zog

A figure like Jesus definately existed if we take a bare bones approcah the only extraordinary thing about this one would be the crucifixtion which Thomas doesnt seem to agree on. However it is a bit of a dead end just to search for this vague figure for by this criteria dozens of historically known individulas could be the HJ and probably hundreds of unknown individuals.

Goliath

Vinnie,

No, it only shows that I care nothing about historical evidence for supernatural claims.

Again, when it comes to any supernatural claim, I couldn't care less about evidence.

Sincerely,

Goliath

Goliath

Metacrock,

And I should care because..................? You're the one making the supernatural claim here, remember?

I've never made either one of these claims, so I need not prove either of these claims.

So the sentence with the most substance in your reply is a (badly spelled) parroting of what I said in my first response to you. Surely you can do better!

Sincerely,

Goliath

Butters

Just to point out a small mistake, there are two claims about how Crockett died. The Mexican version has been suppressed and ignored until recently. If the State of Texas weilded as much power as the Catholic church, this version would have disapeared long ago!

Peter Kirby

I can see the value of multiple attestation for hearsay sources (like the gospels), where the traditions may or may not go back to multiple eyewitnesses. This is because hearsay may not go back to an eyewitness at all, but when you've got multiple attestation, you've got a better chance of the story being old and being first told by someone on the scene. Is this what you are arguing?

Does this assume that the Jesus story is basically historical? Doherty says: "This is not to say that one cannot trace an individual element's history of evolution and reworking, to arrive at some original basic form. This has been a mainstay of New Testament scholarship for generations. But an unargued assumption has also been applied: that those anterior processes lead one back through a chain which begins in many cases with Jesus himself, passing through the usage of the early church, eventually to reach the evangelists in their time. Such study has assumed that early Christian traditions were founded on a force located at ground zero, generated out of the figure of Jesus and the various responses to him. That force then expanded outward in a Big Bang which saw their independent molecules of tradition take on new shapes and meanings, at times attracting external molecules from other non-Jesus spheres, drawn into the Jesus gravitational field." (The Jesus Puzzle, p. 229) So it could be argued that using old material to reveal an authentic Jesus works only if one assumes that there was an authentic Jesus in the first place. How do you avoid circularity?

If John and the Apocrypha were creative, how do we show that Paul and the Synoptics were uncreative? I have the Sanders&Davies book but would prefer to see the argument in your words.

best,
Peter Kirby

Peter Kirby

I have taken your argument seriously.

It seems that you are saying that a story is true if there are not alternative versions of the story (but rather multiple versions that agree on the basics).

I will let Vorkosigan tell us what cases of myth or legend with basic agreement exist in other cultures because he is better at that kind of stuff than I am.

My question was not answered: do you think that the story of the feeding of the multitude is demonstrably historical because of the same type of argument? There are details that are different, but it is basically the same idea in all four gospels: a little bit of food is made into a lot of food as a miracle.

I have another concern that I have mentioned in this thread: what if the later documents are dependent on the earlier ones? For example, the infancy gospels seem to take the narrative framework of Matthew and Luke for granted and fill in the details. Fan fiction basically agrees with the original plot, but that doesn't make it non-fiction.

Did Jesus never get away from the Messianic shtick? I would say that he did. For example, the Apostles' Creed and the Nicene Creed say nothing about Jesus being the Messiah hoped for by Jews. Rather Jesus has become a universal savior and member of the Godhead (for many Christians).

Are there no disagreements about the time of the death of Jesus? It is well known that the synoptics disagree with John over whether Jesus was executed on the passover or on the eve of the passover. That sounds like a minor difference, but it also means that, in John, Jesus didn't eat the passover meal with his disciples, and Jesus was executed at the same time as the lambs were being slaughtered in the temple. Also, the year of the execution is not specified exactly, which leaves room for scholarly speculation; the years 30 and 33 are favorites. Maximin Daia published an "Acts of Pilate" (around 311 CE) that bear a date of circa 21 CE. This disagrees with the date of Pilate's start given by Josephus, but note well that the gospels do not provide absolute dates for Pilate's prefecture.

