So did Jesus live or what?
- Thread starter Seismosaurus
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To which early gospels are you referring, specifically?
kuroyume0161
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Response
Now you can pull your foot out of your mouth (again)...
Now that you may have read that terse rationalization. Read these:
Response 1 to the response
Response 2 to the response
Response 3 to the response
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davefoc
Philosopher
On the issue of whether Isaiah 7:14 was a prediction fulfillled with the birth of Jesus:
http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_proi.htm
I note that kuroyume0161 posted a link on this issue while I was making this post. I'll go ahead and post my link. It's specific to Isaiah 7:14 and it provides a believer and a skeptic view.
I won't let on which view I'm leaning towards on this issue. But I'm thinking one or two of my previous posts might provide some clues.
http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_proi.htm
I note that kuroyume0161 posted a link on this issue while I was making this post. I'll go ahead and post my link. It's specific to Isaiah 7:14 and it provides a believer and a skeptic view.
I won't let on which view I'm leaning towards on this issue. But I'm thinking one or two of my previous posts might provide some clues.
Huntster
Isaiah 7: 1-12 – basically there is a war going on. The prophecy is that a child will be born and the war will be over before he reaches maturity. No messianic prophecy here.
Isaiah 7:13-17
“Then Isaiah said: "Hear then, O house of David! Is it too little for you to weary mortals, that you weary my God also? Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Look, the young woman is with child and shall bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel. He shall eat curds and honey by the time he knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good. For before the child knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good, the land before whose two kings you are in dread will be deserted. The LORD will bring on you and on your people and on your ancestral house such days as have not come since the day that Ephraim departed from Judah — the king of Assyria."
Still no messianic prophecy.
ceo_esq
Ossai
Gasp, gasp, oh no, let’s look at the chapter in question. (NRSV version)
Isaiah 7: 1-12 – basically there is a war going on. The prophecy is that a child will be born and the war will be over before he reaches maturity. No messianic prophecy here.
Isaiah 7:13-17
“Then Isaiah said: "Hear then, O house of David! Is it too little for you to weary mortals, that you weary my God also? Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Look, the young woman is with child and shall bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel. He shall eat curds and honey by the time he knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good. For before the child knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good, the land before whose two kings you are in dread will be deserted. The LORD will bring on you and on your people and on your ancestral house such days as have not come since the day that Ephraim departed from Judah — the king of Assyria."
Still no messianic prophecy.
ceo_esq
Matthew.
Ossai
Why would any reasonable person interpret Matthew's Gospel as an exhortation to violence?
You expect to find reasonable people around here?
kuroyume0161
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To respond in kind: Not while people like you stick around... 
I'd love to have the time to expend on getting indepth about the controversy, but today I'm only playing 'hooky' from work - as I did a rather arduous amount of that over the past week or so, nonstop.
Using the bible as a source to validate the existence of Jesus, especially spouting prophetic passages, does not seem reasonable at all. Show me one prophecy that has ever been scientifically validated to have been fulfilled.
The bible must be removed as a reliable source as long as there is no strong corroboration. One has no doubt that certain historic aspects in the NT are fact (Rome, Greece, Egypt, Judea, Jerusalem, Herod, Tiberius Caesar, etc.). These have existential evidence independent of the bible. Remove the obvious and you are left with the tentative - such as Pontius Pilate, Nazareth. And the rest is purely speculation, improbable, or impossible.
The extra-biblical evidence is therefore the only worth noting - and it is sparse and terse and tainted. If you still hold to your Cornellius Tacitus claim, read this (possibly again):
Historicity of Jesus FAQ
And this for more confusion on the matter:
Hidden History in Acts of the Apostles
I'd love to have the time to expend on getting indepth about the controversy, but today I'm only playing 'hooky' from work - as I did a rather arduous amount of that over the past week or so, nonstop.
