For example, one doesn't need to do that kind of stripping to argue that mythicist attempts to explain apparent references to Jesus' brothers from Paul and Josephus are kludgy. The stripping can be done after establishing that a historical core is likely.

Historicism is not the default, but when mythicism keeps failing to provide a superior explanation of the evidence, does agnosticism really continue to be warranted?