Historical Jesus

[HansMustermann]

I suggest changing the last word. Perhaps... Well, I can't find the right word to say that someone is trying to teach lessons about something he doesn't really know.
As for the rest of your comment, I agree.

Well, it's not saying HE's stupid -- well, not necessarily, anyway -- just that the proposed line of reasoning is. I dunno, feel free to suggest another word for something that fails the most trivial reality check.

 

[HansMustermann]

We need to be able to say that some of the things described in the gospels happened to him otherwise there would be no story to tell. I would suggest an execution or something sufficiently dramatic for his little band of shocked followers to want to tell ever-embellished tales about him.

Do we really need one, though? If it started with Paul hallucinating a guy from beyond the grave, and steadfastly refuses to convey or even learn anything that doesn't come from his hallucination, does he even need a real guy there or is he just talking about the ghost that he hallucinated?

Remember that it wouldn't even be something unusual. The OT has God himself saying that prophecies from him will come in visions and DREAMS. It wasn't like nowadays, when if you told anyone that something came from a vision or dream, they'd just think you're nuts. As late as the renaissance you could get tied to a stake on top of a nice pile of wood, based on just the evidence that someone DREAMED that you were going to the witches sabbath. The notion that you'd need any kind of reality check before trusting a dream or vision just didn't exist until pretty much modern times.

But anyway, even if the vision or dream or other kind of revelation was sorta based on something he's heard of before, how much does it really need to match? I mean, I had a dream recently where The Rock was some sort of ancient kung-fu necromancer. (That's what you get for binging on action movies on Netflix, I guess. You end up making a hash of several unconnected ones.) Does that mean that any of that tells you anything about the real Dwayne Johnson?

 

[dejudge]

..... For example, the earliest surviving manuscript copy of Josephus is a Latin translation from the 5'th century, and even the earliest quote from Josephus in other works is 4'th century. The earliest copies in the original Greek are from the tenth and eleventh centuries. And those copies are most definitely in codex form. That doesn't mean it was composed in the 5'th century, nor that it necessarily was in that format from the start.

Josephus is an accepted figure of history who lived in the 1st century and his writings are corroborated.

Jesus, the disciples and Paul are only found in total fiction, false attribution and forgeries in and out the NT.

In addition, there is no evidence anywhere that any part of the NT was written in the 1st century or around c 50-60 CE.

 

[HansMustermann]

Well, I'm even open to pushing the start into the 70's, since at least that doesn't create the problem with Pliny. I mean, even from 79 to 111, that's 32 years. Hmm, ok, I can see it spreading all the way to causing a local revulsion in Pontus in 32 years.

I'm still waiting to hear what the story looks like according to you, though. Like, so when did they make them up, why was the name "Paul" so important -- more so even than people named as first hand witnesses in the gospels -- that they had to forge more letters in his name than for any other disciple, and when did that name get enough time to spread and be known before someone needed to hijack it, and so on.

 

[dejudge]

Yes. As I said previously “Philo, who wrote an account of the Jews, made no mention of Jesus. At all! And he lived in and around Jerusalem the entire time that Jesus existed”. So, Jesus obviously wasn't the big deal as depicted in the NT. But I’m arguing in the context of some in this discussion claiming that Jesus, Paul and the whole cast of characters in the Jesus story were totally fabricated. Stories don't evolve in a vacuum. So, it’s reasonable to believe that there was a man, Jesus, who had sufficient followers to tell stories about him. And in a gullible era of myths and magic it’s not surprising that they were miraculous and grew in the telling.

The Christian Bible [OT and NT] stories are always fabricated. They make stuff up because people of antiquity and even today believe them.

It must never be forgotten that the people who believe the fabricated stories in the Bible did also believe similar inventions in Roman, Greek, Jewish and Egyptian mythology.

Here is a very small sample:

1. The story of Creation was totally fabricated.
2. The story of Adam and Eve and the talking snake - totally fabricated.
3. The story of Cain and Abel -totally fabricated.
4. The story of Noah and the flood- totally fabricated.
5. The story of the Tower of Babel - totally fabricated.
6. The story of the plagues in Egypt -totally fabricated.
7. The story of the parting of the Red sea -totally fabricated.
8. The story of God writing the Ten Commandments - totally fabricated.
9. The story of Jonah and the whale - totally fabricated.
10. The story of Samson and Delilah-totally fabricated.
11. The story of the ascension of Elijah-totally fabricated.
12. The story of Daniel in captivity -totally fabricated.

