So did Jesus live or what?

[davefoc]

Comments on Meadmakers theories:

I think Meadmaker fails to understand the main theories of the people who believe that Jesus was not an actual character. My simplified and perhaps not quite correct synopsis of the non historical Jesus view:

The basic idea is that there were various cults around the time of Jesus based on Judaism with perhaps some fusion of Greek ideas. These cults may have existed before the supposed time of Jesus or perhaps they developed roughly at the time of Jesus.

One of these cults was the one that Paul was active in and they had an idea of a messiah that was either coming or had come that was not an actual physical entity. Paul fired these guys up and at some point in time the idea that there had been a real messiah began to evolve. Thus the Gospels were written.

Perhaps in some kind of compromise move to incorporate members from a cult that had followed John the Baptist (who seems to have been a real character) the John the Baptist character was inserted into the Jesus narratives.

For a long time, various loosely Christian/Jewish cults continued belief structures that were different than what would become the Christian Church Orthodxy established as a result of Constantine's messing about. These non-Orthodox Christian views were pretty much wiped out together with their documentation after the council of Nicea in 325 AD.

So a mythicist might argue the following with regard to your points:

1. The Gospels. We all know what those are, and their flaws, but they are there.

Not much evidence, as stated above. Clearly mostly fiction, so just based on these there's very little solid evidence one way or another.

2. Josephus. While some have said it looks like forgery, it seems to me that the whole inclusion was probably not made up out of whole cloth.

A mythicist would probably argue that the Josephus quotes referring to Jesus are complete fakes. There are several internet sites that make the case for this. But for me, this is the best piece of evidence. I think it is what tips me in favor of the idea of an historical Jesus. But this Jesus is so poorly defined that it is very difficult to be sure of much.

3. Lots of evidence for Christians, very early.

Not sure what this evidence is. Certainly some of the early evidence may refer to gnostics who may not have believed in a physical Jesus. Certainly they had very non-Orthodox Christian views.

4. ...John the Baptist...

Really only evidence that John the Baptist was a real character. As I mentioned above, mythist theories suggest that John the Baptist followers melded into Christian groups at a time later than the supposed life of Christ.

5. ...Hebrew Gospel of Matthew...

I looked into this once before, and I decided that there wasn't much here, but based on your reference I will take another look at this.

 

[Meadmaker]

Comments on Meadmakers theories:

I think Meadmaker fails to understand the main theories of the people who believe that Jesus was not an actual character. My simplified and perhaps not quite correct synopsis of the non historical Jesus view:

I've read this, but frankly I don't put much stock in the theories. Yeah, it's possible, but it just seems ridiculous to me. The writings I have read seemed to come from people that just wouldn't want to accept anything at all as historical about the story of Jesus. They seemed quite biased.


The whole idea of a non-corporeal messiah is a bit far fetched to begin with, meaning it isn't very Jewish, and then the suggestion that these believers in a noncorporeal messiah decided they were wrong, but made up a corporeal messiah and then gave the messiah divinity. Well, I can't prove it's wrong.

So, go ahead and throw the theory into the pot of possible explanations, but that doesn't mean I have to take it seriously.

I looked into this once before, and I decided that there wasn't much here, but based on your reference I will take another look at this.

There isn't "much" there, but it is interesting, to me at least. To me, it looks like a bit of evidence that the story of Jesus did really originate with Jews, and was later embellished. Definitive? Hardly. Worth paying attention to? Somewhat. Cool? I think so.

 

[Huntster]

...The basic idea is that there were various cults around the time of Jesus based on Judaism with perhaps some fusion of Greek ideas. These cults may have existed before the supposed time of Jesus or perhaps they developed roughly at the time of Jesus.

One of these cults was the one that Paul was active in and they had an idea of a messiah that was either coming or had come that was not an actual physical entity. Paul fired these guys up and at some point in time the idea that there had been a real messiah began to evolve.....

I think it's important to point out that the Pharisees and Sadducees were also cults, or sects, at the time. Josephus also lists the Essenes as the third major cult, or sect, of the period.

