David Mo
Philosopher
The Historical Jesus III
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As I have pointed out the hightlighted part is nowhere as simple as it seems.
I have suggested three "historical" Jesuses to show the problem:
1) In the time of Pontius Pilate some crazy ran into the Temple trashing the place and screaming "I am Jesus, King of the Jews" before some guard ran him through with a sword. Right place right time...and that is it. No preaching, no followers, no crucifixion, nothing but some nut doing the 1st century equivalent of suicide by cop.
2) Paul's teachings ala John Frum inspired others to take up the name "Jesus" and preach their spin on Paul's visions with one of them getting crucified by the Romans by his troubles whose teachings are time shifted so he is before Paul. (John Robertson actually came up with a variant of this in 1900 with this Jesus being inspired by Paul's writings rather then teachings; this also fits Irenaeus crucified 42-44 CE Jesus)
3) You could have a Jesus who was born c 12 BCE in the small town of Cana, who preached a few words of Jewish wisdom to small crowds of no more than 10 people at a time, and died due to being run over by a chariot at the age of 50.
Carrier's hypothetical killed by Herod the Great Jesus as the "true" historical Jesus and the c100 BCE Jesus are other examples of Jesuses who lived but would render nearly everything we have untrue.
Another possibility is Paul latched on to the name of a small and not all that successful would be messiah, had his vision, and then met the remaining followers of this teacher after converting the remnants of various messiah cults to the Jesus "brand". Paul and these remaining followers die and some third sect picks up the pieces using the stories of the various messiah cults Paul had converted to flesh out a biography of the Jesus Paul had a vision of. (This is a variant of GA Wells current theory)
How would you ever prove the existence of such an obscure Messiah especially if he was NOT crucified?
But that is the whole HJ position: repeat Paul, Gospels, Josephus, Tacitus, Pliny the Younger, Suetonius, and (on a really bad day) Thallus and throw in the occupational Celsus, Lucian, Mara bar Serapion, or whatever else is on the table this month to mix it up.
The Testimonium Flavianum Piltdownium is a joke; Claiming ANY of that thing is genuine is insane.
Tacitus at best seems to be repeating what some Christians themselves were saying while other were saying in The apocryphal Acts of Paul oh no Nero was burning us alive because one of our resurrected brothers told him we would overthrow his government. I mean what possible problem could Nero have with that idea?
This assumes the passage is genuine as some of the same problems with the Testimonium Flavianum Piltdownium rear their head and for a far longer time.Pliny the Younger and Suetonius only confirm the movement existed. More over Suetonius' Nero section is at odds with the Tacitus account and gives the impression that "Punishment was inflicted on the Christians" was just part of a general house cleaning of Rome. He makes NO connection between this punishment and the Great Fire. Furthermore neither Josephus and Pliny the Elder who were in Rome c64 CE make no mention of Christians in Rome so the movement either wasn't there or wasn't worth mentioning.
The Chrestus passage in Suetonius as evidence comes off as straw grasping as does about everything else.
The Thallus thing requires so much ad hoc nonsense that I find it insane that any scholar with a functioning brain would even present it.
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Do you expect the Mythicists to answer that? How naive of you! So let me respond.
Here are the acknowledged authentic epistles. The first number in the Table below is the number of verses that contain the word "Jesus"; and the second is the number of these in which Jesus is called Lord. Some verses have Jesus more than once, but these are counted once only. In the case of Philippians I have omitted the two references to "Jesus" in the Kenosis Hymn, as not authentic to Paul
1 Corinthians 24; 17
2 Corinthians 16; 9
Galatians 16; 4
Philippians 19; 5
1 Thessalonians 15; 11
Philemon 7; 3
ETA. My source is Bible Gateway. Authorised Version.
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Belz...
Fiend God
Crickets for poor Gilgamesh, I suppose.
Best I can do is say he's in the Sumerian King List c2600 BCE. But he's given the improbable reign length of 126 years.
ETA However, that was the time when listed kings start to be attested both archaeologically and in other texts.
