gurugeorge

I think this is an excellent idea. It would also be a good idea to get some idea of the standards of historical, philological and archaeological evidence that would be required to prove the existence of the each "historical Jesus" at the relevant level.

Alf

Sort of ok. The main problem I have with it is that the moment you say that some things of the gospels may be true while others are fiction - which is a sort of reasonable approach in and of itself - you get in trouble the moment you start to sort out WHICH is fiction and which is historical.

Ruling out miracles because they are miracles might work for people who do not accept miracles but many christians will say that it is circular or begging the question to do that. You have a priori ruled out miracles.

However, the serious problem is all the things that are not miracles. Should we keep them all? Most likely not! There are for example stories in the gospels which are not miracles but does indicate that they were inserted at a later time and words was placed in Jesus' mouth by the gospel writers or by people whom he got the stories from. So, we remove allegories as ahistorical etc. What about the rest? Should we keep the rest and say it most likely DID happen simply because it possibly COULD happen? No, given as we already found so much "additional" stuff that we already removed, we have no reason to keep things simply on the basis that they are possible. We need positive evidence that it actually DID happen before we accept them. Also, there are things that COULD have happened but very likely did not happen, we should remove those too. So away with child killing in bethlehem! We would expect to read about it from Josephus etc if it actually happened.

So, what is left?

We have a person named Jesus (well, Yeshu or some such) who was born around the early part of 1st century or late 1st century BC who had some followers and taught some ethics which appear rather banal and mediocre - far removed from "the highest genius who ever lived" as some rabid christians see him as. He got some followers and came to Jerusalem and got involved in some disturbance there and got crucified. His followers then dispersed. Some of them may have put him on a pedestall after - when people see their belief and world crumble about them, they seldom abandon it. When those people who were convinced the world would end met on the hill to watch the end of the world and it didn't happen, they did not abandon their belief, they became Jehovas' Witness and got all the more steadfast in their beliefs! Same effect here. Instead of abandoning their belief the rumor started that he had risen from the tomb etc etc. Of course, they had to explain why he isn\'t around any more so they added an ascension - just one more miracle that he did and which confirms that he was special!

Well yeah, you can spin around a story like that - but it is speculation and there is no more foundation for a speculation like that as there are for the gospels so why bother? Why pick and choose and say "this sentence of the gospel" is possibly true and therefore IS most likely true? From where did we get that conclusion? After removing so many paragraphs as fiction the reasonable approach is to declare the rest to be fiction as well until and unless we have positive evidence that it is not and there is none.

If you have someone coming and tell you a wild story about he being picked up by aliens and then some secret agents who really was aliens in disguise tried to force him to take an injection etc you cannot from such a story conclude that it is likely that someone actually did force him to take an injection simply because that is at all possible amid all the wild stories and claims. The reasonable approach is to dismiss the whole story and not to pick out parts of it that might have happened and then conclude that they probably DID happen simply because they might have happened. That is not rational. That is clinging to a story long after it has been verified false.

Alf

jakejonesiv

This statement includes a couple of assumptions: That Christianity started as a "big bang" from a single historical event.

Jake Jones IV

Alf

Exactly. I doubt very much that christianity started by some guy named Jesus who suddenly one day woke up and thought to himself "Yes, I want to start a new religion!". I don't think that is how it works.

Neither was it a comittee that had a meeting and decided to start a new religion.

Christanity grew out as a branch from judaism but soon deviated far from it both so that it reached out outside of the jewish communities but also as it got more non-jewish members it also imported beliefs and ideas and concepts from those non-jewish people. Consequently, we would expect to find christianity to be a mix of pagan elements and jewish elements. What do we find when we study the religion? We find exactly that mix of pagan elements and jewish elements, this can be taken as evidence that this is how the religion grew out. Not by a single event started by a single defined person but rather as a result of the collective effort of many people each of whom provided their contribution to the end result.

So no, it doesn't HAVE to be some specific person who started it.

Alf

aa5874

The historicity of Jesus poses serious problems and in my opinion cannot be satisfied by a poll.

The book called Matthew and Luke put the birth of their 'Jesus' at different times in history, making it a possibilty that at least 2 non-miraculous, obscure and mis-guided persons may be believed to be Jesus. See Matthew 1&2 and Luke 2

The Gospels also presents a character referred to as Jesus Christ, who claims that many shall come in his name, Jesus Christ, and shall deceive many. See Matthew 24:5, Mark 13:6 and Luke 21:8.