Also, there is more regarding the Testimonium:

http://members.aol.com/FLJOSEPHUS/testimonium.htm

In 1995 a discovery was published that brought important new evidence to the debate over the Testimonium Flavianum.
For the first time it was pointed out that Josephus' description of Jesus showed an unusual similarity with another early description of Jesus.
It was established statistically that the similarity was too close to have appeared by chance.
Further study showed that Josephus' description was not derived from this other text, but rather that both were based on a Jewish-Christian "gospel" that has since been lost.
For the first time, it has become possible to prove that the Jesus account cannot have been a complete forgery and even to identify which parts were written by Josephus and which were added by a later interpolator....

 

[Fungrim]

When was that? Pretty much every civerlisation has left records showing they know it was round.

Certainly. However, I was under the impression must of the populace did not know it. However, I was trying to make a general point about the "ad populum" fallacy, I shall be clearer next time.

So someone like yourself, not believing anything without proof, would have wandered throughout 5,000 years of human history propounding that the world wasn't flat, because nobody had provided you proof of that?

I take that as a yes.

My sincere apologies to all. I enjoy this thread quite a bit and will try not to derail it again.

 

[Iacchus]

And yet what was Jesus' purpose for being here, except to teach us how to have faith in God? So, if in fact God does exist, then clearly the existence of Jesus (whether He existed in actuality or not) is not the issue at hand. It would certainly make the case of His existence more plausible, however, if we were able to ascertain that God exists ... it (the New Testament) being the most descriptive account of God's existence so far.

 

[jjramsey]

The basic idea is that there were various cults around the time of Jesus based on Judaism with perhaps some fusion of Greek ideas. These cults may have existed before the supposed time of Jesus or perhaps they developed roughly at the time of Jesus.

The thing is that if this were true, the New Testament would probably look radically different. We should not expect stories like in Mark 6:1-6, which looks like an attempt to rationalize the failure to induce a placebo effect. We should not expect the birth narratives to look like they are trying to work around Nazareth being Jesus' hometown. The mythicist do a terrible job of explaining why an embarrassment like the crucifixion is made up; it is here that they resort to distortions of history, like trying to say that it arose from a currently circulating dying-rising god motif, or worse, a motif of a crucified god-man.

3. Lots of evidence for Christians, very early.

Not sure what this evidence is.

Paul's letters, Tacitus, and Pliny's letter to Emperor Trajan on how to deal with Christians. And, no, I do not find it convincing that the mention of "Christus" in Tacitus is an interpolation, for the reasons mentioned above.

Also, there is more regarding the Testimonium:

http://members.aol.com/FLJOSEPHUS/testimonium.htm

This ends up being a comparison of very weak parallels between Josephus and Luke. Not very convincing.

 

[UrsulaV]

It would have taken a Josephus Campbellus (or a Jamesus Frazierus) to make a connection between Osiris and Jesus in the first place.

Whaaaaat?

Dude, I think we've hit a wall here, because that's just patently absurd to me. Introduce a myth to people who don't know it, and they will compare it to other myths they know. Dead god. Live god. People would TOTALLY make that connection. It boggles my mind to think that because the motifs don't all line up, you think people would be incapable of saying "Oh, yeah, a dying god that then isn't dead, I know one of those." That flies in the face of human nature.

The Romans in particular were constantly casting other Gods in terms of their own. "The Golden Ass" is about the cult of Isis, but includes a hefty section about Cupid and Psyche, which are tied together--the trials of Psyche are compared to the trials of the main character as he comes to the worship of Isis, despite the fact that Isis and Cupid are definitely different on the motif front.

Hermanubis showed up as a combination of the gods Anubis and Hermes, since hey, guy who leads the dead around, guy who leads the dead around, ignored vastly dissimiliar histories and other incidentals. Set is conflated with Typhon, god of storms, despite the fact that Set gets a lot more air time than Typhon ever does, and has a whole slew of other motifs goin' on, but the Romans were obviously fully capable of going "storm god here, storm god there! These two things go together!"

So, no, I'm sorry, there is just no way that I buy that these people couldn't possibly figure out that a dead god that becomes not-dead isn't similiar to another dead god that becomes not-dead. If you're deeply convinced of that, then we're just gonna have to agree to disagree, because I can't imagine how a perfectly intelligent people constantly seeing connections between gods would just happen to miss that one.

