What counts as a historical Jesus?

[Moss]

Why? If someone claims to have a qualification and uses that as a debate point, they need to back that up with some evidence. Anyone can claim anything on the internet, so that kind of talk is cheap. I'm sure he hasn't made that claim without basis, but it makes sense to ask him to substantiate it.

And I've been reading and studying this stuff for 25+ years and am pretty comfortable with my level of knowledge as an interested amateur thanks. I didn't claim to have a degree in the archaeology of the Middle East and biblical history, so I can't see what the fact I have a degree in English has to do with anything.

Do you have something of substance to say about any of the detailed arguments I've advanced so far or will you just be limiting yourself to petty one-line sniping?

Well, for one thing the lack of formal education in the sector seems to be the one thing you repeatedly held against Salm. Why this would not apply in the same way against you is beyond me, especially since you claim for yourself that a certain kind of amateur interest and knowledge of the relevant literature is sufficient to criticize him. The constant repetition of his amateur status does not add anything and detracts from the arguments you want to present.
No, I do not have anything significant to contribute to the discussion as I am just an interested amateur who wants to read actual arguments, not repeated emotive narratives that claim to have demolished the opposition. If your arguments are as good as you claim they are they should stand on their own, without all the narrative framing.

 

[TimONeill2]

Well, for one thing the lack of formal education in the sector seems to be the one thing you repeatedly held against Salm. Why this would not apply in the same way against you is beyond me, especially since you claim for yourself that a certain kind of amateur interest and knowledge of the relevant literature is sufficient to criticize him. The constant repetition of his amateur status does not add anything and detracts from the arguments you want to present.

I just explained to davefoc why I was contrasting his amateur status with the expert status of those he is trying to critique. As I said to him, if all I did was say he was wrong because he was an amateur than that would be a fallacious argument from authority. But I did much more than that. I only noted that this was yet another case of an amateur with an axe to grind trying to second guess experts because, as sceptics, that should always ring an alarm bell for us.

No, I do not have anything significant to contribute to the discussion as I am just an interested amateur who wants to read actual arguments, not repeated emotive narratives that claim to have demolished the opposition. If your arguments are as good as you claim they are they should stand on their own, without all the narrative framing.

Feel free to post your way and I'll continue to feel free to post mine. If you stick around you'll find I give plenty in the way of "actual arguments" and do so in some detail.

 

[davefoc]

In fact, most professional scholars in the strongest academic research departments do not make any large claims for each and every detail of the crucifixion, any more than they accept the magic/supernatural episodes. So anyone getting excited about any implausibilities in the crucifixion narrative isn't offering anything new that would surprise most modern scholars, who still view Jesus the human teacher as historic, in the least. Plenty of up-to-date peer-reviewed scholarship investigating the most plausible elements of the human Jesus biography reflects awareness not only of a sliding scale when it comes to the varying plausibility of a whole range of details in the narrative, but of a markedly varied assortment of different Greek styles often within one and the same Gospel.

These different styles range from highly literary to extremely colloquial. Moreover, the more colloquial the passage, the more often such passages involve what Jesus is saying more than what he is doing, the more often there are apparent Aramaicisms in the text, the more often the text depicts normal entirely human details, and the more the text comes off as something originally oral rather than written. This consilience of qualities points to the distinct possibility that the earliest textual strata reflect oral transmission of things Jesus actually said when his doings were largely transacted in Aramaic, when there was nothing the least bit supernatural about anything he did, and when he seems to have concentrated on teaching rather than stunts. The most literary quality is reserved for the most outlandish passages describing magic and the supernatural.

The takeaway from this is that Mark is probably the earliest Gospel as a whole, even though it already has some magic but not as much as in the later ones, and that the parallel sayings in Matt./Luke that are exclusively philosophical may be the earliest stratum of all, even as Matt./Luke are later Gospels as a whole with -- sure enough -- the introduction of extravagant elements like the Virgin Birth and post-Resurrection appearances at the end. John is most elaborate of all in literary style and -- no surprise -- the supernatural overwhelms practically everything else there.

The onus is on anyone who is ready to explain away the obvious coincidence that the more literary the style the more extravagant the details, and the more colloquial the style the more mundane the details. Anyone who ignores this aspect is not honestly addressing the textual evidence. Can anyone here account for this one-to-one correspondence other than by perceiving distinct chronological strata moving further and further from a normal human biography at the core?