The earliest listed ruler whose historicity has been archaeologically verified is Enmebaragesi of Kish, ca. 2600 BC. Reference to him and his successor, Aga of Kish in the Epic of Gilgamesh has led to speculation that Gilgamesh himself may have been a historical king of Uruk.
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Porpoise of Life
Illuminator
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Consider yourself lucky. After they'd have admitted that this king who was once regarded as purely legendary turned out to be a historical person after all, you'd get walls of text with copious amounts of bolding, highlighting and all caps (probably some bible quotes too) yelling about among other things
-you probably think Satan was real too
-Julius Caesar
-sons of ghosts
-sesquepedalian loquaciousness
-demands for eye witness accounts
-accusations of being a secret Christian.
In whose writing?
They confirm a movement existed with members called Christians - they may not have been Jesus of Nazareth following movements.
Good points.
Suetonius's reference to a 'Chrestus' also supports the proposition that movements existed following Chrestuses or 'Christs' other than Jesus of Nazareth.
I reckon there's a chance that Paul's letters were originally to non-Jesus-following 'churches'/temples/etc, but were later redacted to make it seem they were to Jesus-the-Christ churches.
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You "reckon there's a chance" of that, do you? I have just a very short time ago submitted this. I don't "reckon" that these references to Jesus or to Jesus as Lord exist. I looked them up.
You simply "reckon there's a chance" that Paul originally wrote to non-Jesus followers, but you don't produce any evidence whatsoever for this arbitrary assertion. Now what should we do? Well, we could rewrite Paul, taking out the words that we don't "reckon" on, and putting in others that are more to our taste; or we could see if Paul uses the expression "Christ" in the epistles.
1 Corinthians 59
2 Corinthians 45
Galatians 36
Philippians 36
1 Thessalonians 13
Philemon 7
Go and examine these occurrences of the word. Tell me how you think they got there, if not by Paul's pen, or that of whoever wrote these epistles.
It is beyond ludicrous that people give out things like "reckoning there's a chance". It's plain daft. I reckon there's a strong chance that you're talking nonsense, but if you don't agree, then give me the evidence we might reasonably require.
ETA And while you're doing that, please explain how it fits in with your "reckoning there's a chance" that Paul and Jesus are the same person!
Or perhaps you simply produce one zany idea after another, regardless of whether each contradicts the next or not.
ETA 2 Here's something else you might find useful. The number of verses in the Epistles in which the expression Jesus Christ, or Jesus the Christ appears.
1 Corinthians 20
2 Corinthians 11
Galatians 15
Philippians 19
1 Thessalonians 10
Philemon 6
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Well, first of all - you are replying to people here on this forum, not to some other unnamed people somewhere else.
And secondly, your reply was very clearly a response to my earlier reply that was directly above your reply ; so you were very obviously referring to me as a mythicist.
So - are you describing me as a “mythicist”? Yes or No?
I was not making what you call "references to personal knowledge of Jesus". Afaik, there is "no personal knowledge of Jesus" in any of the gospels or letters, and that was the whole point of asking you about that.
What I asked you for, which you don't like because you have no such evidence, is that I asked where in any of the biblical writing or in any non-biblical writing anyone had ever claimed to have met a human Jesus. That is what I asked you. So what is the answer please? Just give an honest reply without all of your usual constant evasion, and simply tell us where in any of that writing anyone ever claimed to have met a human Jesus.
Because if you cannot show that, and if on the contrary I am right to point out that nobody at in any of that writing, biblical or non biblical, ever says they had met any human Jesus, then as I pointed out to GDon, and where afaik he could not dispute this - that means that in all of that biblical wring and in all of the non-biblical writing too, the only evidence which those writers could possibly produce is evidence of their belief (a religious belief in the case of the biblical writing) in a messiah who was completely unknown to any of them.
Can you please just admit that? Because it's really 100% unarguable, to say that all you are ever offering as "evidence", is actually just un-evidenced writing of peoples religious beliefs in an completely unknown un-evidenced messiah. And where despite being asked hundreds times here both by myself and by virtually every other sceptic in these many years of various HJ threads, you have never once been able to give a straightforward honest admission of the fact that the so-called "evidence" of a HJ, is actually only ever evidence of peoples un-evidenced beliefs about Jesus.
