What counts as a historical Jesus?

[Craig B]

No. Please do not try to confuse the issue by introducing other ancient historical figures for whom we are really not familiar with the evidence and any claimed actual verified history etc. That will just take us off into an endless derail about other figures entirely.

I will introduce such evidence as I please, and I will conduct my argument as I see fit. If you don't like the results, you are free to say so.

 

[Slowvehicle]

No it's not "naïve", and we are not getting into a quite different discussion about whether or not other ancient figures were supposed to have performed miracles and what the evidence was for that etc etc. We talking about the biblical figure of Jesus. Stick to the subject here, please.

The claim was being made that we could discard all the miracles and supernatural stuff, and still be left with a real preacher who just preached his religious beliefs.

But in that case I am asking what marked him out from all the many hundreds of other street preachers of those times, such that people mistakenly believed this person was producing miracle after miracle and must therefore be the messianic Son of God?

IOW - who was this "real Historic" individual who did almost none of the vital things in the gospels, but who is still claimed to be the same figure described in those gospels? Any idea who that "real" person was? ...

... or are we just saying that such a person could have been any one of hundreds of anonymous preachers of the day? ...

... because in that case the claim is so vague and tenuous that it could apply to almost anyone at that time.

That's not a demonstration of any historical Jesus of the bible. That's just a statement of such broad and speculative generality as to be entirely empty and quite worthless.

Well said!

 

[IanS]

I will introduce such evidence as I please, and I will conduct my argument as I see fit. If you don't like the results, you are free to say so.

Sure, as you say "we are (any of us) free to say so". I'm just pointing out that if you go down that line of arguing about claims of miracles performed by other completely different ancient figures who are nothing to do with Jesus & the bible, then it only takes us down a blind alley of time-wasting diversions needing explanations as to where all those claims came from, who wrote about that, and at what date, what is then the evidence for any of that etc. etc. .... you’d end up diverting into another 100 pages of seriously off-topic argument about what could or could not be taken as "fact" or reliably true from mountains of claims about people who have nothing to do with Jesus and the biblical writing.

But a diversion like that is unnecessary here anyway - the simple fact is that the biblical writing about Jesus cannot be true. Because the claims are physically impossible.

And if you try to discard all those impossible supernatural events, so little of Jesus is left, and what is left is so general and uneventful, that nothing evidential or probative remains at all.

As I said before - keep in mind here, that none of the biblical writers ever met Jesus. They were only writing about what was for them the stuff of religious legend. They believed in the legend of a miraculous figure of earlier times ...

... but once you take away all the miracles and supernatural events, what's left is only the biblical writers belief in an unknown legendary figure of earlier times, who was in no way memorable or interesting to them at all, and for whom there is absolutely no reliable evidence anyway!

That is not a historical Jesus of the bible.

 

[eight bits]

Various points arising

Dating Luke:

Some people think that Luke was written after Marcion's gospel, hence mid-Second Century. People who think Marcion wrote after Luke place the canonical Gospel in the early Second or late First, of course.

If you throw out all the supernatural stuff in the gospels and Paul’s letters, then how much is left of the Jesus that 1st century Christians thought was the messiah?

There's not much in Mark that suggests many Jews thought that Jesus was the Messiah during his lifetime, including cheerleader-in-chief John the Baptist. Paul doesn't necessarily think that Jesus "was the Messiah" in any practical sense until after God raised him. Perhaps Jesus, like Paul himself, was set aside at birth by God, but just as Paul didn't actually serve as "apostle to the Gentiles" until after he had lived humbly for a while, maybe Jesus didn't serve as Messiah before he had earned the job as a reward for a life sufficiently well lived.

Probably not the answer pakeha was looking, but then I'm only three-fifths of an HJ'er.

Why would any of the disciples have ever followed a person who never did any of those things? Who were they following? What was it they were all constantly seeing if they were watching a real person who never performed any of the miracles?

There's a good question in there. The disciples presided at the same miracles themselves, away from Jesus, according to the Gospels and Acts. There's a comic scene where Peter tries his first resurrection (Acts 9: 36-43). Peter is plainly no part of the causal explanation of why anything happens.

