Bart Ehrman on the Historical Jesus

[Belz...]

Then there are others who say, Jesus was never believed to have lived on earth in recent times but all this was thought to be a spiritual manifestation of activities in a "mythical" or non-material sphere of existence, like Osiris dwelling in the Underworld. I don't think there's any evidence for the pre existence of such a myth, and I simply reject this version of MJ.

Yes. At this point such an MJ scenario becomes a positive claim for which evidence is required, especially since our "record" of Jesus, such as it is, begins with him very much human, and ends with him very much divine, not the other way around.

 

[dejudge]

Yes. At this point such an MJ scenario becomes a positive claim for which evidence is required, especially since our "record" of Jesus, such as it is, begins with him very much human, and ends with him very much divine, not the other way around.

Actually the very FIRST verse of some version of gMark start with Jesus the Son God.

Mark 1:1 NAS

The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God

Jesus of the NT was the Son of God from the very beginning.

The author of gMark made sure he claimed his Jesus walked on the sea, transfigured and resurrected to show openly that he was writing mythology--not history.

Why do believe gMark is history??

You are on your own if you believe OPEN and blatant mythology represents history.

May I remind you that the author of gMark never claimed he was writing historical accounts of any character.

 

[TimCallahan]

Yes it is the very issue because as pointed out in Evidence for the historical existence of Jesus Christ:

Jesus as historical myth and The Tabula Rasa Jesus

Remsburg pointed out:

"A Historical myth according to Strauss, and to some extent I follow his language, is a real event colored by the light of antiquity, which confounded the human and divine, the natural and the supernatural. The event may be but slightly colored and the narrative essentially true, or it may be distorted and numberless legends attached until but a small residuum of truth remains and the narrative is essentially false."

So even if Jesus is a historical myth (ie was a flesh and blood man) you could have the issue of the Gospel narrative being essentially false and telling you nothing about the actual Jesus other than he existed--effectively putting him on par with Robin Hood or King Arthur, who have had historical candidates suggested as much as 200 years from when their stories traditionally take place.

To make Jesus more than that a researcher has to assume some parts of the Gospels narrative is essentially true. But which parts? In answering that question all supporters of a "historical Jesus" get into the Miner problem of effectively turning Jesus into a Tabula Rasa on which they overlay their own views.

"The "historical Jesus" reconstructed by New Testament scholars is always a reflection of the individual scholars who reconstruct him. Albert Schweitzer was perhaps the single exception, and he made it painfully clear that previous questers for the historical Jesus had merely drawn self-portraits. All unconsciously used the historical Jesus as a ventriloquist dummy. Jesus must have taught the truth, and their own beliefs must have been true, so Jesus must have taught those beliefs." (Price, Robert (1997) Christ a Fiction)

The fact this keeps happening shows just how little definitive information on Jesus there is in Paul's writings and the Gospels.

Price points out the problem and its result:

"What one Jesus reconstruction leaves aside, the next one takes up and makes its cornerstone. Jesus simply wears too many hats in the Gospels – exorcist, healer, king, prophet, sage, rabbi, demigod, and so on. The Jesus Christ of the New Testament is a composite figure (...) The historical Jesus (if there was one) might well have been a messianic king, or a progressive Pharisee, or a Galilean shaman, or a magus, or a Hellenistic sage. But he cannot very well have been all of them at the same time." (Price, Robert (2000) Deconstructing Jesus, pp. 15-16)

"My point here is simply that, even if there was a historical Jesus lying back of the gospel Christ, he can never be recovered. If there ever was a historical Jesus, there isn't one any more. All attempts to recover him turn out to be just modern remythologizings of Jesus. Every "historical Jesus" is a Christ of faith, of somebody's faith. So the "historical Jesus" of modern scholarship is no less a fiction." (Price, Robert (1997) Christ a Fiction)

------

We have seen this process with King Arthur and Robin Hood where the stories are reinterpreted for each generation to promote a particular view of those people. We have seen it with Jesus with him as the 1st century equivalent of a flower child Guru, a follower of Buddhism, or about any other idea that has come across the deck.