You know, ancient Christian documents don't even agree that Christ was crucified. This is found in the Apocalypse of Peter in the NHL:

I know that you would consider this apocryphon to be late and unreliable. So would I. But you have included an awful lot of late apocrypha in your list of sources for the Jesus story, claiming that the story never changes fundamentally. I would consider this to be a significant change in the story.

Furthermore, there are great differences in emphasis in the way that early Christians depict Jesus (or don't depict Jesus, as the case may be). Many people have contrasted John and the synoptics. The Gospel of Thomas doesn't tell us about the sacrificial death of Jesus on the cross. The Shepherd of Hermas doesn't even have the words 'Jesus' or 'Christ' despite its great verbosity. Earl Doherty writes:

This argument needs to be more fully qualified and explicated before it will be convincing to me.

best,
Peter Kirby

Infidelettante

quote Metacrock
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!

That's all I'm arguing! And, as I said that is enough. Metacrock then directs us to his argument which consists of a number of unchanging aspects of the Christ myth.

This list forms the core of his argument that Jesus is historical. The story is true because the story does not change. To accept the list as valid is to accept its' implications.

They include:

*2) that his mother was supposed to be a Virgin named Mary*
Divine parentage. Jesus is God.

*5) he claimed to be the son of God*
A Christian reading of this equals Jesus claims to be God.

*9) rose from the dead leaving an empty tomb*
And you have forced me to give away the ending after all. I hope you're happy. Jesus lives because he is God.

Am I to take it that I am not allowed to use Metacrocks' arguments against him because he declares them off limits? Am I to forget Christianity and allow Metacrock to explain it anew?

The list he offers is his argument and that list includes the Divinity of Jesus. If Metacrock wants certain claims off the table he should not lay them out.

My first post was to point out the incongruity of claiming to know little about Jesus except that he was God. Metacrock is claiming divinity for Jesus *that's all I'm arguing* not withstanding.

JT

NOGO

Wow! This statement alone would disqualify you as a rational thinker, which is what you are pretending to be in this thread and in the limited subject at hand.

John's Jesus is very different person than in the synoptic Gospels.
The difference is not minor.

Just an example.

In the Gospels of John Jesus says that he is the bread of life and he who eats his flesh and drinks his blood has eternal life. The bread of life came down from heaven etc. etc.

Even the disciples are scandalized with these words.

Jesus explains that the flesh is of no importance, what matters are the words which he speaks. They are the spirit which leads to eternal life.

Throughout the Gospel of John Jesus never claims to be divine. The claim is that the spirit of God dwells in him as it can dwell in anyone who beliefs.

There is no virgin birth in the Gospel of John and for good reason. Jesus inherited the spirit of God immediatly after his baptism and not at birth.

This is just an example. John's Jesus is very different.

Vinnie

Yeah, pretty much.

It depends on what you mean by the Jesus story?

The method assumes the historicity of Jesus. I have tried to point that out ion the other thread. As I said in a different thread the methodology is based upon a prior consideration of source and historicity. The method attempts to reconstruct what the HJ was like, not that the HJ existed.

On the flipside, how does Doherty show that this is not the case?

Anyways, how can we put a date on the first stratum without prior belief on when Jesus existed? Basically, I think it is a question of historical plausibility.

This is simply the fundamentals here. How do we determine that a person existed in history? Through any works the person has written, archaeological finds mentioning the person or official records, and literary sources. In Jesus' case we only have the latter and none during his lifetime.

Josephus and numerous sources all mention Jesus as a historical person. When we look at all the earliest sources regarding this Jesus/Christian/Jewish Movement (say all or most first first century sources) we see something like this:

http://www.acfaith.com/jchronology.html

When so many sources (and (presumably) some of most of their communities) seemed to have all viewed a historical person existing in this era, on a historical level, it seems best to consider the historicity of this person as being more probable than not.

The evidence as far as I can see all leans towards a man existing in a certain timeframe. What is more plausible? That some of these very widespread traditions all reach back to this ground zero or that they were all created?