Stone

You've touched on two topics, that I wanted to comment on.

Aramaic in the NT
This is an interesting area that I don't know much about. I hope there will be further discussion on this topic.

The implausible nature of the trial/crucifixion scenarios
I've thought a bit about this. Over the years I have created a rough outline in my mind of what I think is the most likely scenario for very early Christian history. One of the elements I have the most trouble dealing with in my outline is the trial and crucifixion. Every element of the trial seems implausible. It is certainly plausible that the Romans crucified the HJ, but if they did, why did they do it? If it was because Jesus was a rebel, then the whole issue of what would constitute an HJ comes into play. If Jesus was a rebel leader, a la Eisenman perhaps, then is it a reasonable claim that this rebel leader is the HJ? That seems like such a divergence from the Christian story that it is reasonable to ask whether the existence of such an individual could reasonably qualify as the HJ. And if the Romans didn't kill him because he was a rebel then why did they kill him? Maybe some kind of intrigue by the Jewish leaders? Maybe but I had relegated that to antisemitism that got inserted into the NT to satisfy the requirements of a Roman audience, but maybe it was real? Anyway I don't have much to say about this, but I am not sure what if anything can be reasonably guessed at about the trial and crucifixion beyond that the NT story seems wildly unlikely in the details.

 

[TimONeill2]

The implausible nature of the trial/crucifixion scenarios
I've thought a bit about this. Over the years I have created a rough outline in my mind of what I think is the most likely scenario for very early Christian history. One of the elements I have the most trouble dealing with in my outline is the trial and crucifixion. Every element of the trial seems implausible. It is certainly plausible that the Romans crucified the HJ, but if they did, why did they do it? If it was because Jesus was a rebel, then the whole issue of what would constitute an HJ comes into play. If Jesus was a rebel leader, a la Eisenman perhaps, then is it a reasonable claim that this rebel leader is the HJ? That seems like such a divergence from the Christian story that it is reasonable to ask whether the existence of such an individual could reasonably qualify as the HJ. And if the Romans didn't kill him because he was a rebel then why did they kill him? Maybe some kind of intrigue by the Jewish leaders? Maybe but I had relegated that to antisemitism that got inserted into the NT to satisfy the requirements of a Roman audience, but maybe it was real? Anyway I don't have much to say about this, but I am not sure what if anything can be reasonably guessed at about the trial and crucifixion beyond that the NT story seems wildly unlikely in the details.

The trial scenes in the gospels are certainly implausible in many details and this can be traced to gMark's likely context of composition. There are strong indications that gMark was written after 70 AD, and written directly after the First Jewish War (I can go into detail on that if you like). That would have been a very difficult environment in which to be trying to sell a belief in a saviour figure who was a crucified Jew to a Roman audience. So what we can see in gMark and then in the later gospels is a clear attempt to "explain" how Jesus came to be crucified while distancing him as far as possible from Jewish rebels or sedition against Rome.

This is why we have the fiction that Jesus was being accused of blasphemy but handed over to Pilate to get him to do the dirty work of execution. This is nonsense - the Sanhedrin had the power to execute people for blasphemy, so if that was the charge he would have been stoned to death, not crucified. This is also why we get the highly unlikely depiction of Pilate as a reluctant participant who gets bullied into executing Jesus - contrary to everything we know from other sources about this particularly ruthless Roman administrator. And it's why we get the final scene where the first person to acknowledge the crucified Jesus as Yahweh's anointed is not a Jew but the Roman centurion supervisinig the execution (Mark 15:39).

The elements in the trial and execution narratives which are clearly ahistorical all serve the same purpose - to distance Jesus from Jewish sedition, put the blame for his execution on the Jewish leaders and make the story as palatable as possible to a Roman audience.

Which brings us to your question about why he was executed. Despite what gMark and the other gospels claim, it was not "blasphemy" to claim to be the Messiah. gMark does seem to be preserving a historical element when it depicts the trail before the Sanhedrin centring on alleged predictions Jesus made about the fall of the Temple and, given the earlier (rather sanitised) account of Jesus attacking the money-changers, there is solid ground for assuming this was the real beef the Sadducees had with him.

