spurly

Back to the original question of this thread - who was the first Christian?

It can't be Jesus, because the definition of a Christian is a "little Christ" or a Christ follower. Jesus couldn't follow himself.

In my opinion, the first Christians were the 12 apostles and those gathered with them in the upper room whom we find waiting in Jerusalem for the Holy Spirit in Acts 1. They were not called Christians until later in the book, but these people are the ones that started it all after Jesus' ascencion.

Kevin

Greg2003

Kevin,

I cannot believe that Acts is historically accurate. It contradicts the gospels with regard to the ascension and is full of internal contradictions as well as contradictions with Paul's own account of his journey's in Galatians. But most telling is the fact that Acts is a collection of stories about superhero christians, like Paul, Peter, Stephen and others. Several elements of Paul's story sound an awful lot like Homer's Odyssey, only that Paul's role in the parallel events makes him out to be more powerful than Odysseus.

It seems more reasonable to me that the characters in Acts may be real "pillars of the church" that Paul talks about but mythologized into superhero christians more powerful than their greek heroic counterparts. Thus, the story is more compelling than greek mythology and people will be convinced to believe in Christianity instead of Greek or Roman religion. Indeed, this is exactly how Acts is used today in churches all over the world. Even as it is pointed out that obviously god doesn't do miracles like that now-a-days.

So these guys weren't the first christians by virtue of knowing christ and being in the upper room. But, rather are earlier christians than Paul, simply because Paul identifies them as such and we don't have any earlier record of believers before them. (so they could be the first, but we don't actually know for sure)

Amos

In the eye of the needle parable the apostles said "then who can be saved?" which clearly means that the apostels were not saved.

The only reason why they were in the upper room is because they represent the eiditic images (ousia's) of Jesus that had forsaken Jesus prior to crucifixion-- which obviously was a good idea. To recall these "helpers" (or assets) indicates that reason prevailed in the life of Jesus as Christ.

Vorkosigan

My bad. I put it badly, should have said "conceded the possibility of a person under the story somewhere." Thanks for the corrective.

Clarice O'C

Hello,

The Jews were big on the meanings of names. It could be that because Jesus means "Yahweh saves" that they named their fashioned Messiah "Jesus" to fit the meaning.

Best,
Clarice

Greg2003

Yahweh, Yehu, Yehud, Yehua, Yeshua, Joshua, Joseph, Josiah, Jesus, are all names that are related to the same linguistic root, the name of the tribe and its god. And the characters who's names are related to this root are all legendary heroes of Yehud's mythical history. Jesus is modelled as an extension of that legendary heroic history, except that he is much more Hellenized than the other Hebrew heroes and stands for universal redemption of all mankind rather than national redemption of Israel.

Gregg

How about just a little unquestionable attestation outside the New Testament for Jesus' existence? All we have that is somewhat contemporary are a couple of passages in Josephus that are almost certainly later Christian interpolations. If Jesus had existed, if he'd angered the Jewish authorities by preaching blasphemy and causing a riot in the Temple courtyard, if he'd brought the wrath of Rome down on himself by encouraging sedition, Josephus certainly would have known of this fellow, and he would not have thought--or written--highly of him. Josephus hated rabble-rousers like Jesus. He blamed them for Israel's destruction. He would have lumped Jesus with all the other scum and condemned him in no uncertain terms. Instead--nothing but nice things to say. Highly suspicious.But this is just absurd on its face. Please do not bring out this tired old chestnut.

The idea that Paul, who wanted so much to KNOW Jesus' sufferings and the power of his resurrection, would wait THREE YEARS to go to Jerusalem, and then just to visit with Peter and James, is silly. You really believe he was so disinterested in the earthly life of Jesus that he would not have written of visiting the Garden of Gesthemane where Jesus poured out his fears and doubts, of prostrating himself on the hill of Golgotha where his Lord's blood was shed, of standing at the empty tomb and trying to feel the rush of awesome, holy power that must have descended on (or emanated from) that place at the moment of the resurrection?

Even if Paul wasn't interested in these things, his readers and listeners surely would have been. Yet he never writes anything like "and why do you keep asking me things about Jesus, like what his parents' names were, or what he looked like, or things he said and did, or details about his trials, his crucifixion, his resurrection? Haven't I told you that these things are of no importance? All that matters is, he died, and he was resurrected, and because of this you are saved. Isn't that enough?"

Well, ask yourself, Vinnie; would that be enough for YOU? Some dusty apostle walks up and tells you that some fellow in a land far away died and rose from the dead, and if you believe in him you're saved, and you're just going to say, "Baptize me now!" ? You're not going to say, "Well, tell me a little more about this fellow and why I should think he's the son of God. Surely when he lived among people he must have said very wise things, worked miracles? Surely his birth and death must have been accompanied by omens and portents and unnatural events?"

