What counts as a historical Jesus?

[maximara]

Because, and I deplore this, the expression "mythicism" has acquired two different meanings when applied to studies of Jesus. These I call "strong" and "weak" mythicism, and I discuss them at #3599 in this thread:

There is a "weak" mythicism which holds that Paul and the Gospels are unreliable, and Jesus is not attested in other sources, so it is probable that he may not have existed, and things that are believed to exist but don't may be described as "myths".

To this latter doctrine I have no great aversion; and I acknowledge that in addressing it I bear the burden of proof, since I am asserting the existence of someone for whom evidence is sparse. But, to the contrary, the burden of proof is on the "strong" mythicists because these assert the pre-existence of an allegorical treatment of a supernatural Jesus dwelling in a spiritual and not at any time physical dimension.

As I have pointed out before "mythicism" has ALWAYS had two meanings but it is not this "weak" vs "strong" nonsense you are going into:

"The gist of his position was in a large measure like the mythical theory of David Strauss, which created a sensation fifty years ago. Strauss held that there was verily a historic Christ, but that a vast mass of miracle and supernatural wonders had been woven like wreaths around the head of Jesus. Drews goes further. He alleges that there never was such a person as Jesus of Nazareth." (The Times 1910)

Even through David Strauss "held that there was verily a historic Christ" his theory was still called "mythical".

Remsburg, the golden boy of armchair Christ mythers, stated three times in his The Christ that he felt everything pointed to Jesus of Nazareth having to existed. In fact, Remsburg in his first chapter spells out just what he is doing: Jesus of Nazareth, the Jesus of humanity, the pathetic story of whose humble life and tragic death has awakened the sympathies of millions, is a possible character and may have existed; but the Jesus of Bethlehem, the Christ of Christianity, is an impossible character and does not exist.

As I pointed out in post 166 of the "Jesus Christ?" thread:

The point is NOT whether Epiphanius believed that Jesus lived during the time Alexander Jannaeus but if what would become the Gospel Jesus existence was an actual historical fact why would there be any group of people putting him a full century early?

The Occam Razor's answer is the Gospel Jesus was in fact a legendary figure in the Robin Hood King Arthur mold ie effectively a composite character around which elaborate stories had been woven.

Looking for the "historical" Gospel Jesus is as meaningless as looking for the "historical" Robin Hood former Earl of Locksley or "historical" King Arthur Pendragon bastard son of Uther Pendragon and Lady Igraine--those versions are non-historical in that they never existed even if they are based on people who actually lived.
With "historical" candidates for Robin Hood and King Arthur Pendragon a full two centuries outside their traditional times what is so off the wall about a candidate for Jesus being a mere century before the time period the Gospels are set in?

---

If you actually read what the classic Christ Mythers like Drews, Robertson, and so on were going on about was that was nothing to connect the Gospel Jesus other than name to a hypothetical historical Jesus. In fact, their point was once you stripped away all the material that fitted previous myths and implausible pseudohistory you didn't have anything left to really work with.

Again look at the John Frum cargo cult. History does record a John Frum in roughly the right time period: an illiterate native originally named Manehivi.

If we are to accept the basic premise of the HJ position that such movements must have a founder then Manehivi is the founder of the John Frum cargo cult. But if that is true look at what the cult did to Manehivi in a space at best 26 years long:

Manehivi goes from black illiterate native to white literate US serviceman

Manehivi who preached the "gospel" of John Frum is moved from being a flesh and blood man in 1940-41 to being a vision that appears to the village elders vision on February 15, 1931.

Manehivi gains Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh as a brother.

The disconnect between Manehivi and the John Frum the cult describes is so complete that they might as well be two different people! And if that can happen then how useful are the Gospels in telling us anything about the "true" Jesus?

 

[Craig B]

As I have pointed out before "mythicism" has ALWAYS had two meanings but it is not this "weak" vs "strong" nonsense you are going into:

I resent that expression. My terminology is perfectly valid.

