Bart Ehrman on the Historical Jesus

[eight bits]

pakeha

Doesn't this contradict the idea the Sanhedrin couldn't have someone killed, which is why the Romans are dragged into the gospel stories??

I differ with Craig a little bit on this. Pilate may not have served very long after Jesus' execution, and we really don't have a hard date for either Jesus' or Stephen's execution. It is entirely possible for the Sanhedrin to have the prerogative sometimes and not at others, depending on who was in charge. Josephus tells us that that James fellow was offed during a lapse or hiatus in oversight, for example.

 

[dejudge]

...We aren't completely in the dark, though. Paul writes retrospectively about his preaching career. We have a real break in 1 Coritnthians, since we can see him changing the story right then and there (people are going to die before Jesus shows, so only some of us escape death). There is no prize for reverse engineering what Paul's story was originally.

The Pauline Jesus was not a man so it is really of no historical value whether or not he changed his story in 1 Corinthians.

The Pauline Jesus was a living dead--a most non-historical entity


Galatians 1

1 Paul, an apostle, (not of men, neither by man, but by Jesus Christ, and God the Father, who raised him from the dead) .

Galatians 1

11 But I certify you, brethren, that the gospel which was preached of me is not after man. 12 For I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ.

The Pauline story begins when a living dead is revealed to him by a non-existing God.


Galatians 1

15 But when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother's womb, and called me by his grace, 16 To reveal his Son in me, that I might preach him among the heathen; immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood...

The Pauline Corpus is a blatant product of belief and visions not history. No human being ever told Paul about his living dead when he was "called" by a non-existing God.

Paul made up his own story. He immediately conferred with his own imagination and no-body else.

The Pauline version of Jesus, the living dead, was admittedly made up by Paul himself.

The Pauline version of Jesus, the living dead, was assembled without any input from flesh and blood.

 

[Foster Zygote]

Your HJ was not called the Christ [Anointed]. Your HJ was not a King of the Jews or an High Priest.

You assume that your HJ was an obscure preacher who got crucified because he created havoc at the Temple.

Your HJ has not been found.

Tacitus Christus was supposedly well known with followers in and outside Judea.

You have NO evidence whatsoever that your obscurity was a Christian or a Jew.

All you have are assumptions and imaginative speculation.

You do not know the difference between the assumption of an HJ and evidence for an HJ.

The quest for evidence outside the NT and Apologetics for your assumed dead obscurity has produced nothing.

Jesus called the Christ in Antiquities of the Jews 20.9.1 was still alive c 62 CE.

Your assumed dead obscurity was crucified under Pilate.

Seriously, can't you even organize your thoughts and arguments into paragraphs? You didn't even address anything I wrote.

Why should we conclude that most experts are wrong and accept your ignorant opinion as fact? You keep ignoring the question, so I can only conclude that it makes you rather uncomfortable.

 

[Foster Zygote]

Paul made up his own story. He immediately conferred with his own imagination and no-body else.

The Pauline version of Jesus, the living dead, was admittedly made up by Paul himself.

The Pauline version of Jesus, the living dead, was assembled without any input from flesh and blood.

Why did you waste time composing three sentences that say the same thing?

Paul never met Jesus, and he seems to have created a version of Jesus that is much his own creation. He even has to justify to his followers why they should accept his version as accurate when people who knew Jesus say that Paul is off base. He even describes a trip to Jerusalem where he met these people and they agreed to let him preach his own version of Jesus as long as he only preached among the gentiles and left the preaching to the Jews to them, making it seem very likely that they were just glad to be rid of him.

Part of the historical Jesus hypothesis is that Jesus was mythologized and exaggerated by many different people after his death. Much of what was written about him is obviously made up. But that doesn't mean that he could not have actually existed. Why can't you get it through your head that the early Christian writings are not regarded as unbiased documentary histories about Jesus' life? If it is really as simple as you seem to think it is, why do so many university professors studying the matter have an opinion so different from yours?

 

[Foster Zygote]

Your post is filled with baseless rhetoric.

No, you're just afraid to admit that you know nothing about the subject you are arguing so vociferously.

You seem not to understand the difference between an assumption and evidence.

The assumption that there was an HJ is not evidence of anything which is precisely why multiple versions of HJ are being proposed.

