The Jesus Project and the "historical Jesus"

[Abdul Alhazred]

First of all here is the official website of The Jesus Project.

http://www.jesusproject.com/

The notion is that there is an "Historical Jesus" apart from what Christianity has
been saying all through the years, and that this is discernable through critical study
of the Gospels.

My position is that their "Historical Jesus" is special pleading for a sock puppet for
modern concerns.

Basically the old "Jesus is whatever I am" crapola, but with liberals doing it this time.

Please explore the linked website a bit before commenting.

 

[Gregory]

First of all here is the official website of The Jesus Project.

http://www.jesusproject.com/

The notion is that there is an "Historical Jesus" apart from what Christianity has been saying all through the years, and that this is discernable through critical study of the Gospels.

Well, I've poked around. I see a Job Search, articles (poems, mostly), and a variety of other things, but nothing about a historical Jesus. There's certainly nothing about a historical Jesus in the "What is the Jesus Project?" section.

My position is that their "Historical Jesus" is special pleading for a sock puppet for modern concerns.

I don't understand what you mean; can you clarify?

 

[Batman Jr.]

Do you think that Jesus was a con artist, or people just made up stories about him after he died?

 

[Abdul Alhazred]

Do you think that Jesus was a con artist, or people just made up stories about him after he died?

I'm not convinced that Jesus really existed as an historical individual. I incline toward the theory that many of the stories are true, but not really all about the same person.

I certainly don't believe in Jesus the con artist.

What material benefit did he get out it?

 

[Anders]

Do you think that Jesus was a con artist, or people just made up stories about him after he died?

It seems to me that there were quite a few jesuses around year zero. The gospels might, but just might, be the the story about one of all the jesuses, or, the gospels might be a compilation of stories about a lot of different jesuses.

 

[a_unique_person]

I actuall bought and read their book, as I am interested in the history of xianity, as I was brought up a Catholic.

I think there was a Jesus. I think, like them, that about 1% of him is still there to see in the new testament, and that the rest is politics. I would sincerely doubt that he saw himself as being god, or that xianity is anything like what he saw himself creating. For me, he is more of a Budda, someone who saw that the human condition could be improved vastly and relatively simply. The same thing happened to both of these people, their insight was hijacked, re-interpreted, and corrupted by others.

As Shemp said, Xianity was a cult that got lucky.

 

[Bikewer]

I just read "Lost Christianities", which goes into some detail on the process whereby the 4 accepted "canonical" gospels were winnowed from the 127+ that are known.
This is a process that took nearly 400 years, and as the post says, it was mostly politics.

The diversity of the early Christians makes the present day melange of sects pale by comparison. There were groups that believed in one God, two Gods, several Gods, and even as many as 300 or so. Jesus might have been completely divine, completely human, a human possesed by a divine spirit, or several other variations. He apparantly had a brother, but may have had a twin brother as well, and several step-brothers.....
And so on.
Fascinating stuff.

 

[JAR]

The main piece of evidence I know of that at least the Gospel of Matthew was written during the life of at least a portion of the apostles was Matthew 16:28 where Jesus says, "Verily, I say unto you, there be some standing here which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom."

James Randi in his book, "An Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural" interprets in "Appendix II: Forty-nine End-of-the-World Prophecies - That Failed" that the prophecy made by Jesus was an end of the world prophecy where the world would end before all of the apostles died.

So it is possible that the person who wrote that down in the Gospel of Matthew wrote that at a time when at least a portion of the apostles were still alive.

Of course, there are other possibilities. Perhaps the guy who wrote that down was an incompetent who wrote it at a time when all of the apostles were dead if they had ever existed at all and due to his incompetence, it didn't occur to him that by having Jesus say that the end of the world would come before the death of all of the apostles, he would be having Jesus say a prophecy that had not come true.

Or perhaps the guy who wrote the prophecy did not know that at the time he was writing down the prophecy, all of the apostles were dead if they had ever existed at all, and thus he didn't know that he was writing down a prophecy that could not possibly come true.

 

[Abdul Alhazred]

The diversity of the early Christians makes the present day melange of sects pale by comparison...