OK, well if you think you can continue to keep persuading the moderators to censure what people write here when they write as just did in that sentence you just quoted above, where I simply said to you nothing more than -
“That is really all that should ever need to be explained to any impartial truly objective open-minded reader here.”
, then go ahead and make more of your constant complaints, and lets see if the moderators think a sentence like that must be banned from being seen on this website.
But secondly, you have done exactly what you frequently do here, and tried to misrepresent what people have actually posted, by quoting only a small part of the original sentence out of context, and omitting entirely the rest of the persons post which explains very clearly what they have said and why they are saying it. So here is the full sentence with all the stuff you chopped out (all now highlighted in the complete original sentence below) -
Well I'm sure it's all very nice for you to facetiously say that you regard what I wrote as “very fine work”. Because what I wrote in that reply does of course explain why you are wrong, as all impartial objective people here can see for themselves when they read what was actually written in Paul‘s letter 1-Corinthians, which to repeat was this -
And I explained that quote from 1-Corinthians noting the following four points about it, which are all really unarguable (David Mo wants to argue about it, but then David Mo wants to argue about everything, and afaik he is actually Spanish and has often apologised here for his use of English, so I give him the benefit of the doubt as someone who may not know as well as he thinks he does, what is actually being said here in proper use of English). But here again are the four points that you should immediately notice about that particular sentence in 1-Corinthians (and see also the footnote quoting the words of Galatians-1) -
1. Paul does not even mention any crucifixion there.
2. He says it was something he "received" ... and that this can only mean "received from God", because elsewhere he insists repeatedly that he learnt this "from no man", and "nor was I taught it by anyone", but instead "God was pleased to reveal his son in me".
3. He specifically says that "Christ died ... according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures". So he certainly did believe that the death that he (Paul) described for Jesus, was indeed written in the scriptures.
4. He does not, in fact, even mention the name Jesus! He just says that this was the "Christ" ... where the word "Christ" is simply a Greek translation of the much older Hebrew OT word "messiah", meaning anointed by God as a special leader or saviour of the Jewish people. It's not even necessarily any individual named Jesus!
If you want to complain that 1-4 is a repetition of what I already posted above, then you should note that all posts by everyone in these HJ threads have been repeating what is said on either side of this dispute for at least 5 years! All the same points have been repeated at least 200 times both by the HJ side and by the sceptic side ... the same points are being emphasised over and over again. And that is really why it’s essential to say to you and others on the HJ side, that you really must now come to the point in all of this and post any evidence which you claim to have showing that Jesus was a real person ever known to anyone.
Because as I finally pointed out quite bluntly to GDon in itemised points, to which he could iirc do no more than to actually agree -
1. In the biblical writing of letters and gospels, where all of those writers make it crystal clear that they had never known Jesus, then at very best it means that what they wrote about Jesus could never be more than their religious beliefs about Jesus and what they thought other unnamed unknown people of the past had once said about Jesus.
But that is only evidence of their religious beliefs. It is not evidence of Jesus as a real person ever known to anyone.
2. Except that is for the even more damaging fact for the HJ case, that the gospel writers have been “proved” to have been using the OT as a source to create Jesus stories.
3. And where further than that (i.e. beyond 2) - Paul’s letters actually repeatedly insist that his knowledge of Jesus as the long awaited “Christ”, was something he had found confirmed in the writing of ancient scripture. So it’s really unarguable that in those letters, Paul insists (repeatedly) that the Jesus figure that he described was a figure who he believed was foretold in the ancient scriptures.
4. And finally, as Carrier points out in “OHJ“(a 2015 up-to-date peer reviewed book), and as I was insistently asked by GDon to explain and justify - the OT “book of Zechariah” circa 520 BC, does indeed (as Carrier had said) contain a passage in which the prophet Zechariah names a figure called “Jesus”, appearing to say that God had revealed this particular figure to be a pre-existent celestial being who was actually the son of God in the heavens. And further, as Carrier pointed out, and as I had not noticed until reading what Carrier explained about that in the book, Philo had apparently written a document saying that was indeed his own (i.e. Philo’s) interpretation of that particular passage in Zechariah, so that from around the same time as Paul or slightly before, Philo was also writing to say that Jesus was already foretold as the “Word” in that same passage in Zechariah.