So, just on the face of it , we have a major dilemma. The persons referred to as Jesus Christ, in the NT, one of them may be a deceiver or all of them. The complexity of the matter is not easily resolved by a poll.

gurugeorge

Well that's true and not true - it doesn't have to be some great, charismatic founder, but the people who actually started it, the leaders of the communities, the inspired mystics, etc., were pretty remarkable people in their own right.

All good points being made. I honestly think, though, that actual evidence which would decide the matter one way or another is lacking. The existent textual evidence is unfortunately ambiguous enough so that each "side" can see some justification for its position, given certain assumptions.

And it's the assumptions we have to look into, alongside all the history and philology - we need to understand the sociology of religion, the anthropology, the psychology and finally we need to have some verstehen about the whole thing - we need to have gone through similar experiences (whilst keeping our wits about us - very difficult, obviously).

FWIW, as an ordinary intellectual joe who's interested in these matters, I feel I've made an effort in this direction, in my amateur way, and to me, with this kind of context for my historical and philological readings, the MJ hypothesis makes more sense.

The main thing I see is: lots of religion is actually developed around trance states and altered states of consciousness that people have in certain social (ritual) settings, and also around the kinds of visions that develop in these altered states. That's the key thing - that's what all this business is about, like it or not. All the burning energy and ingenuity that then lays its hand to writing about these matters comes from first hand experience of weird stuff.

i.e. point number one: with a few exceptions, most religions arise from purported communication with discarnate intelligences through the medium of trance states and altered states of consciousness. Those that don't arise from this arise from purported mystical experiences of Oneness, the Absolute, etc.

So for the most part you have (on the one hand) people who have had (to them) very real experiences that are not quite hallucinations but more like waking dreams that seem very solid and 3-d, who seem to themselves to be communicating with some bodiless entity, or (on the other hand) people who have had overwhelmingly Other expereinces of Unity, who then go on to promulgate the "teachings" they have been given, or to transmit the moral guidance. (And sometimes a bunch of similarly inspired people would do it in circles or "study groups" - or caves, meditation huts or halls.)

St Paul certainly seems to me to be no exception to this (what one might call) standard religion-starting scenario. It seems to me that the early Christian stuff and the Gnostic stuff is like this too. "Astral" visions, pure and simple, combined here and there with an element of the "direct path" (non-dual) mysticism Freke and Gandy see. (There's a whole interesting confluence between Eastern and Western "enlightenment" systems here - Robert M. Price touches on this when he mentions Mahayana Buddhism in connection with Gnosticism - there might well be curious little byways of connection between them.)

Now the "religious hypothesis" in its most abstracted, general scientific form is that it is possible, through the medium of trance states and altered states of consciousness, to communicate with discarnate intelligences way beyond us (or beneath us) in wisdom and kindness. In scientific terms this is a bold hypothesis - untestable as yet, but maybe testable in the not too distant future.

But putting the truth of what these religious people have all "seen" and "understood" to one side, you have to admit that it certainly seemed to them like they were really communicating with these entities (or having these experiences of Oneness). So this certainty, this feeling that they had met (or become) "Jesus" (either a discarnate intelligence, or some confluence of discarnate intelligence and innate Archetype representing pure awareness as being God-like awareness) like you would meet Mr. Jones (or come to your senses on awakening from a dream of being someone else other than Jesus); this certainty would have been present when they were scribbling those ancient texts, doing their midrash, cobbling together their theogonies and theodicies.

And then you mix this in with all the politics, economics, history, sociology - the place these people had in the society around them, the things they had to do to live and thrive and perpetuate themselves in their social setting. This total context forms the context for what's "plausible", "possible", "unlikely", etc., which then forms the context for one's interpretation of the texts.

And then one can go about sorting out the wheat from the chaff in the Bible, in the Daodejing, in any "sacred" text - what in it looks plausibly historically true, what in it looks like this or that kind of other well-known teaching, what's novel, beautiful, inspiring, stupid, etc.

Clivedurdle

What is the difference?

J-D

I see no reason to regard that hypothesis as more plausible than the alternative. Can you flesh it out a bit for me?

For example, why does Paul refer in his own letters to earlier apostles?

J-D

But people do talk about him. People even write whole books about him.

J-D

If somebody asks 'who founded the Nazi Party?', then the historically correct answer is 'Anton Drexler founded the Nazi Party'. Sure, he who must not be named had the most influence on how it turned out, but that does not change the historical fact that he was not the founder of it.