The Christian Bible is a compilation of utter fiction, forgeries and false attribution.

We need to be able to say that some of the things described in the gospels happened to him otherwise there would be no story to tell. I would suggest an execution or something sufficiently dramatic for his little band of shocked followers to want to tell ever-embellished tales about him.



Certainly, but reality-based fuzziness.

Why do you need to believe the obvious fiction stories in the NT contain historical accounts?

You seem to be doing what the authors of the Bible did.

They just fabricated their own story because people would believe.

You are suggesting Jesus was crucified without a shred of historical evidence simply because it seems believable to you today.

You don't seem to understand that in antiquity all the stories about Jesus were believed to be true and that is precisely why the stories are in the Christian Bible.

 

[Delvo]

Stories don't evolve in a vacuum. So, it’s reasonable to believe that there was a man, Jesus, who had sufficient followers to tell stories about him. And in a gullible era of myths and magic it’s not surprising that they were miraculous and grew in the telling.

We need to be able to say that some of the things described in the gospels happened to him otherwise there would be no story to tell. I would suggest an execution or something sufficiently dramatic for his little band of shocked followers to want to tell ever-embellished tales about him.

A Jewish historian & commentator in Rome named "Josephus" ("Joseph" plus a Roman suffix) wrote a section in one of his books describing several wandering Jewish doom preachers of that era who developed significant followings for a while. So the fact that guys like that existed in general is established by a non-Biblical source. But the individuals he describes are mostly too different from Jesus. For one thing, they had other names, or were identified only by where they came from but it wasn't where Jesus was from. (For example, he called one "The Samaritan", but Jesus was no Samaritan.) I think there was a "Galilean", but that's where we run into more substantial mismatches in what these guys did and preached, compared to what Jesus is supposed to have done & preached. For example, one of them led his crowd to the Jordan River expecting it to split open for them to escape across it. (It didn't.) But there are a couple who come close enough to have contributed to the later Jesus idea.

One was identified only as "The Egyptian", which already isn't a bad start because the Gospels have Jesus living in Egypt for a while as a child. And he centered his preaching on the Mount of Olives, and had a large enough following to annoy the Romans so they sent an army after them, resulting in what Josephus calls a battle/slaughter. That might seem to contradict the Jesus story, which we now tend to think of as a smaller-scale thing where a few guards/cops were sent to arrest an individual with relatively few or no other people around like in "Law & Order", but I've recently encountered an argument that the word that's used in the Gospels for that group of Romans was actually a military unit, a chunk of the army, so the Gospels really have Jesus captured by an army, just without depicting the rest of the battle around him. Whether that's a fair translation or not, the size of The Egyptian's following certainly sounds similar to the crowds that are depicted elsewhere in the Gospels, even if not for the arrest/capture scene. And after the chaos of a battle (especially one where one side was an undisciplined rabble), or a slaughter, or a riot getting squashed, most survivors wouldn't have known the fate of one individual, so it would have been easy to tell them whatever you wanted later on.

Another was actually named "Jesus", although from the wrong town and with the wrong father. He entered the city during a Jewish festival, went to the temple to rant against it while quoting Jeremiah 7, stuck around afterward to preach daily about the coming destruction there, was seized & beaten by Jewish authorities who accused him of speaking against the temple, offered no defense, was turned over to the Romans who beat him some more, was interrogated personally by the Roman governor, still offered no defense there either, and was not found guilty or dangerous and thus free to go by the governor, only to end up getting killed by Romans anyway, after crying out a final lament for his own sad fate. (It wasn't "why have you forsaken me" on a cross, though; his final quote simply switched his usual "woe to Jerusalem" and "woe to the temple" to "and woe to me as well", before getting konked in the head by a projectile during a siege.)