Jesus isn't a big deal because he can raise people from the dead. He can't, only God can. He's a big deal, within the story premises, because he knows what time it is, and it is the time that God is willing that the selected dead should rise. Miracles happen around Jesus and his staff, because it is the time for that. Jesus is not a psi-kiddie. He isn't the one making the pinwheel spin.

,,, who through the proof of his constant miracles, showed himself to be the supernatural Son of God.

In John maybe, once it was clear that the rest of the dead weren't being raised. In earlier Gospels, Jesus can't get a sign-off on Messiah-hood, much less divinity, just for presiding at miracles. Even John is equivocal about the cogency of inferring personal qualities from miracles happening around somebody. As well he should be, since in the rest of the proto-canon, the efficacious personal quality often resided in the recipient ("Your faith has healed you..."), rather than Jesus, and as already mentioned, the followers presided at miracles, too. Is everybody the Son or Daughter of God?

Cool idea for a religion, but I'm unsure that's the religion that John was pimping for.

But in that case I am asking what marked him out from all the many hundreds of other street preachers of those times,..

One of the most successful writers of all time thought that he was one among more than 500 people who saw the guy after he had died, and hit upon the idea of using the story to sell flight lessons to the goyim.

 

[Craig B]

Sure, as you say "we are (any of us) free to say so".

Thank you.

But a diversion like that is unnecessary here anyway - the simple fact is that the biblical writing about Jesus cannot be true. Because the claims are physically impossible. <snip> ... but once you take away all the miracles and supernatural events, what's left is only the biblical writers belief in an unknown legendary figure of earlier times, who was in no way memorable or interesting to them at all, and for whom there is absolutely no reliable evidence anyway!

That is not a historical Jesus of the bible.

Yes, you have provided us with a definitional exclusion of the existence of an HJ. An "ontological disproof". That's absolutely fine. The Jesus of the Bible is a miracle worker. Miracles are impossible. So there is no Bible Jesus. But there is no evidence outside the Bible. Therefore there was no Jesus full stop. I don't accept that reasoning as final or foolproof, however.

 

[IanS]

Thank you. Yes, you have provided us with a definitional exclusion of the existence of an HJ. An "ontological disproof". That's absolutely fine. The Jesus of the Bible is a miracle worker. Miracles are impossible. So there is no Bible Jesus. But there is no evidence outside the Bible. Therefore there was no Jesus full stop. I don't accept that reasoning as final or foolproof, however.

OK, that's fine. You certainly do not have to accept the argument I have made. And it's most definitely not a “proof” of anything.

I'm just trying to explain to you why I think the miraculous stuff is not so easily discarded.

The miracle stuff has to be there, because without it there is no biblical writing and no mention of anyone called Jesus by anyone.

The only known Jesus is the miraculous Jesus of the bible (though in fact those biblical writers didn‘t even know who that legendary Jesus was either!).

 

[eight bits]

The New Testament reports miracles. Reports are not supernatural events. Reports require only somebody's lips to move. Nothing in the New Testament depends on anything supernatural actually happening,

The New Testament is written, in part, by somebody (Paul) who is said to have superintended miracles like Jesus'. Part of what the Gospels report is other people besides Jesus presiding at miracles. I have already discussed disciples superintending, but people of unknown religious attainment are reported doing these things, too. Mark reports Jesus tolerating an unaffiliated exorcist (at 9: 38-39). The Gospel doesn't even bother to name or situate the guy, that's how routine was that which Jesus is said to have done. The first audience for the New Testament were people who saw these sort of events every week at the church meeting (1 Corithians suggests that there was a whole lot of shaking going on at Paul's churches.)

The early-Gospel miracles especially are highly plasuible psychological events. From Mark, we have whatever Jesus saw when he hit the water, after J the B manipulated the setting and set. we have whatever Peter, James and John saw when they climbed the mountain, after Jesus manipulated the stting and the set.

