Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Adam · 06-04-2012, 11:48 PM

Shesh and outhouse are both right about the Poor and what not, it's just that the earlier ministry recorded in Q focuses on the poor as outhouse states, but the later part is different--what's described after the author of L joined them. By that time Jesus may have patrons supporting him, as Shesh decribes. L is will underway by Luke 7, and it is in Luke 8:1-3 that we learn about the women in Jesus's retinue.

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Originally Posted by outhouse

hey Shesh

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Originally Posted by Sheshbazzar

And who traveled about with a retinue of followers with a communal money bag from which they were able, in addition to the supplying all of their own needs, from their surplus, donate alms to the poor.

Ah yes, the mythical 12 we know he never had follwing him.

If you accept anything from the gospels, you might as well accept the Twelve. They're in Q, L, and Mark, though just called "disciples" in gJohn.

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he most likely had just his inner circle with him as he traveled and healed so he could eat, that is plain as day in scripture.

and of course scripture speeks of how he is proud of the poor and the rich can bite it! lol
he traveles with poor fishermen at that time also like jesus lived a life below a peasant.
They had no money, nor did he want it, remember he learned his methods from john who ate locust and wild honey clothed in a camel hair tunic.
my guess is they had nothing to be taxed for at that point, thus not feeding the roman machine! the enemy.

outhouse is correct that these are characteristic of most of Jesus's ministry. Nevertheless,

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That one whom at the Pashka Festival, his credit worthiness so renowned that he could order up transportation and provisions simply upon his word, and whom during the busiest night of the year, was able to reserve one of the most desirable dining halls in the entire city in which to hold his private party.... And who when he died, was laid to rest in a brand-new garden tomb prepared for a very wealthy man.

he was said to be placed in Josephs tomb, reality is he very well could have been fed to the dogs

So Crossan says, but scripture is probably correct that he was placed in the tomb of a wealthy man who had associates wealthy enough to write or commission someone to write about Jesus. Q1, the Passion Narrative, and the Johannine discourses all may have been written at that very time.

gurugeorge · 06-05-2012, 05:31 PM

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Originally Posted by outhouse

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How do you know?

because many people and places and events in the epistles and gospels have complete historicity

And so do Marvel comics. When you said "not 100% mythology" I had assumed (since that had been the topic of our conversation so far) that you were talking about the actual "Jesus" biography, not historical background detail of the kind that anybody might put in a story to give it authenticity.

So, how do you know that the Jesus biography is not 100% mythology? The stuff about the character himself, his life and doings?

J-D · 06-05-2012, 06:40 PM

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Originally Posted by gurugeorge

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Originally Posted by J-D

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Originally Posted by gurugeorge

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Originally Posted by J-D

You acknowledge the imprecision, but you say that the discussion is clear enough despite that imprecision. The discussion doesn't look clear enough to me. It looks hopelessly confused.

I wouldn't say the discussion is clear, but it remains focussed enough.

I don't see how a discussion can be focussed if it isn't clear. If it isn't clear, how do you know whether it's focussed on anything?

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Originally Posted by gurugeorge

If we were writing dissertations, then of course it would be necessary to define terms, but it's not necessary in most discussions here, where most of the usual suspects key participants have been at this for quite some time.

I just thought of another way of putting it that might satisfy you. Any "historical Jesus" is a hypothetical explanans for the existence of Christianity. Therefore the definition of "human Jesus" will vary with the hypothesis, with the method used of "extracting" him from the text, etc., etc. But the root idea is clear enough: the idea of a man, living roughly around that time, around whose life and/or doings the mythical Jesus we know and love was somehow, and to some degree, formed.

If you intend to define 'historical Jesus' as 'any explanation for the existence of Christianity', then the only way to deny that there is a historical Jesus is to deny that there is any explanation for the existence of Christianity, and it's impossible to distinguish between explanations for the existence of Christianity which include a historical Jesus and those which don't. I don't think that's what you meant, and even if it is, I'm sure it's not what other posters here mean.