I essentially agree with this position. I think Jesus was historical - but barely. One criterion by which one can judge the non-supernatural narratives of the Christian scriptures is that of plausibility. For example: Is it plausible that Jesus could have entered Jerusalem in a triumphant manner, with people throwing down their garments and palm fronds, so the feet of the ass he was riding didn't have to touch the ground, and the same people crying out, "Hosannah!", which means, "Save us!", and, by extension, "Free us!"; yet that the Romans didn't do anything about it?

Josephus tells of a messianic pretender named Theudas, who gathered his followers on the east side of the Jordan River, believing that it would part, just as it had in the Book of Joshua, so he could cross dry-shod and march into Jerusalem. The Romans really didn't need to do anything about Theudas. Once the river did not part for him, once he got his feet wet, he would have been totally discredited. However, Cuspius Fadus, then procurator of Judea, sent out a detachment of cavalry. They killed, wounded or dispersed the followers of Theudas, captured him, cut off his head and brought it back with them to Jerusalem. So, the Roman response to messianic pretenders was swift, decisive and gratuitously brutal.

Josephus also tells of how Pontius Pilate dealt with an angry, but not necessarily violent, mob that was protesting his use of temple funds to build an aqueduct to bring water to Jerusalem. He told them to disperse and, when they didn't, he gave pre-arranged signal. He had soldiers, dressed as civilians but with weapons hidden under their clothes, mix with the crowd. At the signal, they pulled out their weapons and began slaughtering the protestors. This is pretty much the sort of behavior one would expect of someone whose mentor was Lucius Aelius Sejanus, captain of the Praetorian Guard who plotted to take over the empire (In the TV series I, Claudius, Patrick Stewart portrayed Sejenus with a certain genial malice).

So, not only is the Palm Sunday entrance into Jerusalem wildly implausible, so also is the, "Give us Barabbas" narrative, in which Pilate is portrayed as somewhat cowed by the mob. Of course, there's no indication that the Romans would have released any prisoner condemned to death on the occasion of a local holiday. However, had there been such a policy, and Pilate really wanted to release Jesus, he could easily have told the mob, "You ask me to free Barabbas, and I will. As an act of magnanimity, I will also release Jesus."

Even the Sermon on the Mount fails for lack of decent acoustics, as in, "Blessed are the cheese makers." He could have preached the various aphorisms of the Beatitudes, but hardly to a vast multitude in the countryside.

About the only act recorded in the gospels I can see as plausible is Jesus overturning the tables of the money-changers, which, had he done so, would have resulted in his immediate arrest: no need for a secret nighttime arrest, no need for a betrayer. I could see Jesus as having complicity in his own arrest in the deluded belief, as a messianic pretender, that he would be raised from the dead, once the Romans executed him.

It strikes me that this thread has generated a great deal of heat, but little light, considering that most of those of us posting on this thread who accept an HJ, only accept a Jesus who was barely historical. I see little difference between the barely HJ position and the the MJ position. Yet look at all the rancor - at least on the part of dejudge - this has provoked. This will likely be my last post on this thread, since I see most of what has any substance in this issue as having long been mulled - an mauled - over.

 

[Craig B]

Actually the very FIRST verse of some version of gMark start with Jesus the Son God.

That us not true. Son God is not the same as son of God, and you know it. Nowhere does Mark call Jesus God, and I will assume that is a slip.

Jesus of the NT was the Son of God from the very beginning.

Not in the sense of a miracle divine birth. In the sense of the passages I have cited re David and Solomon, which are reflected in the words from Heaven Jesus is described as hearing at the time of his baptism. But this has been pointed out many times. You don't answer it but just keep repeating the same old nonsense. Copy and paste.

 

[zugzwang]

Craig B wrote:

Yes. This is not a virgin-born water-strolling self-transfiguring Logos-style creator such as dejudge tries to scare us with from time to time.

I forgot another point about the laws on Peah, which seem to be quite complex, is that it wasn't forbidden to glean on the sabbath (as far as I can make out), but the Pharisees wanted to bring in a super-orthodox rule to forbid it. So Jesus rebuffs this, possibly to defend ordinary poor Jews, who after all, get hungry on the sabbath. Of course, he is given the famous maxim about the sabbath being made for man, but that in itself is not particularly supernatural.

I think some Christians take these discussions as showing Jesus as critical of religion itself, which is rather ironic. But at any rate, it looks like a row between different Jewish groups, not a wonder-worker, doing his wonders.

