Originally Posted by MCalavera

Read your Bible for the answer.

Originally Posted by mountainman

FFS. Do you have any other authority?

Originally Posted by MCalavera

nope. Only evidence.

Originally Posted by MCalavera

Yep, physically, he failed as the Messiah. So they had to make it up with more spiritualized doctrines.

Originally Posted by mountainman

The passages in the letters of John indicate that there were those in "John" 's days who "refused to confess that Jesus had appeared in the flesh". This may also be interpretted as reporting that there were people who refused to confess that Jesus was historical. It was a very antichristian thing to do, and apparently still is, to rudely and impolitely REFUSE to confess that Jesus was historical.

Originally Posted by MCalavera

That's against Gnosticism not mythicism.

Originally Posted by jakejonesiv

Every single thing that makes Jesus worthy as the object of religious worship is derived from myth. And without the mythical/religious element, no one would have so much as heard of any so-called Jesus of Nazareth or had a religion that centered on him.

The world of the NT is only the real world superficially; it is a fictional construct in which impossible things are imagined to happen routinely. In what sense can Jesus be human, who even before the alleged resurrection walks on water (Mark 6:49), reads minds, and cannot be grasped by his enemies (Luke 4:29-30)?


The very idea of a "Historical Jesus", a Jesus stripped of all divinity and pre-existence, conceived as a mere man whose mission had failed, is an idea that the Church Fathers and heretics alike would have rebelled against with all vigor. This is a conceit of the "Quest for the Historical Jesus" movements. Are we on now on the third or fourth quest?


The Jesus of the early Christians was not conceived of as a human failure. He was believed to have pre-existed in heaven in some sense. He ascended as surely as he descended. He rose as surely as he died. He was glorified as surely as he was humbled. This is the language of faith, it is the world of myth.


Whether this was deemed to have occurred in the heavens or on the surface of the earth, it is a mythical construct. The world that Jesus descended to is not our world. It is an imaginary construct similar to our world, but that is dominated by spirits, and has a cosmology completely at odds with science. Fantastic events are reported as common place. It is over this framework that the alleged deeds of Gospel Jesus are accreted.


Modern researchers into the Historical Jesus meet with a daunting challenge. The "Historical Jesus" must be wrenched from the text, regardless of the violence done to the stories. They just ASSUME whatever they want to in the text is historical without a shred of textual evidence to back up their deconstructions. MCalavera demonstrates this with every post.

For example, they will claim that Joseph was the step father of Jesus while in the same breath denying that Jesus was the miraculous child of Virgin Mary “overshadowed” by the Holy Ghost. Yet these are both integral parts of the same text in Luke and it is presumptuous to rip selected bits out as “historical” while selectively consigning other parts to the trash can of myth. If you will forgive an analogy, it is like shattering a vintage Ming Dynasty vase, and trying to put together a coffee cup from the shards. Anything that offends the sensibilities of the modern scholar (i.e. miracles , the supernatural) must be discarded. Here we have met meet the real criteria of embarrassment!

The mythicist and the true believer have much in common. Both can retain the integrity of the stories in the context we read them, the difference being that the mythicist do not have to position the incredible or mundane elements within reality. It is the skeptical historist who is odd man out. He must bring his modern conceits to tales of wonder and pick over the bones like a vulture.

Jake Jones IV

Originally Posted by jakejonesiv

Hi Shebazzer,

I call this the Historicist Limbo.

Many of the alleged deeds would be so noteworthy and notorious that they could never had escaped the notice of the Romans or the historians including Josephus.


This leads to the dilemma that HJ proponents often find themselves in. If the Historical Jesus had indeed performed such outrageous and noteworthy deeds, we should expect to see reports of it in sources independent of the gospels, which we do not. I mean, not only are they not mentioned in the secular texts of the historians, but they also are not mentioned in any of the NT epsitles. How wierd is that?

The naïve historicist shrinks the event to "explain away" the lack of independent confirmation. We see this again and again with the healing miracles, feeding of the multitudes, the Triumphal entry, the Cleansing of the Temple, etc. If there were a shred of historicity to the way these events are described in the gospels, the fame and notoriety of the alleged events could never have escaped notice.

But rather than come to the reasonable conclusion that we are dealing with ahistorical material (which we have seen is based always on "midrash" of the OT, i.e. prophecy historicized), certain historists assume the gospel version is an exaggeration of a historical core. But the “core” turns out to be so trite and pointless that no one would give a hoot about it.

Be we have hardly finished with the Historist Limbo. Once they have passed under the bar that they have deemed is sufficiently low enough, they immediately start to "dance" the incident back up again, investing it with much significance by appeals to hidden meanings, politics, Romans, secrets, and whatnot. But without realizing that they have inadvertently raised the level of the Limbo bar so recently passed under.

Jake