Now, there were lots of simple and credulous people back then, but Paul wasn't preaching just to peasants and village idiots and slack-jawed yokels. Many Romans were quite educated and sophisticated. If Paul had told them that their salvation rested on believing in the life, death, and resurrection of a historical person who was actually the pre-existent Word of God through whom all things were made, they would have demanded to know more about this person, and Paul would have been forced to tell them about him, whether he himself was interested in Jesus' earthly life or not.Doherty "concedes" nothing of the kind. He simply says that the character of Jesus in the gospels might be modeled on intinerant Jewish preachers and teachers. Of which there were legion.You talk like the above is the be-all and end-all of Doherty's argument. I don't think Doherty spends much time on this matter at all. He certainly doesn't argue that "Because Mark and Paul have pro-Gentile material and Mark anti-Jewish material" we can therefore assume there was no historical Jesus. You are just making this up in a vain attempt to trivialize his case.


How about one?Since when is Mark considered an eyewitness?Q at its earliest layer was simply a collection of wisdom sayings assigned to no particular person.Josephus doesn't claim to be an eyewitness, and (as mentioned above) he would have been unlikely IN THE EXTREME to say anything positive or even neutral about Jesus. He despised people like Jesus.You obviously haven't read much of Doherty, because I seem to recall that he addresses these so-called "embarassing" events in considerable detail.

Gregg

-DM-

Our own Richard Carrier wrote a critical review of Doherty's The Jesus Puzzle here.

-Don-

-DM-

Josephus (37-100), of course, had not yet been born when Jesus is thought to have been crucified (~33).

-Don-

Vinnie

That is strange. I didn't think someone of your philosophical persuasion would be swayed by the apologists arguments for canonization. Maybe you could put aside your belief about the canonical status of the NT and try to think of the books in terms of individual works? Anyways, as I was saying, Mark, Q, Josephus etc.

Well a stronger case can be made against the longer passage (though I'm not fully persuaded) but arguments against the shorter passage are pretty weak. This Jesus figure is said to have a brother named James by Josephus, GMark and Paul (who knew James by his own admission). Threefold- independent attestation.

Josephus said NO nice things about Jesus that I am aware of. Also did you mean to imply that Josephus would have written about Jesus had Jesus existed because Jesus was a rabble rouser and was crucified by Rome? Or just that Josephus would not write positively about him (which I agree with)?

Negative arguments from silence about what Paul did not say are highly speculative. Failure to write does not equal failure to know. A few sobering cites from Raymond Brown's Introduction to the NT:

On the grounds that Paul does not mention an idea or practice, very adventurous assumptions are sometimes made about his views. For example, the Eucharist is mentioned in only one Pauline writing and there largely because of abuses at the Eucharistic meal at Corinth. Except for that situation scholars might be misled to assume that there was no Eucharist in the Pauline churches, reasoning that Paul could scarcely written so much without mentioning such an important aspect of Christian life.

Arguments from silence can work in certain situations but not in the clumsy manner you used them in above. As Brown states(p.39), "On the level of the literal sense, exegesis that embraces what the evangelist did not actually convey in writing becomes very speculative."

In addition to my above comments, did you ever stop and think that maybe stuff like that was common knowledge in the Christian coimmunities Paul was writing to?

You are joking right? From what I remember of the authentic letters, Paul wrote to Christians, not inquiring skeptics like yourself. if that is true then your response is utter nonsense.


See my statement in bold up above and all my earlier comments on negative arguments from silence.

Yes, Toto already clarified on that point. I was responding to Michael’s comment.


Try reading that again . I never said Doherty argued that. Yuri posted a link to a thread he started on mythicism where he posted that argument. I replied to Yuri and critiqued his argument. I said his argument was specious and the conclusion banal. Reading your post brought similar thoughts into my mind. I made nothing up in an attempt to trivialize Doherty’s case and I resent your idiotic accusation.

If that were true the issue would be settled but you won’t settle for less than contemporary-primary source data. You want nothing less than an eyewitness account but sober historians do not require that nor videotapes of the event like you. This is just bad history. You are just making up the “videotape criterion” in an attempt to trivialize my solid case for the historicity of Jesus

Who said he was?

Unfortunately for your case, Q is defined as the source Matthew and Luke used for their common material that is not found in Mark. Matthew and Luke both independently copied Q as if the material was a sayings list of Jesus’ words. The only indicators that we have all point towards Q being a sayings list of the words of Jesus that was floating about. Maybe we could look at some Stage one Q stuff though? How about Q-19 for starters as cited here?
http://www.cygnus-study.com/pageq.shtml

[quote] You obviously haven't read much of Doherty, because I seem to recall that he addresses these so-called "embarassing" events in considerable detail.[/quote[

So do other scholars. Doherty is not the final authority on these matters nor are the other scholars. And no I haven’t read much of Doherty’s work aside from some stuff on the Jesus Puzzle site and I don’t plan on reading his book anytime soon. I have too many others on the list right now.

Vinnie