Using the bible as a source to validate the existence of Jesus, especially spouting prophetic passages, does not seem reasonable at all. Show me one prophecy that has ever been scientifically validated to have been fulfilled.
The bible must be removed as a reliable source as long as there is no strong corroboration. One has no doubt that certain historic aspects in the NT are fact (Rome, Greece, Egypt, Judea, Jerusalem, Herod, Tiberius Caesar, etc.). These have existential evidence independent of the bible. Remove the obvious and you are left with the tentative - such as Pontius Pilate, Nazareth. And the rest is purely speculation, improbable, or impossible.
The extra-biblical evidence is therefore the only worth noting - and it is sparse and terse and tainted. If you still hold to your Cornellius Tacitus claim, read this (possibly again):
Historicity of Jesus FAQ
And this for more confusion on the matter:
Hidden History in Acts of the Apostles
jjramsey
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This is irrelevant. We are not talking about showing that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God, etc., except perhaps for Huntster. We are talking about the existence of a person in history about whom many legends likely sprang.
There is a vast difference between regarding the Bible as unreliable, which is good methodology, and treating it as if it did not exist. For example, it does not follow that Jesus grew up in Nazareth simply because the New Testament says he did. However, it is a fact that the New Testament makes such a claim, and any theory as to where Jesus grew up or whether he even existed has to cogently account for the existence of that claim, either by arguing why the claim is likely true, or by explaining why the claim is probably counterfactual. Ignoring that the New Testament even makes such a claim is to ignore pertinent data.
It also does no good to say that since the New Testament has falsehoods, it should be treated as if it were the testimony of a consistent liar. The New Testament is all over the map on this. On the one hand, there are clearly false stories in it. On the other hand, it relates material that appears to be neutral and even against its authors' interests. It is a mixed bag and should be treated as such.
Yes, the FAQ says pretty much what's been said already: Yes, it is unlikely to be a forgery, and no, it is unlikely that Tacitus is independently confirming Christian claims. If you are talking about the likelihood that "Christus" in Tacitus' Annals could be referring to some other would-be messiah besides Jesus of Nazareth, the FAQ does not deal with that at all.
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kuroyume0161
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Yes, and all of the 'legends' exist in the NT (gospels) or ancillary thereto in the non-canonical books (apocrypha). Look, there is nothing of any possible real person to be gleaned about King Arthur from the legends in 'L'morte de Arthur' either. The best they can do with this relatively new legend is pin it on several of a dozen possible candidates - of whom they have historical records on which to pin. There are no corroborating historical personages onto which to pin the possible real person Jesus or Yeshua or the Teacher of Righteousness (and so on).
There was no Nazareth at the time of Jesus' supposed life. It was created by the wife of Constantine to best of our knowledge. As one strips away all of the legend and interpolation, the man Jesus shrinks into oblivion. Not that a person (Teacher of Righteousness) could not be embodied in the legend. But it starts to sound like most of the legend was concocted to fit the evolving story (or stories).
I didn't say the NT authors were consistent liars. Some of them are assured to have taken prior writings into account as they wrote. And, as Tacitus did, they took the party line as to what had happened obviously without research.
Jesus the NAZAREAN. There was no Nazareth that has been found to exist in the time of Jesus' life.
Wikipedia
The Way of Jesus the Nazarean
Home towns
Did Jesus Christ exist?
Did Jesus Christ Really Live?
Jesus Puzzle website
jjramsey
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False analogy. The King Arthur legends are very loosely tied to any historical time line. They are also fairly melodramatic; there is little about them that is mundane. The accounts in the Gospels occur over a much more clearly defined span of time. Various parts are surprisingly mundane, and some look like rationalizations of failure.
From the site by scholar Mahlon H. Smith:
The tablet from Caesarea Maritima documents that some priestly families moved there after the Bar Kochba revolt in 135 C.E, making it unlikely that the site of Nazareth was really a large family farm, unless you want to make unsupported speculation that it turned from a family farm into a village.
