What counts as a historical Jesus?

[Piggy]

Well, yes, but Paul doesn't mangle "son of man" that way. It only appears in texts by Greeks for Greeks. In fact, IIRC only in the gospels. Even the other guys writing epistles don't use that.

And, as I was saying, I have no problem imagining that Greeks would mangle that translation. I'm just not sure someone can be that sure that Jesus himself did that, as opposed to being just that: someone mangling it later. ETA: presumably Mark, since he's the first one to use that.

You're not making any sense, Hans.

You seem to be assuming that Jesus was some sort of post-Temple Rabbi. He wasn't.

Like I said, the situation at that time with regard to the phrase was much as it is with señor in Spanish today, which can mean either some random person or God, depending on context.

Nobody had to "mangle" anything… that was simply how usage of the term had evolved at that time.

 

[Piggy]

Please don't tell me what I believe, it's extremely rude because it implies I am deliberately lying.

As far as I know there are no accounts of Jesus written by eyewitnesses, if you have any now would be a good time to produce them.

Claiming Paul knew Jesus' brother is already assuming that Jesus existed.

"Assume"
There's the problem with your argument.

No, it's not assuming because we have solid evidence that Paul knew Jesus's brother, since he discusses it in his letters as a matter of course.

And I don't think you're lying, I think you're engaging in cognitive dissonance.

How can you really believe that we should assume that everyone in history for whom we don't have direct primary evidence or references should be assumed not to be real?

A: You can't, and you don't.

So attempting to apply such an absurd standard in this case is simply ridiculous.

That's not how it works.

You look at the available evidence and go where it leads.

You do not start out asking for an arbitrary (and highly rare) type of evidence, then draw an unwarranted conclusion when you don't find it.

 

[HansMustermann]

And in Call Of Cthulhu we see Francis Wayland Thurston discussing his late uncle, the professor Angell, and his studies, or the sailor Gustaf Johansen as a matter of course. It doesn't mean that's "solid evidence" that either of the three existed.

Or to use a more ancient example, Plato has Timaeus, Critias and Socrates talking in two books. And not only that, but Critias mentions as a matter of fact that he learned his story from Solon. We can be pretty sure that it's made up, because there's no way Critias could be so old as to be talking both to Socrates and to Solon. We also tend to take Timaeus as made up, because nobody but Plato seems to have ever heard of such a great philosopher.

At any rate, I could even understand taking him tentatively as a real person, but using Paul's mention of James as "solid evidence" that Paul didn't make up James is as circular as it gets. That's not "solid evidence", that's just wanting to believe it.

You know, since you accuse others of cognitive dissonance.

 

[Piggy]

What's the evidence that backs up your scenario?

If you don't wish to type it out again, could you link to where you have presented the evidence before?

We'll have to take it in parts.

The evidence for all this is not easy to get at. It's history, after all, not physics, so it can only be explained via the messy details… you never get an elegant theory and revealing experiment that can show it in an instant.

Going through all that will take some time, but I can take it in parts, if you like.

But first let me note that two of the most important pieces of evidence are, in some ways, invisible… at least at first glance.

They are context and convergence.

The thing about this scenario is that it not only conforms to all the various pieces and types of evidence we have (convergence), but it's also entirely mundane (context) which is to say that there are no surprises here.

For example, if we find letters referring to an American soldier during the Civil War, and those letters tell us that he was a farmer, in his late 20s, a Christian, with a wife and a couple of kids, well, what's to doubt? Especially if unconnected sources agree, and we have photos or other types of evidence that support these references.

However, if we find another source referring to this soldier, and it reports great heroic deeds by him, and yet we find no reference to such deeds in earlier letters by others, and no reference in any local newspapers of the time, and the accounts of his heroism are in some ways contradictory or implausible or if they get facts wrong about the battle, and the author of these accounts is the promoter of a traveling show in which this fellow works as a sharp-shooting act, then we see that source for what it is, an attempt to portray an ordinary soldier as a hero.

That's how textual criticism of ancient literature works, at least in part and as it relates to this kind of question. And doing this work for ancient texts from ancient cultures requires the cooperation of linguists, archaeologists, historians, and other specialists in order to tease out the facts about the texts (who made them, when, where, why, for whom, based on what?) and place them in the wider context of time, geography, politics, and culture.

So, why do we believe that he was a Galilean Jew raised in Nazareth?

Well, keeping in mind that historical evidence is cumulative, and no single piece stands on its own….

1. That what everybody says.

2. There is nothing to be gained by making this claim if it's not true. There is nothing special about being from Nazareth.

3. There are efforts to explain it away.

For example, we find two distinct and entirely implausible stories that arise in the next generation or two after the death of Jesus, which place his birth in Bethlehem in order to conform with a prophecy, and which then have his family move to (or back to) Galilee where he grows up.