Multiple plausible version of lots of things are proposed in both history and science. You think, in your ignorance, that scholarship is just about asserting things as true, that something is either provably true or it must be false. That's why your pretense involves you doing just that.

"People educated in [the critical habit of thought] ...are slow to believe. They can hold things as possible or probable in all degrees, without certainty and without pain." - William Graham Sumner

The fact is that no corroborative historical evidence has ever been found for the multiple assumed HJ characters.

What you mean is that no proof has been found, yes? Because your mantra that there is no evidence supporting the plausibility of an historical Jesus is just a lie that you keep telling yourself.

Your HJ is just an unevidenced assumption.

It is not an assumption. It's ironic that you accuse me of being ignorant of the difference between assumption and evidence, and then write the above after being told numerous times that an historical Jesus is regarded as plausible, even likely, but not proved, by the majority of scholars.

 

[Craig B]

... You reject virtually all the Jesus story and admit the NT is unreliable yet cherry-pick parts of the NT to assemble your Jesus.

Not quite. It's a criterion of admissibility, well known even during the Enlightenment.

Is it rational or fair to demand our belief of things, which are in their own nature far removed from common belief, or common sense, and require something more than the usual testimony of history for their support? When Livy affirms (T. Livii, lib. xxii, cap. 1.), that the Gauls conspired against Hannibal, we admit and believe the fact; but when in the same chapter he speaks of shields sweating blood, of its raining hot stones at Arpi, and the like, we justly reject and disbelieve these improbable assertions.

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/40981/40981-h/40981-h.htm. So, we "cherry-pick".

 

[Foster Zygote]

Not quite. It's a criterion of admissibility, well known even during the Enlightenment. http://www.gutenberg.org/files/40981/40981-h/40981-h.htm. So, we "cherry-pick".

Yes, there's a big difference between discerning between the plausible and the implausible, and deliberately omitting evidence that proves an argument wrong. Historians do the former all the time. There's nothing dishonest about reading early Christian accounts and concluding that it's plausible that Jesus was an early 1st Century preacher of a seditionist bent who was executed by the Romans, that he most likely had a father named Joseph and a mother named Mary and that he came form Nazareth or was a Nazirite. There's also nothing dishonest about concluding that he was almost certainly not born in Bethlehem and that he never performed any supernatural acts or rose from the dead. Thinking that implausible and impossible elements in the various Christian narratives mean that they must be rejected as entirely false, without any elements of truth at all, is both naïve and indicative of a profound ignorance of history.

 

[dejudge]

Your HJ was not called the Christ [Anointed]. Your HJ was not a King of the Jews or an High Priest.

You assume that your HJ was an obscure preacher who got crucified because he created havoc at the Temple.

Your HJ has not been found.

Tacitus Christus was supposedly well known with followers in and outside Judea.

You have NO evidence whatsoever that your obscurity was a Christian or a Jew.

All you have are assumptions and imaginative speculation.

You do not know the difference between the assumption of an HJ and evidence for an HJ.

The quest for evidence outside the NT and Apologetics for your assumed dead obscurity has produced nothing.

Jesus called the Christ in Antiquities of the Jews 20.9.1 was still alive c 62 CE.

Your assumed dead obscurity was crucified under Pilate.

Seriously, can't you even organize your thoughts and arguments into paragraphs? You didn't even address anything I wrote.

Actually you did not address anything I wrote because you cannot do so. You have no evidence for your assumed HJ.

Why should we conclude that most experts are wrong and accept your ignorant opinion as fact? You keep ignoring the question, so I can only conclude that it makes you rather uncomfortable.

Why should we accept your assumptions as facts without any corroboration?

You seem to have no idea that historians have not solved the question of the existence or non-existence of Jesus.

The Quest for HJ is still on-going.

Why do you not accept the on-going quest for HJ?

You are ignorant of the facts.

No HJ has ever been found.

Why do you not agree with the experts?

What HJ are you talking about?

Please, just go and look your obscure dead HJ if you can find him.

 

[pakeha]

Without consulting sources: I think it is agreed that the Sanhedrin could have people killed, so the story is wrong. I think the Romans killed Jesus on their own account, on a charge of rebellion or usurpation. In Acts 17 we can see that this was the opinion regarding the Jesus group held by the Jews of Thessalonika, and no doubt other places. Paul had a different view of Jesus, but the Jews of that city wouldn't be aware of that.