So the idea that they would want to dispose of this Galilean rabble-rouser is at least plausible. As is the idea that they would want to hand him over to Pilate. The Prefect rarely came to Jerusalem, but he did so at Passover because it was a time when the Jews tended to get very worked up about freedom from foreign domination, given that was what the whole festival was about. So Pilate was in town with several cohorts of auxilia and in residence in the Fortress Antonia - right next to the Temple compound. We know from other sources that Pilate took a dim view of any whiff of rebellion and was happy to unleash his troops on civilians to nip any sign of sedition in the bud. So there was a strong incentive for the Sadducees to nab Jesus and hand him over to Pilate before Pilate started killing civilians first and asking questions later. Or never.

As for why Pilate had a problem with Jesus, he was a Roman aristocrat and administrator with no interest in Jewish theology. Jesus' pronouncements about the coming apocalyptic "kingship of God" many have been Jewish gobbledegook to Pilate, but the bit about God sweeping away the oppressors of Israel to establish this imminent eschatological kingdom would not have been. The later Christian traditions played up the "my kingdom is not of this world" stuff, but the fact was that the apocalypse Jesus and preachers like him proclaimed was of this world and did involve Israel's enemies being swept away by the hand of God. And the Romans had no time for people who preached stuff like that.

This is why he was crucified. gMark is clear that the charge written on the cross was "King of the Jews" - the Romans were ruthless about crucifying pretenders, even if they didn't understand the intricacies of Jewish apocalyptic theology.

 

[tsig]

The trial scenes in the gospels are certainly implausible in many details and this can be traced to gMark's likely context of composition. There are strong indications that gMark was written after 70 AD, and written directly after the First Jewish War (I can go into detail on that if you like). That would have been a very difficult environment in which to be trying to sell a belief in a saviour figure who was a crucified Jew to a Roman audience. So what we can see in gMark and then in the later gospels is a clear attempt to "explain" how Jesus came to be crucified while distancing him as far as possible from Jewish rebels or sedition against Rome.

This is why we have the fiction that Jesus was being accused of blasphemy but handed over to Pilate to get him to do the dirty work of execution. This is nonsense - the Sanhedrin had the power to execute people for blasphemy, so if that was the charge he would have been stoned to death, not crucified. This is also why we get the highly unlikely depiction of Pilate as a reluctant participant who gets bullied into executing Jesus - contrary to everything we know from other sources about this particularly ruthless Roman administrator. And it's why we get the final scene where the first person to acknowledge the crucified Jesus as Yahweh's anointed is not a Jew but the Roman centurion supervisinig the execution (Mark 15:39).

The elements in the trial and execution narratives which are clearly ahistorical all serve the same purpose - to distance Jesus from Jewish sedition, put the blame for his execution on the Jewish leaders and make the story as palatable as possible to a Roman audience.

Which brings us to your question about why he was executed. Despite what gMark and the other gospels claim, it was not "blasphemy" to claim to be the Messiah. gMark does seem to be preserving a historical element when it depicts the trail before the Sanhedrin centring on alleged predictions Jesus made about the fall of the Temple and, given the earlier (rather sanitised) account of Jesus attacking the money-changers, there is solid ground for assuming this was the real beef the Sadducees had with him.

So the idea that they would want to dispose of this Galilean rabble-rouser is at least plausible. As is the idea that they would want to hand him over to Pilate. The Prefect rarely came to Jerusalem, but he did so at Passover because it was a time when the Jews tended to get very worked up about freedom from foreign domination, given that was what the whole festival was about. So Pilate was in town with several cohorts of auxilia and in residence in the Fortress Antonia - right next to the Temple compound. We know from other sources that Pilate took a dim view of any whiff of rebellion and was happy to unleash his troops on civilians to nip any sign of sedition in the bud. So there was a strong incentive for the Sadducees to nab Jesus and hand him over to Pilate before Pilate started killing civilians first and asking questions later. Or never.

As for why Pilate had a problem with Jesus, he was a Roman aristocrat and administrator with no interest in Jewish theology. Jesus' pronouncements about the coming apocalyptic "kingship of God" many have been Jewish gobbledegook to Pilate, but the bit about God sweeping away the oppressors of Israel to establish this imminent eschatological kingdom would not have been. The later Christian traditions played up the "my kingdom is not of this world" stuff, but the fact was that the apocalypse Jesus and preachers like him proclaimed was of this world and did involve Israel's enemies being swept away by the hand of God. And the Romans had no time for people who preached stuff like that.

