MrMacSon

"the Church of the Historical Jesus" also includes theologians who believe in a human Jesus as part of a divine Trinity and are happy to use the notion of a historical Jesus, and publicity about that notion, to cement their doctrine or as a hook to bait new believers.

Toto

So why exactly are you so sure there was a crucifixion, if there were no historical witnesses?

The only thing modern scholarship has to say is "too embarrassing to have been made up." But then the next generation of scholars has pretty much dropped the criterion of embarrassment.

Someone needs to fill in a few of the gaps here.

Diogenes the Cynic

I doubt this very much. Most liberals (in the US anyway) are still believers. The Zealot theory is nothing new. S.G.F Brandon wrote Jesus and the Zealots in 1967 and it has not been embraced by liberals. I don't this is going to be an influential book in that way. Anecdotally, what I've seen from "new atheist" types has been more of a trend towards mythicism than a particular HJ view. If they wanted a Jesus that was soothing to political/social "liberals," Crossan gives them one that is about as lefty as any scholar has - egalitarian, non-apocalyptic, anti-establishment, Woodstock peace and love communalism. Crossan even presents the Temple incident as basically an "Occupy Wall Street" type event ("Occupy Zion?"). If liberals were going to gravitate to an HJ that appealed to them it would be Crossan, but I actually think that more and more are tending towards complete mythicism (though Ehrman appears to be widely read as well). I think that Aslan's book sales were spiked, to a large degree, simply as a middle finger to Fox News and to show appreciation for someone reversing a trap interview and throwing the interviewer around like a rag doll.

His book is not a bad introduction into a lot of the basic scholarship, though, and could at least cause some people to started reading more scholarship.

Diogenes the Cynic

The Passions are fiction, but Paul says Jesus was crucified. He gives no details, but it shows that the crucifixion belief preceded the writing of the Gospels.

aa5874

You very well know the Pauline writers also claimed Jesus resurrected after he was dead and buried which also shows the resurrection preceded the writings of the Pauline Corpus.

In fact, it is claimed that Jesus was God's own Son which shows that the Son of a God preceded the Pauline Corpus.

A Pauline writer claimed Jesus was in the image of God, Equal to God and was the Creator which shows Jesus the Creator God preceded the Pauline Corpus

In other words, it was Mythology that preceded the Pauline Corpus.

Grog

that idea pre-dates Jesus, though, as James mentioned. For example, the idea of putting the Son of God to a shameful death is in the Wisdom of Solomon. In fact, the Apocalypse of Adam (as I show in a new thread):

Compare lines 21 and 22 to 1 Corinthians 2:8:

That Paul mentions a crucifixion does not indicate that he believed in a recent crucifixion at the hands of the Romans. In fact, Romans 13 seems to be a falsifying statement against that notion.

Most of the elements in Paul that historicists claim demonstrate that Paul thinks of a human Jesus can be found in the writings of pre-Christians in relation to clearly heavenly beings. Heavenly beings can be of the seed of someone, (for example Noah in the Apocalypse of Adam), the "Illuminator of Knowledge" descends from heaven to earth and is "born" to a "virgin" in a "desert place" "outside the city." Philo talks about the Logos descending to earth. These vague references in Paul to a "crucifixion" do not in any way indicate that Paul is talking about a recent event occurring under Pontius Pilate.

The belief in the crucifixion of the Son of God precedes Paul, precedes Jesus, precedes Christianity.

everettf

Did I hear Aslan say the Romans spoke Greek? I thought the Romans spoke Latin and Jesus spoke Aramaic. What was that like, everybody speaking something different. Was everybody a linguist? Just asking.

andrewcriddle

A Roman's first language would have been Latin. Jesus' first language would have been Aramaic. However, both Jesus and most Romans living in the Eastern Mediterranean would have probably understood enough Greek to buy something in the local market. A slightly simplified version of Greek, koine Greek had become a common language for people in the multicultural Eastern Mediterranean.

(Wealthy educated Romans would often have been taught classical Greek at school but that is a slightly different issue.)

Andrew Criddle

Diogenes the Cynic

Greek was still the lingua franca in the Roman Empire. Educated Romans would have learned Greek as a matter of course, and it was the mediary language in the Provinces.

outhouse

Because it was the Romans way of setting examples for jews of what not to do.

We had people writing within a lifetime that he was placed on a cross, and traditions from Paul within a decade or two that claim this.

Pilate had a hatred for Galileans, and culturally Pilate placing a Galilean Jew on a cross, does not take a leap of imagination what so ever.