Usurpation?
Do you mean of Herod?

If it were rebellion, wouldn't Jesus' followers have been nailed up as well to keep him company? Nor would there have been a trial, would there?

I find the arrest, trials and death of Jesus very confusing.

pakeha


I differ with Craig a little bit on this. Pilate may not have served very long after Jesus' execution, and we really don't have a hard date for either Jesus' or Stephen's execution. It is entirely possible for the Sanhedrin to have the prerogative sometimes and not at others, depending on who was in charge. Josephus tells us that that James fellow was offed during a lapse or hiatus in oversight, for example.

Pilate was recalled in 36 CE, IIRC.
Isn't it strange we don't have a date for Jesus' death?

 

[dejudge]

Yes, there's a big difference between discerning between the plausible and the implausible, and deliberately omitting evidence that proves an argument wrong. Historians do the former all the time. There's nothing dishonest about reading early Christian accounts and concluding that it's plausible that Jesus was an early 1st Century preacher of a seditionist bent who was executed by the Romans, that he most likely had a father named Joseph and a mother named Mary and that he came form Nazareth or was a Nazirite. There's also nothing dishonest about concluding that he was almost certainly not born in Bethlehem and that he never performed any supernatural acts or rose from the dead. Thinking that implausible and impossible elements in the various Christian narratives mean that they must be rejected as entirely false, without any elements of truth at all, is both naïve and indicative of a profound ignorance of history.

You are inventing stories that honest Christians did not write. Why?
Where do you get your imaginative stories?

You keep repeating what you honestly guess but cannot show your sources.


There is no evidence at all that people of antiquity, Jews and Romans, worshiped a known dead Jewish preacherman as a God pre 70 CE.

Please, let us be honest.

The honest Christian writers claimed Jesus was born in Bethlehem of a Holy Ghost and a Virgin and that he was the Logos and God Creator.

The honest Christian writers claimed Jesus was the Son of God, that he was tempted by Satan, that he walked on the sea, transfigured, resurrected, ate fish after he was dead, commissioned his disciples and then ascended to heaven.

The honest Christian writers wrote about a Jesus of Faith--a Jesus of Belief.

You give the impression that Jews, Christians, potential converts and Romans knew Jesus was a man [a crucified criminal] yet deceived themselves into believing the crucified criminal was the Son of God.

An historical Jesus as a crucified criminal and worshiped as a God by Jews makes no sense whatsoever pre 70 CE while the Jewish Temple was still standing.

There is no history outside Apologetics that Jews ever worshiped a crucified criminal for remission of sins before the Fall of the Temple.

Thinking that implausible and impossible elements in the various Christian narratives mean that they must be rejected as entirely false, without any elements of truth at all, is both naïve and indicative of a profound ignorance of history.

It is your position that is indicative of profound ignorance and highly illogical.

You expose the NT as a source of fiction, reject virtually everything about Jesus and then immediately initiate your own undocumented story based on your imagination.

After having admitted that the Jesus story is filled with magic and after having been shown that there is no history of your assumed dead obscurity you still maintain that your HJ is plausible when you know that it was MJ that was plausible and believed by the Jesus cult of antiquity.

Your assumed obscure HJ cannot be found because he was just invented for argument sake.

 

[Foster Zygote]

Actually you did not address anything I wrote because you cannot do so.

Going for the old, "I know you are, but what am I?" tactic? It's certainly consistent with the quality of tour presentation. I, and others, have already addressed every single point in that post. It's a joke, dejudge. Mindlessly repeating the same fragmentary thoughts that you can't even organize into any sort of actual argument is just childish.

I've asked you time and time again why we should accept your claims over that of the great majority of academic scholars. When you say that the hypothesis that they support as very likely is completely wrong, what you are essentially saying is that you know more than they do. So how is it that you know more than they do? And no, I don't expect you to answer that query. You may respond evasively, but you won't justify your position.

You have no evidence for your assumed HJ.

First of all, it's not my historical Jesus. Your attempts to disassociate it from the scholarly community that clearly intimidates you so much are transparently obvious. Secondly, they don't assume that he existed, they regard his existence as very plausible. And lastly, you are simply denying the evidence, sticking your fingers in your ears, closing your eyes and yelling "NAHNAHNAHNAHNAHI'MNOTLISTENIGTOYOU!", because you are too much of an intellectual coward to admit that you can't offer any reason to conclude that the scholarly community is far less authoritative on this matter than someone who can't even construct a cogent paragraph.