This is why he was crucified. gMark is clear that the charge written on the cross was "King of the Jews" - the Romans were ruthless about crucifying pretenders, even if they didn't understand the intricacies of Jewish apocalyptic theology.

So Jesus got executed because he violated Roman laws?

 

[TimONeill2]

So Jesus got executed because he violated Roman laws?

That's what crucifixion was all about. It was considered the worst possible form of execution and was reserved for pirates, escaped slaves and for rebels against the Empire.

 

[maximara]

I'm "diverting" you? Sorry, but the whole Nazareth thing was first raised by Hans - I simply challenged him to back it up with evidence (partly because it made a nice change from his usual dodging and weaving).

No, Hans brought up many points and you latched on this one because you really don't have arguments regarding the other stuff.

We know from John Frum that an inspired person can try to take on the role of a mythical person in a relatively short time. Again, on every point where we can actually check them the Gospels give us social-political nonsense.

The birth stories are garbage (Luke is better then Matthew but still has huge social-political problems) and the trial-crucifixion is similar social-political impossibility. Everything points to the Gospels being a 2nd century equivalent of dime novesl that used historical person as their main character. Just because Jesse James, Wild Bill Hickok, and Calamity Jane existed doesn't mean any of the dime novels about them are worth beans as history. The same is true of the Gospels Jesus.

 

[TimONeill2]

No, Hans brought up many points and you latched on this one because you really don't have arguments regarding the other stuff.

I tackled that one in detail because I was asked to. And stick around - I have plenty of arguments regarding "the other stuff".

We know from John Frum that an inspired person can try to take on the role of a mythical person in a relatively short time.

Yes we do. And we also know that historical people can also have supernatural claims about them in a relatively short time as well.

Again, on every point where we can actually check them the Gospels give us social-political nonsense.

Not true. There's actually quite a bit in there which makes sense as being historical in origin.

The birth stories are garbage (Luke is better then Matthew but still has huge social-political problems)

I'm not sure what "social-political problems" means here, but they certainly have historical problems. The key point here is why they are telling these stories about him. The only point on which they overlap is that they have a guy who grew up in Nazareth being born in Bethlehem, except they tell contradictory and mutually exclusive stories to achieve this. This makes the most sense if they had to do this because Jesus was from Nazareth and they were countering the argument that he couldn't be the Messiah because he was from the wrong town in the wrong part of Jewish territory. Do you have an alternative explanation?

and the trial-crucifixion is similar social-political impossibility.

Though as I argued for davefoc above, it contains elements under the implausible elements that make sense (and were awkward for the gospel writers).

Everything points to the Gospels being a 2nd century equivalent of dime novesl that used historical person as their main character. Just because Jesse James, Wild Bill Hickok, and Calamity Jane existed doesn't mean any of the dime novels about them are worth beans as history. The same is true of the Gospels Jesus.

A bold assertion. "Everything" doesn't actually point that way at all.

 

[maximara]

That's what crucifixion was all about. It was considered the worst possible form of execution and was reserved for pirates, escaped slaves and for rebels against the Empire.

Right, but the question is did it really happen or was it created so the Jesus portrayed matched Paul's earlier accounts?

As I stated before

"The (Christ) myth theory is not concerned to deny such a possibility (of there being a flesh and blood Jesus being behind the Gospels story). What the (Christ) myth theory denies is that Christianity can be traced to a personal founder who taught as reported in the Gospels and was put to death in the circumstances there recorded."

As I said before you could have a Jesus who was born c 12 BCE in the small town of Cana, who preached a few words of wisdom to small crowds of no more than 10 people at a time, and died due to being run over by a chariot at the age of 50 but it would still make the Gospel Jesus mythical and nonhistorical because this historical Jesus did not teach as reported in the Gospels nor was put to death in the circumstances there recorded.
Again we go back to Biblical scholar I. Howard Marshall's two ways Jesus could be historical which TimONeill2 and those like him avoid like the plague:

1. Jesus existed, rather than being a totally fictional creation like King Lear or Dr. Who,

or

2. The Gospels accounts give a reasonable account of historical events, rather than being unverifiable legends such as those surrounding King Arthur.