What puzzles me about this, is that some people seem to argue that there is very little ordinary stuff in the gospels, and it is packed full of wonder-working. Yet this discussion of Peah is only part of a whole series on purity, which was (and still is, I think) a very big deal for Jews, hence stuff about what you can eat, about ritual purity, and so on.

This stuff is not supernatural, so why is it ignored? It's what you would expect a Jewish preacher/teacher to rabbit on about.

 

[The Norseman]

I was under the impression that several of these historical people had been named again just a couple of days ago. Socrates gets trotted out, though I understand the differences between him and Jesus. We basically have people's word that he existed. IanS would never accept what we have on Socrates as credible reliable awesome evidence. Or if he did, he would be inconsistent in his standard.

I'm not sure it's worth me repeating myself a third time, then, since I was quite clear why that was a problem.

Oookay. I'm not sure why you and I seem to dance at the edge of incivility, but I will do my best to not respond in such a manner toward you. I apologize if I have done so earlier.

Also, you will have to forgive me because it isn't as clear to me as it has been for you. You can choose not to answer it for the third time, but I will ask politely for you to explain why it's so obvious what a problem it would be for it to be said that "it's highly improbable that Socrates existed, mainly because there isn't any other data to support his existence, which will be revised upon further non-fantastic data being discovered."

You count the number of posts in this thread making reference to the theorem, and get back to me if you hit anywhere close to 25%.

I'm sure you're correct and I'll take you at your word. My question was expressing puzzlement that you were participating in the sub-concept (if you will) dealing with Bayes' Theorem if you didn't care about it. Nothing more.

 

[dejudge]

Now compare those to Jesus:

1) The only known possible known contemporary is Paul (Romans, 1st Corinthians, 2nd Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1st Thessalonians and Philemon) who not only writes some 20 years after the events but seems more intent on the Jesus in his own head than any Jesus who actually preached in Galilee. In fact, even though in his own account Paul meets "James, brother of the Lord" we get no details of Jesus' life, not even references to the famous sermons or miracles.

Paul could not be a known contemporary because the Church writers claimed Paul wrote Ephesians, 2 Thessalonians, Colossians, 1&2 Timothy and Titus.

Church writers also claimed Paul was ALIVE when gLuke was composed.

Which Paul was a known contemporary?

Letters to place Paul in the 1st century at the time of Nero turned out to be forgeries.

Paul is an unknown character--not even the Church knew when Paul really lived, or what he wrote and when he wrote them.

It took hundreds of years, over a thousand years, to realize the Pauline letters are the products of perhaps as much as SEVEN different writers at different times.

The many characters using the name Paul was NOT Saul/Paul in Acts.

Saul/Paul in Acts wrote NO letters to Seven Churches and none to Timothy, Titus and Philemon to at least 62 CE.

Neither Ignatius writings or the Clement Epistle state Paul wrote letters before c 70 CE.

The Pauline Corpus is completely useless to argue for an historical Jesus.

The Pauline writers claimed they were witnesses of God that their Jesus was ALREADY dead and resurrected when they were seen of him after OVER five hundred people.

If HJ was a known dead human being then the Pauline writers were KNOWN LIARS.

 

[Craig B]

... I forgot another point about the laws on Peah, which seem to be quite complex, is that it wasn't forbidden to glean on the sabbath (as far as I can make out), but the Pharisees wanted to bring in a super-orthodox rule to forbid it. So Jesus rebuffs this, possibly to defend ordinary poor Jews, who after all, get hungry on the sabbath. Of course, he is given the famous maxim about the sabbath being made for man, but that in itself is not particularly supernatural.

I wonder if the passage is in fact about Peah. In the David story he and his men need food because they're on the run from Saul, and David thereafter defects to the King of Gath, then other places; and Saul goes to the priest and kills him for having given David the bread. What can this have to do with Peah, whether grain may be gleaned on the Sabbath or not? It is about some kind of messianic activity, engaged in while on the run, and so holy that it justifies not merely casual taking of grain but would even warrant consumption of the holy bread. Maccoby uses this incident to further his view of Jesus and his men as Theudas-style rebels. But it is very confusing, and the error in the priest's name is exceedingly odd. Why was it not "corrected" by an alert redactor in subsequent centuries?