The only prooftext offered regarding his origins in Nazareth -- prooftexts are citations of scripture showing how an event comports with prophecy -- is from some obscure rabbinical source (or some such) that is now lost to us, and appears to be rather clumsily shoe-horned in to fit, saying that he would be called a Nazarine, which is a far cry from a Biblical citation saying "he will come from Nazareth".

If Jesus had not been from Nazareth, nobody would have gone to such trouble -- or any trouble -- to explain that fact away. They would just have never made the claim in the first place.

4. Given the politics and culture of the time, it's not at all surprising that an apocalyptic holy man from Galilee would emerge from John's group to gather his own following and end up crucified by Pilate at Passover for preaching that the Kingdom of God was about to arrive and the high would be laid low and the lowly would be exalted.

In short, Jesus being from Nazareth in Galilee fits everything we know, is not in the least surprising, and neatly explains why later Christians invented the particular birth narratives that they did, and why the clumsy prooftext appears.

There is simply no good reason to doubt it, and every reason to believe it.

OK, got obligations to keep, more later.

 

[HansMustermann]

You're not making any sense, Hans.

You seem to be assuming that Jesus was some sort of post-Temple Rabbi. He wasn't.

Like I said, the situation at that time with regard to the phrase was much as it is with señor in Spanish today, which can mean either some random person or God, depending on context.

Nobody had to "mangle" anything… that was simply how usage of the term had evolved at that time.

Evidence? Any use in Hebrew or Aramaic outside of one portion of Enoch... that we actually don't have in Hebrew or Aramaic, that meant that? Any evidence that Jesus was going by Enoch?

Because one use in one document that wasn't even part of the canon, doesn't make it THE established meaning.

And at that, a book of that text which is preserved only in an Ethiopic version, not in Hebrew or Aramaic. On the contrary, when we look at what comes from Israel, we don't find that particular book among for example the Dead Sea Scrolls. So we don't even know that anyone was taking that particular book from Enoch seriously enough to copy it, much less that anything from it (Son Of Man included) was actually taken as THE canon idea about the messiah.

 

[Piggy]

The turning over the tables of the merchants in the Temple intrigues me as something a historical and angered man would do. One should expect that the Son of God would have done much worse to the merchants, at least turning them into pigs or whatever.

Well, you're misunderstanding what a Son of God is at that time.

In the Jewish tradition, a Son of God is one adopted by God for a special relationship, and it is used to refer to kings, priests, prophets, even collectively to the Jewish people. It's used in other cultures of the time as well.

The followers of Jesus believed he had been chosen by God to bring word of the coming of the Kingdom of God on Earth in their lifetimes, which would certainly have made him a prophetic Son of God in their eyes.

The Essenes had their own Son of God, and predicted the coming of two Messiahs, a priest and a warrior.

The notion of Jesus as an actual offspring of God, fathered by God and a woman, came later as Christianity spread to the "God-fearers", pagans who worshipped with the Jews.

What most likely happened in the Temple compound, if anything, is that Jesus caused a ruckus with some of the money changers or vendors in the colonnade. Given his background as an apocalyptic Galilean peasant whose own chosen prophet was killed by Herod, during a time when the Temple priesthood was not Biblically legitimate, it's no surprise that he might have a bone to pick with these folks.

Of course, by the time John get hold of the story a couple of generations later, Jesus is running folks out of the Temple with bullwhips.

In reality, it would be more like an angry fan knocking over things at a hot dog stand in a huge NFL stadium.

 

[Piggy]

And in Call Of Cthulhu we see Francis Wayland Thurston discussing his late uncle, the professor Angell, and his studies, or the sailor Gustaf Johansen as a matter of course. It doesn't mean that's "solid evidence" that either of the three existed.

Or to use a more ancient example, Plato has Timaeus, Critias and Socrates talking in two books. And not only that, but Critias mentions as a matter of fact that he learned his story from Solon. We can be pretty sure that it's made up, because there's no way Critias could be so old as to be talking both to Socrates and to Solon. We also tend to take Timaeus as made up, because nobody but Plato seems to have ever heard of such a great philosopher.

At any rate, I could even understand taking him tentatively as a real person, but using Paul's mention of James as "solid evidence" that Paul didn't make up James is as circular as it gets. That's not "solid evidence", that's just wanting to believe it.

You know, since you accuse others of cognitive dissonance.

Well, if you insist on ignoring genre, I suppose that might make some kind of sense.

But of course, if you ignore genre, you will come to absurd conclusions.

You're pretending that there's some way in which we can compare those writings like that, but even you should know that we can't.

When Paul writes to the churches about his interactions with James and Peter and others, there's simply no reason to believe that he's lying.

Do you have any reason to believe he's lying? Or more to the point, do you have a coherent explanation for all we know in which it's true that Paul is lying?