Note Marshall is saying totally fictional creation not fictionalized. The idea that the Gospels are a fictionalized account of Jesus makes Jesus non-historical under Marshall's second definition much the same way as Shakespeare's Richard III is non-historical.

No sane person argues that Richard III himself didn't exist but similarly no sane person argues that Shakespeare's version is historical.

Another even more extreme example is Vlad III of Wallachia who is better know today by his last name: Dracula. Stoker's version and the real Dracula are two totally different people connected largely by description and name.

 

[TimONeill2]

Right, but the question is did it really happen or was it created so the Jesus portrayed matched Paul's earlier accounts?

And Paul's earlier accounts are based on ... ?

As I said before you could have a Jesus who was born c 12 BCE in the small town of Cana, who preached a few words of wisdom to small crowds of no more than 10 people at a time, and died due to being run over by a chariot at the age of 50 but it would still make the Gospel Jesus mythical and nonhistorical because this historical Jesus did not teach as reported in the Gospels nor was put to death in the circumstances there recorded.

If the historical Jesus was born in Cana etc, why didn't the later stories describe all that or something close to it rather than the stories we have?

Again we go back to Biblical scholar I. Howard Marshall's two ways Jesus could be historical which TimONeill2 and those like him avoid like the plague:

Who are you talking to? You can address me directly - I'm right here.

1. Jesus existed, rather than being a totally fictional creation like King Lear or Dr. Who,

or

2. The Gospels accounts give a reasonable account of historical events, rather than being unverifiable legends such as those surrounding King Arthur.

What exactly am I supposedly "avoiding" here?

 

[davefoc]

[general discussion about the implausibility of the gospel trial descriptions]

Which brings us to your question about why he was executed. Despite what gMark and the other gospels claim, it was not "blasphemy" to claim to be the Messiah. gMark does seem to be preserving a historical element when it depicts the trail before the Sanhedrin centring on alleged predictions Jesus made about the fall of the Temple and, given the earlier (rather sanitised) account of Jesus attacking the money-changers, there is solid ground for assuming this was the real beef the Sadducees had with him.

So the idea that they would want to dispose of this Galilean rabble-rouser is at least plausible. As is the idea that they would want to hand him over to Pilate. The Prefect rarely came to Jerusalem, but he did so at Passover because it was a time when the Jews tended to get very worked up about freedom from foreign domination, given that was what the whole festival was about. So Pilate was in town with several cohorts of auxilia and in residence in the Fortress Antonia - right next to the Temple compound. We know from other sources that Pilate took a dim view of any whiff of rebellion and was happy to unleash his troops on civilians to nip any sign of sedition in the bud. So there was a strong incentive for the Sadducees to nab Jesus and hand him over to Pilate before Pilate started killing civilians first and asking questions later. Or never.

As for why Pilate had a problem with Jesus, he was a Roman aristocrat and administrator with no interest in Jewish theology. Jesus' pronouncements about the coming apocalyptic "kingship of God" many have been Jewish gobbledegook to Pilate, but the bit about God sweeping away the oppressors of Israel to establish this imminent eschatological kingdom would not have been. The later Christian traditions played up the "my kingdom is not of this world" stuff, but the fact was that the apocalypse Jesus and preachers like him proclaimed was of this world and did involve Israel's enemies being swept away by the hand of God. And the Romans had no time for people who preached stuff like that.

This is why he was crucified. gMark is clear that the charge written on the cross was "King of the Jews" - the Romans were ruthless about crucifying pretenders, even if they didn't understand the intricacies of Jewish apocalyptic theology.

This sounds like a Jesus was a rebel theory. And you make it sound plausible, but there are difficulties. Jesus has to be famous enough that Pilate would give a crap about him but not so famous that anybody wrote about him in his own time. Alternatively, if I understand Eisenman's theory, he believes that the rebel sect that Jesus was a part of (perhaps the leader?) was mentioned in Jesus' own time, it is just that they didn't call themselves something that is easily identified as the Jesus group we identify with the gospels.