So we don't even need to be quite so vague as "well, there were these guys in general, and 'Jesus' was a common name". Most of what we would look for as an origin of the Jesus legend is already specified in just those two guys. (The only thing keeping me from saying Jesus was a real person would then be the fact that two does not equal one. )

 

[smartcooky]

A Jewish historian & commentator in Rome named "Josephus" ("Joseph" plus a Roman suffix) wrote a section in one of his books describing several wandering Jewish doom preachers of that era who developed significant followings for a while. So the fact that guys like that existed in general is established by a non-Biblical source. But the individuals he describes are mostly too different from Jesus. For one thing, they had other names, or were identified only by where they came from but it wasn't where Jesus was from. (For example, he called one "The Samaritan", but Jesus was no Samaritan.) I think there was a "Galilean", but that's where we run into more substantial mismatches in what these guys did and preached, compared to what Jesus is supposed to have done & preached. For example, one of them led his crowd to the Jordan River expecting it to split open for them to escape across it. (It didn't.) But there are a couple who come close enough to have contributed to the later Jesus idea.

One was identified only as "The Egyptian", which already isn't a bad start because the Gospels have Jesus living in Egypt for a while as a child. And he centered his preaching on the Mount of Olives, and had a large enough following to annoy the Romans so they sent an army after them, resulting in what Josephus calls a battle/slaughter. That might seem to contradict the Jesus story, which we now tend to think of as a smaller-scale thing where a few guards/cops were sent to arrest an individual with relatively few or no other people around like in "Law & Order", but I've recently encountered an argument that the word that's used in the Gospels for that group of Romans was actually a military unit, a chunk of the army, so the Gospels really have Jesus captured by an army, just without depicting the rest of the battle around him. Whether that's a fair translation or not, the size of The Egyptian's following certainly sounds similar to the crowds that are depicted elsewhere in the Gospels, even if not for the arrest/capture scene. And after the chaos of a battle (especially one where one side was an undisciplined rabble), or a slaughter, or a riot getting squashed, most survivors wouldn't have known the fate of one individual, so it would have been easy to tell them whatever you wanted later on.

Another was actually named "Jesus", although from the wrong town and with the wrong father. He entered the city during a Jewish festival, went to the temple to rant against it while quoting Jeremiah 7, stuck around afterward to preach daily about the coming destruction there, was seized & beaten by Jewish authorities who accused him of speaking against the temple, offered no defense, was turned over to the Romans who beat him some more, was interrogated personally by the Roman governor, still offered no defense there either, and was not found guilty or dangerous and thus free to go by the governor, only to end up getting killed by Romans anyway, after crying out a final lament for his own sad fate. (It wasn't "why have you forsaken me" on a cross, though; his final quote simply switched his usual "woe to Jerusalem" and "woe to the temple" to "and woe to me as well", before getting konked in the head by a projectile during a siege.)

So we don't even need to be quite so vague as "well, there were these guys in general, and 'Jesus' was a common name". Most of what we would look for as an origin of the Jesus legend is already specified in just those two guys. (The only thing keeping me from saying Jesus was a real person would then be the fact that two does not equal one. )

Josephus was born in Jerusalem, and lived from 37 to 100AD and these writings were a few years before he died, which means he could conceivably have spoken to people with first hand knowledge of these preachers.

 

[pgwenthold]

Or maybe it was Jesus of the bible, but the stories about features such as the sizes of the crowds and the things he was supposed to have done, were exaggerated to make Jesus seem more important and more all-encompassing than he really was at the time.

So it was Jesus of the Bible if you ignore what the bible says?

Thanks for illustrating my point.

 

[smartcooky]

So it was Jesus of the Bible if you ignore what the bible says?

Indeed

(nice pith too!)

 

[Skeptical Greg]

dejudge:

It must never be forgotten that the people who believe the fabricated stories in the Bible did also believe similar inventions in Roman, Greek, Jewish and Egyptian mythology.

I'll try not to forget that, but I seriously doubt that few people who believe the stories in the Bible believe any of those other things.


Statements like this make anything you have to say not worth reading.

 

[HansMustermann]

Josephus was born in Jerusalem, and lived from 37 to 100AD and these writings were a few years before he died, which means he could conceivably have spoken to people with first hand knowledge of these preachers.

It's not just that he could have spoken to people. His main focus is that Vespasian is the real messiah, and just about any reasonable religious interpretation of Judaism has to support that. And conversely, any other interpretation has to be wrong.