Carl Jung reported better stuff in his life than a lot of what Mark attributes to Jesus. If you remove the psychologically interesting material from Jung's biography, then you would wonder why anybody would write about him, either. OK, there was Keira Knightley's character, but you see where I am going here.

Comparisons with other known-to-be historical people are appropriate when developing criteria for a historical Jesus who counts. Jesus' "healing" miracles are what you can watch Benny Hinn doing anytime you like on cable TV or streaming video. Except you bring 2000 years of progress to the spectacle. Not much to say about Benny, either, if you edit out the stuff for which superstitious people offer a supernatural explanation.

By that standard, Sylvia Browne wouldn't make the cut as a historical person who counts. That sets up the last miracle of the post: Peter's first take on the waterwalk is that he's seeing a ghost. Could be, the whole flipping religion is about seeing a ghost. Paul lists Peter as the first to see that ghost, too.

Jesus "counts" because he is a focus for superstitious attention. To edit out natural events into which superstitious people read something else is to guarantee that no historical person could possibly count as Jesus.

 

[neilgodfrey]

Yes it does! Whether the passage was written in the second century (if indeed it was) or the twentieth century, it contains a discussion of the possible divine inspiration of these first century rebel movements. For evidence of first century messianism we may look to Josephus. In his work we find an unambiguous statement that messianism was a major incitement to revolt. And for Simon bar Giora, a leader of the First Revolt, . . . Similar coins were also minted later by Bar Kochba.

If Acts is fiction and propaganda it cannot be used as a source for the interpretation of the events as you describe. The Gamaliel speech is deliberately constructed as a foil to the Jesus movements. That is not evidence of anything but the dramatic proclivities of the author of Acts.

The only evidence Josephus gives us of first century messianism being an instigator of revolt relates to the period of the Jewish War itself. That's a generation or two after the supposed time of Jesus.

I am not disputing popular messianism at a later time. For some reason (not hard to figure out why) some scholars want us to interpret Josephus' silence as an indicator that he was really referring to messianic movements yet we are also asked to interpret his non-silence in the same way!

No, Horsley has shown the prevalence of bandit movements in the period of Jesus. There were rebel figures from time to time but I have seen no evidence that they were messianic. Thompson and Green and co demonstrate that the title of "messiah" was never applied to a contemporary person until the Jewish War(s).

 

[neilgodfrey]

I'd be interested in seeing sources for that. . . . earlychristianwritings.com. . . gives 80-130, with a preference for c95-100 if Luke did in fact draw on Josephus. Earlier is "permissible" if he didn't.

Peter Kirby gives the common dates found in the basic texts on his earlychristianwritings site. But there have always been scholars who have argued for a mid second century date for Acts. I find their arguments persuasive because they are based on normative dating means and not what essentially boil down to apologetic assumptions.

There is an "apologetic" assumption that the gospels must date as close as the evidence will permit to the supposed time of Jesus. So references to the fall of Jerusalem set them to about 70 CE and that's the starting point.

But if we rely on more standard methods of dating, and look at the first evidence that Acts was indeed known by others, then we come to the latter second century. And if we look at the contents of Acts and seek to explain them in the light of all our other contesting and comparable data, we find that Acts is most efficiently explained as a response to Marcionism -- in the early and mid second century. Further, it appears that Church Fathers in the earlier part of the second century knew nothing of Acts since they failed to use its information despite it being so useful had they known it.

I am not allowed to post url's yet here. Otherwise I would point you to lengthy discussions of the scholarship explaining all of this. But I have discussed the contents of scholarly works on this, including one series of posts outlining the various arguments for the early and late dating of Acts -- if one goes to vridar.org and places "Dating the book of Acts" (including the quotation marks) in the Search box there these will give you posts with the scholarly sources for the various arguments.

 

[Slowvehicle]

Peter Kirby gives the common dates found in the basic texts on his earlychristianwritings site. But there have always been scholars who have argued for a mid second century date for Acts. I find their arguments persuasive because they are based on normative dating means and not what essentially boil down to apologetic assumptions.