The point is NOT whether Epiphanius believed that Jesus lived during the time Alexander Jannaeus but if what would become the Gospel Jesus existence was an actual historical fact why would there be any group of people putting him a full century early?

I don't think you have shown that such a group existed, except perhaps much later among Jewish readers of the Toldoth Yeshu. I don't believe that prior to the early first century there was any group venerating a Jesus supposedly active under Janneus.

The Occam Razor's answer is the Gospel Jesus was in fact a legendary figure in the Robin Hood King Arthur mold ie effectively a composite character around which elaborate stories had been woven.

Looking for the "historical" Gospel Jesus is as meaningless as looking for the "historical" Robin Hood former Earl of Locksley or "historical" King Arthur Pendragon bastard son of Uther Pendragon and Lady Igraine--those versions are non-historical in that they never existed even if they are based on people who actually lived.

The question is still of interest whether there was or was not a "historical" person around whom the myths coalesced.

With "historical" candidates for Robin Hood and King Arthur Pendragon a full two centuries outside their traditional times what is so off the wall about a candidate for Jesus being a mere century before the time period the Gospels are set in?

Nothing whatever. Just show that there was a Jesus cult in the first century BCE, and you will have made your case.

 

[maximara]

\Nothing whatever. Just show that there was a Jesus cult in the first century BCE, and you will have made your case.

How is this different from asking for evidence between 6 BCE to 36 CE for Jesus existing?

We know from Josephus that there were plenty of would be Messiahs running around and the Testimonium Flavianum is such mess that we don't know if any of it was real. It certainly doesn't help that Book XVIII chapter 3 flows much better in both the original Greek and the translations if you go from paragraph 2 to 4 skipping the Testimonium Flavianum entirely.

If there was no group believing that Jesus was crucified under Alexander Jannaeus why do so many scholars going back at least eight centuries claim that this was the tradition of the Jews?

Better yet why would the Jews even suggest such a thing? The Gospel account is pretty blatant in its efforts to get the Romans ala Pontius Pilate off the hook so why in the name of sanity would the Jews come up with a story that one of their own Jewish priest kings crucified Jesus a hundred years earlier?

Also if the Jews didn't have such a belief why would they be quiet regarding its falsehood for all that time?

Now in Embassy to Gaius (c40 CE) there is a whole chapter regarding the excesses of Pontius Pilate.

Now here is where it gets interesting...supposedly this is not a letter from Philo but a letter to him...by Herod Agrippa. Now Agrippa is pushing Pontius Pilate down to promote the nobility of Tiberius so as to secure his grandfather's old kingdom for himself. So if Pontius Pilate was the wet noodle we see in the Gospel you think Agrippa would mention it. Certainly Agrippa would have pointed out Pilate efforts to placate a Jewish mob by offering to free the killer of Roman citizens. Yet nothing of the sort appears in the letter.

More over with Philo and Agrippa sharing letters the old issue of Philo not knowing a thing about Jesus comes up again. Certainly Agrippa knew about Philo's interest in his Logos and being in the area from 37 CE would have at least heard of Jesus...and yet Agrippa tells Philo none of this?

 

[Brainache]

How is this different from asking for evidence between 6 BCE to 36 CE for Jesus existing?

Well the evidence for the HJ consists of lots of stories about a bloke named Jesus. We have that. What we don't have is evidence of anyone telling stories about Jesus before that time. If you have that evidence, everyone would like to see it.

We know from Josephus that there were plenty of would be Messiahs running around and the Testimonium Flavianum is such mess that we don't know if any of it was real. It certainly doesn't help that Book XVIII chapter 3 flows much better in both the original Greek and the translations if you go from paragraph 2 to 4 skipping the Testimonium Flavianum entirely.

If there was no group believing that Jesus was crucified under Alexander Jannaeus why do so many scholars going back at least eight centuries claim that this was the tradition of the Jews?

