What counts as a historical Jesus?

[grahbudd]

Oh then a few points around his life:
The Jewish temple authorities, with enough trouble on their hands as it was, were keen to suppress the cult both before and after his death. To their dismay (one can here safely speculate ) after his death, some of his disciples became convinced that he had risen from the dead again. The basis for this belief is not clear. The story of the empty tomb is present in all of the gospels, although not in Paul. There are also a number of resurrection appearance narratives, which are not particularly consistent (e.g. see the list in Paul and compare it to those in Luke and Matthew and John). In addition, where these appearances took place is also unclear - Jerusalem, or Galilee? The most interesting narrative here is the Emmaus one preserved in Luke. Oddly enough, although apparently keen to site all the appearances in Jerusalem, Luke later on has Jesus eat a piece of broiled fish - more Galilean, one might think...

I digress.

The early disciples (what was left of them) seem to have ended up in Jerusalem, presumably under some duress. Then comes Paul's famous conversion and his subsequent vision of taking this new religion to the Gentiles. This undoubtedly saved it given hat was about to happen to Jerusalem...

 

[grahbudd]

(burble) a few comments about miracles. It's true there's quite a lot of the miraculous in the early records,cand that I think leads lots of people to regard the whole shebang as suspect. But this betrays a certain lack of sympathy with the ancient mind.

Actually, if we take Mark, who is a good first base, then one can see that the miracles fall into a few categories. The first is healings and exorcisms (eg the healing of the fever of Peter's mother in law; the healing of the man with the withered arm). I submit that these are the sorts of healings that a folk healer of the time would be expected to do (note, for example, that in the case of the withered arm, the opponents of Jesus fully expect him to be able to do it, the only question is the narrow one of whether or not he will do it on the sabbath). Similarly in this categories go deaf mutes and the blind.

The raising of the daughter of the synagogue leader looks hyper miraculous, but of course, if we take the text at face value she is not actually dead!

Then we have the bizarre and darkly amusing story of the Gadarene swine, which seems to be poking fun at the Romans.

On top of this are the enigmatic and pregnant 'nature' miracles. At least some of these (eg feeding of the five thousand) are very heavily overlain by OT references (in this case Psalm 23) and so it's not entirely clearly, I don't think, what status they are *meant* to have...

 

[davefoc]

You're still missing the null hypothesis
4. There is no evidence for an HJ, therefore it is unlikely one existed.

The HJ hypothesis as it stands is unfalsifiable: there could always have been someone to serve as inspiration for the writers somehow no matter how much you whittle away as being myth. Look at your current definition: he was just some guy in about the right time and place who kind of minimally resembled the Jesus we know just enough to count. And he shall be called Brian, right?

So since it's unfalsifiable, the only sane thing to do after we've exhausted enough time and resources to say we've given it a fair shot, is give up the chase and accept the null. HJ is a big fish story with no fish, simple as that. Is it plausible? Sure. Is it true? Not that we can tell.

Mostly I agree with all of this. I did consider adding that fourth category but I thought there might not be anybody in this thread that would fit.

Even though I see myself in category two I tend to agree with a lot of what the category 3 people have to say about this and I agree with you, apparently a category 4 person, has to say about this mostly.

I agree in particular that hypothesis that an HJ existed or didn't exist for that matter is unfalsifiable. And not in some philosophical we-can-never-be-sure-about-anything way. I mean in the way that all the evidence and analysis of the HJ theories are based on shaky evidence, the validity of which can never be established.

I also agreed with this:

So since it's unfalsifiable, the only sane thing to do after we've exhausted enough time and resources to say we've given it a fair shot, is give up the chase and accept the null.

It is the only sane thing to do. The sources are too sketchy and unreliable to know anything of substance about the HJ even if we assumed that he did exist and no matter how one slices and dices the evidence we won't even know if he did exist.