There is an "apologetic" assumption that the gospels must date as close as the evidence will permit to the supposed time of Jesus. So references to the fall of Jerusalem set them to about 70 CE and that's the starting point.

But if we rely on more standard methods of dating, and look at the first evidence that Acts was indeed known by others, then we come to the latter second century. And if we look at the contents of Acts and seek to explain them in the light of all our other contesting and comparable data, we find that Acts is most efficiently explained as a response to Marcionism -- in the early and mid second century. Further, it appears that Church Fathers in the earlier part of the second century knew nothing of Acts since they failed to use its information despite it being so useful had they known it.

I am not allowed to post url's yet here. Otherwise I would point you to lengthy discussions of the scholarship explaining all of this. But I have discussed the contents of scholarly works on this, including one series of posts outlining the various arguments for the early and late dating of Acts -- if one goes to vridar.org and places "Dating the book of Acts" (including the quotation marks) in the Search box there these will give you posts with the scholarly sources for the various arguments.

Post the URL as text, with extra spaces, and some kind soul will put it up for you...

 

[Craig B]

... The only evidence Josephus gives us of first century messianism being an instigator of revolt relates to the period of the Jewish War itself. That's a generation or two after the supposed time of Jesus.

I am not disputing popular messianism at a later time ...

Good and well. But at #4072 you said this:

Others have argued that there is no evidence that the "messiah" concept (until the second century CE) was ever a feature of popular Jewish consciousness. It was a theological concept that, as far as we can say for certain at this point given the evidence, was confined to esoteric speculations of priests and scholars.

This all changed after the fall of Jerusalem in 70 CE.

So did the change in the understanding of the Messiah take place post 70 - in consequence of the War, as you say? Or later, in the 2nd century, as you also say? Or was it in fact already present prior to the outbreak of the War, as one of its major causes, as we have seen that Josephus says?

 

[maximara]

Thank you. Yes, you have provided us with a definitional exclusion of the existence of an HJ. An "ontological disproof". That's absolutely fine. The Jesus of the Bible is a miracle worker. Miracles are impossible. So there is no Bible Jesus. But there is no evidence outside the Bible. Therefore there was no Jesus full stop. I don't accept that reasoning as final or foolproof, however.

I agree that as presented it is a bit of a non sequitur but even stripped of the miracle stuff the Bible gives us a Jesus who spoke to hundreds if not thousands of people. Supposedly there was a mob formed regarding his trial and then he was crucified.

You would think that would have attracted far more attention then what we see outside the Bible. Compare what Josephus gives us for Simon of Peraea and Athronges who predate Jesus by nearly 20 years to the Testimonium Flavianum in its entirety and see how little we are given.

So you get a turn down the volume situation making Jesus more and more minor which hits the other wall. Supposedly as Saul Paul became infamous across three Roman provenances for his persecution of Christians.

Now unless Saul was persecuting "Christians" before Jesus was crucified you have a movement spread like wildfire so that Saul has someone to persecute and yet no one notices this.

Given the size of the most likely provinces involved Saul must have been riding a mount that was effectively a cross between Speedy Gonzales, the Roadrunner, and Sonic the Hedgehog being feed oats spiked with amphetamines.

Yet nobody notices the founder of this movement until Paul starts writing letters over 20 years later after his conversion?

Furthermore we have letters from Herod Agrippa to Philo who is informing Philo of all the bonehead things Pontius Pilate did so that Philo who is already on his way to talk to Caligula will have "evidence" that Agrippa would make a much better ruler of the area then anyone Caligula could choose. If Jesus was in any way important to that cause Herod Agrippa would have informed Philo of it...but he doesn't.

It is not just we down 't have evidence but people (like Herod Agrippa and Philo) who should and would have mentioned Jesus don't. Jesus is so far off of nearly every non Biblical author's radar for nearly 300 years that he must have been a very minor person...which brings us back to the Saul-Paul problem.

 

[Belz...]

Now unless Saul was persecuting "Christians" before Jesus was crucified you have a movement spread like wildfire so that Saul has someone to persecute and yet no one notices this.