Either way, your post suggests a level of confidence in your own views that doesn't seem justifiable to me by the available evidence. Yes, something like that might have happened but you have inferred it from a text for which you are disregarding most of the content. I am skeptical that anything is knowable about first century Christianity with that degree of confidence.

 

[davefoc]

...

"The (Christ) myth theory is not concerned to deny such a possibility (of there being a flesh and blood Jesus being behind the Gospels story). What the (Christ) myth theory denies is that Christianity can be traced to a personal founder who taught as reported in the Gospels and was put to death in the circumstances there recorded."

I know you said something like this earlier. The problem with it with regards to this thread is that most of the people participating in this thread, including perhaps even TimONeill2, would be in the Christ myth camp if the Christ myth theory is defined as you do. I suspect nobody participating in this thread believes that Christianity was founded by a charismatic influential Jesus character whose message was so powerful that it led to a new religion.

FWIW, that's what I assumed when I first began to look into early Christian history seven or so years ago. The questions I was trying to get an answer to were how was this guy so charismatic that he could inspire people not local to him to join a new religion and why if he was that powerfully influential didn't he inspire the people living near him to be part of that religion. I quickly came to understand that my question contained a faulty assumption. i.e. Jesus didn't create Christianity which is what I think anybody that has studied this a bit and that has a non-religious world view comes to understand almost immediately when they look into it.

 

[TimONeill2]

This sounds like a Jesus was a rebel theory.

Well, not exactly. There was almost certainly a socio-political element to his eschatological ideas about the coming kingship/"kingdom" of Yahweh (there usually is in millenarian movements), but I can't see much to indicate that Jesus was preaching a Bar Kokhba-style uprising against the Romans. He is depicted as preaching that Yahweh was going to intervene in history and very soon. This involved, amongst other things, the enemies of Israel being swept away by Yahweh and his angels. As far as the Romans were concerned, this was sedition even if he wasn't preaching an armed uprising.

And you make it sound plausible, but there are difficulties. Jesus has to be famous enough that Pilate would give a crap about him but not so famous that anybody wrote about him in his own time.

In other words, exactly like the other such preacher-prophets we know about from the same period. Several of them seem to have been much more significant than Jesus. In 36 AD a Samaritan prophet claimed he was going to perform a miracle on Mount Gerizim and "a great multitude" (Josephus, Antiquities, XVIII: 85-87) assembled to rally to him. Pilate certainly "gave a crap" about this guy and attacked him and his followers with both cavalry and heavy infantry. He was significant enough for the Romans to need to mobilise troops, yet no-one wrote about him in his own time either.

Ditto for the Egyptian prophet (Josephus, XX: 169-171) and for Theudas (Josephus XX: 97-98). Both were a far bigger deal than Jesus and both had to have troops mobilised against them yet neither of them were written about in their own time. Therefore we should have no expectation that Jesus, who was much less of a big deal it seems, should be mentioned by contemporary sources if these three were not.

Alternatively, if I understand Eisenman's theory, he believes that the rebel sect that Jesus was a part of (perhaps the leader?) was mentioned in Jesus' own time, it is just that they didn't call themselves something that is easily identified as the Jesus group we identify with the gospels.

Yes, well let's just say that Eisenman's stuff isn't exactly well regarded.

Either way, your post suggests a level of confidence in your own views that doesn't seem justifiable to me by the available evidence. Yes, something like that might have happened but you have inferred it from a text for which you are disregarding most of the content. I am skeptical that anything is knowable about first century Christianity with that degree of confidence.

I put a lot of the appropriate and usual "perhapses" etc in there. But I was giving a bald summary. I can elaborate on how and why these things are likely. Tell me which parts in particular you found unjustifiable and I'll go into detail on those points.

 

[davefoc]

...


I put a lot of the appropriate and usual "perhapses" etc in there. But I was giving a bald summary. I can elaborate on how and why these things are likely. Tell me which parts in particular you found unjustifiable and I'll go into detail on those points.

I just reread your post and I only noticed one "perhapses" equivocation. I would have been more comfortable with your post if you had at least two "perhapses". Still, I like the the theory. Jesus is rabble rouser sort of fellow. Some Jewish religious leaders don't like him, they trump up some anti empire crimes by Jesus and they turn him over to Pilate as a kill two birds with one stone strategy. They get rid of Jesus and they mollify Pilate.