 

[jjramsey]

The Romans in particular were constantly casting other Gods in terms of their own.

And when we try to classify gods according to a dying and rising pattern, we are doing what the Romans did, trying to make the others' religion fit into the categories with which we are familiar. This is not a good way to get inside the heads of the people of the time.

So, no, I'm sorry, there is just no way that I buy that these people couldn't possibly figure out that a dead god that becomes not-dead isn't similiar to another dead god that becomes not-dead.

Because when thinking of Osiris, they likely think of him as god of the dead, and as a god who is dead. Just the overall flavor is wrong. Osiris is typically depicted as a mummy, or in some cases the bull Apis. The temporary resurrection is an interesting side story, but it isn't a central element nor even a consistent element in Osiris mythology.

If we look at how the pagans saw Jesus, we see him as likened to a magician (i.e. Celsus), or as a failed divine man, contrasted unfavorably with Apollonius of Tyana. We see graffiti making fun of what was to them an absurd idea, a crucified god, rendered as a donkey-headed man crucified with a scrawl "Alexmenos worships his god." We even see Christians derided as "atheists"! They indeed tried to fit Jesus into their motifs, but a dying and rising god wasn't one of them.

 

[davefoc]

Originally Posted by Meadmaker :
3. Lots of evidence for Christians, very early.

Originally Posted by davefoc :
Not sure what this evidence is. Certainly some of the early evidence may refer to gnostics who may not have believed in a physical Jesus. Certainly they had very non-Orthodox Christian views.

Originally Posted by jjramsey:
Paul's letters, Tacitus, and Pliny's letter to Emperor Trajan on how to deal with Christians. And, no, I do not find it convincing that the mention of "Christus" in Tacitus is an interpolation, for the reasons mentioned above.

Yes there is evidence of Christianity early on. Except for Josephus and the NT, none of it is believed to date earlier than 100AD.

There are four issues here I think with regard to their value as evidence of an historical Jesus.
1. Were Christian oriented statements added in at later dates?
2. When the writers refer to earlier events were they accurate?
3. What did the Christians that are referenced believe in?
4. Evidence of Christianity is not the same thing as evidence of Jesus.

The scholarly consensus (not unanimous) does seem to be that the Tacitus lines were not intepolated. But that does not mean that what he said was correct. Those lines are dated late in his life, more than fifty years after the events. Is there historical evidence that Nero persecuted a Christian sect as opposed to a general persecution of Jews? If there were Christian Sects for Nero to persecute what did they believe?

I think there is a tendency amongst most casual thinkers about the nature of the rise in Christianity to assume what the leaders of what would become the orthodox church wanted us to assume. That is that a common doctrine existed after the death of Jesus that is more or less consistent with current Church orthodoxy and that this common doctrine was the basis for Christian Church doctrine as we know it today.

I think this view is false. There were many different ideas about what church doctrine should be. Many of the leaders of these early sects are known together with their divergent views. If a historical Jesus played a significant role in the establishment of the church this is the opposite of what one would expect. One would have expected an early common doctrine that gradually diverged over time.

Early church leaders were aware of this problem and as they were able to concentrate power they also sought to eliminate alternative views to create the impression of Jesus as a single founding source.

So what has come down to us today is a collection of very problematic evidence filtered through centuries of Christian manipulation. The issue of whether there was or wasn't a real character that inspired the Jesus stories is almost a secondary issue to how the fictional character was developed and came to be the basis for the world's largest religion. Even if he existed he played only a small part in the development of the mythology surrounding him.

 

[davefoc]

another comment on zaaydragon's theories:

My apologies zaaydragon, I think I was too quick to be dismissive of your ideas. The notion of speculating about the nature of the mother of Jesus struck me as so weakly founded on what is known that I didn't really absorb the rest of your thoughts very well.

Except for the highly speculative portion of your theory dealing with Mary, I think your ideas are reasonably founded on what can be guessed at. I thought your speculations about the mother of Jesus interesting but also completely without any historical basis.