So what are you suggesting ?That Paul was written later than we think to give the impression of a larger Christianity ?

 

[Craig B]

So what are you suggesting ?That Paul was written later than we think to give the impression of a larger Christianity ?

No doubt you'll tell us he wrote his epistles during the reign of Alexander Janneus while he was being initiated into Essenism in a desert hideaway on the shores of the Dead Sea.

 

[gsmonks]

When tossing the Jesus myth around like a Greek salad, it's seldom mentioned that the myth is a bit like a rotten onion. A good onion has discrete layers whilst a rotten onion's borders aren't distinct in rotten spots.

There's the "Christ as a person" claim, which in itself is divisible. There's the magic guy who's said to be the son of the bearded dickhead in the sky nonsensical story, there are claims of a rabbi who taught, which are muddled and obviously untrue, and a recent claim is that a group of scholars have teased the story of the real guy and his family from the psycho-Bible.

I have always dismissed the claims that Christ was an historical figure, but when I saw this documentary I conceded, assuming this documentary is factual and its finding true and verifiable, that the door is a jar, or maybe even a window.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4kTNS18ses

It could also be yet another conspiracy theory blowing smoke up our arses, but until I see evidence to the contrary, the jury's out.

There are a few things true believers seem slow to grasp about the Jesus history. The most telling is the evolution and development of the early Christian movement, which is mired in bologna. A lot of stuff is passed off as history, for example, that is Christian crappola, not history. The stories of Christian persecution are a good example. The Romans were very tolerant of other people's religions. They did not persecute the Christians. That much is a lie. The truth is that the early Christians were notorious disturbers of the peace and were extremely disrespectful towards people of other religions. These were characteristics of Christianity from the very beginning- its intolerance and its lies.

The earliest teachers of the Gospels each taught ONE Gospel, and there were a good many of them. What modern Christians fail to relate, and in all likelihood don't know themselves, is that Christ wasn't mentioned in the Gospels in their earliest form. In fact, we have no idea what the originals contained, because generations of competing kooks reworked and revised the texts over many years, and the early years were a tug-of-war between competing factions.

So anyway, you have the Christ of the competing kooks, the guy who may or may not have existed, and you have the early Christian movement which probably didn't have Jesus in it.

The latter is evidenced in the symbolism of the early Christian faith. The earliest Christian cult followers' symbol was a fish, not a cross. The cross (and the crucifixion) came later, and when the cross was introduced, there was a sheep, not a man, nailed to it. Over time the sheep took on human features, and eventually it became a man, known in the earliest writings as "the lamb of Dog", not Jesus. It took time for the ideas of the Godfather, the Sun, and the Holey Smoke Trinity thing to be hashed out and codified, and terms like "the lamb of Dog" to be assimilated.

 

[IanS]

I agree that as presented it is a bit of a non sequitur but even stripped of the miracle stuff the Bible gives us a Jesus who spoke to hundreds if not thousands of people. Supposedly there was a mob formed regarding his trial and then he was crucified.

.

Max, I know you and I are agreeing on most of what we’ve said in this thread, but just re. the above -

- I think all those claimed conversations must be regarded in very considerable doubt. Because, firstly - we mainly know of the conversations from the anonymous authors of the gospels, and not for example from any earlier writing of Paul or any non-Christian writers.

However, secondly - those gospels come to us far too late to be reliably believable. Prior to the 4th century all we apparently have are a number of fragments thought to be from various gospels and thought/claimed to be from earlier dates closer to the 1st century. But the detail that we get from the gospel stories presumably has to come mostly from those 4th century and later copies.

But thirdly, where authors like Helms have tried to check those gospel conversations attributed to Jesus and other biblical figures, it turns out the same or very similar conversations can be found centuries before in the writing of the OT.

That cannot be just a coincidence, that so much of what Jesus is supposed to have said and done, is actually taken in one form or other from the OT.