It seems like the most likely possibility given what we know, but my guess is that it didn't happen that way. I don't think we know enough to make reliable guesses about this and there are a lot of possibilities, many of which we don't know enough about to know that they are even a possibility.

 

[TimONeill2]

It seems like the most likely possibility given what we know, but my guess is that it didn't happen that way. I don't think we know enough to make reliable guesses about this and there are a lot of possibilities, many of which we don't know enough about to know that they are even a possibility.

We can only use the material available to us. But I'm not sure I understand how you juggle "it seems most likely" and "but my guess is it didn't happen that way". What exactly is that guess based on?

 

[davefoc]

We can only use the material available to us. But I'm not sure I understand how you juggle "it seems most likely" and "but my guess is it didn't happen that way". What exactly is that guess based on?

I meant that of the possibilities I am aware of it seems like the most likely, but my guess is that the sum of all the other possibilities (known and not known by me) is greater than this particular one. I really don't know though, perhaps people more informed about this than myself really have sussed out a reasonable approximation of the truth and I just don't recognize it.

I would like to restate your scenario to make sure I understand it:

Jesus is a minor rabble rouser that is involved to a degree in pushing for Jewish independence from the Romans. The Jewish religious leaders decide to turn him over to Pilate because they are looking to curry favor with Pilate by turning over malcontents and possibly because Jesus is pissing them off by promoting religious ideas that conflict with their livelihood.

I guess my main objection to this idea is that it involves speculation not directly backed by evidence. It is just a read between the lines attempt to try to figure out what really happened idea and even if that is the best fit scenario for the information that we have, we don't have the luxury of finding out whether we're close or not because the available reliable evidence is so limited about all this.

The fact that the gospels are largely fiction and are written by people displaced in time, location and language by the events in question makes me skeptical about any inferences drawn about the true nature of Jesus and the events of his life from the NT.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

If the historical Jesus was born in Cana etc, why didn't the later stories describe all that or something close to it rather than the stories we have?

But that's exactly a begging the question fallacy. To get that the Gospels would describe exactly where Jesus is from, you need to assume that the Gospels were reliable and accurate in the first place. But that is exactly the question. You can't support gospel accuracy by implicitly assuming accuracy in the first place.

That, in a nutshell, is also why historians like to have corroborating evidence. You can support the idea that source X is accurate at all about event Y, by the fact that an independent and at least somewhat reliable source Z describes the same event Y. You can't support the accuracy of source X by ASSUMING just that as a premise.

 

[TimONeill2]

I would like to restate your scenario to make sure I understand it:

Jesus is a minor rabble rouser that is involved to a degree in pushing for Jewish independence from the Romans.

Ummm, no. He's a minor rabble rouser who preaches that the end of the world is coming any day now. Or rather the end of this world. There was a belief at the time that the Jews had been allowed to be oppressed by a succession of conquerors because of their unfaithfulness to Yahweh. But it was believed that some time soon Yahweh would raise up an "anointed one" (which is what "Messiah" means) who would usher in the day when Yahweh reasserts his power in the world, destroy the oppressors of Isreal, raise the dead for a final judgement, cast those regarded as unrighteous into Hell and then rule a renewed creation through his Messiah. All of Jesus' teachings are about this coming "kingship of Yahweh, which is rendered "kingdom of God" or "kingdom of Heaven" in the gospels.

The Jewish religious leaders decide to turn him over to Pilate because they are looking to curry favor with Pilate by turning over malcontents

They turn him over because Pilate was known for group reprisals in response to any kind of unrest, even simple protests.

and possibly because Jesus is pissing them off by promoting religious ideas that conflict with their livelihood.

More like their religio-political authority, actually.

I guess my main objection to this idea is that it involves speculation not directly backed by evidence.

Er, no it doesn't. It's right there in the accounts we have.

It is just a read between the lines attempt to try to figure out what really happened idea and even if that is the best fit scenario for the information that we have, we don't have the luxury of finding out whether we're close or not because the available reliable evidence is so limited about all this.

Yes, that's the study of ancient history.

The fact that the gospels are largely fiction and are written by people displaced in time, location and language by the events in question makes me skeptical about any inferences drawn about the true nature of Jesus and the events of his life from the NT.

