aa5874

But, Theophilus may have been dead before Acts was written, or was even a fictitious character.

There is some serious chronological problems with addressing gLuke and Acts of the Apostles to Theophilus.

If the author wrote Acts after the Peter and Saul/Paul had died, why did he not write about two very important and probably most significant events, the the matyrdom of Peter and Paul

And if gLuke was written after the death of Nero, then the author would have known of two very significant events, the so-called the most glorious matyrdom of Peter and Saul/Paul, yet made no mention of them at all.

The use of the word "Theophilus" resolves nothing about the authorship of gLuke or Acts of the Apostles.

Now, the writings of Irenaeus is the earliest to mention of Acts of the Apostles, end of 2nd century and no mention of Acts is found in the writings of Justin Martyr, around the middle of the 2nd.

bacht

Oh I know, I'm just playing along with the premise that there was a Jesus who might have provided teachings to help settle doctrinal disputes in the Glorious Time of the blessed apostles...

andrewcriddle

FWIW there is one direct quotation of Jesus in Acts at 20:35 where Paul says It may be significant that this is a saying of Jesus not found in the Gospels.
Possibly Luke chose not to repeat sayings material already in his Gospel.

Andrew Criddle

bacht

Sound close to the Sermon on the Mount

ercatli

Do you mean you drew that conclusion before you had seen the "actual arguments"?

No, those statements don't assume anything, they are the conclusions of that scholar after extensive historical analysis. Competent historians don't assume anything about Mark or Paul, nor do they assume the person they are writing about (Jesus) is historical, that is what their historical analysis seeks to determine. And the consensus of historians is that Jesus was an historical person, as my quotes show - and I could give many more.

Perhaps it is you who is doing the assuming?

No-one is at this stage talking about a "god-man", simply a historical person. If you read the historians, you will find that they don't generally draw conclusions about a "god-man" because they regard them as metaphysical conclusions to which their expertise as historians does not apply. And so, yes, the consensus of unbiased and expert historians is that Jesus indeed lived, and did many of the things said of him.

Only once we establish the historical facts as best as can be known can we even begin to discuss any metaphysical conclusions we each might draw, but I fear you have allowed your metaphysical conclusions to come before the historical facts.

I think that means further discussion would not be useful - what do you think? But at least we have determined the basis of our disagreement - willingness to accept the consensus verdict of expert historians.

Best wishes.

rlogan

Hi Corey. None of this to be taken personally please, I think the adherents to a sensible MJ position need to strike at the heart of this argument made implicitly by a lot of misguided HJ proponents.


I never see an HJ adherent actually looking for a historical Jesus. What they look for are excuses as to why you shouldn't have to.

It's amazing with some of them - the pretense of intense concern over "methodology" - tying themselves up in knots over excuse-making for why there should be no record.

But never looking.

Everything except trying to find him.

Well I LOOKED. Because I WANTED TO FIND HIM.

After being a fundy gospel singer and so deep into it that I was attending sessions where we were casting demons out of people, and some speaking in tongues. Ick. Have to admit that once I went along with it and uttered some gobledygook myself.

So after rejecting it all completely, I decided to try going back and finding the guy who was the founder, and who obviously been corrupted over the centuries.

I started with the hypothesis that there must have been a linear progenitor to present Christianity, and the minimum standard for me was that he had been executed at the will of the religious authorities or the Roman Prefect Pilate or in combination due to his religious following representing an effective political threat.

I had to drop that after a couple of years and move to a different objective: finding a positive explanation for the written record before us.

And that is where I found Jesus, the man. Mined from the Hebrew Bible. The political events of the 300's where Constantine mandated Christianity as the state religion is a very important consideration for the record we have.

Because in order to mandate a religious belief about Jesus, it was necessary at that time to also mandate it as history. And by far the most important history we had at the alleged time of the events was Josephus Flavius, writing a History of the Jews and Jewish Wars.

The religious authorities in the 300's needed to vest the Papacy with the linear inheritance of Christianity authority - the authority of Jesus himself. Their exact claim was Jesus to Peter, the rock of the Church, and therefore the linear inheritants - the papacy line.

Jesus as a historical person gave to the Roman Emperor a dictatorship over religion in a fascinating diversion (opiate) of the masses. Their worldy life was miserable, but of course in Heaven they are kicking everyone's ass. Just render unto Ceasar and heed the Pope. Heaven is waiting for you. Put your faith in Jesus. Holy shit you think YOU suffer? Just look at what this guy did for you. Up there on that cross for you. Went to hell for you.

As official state historian Eusebius holds up the forged Testimonium Flavianum, just frothing on about how we are going to be listenting to "The Jews themselves" brag on Jesus. The whole Christian fraud rests on the shoulders of this clumsy forgery. It is close enough for peasants who can't even read, of course. That is who it was written for. The common people sitting in church. The official state "cover" for the historical Jesus.

