Topher

Okay I'll start of by saying I'm not arguing for his existence. I'm an atheist, I think the lack of evidence/the argument from silence sufficiently dispels the claim of Jesus the supernatural god-man, and the events outlined in the gospels (e.g. dead saints, crowds of thousands, etc), however the question of a purely human Jesus remains. I'm certainly skeptical; I think Richard Carrier and others certainly have a plausible hypothesis that should be taken more seriously by the mainstream. In any case I think if we're honest with ourselves then, as argued by as Robert Price, we really just don't know and can only truly arrive at 'agnosticism' on his existence. Anyway, I'm certainly open to a purely human Jesus who later became embellished in to the myth we have today.

Here's the argument I read for why Jesus must have existed:

Then it was suggested that Matthew cited a supposed prophecy about the messiah being from Nazareth:

How does the JM hypothesis explain this?

Ben C Smith

Some do something like the following:

1. Jesus was called the Nazarene, but the Nazarenes were a sect, not members of a locality.
2. Some tradent, not knowing who the Nazarenes were, invented a place called Nazara by back-formation.
3. Some other tradent, also not knowing who the Nazarenes were, discovered that there was a Galilean town called Nazareth and therefore connected Jesus to that town.

Try the Nazareth discussion thread for more details than the average accountant could stand.

Ben.

Steven Carr

Mark has a Jesus who kept his identity secret, so having him come from a very small town would help that.

Why did Sir Arthur Conan Doyle place Sherlock Holmes in Baker Street, a street of no significance?

Chili

A mythicist should have an answer for everything, I supose, but I would argue that the reason why Jesus was from Nazareth in Luke is because Nazareth was the [little] city of God where Mary was from, which did not exist in Matthew who therefore needed to create the 'prophetic image' to justify the birth of Christ who in Matthew turned out to be an imposter (Mt.27:64) instead of the the real Messiah. My argument here is the prevailing turmoil in the mind of Joseph [as suggested by his flight into Egypt] where Herod did a number on him and so back to Galilee he went without the actual presence of Christ in him but was merely sustained there by the angel of the Lord who elsewhere is called Lucifer (notice the absence of Joseph when the magi arrived).

The census in Luke was not a tax but an account of himself (confession we call it) which there was the grand or final confession wherein the confessor himself was moved to give birth to the God within (he was 'pregnant with despair' as Joyce put it) . . . and of course, one must be moved to get there in a non-rational way so that the first mover is God via Mary who was from Nazareth indeed and finally is thus is also why Christ was from Judaic descend.

I should add here that despite the tragic ending, Matthew is very much inspired because a great deal of insight is required to blend these two Gospels in such a way that the apparent contradictions compliment each other to make the difference between hell and heaven known.

spin

Sounds like a umm, reduced version of comments from me, but "[h]ow does the JM hypothesis explain this?"


spin

Ben C Smith

Yes, yes, after accosting someone else in another thread for lumping agnostics in with mythicists I turn around and do pretty much the same thing. :blush:

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. —R. W. Emerson.

Do I contradict myself? Very well, then, I contradict myself. —Walt Whitman.

Ben.

GakuseiDon

Has Richard Carrier actually come out with his own hypothesis? Or do you mean Earl Doherty? Just wondering.

Topher

I mean the hypothesis that Carrier argues, which I believe is in line with Doherty's.

GakuseiDon

I don't think he argues any hypothesis at the moment, though he is hoping to write a book on questions on historicity and methodology. He has written a webpage reviewing Doherty's book, and has come down on the side of mythicism. But with respect to Doherty's theories, he has made it clear that he finds problems there. On his blog here, he briefly mentions his review of Doherty "with whom I still have as much disagreement as agreement"

diana

Matthew and Luke appear to be both derived from Mark (and the much-debated Q), but they reflect different traditions which did not consult one another. As another example of drastic differences, witness their competing genealogies of Jesus. Does this prove "one of them is correct"? Pish.

d