However all that may be, Jesus does not come across as a virgin born divinity in these passages, as you observe.

 

[Stone]

[He] fears an attack on academic history on these grounds ......... this kind of attack is mainly an internet amateur phenomenon, isn't it?

For now......................

Stone

 

[dejudge]

However all that may be, Jesus does not come across as a virgin born divinity in these passages, as you observe.

Christians of antiquity who used the Gospels claimed Jesus was God and born of a Ghost.

This a partial list of those claimed Jesus was the Son of God and born of a Ghost AFTER using the Gospels or Pauline Corpus.

Ignatius, Aristides, Justin, Hippolytus, Origen, Tertullian, EUSEBIUS, Jerome, Rufinus, Lactantius, Augustine, Chrysostom.

It is clear that Jesus did come across as a virgin born divinity to those who were Christians in antiquity.

 

[Stone]

This is where Tacitus can be seen as a transmitter of second or fifth hand information, since there were no records from the 30s available to a writer in the second century.

Wow, what a freaking confident assertion. You just know that, do you? Pray tell us just where you picked up that infallible intelligence? Impress us all by this great discovery. Do you time travel, by any chance?

Stone

 

[Craig B]

Christians of antiquity who used the Gospels claimed Jesus was God and born of a Ghost.

This a partial list of those claimed Jesus was the Son of God and born of a Ghost AFTER using the Gospels or Pauline Corpus.

Ignatius, Aristides, Justin, Hippolytus, Origen, Tertullian, EUSEBIUS, Jerome, Rufinus, Lactantius, Augustine, Chrysostom.

It is clear that Jesus did come across as a virgin born divinity to those who were Christians in antiquity.

Aaaargh! He's followed me here with his lists of names. But wait! There is a subtle change of emphasis in the opening lines. Instead of saying that all the gospels claimed Jesus was born of a virgin and a ghost, he's just claiming that "Christians of antiquity" believed this. Great, a step forward. Good show, dejudge! He tries to undo the effect by adding that Jesus "came across" as a virgin born divinity; but still and all, perceptible progress has been achieved.

 

[dejudge]

Wow, what a freaking confident assertion. You just know that, do you? Pray tell us just where you picked up that infallible intelligence? Impress us all by this great discovery. Do you time travel, by any chance?

Stone

If there were records that Jesus of Nazareth was a real human being then the Pauline writings are a Pack of LIES and could not have started a New Religion.

If people of the Roman Empire knew of the records that an Itinerant preacher was crucified and Paul claimed he was God Creator who abolished the Laws of the Jews for Remission of Sins since 37-41 CE then Paul would have been regarded as an Idiot and a Liar.

The start of Christianity [the Jesus cult] could NOT have begun on actual KNOWN Lies

 

[maximara]

I essentially agree with this position. I think Jesus was historical - but barely. One criterion by which one can judge the non-supernatural narratives of the Christian scriptures is that of plausibility. For example: Is it plausible that Jesus could have entered Jerusalem in a triumphant manner, with people throwing down their garments and palm fronds, so the feet of the ass he was riding didn't have to touch the ground, and the same people crying out, "Hosannah!", which means, "Save us!", and, by extension, "Free us!"; yet that the Romans didn't do anything about it?

Josephus tells of a messianic pretender named Theudas, who gathered his followers on the east side of the Jordan River, believing that it would part, just as it had in the Book of Joshua, so he could cross dry-shod and march into Jerusalem. The Romans really didn't need to do anything about Theudas. Once the river did not part for him, once he got his feet wet, he would have been totally discredited. However, Cuspius Fadus, then procurator of Judea, sent out a detachment of cavalry. They killed, wounded or dispersed the followers of Theudas, captured him, cut off his head and brought it back with them to Jerusalem. So, the Roman response to messianic pretenders was swift, decisive and gratuitously brutal.

Josephus also tells of how Pontius Pilate dealt with an angry, but not necessarily violent, mob that was protesting his use of temple funds to build an aqueduct to bring water to Jerusalem. He told them to disperse and, when they didn't, he gave pre-arranged signal. He had soldiers, dressed as civilians but with weapons hidden under their clothes, mix with the crowd. At the signal, they pulled out their weapons and began slaughtering the protestors. This is pretty much the sort of behavior one would expect of someone whose mentor was Lucius Aelius Sejanus, captain of the Praetorian Guard who plotted to take over the empire (In the TV series I, Claudius, Patrick Stewart portrayed Sejenus with a certain genial malice).