But to an educated person now with a fair mind, and an understanding of why Eusebius is forging this testimony, it seems to me incumbent to do exactly what Eusebius tells us to do: look and see what the Jews said about Jesus, and most especially look into the writings of Josephus Flavius, the Jewish Historian, commanding General, Political emmissary to Rome, etc.

I'd be willing to listen to the James passage maybe. That is about the closest you are going to come to any note of some candidate progenitor religion going on. Willing to study it more. Ebbionites don't cut it though, or the Essenes. IMHO. Nor Zealots.


Well we are talking about a religious leader, not my grandparents, aren't we.

Notice how important it is to remove the very things Jesus is supposed to be famous for and make up analogies how he was really nobody anyone would ever notice.

In order to show how he would be noticed at the same time nobody is noticing him. It is a completely contradictory stance.

It is so contrary to posing Jesus as a preacher who obtained any kind of following it is complete silliness. Irriationality.

Defining the "historical Jesus" as just some Joe six-pack grandfather who never said anything of note to anyone worth remembering. It is by definition not a linear progenitor to ANYTHING.

Cheers

ercatli

So are you asking me to base my conclusions on the non-expert conclusions of a few people on an admittedly biased forum rather than the consensus of expert scholars?

So who do you think I should believe rather than the expert scholars?

Have I misunderstood you here? Are you actually saying that no-one has tried to "examine the issue of whether Jesus was a historcal figure using the best modern historical methods"? If so, then this is a terrible mistake. That is what all modern historians try to do. This is so well known that the phrase "quest for the historical Jesus" is commonly used. The first wave of that quest began in the 18th and 19th centuries, and we are now in the third wave. And, to clarify, this isn't (generally) a quest to determine whether a historical Jesus actually existed (that much is already accepted by almost all historians), but the attempt to disentangle which parts of the story of Jesus are so well based historically that they can be accepted by historians of any metaphysical view from atheism to christianity, and which parts are filtered through the faith of the early believers so that the faith and historical elements cannot easily be disentangled. But don't believe me, look it up in Google yourself.

I have not come across the Jesus Project before, but judging by the few names I know in it, it is biased towards the sceptical end of scholarship. If that is correct, then taking notice of its conclusions over the consensus of mainstream scholars is allowing your assessment of the facts to be biased by your preconceived conclusion, something I would be unwilling to do.

I confess, it's me.

Interesting descent from rational argument into innuendo. If you read my material, you would have your answer, but I'll give it for other people's benefit. I've never read Josh McDowell. Instead I read every book in our local library by a competent scholar, all viewpoints, and a few other books besides - more than twenty I would guess. I rejected (for this purpose) those who appeared to have preconceived opinions (both christian apologists and sceptical apologists) and have used in my discussion here only those historians whose methods are clearly unbiased by their metaphysics, as is proper. I took most notice of those that other scholars said were pre-eminent in the field. I commend the same approach to you. Do you wish to know any more?

None of it? If you accept the verdict of mainstream unbiased historians, I could validate it all.

Sorry about the boring, but it was your choice to go there. I would be happy to discuss apologetics with you, but not right now, for two reasons. (1) This discussion is about history, not apologetics, and (2) until we can agree on what is history, it is pointless discussing apologetics. I have confined myself in this thread to history, as determined by the expert historians, and have not allowed my metaphysics to intrude on that. Do you have a problem with that approach?

Best wishes.

aa5874

The concensus is faith-based, that is, there is no evidence whatsoever to support the concensus.


Where can I find information about a man called Jesus?

In the NT and the church writings, Jesus was a God, born without sexual union, witnessed going through the clouds by his followers.

A man can just go through clouds? What did the man really do?

According to the NT and church writings, it was a god-man, born without sexual union, that was crucified, and it was the god-man, offspring of the Holy Ghost, that was resurrected.

I don't know any man named Jesus that did anything in the NT.

You know a man named Jesus? But not from the NT, from your imagination.

I hope you know that the NT is about a god-man, Pilate, according to the story, tried the god-man creature who was born without sexual union.

In which book do you find historical facts about a man called Jesus? Tell me as best as you can.

mountainman

Dear ercatli,

Eusebius tried that with Josephus.
See the Testimonium Flavianum.
It's a good introduction to BC&H.

Best wishes,


Pete

Sheshbazzar

Of course it could have been quoted from any one of the hundreds of Jesus books that didn't survive or make it into the catholic Canons.
Perhaps one of these days an archaeologist will pick up the right rock, and find yet another stash of unknown gospels and apocalypses.