My comments on your Jesus historicity article:
Numerous errors in the current article...
There are numerous errors and overstatements in the current article on the existence of Jesus. How should this be addressed? I'd like to see a more balanced presentation of the various points, as opposed to what is currently simply a misguided polemic against the mythicist position that misrepresents many facts.
Here are some of the problems I see so far:
"The attestation that Jesus had brothers is attested across multiple sources, namely the Synoptic Gospels, the Gospel of John, Paul's epistles, and Josephus."
This is misleading to false, and indeed greatly overlooks serious scholarship.
The Gospel of Mark and the Gospel of Matthew name brothers of Jesus. The Gospel of Luke and the Gospel of John simply mention brothers, but don't name them. The author of Matthew clearly copied his information from the Gospel of Mark, and the references in Luke and John also follow this tradition. The Gospel of Mark, however, gives many reasons to consider it a purely fictitious story, in which characters are fabricated and play out roles in a narrative.
The claim that Josephus names a brother of Jesus is complicated by the fact that the passage in question is indeed in serious doubt as an interpolation.
As for Paul, Zindler's assessment (mentioned in the article) is correct. This is strongly supported by the fact that none of the other 1st century writers claimed that the James who was a leading figure was a brother of Jesus. If the person who Paul met was a real brother of Jesus, then the writers of the Gospels, Acts, the other Epistles, and various apocrypha, such as the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of the Hebrews were all either unaware of this fact, or indeed directly contradict it.
See my article here for a full discussion of this (search for "brother of the Lord"):
http://www.rationalrevolution.net/articles/jesus_myth_followup.htm
"The Gospels consistently report Jesus' hometown as being the "city" (really a obscure village) of Nazareth."
This is irrelevant. The Gospels are clearly stores that do portray Jesus as a real historical person, there is no debate about that. The Gospels of Matthew and Luke place Jesus in Nazareth because that's what the author of Mark did. The question is, why did the author of Mark make this claim.
"Now if Jesus really had been crucified, then it makes sense that the doctrine of his crucifixion would be there; the disciples were forced to deal with the crucifixion of their master, and the doctrine evolved from there. However, the prejudice against crucifixion makes it unlikely that anyone would have wanted to make up from whole cloth a religion with a crucifixion as its center."
This is not only pure speculation, but pure speculation from a totally uninformed opinion and no understanding of the messianic literature and beliefs of the time. Writings from Qumran and other messianic and apocalyptic writings of the time show an expectation that the savior, prophet, or "son of man", would be a despised person who would die a humiliated death at the hands of authorities (often divine). The "Suffering Servant" passage in Isaiah had been a motif for messianic writings for at least 100 years prior to the time of Paul.
Crucifixion, indeed, makes perfect sense as a mythical construct, because crucifixion was something a mode of death that was heavily associated with being executed by authorities. In addition, the people whom this savior was representing suffered crucifixion themselves. That this was a horrible means of death is what makes the entire story and symbolism make sense. I couldn't conceive of a mode of death that would be better suited to this story. This can also be compared to being sawed in half with a wooden saw in the Martyrdom of Isaiah story, written about one century before the Jesus story, and referred to in the Book of Hebrews. There was an expectation that true prophets would suffer humiliation and a painful death.
"How much impact on the historical record should Jesus have had?"
Dismissing the lack of evidence is not in itself a form of evidence.
"It is far more likely than not that Jesus of Nazareth existed as a human being."
I strongly disagree, and I disagree with the nature of this article. An article on this subject should be balanced and present all of the relevant information, not present straw men and poor arguments against a few points.
I would be happy to participate in writing a more balanced article, which I believe should neither take a position for or against historicity.
Malachi151 19:53, 6 May 2007 (CDT)