So, not only is the Palm Sunday entrance into Jerusalem wildly implausible, so also is the, "Give us Barabbas" narrative, in which Pilate is portrayed as somewhat cowed by the mob. Of course, there's no indication that the Romans would have released any prisoner condemned to death on the occasion of a local holiday. However, had there been such a policy, and Pilate really wanted to release Jesus, he could easily have told the mob, "You ask me to free Barabbas, and I will. As an act of magnanimity, I will also release Jesus."

Even the Sermon on the Mount fails for lack of decent acoustics, as in, "Blessed are the cheese makers." He could have preached the various aphorisms of the Beatitudes, but hardly to a vast multitude in the countryside.

About the only act recorded in the gospels I can see as plausible is Jesus overturning the tables of the money-changers, which, had he done so, would have resulted in his immediate arrest: no need for a secret nighttime arrest, no need for a betrayer. I could see Jesus as having complicity in his own arrest in the deluded belief, as a messianic pretender, that he would be raised from the dead, once the Romans executed him.

All this is what I mean when I say when we compare the Gospels to know historical events they fall part.

One of the more interesting ideas is that the Gospel Jesus was a composite character formed out of various would-be messiahs. That view mean you have a historical seed but which one is the "core" has been lost...sort of what we have with Robin Hood.

Remsburg felt there was just enough to say Jesus had been real person but he also felt there was nothing reliable in the Gospels regarding him. Also one point that keeps being forgotten is there weren't just four Gospels but dozens (I have seen as many as 50 stated in one source).

In many cases we only know the smallest information about these other Gospels and their contents. Take the Gospel of Thomas hishc in an A&E program has Jesus being a "talking head"..."the living Jesus as scripture"

 

[IanS]

Tacitus?
Tacitus wrote his Annals in 116 CE.

It's truly astonishing, and really just very sad, that people in these threads are still proposing writers like Tacitus as evidence of Jesus.

Apart from the fact that Tacitus could never have met Jesus, the earliest known copies of Tacitus (same for copies of anything from Josephus), date not 116 CE, but from 1000 years later in the 11th century! And even those were apparently written by Christian copyists themselves.

 

[dejudge]

That us not true. Son God is not the same as son of God, and you know it. Nowhere does Mark call Jesus God, and I will assume that is a slip. Not in the sense of a miracle divine birth. In the sense of the passages I have cited re David and Solomon, which are reflected in the words from Heaven Jesus is described as hearing at the time of his baptism. But this has been pointed out many times. You don't answer it but just keep repeating the same old nonsense. Copy and paste.

What you say does not make much sense. If people were already known to be the son of God then it would not make sense to identify Jesus as the Son of God.

Plus, in any event, human beings cannot walk on the sea, transfigure and resurrect.

It is really futile for you to argue that Jesus was NOT the Son of God when he was NOT human.


The author of gMark made sure he included non-human activities for his son of God so that people would know he was writing Mythology.

Why do you believe gMark is history when virtually everything in gMark about Jesus is either total fiction or could not have happened?

Do you believe that if Jesus was baptized there would be a Holy Ghost bird and a Voice from heaven?

Do you believe that gMark's Jesus was SPITTING in people's faces so that they could instantly cured of blindness?

Do you believe gMark's Jesus instantly made the dumb talk and the deaf hear?

Do believe gMark's Jesus fed 9000 person using a few fish and bread?

Do you believe gMark's Jesus could actually bring dead people to life?

You DON'T believe gMark's Jesus story so why are you arguing with me?

gMark Jesus story is obvious OPEN and blatant mythology--the author deliberately wrote fiction and implausible accounts.

gMark is also a KNOWN forgery.

Why are you arguing with me over gMark a writing of forgery, fiction, implausibility and mythology?

Even if Jesus was described as human in gMark he would still be mythological EXACTLY like Romulus, the Son of a God and a woman with a human brother.

When Romulus died, day was turned into night, later he resurrected, appeared to a person in Rome then he ascended--just like Jesus.

gMark's Jesus perfectly matches the mythology of the Jews, Romans and Greek.

gMark Jesus was non-human, the son of God who walked on the sea.