Does it? Even including Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons? And Moonies?

All of these say they are the 'real' Christians.

Not to mention Christian Science, Swedenborgians, Christadelphians, etc etc.

I think early Christianity was no more diverse than the modern various versions.

 

[Bikewer]

As the author points out, at least the present diversity of Christian sects maintain the main points of belief, for the most part.
In the first few hundred years, the "canon" of accepted texts hadn't been finalized, and sects had wildly divergent beliefs that bear little or even no resemblance to what we experience today.

 

[steenkh]

I can see no reason why Jesus as a historical person should be controversial. After all, the Christian Church was well established within twenty years of his death, and the community in Jerusalem was led by James, who seem to have been Jesus' brother. Even if he was not, there must have been plenty of people still living who could remember Jesus.

Today, we also have lots of religions or sects that have been founded by existing persons, and I doubt that we can find any religions founded or based upon persons that have never lived.

These persons, including Jesus, may not be able to recognise their own teachings (visions from "Life of Brian" springs to mind), but we can also see "religions" like Scientology where the founder had a complete vision of what he wanted it to be (a money and power machine).

I think that a likely scenario for Christianity is that Jesus was a radical Jewish preacher who never intended to form a new religion but rather to reform Judaism, and that entrepreneurial types (Paul) later expanded the scope to encompass Gentiles, and made it into a world religion. Paul had never met Jesus, and from what we have in the bible it is plain to see that Paul's teachings did not go down well with the people who actually knew Jesus (Peter and James). I believe that Paul, not Jesus, is the founder of christianity.

I cannot resist to mention a pet theory of mine here: When you read Paul's letters, it is obvious how obsessed he is with stopping the practice of circumcision (a very laudable obsession in my view). The circumcision issue made it necessary to expand the scope of the grace of God to non-circumcised people (gentiles). Another fact is that Paul is not too happy about being together with women: he even recommends others not to live with women. It is also a fact that perhaps as many as one in ten of circumcised males suffered from accidents and infections brought on by the operation (I saw this in an article about modern or pre-modern circumcision in non-western societies). All these facts together has lead me to the conclusion that christianity was created by a blunt knife!

For those who cannot see where I am drifting, I say that I think that Paul had a bad circumcision and he decided to fight against this brutal practice. The fact that he did not want to marry could mean that his circumcision had been one of the worse cases (excepting those where the victim dies).

 

[sackett]

Steenkh makes a good point

Historical Jesus has come up before on this forum, not surprisingly.

Last time I participated, I opined that Christianism had to have a founder, i.e., one guy who started the ball rolling, and we might as well call him Historical J., because that's as close as we're ever likely to come to "identifying" him. (Seems to me to be a pretty safe, even uncontroversial opinion; after all, nobody ever heard of a cult being drawn up by a committee. Cult-founding is an intensely egocentric activity: one prophet, one cult; two prophets, two cults, and war between them.)

Man! did I ever get screamed at by one or two enthusiasts for expressing that little idea! As Abdul says, everybody wants his own custom-tailored Jeezus, and that includes the deniers, who are on fire to make him vanish.

There's nothing implausible about the bare-bones story of Jesus: a Jew with a messiah complex (har har!) got crossways of the authorities, stirring up the turbulent Hebrews and looking dangerous. The Romans dealt with him in their customary way (2 boards + 3 nails and the prob goes away), but his cult continued to smoulder, and eventually caught fire.

Blood, suffering, and flames: they have a way of appearing in almost any Chrrrristiannnn context.

 

[crocodile deathroll]

If Jesus was right

If Jesus was right and he was the way and the light. Then why did God leave the burden of converting pagans to Xtianity up to missionaries to travel to places like the Arctic in the bitter cold with kayaks and sled dogs in order to convert the Inuits to Christianity nearly 2000 years later?

If Jesus is right then why doesn't this god do it himself and sent "angels" down to convert the Inuits 2000 years earlier? A divine miraculous power that Christians keep reminding us of. Why does this omnipotent God in his gift to save the world use such extremely inefficient tools like missionaries embarking on such a perilous journey to spread his message?