Almost the only place where we disagree a bit is that I am willing to be a bit insane about this and continue to see if there isn't some clue that will make my guess about what happened a little more refined and a little more accurate. And apparently we disagree in that my guess is that there was an HJ that meets the minimum criteria I put forth above and your guess is that there wasn't.

 

[maximara]

On the contrary, I would say there is plenty of evidence about Jesus that would be admissible, and allow us to build up a reasonable picture of his life. These would include the following:

I) he was born a few years BC. Both Luke and Matthew agree on this, and so does John. It's true Luke has another date reference (the notorious census) but this is inconsistent with what he says elsewhere and thus can fairly be regarded as some sort of slip.

St. Irenaeus himself pointed to John 8:56-57 stating "Now, such language is fittingly applied to one who has already passed the age of forty, without having as yet reached his fiftieth year, yet is not far from this latter period. But to one who is only thirty years old it would unquestionably be said, "You are not yet forty years old.""

If we accept the Pontius Pilate (recalled to Rome 36) death then bt Irenaeus' argument (Jesus being 46+ years old when this comment was made) John puts Jesus birth around 11 BCE--more then "a few years BC"

The fact is that Luke, Matthew, and John are a temporal train wreck as Luke clearly puts the date at 6 CE and that Jesus and his family returning to their home city and stayed there going to the Temple every year (Luke 2:39; Luke 2:41) while Matthew has the family getting on the fastest camel and taking off to Egypt. The fact that by Matthew 2:16 says (KJV here) Herod "slew all the children that were in Bethlehem, and in all the coasts thereof, two years old and under, according to the time which he had diligently inquired of the wise men" indicates that Herod took nearly two years to figure out he had been tricked pointing to a 5 BC or even 6 BC birth date. John as demonstrated by arguments by St. Irenaeus himself put the birth around 11 BCE. There is no agreement.

II) he was born in Nazareth, but his mission was centred in Capernaum a few miles away.

All evidence so far point to Nazareth being so small (assuming it existed in the 1st century CE) it would have been Jesus of where?

III) he was a disciple of John the Baptist. Interestingly, just beneath the surface, the Synoptics tie themselves in knots trying to get around the fact that their ministries overlapped, and thus were probably seen as rivals in some sense (the Synoptics want us to believe that Jesus did not start his ministry until the arrest of John).
IV) his mother was called Mary, and he had several brothers (most likely). There is no reason to think his father was not called Joseph although he doesn't feature in any way after the birth narratives.
V) he had a somewhat peripatetic ministry in Galilee. This consisted of preaching and acts fully consistent with those of a folk healer/exorcist. His preaching was both apocalyptic (in the technical sense) and also squarely within the prophetic tradition as reflected in eg the Minor Prophets of the OT. Some of his rabbinic disputes about the interpretation of the Law with the Pharisees have been preserved (eg the Peah dispute about gathering corn from the corners of fields on a Sabbath).
VI) he had a group of disciples, only some of which remained of importance after his death (yes, he died! )
VIi) although he had probably been there before (even the Synoptics have Jesus having friends in Bethany, after all) he ended up in Jerusalem during the tumultuous Passover week of (probably) 33AD.
VII) he was, to coin a phrase, crucified under Pontius Pilate after having been arrested as a result of an incident in the temple.

Isn't that quite of detail about an obscure 1st century figure?

Assuming any of it is true. Robin Hood and King Arthur have similarlly detailed histories but they are legends and unlike Jesus we see more or less when characters like Maid Marion, Guinevere and Lancelot were added.

Apollonius of Tyana (the Pagan Christ) has just as rich a biography and Eusebius, in his Treatise against Apollonius did not question that the man existed even though the best work on him was written c225 CE--some two hundred years after he supposedly lived.

