GreggLD1

Notice I said that he couldn't have performed all the miracles ATTRIBUTED TO HIM IN THE GOSPELS without attracting high-level attention. Run-of-the-mill faith healers didn't bring several-days-dead people back to life. And the Gospels say Jesus performed many of his miracles before "multitudes" and that the authorities were aware of what he was doing. My point was that his ministry couldn't have been what is described in the Gospels, because such a ministry (culminating in a crucifixion featuring darkened skies, earthquakes, and dead people rising from their graves and walking the streets) couldn't possibly have been ignored by chroniclers of the time.

Gregg

CX

Indeed, but Galilee was. Perhaps province is the wrong word. In any case, Jesus was from Galilee and preached largely among peasants and provincials on the periphery of Palestinian society. It is not likely he would have drawn much attention from anyone in Jerusalem (until the episode with the money changers in the temple) and certainly not in Rome. As an example, how many people knew anything about David Koresh until his big conflagration with the Government. Despite the fact that Waco is midway between arguably two of the most important cities in Texas (Dallas & Austin) Waco itself is an "obscure backwater" all things considered. Further evidence of this fact is how some people react to Jesus' place of origin. "Nazareth? What good comes from there?" Jesus was a nobody in his own time.

leonarde

Posted by Steven Carr: Hmmm, are we talking NOW or in 30 AD??? Yes, HEROD
had "good connections" but Jesus?? The most prominent people who are mentioned in the Gospels
who knew him were: Joseph of Arimathea, Nicodemus,
and one Roman centurion whose (?child?)Jesus cured. Eventually He did MEET Pilate and Herod but
it was under such circumstances as would indicate
that they weren't "tight".

Cheers!

leonarde

posted by Gregg: As Steven Carr notes, there's acknowledgement in
the Gospels that Herod had heard of him and perhaps was curious about him. In the audience(s)
with Pilate there's a palpable curiosity on Pilate's part: 'who IS this guy, and what's the big fuss about?' but the only Roman I can think of
who knows for sure-----that is recorded----is the
centurion. Perhaps if Pilate had had a sick family
member and had sent for Jesus, his (Pilate's)familiarity with him would have been greater.

Actually if you follow the healing narratives, a
number of the JEWS (especially those religiously
hostile) paid no mind to the cures themselves, they merely were alarmed that these cures were making Jesus more popular (of course in a superficial way but still!). The most spectacular
one, the raising of Lazarus, seems to have occurred in the last couple of weeks of Jesus' life....

Cheers!

Radcliffe Emerson

Indeed, Galilee was the poorest region in Palestine, and nothing much has been uncovered there to suggest otherwise.

I think Jesus was either a myth based on several different people, or the human Jesus the myths are based on just screwed up. I think he went to Jerusalem to force an issue and got arrested and put to death.
I think he thought he was some kind of messiah, and if he forced things people would rally around him, and it didn't happen.
Which of course wouldn't happen, because the Jewish messianic belief is that there will be TWO messiahs at the same time, a social one, and a political one, AND they will usher in world peace the first time they arrive. That clearly did not happen in the first century.
Anyway, the Romans crucified Jesus (or whoever the legend was based on), and Romans left the bodies on the crosses until they had decomposed considerably, then threw what was left to the dogs.
This is why only one skeleton has been found with evidence from a crucifixcion, and also why there was no body of Jesus in any tomb.

[ September 16, 2002: Message edited by: Radcliffe Emerson ]</p>

Gregg

When what the Bible says about Jesus' miracles is the thing in question, you can't use what the Bible says about people's reactions as evidence that the miracles took place. You have to look for corroboration from non-Biblical sources, which you will not find. This is similar to arguing that there was a big back-and-forth debate between Jews and Christians in the 1st century as to whether Jesus' body was stolen from the tomb--based on a couple of verses from the Gospels about the Jews bribing the guards to say the body was stolen. Nowhere but in the Bible can you find anything about this supposed debate. By the time the Jews actually did get around to mentioning Jesus in their writings, they had to rely on what they heard from Christians, or even make up derisive stories (he was the bastard child of a Jewish woman and a Roman soldier)--they had absolutely no memories of their own about this remarkable person who had done so many wondrous works in their midst.

Let's face it-- it's kind of silly to think that if thousands of people were witnessing genuine miracles--the lame walking, the blind seeing, lepers cured, cursed bushes dying, water changing into wine, loaves and fish multiplying, dead people rising, and so on, that they would really react as the Gospels say they did. Do you really believe that they would "pay no mind to the cures themselves," instead just worrying that they were making Jesus more popular? Come on, people back then may have been a bit more credulous and more open to considering something a "miracle" than they are today, but they weren't stupid. If thousands of people, rich and poor, educated and uneducated, master and slave, men, women and children, were really witnessing miracle after bona-fide miracle on a scale unheard of since the legendary days of Moses, they would KNOW that something extraordinary was going on, that this was no run-of-the-mill faith healer. News of Jesus' remarkable exploits would have quickly spread to all corners of the Empire.

Even if this fellow had said or done some things that the Jewish authorities didn't like, causing them to reject and denounce him, it makes no sense that all the ordinary people he'd helped, or the thousands who had witnessed the cures and other miracles, would simply fall into line behind their leaders, reject him and then forget all about him. Such a powerful and charismatic person who lived such an amazing life and died such a dramatic death should have sparked a lively, even furious, debate among the Jews over just who he was (notwithstanding who he claimed to be). He should have generated a wide range of responses, not just the supposed "official" Jewish response and the Christian response, both of which we "know" about only through the Christian scriptures. Lots of Jewish groups should have sprung up wanting to claim Jesus for their own and seeing him in a variety of ways. Even many non-Jews would probably have wanted to weigh in with their opinions. But instead, outside the Gospels, for decades we find only dead silence about Jesus but for a couple of questionable passages in Josephus. This is simply not the state of affairs we should expect to find if Jesus did the things the Gospels say he did.

Gregg

CX

There is extrabiblical support for this debate having taken place early on. I'd look in the patristic literature, particularly the ante-nicene fathers.

Gregg

Well, I'll check it out, but 2nd-century Christian apologists aren't exactly what I was thinking of in terms of extrabiblical support. What about references in Jewish, Greek, and Roman literature?

Also, I find it hard to believe that Earl Doherty, who gives special attention to the apologists, would have missed an opportunity to critique passages that seem to allude to an early-mid first century debate between Jews and Christians over what happened to Jesus' body. If he ignored these passages in his original thesis, someone would have called them to his attention and forced him to address them by now.

I guess I'll raise this question on the JesusMysteries forum and see what response I get.

Gregg

Camaban

as for Herod and The Emperor (This is Emperor Claudius we're talking about, isn't it?) being on speaking terms, as far as I can remember from readon I, Claudius, he and Herod had been close friends from childhood.

Vampyroteuthis

Oh!! I know! I know!! ***frantically waving hand*** I read this in a book about the Free Masons! Any documents originating from the old roman government are squirreled away by the roman catholic church. In the book it states that the roman catholic church is nothing more than a dead civilizations continuing bid to control the modern world through fear and ignorance!

How about that for speculation!!?? Anyone think the pope's going to cough up any ancient texts for us to read? : )

Aimee