 

[Z]

another comment on zaaydragon's theories:

My apologies zaaydragon, I think I was too quick to be dismissive of your ideas. The notion of speculating about the nature of the mother of Jesus struck me as so weakly founded on what is known that I didn't really absorb the rest of your thoughts very well.

Except for the highly speculative portion of your theory dealing with Mary, I think your ideas are reasonably founded on what can be guessed at. I thought your speculations about the mother of Jesus interesting but also completely without any historical basis.

Well, to be honest, I don't remember where these ideas about the supposed Mary came from. I do seem to recall that this was a socially affluent woman who was known for her independence and strong-will. The rest was actually some theorizing I've seen others do, and it smacks more strongly of truth than the Gospel tales OR the idea that there just wasn't any Jesus figure at all.

I'll try (if I remember to) and see if I can't find where I got this portrait of Mary from.

 

[ceo_esq]

The fact of the matter is that Pilate is mentionned by roman records. That's INDEPENDENT confirmation of the existence of Pilate.

IIRC, the only clear evidence for Pilate that is independent of the Gospels, Josephus and Tacitus is a single brief inscription that was discovered in the early 1960s. And of course, one might expect that owing to his position Pilate would figure more frequently and prominently than Jesus in contemporary Roman records and in later works by Roman historians. Yet the great majority (and until very recently, all) of the little we know about Pilate comes from the same sources that tell us of Jesus' existence.

 

[Huntster]

...I think there is a tendency amongst most casual thinkers about the nature of the rise in Christianity to assume what the leaders of what would become the orthodox church wanted us to assume. That is that a common doctrine existed after the death of Jesus that is more or less consistent with current Church orthodoxy and that this common doctrine was the basis for Christian Church doctrine as we know it today.

I think this view is false.....

I would hope so. Acts is filled with the story of the struggles among the apostles, starting mere days after the crucifixion. The Peterine/Pauline sects are yet another example. The fact that the Jewish religion at the time had numerous sects, Christianity is divided by countless sects, ditto Islam, shamanism, and on down the line.

Let's face it: Man is not capable of completely unified thought/belief. That's what free will is all about. This forum is yet another example.

...The issue of whether there was or wasn't a real character that inspired the Jesus stories is almost a secondary issue to how the fictional character was developed and came to be the basis for the world's largest religion....

The issue is faith.

Heaven and Earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away...

 

[Huntster]

Well, to be honest, I don't remember where these ideas about the supposed Mary came from. I do seem to recall that this was a socially affluent woman who was known for her independence and strong-will. The rest was actually some theorizing I've seen others do, and it smacks more strongly of truth than the Gospel tales OR the idea that there just wasn't any Jesus figure at all.

I'll try (if I remember to) and see if I can't find where I got this portrait of Mary from.

Please do.

Like is commonly asked;

Evidence, please.

 

[jjramsey]

And of course, one might expect that owing to his position Pilate would figure more frequently and prominently than Jesus in contemporary Roman records and in later works by Roman historians.

I don't think Pilate was that important a person, just yet another governor of a province. He was mostly interesting because of his scrapes with the Jews, and those, IIRC, are in parts of Josephus' works that don't have a direct association with Jesus. Also, we simply don't have many records from the first century, period.

 

[Z]

Please do.

Like is commonly asked;

Evidence, please.

Well, it's time to consume a small quantity of raven, possibly.

The best I can tell is that I probably picked up the idea from some documentary on TV years past. Certainly, little internet evidence makes any claims such as this, and the books I have only make vague reference to some early Christian dissent - roughly seventh century or so - in which Mary was proposed to have slept with a Roman officer, and having conceived, concocted the whole 'immaculate conception' routine to keep from being stoned to death. If this were the case, we'd have to paint a picture of Mary as a conniving schemer, certainly. However, I don't think there's a lot of evidence other than hearsay to support the idea that Mary was a little ho.

Just to be stubborn, nothing specifically rules out this idea, either - that Mary arranged as much of this as possible to improve her social standing. In fact, she may have been pushed into doing so by her relatives - wasn't Elizabeth similarly 'blessed' by God with Mary, after all? The idea might simply have been passed from mother to daughter.