For someone who's apparently priding himself on his clarity of thought and coming here with the pretense of sorting all us muddled clowns out, you're not very big on reading comprehension are you? "Any explanation for the existence of Christianity" is not the same as "a hypothetical explanans for the existence of Christianity"

"HJ" is one of many possible hypothetical explanations of Christianity - that is, that (rather than being sheerly made up for any number of possible reasons, or based on a visionary Jesus entity, or any number of other possible hypothetical explanations of Christianity) it was started by a human being called Jesus, whose biography shared some (variable, depending on particular HJ hypothesis) element with the gospel Jesus, and who's biography can be extracted somehow from the mythical Jesus texts we have.

But also, there are many possible "historical Jesuses" (who might be possible explanations of Christianity).

No more precise definition is needed, since the term just refers (through common usage here and elsewhere) to a generic quality of the type of historical person we are looking for.

To have a more precise definition at the outset would be to prejudice the inquiry towards one of the many possible "historical Jesuses".

Funnily enough, your misquoting of me is of a piece with your misquoting of Toto above:-

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Christianity either started with a historical leader (referred to as Jesus) or with someone having a vision of that savior. Option A is the historicist option, option B is mythicism.

And once again, the terms in which you have stated the two positions don't clearly reflect the supposed disagreement, since in the terms in which you have expressed them they are not necessarily opposed to each other. It is not impossible for both of the statements 'Christianity started with a historical leader' and 'Christianity started with somebody having a vision of a saviour' to be true. The words you have chosen are not well-chosen for the purpose of characterising a major divide.

Here, you completely ignore Toto's "referred to as Jesus" and "that savior".

People who live in sloppy glass thinking houses shouldn't throw stones.

If there were a consensus here that 'historicist' meant 'somebody who holds that Christianity began with a human being called Jesus, whose biography shared some (although not automatically all) its details with the account given in the gospels, and whose biography (or at least a partial biography) can be extracted from the gospel texts', then we'd have an agreed definition clear enough to be useful.

And there are some posters here who would accept that (or something nearly equivalent) as a definition of 'historicist'.

But I don't see the evidence that there is a consensus. I see disagreements between posters which seem to me to indicate that not everybody does accept a definition of 'historicist' along the lines you propose.

mountainman · 06-05-2012, 08:45 PM

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Originally Posted by J-D

If there were a consensus here that 'historicist' meant 'somebody who holds that Christianity began with a human being called Jesus, whose biography shared some (although not automatically all) its details with the account given in the gospels, and whose biography (or at least a partial biography) can be extracted from the gospel texts', then we'd have an agreed definition clear enough to be useful.

And there are some posters here who would accept that (or something nearly equivalent) as a definition of 'historicist'.

But I don't see the evidence that there is a consensus.

But there is no consensus. And there never was.
There is in reality a spectrum of hypotheses and/or "belief".
This spectrum may be mapped.

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I see disagreements between posters which seem to me to indicate that not everybody does accept a definition of 'historicist' along the lines you propose.

Maybe someone could write an FAQ on "Jesus Historicism" (and/or for that matter "Jesus Non Historicism"). The term historicity may prove useful. But as far as I am concerned, the table of Jesus Historicity positions in an earlier thread is itself a proto-type FAQ.

J-D · 06-05-2012, 09:08 PM

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Originally Posted by mountainman

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Originally Posted by J-D

If there were a consensus here that 'historicist' meant 'somebody who holds that Christianity began with a human being called Jesus, whose biography shared some (although not automatically all) its details with the account given in the gospels, and whose biography (or at least a partial biography) can be extracted from the gospel texts', then we'd have an agreed definition clear enough to be useful.

And there are some posters here who would accept that (or something nearly equivalent) as a definition of 'historicist'.

But I don't see the evidence that there is a consensus.

But there is no consensus. And there never was.

That was what I said in the first place. If people don't agree on what 'historicist' means, then any discussion relying on use of that term is bound to be incoherent and futile.

outhouse · 06-05-2012, 09:14 PM

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'historicist' meant 'somebody who holds that Christianity began with a human being called Jesus, whose biography shared some (although not automatically all) its details with the account given in the gospels, and whose biography (or at least a partial biography) can be extracted from the gospel texts', then we'd have an agreed definition clear enough to be useful.