Better yet why would the Jews even suggest such a thing? The Gospel account is pretty blatant in its efforts to get the Romans ala Pontius Pilate off the hook so why in the name of sanity would the Jews come up with a story that one of their own Jewish priest kings crucified Jesus a hundred years earlier?

Also if the Jews didn't have such a belief why would they be quiet regarding its falsehood for all that time?

I think it is generally accepted that the Jews actually had no record of Jesus and that later generations assumed that a mention of an earlier different Jesus referred to the bible Jesus.

I have no idea if that is correct.

 

[Craig B]

Well the evidence for the HJ consists of lots of stories about a bloke named Jesus. We have that. What we don't have is evidence of anyone telling stories about Jesus before that time. If you have that evidence, everyone would like to see it.



I think it is generally accepted that the Jews actually had no record of Jesus and that later generations assumed that a mention of an earlier different Jesus referred to the bible Jesus.

I have no idea if that is correct.

Thanks, Brainache. I agree with all of that.

 

[maximara]

Well the evidence for the HJ consists of lots of stories about a bloke named Jesus.

There are a lot of stories about a bloke called Sherlock Holmes who people send letters to...doesn't mean he exists.

We have that. What we don't have is evidence of anyone telling stories about Jesus before that time. If you have that evidence, everyone would like to see it.

Again how is this different from asking for evidence between 6 BCE to 36 CE for Jesus existing?

As the apologists are so fond of saying 'absence of evidence is not evidence of absence'. Well that door swings both ways!

I think it is generally accepted that the Jews actually had no record of Jesus and that later generations assumed that a mention of an earlier different Jesus referred to the bible Jesus.

I have no idea if that is correct.

If Jesus was as popular as the Gospels make him out to be why would the Jews not have any record of him?

Of course this gets to the logic problem with the whole "Jesus was a minor figure" idea.

1) Based on Paul's account he could not converted any later then 37 CE.

2) Paul as Saul was supposedly infamous regarding his persecution of Christians in three provinces.

3) Based on Josephus John the Baptist was beheaded in 36 CE and the synoptic Gospels have Jesus still doing his ministry.

So assuming Paul is not exaggerating we have two options:

A) Saul was persecuting followers of Jesus before his crucifixion (which creates all kinds of logic headaches of its own)

B) The three provinces Saul traveled were so filled with Christians that Saul was literally tripping over them (which shoots the whole "Jesus was a minor figure" idea down)

 

[Brainache]

There are a lot of stories about a bloke called Sherlock Holmes who people send letters to...doesn't mean he exists.

Seriously? It's like Jasonr never went over this exhaustively just a few pages back. Yes, but has anyone ever suggested that Arthur Conan-Doyle believed Sherlock Holmes was a real person?

Again how is this different from asking for evidence between 6 BCE to 36 CE for Jesus existing?

As the apologists are so fond of saying 'absence of evidence is not evidence of absence'. Well that door swings both ways!

In this case, we have stories about someone flesh and blood named "Jesus" walking about doing stuff that human beings do. The stories include magic and miracles, but so do stories about Ceasar.

If there was a sect of Judaism in the 1st century BCE telling Jesus stories, why doesn't Josephus or someone mention them?

If Jesus was as popular as the Gospels make him out to be why would the Jews not have any record of him?

Of course this gets to the logic problem with the whole "Jesus was a minor figure" idea.

Maybe they did have records in Jerusalem, but the Romans trashed the place, remember? The population was dispersed and sold into slavery, not the ideal conditions for preserving details of theological schisms.

1) Based on Paul's account he could not converted any later then 37 CE.

2) Paul as Saul was supposedly infamous regarding his persecution of Christians in three provinces.

1) I'll concede this point for the purposes of this discussion.