Which some might suspect is also because having a prophet in his pocket that gives him that kind of religious endorsement may have been the main reason Vespasian didn't nail him to a cross in the first place. (Josephus having actually been a rebel leader in the Jewish revolt.) And later released him from jail and set him up with a pretty good life.

So, you know, Josephus's paycheck and possibly life depended on sticking to that line.

(Also just for the record the idea of such a crossover where the Jewish god endorses a Roman emperor wouldn't be as ridiculous as it sounds, or at least not for the Romans. Romans were always into numina, i.e., aspects, of the gods, and Yahweh had been assimilated by the Romans as an aspect of Jupiter. It didn't do much for the Jews, but for Vespasian he effectively had the endorsement of Jupiter himself. In fact, what he had was that Jupiter wanted him to be emperor all along, from before Rome was even founded. Not a flippin' bad deal.)

But anyway, Josephus actually has a chip on his shoulder to sorta 'debunk' these wannabe loser messiah pretenders. They HAVE to be loser pretenders, because Vespasian is the real deal.

With a second chip on his shoulder about Roman governors. His arguably even bigger focus is showing that the Jews aren't all just a bunch of unreasonable religious fanatics, who'll revolt no matter what, just out of fanaticism. He wants to present them as being just riled by various excesses, abuses, corruption, and/or just trampling their local customs.

A Jesus that actually was a major messianic pretender like in the Bible, AND had been put through a ridiculously illegal trial and execution sequence by a Roman governor, INCLUDING riling the Jews by putting a "King Of The Jews" sign on his cross... yeah, you can see how he'd have more than one reason to mention that. It's the kind of thing that's pretty much an ace in the hole for the theory that he's trying to present.

So, yeah, it's rather conspicuous that he doesn't.

 

[dejudge]

dejudge:


I'll try not to forget that, but I seriously doubt that few people who believe the stories in the Bible believe any of those other things.

Your statement is highly illogical.

You seem to have no idea what people in antiquity believe before the Jesus stories were fabricated.

People in the Roman Empire who later believed the Jesus fables were the people who believe in Greek/Roman/Jewish mythology.

Examine Justin's "Discourse to the Greeks".

http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/justinmartyr-discourse.html

Henceforth, ye Greeks, come and partake of incomparable wisdom, and be instructed by the Divine Word, and acquaint yourselves with the King immortal; and do not recognise those men as heroes who slaughter whole nations.

The author wants the Greeks to stop believing their myth fables and believe the myth fables of his Jesus who was born of a Ghost and a Virgin.

People in the Roman Empire who believe in multiple Gods and myths like Chronos, Ouranos, Jupiter, Venus, Pluto, Minerva and many more were asked to believe in Justin's myth fables.

Examine Justin's First Apology"

And when we say also that the Word, who is the first-birth of God, was produced without sexual union, and that He, Jesus Christ, our Teacher, was crucified and died, and rose again, and ascended into heaven, we propound nothing different from what you believe regarding those whom you esteem sons of Jupiter.

People who believe myth fables are those who will eventually believe the fables of Jesus, the disciples and Paul.

Another example where people who believe in mythology accept utter fiction as true is the start of a new religion by Joseph Smith.

Joseph Smith claimed an angel named Moroni told him about some golden plates.

The people who believe angels exist might believe Joseph Smith story is true.

If Joseph Smith told me an angel said anything to him it would be exposed as a stupid lie. Angels do not exist.

The NT stories of Jesus, the disciples and Paul are stupid fiction but was accepted by those who believe in demons, devils, angels, Gods and Ghosts.

 

[dejudge]

So it was Jesus of the Bible if you ignore what the bible says?

Thanks for illustrating my point.

Your question is a complete contradiction.

If you reject what the Bible says about Jesus the character is obviously not Bible Jesus. Unless you make your own Bible story for your Jesus.

 

[David Mo]

You seem to have no idea what people in antiquity believe before the Jesus stories were fabricated.

People in the Roman Empire who later believed the Jesus fables were the people who believe in Greek/Roman/Jewish mythology.

There are many people who believe that Trump is a great president and yet Trump exists.

To accuse someone of having no idea you have to get some idea. Gnothi seauton.

