outhouse

I still buy a historical core that JtB did dunk yeshua.


yeshua carried on this tradition


I look at them both as a different kind of zealot, much craftier then those zealots that perished before them.

aa5874

You BUY into Myth Fables.

The very stories that claimed John Baptized Jesus claimed Jesus WALKED on Water.

Please, don't buy Myth Fables. Please, just go FIND a history book first.

Sorry there is NONE for Jesus. I forgot.

Jesus was a PHANTOM in the Bible.

James The Least

It's fictional. Like everything else in the gospels.

It does not pass the criterion of embarrassment. Mark was writing midrash. He found "prepare a way in the wilderness" in Isaiah and thought that meant that his story needed some Jesus-like precedent to "prepare" for the main event. So he went rummaging through Josephus (or some other lost source) and found an apocalyptic loon that fit the plot.

James The Least

if you buy this, you'll buy anything. i have a bridge to sell you in brooklyn.

outhouse

Weak! lol

much of the bible has historicity. while it does cantain some fiction, you need to understand if they believed it, its mythology not fiction.


Its pretty obvious these ignorant people who followed mythology believed their sould would be saved by their gods

Diogenes the Cynic

Josephus does not say John was apocalyptic or Messianic.

The Dead Sea Scrolls, on the other hand, are full of that "make a road through the wilderness" stuff as well as some other things that are similar to how Mark portrays John the Baptist. There really were people living in the wilderness, using baptism as a substitute for Temple sacrifice, saying they were "making a highway through the wilderness" for the return of the Messiahs (the Qumran literature actually expected two Anointed ones a King and a Priest, as per the old days).

Josephus says a lot about the Essenes, and even says he spent three years as an Essene himself, following a teacher who had a severely ascetic lifesyle, again similar to how Mark describes the Baptist. From Life:
Josephus does not identify John the Baptist as an Essene or an ascetic:
John is not desribed by Josephus as having any of the qualities you say Mark was looking for. Josephus does not say John was ascetic, apocalyptic, or Messianic. He and the Qumran scrolls say the Essenes were all of those things.

Mark did not invent the "make a way in the wilderness" interpretation of Isaiah himself, that was already Essene boiler plate 100 years or more BCE.

There are also multiple and contradictory attestations of John the Baptist in the Gospels, including a Q source having John send his own disciples to inquire whether Jesus was the "one we seek, or should we wait for another," after John has already presumably seen the Holy Spirit descend on Jesus at his baptism.

So Mark did not invent the John the Baptist connection himself (there is an independent one in Q), nor could he have derived his description from Josephus. If he was looking for a character such as you suggest, then Banus would have been the one (though he's in Life and the JBap description is in Antiquities).

There's some kind of Essene connection there, be it invented or historical (and there's no reason John could not have been an Essene, there were thousands of them, according to Josephus). Even if Mark is just conflating John with Essene ideas, those ideas were still not invented by Mark. They are in the Qumran Scrolls.

outhouse

he should also realize zealots were against temple worship because they viewed the jewish government as corrupt due to the roman infection and greed.

that and the gospel authors had nothing in common with the original sect

aa5874

Please, forget about Hypothetical "Q". You are CONVENIENTLY inventing sources just to support your OWN position.

Your Presumptions about "Q" are really worthless.

proudfootz

Even if there was an historical Jesus, it's likely this is as fictitious as just about everything else written about him.

outhouse

based on what? what is fictitious exactly? and how did you determine that?