2) He says he was persecuting followers of "The Way". I'm thinking that this means any of those apocalyptic sects active at the time who were preaching against the authority of the Roman controlled Temple and the legitimacy of the Herodian dynasty. You know, like the DSS people out there in the wilderness preparing "the way of the Lord"

3) Based on Josephus John the Baptist was beheaded in 36 CE and the synoptic Gospels have Jesus still doing his ministry.

So? If JTB was executed early in the year, that still gives Jesus time to annoy people and get whacked.

So assuming Paul is not exaggerating we have two options:

A) Saul was persecuting followers of Jesus before his crucifixion (which creates all kinds of logic headaches of its own)

B) The three provinces Saul traveled were so filled with Christians that Saul was literally tripping over them (which shoots the whole "Jesus was a minor figure" idea down)

A) He was persecuting anyone the High Priest told him to, whether they'd heard of Jesus or not.

B) Well there were a lot of Jews who weren't happy with the way Rome was running their country. One thing I've learned through these threads is that "The Life Of Brian" is pretty Historically accurate.

 

[The Norseman]

Seriously? It's like Jasonr never went over this exhaustively just a few pages back. Yes, but has anyone ever suggested that Arthur Conan-Doyle believed Sherlock Holmes was a real person?

Seriously?

What if Conan-Doyle did say that Holmes was a real person? Would we have this huge mass of people who firmly believe -- to the exclusion of a single hint of a question -- that Holmes existed even with no other information than what Conan-Doyle wrote? Despite years of searching for any corroborating evidence and finding none, would Holmes' existence be as Yeshua's has been characterized in this very thread -- as controversial as the theory of evolution?

All it takes is one seriously whacked bum-turned-preacher to kick off the whole thing, really. Unfortunately, there's still this little niggling item of lack of evidence for any of it, mythical, real or other.

 

[Brainache]

Seriously?

What if Conan-Doyle did say that Holmes was a real person? Would we have this huge mass of people who firmly believe -- to the exclusion of a single hint of a question -- that Holmes existed even with no other information than what Conan-Doyle wrote? Despite years of searching for any corroborating evidence and finding none, would Holmes' existence be as Yeshua's has been characterized in this very thread -- as controversial as the theory of evolution?

Maybe if no one had written contemporary fiction before Conan-Doyle, you might have a point.

All it takes is one seriously whacked bum-turned-preacher to kick off the whole thing, really. Unfortunately, there's still this little niggling item of lack of evidence for any of it, mythical, real or other.

All most of us are talking about is that one seriously whacked bum-turned-preacher. Otherwise the evidence (ie: the stories about the bum-turned-preacher), doesn't make any sense whatsoever and we are left with a picture of the Classical World where people invent imaginary Martyrs of real-world conflicts.

How could that possibly work? How can Jesus be believed to be a passover Lamb, if there was no meat on his bones?

 

[IanS]

Seriously? It's like Jasonr never went over this exhaustively just a few pages back. Yes, but has anyone ever suggested that Arthur Conan-Doyle believed Sherlock Holmes was a real person?
.

That is not necessarily an accurate comparison though, is it.

Because we really don't know who or how the Jesus story really started. The gospel stories, and Paul’s stories of Jesus all appear to be copied from much earlier stories in the OT (see Randel Helms, Gospel Fictions). But if for example Paul was the first person (that we know of) who began to associate the name "Yehoshua/Jesus" with those OT messiah stories, then as I pointed out earlier, Ellegard goes into considerable detail about why he thinks Paul was never really talking about a real human or recently dead person when he described Jesus.

If Ellegard is right about that, and I think other writers have said similar things about Paul’s version of Jesus, then it means Paul may have effectively created Yehoshua as what we would now call a "mythical" representation of what Paul thought was the prophesised embodiment of a god-given messiah who he thought was certain to be sent to save the Jewish people.

