Gregg

(Note: If you are unfamiliar with lay scholar Earl Doherty's case against Jesus as a historical figure, I encourage you to visit his Web site at <a href="http://www.jesuspuzzle.org" target="_blank">www.jesuspuzzle.org</a> and study it thoroughly before reading the rest of this post.)

I have to confess I find it perplexing that Earl Doherty's theory that there was no historical Jesus has met as much resistance as it has from many people on this forum. I realize the theory sounds radical, and it can be very difficult to reject something that you've taken for granted your entire life. Believers or not, most people have simply assumed that yes, there MUST have been somebody named Jesus who at the very least did some preaching and got himself crucified by the authorities. This view, at first glance, just seems so much more sensible and reasonable than the ahistoricist position. There just HAD to be some real person at the root of this movement. Isn't this the case with all myths, that some real person or event lies behind them? How else could Christianity have gotten started, after all?

But the fact is, the historicist position is made up entirely of assumptions like this. When you look at the whole picture, the historicist argument is surprisingly weak. The ahistoricist position rests on much firmer ground, explains the evidence much better, is more consistent and coherent, is much easier to argue and defend, and just makes a whole heck of a lot more sense.

Let's say you start with the historicist position that I call the "minimalist" position. This view essentially says that Jesus was an obscure, humble rabbi who for one reason or another died a lonely, unjust death. Afterwards, layer after layer of mythology got piled on him, until people were saying that he was the preexistent Word of God through which all things were made. Objections:

1. The earliest Christian creeds don't show any sign of this "mythological buildup." Christ is a cosmic redemptive figure from the start.
2. How did this obscure, humble rabbi gather followers in the first place, and what exactly did he do to convince them (all of them being Jews) that he was the incarnate Word? Jews just don't go around making God into a man or a man into God. That's pure blasphemy.
3. How would these followers even figure that Jesus was the Messiah (who WAS supposed to be a person)? Nowhere in the Jewish scriptures is the Messiah described as a humble, obscure rabbi who dies an ignominous death. The scriptures do have a recurring theme called the "suffering and vindication of the innocent righteous one" but this figure is not associated with the Messiah.
4. How would these few followers--probably all of them poor and illiterate--suddenly become brilliant theologians and eloquent evangelists, and in the course of a couple of decades convince thousands of Jews and Gentiles throughout the Empire that this humble, crucified rabbi no one had ever heard of was really God in the flesh, Messiah, Suffering Righteous One, Son of Man, the salvation of the world, etc., etc.?

Now let's consider one of the "moderate" historicist positions (there are as many versions of this as there are historicists, it seems). This says, at a minimum, that Jesus (or Rabbi Yeshua Ben Yosef) enjoyed a fairly large following, mostly among the poor--that he preached a message of social revolution--and that he may have caused a ruckus in the precincts of the Temple that led to his arrest and execution. Some versions throw in that Jesus was probably very charismatic and that he may even have caused some psychosomatic healings. Objections:

1. The Jewish historian Josephus could not have possibly have overlooked the career of this Jesus, particularly the Temple incident. Josephus despised people like this, who he blamed for provoking Rome and causing Israel's destruction, and he discussed them and their activities in detail. Yet the two brief references to Jesus in the chronicles were almost certainly inserted by later Christian copyists. The rest of the contemporary record is completely silent.
2. There's still no reason for this Jesus to be mythologized. There's nothing in his career to distinguish him from other preachers, healers, magicians, and social revolutionaries of the time, including his crucifixion.
3. Nearly all the objections to the minimalist position also apply to the moderate position.

This is just a brief example of how quickly the historicist position collapses under close scrutiny. There is a great deal more to the ahistoricist case than this, of course. Yet even though it's a fairly complex argument that has to cover a lot of ground, at the same time it's very simple and elegant, fits the evidence beautifully, and answers a lot more questions than any other theory. Again, I understand that it sounds radical and that being a skeptical lot, many atheists are not going to embrace it immediately. But it's still difficult to understand how anyone who carefully studies Doherty's thesis (anyone who has no vested interest in Jesus being a historical figure, that is) could continue to support the historicist position, or even remain neutral. The ahistoricist case is just too compelling.

Gregg

doubtingt

I certainly have heard nothing that could
strongly discount the ahistoricist theory.
The fact is that we know the NT is a book of fiction. The only question is whether JC was
a fictional composite or whether the basic
story of the man himself is more or less true.
The Bible itself gives us no basis to determine
this. Rational people should be agnostic about it
until the evidence clearly favors one theory over the other. The problem is that his existence has
been blindly assumed for so long, that historians unjustifiably place the burden of proof on
the ahistoricists.