Now if that is all true, i.e. if Philo did write around the time of Paul (and certainly he was supposed to have been writing before our first extant copy of Paul’s letters in P46 circa 200AD), saying that the figure named in Zechariah as “Jesus”, was indeed the “Word” i.e. the pre-existent celestial Son of Yahweh called the "Logos", then that would be a very obvious explanation of where Paul might very easily have got the name “Jesus” when Paul writes to say his beliefs about Jesus were “according to scripture”.
And that actual name, i.e. “Jesus”, was really the only remaining minor mystery in the entire biblical story of the “Christ”. Because all the other things which Paul says about Jesus, which is actually very little, are in Paul’s own insistent words, known to him “from no man”, “nor was I taught it by anyone”, but instead he insists he knew it through divine revelation “according to scripture”.
And further even than that - where the later writing of the gospels are the texts (as opposed to Paul’s letters) that actually add any earthly details of what Jesus was claimed to have done, i.e. mostly miracles that 1800 years later were finally proven to be impossible, those gospel writers (all unknown anonymous authors, and not as once claimed personal eye-witness disciples of Jesus) have now been shown to have been creating Jesus stories from various passages of the OT.
So there is really nothing left to explain about where and how the Jesus story came into existence. Because Paul actually confirms (as nearly as any early writing from that time could ever be expected to) that he was obtaining his Jesus beliefs “according to scripture” ... after which the later gospel writers (if you believe they were indeed later than Paul, as you and all HJ people have insistently claimed) simply did as Paul had said that he had done, and looked in the OT for any passages that they could convert into messianic Jesus stories (which they were certainly doing, as detailed in the book by Randel Helms. “Gospel Fictions”). And where even the actual name of Jesus can be quite easily found from 500 years before Paul in the OT scripture known as the “book of Zechariah”, and where Philo was said to have been writing before Paul (since Philo is said to have died by c.50 AD) was apparently very clear in saying that the book of Zechariah had indeed named the “Word”, i.e. the pre-existent celestial Son of God, as a figure named “Jesus”.
So how much clear do you need it ever to be? And that by that way is all justified in the above by clear and unarguable evidence which I have just quoted to you chapter and verse from the writing of Philo, the writing of Paul himself (e.g. in 1-Corinthians), and the book by Helms showing beyond doubt that the Gospel writers were doing precisely what Paul had already insisted upon and scouring the OT scriptures for whatever they could interpret as a Jesus story.
So -
1 - did Paul invent the Jesus belief from thin air? Answer No! He got it from what he believed was coded messiah prophecy in scripture.
2 - did the gospel writers simply invent their Jesus stories “out of whole cloth”? Answer, Yes & No. That is - Yes in the sense that they invented elaborate preaching pericopes in order to “bring the figure to life” i.e. to preach realistic sounding scenarios for the meaning behind their Jesus stories (all the stories are heavy with quite obvious religious meaning, intended as teaching of what the faithful should do as observant Jews/Christians). But “No” in the sense that they believed that a divine figure called “Jesus” had already been correctly discovered by Paul in his reading of the ancient scriptures.
Again for the sake of any impartial “lurker's” who read these HJ threads, and who are treating this subject with a more open mind than posters like Craig who are entirely wedded to their belief in Jesus - we should keep in mind that “Paul” may not have ever written any of the letters that carry his name, because -
1. Afaik, there is actually no clear evidence that Paul really existed. And dejudge for one will tell you that he probably did not exist.