It may seem surprising to us now in the 21st century, but in the 1st century AD and earlier, devout Jews in that region were clearly mixing fact and fiction all the time in the way they presented their religious visions and their religious beliefs in OT prophecy etc. What they presented sounding like factual events involving the acts of Jesus, were for example clearly not factual events, because as Helms book shows, the stories of those events were almost all taken from OT stories/prophecies that had already been written 500 years before Jesus was ever supposed to have been born.

Paul may not have regarded what he was doing as creating a myth. Because he thought it all had to be true "according to scripture". All that Paul has done (if this scenario is correct) is given the messiah a rather special name, ie "Yehoshua", which as we discussed 50 pages back, is actually a so-called "Theophoric" name/word, which means something like "I invoke a cry to the saving God".

 

[maximara]

How could that possibly work? How can Jesus be believed to be a passover Lamb, if there was no meat on his bones?

John Frum is becoming a go to for about every argument that the apologists can muster.

As I said before let's assume that the HJ proponents are right and that such moments must have a founder and use the John Frum cargo cult as our baseline History does record a John Frum in roughly the right time period: an illiterate native originally named Manehivi.

If we are to accept the basic premise of the HJ position that such movements must have a founder then Manehivi is the founder of the John Frum cargo cult. But if that is true look at what the cult did to Manehivi in a space at best 26 years long:

Manehivi goes from black illiterate native to white literate US serviceman

Manehivi who preached the "gospel" of John Frum is moved from being a flesh and blood man in 1940-41 to being a vision that appears to the village elders on February 15, 1931.

Manehivi gains Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh as a brother.

The disconnect between Manehivi and the John Frum the cult describes is so complete that they might as well be two different people!

John Frum the white literate US serviceman as far as we can see has no meat on his bones either and despite efforts as early as 1957 to discredit the John Frum cult and its breakaway groups the people still believe. (Lal, Brij V.; Kate Fortune (2000) The Pacific Islands: an encyclopedia; University of Hawaii Press; ISBN: 978-0824822651; Pg 303)

 

[eight bits]

Brainache

Generally, I'm in agreement with your recent posts. It is clear that neutral observers' silence about a cenury-old Jesus cult would be no less mysterious than their silence about a novel one. (Lots of doors swing both ways.) I do have reservations about one aspect, however, whcih I pursued with another poster here a while back.

Maybe if no one had written contemporary fiction before Conan-Doyle, you might have a point.

My difficulty with such theories is the asumption that a performance of natural language is like a perfomance of engineering, which must be both collective and gradually cumulative. We know the Romans didn't have nuclear submarines not only because of an "absence of evidence" of that technology, but because there are necessary antecedents, like machine lathes.We have affirmative evidence of the sorts of tools for that purpose that Romans used instead. Romans couldn't make nuclear submarines using such tools.

In contrast, almost every human baby is born with the capacity, to be realized after a few years' social experience, to do as an individual anything with natural langauge that anybody ever has done with natural language, individually or collectively.This is why Piggy demonizes Joseph Campbell, because Campbell described human storytelling peformance as emerging from the individual inheritance of the common heritage of humankind. The very idea of global human language production competence exposes Piggy's consensus of Bible exegetes for the house of cards that it is.

We think Jesus wasn't offered as a fictional character because we have First and Second Century literature that discusses him as being proposed to have been a real person, and the proposal being received as such. That doesn't exclude his having been a fabrication, but it does contrast with the record of Sherlock Holmes. Even if we had no other knowledge of Conan-Doyle at all, except the Sherlock Holmes stories themselves, we would still have writing about how his work was received by contemporaries and succeeding generations.

We can thus exclude Sherlock Holmes as having been a real person, and not because of some fantasy that we can use natural language in a way that an earlier elite user of natural language could not. We cannot make the same exclusion for a Jesus who died sometime during the eleven years centered on 31 CE. Noticing that difference is a first step, and nowhere near a last step, in establishing whether there ever was a historical Jesus who would count.