Why should we accept your assumptions as facts without any corroboration?

Burn that strawman, dejudge. Burn it good.

You seem to have no idea that historians have not solved the question of the existence or non-existence of Jesus.

The Quest for HJ is still on-going.

Why do you not accept the on-going quest for HJ?

Is your reading comprehension really that challenged? Are you unable to tell that the point, all along, of those arguing against you is that there is no epistemological proof of the existence of an historical Jesus, merely clues that strongly suggest that he could have existed?

You are ignorant of the facts.

Like the fact that Josephus wasn't saying that the Christ was crucified around 62 CE, but rather his brother, James? Like the fact that your position runs opposite to that of the great majority of professional scholars? Like the fact that someone writing that Jesus was born of a virgin or walked on water is not proof that no real, non-magical Jesus ever existed?

No HJ has ever been found.

No one claims that he has. This is your only pathetic path to some sense of victory regarding this issue: The pretense that an historical hypothesis cannot be regarded as plausible, that it must be proved or be dismissed as impossible, and thus, you "win".

Why do you not agree with the experts?

You mean all those experts who completely disagree with you? Those experts?

Or perhaps you mean the small majority of historians who support the hypothesis that Jesus never actually existed? I neither agree nor disagree with them. They've got a long row to hoe, but their ideas should be openly evaluated by their peers to determine their merit. But I can be certain of one thing: Not one of those scholars will offer anything as utterly ridiculous as what I will charitably refer to here as your arguments.

What HJ are you talking about?

The one who may have been an early 1st Century deluded rabbi with revolutionary aspirations who found himself looking down from a cross at the continuing dominance of the Roman Empire.

Please, just go and look your obscure dead HJ if you can find him.

I'll leave that to the experts. But it seems unlikely that there will ever be proof either way, unless Welles' Time Traveller ever gets on the case. The origins of an historical Jesus are probably forever buried in the distant past, like so many other unanswered historical questions.

I've asked before if you might have been a Christian in the past. One thing that suggests to me that this might have been the case is that you often refer to the Christian canon as though it were a single cohesive work, much like Christians are taught to view it (As I know from experience). But the other reason is that you appear to have adopted the exact opposite of the (non-universal) Christian doctrine that that the Bible is the perfect word of God. It seems like you might have rejected the Bible by completely reversing a view that you came to be embarrassed by, or even feel betrayed by. Your previous accusations that those who think that an historical Jesus might have existed were "closet Christians", obviously meant to be insulting (although met more with amusement), Further instills in me the notion that you have some animosity for Christian belief, rather than simple intellectual curiosity about its origins.

 

[maximara]

Usurpation?
Do you mean of Herod?

If it were rebellion, wouldn't Jesus' followers have been nailed up as well to keep him company? Nor would there have been a trial, would there?

I find the arrest, trials and death of Jesus very confusing.

I don't find them confusing but rather insightful:

* The Sanhedrin trial account is totally at odds with the records on how that court actually operated in the 1st century.

* Jesus preaches in the open so there is no need for the whole Judus betrayal. A real Roman official would have sent a modest group of soldiers and got the guy as what happened with John the Baptist.

* Pontius Pilate is totally out of character based on other accounts. Josephus relates two accounts where Pilate's solution to mobs causing a disturbance was brutally simple--have Roman soldiers go out and kill them until they dispersed. Moreover it is never really explained in the Bible why if Jesus' only crime was blasphemy why Pilate would need to be involved. If Jesus crime has been sedition then there would be no reason for Pilate to involve Herod Antipas or for the Sanhedrin to be involved for that matter.

* The crucified were left to rot as a warning to others unless there was intervention on the behalf of an important person per The Life Of Flavius Josephus

* Given Jesus short time on the cross and reports of him being out an about afterword certainly the Romans might have wondered if they had been tricked yet there is nothing in the reports of the Romans acting in this matter. Carrier describe how the Romans would have handled the situation and it is totally at odds with the account in Acts.

Each of these by itself doesn't mean much but taken together they suggest that the stories are historical fiction

Pilate was recalled in 36 CE, IIRC.
Isn't it strange we don't have a date for Jesus' death?