2. If Paul did exist, then as someone who appears to be a wandering street preacher, who prior to his conversion seems to have spent all his time physically persecuting and iirc physically apprehending other Christians from a so-called Church of God who were at that date (i.e. before Paul's vision of about 36 AD) preaching only a slightly different version of old testament Judaism than Paul was preaching, and apparently quite literally dragging those people off the streets to deliver them before a Jewish religious court to be stoned to death for heresy, then he (Paul) may have been quite illiterate and unable to read or write much beyond recognising and spelling his own name. Such that, someone else might have either written down what Paul said, or what the writers believed he would have said. Or else, imho, quite possibly later scribes simply wrote what was believed to have been the sayings of a much earlier figure named Paul.
And as someone who according to all his numerous trips all around that part of Judea and nearby parts of Europe from Turkey to Greece to Italy, seems to have spent a great deal of his time travelling huge distances, it would seem that even if he could read and write, he would in any case have very little time to have been sitting around in libraries or churches hunched over ancient hand-written papyrus scripts of either original Hebrew old testament books, or reading what by that date of circa 30 to 50 AD would more likely have been translations (and mistranslations) rendered as the Greek Septuagint.
It seems far more likely to me, that if Paul could read and write well enough to have produced all his own letters, then what he meant by saying it was known to him “according to scripture”, was probably not that he was sitting down reading lots of the most original unadulterated old testament manuscripts, but more likely (I think) that he was just repeating what he had been taught about the contents and meaning of the OT by various preachers who he had learned from in his younger days. And what any such preachers, whether called “teachers” or not, might have said about what they regarded as the “true” meaning and true contents of scripture, would have been anyone’s guess ... various different preachers probably preached/taught all sorts of crazy beliefs about what they thought had been written in ancient Hebrew manuscripts of the OT (keep in mind that by Paul’s time, such preachers would probably have been relying on Greek translations, complete will all manner mistranslations and errors, that is if they even had any such written manuscripts at all).
Footote for reference- Paul’s statement in Galatians-1
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Galatians+1
Galatians-1 New International Version (NIV)
No Other Gospel
6 I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you to live in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel— 7 which is really no gospel at all. Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ. 8 But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let them be under God’s curse! 9 As we have already said, so now I say again: If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let them be under God’s curse!
10 Am I now trying to win the approval of human beings, or of God? Or am I trying to please people? If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a servant of Christ.
Paul Called by God
11 I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the gospel I preached is not of human origin. 12 I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it; rather, I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ.
Look at the highlighted words in the above, please. Because they are perfectly clear, unmistakable, and unarguable.
Your source does not contain any "authentic" Epistles.
The Authorised Version is compiled from COPIES of COPIES of manuscripts and Codices
In addition, you have already admitted that Paul did not use the NOMINA SACRA.
All manuscripts and Codices with the Pauline Corpus contains the NOMINA SACRA.
The EARLIEST manuscripts and Codices of the Pauline Corpus do not contain the word JESUS [Ἰησοῦ ].
Examine pictures of Papyri 46--the earliest existing Pauline Corpus.
The word JESUS [Ἰησοῦ ] cannot be found.
http://earlybible.com/manuscripts/p46-Rom-4.html
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As far as I can see, the three posts prior to that one of mine were by Mcreal, Leumas and dejudge. I have no idea if you are a mythicist. I said, and do now say, that those who think Paul invented Jesus from OT texts are Mythicists, though it may be that the converse is not true.
So you are the best judge of what you believe as regards these things, and also of whether you are a mythicist or not. It makes no difference to my observation one way or another.
Belz...
Fiend God
No takers? Personally I find that there's an interesting parallel, here.
Not relevant to this discussion, and this gibberish about the NS is hilarious. That's a later ms. This is where your obsessions let you down.
But anyway, I'm responding to this:
Mcreal is talking about "Paul's letters" presumably whether Paul wrote them or not - the Epistles. I am stating, whether P wrote them or not, these works contain references to Jesus, Lord and Christ, and Mcreal needs to explain what he means and not merely "reckon something is possible".
I even suggested to Mcreal that he should
Go and examine these occurrences of the word. Tell me how you think they got there, if not by Paul's pen, or that of whoever wrote these epistles.
dejudge said:
You don't know what you are talking about.
Again, you present no historical evidence for your DEAD OBSCURE HJ.
