GakuseiDon

According to Doherty, nearly all of the non-historicist Christians writing to pagans whose letters are extant wrote in the second half of the Second Century CE, so were near-contemporaries of Celsus. It goes towards how Doherty's model stands up. Personally, I don't think Celsus is strong evidence against Doherty's model -- the lack of references in the heresiologists of around that time is a much more significant argument IMO.

Jayrok

This has been my question for some time. People often say if the Jews wanted to dispell the gospels at the root, all they had to do was produce Jesus' body. By not doing so, they claim the Jews were unable to refute the gospel story. Thus it is not only historical, but accurate as written.

But as Earl suggests, there is no surviving 'spin' by the Jews until much later. The Jews in power in the mid first century didn't provide spin because there was nothing for them to argue against. By the time the stories were circulated and accepted as historical, the ones in the know would have long since been dead.

I feel like the lack of literature from Jewish sources from AD 30-60 against any historical tradition of Jesus Christ is telling.

Are there any documents from Jewish sources rebutting any traditions about an historical Jesus that early?

If not it could also strengthen Doherty's thesis that Paul's Jesus is mythical. If Paul's references to Jesus were about an earthly man, where are the Jewish documents refuting Paul's idea that an earthly Jesus was the Jewish messiah and that messiah was actually the Son of God? Maybe they didn't have his letters, but since oral tradition was so highly regarded, surely they heard the stories. But if they took it as just another religious movement like the other mystery religions, why would they bother to rebut it?

But if Paul had multiple churches out there worshipping a man they called the messiah of the Jewish scriptures and claiming he was God encarnate and fulfilled Jewish prophecy, you'd think Jewish leaders would be up in arms and out in force to disprove such a claim. Even if they were unable to do so for some reason, we would still see evidence in their literature... and that is all we are looking for at this point.

torquemada

Read the classic by Robert Eisler, The Messiah Jesus and John the Baptist. It is Eisler's thesis that there was plenty of written evidence about Jesus but it was censored and/or destroyed once Christianity became official in the 4th Century. Most of the official records and the writings of the 'real' Josephus were full of negative commentary about Jesus as the leader of a messianic anti-Roman movement. Eisler attempts to restore the oldest writings of Josephus through the Old Russian translation of an early Greek manuscript based on an Aramaic one by Josephus designed not for his Roman patrons but for Jews in the East. The picture there of Jesus and John the Baptist and the earliest Christians is one the official church could not permit to survive. Its Jesus allowed himself to be proclaimed an anti-Roman king by the Jerusalem populace. He was quickly arrested by Pilate and killed. His followers continued anti-Roman agitation and even military action through the two wars against Roma, the one leading to the destruction of the Temple and Massada and the second leading to the victory of Hadrian over Bar Kokhba who may have been a relative of Jesus'.

This is heady stuff but fascinating. In any event, the Gospels do more to conceal than to reveal the real Jesus. The Gospels pretend that Jesus and the early Christians were not hostile to Rome, which they were. And that everything anti-Roman was the fault of the non-Christian Jews, which it was not.

andrewcriddle

Origen says book 1 chapter 28 There follows a discussion of the hostile picture of Jesus which the Jew in Celsus' work presents.

These hostile claims seem to be presented by Celsus as being the Jewish view of Jesus, and, given the parallels with hostile Jewish accounts of Jesus known from later sources, it is probable that he is using a Jewish source of some kind.

Andrew Criddle

Ben C Smith

I never know quite what to make of such statements, Earl. It is one thing to present reasons for ignoring a passage that professes to give the Jewish spin against HJ traditions prior to Lucian and Celsus, quite another to write as if such a passage does not even exist. Matthew 28.15b:

And this story [that the disciples stole the body of Jesus] was widely spread among the Jews, to this day.

Ben.

EarlDoherty

H. J. Baylis, Minucius Felix, written in 1928 is the best. He has an extensive discussion of the dating question, and arguments for the 150s dating which I find compelling. Also, as I recall, I have debated this question rather extensively a few years ago, including Becker's "philological analysis". I'm sorry, but I can't remember whether it was here on IIDB or not, and I'm not too proficient at digging out parts of old threads. (In fact, I haven't a clue.) If anyone adept at that could find the time to see if they can locate a discussion of this sort, (maybe three to five years ago?) I'd appreciate it.

Earl Doherty

EarlDoherty

When I wrote that, I wondered if anyone would fall into the Matthean trap. But I never thought it would be you, Ben. Tut-tut.

I can do no better than quote a passage from my book “Challenging the Verdict”:

(Sorry the quote turned out like this. I took it from a pdf file, and don't know how to eliminate the line problems. Too many tricks for this old(ish) dog!)

Earl Doherty

Amaleq13

You participated in a thread titled Minucius Felix etc in 2005 but I obtained no hits for you referring to "Becker" or "philological analysis" except in this thread. You mention "Baylis" in the linked thread here.

If that wasn't the debate, I think it happened someplace else.


Doug

Solo

John's gospel has Jesus himself defend against the 'Jewish spinning' (8:41), and transparently drops the virgin birth mythologem to forestall it. If then John prefers teasing Nicodemus with the 'second birth', then these things would have arisen probably 40-80 years earlier.

Jiri

Ideologist

Which scholars have "come to acknowledge" that Acts was written in the later parts of the second century? That sounds like a late date even by a very extreme timeline.