"Largely fiction" is an assumption. And as ancient source material goes, a mere handful of decades after the fact is actually better than we usually have.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

You've touched on two topics, that I wanted to comment on.

Aramaic in the NT
This is an interesting area that I don't know much about. I hope there will be further discussion on this topic.

There are a couple of instances where it makes sense that it comes from Aramaic or Hebrew. Bearing in mind that the two languages were so similar that most of the time if someone tries to nail it as exactly Aramaic or exactly Hebrew, they're overstating it.

Edit: in modern terms, imagine I had a halluci... err... vision, and wrote about an Italian messiah, based on some phrases out of context... err... "prophecies" in the Vulgate. For some things you might be able to tell whether my English phrase can't come from modern Italian, or can't come from classical Latin, but for a whole lot of stuff you wouldn't be able to really tell which. That's pretty much the problem with Hebrew vs Aramaic.

But it's kinda important to remember that, because a lot of claims boil down to, "it comes from Aramaic, therefore Jesus said it", which, in a addition to the obvious problem, is begging the question in identifying the language as Aramaic. The reasoning assumes that it was said in Palestine, where Aramaic was the language and Hebrew was just a dead liturgical language, as opposed to coming from some non-canon "prophecy" in Hebrew that can't originate with Jesus.

Anyway, probably the most obvious is the "son of man" phrase which later the church took as a title for the Messiah. (And we even saw someone on this forum claiming that Jesus was claiming a greater title with that than even son of god) But actually in BOTH Aramaic and Hebrew, "son of man" was just a sort of kenning for "man". They used it for more than "man" though. E.g., "the son of a donkey" construct worked the same.

So for example when Mark makes Jesus say, in Mark 2:27-28:

27. Then he said to them, "The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.

28. So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath."​

It really makes no logical sense. But in Aramaic or Hebrew it would just mean "The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So man is Lord even of the Sabbath." The "son of man" was just a literary device to avoid repeating "man" ad nauseam. Ah-ha. Now it makes sense. But it suddenly stopped being some claim about Jesus's authority over Sabbath, and it's just a generic way of saying, "screw this, it's ok to break the Sabbath."

That said, the criterion is often abused for Jesus alone to mean something it really doesn't: support a character as true.

Actually the criterion is a solid and rational one to EXCLUDE stuff that couldn't have been said in a particular language. E.g., John's "born again" conversation is based on a pun that only worked that way in Greek, and would definitely not worked that way in Aramaic. So we can be pretty sure that it wouldn't have been said in a conversation in Aramaic.

The criterion is used to flag something as probably FALSE, not to support it as probably TRUE.

The reason is pretty obvious. Using an expression that came from another language, doesn't actually mean that one can narrow who said it, or even that it was actually said by anyone else than the author writing that stuff. E.g., just because Pitr from the User Friendly web-comic uses the occasional Russian words or stereotypical Russian constructs, doesn't mean that there was a historical Pitr actually saying that.

 

[davefoc]

Mostly I'm prepared to agree to disagree with the faith that you have that it is possible to derive reliable information out of the NT gospels, but a few responses:

The study of very early Christian history is like other ancient history study
There is a huge difference. People that are studied from ancient history were usually famous in their own time. Usually there is no doubt that they existed and they did things that had to be done by somebody so that even if they didn't exist somebody did the acts attributed to them. It is likely that Jesus did nothing that made him particularly famous in his own time and we have no corroboration outside the NT that most of the things reported in the NT happened. Stuff written well after his death by people separated by language, distance and time from a hypothetical Jesus character are particularly unreliable sources when there is no way to corroborate their claims and their claims are made as part of an effort to promote a new religion.

The NT is largely fictional
You seem to be raising some kind of semantic point that I don't get on this. The birth narrative is generally believed to be complete fiction. All the supernatural events didn't happen. At the least the long passages that purportedly contain Jesus speeches are likely to be fictional given the inability of people to record speeches. Where the gospels conflict with each other at most only one is accurate. Some of the passages contain conversations that the author couldn't possibly have overheard. Every aspect of the trial narrative is suspect. There are conflicts with geography. The genealogy stuff is almost certainly made up. The stuff about the twelve apostles is probably fictional. There is not much left of the gospels after all the probably false material is removed and given that, it seems like characterizing them as largely fictional would be correct by any normal meaning of that expression.