Minimalist

There is no doubt that the stories are tied together. The question is, how much of them is real? If you want to reduce it to the story of a flood survivor being grateful that's fine. But we have only part of one version of the story and it, like all the others, has lots of divine malarkey thrown in and there is no evidence that the Sumerian gods were any more real than the later gods who were written into the story.

Diogenes the Cynic

There is no reason to believe it has any historical basis.

aguy2

If Jesus was capable of reading the minds of others, it would not have necessary for him to be literate, per se. Does anyone else see in the scriptures the very real possibility that he may have been capable of reading the minds of others?
aguy2

Grog

certainly the character Jesus in the Gospels could well be able to read the minds of others, just like Johnny Smith could see peoples' futures by touching them in the Dead Zone.

outhouse

Agreed.

we have a factual flood that started mythology that was used by many different cultures that evolved after the original mythology.

steve_bnk

Jesus of the gospels was a Jewish rabbi preaching Judaism to Jews. He never renounced Judaism and reinforced Mosaic law. He would have no reason to record any teachings, it already existed. If you read the Old Testament, there is nothing new that Jesus alleged to have said.

spin

Is this all belief, theory or plain old assertion?

Despite the fact that gospels have Jesus saying that the Pharisees love to be called "rabbi" (Mt 23:8), we find that it is only after the time of Johanan ben Zakkai that the title "rabbi" was used, while "rabban" was used for Johanan and for Gamaliel the elder, so slightly earlier. In Mt "rabbi" is an obvious anachronism, and it may even be that use of "rabbi" in early decades of the first century is also an anachronism.

Was Jesus a real person? I don't know and I can't see how anyone else can, given the available evidence. Was the story of Jesus first recorded in Judea or did it develop in the diaspora? Why was the first gospel (Mark) apparently written in Rome if the story actually came from Judea? Why were the earliest Jesus cult centers in Anatolia and Greece?

outhouse

I'll take the bait.

In my opinion, yes.


Nothing has made as much sense as a martyred man at Passover.


No other hypothesis flows as smoothly, to me.





Fair enough, not everyone judges the evidence the same.



Recorded? Diaspora for the most part, in my opinion. Its tough because multiple traditions were compiled into the gospels. I would not be against some traditions originating from some of the larger more Hellenistic cities in Israel.

Can they all be sourced to a geographic location, doubt it.

Develop? Oral tradition after Passover.



Rome. My opinion, I follow that it was compiled and written in Syria. This is wiki's statement by Theissen, Gerd and Annette Merz. I have just found no reason to doubt it as of yet.



I didn't know about Greece.

But it is my opinion that after Passover was over, some people were talking about the martyred man who died for their benefit fighting corruption that developed into a legend that grew into mythology. Possibly from a unknown claim of resurrection, maybe not. I'm not sure when that was added.

Of the 400,000 possible attendants per E.P.Sanders, Its my opinion, some went back to their homes in the Diaspora with some knowledge of the events, and the mythology grew from that point on.

Not only is a martyred man at Passover plausible, it fits the cultural anthropology perfectly, and explains how the mythology spread to so many different communities so quickly, starting the multiple traditions all about the same time period in and out of the Diaspora.

This does not indicate the size of the movement only its dispersion.




I view the movement as a separation of Hellenistic Judaism from Judaism. With the Jesus character or what ever his name might have been, being the match that set it off.

dogsgod

We have a gospel story that outhouse thinks he can improve upon.

spin

The aim of these questions was to entice engagement with the evidence, not for someone to take the bait.

No engagement with the evidence here, is there?

Let's see you start engaging with the evidence.

No engagement with evidence yet.

Engagement? Rehearsing Wiki?

Umm, Corinth, Thessalonia?!

Who wants your opinion? The forum wants evidence that supports an argument.

You've mentioned the passover a few times now as if it is part of your imaginary history of the life of Jesus that you haven't developed, because you haven't evinced any evidence for it.

If we look at the earliest christian literature, ie Paul's, we find Jesus as a sacrifice. The central Jewish sacrifice was the pascal lamb (remember "lamb of god, Jn 1:29, 36?) which renewed the Jewish covenant every year. Isn't the death of Jesus once for all a replacement of the passover lamb? So we should expect a story about the sacrificial death of Jesus at passover, shouldn't we?

Oh, so you imagine a corruption fighting Jesus. The earliest christian literature, yes, Paul's, does not support such a notion. His is a salvation story, not a corruption fighting story. When did this notion of fighting corruption enter the tradition and what is the primary evidence to support it??

On what evidence do you take the death of Jesus to have 1) been real, 2) taken place at passover, 3) carried back to the diaspora? What are the exact primary sources that establish the answers to these?

Plausibility is frequently a condition of fiction. Discussing plausibility per se is time wasting.

Well, that settles it then... but wait, at least in our eyes can't fiction fit "the cultural anthropology perfectly"? We don't have much of a clue about enough of the culture of the period to make sweeping statements about things fitting the cultural anthropology perfectly. I do believe, outhouse, that you are just talking nonsense from beginning to end.

Explaining things is a lovely pastime, outhouse, but here we are after umm, what was it we were after again?... oh, yes,... we are after evidence to support the explanation, not a web of conjecture rehearsed from videos and wikipedia.

You view it that way do you!? Well, that's just dandy, but I'd really love to see a few shreds of that mystical ingredient, primary evidence, to give your opinions a glimmer of credibility.

Frequently it's hard to come to meaningful conclusions, but the only way ahead in such a situation is to engage with the evidence, not rehearse the engagement of others.