Actually The Antiquities of the Jews 18.89 says the following:

So Vitellius sent Marcellus, a friend of his, to take care of the affairs of Judea, and ordered Pilate to go to Rome, to answer before the emperor to the accusations of the Jews. So Pilate, when he had tarried ten years in Judea, made haste to Rome, and this in obedience to the orders of Vitellius, which he durst not contradict; but before he could get to Rome Tiberius was dead.

Tiberius died 16 March, 37 CE so depending on how fast one could travel in those days Pilate could have been recalled in 37 CE

As for there not being a date for Jesus' death as Pilate himself shows that is not surprising. For the most part we only have general ideas on when events happened even for major players in history. Take when Herod the Great was declared king:

Antiquities XIV 14:5 states Herod the Great was declared king "on the 184th Olympiad, when Caius Domitius Calvinus was consul the second time, and Caius Asinius Pollio the first time."

The 184th Olympiad gives us a range of summer 44-40 BCE and due to the policy of assuming consulship took place on January 1 regardless of when it actually happened (actually October in this case) Caius Asinius Pollio and Caius Domitius Calvinus set this at 40 BCE.

 

[Belz...]

naïve

Wow. You actually wrote it properly ! I don't see that often in English circles.

Félicitations !

 

[Foster Zygote]

Wow. You actually wrote it properly ! I don't see that often in English circles.

Félicitations !

And a big "howdy" to y'all, too!

 

[abaddon]

You are inventing stories that honest Christians did not write. Why?
Where do you get your imaginative stories?

You keep repeating what you honestly guess but cannot show your sources.


There is no evidence at all that people of antiquity, Jews and Romans, worshiped a known dead Jewish preacherman as a God pre 70 CE.

Please, let us be honest.

The honest Christian writers claimed Jesus was born in Bethlehem of a Holy Ghost and a Virgin and that he was the Logos and God Creator.

The honest Christian writers claimed Jesus was the Son of God, that he was tempted by Satan, that he walked on the sea, transfigured, resurrected, ate fish after he was dead, commissioned his disciples and then ascended to heaven.

The honest Christian writers wrote about a Jesus of Faith--a Jesus of Belief.

You give the impression that Jews, Christians, potential converts and Romans knew Jesus was a man [a crucified criminal] yet deceived themselves into believing the crucified criminal was the Son of God.

An historical Jesus as a crucified criminal and worshiped as a God by Jews makes no sense whatsoever pre 70 CE while the Jewish Temple was still standing.

There is no history outside Apologetics that Jews ever worshiped a crucified criminal for remission of sins before the Fall of the Temple.



It is your position that is indicative of profound ignorance and highly illogical.

You expose the NT as a source of fiction, reject virtually everything about Jesus and then immediately initiate your own undocumented story based on your imagination.

After having admitted that the Jesus story is filled with magic and after having been shown that there is no history of your assumed dead obscurity you still maintain that your HJ is plausible when you know that it was MJ that was plausible and believed by the Jesus cult of antiquity.

Your assumed obscure HJ cannot be found because he was just invented for argument sake.

Why are you aggressively arguing this on a board populated predominantly by atheists? After all, most here consider the bible to be no more than the rantings of primitive goat herders.

Sure, there might have been some dude upon whom later mythologies were laid. But who cares? It's all a load of mythological rubbish.

Get some perspective. It is possible to speculate that there may have been some wandering nutjob who gave rise to these implausible myths. It is equally plausible to speculate that it was entirely made up out of whole cloth.

Either way, it is so trivially unimportant as to have no meaning. Somehow, it has meaning to you. I have no idea why.

 

[dejudge]

Going for the old, "I know you are, but what am I?" tactic? It's certainly consistent with the quality of tour presentation. I, and others, have already addressed every single point in that post. It's a joke, dejudge. Mindlessly repeating the same fragmentary thoughts that you can't even organize into any sort of actual argument is just childish.

You are the one using the same old tactics. You repeat your assumptions to make them appear as facts.

You have no corroborative evidence for your obscure HJ and have clinged to forgeries in Tacitus and Josephus.

Why are you talking about childhishness when your argument for HJ is HIGHLY illogical and based on known forgeries and sources of fiction .