 

[DevilsAdvocate]

The NT stories of Jesus, the disciples and Paul are stupid fiction but was accepted by those who believe in demons, devils, angels, Gods and Ghosts.

Well, yeah. Duh. I don't think anybody in this thread is arguing against that.

But there was a historical Jesus.

Reconcile. Reconcile. Make an attempt to Reconcile.

 

[Tassman]

Do we really need one, though?

No, we don’t “need one” at all. The world would be a lot better off without it. But, given that there are 2 billion people in the world who believe all that crap we are rather stuck with it. So, it behooves us to try and understand where it all came from.

If it started with Paul hallucinating a guy from beyond the grave, and steadfastly refuses to convey or even learn anything that doesn't come from his hallucination, does he even need a real guy there or is he just talking about the ghost that he hallucinated?

I think it originated from two sources - the dominant one being, as you say, Paul’s hallucination. And on this basis, he hijacked the little group of Jesus’ followers, i.e. the Jewish Christians.

The origin of Paul’s hallucination, given that hallucinations are invariably grounded in some form of distorted reality (as per dreams), was quite probably what he already knew about Jesus' disciples wandering around Jerusalem talking about Jesus still being “with them”. After all, even today we get people who “talk to Jesus” and regard him as their “personal friend and savior” as though he was alive.

even if the vision or dream or other kind of revelation was sorta based on something he's heard of before, how much does it really need to match? I mean, I had a dream recently where The Rock was some sort of ancient kung-fu necromancer. (That's what you get for binging on action movies on Netflix, I guess. You end up making a hash of several unconnected ones.) Does that mean that any of that tells you anything about the real Dwayne Johnson?

Except that there IS a real Dwayne Johnson. So, the analogy is that you wrapped a real historical figure (The Rock) within your illusionary dream. YOU know it’s a dream whereas Paul thought his “Jesus dream” was real. AND Paul, being well educated and authoritative, convinced others that it was real. The rest (sadly) is history.

 

[HansMustermann]

@dejudge
Well, your original phrasing that, "It must never be forgotten that the people who believe the fabricated stories in the Bible did also believe similar inventions in Roman, Greek, Jewish and Egyptian mythology." is still somewhat poorly phrased and misleading.

More importantly, though, it's overextended and trying to connect things by no more than an association fallacy. Because not everything in a religion is the same kind of claim. Some are supernatural, some are not. And in fact, some are made up and some are not. You can't go,
P1: X and Y are religious claims and are false.
P2: Z is also a religious claim.
C: Therefore Z is also false.
Especially when they're not even the same kind of claim.

E.g., if you want to talk similarities to Egyptian, Jewish and Greek inventions:
- the deity Aten is made up. The monotheistic version being founded by a guy called Akhenaten in not.
- most of the Roman gods like Jupiter or Mars are made up. Deified emperors like Trajan or Marcus Aurelius are not.
Etc.

In fact, in both cases, there is a crucial difference between the former kind of claim and the latter one: historical necessity.

- there is no historical necessity for the Sun to be a god. There is a historical necessity for SOMEONE to invent that particular cult.
- there is no historical necessity for Jupiter to be real. There is one hell of a historical necessity for Trajan to be real. (If nothing else, SOMEONE had to physically lead an army into Dacia... twice.)

But even more importantly there, some are supernatural claims, some are mundane claims. That some kind of drama in the sky ended up with Amun dead and Aten having all the power is a supernatural claim. That some pharaoh called Akhenaten built temples to Aten is not.

Now of course, mundane claims can also be false, can be made up, etc. E.g., if I told someone that I saw a cow on the way to work today, it would be trivially false, because I'm not going anywhere with the Corona lockdown in effect, and I'm most certainly not seeing any cow in my living room. But you can't deduce that it's false just from the fact that some guy who believed that, also believes some mythical stuff about cows. (E.g., he's Hindu.)

I.e., you can't just lump Paul together with angels, just because they're in different books (note the plural) of the same religion and was believed by the same people.

 

[HansMustermann]

Except that there IS a real Dwayne Johnson. So, the analogy is that you wrapped a real historical figure (The Rock) within your illusionary dream. YOU know it’s a dream whereas Paul thought his “Jesus dream” was real. AND Paul, being well educated and authoritative, convinced others that it was real. The rest (sadly) is history.