 

[IanS]

To IanS As to Wells' own views, his wiki biography states

Since the late 1990s, Wells has said that the hypothetical Q document, which is proposed as a source used in some of the gospels, may "contain a core of reminiscences" of an itinerant Galilean miracle-worker/Cynic-sage type preacher. This new stance has been interpreted as Wells changing his position to accept the existence of a historical Jesus. In 2003 Wells stated that he now disagrees with Robert M. Price on the information about Jesus being "all mythical". Wells believes that the Jesus of the gospels is obtained by attributing the supernatural traits of the Pauline epistles to the human preacher of Q.

Why would you even bother to quote something as weak, vague and inconsequential as that? And I think you have quoted that same passage several times here now.

What do you think that writer of the Wikipedia description actually says about what Wells had said in his 2003 book? That’s not Wells “own biography” is it! That’s what the writer of that Wikipedia article says about Wells and his book of 2003.

What did you think any of my posts ever said about Wells view of Jesus?

Do you think anyone, Wells or anyone else, ever denied that there were probably hundreds of human preachers around Palestine in the early first century? Any one of whom (or any number of whom) may have later become mythologized as a very different figure described in the bible?

What do you think counts as a real Jesus? Anybody at all who preached anything in Palestine before about 100AD?

 

[dejudge]

It's truly astonishing, and really just very sad, that people in these threads are still proposing writers like Tacitus as evidence of Jesus.

Apart from the fact that Tacitus could never have met Jesus, the earliest known copies of Tacitus (same for copies of anything from Josephus), date not 116 CE, but from 1000 years later in the 11th century! And even those were apparently written by Christian copyists themselves.

This is a really good point. In fact an extremely good point that has been overlooked

All the supposed evidence for an HJ that have been recovered are dated no earlier than a thousand years or more after the supposed authorship.

The earliest extant copies of Josephus, Tacitus, Suetonius and Pliny are hundreds of years away from their time of authorship.

We only have recovered evidence for Christianity [the Jesus cult] in the 2nd century or later.

We really ONLY have extant evidence for a 2nd century Jesus cult.

The Jesus cult started in the 2nd century until further evidence is found.

We can stop talking about Josephus, Pliny, Tacitus and Suetonius because there are NO contemporary existing copies.

All the existing dated recovered manuscripts of Jesus described him as a Myth.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_New_Testament_papyri

 

[dejudge]

...About the only act recorded in the gospels I can see as plausible is Jesus overturning the tables of the money-changers, which, had he done so, would have resulted in his immediate arrest: no need for a secret nighttime arrest, no need for a betrayer.

You have now shown exactly why the "over turning table" story is NOT Plausible.

Jesus should have been immediately arrested but he was NOT.

Jesus should have gotten his butt kicked by the money-changers themselves but was NOT.

Jesus should been lucky to come out alive but was completely untouched.

ALL the stories of Jesus are not Plausible if Jesus was human.

An HJ is not compatible with the NT.

If Jesus was a known dead messianic pretender then the Pauline writings are a KNOWN Pack of lies and could not have started a new religion.

If the Romans EXECUTED the known messianic pretender then how did Paul manage to fool the Romans and tell them that the same pretender was Resurrected and that he was the Son of God, Savior, God Creator who abolished the Laws of the Jews for remission of sins?

The Pauline writings are NOT Plausible if the Romans EXECUTED the pretender.

 

[Craig B]

Why would you even bother to quote something as weak, vague and inconsequential as that? And I think you have quoted that same passage several times here now.

What do you think that writer of the Wikipedia description actually says about what Wells had said in his 2003 book? That’s not Wells “own biography” is it! That’s what the writer of that Wikipedia article says about Wells and his book of 2003.

What did you think any of my posts ever said about Wells view of Jesus?

Do you think anyone, Wells or anyone else, ever denied that there were probably hundreds of human preachers around Palestine in the early first century? Any one of whom (or any number of whom) may have later become mythologized as a very different figure described in the bible?

What do you think counts as a real Jesus? Anybody at all who preached anything in Palestine before about 100AD?

Not what Wells is reported to have said. He is referring to an individual responsible for the contents of the hypothetical Q document. Of course Wells may be wrong, but he can't now properly be cited in support of the "all myth" hypothesis.