Layman

That's an awfully conlusory statement. You do know that most relevant historians and New Testament scholars beleieve that one of the two references to Jesus is 100 % genuine? This includes a diverse set of liberals, conservatives, Jews, Christains, and secular scholars arriving at the same conclusion.

And a majority of the same diverse group of scholars also thinks that the other reference to Jesis is only partially interpolated. It does contain a valid core describing Jesus' ministry which, roughly speaking, is consistent with the Gospels.

Did you know that such was the state of the inquiry? If not, how come you failed to mention this?

MortalWombat

<a href="http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/josephus.html" target="_blank">Here</a> is a collection of a multitude of Josephus resources for people's reference.

Gregg

Because I suggested that anyone unfamiliar with Doherty's case check out his Web site before reading further. Doherty lays out the problems with the Josephus references in considerable detail. Again, the link is <a href="http://www.jesuspuzzle.org" target="_blank">www.jesuspuzzle.org</a> --see supplementary article # 10.

Gregg

[ September 06, 2002: Message edited by: Gregg ]</p>

MortalWombat

I assume you mean the "James, the brother of Jesus" reference.

It was written roughly around the same time as the gospels or slightly afterward (in the 90s). Given that Josephus could not have been an eyewitness since he was born in 37 AD, it is not unreasonable to posit that whatever information he was getting about the ministry of Jesus may have been from Christian sources.

Gregg

I refer you to <a href="http://www.jesuspuzzle.org" target="_blank">www.jesuspuzzle.org</a> supplementary article # 10. Here is an excerpt:

19. Did Josephus draw on old personal memories? - Lest it occur to the reader that there might be an ‘out’ in all this, let me address it here. Could Josephus have set aside all the negative traditions (from his point of view) that were current about Jesus and the Christians, and relied instead on personal memories from his pre-War days in Judea and Galilee? Might we presume that the idealized picture painted by those modern scholars who have excavated a “genuine” Jesus from Q1 is essentially correct, and that Jesus had been an enlightened, Cynic-style sage who never breathed a word about apocalyptic destruction or the Son of Man? Was Josephus’ evaluation based on first-hand, remembered contact with early Christians who had followed such a sage? (He was born in Palestine in 37 CE.)

I have never encountered anyone in this debate who alleges that Josephus had such contact with or knowledge of earliest Christianity. In fact, not having been aware of painting themselves into the corner I have outlined, scholars have rejected such a thing. Again, rightly so. Those personal memories would have had to be very strong and very positive for Josephus to have trusted them and allowed them to override all the negativity which became attached to the Christian name. This would hardly have been likely. Josephus was of a priestly family, and he never gives any indication of having had contact with Christian circles. One can even assume that there would have been some negativity felt toward Jesus and Christians in the Jewish circles he did move in, as witness (from Paul) the persecution certain early Christian communities were subjected to.

In addition, with all due respect to the Jesus Seminar and various new questers, that Jesus could actually have been such a paragon as to create this strong, positive and lasting impression in one who was not a follower and who had never met him personally, is also highly unlikely. Nor is it likely that the Christian movement in the 50s, let’s say, when Josephus might have formed such an impression, was free of all objectionable elements. The paragon picture, in any case, is compromised by the phrase “doer of wonderful works,” which automatically brings in elements which Josephus would have regarded as negative.

But the overriding consideration is that if Josephus were drawing on such early, personal memories, he would be presenting a picture of Jesus which went against the general view of Christianity by outsiders at the time he was writing, as well as against the principles and outlook he elsewhere expresses toward those things which would have been associated with the Christian sect and founder. If, under any circumstances, Josephus were making this kind of exception for Jesus, he would hardly have done so without a word of explanation, without an account of how this particular executed messianic agitator was unlike the rest. And it would have had to be in decidedly positive terms which a Christian would never have deleted or ignored. He would have spent more than three “neutral” sentences on the man.

Layman

I've spent much of my last few months arguing about the Josephus references. Why not check out those threads which are on this very website? There are four of them. Please reveiew them. They cover many of Doherty's arguments.

Layman

Actually it is unlikely that Josephus was dependent on Christian sources for a number of reasons, including the lack of any evidence that he had any contact with Christains at all, the language and style of the authentic core, and his access to Roman records and Jewish traditions.

Gregg

I certainly will. Could you name the threads? I did a search and identified a couple, but I'm not sure what the other two are.