Toto

It's not the most likely fit. The most likely fit is a story about the son of God who was crucified by the Romans and arose from the dead.

If there had been an actual nobody preacher, too obscure for any contemporary Roman official to notice, who was crucified and stayed dead, the other details do not fit. The sect would most likely have died out or been reabsorbed into Jewish Messianism.

Chaucer

Excuse me: the extra-Biblical sources do not fit that at all. They do fit a human troublemaker who gathered a few followers and finally made enough trouble for himself to be nailed by the Romans, period. Which are you going to believe, the half-dozen extra-Biblical sources, or the Biblical ones?

Chaucer

Kapyong

Gday,

Wrong.
There is NO mention of a Jewish family, there is no mention of a Jewish mother.

Paul says the mother was the "Jerusalem above" - no mention of Mary at all.

Why do YOU think he means a Jewish mother?

So then why are you conspicuously avoiding this piece where Paul refers to Jerusalem above as our mother?



K.

Toto

The extra Biblical sources are all late enough to derive from Christian sources, which would be the story that Christians created after the first Jewish War and the destruction of the Temple.

If you start by realizing that there is no independent evidence of Christianity from before that time, and the destruction of the Temple was the sort of event to spur the creation of a new religion, and Christians were perfectly capable of creating a back story for their new religion, everything fits together nicely. The only piece of data that might contradict this is Tacitus' story about Christians being burnt by Nero, but there are significant problems with this as history, as outlined by Darrel Doughty.

But the evidence is very thin. That's why I don't see the point of being dogmatic about this, or getting so worked up, or accusing anyone who disagrees with you of various academic sins that will lead to a new dark ages or worse.

thedistillers

What I find interesting is Ehrman's choice to write an e-book.

Why not a book? A book on the historicity of Jesus would interest just as many people as, for example, his book on the problem of evil, so I don't buy his excuse.

Chaucer

So why do the extra-Biblical sources NOT agree with the Biblical version of "a story about the son of God who was crucified by the Romans and arose from the dead" and uniformly agree on a "human troublemaker who gathered a few followers and finally made enough trouble for himself to be nailed by the Romans, period"?

Chaucer

Toto

The extra Biblical sources are about what we would expect from the outside society interpreting what they heard from Christians. About all they know is that someone was crucified (Pliny doesn't even know this) and there were followers around - except for Antiquities 18, which sounds just too Christian to pass muster.

If you think that this is enough to establish the historicity of Jesus, that's ok. But don't expect everyone else to agree that this meager evidence is sufficient.

spin

Before talking about James he passingly mentions something about John the baptist in regard to AJ 18. This is correct. But then he goes off on his James discourse, which shows no real sign of awareness of the James material in AJ 20. It's possible that he had seen AJ 18, but his lack of content regarding James suggests that he hadn't even seen that. It's possible that Origen had a collection of handy references including useful notes on Josephus and had never seen the original. That seems to explain best what we see in his reports.

It's been a while, so I grabbed the fragments off the net and nothing seems to indication knowledge of Josephus, just the connection between James's death and the fall of Jerusalem.

Good luck.

aa5874

Based on HJers, HJ was NOT CHRIST.

HJ was an OBSCURE PEASANT and was known to be an apocalyptic preacher according on HJers.

There is ZERO, I repeat, ZERO extra-biblical sources that mentioned an OBSCURE PEASANT who was NOT CHRIST and was EVENTUALLY worshiped as the Son of God, the LORD and SAVIOR, the END of the LAW, and through whose resurrection Mankind would be SAVED.

"Antiquities of the Jews" 18.3.3 and 20.9.1 are FORGERIES based on the writings of Origen's "Commentary on Matthew" X.17, "Against Celsus" 1.47 and 2.13.

And based on the Pauline writings Jesus CHRIST was given a name ABOVE every name of things IN HEAVEN, ON EARTH and UNDER the EARTH.

No extra-bibilcal source mentioned an OBSCURE PEASANT called HJ who was NOT Christ.

Chaucer

Which means, therefore, that you erred in claiming earlier that "The most likely fit is a story about the son of God who was crucified by the Romans and arose from the dead." Plainly, inasmuch as the "extra Biblical sources are about what we would expect from the outside society interpreting what they heard from Christians", that interpretation only accommodates a "human troublemaker who gathered a few followers and finally made enough trouble for himself to be nailed by the Romans, period". It does not accommodate your claim. Thus, my point stands.

Chaucer