 

[Craig B]

... Ellegard goes into considerable detail about why he thinks Paul was never really talking about a real human or recently dead person when he described Jesus ... then it means Paul may have effectively created Yehoshua as what we would now call a "mythical" representation of what Paul thought was the prophesised embodiment of a god-given messiah (...)
Paul may not have regarded what he was doing as creating a myth. Because he thought it all had to be true "according to scripture". All that Paul has done (if this scenario is correct) is given the messiah a rather special name, ie "Yehoshua", which as we discussed 50 pages back, is actually a so-called "Theophoric" name/word, which means something like "I invoke a cry to the saving God".

This is a statement of the "strong" mythicism - a term that maximara thinks is nonsense. I think this scenario is most improbable. The most natural interpretation of the data is that Paul believed in the recent existence of Jesus, and that he went to Jerusalem and there encountered people whom he believed to have been associates of that person, and a community which they oversaw.

That "Jesus" is a theophoric name is nothing special. It means "YHWH saves". (You say it meant "I invoke a cry to the saving God" but I can't trace any element within it conveying the meanings "invoke" or "cry".) Many people bore that name, or one of the numerous other Biblical names containing the element El or variants of YHWH in reference to the God of Israel. There are about 15 to 20 individuals named Jesus in the works of Josephus.

Lists of personal names which include the divine designations El, YHWH, Shaddai and Baal may be found in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theophory_in_the_Bible. And of course worshippers of other gods used theophoric names too as in Nebuchadnezzar - "Nabu, preserve my firstborn son", in the Bible, or the historical king Mithridates - "Gift of Mithras". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mithridates. Like Nathaniel, Gift of El, or Jonathan, Gift of YHWH.

 

[maximara]

This is a statement of the "strong" mythicism - a term that maximara thinks is nonsense. I think this scenario is most improbable. The most natural interpretation of the data is that Paul believed in the recent existence of Jesus, and that he went to Jerusalem and there encountered people whom he believed to have been associates of that person, and a community which they oversaw.

Again we get to the issue of Paul himself stating the Jesus he is talking about is a vision which leaves us with the key issue--how much is what Paul saying coming from his own imagination and how much is coming from history?

If most of what Paul is going on about is from his head then the relationship with any actual Jesus outside of name is in all likelihood nil which would go a long way in explaining why Paul gives so few real details regarding Jesus.

 

[IanS]

Just show that there was a Jesus cult in the first century BCE, and you will have made your case.

There was certainly a messiah cult, with stories similar to those of Jesus, since at least 600BC in the prophecies of the Jewish OT. Those are actually the stories which appear in the four canonical gospels (again ... see Helms, Gospel fictions).

 

[Craig B]

There was certainly a messiah cult, with stories similar to those of Jesus, since at least 600BC in the prophecies of the Jewish OT. Those are actually the stories which appear in the four canonical gospels (again ... see Helms, Gospel fictions).

Any chance of a look at these 600 BC prophecies of the Messiah?

 

[IanS]

This is a statement of the "strong" mythicism - a term that maximara thinks is nonsense. I think this scenario is most improbable. The most natural interpretation of the data is that Paul believed in the recent existence of Jesus, and that he went to Jerusalem and there encountered people whom he believed to have been associates of that person, and a community which they oversaw.

It's a "myth theory" proposed, as I said, in the book by Elvar Ellegard. There are good reasons why you should read that book, it's very informative on this subject, and it's academically very rigorous and precise too.

That "Jesus" is a theophoric name is nothing special. It means "YHWH saves". (You say it meant "I invoke a cry to the saving God" but I can't trace any element within it conveying the meanings "invoke" or "cry".)