Yes, but my point is that he's a different guy from the kung-fu necromancer in my dream. If I started a cult of that kung-fu necromancer and how he can give you eternal life because he's a lich king, and in the year 4000 all you had that mentioned Dwayne Johnson was that, you couldn't really reconstruct anything about him from that. You know, like people from bible studies want to reconstruct a "historical Jesus".

Trying to go, "oh yeah, the historical Dwayne Johnson must have been a cult leader" just because that's what my dream makes him, would be fundamentally flawed. Yet the same kind of reasoning is presented as perfectly valid when it's about Jesus.

But basically here's an easier example that I keep using. We know that the Mad Arab Abdul Al Hazred is based on Lovecraft's mom's maiden name, "Hazard". And is most likely inspired by her. Except she didn't live in the 8'th century, never wrote the Necronomicon (far as we know), didn't worship Cthulhu and Yog Sothoth, didn't explore underground catacombs in the ruins of Babylon, and we're pretty sure she wasn't devoured by invisible demons in Damascus.

Would you say that Lovecraft's mom is the "Historical Abdul Al Hazred"? If yes, I will happily grant that about that much match might (or might not) also exist for Jesus. If not, well, then you have a pretty good idea of what I object to about the Historical Jesuseseseses that bible studies guys reconstruct from the gospels.

 

[Tassman]

The Christian Bible [OT and NT] stories are always fabricated. They make stuff up because people of antiquity and even today believe them.

It must never be forgotten that the people who believe the fabricated stories in the Bible did also believe similar inventions in Roman, Greek, Jewish and Egyptian mythology.

But myths and legends and fantastical stories nevertheless had origins and motivation. With the Jesus story it was the yearning for the Messiah to overcome the evil Romans.

Why do you need to believe the obvious fiction stories in the NT contain historical accounts?

These magical stories did not arise in a vacuum; it’s interesting to try and understand why they did arise.

You seem to be doing what the authors of the Bible did.

Just trying to understand WHY the authors of the bible did what they did.

They just fabricated their own story because people would believe.

Why would they want to make people “believe” if they themselves didn’t believe – no matter how misguidedly?

You are suggesting Jesus was crucified without a shred of historical evidence simply because it seems believable to you today.

According to biblical scholars what we have are narratives set down 20-70 years after Jesus died by believers, which are largely dependent on tradition and hearsay. And that “tradition and hearsay” included crucifixion. There is no good reason to not accept in broad-brush terms such consistent references to a crucifixion. It wouldn’t have been unusual – it’s what Romans did to dissidents and life was cheap.

 

[HansMustermann]

Now I'm not saying it was impossible to get nailed by the Romans, but life actually wasn't THAT cheap. If Jesus were in fact innocent of anything except disagreeing with the local priests, it wasn't really enough any more to just have him killed. Not only we have examples in Josephus where people were NOT executed for such stuff (e.g., that "woe to Jerusalem" Jesus), but we actually have examples where the Romans got butthurt when the locals took the law in their own hands and executed someone for religious differences. There's a high priest that gets outright sacked and replaced for that kinda thing.

So, no, just being a dissident was not enough. Especially to go all the way up to crucifixion, you had to be an actual bandit or rebel or such.^(*)
And sure enough, a lot go, "yeah, so you know that driving the merchants out of the temple? Jesus must have led an armed attack on the temple, and got nailed for it." Which, fair enough, could get you on the fast track to getting nailed.

But that's creating a noteworthy Jesus, so now it brings us back the problem of how come we never heard of this big bad rebel leader?

ESPECIALLY if it's connected with the temple at all, Josephus was VERY interested, because he had to make everything a sign that God abandoned the temple, or the Jews acted in some way to make that happen, and now Vespasian was the real messiah. He even reports such stuff as lights seen at night, or the temple doors opening for no reason, as such signs. So he'd miss a major attack on the temple?

^(*) Unless you were a slave, that is. A slave could be just handed over by his master to be nailed. But a slave Jesus just taking a year or three off to wander around major cities, with a whole gaggle of followers, and be a public figure is also stretching suspension of disbelief a bit. Also, it wouldn't have warranted much of a trial. It would go more like, "Are these those runaways slaves? Yes? Ok, out of the door, line on the left, one cross each."