Belz...
Fiend God
Yet Luke and Matthew disagree by as much as 10 years as to the birth date of Jesus.
davefoc
Philosopher
It seems what we have agreed on so far is that the Gospels are mostly fiction (with no disrespect intended here towards hunster, I realize he probably doesn't agree with this) with some correct historical details mixed in. The fact that there is some known non-fiction content supports the notion that there may be some truth in some of the details related to Jesus. The fact that there are some details that are inconsistent with some Christian notions adds some additional credibility to the idea that there might be some truth in the Gospels with respect to Jesus.
Further we have agreed that the extra biblical references are suspect because of the possibility of later Christian oriented additions but that in particular the Josephus references are likely to have been at least partly based on original Josephus writings. (based on an apparent scholarly consensus in that direction mostly).
It also appears that the Tacitus reference is probably real but of limited evidentiary value related to the issue of whether there was an historical Jesus.
The thing that hasn't been discussed much is the evidentiary value of Paul's letters and the Acts of the Apostles. The evidence cuts both ways from these sources but for some of the people that I have read and/or discussed this issue withl, the most important piece of evidence that moves them from a mythicist view to a minimalist view is Paul's letters and maybe the Acts of the Aposte book in the NT.
Further we have agreed that the extra biblical references are suspect because of the possibility of later Christian oriented additions but that in particular the Josephus references are likely to have been at least partly based on original Josephus writings. (based on an apparent scholarly consensus in that direction mostly).
It also appears that the Tacitus reference is probably real but of limited evidentiary value related to the issue of whether there was an historical Jesus.
The thing that hasn't been discussed much is the evidentiary value of Paul's letters and the Acts of the Apostles. The evidence cuts both ways from these sources but for some of the people that I have read and/or discussed this issue withl, the most important piece of evidence that moves them from a mythicist view to a minimalist view is Paul's letters and maybe the Acts of the Aposte book in the NT.
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davefoc
Philosopher
This is the kind of thing that I was talking about with respect to the Gospels. There are many internal inconsitencies, together with lots of other problems. But none of this precludes the possibility that there is a kernel of truth about Jesus in them.
So the question is, is there enough ring of truth in the NT, coupled with the extra-biblcal sources to make a reasoned guess that an individual existed whose life had some minimum set of characteristics similar to the Biblical Jesus to be judged to have been the historical Jesus.
About half way down the page there is a nice table summarizing the inconsistencies between the Gospels in this site:
http://www.reluctantatheist.com/authenjesus.htm
pgwenthold
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But as I've noted before, if this is your standard, then the question is about as interesting (and substantial) as whether Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz lived or not.
I mean, there was a girl from Kansas named Dorothy (L. Frank Baum's niece) who had an Aunt "Em" (Maude Baum) and there were many stories written about her.
If that is what you mean by "historical Jesus" I think most people would probably acknowledge there was someone like that. Of course, such a character has only a trivial resemblence to that described in the NT, so it's not clear what it's worth. It's certainly not "historical" in any sense except the fact that he lived at a time that is history to us now.
kuroyume0161
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Yes, that's it in a nutshell basically.
I know people claim this and that about certain authors, but I am reading auxilliary texts at this site from the author of "The Jesus Puzzle": starting with the Main Articles. If Paul ever knew that there was a person at the heart of Christianity (other than himself and the 'twelve'), he sure was good at avoiding it. The structure of the religion is so well laid out (but, of course, this could be a forced structure without going more depth into scholarly details) that it is rather clear that this is a form of mystery religion that Paul is advocating and preaching. The fact that the Holy Spirit is given and all knowledge is 'revealed' from God through revelation in the scriptures using his intermediary, Jesus Christ, and none of it handed down from a great teacher or prophet (only the prophets of the OT) speaks volumes.