I've asked you time and time again why we should accept your claims over that of the great majority of academic scholars. When you say that the hypothesis that they support as very likely is completely wrong, what you are essentially saying is that you know more than they do. So how is it that you know more than they do? And no, I don't expect you to answer that query. You may respond evasively, but you won't justify your position.

I have asked you time and again for the data which supports yours claim about the "great majority of academic scholars" to this day you cannot do so. You are promoting Chinese Whispers and Rumors.

Please identify your source and tell us the number of all Academic Scholars in the world?

Please identify your source AND tell us the number of all Academic Scholars in the world who argue that there is insufficient evidence to settle the HJ?

Please identify your source and tell us the number of all all Academic Scholars in the world who argue that Jesus was a figure of mythology?

You fail to understand that an HJ was an assumption and that the Quest for HJ is still on-going for hundreds of years with no end in sight.

You fail to understand that it is evident that there is no known evidence for the multiple assumed HJ characters.

First of all, it's not my historical Jesus. Your attempts to disassociate it from the scholarly community that clearly intimidates you so much are transparently obvious. Secondly, they don't assume that he existed, they regard his existence as very plausible.

Your statement is highly illogical and contradictory.

You are the one attempting to disassociate yourself from Bart Ehrman and Robert Eisenman.

Bart Ehrman claimed Jesus of Nazareth certainly did exist in his argument for an historical Jesus of Nazareth.

Robert Eisenman, an historian, admitted the no-one has solved the HJ question.

Now, there are multiple versions of HJ so you must have chosen the one you like.

Which HJ do you like HJ the obscure preacherman, the Cynic, the Zealot, the prophet or messianic claimant, the rabbi.....?

Which one is your HJ?

And lastly, you are simply denying the evidence, sticking your fingers in your ears, closing your eyes and yelling "NAHNAHNAHNAHNAHI'MNOTLISTENIGTOYOU!", because you are too much of an intellectual coward to admit that you can't offer any reason to conclude that the scholarly community is far less authoritative on this matter than someone who can't even construct a cogent paragraph.

Your claim is highly illogical. You understand every thing I write because you are always responding to them. In fact, you take my posts extremely seriously and appear to be terrified or extremely concerned.

You seem to think that people here do not see exactly what has happened. You are extremely worried that the HJ argument is being exposed as baseless and without a shred of supporting evidence from antiquity.

Like the fact that Josephus wasn't saying that the Christ was crucified around 62 CE, but rather his brother, James? Like the fact that your position runs opposite to that of the great majority of professional scholars? Like the fact that someone writing that Jesus was born of a virgin or walked on water is not proof that no real, non-magical Jesus ever existed?

Again, you make another highly illogical statement.

If Jesus was a Myth then we would expect stories that he was the Son of God, the Logos, God Creator, that he walked on the sea, that he transfigured, resurrected, ate food afterwards, commissioned his disciples and then ascended.

That is exactly what happened.

The Jesus story perfectly matches the mythology of the Jews, Greeks and Roman.

The Jesus story was highly competitive for the new religion when Jesus is God's son.

 

[dejudge]

Why are you aggressively arguing this on a board populated predominantly by atheists? After all, most here consider the bible to be no more than the rantings of primitive goat herders.

You obviously is either new here or do not know that Atheist here use the NT as an historical source for their HJ.

If atheists here consider the Bible to be no more than the primitive rantings of goat herders then why do they argue that Jesus was actually in the Jewish Temple in the time of Pilate and was crucified in Jerusalem.

You are merely exposing the problem with the HJ argument.

The Bible is their primary source for their assumed biography of their HJ.

Essentially, the rantings of primitive goat herders are the only sources for
the HJ argument.

Sure, there might have been some dude upon whom later mythologies were laid. But who cares? It's all a load of mythological rubbish.

Why do people use "a load of mythological rubbish" as an historical source for their HJ?

The Bible is a compilation of a known load of mythological rubbish.

Get some perspective. It is possible to speculate that there may have been some wandering nutjob who gave rise to these implausible myths. It is equally plausible to speculate that it was entirely made up out of whole cloth.

Either way, it is so trivially unimportant as to have no meaning. Somehow, it has meaning to you. I have no idea why.

You seem extremely interested in the subject. Why post here if the existence/non-existence of HJ is trivially unimportant?---- "I have no idea why"!!

I am extremely interested in the arguments for an historical Jesus.