I can tell you right now that you don't.

 

[Piggy]

Evidence? Any use in Hebrew or Aramaic outside of one portion of Enoch... that we actually don't have in Hebrew or Aramaic, that meant that? Any evidence that Jesus was going by Enoch?

Because one use in one document that wasn't even part of the canon, doesn't make it THE established meaning.

And at that, a book of that text which is preserved only in an Ethiopic version, not in Hebrew or Aramaic. On the contrary, when we look at what comes from Israel, we don't find that particular book among for example the Dead Sea Scrolls. So we don't even know that anyone was taking that particular book from Enoch seriously enough to copy it, much less that anything from it (Son Of Man) included was actually taken as THE canon idea about the messiah.

The earliest Christian beliefs are drenched in Enoch.

Look, I'm not going to argue this point with you, because discussions with you have no end, regardless.

If you want to look at it through your soda straw, go right ahead, you can believe what you like.

It might disconcert you to know that scholars of the Ancient Near East don't doubt that the Son of Man was an identifiable figure in Jewish apocalyptic thought at the time of Jesus.

It might, but I doubt it will.

You apparently want reams of ancient literature on the topic as evidence, but I suspect it's just your typical pattern of demanding particular types of evidence which would be great if we had them but which in reality nobody expects to find.

 

[tsig]

Well, you're misunderstanding what a Son of God is at that time.

In the Jewish tradition, a Son of God is one adopted by God for a special relationship, and it is used to refer to kings, priests, prophets, even collectively to the Jewish people. It's used in other cultures of the time as well.

The followers of Jesus believed he had been chosen by God to bring word of the coming of the Kingdom of God on Earth in their lifetimes, which would certainly have made him a prophetic Son of God in their eyes.

The Essenes had their own Son of God, and predicted the coming of two Messiahs, a priest and a warrior.

The notion of Jesus as an actual offspring of God, fathered by God and a woman, came later as Christianity spread to the "God-fearers", pagans who worshipped with the Jews.

What most likely happened in the Temple compound, if anything, is that Jesus caused a ruckus with some of the money changers or vendors in the colonnade. Given his background as an apocalyptic Galilean peasant whose own chosen prophet was killed by Herod, during a time when the Temple priesthood was not Biblically legitimate, it's no surprise that he might have a bone to pick with these folks.

Of course, by the time John get hold of the story a couple of generations later, Jesus is running folks out of the Temple with bullwhips.

In reality, it would be more like an angry fan knocking over things at a hot dog stand in a huge NFL stadium.

For which the angry fan would be promptly arrested.

I see that you have your own private Jesus and are sure that the bible supports your view if we can just somehow explain away all those bothersome details that don't say what you want them to say just like all other believers.

Everyone gets the Jesus they need.

 

[HansMustermann]

The earliest Christian beliefs are drenched in Enoch.

The earliest Christian beliefs, yes, but decades later and in Greek.

I still don't see how that supports postulating that 40 years earlier, and in Aramaic, Jesus would use that as a title, or that it would be the mainstream meaning in Aramaic.

Again, what we lack is exactly ANY use of that phrase as a title in either Hebrew or Aramaic. The only uses as a title we have from anywhere near the period are either in Greek or in a document written in Ethiopic, or more precisely in the Ge'ez language, a language related to Old South Arabian.

The mind simply boggles that any phrase could be postulated to mean something in a language, when what we lack is ANY instance of it being used that way in that language. And in fact when every single instance of that expression in that language that we have, is meaning something entirely different.

I mean, since you mentioned El Señor in Spanish, if I asked you to support the idea that it is indeed used to mean God, you could find thousands of instances of it being used for that. Without even trying. From the bible, to scholar writings, to quotes from novels, to even YouTube music videos. And that's how we'd know it actually does mean that in Spanish.

Here we don't have ANY instance in either Hebrew or Aramaic, where "a son of a man" means anything else than "man". It's not even somewhat unclear, or a split between different uses. There aren't ANY.

Yes, some Greek-speaking Christians later thought it makes an awesome title, but that doesn't mean you get to just retrofit that into Aramaic just like that.

It's like taking the USA sarcastic use of "czar" from 2013 (e.g., "czar of security") and pretending that it's how it was used in Russian in 1913 too.

You apparently want reams of ancient literature on the topic as evidence, but I suspect it's just your typical pattern of demanding particular types of evidence which would be great if we had them but which in reality nobody expects to find.

BS. You can't pretend that oh, you have the evidence, it's just not reams of it, when actually you don't have any. There isn't a single instance of it being used that way in either Hebrew or Aramaic before or around Jesus's time. Entirely different issue.

 

[Belz...]

I don't know what you mean by "freak accident", but yes, Jesus does not appear to have been anything special during his life.

It doesn't appear like he had a life.