Acts 'acts' as an intermediary (sort of like Paul's Jesus Christ). From some of my readings, it is speculated that the Pauline epistles are some of the oldest Christian documents in the canon, followed by Acts of the Apostles, and then the Gospels. This sure sounds like an evolving orthodoxy - from Greco-Judeo mystery religion to one where there is a hinted real figure to one where the 'real' figure is enfleshed.
There may have been a town of Nazareth in the early first century. Yet there are many scholars who would agree that it is fully possible and more likely that this is a corruption of Nazarean (the cult) which can be traced to that time period. The fact that the interpretation seems to be able to go both ways must make one wonder which is more important: that Jesus was from Nazareth (almost inconsequential) or that he was a Nazarean (stating his belief system).
ETA: I should correct myself that it was purported to be Constantine's mother, not wife, who established 'Nazareth'.
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davefoc
Philosopher
pgwenthold, I think you have hit on the fundamental idea that unites the views of the mythicist and the minimalist: If an historic Jesus existed his life has been wildly fictionalized in the Gospel accounts and his story played only a small role in the development of Christianity..
I think that the more interesting question is how did Christianity get going rather than was there an historical Jesus given the limits on the part that individual is likely to have played in the formation of Christianity. Although, for me, the issue of Jesus's existence is interesting, albeit one which is very unlikely to ever be answered with any degree of certainty.
I think you also allude to what I think of as the semantic element inherent in the nature of the question about the existence of an historical Jesus. What exactly constitutes the minimum similarity between the life of a real Jesus and the life of the Christian Jesus?
I don't have a firm view on this, but most of the following would need to be true to meet my minimum requirements for an historical Jesus:
1. The individual played a signicant role in a religious (perhaps partially political) sect roughly in the time frame of the Christian Jesus.
2. He was killed or believed to have been killed by the Romans at roughly the same time as the Christian Jesus.
3. After his reported death, the sect he had been part of carried his memory forward and infused the developing Christian groups with some of their ideas especially concerning the life of Jesus.
I think you are right, if you meant by "most people" in your post I quoted above, that a scholarly consensus exists that an individual fitting those criteria existed. You are wrong if you think the case is clear cut or that there aren't a number of scholars that believe no such individual existed.
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Belz...
Fiend God
I was merely responding to the assertion that there was a clear setting in time.
jjramsey
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Argument from silence. Doherty writes a lot of rhetoric on how since some second-century writers mentioned Jesus, then Paul should have done likewise. His examples of where Paul should have mentioned items from Jesus' history are pretty lame:
And where would Paul shoehorn this? Doherty never explains why Paul should have felt a need to do this.
The mention of them would have cluttered up the letters without any appreciable change in their impact.
It would speak volumes if it weren't a distorted reading of the epistles. Even Paul refers to handing down tradition, as in 1 Corinthians 15:3-7.
Evolving orthodoxy, yes, but probably not in the way that you described. For example, the crucifixion has been a central part of Christianity from the beginning, and it implied that there was a flesh-and-blood person being crucified. Doherty's contention that the crucifixion was a mythical event in a upper heaven doesn't hold water, but depends on speculation and a mangled translation of kata sarka as "in the sphere of the flesh."
Think carefully about this. A mythical Christ gets historicized in a way that his story becomes that of a peasant Galilean Jew from an obscure town who preaches doom to towns near the Sea of Galilee of no particular religious importance, such as Capernaum and Chorazin, fails to do miracles in Nazareth, and dies in a way that make Christianity look ridiculous to many pagans. And this is supposed to be more probable than the idea that Jesus of Nazareth existed, but was overlaid with legends like so many other historical figures have?
Actually, there are very few who would agree with that, and in any case, it's unfounded speculation meant to work around the references to "Nazarene" in the New Testament that, in context, clearly refer to a denizen of a place called Nazareth.
jjramsey said:
Belz said:
Which is a drop in the bucket compared to the hazy timeframe to which the King Arthur legends date.