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Old 08-04-2013, 08:58 PM   #81
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Charlotte Allen nails it: the Church of the Historical Jesus

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Aslan's book ... is actually the latest installment in a vast body of literature reflecting the beliefs of a completely different religion: the Church of the Historical Jesus.

The aim of this church, which has been around since the Enlightenment and its worship of rationalism, is to peel away the Gospel stories, with their virgin birth, their miracles and their walking on water, to uncover the "real" Jesus, a demythologized, strictly human figure who didn't found Christianity and who stayed dead when he died. Its adherents tend to be non-Christians fascinated by Jesus; secular intellectuals in general; and liberal Christians, including many clergymen and New Testament scholars, whose sensibilities are embarrassed by traditional Christianity's claim to supernatural origins and its extravagant assertions about Jesus' divinity, his atonement on the cross for human sin and his resurrection from the dead on Easter morning....
"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.
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Old 08-04-2013, 09:04 PM   #82
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Could you explain what you mean by this? It doesn't make a lot of sense. Are there words missing??
Only because of your biased views do you not understand the context in which I have replied.

The context and methodology I use follows modern scholarships and professors, not a fringe conspiracy minded bloggers.

"Yep True."

Everyone knows there was no historical witness who authored anything.

That was very clear, please try and follow.

And it does not change the historicity the crucifixion has.
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.
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Old 08-04-2013, 09:43 PM   #83
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Return of the Jesus Wars by Ross Douthat
Aslan has probably defined Jesus for the next generation of liberals.
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.
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Old 08-04-2013, 09:49 PM   #84
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I have Aslan's book now on my tablet, but when he has stated that the one "fact" that can be agreed upon is that Jesus was crucified, it is hard to get motivated to read this closely. I am hoping it is not just another "This is how Jesus must have been given the context of the times."

To me, the crucifixion is not well-attested. The accounts themselves are derived entirely from other sources.
The "fact" of the crucifixion is that it is based entirely on Psalm 22 and Isaiah 53. Matthew added a couple of additional "facts" from the Wisdom of Solomon. Nothing about the crucifixion can be explained as historical witness to an actual crucifixion.
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.
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Old 08-04-2013, 10:15 PM   #85
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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.
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.
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Old 08-04-2013, 10:26 PM   #86
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The "fact" of the crucifixion is that it is based entirely on Psalm 22 and Isaiah 53. Matthew added a couple of additional "facts" from the Wisdom of Solomon. Nothing about the crucifixion can be explained as historical witness to an actual crucifixion.
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.
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):

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the illuminator of knowledge will pass by in great glory, in order to leave (something) of the seed of Noah and the sons of Ham and Japheth - to leave for himself fruit-bearing trees. And he will redeem their souls from the day of death. For the whole creation that came from the dead earth will be under the authority of death. But those who reflect upon the knowledge of the eternal God in their heart(s) will not perish. For they have not received spirit from this kingdom alone, but they have received (it) from a [...] eternal angel. [...] illuminator [...] will come upon [...] that is dead [...] of Seth. And he will perform signs and wonders in order to scorn the powers and their ruler.

Then the god of the powers will be disturbed, saying, "What is the power of this man who is higher than we?" Then he will arouse a great wrath against that man. And the glory will withdraw and dwell in holy houses which it has chosen for itself. And the powers will not see it with their eyes, nor will they see the illuminator either. Then they will punish the flesh of the man upon whom the holy spirit came.
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"Let us lie in wait for the righteous man,
because he is inconvenient to us and opposes our actions;
he reproaches us for sins against the law,
and accuses us of sins against our training.
[13] He professes to have knowledge of God,
and calls himself a child of the Lord.
[14] He became to us a reproof of our thoughts;
[15] the very sight of him is a burden to us,
because his manner of life is unlike that of others,
and his ways are strange.
[16] We are considered by him as something base,
and he avoids our ways as unclean;
he calls the last end of the righteous happy,
and boasts that God is his father.
[17] Let us see if his words are true,
and let us test what will happen at the end of his life;
[18] for if the righteous man is God's son, he will help him,
and will deliver him from the hand of his adversaries.
[19] Let us test him with insult and torture,
that we may find out how gentle he is,
and make trial of his forbearance.
[20] Let us condemn him to a shameful death,
for, according to what he says, he will be protected."

[21] Thus they reasoned, but they were led astray,
for their wickedness blinded them,
[22] and they did not know the secret purposes of God,
Compare lines 21 and 22 to 1 Corinthians 2:8:

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8 None of the rulers of this age understood it. If they had known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.
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.
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Old 08-05-2013, 04:21 AM   #87
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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.
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Old 08-05-2013, 04:31 AM   #88
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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.
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.)

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Old 08-05-2013, 08:10 AM   #89
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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.
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.
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Old 08-05-2013, 08:59 AM   #90
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So why exactly are you so sure there was a crucifixion, if there were no historical witnesses?

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.
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