Evidence like that - (1)similar OT examples from centuries before, (2)readable detailed copies of the gospels too late at 4th century onwards, (3)gospels written anonymously using anonymous sources (actually the source was quite obviously the OT, see Helms, ref as given earlier), (4)gospel authors and Paul only repeating legends of a past & deceased figure that none of them ever knew at all, (5)no near contemporary non-Christian mention of any such conversations, meetings or events or any such Jesus figure at all, not even in the Dead Sea Scrolls .... evidence like that makes the claimed conversations and meetings of Jesus almost as unreliable and unlikely as the supernatural miracles and visions etc.

If you get rid of all the highly suspicious conversations and meetings, unconfirmed by anyone alive at the time, then I'm not sure what is actually left of any "real" Jesus figure in the gospels? Certainly there would be nothing left worth any of the biblical authors ever bothering to write about. And whatever was left would be a completely different figure than the Jesus that they actually did write about and did believe in.

 

[maximara]

So what are you suggesting ?That Paul was written later than we think to give the impression of a larger Christianity ?

No, but if we are to take what we are told about Paul seriously you have this issue how does a very minor person create a movement so massive that it cover three Roman provinces but that no one notices for 20 years?

 

[maximara]

Max,

(good points snipped for space)

If you get rid of all the highly suspicious conversations and meetings, unconfirmed by anyone alive at the time, then I'm not sure what is actually left of any "real" Jesus figure in the gospels? Certainly there would be nothing left worth any of the biblical authors ever bothering to write about. And whatever was left would be a completely different figure than the Jesus that they actually did write about and did believe in.

But that is what "classic" Christ mythic ala Drews, Remsburg, and the rest was.

If you strip away the supernatural and then strip away the material that is essentially reworking of OT and pagan stories you have so little left that other then name there is nothing to connect the NT Jesus and any hypothetical historical Jesus.

The best Remsberg could say was there was a Jesus in the first century Galilee and that was basically it.

"Jesus, if he existed, was a Jew, and his religion, with a few innovations, was Judaism. With his death, probably, his apotheosis began. During the first century the transformation was slow; but during the succeeding centuries rapid. The Judaic elements of his religion were, in time, nearly all eliminated, and the Pagan elements, one by one, were incorporated into the new faith." (Remsberg)


Even tradition admits that the "genuine" letters we have have from Paul were edited into their current form--perhaps by Marcion c140 CE. From the writings themselves we know we didn't get it all as the following Paul writings are referenced...but we don't have them:

First Epistle to Corinth (1 Corinthians 5:9)
Third Epistle to Corinth aka Severe Letter (2 Corinthians 2:4; 2 Corinthians 7:8-9)
The earlier Epistle to the Ephesians (Ephesians 3:3-4)
The Epistle to the Laodiceans (Colossians 4:16)

The oldest primary provenience of Paul (Papyrus 46) is well after the editing occurred at 175-225 CE.


The Gospels are more of a train wreck. The earliest best primary provenience we have for the Gospels is Codex Sinaiticus (c330–c360 CE) so that is no good.

Secondary provenience is not much better. Irenaeus goes on a mammoth quote dump c180 CE but he also makes claims that make no sense with history or the Gospels as we know them.

Marcion c140 CE supposedly rejected what would become known as Matthew, Mark and John and use his own version of "Luke" but it is not known if this was the original or altered to suit Marcion.

Discounting the provenience those reference documents have the best we can show is that some form of Paul and some form of the Gospels existed c140 CE...long after everyone who knew Jesus was dead and gone.

IanS, i know these things have provenience issues but my point is even if we give the apologists the best break possible on the referral documents (because the primary provenience is next to useless) they can't push things any further back then c140 CE and their best reference (Irenaeus) makes conclusions totally incompatible with the Gospels we know.

 

[IanS]

But that is what "classic" Christ mythic ala Drews, Remsburg, and the rest was.

If you strip away the supernatural and then strip away the material that is essentially reworking of OT and pagan stories you have so little left that other then name there is nothing to connect the NT Jesus and any hypothetical historical Jesus.