Embarrassing material seems historically, more likely to go back to ground zero than to invention by some unknown person in the thirties or 40s IMO. Why would any Christian invent baptism by JBap and subject Jesus to him? Why would an early Jewish movement invent the fictional character of a crucified Messiah? Numerous datums go against the grain (embarrassing) of the evangelists. Why should they include this material? The evangelists all believed in a Gentile mission. In the Gospels we see Jesus limiting his mission to the people of Israel. If Mark was simply inventing, why invent material that goes against the theological grain of his Gospel? Why would Matthew and Luke follow suit? And why would the authors invent or include an account where Jesus derogatorily calls a gentile woman a "dog"? And Paul, our first stratum source is certainly not at liberty to create HJ materials. The silence (not a total silence as Paul has quite a few datums) actually becomes an argument for historicity

Jesus history is axiomatic to me given all these sources which view him as a person. Many of them do not look like wholesale fiction and many many of them show limited creativity.

List me all the sayings of Jesus Paul created.

I'm still waiting.



Still waiting....



Get the point?

The mythicist silence argument seems to clearly undrcut itself (assuming some HJ material in Paul)

I don't have the time to go through all the issues now but I hinted at two things here.

1. The lack of created sayings in Paul. Paul is even careful to distinguish between his commands and the Lord's at one (or two) point(s) is he not?

2. The Synoptics on Jesus' Jewish-centered mission. As Sanders&Davies wrote, "The paucity of material on Gentiles in all three synotpics shows that there were limits on invention even in a good cause."

Paul claims in spots to be passing on tradition. He is first stratum (using the cumulative weight of the traditions from all those sources in my link to establish ground zero) and shows limited creativity. This makes me hopeful in using Paul's first stratum datums which also receive outside independent attestation.


I find the prior considerations of sources and historical plausibiility (which do use components of the reconstruction methodology) to be capable of putting Jesus' existence in the "highly probable camp".

Is it an extraordinary claim to merely say that a person existed in antiquity? I don't think so and I see no reason to deny historicity given the sources. Of course, Doherty sees a complete silence in Paul and dates the Gospels later does he not? His consideration and view of the sources is notable different than my own. This of course, will most likely result in competing views. Its really a question of the sources. Did Paul believe in a historical Jesus recently crucified or not?

I think the method of HJ research is all about reconstructing the HJ, not proving the historicity of.

Vinnie

SLD

Are you saying Yeshua wasn't the third most popular name at that time? If so, please do so. My information on that matter comes from the previous debates on this board and links to articles about the James Ossuary where that fact was discussed at some length by the various scholars involved in that investigation. IIRC, those scholars stated that about one in 10 people in Judea were named Jesus during that time. Admittedly, I do not know the how they came up with that data, but I have seen no one challenge it either. If you do have different data, don't be coy, just share it with us - I'd be happy to see it.

Are you saying that there were not thousands of crucifixions by the Romans during this time? I doubt anyone knows a close number, but Philo of Alexandria reports coming across hundreds in his travels. Josephus talks about witnessing 500 crucifixions in one day.

Statistically speaking one in ten of those crucified would have been named Jesus.

As to their claims to be the messiah, Hyam Maccoby's books "Revolution in Judea" and "The Mythmaker" document that there were indeed many messianic movements during that timeframe, and that a messianic claim meant to most Jews in Judea that the messiah was merely the continuation of the Davidian line of Kings. The Romans reserved crucifixion primarily for treason by the lowest of their subjects, although also for other crimes.

That Judea was full of treasonous movements during this time, is, I think, a given by all historians, since the problems the Romans had in that region are attested to by many ancient sources and of course ultimately they boiled over in several open wars that eventually destroyed Jerusalem and later scattered the Jews from that area for almost 2000 years. Are you seriously challenging that this didn't happen, or merely that Judea was a calm backwater of the Roman empire until AD 70?

I wouldn't think anyone would seriously contest that hundreds, if not thousands of Jews were crucified during the early part of the First Century time period for treason against Rome. One in ten were named Jesus.

Therefore proving that Jesus was a "historical" figure, is pointless.

SLD