I dont see a problem at all with that definition.

there shouldnt be a arguement or disagreement on how to define a "historicist"

you were pretty straight foward

Adam · 06-05-2012, 10:19 PM

I like that definition. I'm an historicist.

rlogan · 06-05-2012, 11:53 PM

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Originally Posted by spin

And, of course, neither more or less likely to be false--which needs to be stated rather than sublimated. Such sublimation is only to be expected in the prevalent cultural hegemony, which favors the longstanding dominance of the notion of Jesus being real and which sustains a generally believing bevvy of academics who give institutional credibility to the notion. Such institutions tend to be fronts for hegemony as noted by Ivan Illich. Reflecting the view that Jesus existed is natural for the believer, the person who knows nothing about it and for those who have been trained in seminaries for several years. In such a situation it is very hard for a non-hegemonic view to emerge with any coherence because there are no tools of conviviality to support it. Repressive tolerance allows the individual to think of any lunacy s/he may happen upon, but there is no convivial support to allow such ideas to be developed in a scholarly manner. There are no institutions or money to support the intellectual endeavor. The result is that individuals work away at their personal follies as best they can until they become too old or too alienated after years or decades of being treated as conspiracy theorists or the like. The lone gunman approach is bound to fail: there needs to be a real conspiracy.

Hanging on to the notion that Jesus existed generally has nothing to do with evidence. It is simply the most intellectually comfortable view to hold. And that is only natural--because of cultural hegemony. This is the reason why people can't give up on the historical Jesus. And it's easy to bash alternative views in a hegemony. They certainly have no institutional credibility--and can never get any in the current status quo.

You should know that I haven't been impressed with the evidence put forward by either side of the divide. However, I think that it is necessary to work collectively towards a non-hegemonic position as to the existence of Jesus. That requires the stimulation of alternatives to the prevalent position. How can one reach an informed opinion without having meaningful alternatives?

Thanks Spin. Really.

I wonder sometimes why I bother coming back here because you just can't make much traction without a mutually supportive but critical environment. It would be nice if a few of the noise generators passed a jug of anti-freeze around between themselves too. Because the signal-to-noise ratio is far too low collectively right now.

One of the most annoying things from a statistician's point of view is the methodology of beginning with the gospel Jesus and stripping away every obvious falsification so that you arrive at a "historical jesus" that cannot be rejected. You are no longer dealing with the actual evidence we have then. The evidence is the texts and we need to know when they were written, who wrote them, how they were interpolated, etc. - and not create some fictional data set that does not even exist. You are not explaining the data when you take the data you have and just re-write it in a way that was never written that way in the first place.

On the other hand, when you KEEP the data you have and observe the correlation between that data and the septuigint version of the Hebrew Bible, for example, you are doing some powerful explaining, which is the way statistics actually works: Explain the data instead of making up your own data arbitrarily.

Add in the geographical errors and some extrabiblical context (I'm a big fan of the Pliny-Trajan correspondence for example) and you are really on your way to determining when, where, and who put this data before us.

You've helped me in ways that you are trying to get across to your main antagonist here, and I want to thank you for that. When you act as a mentor instead of just "you're wrong" then some actual work can get done - progress can be made - by people who aren't even on the varsity squad here.

Toto · 06-06-2012, 12:48 AM

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Originally Posted by J-D

...

But I don't see the evidence that there is a consensus. I see disagreements between posters which seem to me to indicate that not everybody does accept a definition of 'historicist' along the lines you propose.

What gives you this idea?

And why does it matter?

The term historicist was only invented as a counter to "mythicist." It's a general term for those who are not mythicists in the debate over the historical Jesus. It's not as if it's a club with bylaws and an oath for admission, and historicists tend to disagree with each other on many issues.

stephan huller · 06-06-2012, 01:30 AM

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I like that definition. I'm an historicist.

No you're a literalist. I think that earthquake argument tips the scales from merely being a historicist.

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06-05-2012, 10:19 PM	#177
Adam Veteran Member Join Date: Sep 2011 Location: Dixon CA Posts: 1,150	I like that definition. I'm an historicist.

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