The earliest manuscripts and Codices of the Pauline Corpus Papyri 46 does not mention Jesus [Ἰησοῦ ].
Your DEAD OBSCURE HJ is similar to PAUL.
Dead OBSCURE HJ and Paul are Fiction characters back dated to the 1st century before the Fall of the Jewish Temple C 70 CE.
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dejudge, when you can't think of a response you "churn" out repetitive nonsense about DEAD OBSCURE HJ.
You have forgotten your own words of Sublime Wisdom:
We can't go over the same thing.
I think what I wrote is actually correct. In any scenario that you might postulate, if it is claimed that this was a real living person (or persons, plural), then that is a factual statement.
In fact, it's two factual statements, i.e. (1) it states that this was a real living person, and (2) it states that this individual was the person who inspired later biblical stories of Jesus. The same would be true even if the theory was that Jesus was a composite of multiple real figures ... as long as you are postulating one or more real human figures, then what is being claimed, is composed of those same two facts.
But in 21st century (and in fact since the 19th century), the way we decide whether or not any such claim of fact is likely to be true, is by an objective impartial study of the data being offered as the evidence. And at least since the late 19th century the way we do that is by a proper scientifically objective study of the data ... and that is by no means the specialisation of Bible Scholars and Theologians, whose main interest in the subject is to learn more about the religious beliefs that they all had when the entered their profession (and which was in almost every case, the entire reason why they entered that profession).
IOW - bible scholars and Theologians who write about Jesus and the bible, may indeed have a very extensive knowledge of what was said about Jesus in the biblical writing, and in the earliest non-biblical writing. But that is not by any means a guarantee or qualification to show that any of these individuals are objective impartial experts on deciding what is vs. what is not credible to be claimed as "evidence".
If you want to know whether or not any proposed data really is evidence of whatever is being claimed, then the true experts that are now asked in the 20th & 21st centuries, are scientists and lawyers, and where the lawyers have increasingly become dependent upon expert scientific witnesses.
If it's a matter of claimed fact which is said to be supported by data which is claimed as truly evidence of what various people are claiming, then that is a factual claim, for which scientists are the independent expert academics, not highly partial and far from independent theologians and biblical scholars (or even genuine non-religious "Historians").
Well "prove" is entirely the wrong word and entirely the wrong concept. We are not claiming to "prove" anything. And if people understand science, then they will know that it's probably impossible ever to actually "prove" anything.
What we are talking about is data offered as evidence to support a claim or belief.
In this case of a HJ, that means as much properly objective impartial scientific study of the claimed data as possible, in order to suggest an impartial independent likelihood or tentative "probability" or "confidence value" that might be assigned to the data in respect of it's claim as evidence supporting the claim.
In the case of HJ, the problem is that the very slightest scientifically objective look at the data being used to claim "evidence", shows that the data set is so deeply and irredeemably flawed and so utterly unreliable, in fact very often it's been shown to be completely untrue, that nothing at all can be said with any confidence about a claimed Jesus figure who was completely unknown to anyone who ever wrote anything about him, and also completely un-evidenced in any of their writing ... but where on the contrary, there is now a huge amount of quite unarguable evidence to show that what was being written was mostly untrue fiction, and where the little that remains was completely unreliable to put it mildly.
Oh, I see what you're saying. A strange thinker has proposed that Jesus and Paul are the same person, and you are saying that's right. Paul didn't exist, so he's the same person as Jesus because Jesus didn't exist either.
Both of them must then be the same person as John Frum and Sherlock Holmes. So we can say that Jesus and Sherlock Homes are the same person, which is good fun, and philosophically quite interesting too.
It's interesting that Christ is used quite a lot more than Jesus in Romans, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Galatians, & Philippians; and, for one of the other two, - 1 Thessalonians - Lord, Jesus, and Christ are used in nearly equal amounts.
Most of those epistles are to communities with documented serapea (in the 1st-3rd centuries), and Serapis was called Christ.
Also, the Pauline epistles were likely redacted to align with the synoptics ie. redacted to refer to Jesus when they originally didn't.
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