Likewise, she may have felt some social pressure anyway, as it seems that her parents were descended from royal and priestly lines. Granted, in the time of Pilate, that ancestry might not have amounted to a hill of beans, and may even have been fabricated; but assuming that it was at least publicly accepted by her contemporaries, there may have already been considerable opinion that a child of Mary's would be something special. And certainly the idea of a liberator was prevalent among the Jews of that time... it's not a far stretch to say that she did her best to try to fulfill prophecies, which were undoubtably handed down through her family and fed to her from most of her contemporaries.

However, the idea that Mary was this scheming, resourceful young lady seems to be based on half-remembered television reporting - hardly a reliable resource, at all. Certainly no more reliable than Biblical sources.

 

[Z]

I don't think Pilate was that important a person, just yet another governor of a province. He was mostly interesting because of his scrapes with the Jews, and those, IIRC, are in parts of Josephus' works that don't have a direct association with Jesus. Also, we simply don't have many records from the first century, period.

From what I can tell, this has been an important point in Christian apologetics. Pilate was no more important than, say, Mayor Bob Jackson of Wichita, Florida... with the exception that he crucified the Saviour. In other words, the only people he WOULD have been notable to were people who already believed in the Christ. Even the meticulous record keeping of public officials attributed to the early Romans might not have included the local leaders of every town, hamlet, and watering hole throughout the Roman occupancy. For example, do we know who was in charge of public works in the month that Nero allowed Rome to be burned to the ground, or who was in charge of the legion occupying, say, Saldea, in the tenth year of its occupancy? Not bloody likely.

After all, like any public record, I'm sure they purged records that were getting cumbersome and served no good purpose, once the involved people and their immediate families were dead and gone.

Now, I'm no expert on Roman record keeping, but I do seem to recall that some societies placed the burden of record keeping for lower-level authorities on that authority's family after their service was over - and if this was the case in Pilate's Rome, his family may simply have fallen down on the job. Maybe recording that Pilate was the boss when all this controversy happened was considered to be a bad idea at the time. The fact is, we just don't know.

 

[davefoc]

you say Procurator I say Prefect

a couple of more comments on this quote from tacitus:

Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular.

1. A stone was discovered in Caesarium that bares a reference to Pilate with the title, Prefect. Tacitus refers to Pilate as a procurator. I am not sure how significant the error is. It seems that the tiltles were not used interchangeably at least based on limited internet research. If Tacitus based his paragraph on Roman records, presumably he would have gotten the title right.
http://www.usd.edu/erp/Palestine/administ.htm

2. Apparently Paul doesn't mention all this torture of Christians that Tacitus seems to know about. Theorectically Paul was there. Did he mention it and what he wrote on this got lost or is the whole Christian torture thing made up? It seems like there might be a general consensus amongst scholars that it was. But I'm not sure about this.

The two issues above together with the unlikely existence of a significantly large group differentiated as Christians at the time of Nero seem to suggest that even if Tacitus wrote this he was writing down information he received from Christians and not basing his view on information from Roman records or Roman memories.

If what I have written above is roughly correct it seems like it is reasonable to give very little credence to the Tacitus quote as evidence for the existence of an historical Jesus.

As an aside it is interesting to see how different sites present the information about the Pilate inscription. Believer sites see it as further proof of the historicity of the bible. Skeptic sites are quick to point out the prefect/procurator issue.

 

[UrsulaV]

And when we try to classify gods according to a dying and rising pattern, we are doing what the Romans did, trying to make the others' religion fit into the categories with which we are familiar. This is not a good way to get inside the heads of the people of the time.

I thought the Romans were some of the people who's heads we were trying to get into! *flail*

I give up. I don't think the question you were originally asking is the one I was trying to answer, or possibly vice versa, and I suspect we're discussing at cross-purposes, since I've completely lost any sense of what you were trying to prove in the first place, and none of it seems to bear on whether there was a real Jesus or not.

I'm just gonna gibber quietly over here in the corner for a bit...

 

[geni]

Certainly. However, I was under the impression must of the populace did not know it.

I suspect that most of the population didn't think about it.