 

[pakeha]

...The one who may have been an early 1st Century deluded rabbi with revolutionary aspirations who found himself looking down from a cross at the continuing dominance of the Roman Empire. ...

I'd understood mainstream academics now view Jesus as a apocalyptic preacher, rather than a revolutionary one or even a social reformer. How do you figure the revolutionary angle?

I don't find them confusing but rather insightful:

* The Sanhedrin trial account is totally at odds with the records on how that court actually operated in the 1st century.

* Jesus preaches in the open so there is no need for the whole Judus betrayal. A real Roman official would have sent a modest group of soldiers and got the guy as what happened with John the Baptist.

* Pontius Pilate is totally out of character based on other accounts. Josephus relates two accounts where Pilate's solution to mobs causing a disturbance was brutally simple--have Roman soldiers go out and kill them until they dispersed. Moreover it is never really explained in the Bible why if Jesus' only crime was blasphemy why Pilate would need to be involved. If Jesus crime has been sedition then there would be no reason for Pilate to involve Herod Antipas or for the Sanhedrin to be involved for that matter.

* The crucified were left to rot as a warning to others unless there was intervention on the behalf of an important person per The Life Of Flavius Josephus

* Given Jesus short time on the cross and reports of him being out an about afterword certainly the Romans might have wondered if they had been tricked yet there is nothing in the reports of the Romans acting in this matter. Carrier describe how the Romans would have handled the situation and it is totally at odds with the account in Acts.

Each of these by itself doesn't mean much but taken together they suggest that the stories are historical fiction




Actually The Antiquities of the Jews 18.89 says the following:

So Vitellius sent Marcellus, a friend of his, to take care of the affairs of Judea, and ordered Pilate to go to Rome, to answer before the emperor to the accusations of the Jews. So Pilate, when he had tarried ten years in Judea, made haste to Rome, and this in obedience to the orders of Vitellius, which he durst not contradict; but before he could get to Rome Tiberius was dead.

Tiberius died 16 March, 37 CE so depending on how fast one could travel in those days Pilate could have been recalled in 37 CE

As for there not being a date for Jesus' death as Pilate himself shows that is not surprising. For the most part we only have general ideas on when events happened even for major players in history. Take when Herod the Great was declared king:

Antiquities XIV 14:5 states Herod the Great was declared king "on the 184th Olympiad, when Caius Domitius Calvinus was consul the second time, and Caius Asinius Pollio the first time."

The 184th Olympiad gives us a range of summer 44-40 BCE and due to the policy of assuming consulship took place on January 1 regardless of when it actually happened (actually October in this case) Caius Asinius Pollio and Caius Domitius Calvinus set this at 40 BCE.

"Each of these by itself doesn't mean much but taken together they suggest that the stories are historical fiction"
Thanks for summing up the reasons that have led me to think those stories are historical fiction. Til now they've been merely loose beads rattling about, but you've given them order and consistence via your pragmatic list.

Absolutely nothing about the tales of Jesus' arrest, trials and death makes sense outside of fiction written by several different people.

 

[maximara]

Like the fact that Josephus wasn't saying that the Christ was crucified around 62 CE, but rather his brother, James? Like the fact that your position runs opposite to that of the great majority of professional scholars? Like the fact that someone writing that Jesus was born of a virgin or walked on water is not proof that no real, non-magical Jesus ever existed?

The problem is that the Josephus reference to James doesn't show anything per John Frum who in 17 years picked up Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh as a brother...even through the man only has sisters.

Also that James was stoned...not crucified so where is this crucifixion thing coming from?

Furthermore, nearly everybody else put the death of James as being 69 CE raising the issue of someone assuming the James in Josephus was the same one reference in Paul and glossed it as such with the gloss being woven into the text later.

Note that Origen in Against Celsus 1.47 and Against Celsus 2.13 states that Josephus said the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple were "on account of" James the Just. Yet no such passage exists anywhere near the 20.9.1 reference and no one to date has produced where in any other part of Josephus this passage may be found.

 

[Belz...]

Going for the old, "I know you are, but what am I?" tactic? It's certainly consistent with the quality of tour presentation. I, and others, have already addressed every single point in that post. It's a joke, dejudge. Mindlessly repeating the same fragmentary thoughts that you can't even organize into any sort of actual argument is just childish.

You are the one using the same old tactics.

I think you missed his point entirely.