The best Remsberg could say was there was a Jesus in the first century Galilee and that was basically it.

"Jesus, if he existed, was a Jew, and his religion, with a few innovations, was Judaism. With his death, probably, his apotheosis began. During the first century the transformation was slow; but during the succeeding centuries rapid. The Judaic elements of his religion were, in time, nearly all eliminated, and the Pagan elements, one by one, were incorporated into the new faith." (Remsberg)


Even tradition admits that the "genuine" letters we have have from Paul were edited into their current form--perhaps by Marcion c140 CE. From the writings themselves we know we didn't get it all as the following Paul writings are referenced...but we don't have them:

First Epistle to Corinth (1 Corinthians 5:9)
Third Epistle to Corinth aka Severe Letter (2 Corinthians 2:4; 2 Corinthians 7:8-9)
The earlier Epistle to the Ephesians (Ephesians 3:3-4)
The Epistle to the Laodiceans (Colossians 4:16)

The oldest primary provenience of Paul (Papyrus 46) is well after the editing occurred at 175-225 CE.


The Gospels are more of a train wreck. The earliest best primary provenience we have for the Gospels is Codex Sinaiticus (c330–c360 CE) so that is no good.

Secondary provenience is not much better. Irenaeus goes on a mammoth quote dump c180 CE but he also makes claims that make no sense with history or the Gospels as we know them.

Marcion c140 CE supposedly rejected what would become known as Matthew, Mark and John and use his own version of "Luke" but it is not known if this was the original or altered to suit Marcion.

Discounting the provenience those reference documents have the best we can show is that some form of Paul and some form of the Gospels existed c140 CE...long after everyone who knew Jesus was dead and gone.

Yep. Well ... without me having read anything from Drews or Remsberg etc., it sounds as if I am saying the same thing as they both noticed long ago. That is - once you remove all the unacceptable elements of the Jesus claims from the bible, there is virtually nothing useful left.

IanS, i know these things have provenience issues but my point is even if we give the apologists the best break possible on the referral documents (because the primary provenience is next to useless) they can't push things any further back then c140 CE and their best reference (Irenaeus) makes conclusions totally incompatible with the Gospels we know.

Sure, you may well be quite right on that. You know far more than I do about other authors like Marcion.

The only other thing I'd say re. the claimed dates is that I agree with what I think Neil Godfrey was suggesting earlier. Namely that Biblical Scholars have historically been far too optimistic and serving of their own interests when estimating the dates as early as possible in order place the earliest bible writing as close as possible in time to the supposed life of Jesus.

But I think that position is untenable anyway. Because it seems that prior to about 4th century (and in fact mostly 6th century onwards) all that exists for any of the gospels is a collection of fragments, which are presumably not sufficient to provide much if any detail about the story of what was believed about Jesus …

…. otherwise if the mere fragments were sufficient, everyone would be writing to say that there were enough fragments that could be stuck back together to make almost complete copies of gospels dating back to the 1st century AD. But that is of course not the case. Instead, afaik, all the current day Biblical scholars are quite silent on that. And I take that silence as a quite obvious admission that in fact the bulk of what is said to be known about the detailed biblical picture of Jesus, comes not from any such fragments, but actually from the more complete and readable copies dating from the 4th to 6th century onwards.

The same really applies to non-biblical writing from Josephus and Tacitus, and afaik all the other non-biblical writing too. That is - very early dates are often claimed as support for the biblical Jesus story. But in fact, none of that non-biblical writing is actually known except from copies made many centuries later, and mostly (apparently) by Christian copyists.

IOW - put simply, the early claimed dates appear to be thoroughly misleading, to the point of bordering on deliberate misrepresentation if not dishonesty in the way Biblical scholars have presented that material.

Or even more simply, as you said - the thing is a complete train wreck.

 

[Belz...]

No, but if we are to take what we are told about Paul seriously you have this issue how does a very minor person create a movement so massive that it cover three Roman provinces but that no one notices for 20 years?

I understand the issue, but I want to know what that entails, if not that the story wasn't written outside of the time frame we usually set it in.