 

[Belz...]

No, it's a total waste of time. In fact, it's worse than that, because if you don't know enough about the scholarship to spot the errors, you'll come away with wrong ideas.

And no, I'm not going to take an hour of my life to watch that video, because there won't be any new arguments in it, I've heard them.

If there are arguments which you find compelling, simply explain them.

In other words you won't watch it because you're probably not spot anything new, which you can't know unless you watch it. It's brilliant.

I'm giving it a vew myself.

 

[Belz...]

No, it's not assuming because we have solid evidence that Paul knew Jesus's brother, since he discusses it in his letters as a matter of course.

Is that solid evidence, really ?

 

[Belz...]

Everyone gets the Jesus they need.

Well he is a personal saviour.

 

[Craig B]

Is that solid evidence, really ?

Not very solid, but it is evidence. A person is named in the Gospels as Jesus' brother, and in a different context Paul tells us he met a person of that name, who is the Lord's brother.

 

[Belz...]

Just finished watching the video. It's very interesting. I had never thought of the Jesus myth development timeline quite that way.

 

[tsig]

Originally Posted by Piggy View Post
No, it's not assuming because we have solid evidence that Paul knew Jesus's brother, since he discusses it in his letters as a matter of course.

Is that solid evidence, really ?

C'mon we know Paul knew Jesus's brother because he said he knew his brother and we know it was Jesus's brother because Paul said it was Jesus's brother and Paul wouldn't have said he knew Jesus's brother unless he just knew it as a matter of course.

(I'm dizzy now)

 

[Piggy]

For which the angry fan would be promptly arrested.

I see that you have your own private Jesus and are sure that the bible supports your view if we can just somehow explain away all those bothersome details that don't say what you want them to say just like all other believers.

Everyone gets the Jesus they need.

Yes, if there were a cop nearby, he'd be promptly arrested, if not then he'd be not so promptly arrested, which is what happened to Jesus, only he got a bit harsher sentence than a night in the drunk tank.

I have no idea what you mean by a private Jesus.

The fact that you have no clue what the scholarship is doesn't mean that I'm ignorant of it, too.

 

[IanS]

No.

You're wrong about Ehrman. He started out in confessional apologetics when he was young, but when he got into an accredited program, that worldview fell apart for him.

Perhaps Wikipedia is wrong in what it says about Ehrman’s academic qualifications and background, but what is described in the wiki quotes below is not someone who is a typical academic historian who normally conducts research into non-religious areas of history (as most academics historians do, afaik?) and who just happened at one point to look into the historical evidence for and against the existence of Jesus.

What is described there is someone who’s background and qualifications appear to be specifically in the area of religious studies.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bart_D._Ehrman

Bart D. Ehrman (born 1955) is an American New Testament scholar, currently the James A. Gray Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Ehrman is a leading New Testament scholar, and has also achieved acclaim at the popular level, authoring four New York Times bestsellers. His best-known works at the popular level are Misquoting Jesus and Jesus, Interrupted.[1] Ehrman's work focuses on New Testament textual criticism and early Christianity.


Education

Ehrman grew up in Lawrence, Kansas, and attended Lawrence High School, where he was on the state champion debate team in 1973. He began studying the Bible and its original languages at the Moody Bible Institute and is a 1978 graduate of Wheaton College in Illinois. He received his PhD and M.Div. from Princeton Theological Seminary, where he studied under Bruce Metzger. He received magna cum laude for both his BA in 1978 and PhD in 1985.

 

[Piggy]

The earliest Christian beliefs, yes, but decades later and in Greek.

I still don't see how that supports postulating that 40 years earlier, and in Aramaic, Jesus would use that as a title, or that it would be the mainstream meaning in Aramaic.

OK, so now you've drifted off into other topics.

You don't seem to understand the situation.

The term used in Ezra's apocalyptic vision to refer to a man (or to an angel in the form of a man) morphs into a term used for a specific personage in the apocalyptic visions in the Daniel and Enoch writings, and shows up in Christian writings in that same sense, which isn't surprising because Daniel and Enoch show up all over the place in original Christian thought.

From this, we can see not only the morphing of usage, but also the progression of thought among apocalyptic Jews.

Whether Jesus thought of himself as playing that role on the Day of the Lord or not is an open question. I think it's more likely that he did not, but that's tangential.

In any case, again, it's an analog to the current Spanish usage of señor to mean "gentleman" or "God".

And there's no real doubt about this, you know. The progression is clear to see from the writings, and the traditions into which they fit.

This is not controversial.

Whether Jesus spoke the term doesn't matter, and for our purposes it doesn't matter whether he saw himself in that role or not, whatever term he would have used for it.

The topic at hand was belief by others, after his death, that he was the Son of Man who would lead God's Army, and how that differs from another title given to him, Son of God.