Be careful - I specifically avoided saying it meant precisely the exact words "I invoke a cry to the saving god". I said that it's variously interpreted to mean something of that sort. Ie - it was apparently a word which was used as a form of cry or appeal to a saviour in God. See for example the following quite full discussion in this Wiki link -


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_and_titles_of_Jesus
Etymology

There have been a number of proposals as to the origin and etymological origin of the name Jesus (cf. Matthew 1:21). The name is related to the Hebrew form [Yehoshua`] יְהוֹשֻׁעַ Joshua, which is a theophoric name first mentioned within the Biblical tradition in Exodus 17:9 referring to one of Moses' companions (and his successor as leader of the Israelites). This name is usually considered to be a compound of two parts: יהו Yeho, a theophoric reference to YHWH, the distinctive personal name of the God of Israel, plus a form derived from the Hebrew triconsonantal root y-š-ʕ or י-ש-ע "to liberate, save". There have been various proposals as to how the literal etymological meaning of the name should be translated, including:[15][16][17][18][19]

YHWH saves
YHWH (is) salvation
YHWH (is) a saving-cry
YHWH (is) a cry-for-saving
YHWH (is) a cry-for-help
YHWH (is) my help

Many people bore that name, or one of the numerous other Biblical names containing the element El or variants of YHWH in reference to the God of Israel. There are about 15 to 20 individuals named Jesus in the works of Josephus.

Sure. But presumably, in pre-biblical times, when Jewish children were given the name Yehoshua (and other similarly theophoric names), it was presumably because their parents/guardians/community/whoever, wanted to acknowledge and recognise that saving godly appeal in the word used to name the child …. That is - the child’s name is being used as a direct symbol of the faith, in a word which invokes a cry or appeal to the saviour nature of God.

IOW - the name or word is first and foremost a religious utterance. Which is subsequently being promoted with due deference in the naming of the children. The word is being used as a dual purpose, it’s used both as a direct invoking appeal to God, and also used from an early date in the Jewish history (apparently first appearing in the book of Exodus, c.600BC) as a name given to children in order that the child’s name itself includes that devotional invocation to the saving nature of God.

 

[maximara]

Any chance of a look at these 600 BC prophecies of the Messiah?

We have to remember that "messiah" originally divinely appointed king ala David, Cyrus the Great, or even Alexander the Great.

Later it would become liberator of oppression as seen with Judas Maccabeus, Simon of Peraea, and Athronges.

Any "prophecies" are of the Oracle of Delphi (if you invade you will destroy a great empire) or Nostradamus (take what ever fits and run with it) stripe and IMHO a waste of time.

 

[IanS]

Any chance of a look at these 600 BC prophecies of the Messiah?

Sure ... You need to get a copy of the book by Helms that I've referenced and suggested half a dozen times. Here’s a link so you know which book to get -


Randel Helms, Gospel Fictions

 

[Craig B]

We have to remember that "messiah" originally divinely appointed king ala David, Cyrus the Great, or even Alexander the Great.

Later it would become liberator of oppression as seen with Judas Maccabeus, Simon of Peraea, and Athronges.

Any "prophecies" are of the Oracle of Delphi (if you invade you will destroy a great empire) or Nostradamus (take what ever fits and run with it) stripe and IMHO a waste of time.

Then your statement is very misleading

There was certainly a messiah cult, with stories similar to those of Jesus, since at least 600BC in the prophecies of the Jewish OT. Those are actually the stories which appear in the four canonical gospels (again ... see Helms, Gospel fictions).

The expression Messiah simply meant an anointed, that is legitimate, king. It was a title of kings of the Davidic dynasty, and Cyrus earned the title "Christ" in Isaiah 45:1 because he liberated the Jews from Babylonian captivity. But this is not a messiah cult, or anything like it. The statement about Cyrus in no way resembles a description of a supernatural being.

As to Judas Maccabeus etc. here we see the gradual start of messianism, in the Maccabean period, long after 600 BCE. Find a non-material Jesus being venerated by messianists, post 167 BCE and pre 30 CE, without ever having dwelt on Earth and, as I say, you will have made your case.