Shinobi

Why didn't Jesus write anything? Does this constitute a good slapdown of the historical Jesus position?

I guess HJers will say that he wasn't interested in writing things down, but why would he be against it? Wouldn't that be a better way of getting his message out to people?

Another thing, Let's say that Jesus was a real person in history. What's so good about him? Did he say anything that hadn't been said before? Were any of his teachings way ahead of his time? I don't see anything original in what he says.

lpetrich

And there is the serious question of how much he had practiced what he preached -- forbidding name-calling and then doing lots of name-calling himself.

But yes, I agree, why didn't he write anything? As Richard Carrier points out, the documentation of Julius Caesar's career is MUCH better than that of Jesus Christ's.

malookiemaloo

Can you imagine what it would be like if we had a manuscript bearing Jesus's signature? Contained in a shrine, millions of pilgrims worshipping it and praying to it. It would become a God and Jesus would take second place.

I think it is in the Divine plan that He didn't write anything...................or perhaps He did and it was destroyed or we haven't found it yet!


m

keyser_soze

Or perhaps he was never the "figure" that christianity created?

malookiemaloo

Trust a non-theist to say something like that!!


m

SULPHUR

As a carpenter he would not have been taught how to write.

CX

Actually I think most "HJers" would say that given Jesus' social position (an artisan and peasant) and the period in question, he most likely would have been illiterate as would the majority of his followers (save possibly Levi/Matthew the publican). Also, at the time most information was not disseminated in writing since the majority of the populace was illiterate AND both the materials and the labor involved in writing things down were very expensive. Rather such things as teachings and religious traditions were transmitted orally.

Gooch's dad

I think it's an excellent question. If Jesus was, as Christians claim, the physical incarnation of the creator of the entire universe--why didn't he write anything down? There isn't even any indication whatsoever that he urged his disciples to record his teachings.

And malookie, your bit about Jesus' writings becoming an idol of sorts overlooks something crucial--we don't have ANY original writings of the NT authors. No signatures whatsoever.

Next a theist will claim that skeptics would dismiss any surviving writings as forgeries, psedepigraphical writings. Nonsense. We don't have the surviving originals of Paul's writings, but it is pretty much universally agreed by Christians and skeptics alike that Paul wrote 1 Corinthians and the main corpus (excluding the Pastorals, and for sound reasons).

I don't think this argument is a 'slapdown' for those that think Jesus was a historical man. I am one who does think it is likely that Jesus existed. It's been said quite a few times in this forum that it doesn't require extraordinary evidence to assert that a charismatic Jewish preacher existed and was crucified for insurrection in the early 1st century. IMHO, Josephus Ant. 20 and Paul provide that very ordinary evidence.

CX

This is a significant sticking point for me. On the one hand if Jesus' was just one of many very human messianic claimants and a peasant reformer of the Jewish Temple cult then we should not expect to see anything from him in writing for the reasons I suggested above. OTOH if he was the incarnation of the one true god, it would have been quite simple for that self-same god to have Jesus write down his entire program AND magically preserve it for all time in any number of ways that would be indisputable to even the staunchest skeptic. I mean we are talking about the all-powerful creator of the universe here. He could have had a book of Jesus' teaching and the plan for salvation written in every language known to man floating in the desert for all time. And that's just off the top of my head. And I'm not even an omnipotent deity.

keyser_soze

Read closer, it's rebbe, not carpenter. His father was a carpenter. Of course, that is assuming you can buy into the myth.