Metacrock

This is one of many arguments for the historicity of Jesus of Nazarath as a man. I'm not concerned here with arguing for his diety, or for the truth of the Bible. My only concern in this thread is that Jesus was an historical person.

I admitt we don' know a lot about him. But we do have real good evidence that he existed and that he claimed to be Messiah, grew up a band of followers and was probably executed by the Romans.that's all I'm arguing!

Just remember that history is probablity. None of it can be empirically proven, all history is historical probablity. I don't claim that this is absolute proof, I claim only that it makes for a good probability. Please read all three pages to get the full argument!



No Other Versions of Jesus Story


Is The Bible the Word of God?

Goliath

Metacrock,

Thanks for saving me quite a bit of reading time!

This battle was over as soon as it started.

Sincerely,

Goliath

Vinnie

Meta, I find that historically it is somewhat difficult to demonstrate that Jesus thought he was the Messiah. How you interpret "Messiah" factors into this of course. We do know that the belief that Jesus was the Messiah started extremely early. As Fredriksen noted, "Paul typically identifies Jesus as "Christ": the term occurs more than 140 times in the seven letters of his extant correspondance. Since he writes to already established communities, Paul nowhere offers an elementary, catechetical explanation for his or the tradition's use of the instruction that we find in the later Gospels."

Further, belief in Jesus' messianic status was certainly widespread but there is at least one problem that I am aware of. All the Synoptic authors (and those before them and after) clearly believed Jesus was the Messiah but when we get right down to it the synoptic evangelists could cite little direct evidence of such claims. If Jesus did claim to be Messiah he did so only to his closest followers and maybe to some who privately asked him. You are surely familair with the "Who do you say I am?" question and the "Tell no one" response. There are other texts which seem to make it unlikely that Jesus ever used the term. If he had a habit of it the Gospels would contain more direct evidence.

E.P. Sanders has put forth persuasive comments against the notion that Jesus used the term Messiah to refer to himself. Actually, E.P. Sander's thinks that Jesus' self-claims may have been higher than Messiah. "Not only spokesman for, but viceroy of God; and not just in a political kingdom but in the kingdom of God" (see HG, p. 242.)

I found E.P. Sanders whole chapter (Jesus' View of His Role) on this to be informative and challenging (pp. 238-248).

Vinnie

Vinnie

Goliath, thank you for saving me the time of not being tempted to read anything of significant length from yourself in response to Meta on this subject. Your comment shows that you do not even possess the slightest understanding of the basics of reconstructing ancient history. All reconstructions based upon literary sources work in terms of probability, not absolute proof.

Vinnie

SLD

Given that Jesus was the third most popular name in Judea in the time of the Roman occupation, and given that hundreds, no hundreds of thousands of Judeans were crucified, and that many, many of those claimed to be the Messiah (which to most of the Judean Jews, merely meant the overthrow of the Romans and the re-establishment of the Davidian line of Kings), there undoubtedly are quite a few historical Jesi.

Is one of them who Paul used to create his mystery cult for? That's a much tougher question and absent further discoveries unlikely to be determined in the near future.

SLD

Vinnie

I take it these will be the basic questions asled in response:

How do you know how popular the name Jesus was?

Do you have any surveys or name catalogues of first century Jews? What is the estimated population of Palestine in Jesus' day and what percentage of the names do we actually know? I believe Josephus provides a figure for the population but we have no way of verifying his numbers.

What are the generals of the naming process in antiquity? Were there a general list of names most commonly used? Jesus means Joshua right? Was it a popular name given Joshuas deeds in the OT?

At any rate, how many Jesus' were crucified in Palestine during the first third of the first century A.D Roman world (probability-wise)? I know of one for certain

How many of the people crucified claimed to be Messiah? How do you arrive at this information?

What probability of them were people named Jesus?

What do you mean by create a mystery cult? Do you think Paul really did not believe the things he said about Jesus?

Paul certainly was not in the habit of creating sayings material (this is one of many argument for limitations on Christian creativity in Paul and the synoptics and other Christian sources in general). What about where Paul claims to be passing on material rather than creating?

Vinnie

Infidelettante

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Metacrock
[B][b]My only concern in this thread is that Jesus was an historical person.

I admitt we don' know a lot about him. But we do have real good evidence that he existed and that he claimed to be Messiah, grew up a band of followers and was probably executed by the Romans.that's all I'm arguing!

So you don't know much about him other than he claimed to be God and that he was followed around by the Apostles and he died. Which makes for a good yarn several days later. Don't give away the ending.

I got no problem with that. Anyone else?

JT

Vinnie

When did Meta say Jesus claimed to be God?

Meta did not say that was all we can know about Jesus. He said that is all he is arguing for at the moment if I am not mistaken.

Vinnie

Vinnie

That came out wrong. Itsa case showing how there were limitations in regards tp creating sayings material accross some texts (e.g. Pauline corpus and other epistles). Of course, GJohn does the opposite of this with the saying material. The "many arguments" for limited creativity apply for the most part, to the synoptic authors.

Vinnie

Peter Kirby

Vinnie: When did Meta say Jesus claimed to be God?

It's a common mistake to assume Messiah=God. I was having dinner with my dad and he mentioned that Jewish people must believe that God is more than one person because they expect the Messiah, who is divine. I had to explain to him that Jews believe God to be one person and that the Messiah expected by Jews is human (if perhaps an exalted human).

Vinnie: Meta did not say that was all we can know about Jesus. He said that is all he is arguing for at the moment if I am not mistaken.

Metacrock seems to be arguing that a story is true if the storytellers don't disagree with each other too much. Would that mean, for example, that the story of the feeding of the multitude would have to be true because it is told in all four gospels, and no ancient source gives a wildly varying story?

best,
Peter Kirby