I just spread this message with just the click of a mouse. I must be dong a better job than the Christian god. Because even Iniuts in the Arctic could read this with this click of a mouse on the right link if they has access to the internet.

Besides if modern Christian evangelists desired to emulate the historical Jesus the they should just concentrate on converting Jews only to Christianity. Maybe starting with Shiron. It would save them a lot of trouble and none of their missionaries would need the freeze to death in the Arctic to in order to convert the Eskimos.

CDR

 

[Bikewer]

My thoughts precisely, Crocodile. If an all-just god makes salvation dependent on the acceptance of Jesus, they've done a mighty poor job of getting the word out.

I'd imagine even to the present day there are folks in remote or heavily-controlled areas who've never heard of the guy.

 

[Abdul Alhazred]

Re: Steenkh makes a good point

... As Abdul says, everybody wants his own custom-tailored Jeezus, and that includes the deniers, who are on fire to make him vanish.

Yes. But it's something new that the "Jesus Project" liberal types are doing it. OK not so new, but within my lifetime.

There's nothing implausible about the bare-bones story of Jesus ...

Quite right, but there's enough non-bare-bones stuff in the gospels to call it all into question. I don't say the whole thing was simply made up, but there is enough chronological contradiction to conclude it was not all about the same person.

 

[LettristLoon]

Yo.

So much of the "bare-bones" biographical details of Jeebus is tied up in stories of other folks, like Mithra, Dionysis, Odin, and even Shango (Yoruba rhythm god, born of a virgin at the solstice, died in his early thirties from getting nailed to a tree, only to rise and redeem the world with his funky-beats). If you have all of these disparate Jesus-like stories floating around, what's the use of any one of them, individually? Isn't it best to just write it off as a historical curiosity and refuse to dignify Christian myth by taking it too seriously?

- B

 

[Abdul Alhazred]

Yo.

So much of the "bare-bones" biographical details of Jeebus is tied up in stories of other folks, like Mithra, Dionysis, Odin, and even Shango (Yoruba rhythm god, born of a virgin at the solstice, died in his early thirties from getting nailed to a tree, only to rise and redeem the world with his funky-beats). If you have all of these disparate Jesus-like stories floating around, what's the use of any one of them, individually? Isn't it best to just write it off as a historical curiosity and refuse to dignify Christian myth by taking it too seriously?

- B

Similar stories doesn't imply historical connection, just similar psychology.

Dionysis or Odin equals Jesus is a stretch (dunno about Shango).

But Mithra equals Jesus is right on the money, historically. In the struggle among post-Roman religions it is Mithra who has won, except he's now called Jesus.

 

[steenkh]

In the struggle among post-Roman religions it is Mithra who has won, except he's now called Jesus.

But all of this still does not mean that Jesus was not a historical person. It rather shows the frame of mind of the people who started writing stories about him (again, see Life of Brian for how this could work!)

 

[ceo_esq]

Similar stories doesn't imply historical connection, just similar psychology.

Dionysis or Odin equals Jesus is a stretch (dunno about Shango).

But Mithra equals Jesus is right on the money, historically. In the struggle among post-Roman religions it is Mithra who has won, except he's now called Jesus.

Searching for a decent online bibliography, I came upon this site:

http://www.tektonics.org/tekton_04_02_04_MMM.html

The author there takes the position that modern Mithraic scholars themselves disagree with the notion that Christianity actually borrowed substantively from Mithraism. I'm still considering the arguments, but I've taken note of the essay because the Mithraic bibliography is the most extensive I've been able to locate, and unless the author is seriously misrepresenting his sources (always a possibility), the Mithra-Christianity hypothesis is dealt a serious blow by them. Any thoughts?

 

[JAR]

Do you think that Jesus was a con artist, or people just made up stories about him after he died?

I think Jesus was a real person who was fraudulent, extremely delusional, or both. I think he was a genius whose religion, called Christianity, became so popular because it was beneficial and I think that Christianity is the most popular religion in the world because it is the most beneficial religion in the world.