 

[davefoc]

On the contrary, I would say there is plenty of evidence about Jesus that would be admissible, and allow us to build up a reasonable picture of his life. These would include the following:

I) he was born a few years BC. Both Luke and Matthew agree on this, and so does John. It's true Luke has another date reference (the notorious census) but this is inconsistent with what he says elsewhere and thus can fairly be regarded as some sort of slip.
II) he was born in Nazareth, but his mission was centred in Capernaum a few miles away.
III) he was a disciple of John the Baptist. Interestingly, just beneath the surface, the Synoptics tie themselves in knots trying to get around the fact that their ministries overlapped, and thus were probably seen as rivals in some sense (the Synoptics want us to believe that Jesus did not start his ministry until the arrest of John).
IV) his mother was called Mary, and he had several brothers (most likely). There is no reason to think his father was not called Joseph although he doesn't feature in any way after the birth narratives.
V) he had a somewhat peripatetic ministry in Galilee. This consisted of preaching and acts fully consistent with those of a folk healer/exorcist. His preaching was both apocalyptic (in the technical sense) and also squarely within the prophetic tradition as reflected in eg the Minor Prophets of the OT. Some of his rabbinic disputes about the interpretation of the Law with the Pharisees have been preserved (eg the Peah dispute about gathering corn from the corners of fields on a Sabbath).
VI) he had a group of disciples, only some of which remained of importance after his death (yes, he died! )
VIi) although he had probably been there before (even the Synoptics have Jesus having friends in Bethany, after all) he ended up in Jerusalem during the tumultuous Passover week of (probably) 33AD.
VII) he was, to coin a phrase, crucified under Pontius Pilate after having been arrested as a result of an incident in the temple.

Isn't that quite of detail about an obscure 1st century figure?

Yup and the question is did he exist. Everything you have put forth is derived from the Gospels or the writings of Paul. The authors of the Gospels are unknown, the date they were written is unknown, where they were written is unknown, they were written in a language that it is unlikely to be that of a hypothetical HJ spoke, they are self contradictory, they contain implausible events (including some non-supernatural ones), only one of them has much historical credibility, the birth narrative was made up out of whole cloth and is presented as real thereby seriously discrediting the reliability of the works as a whole, there are significant geographical errors in them, there are cultural errors in them suggesting that at least some of the Gospel writers weren't Jewish (my guess is that none were), there are probably at most only two independent sources for the Gospels beyond what the writers themselves dreamed up. they were written well after the death of a hypothetical HJ. But despite all these issues there is a contingent of people that think they can derive a reliable truth out of the Gospels if they stare at them long enough.

Maybe together with some common sense, a knowledge of the first century Jewish customs and culture and careful use of the a few external biblical sources like Josephus and Tacitus somebody has arrived at a reliable theory about the nature of early Christianity that includes an HJ. I doubt it. It looks to me like some of the pillars of the case that an HJ existed have been seriously challenged in this thread. Strong evidence has been put forth that the Testimonium Flavium was a forgery in this thread. The Josephus reference to James the brother of Christ has been seriously challenged and the evidence of Tacitus, even if one assumes it is an accurate representation of what Tacitus wrote only provides evidence that there were Christians in 64AD and that is based on something written in 115AD.

That only leaves the writings of Paul to provide much corroboration for the Gospels and for the most part they don't do that. We don't know much about the HJ that Paul is referring to since he doesn't talk much about him. That makes it difficult to corroborate the Gospel description of Jesus based on Paul, but Paul does mention interactions with the brother of Paul and some of his followers and for me that is the basis of my guess that an HJ existed. But there are lots of Paul theories and most of them can't be disproved:
1. Paul made most of it up. He saw an opportunity to exploit the burgeoning market for Jesus speakers and he made most of his story up. He made his living going from God-fearer group to God-fearer group pitching his religion and his connection with the group of Jesus followers that he made up.
2. We don't know what Paul said. About half of the letters attributed to him are known to be forgeries, the rest may have been heavily interpolated, who knows?
3. Paul didn't exist. The travel stories are a bit tough to swallow. He goes from place to place and everywhere he finds groups susceptible to his message. Who's paying the bills?

 

[IanS]

You're still missing the null hypothesis
4. There is no evidence for an HJ, therefore it is unlikely one existed.

The HJ hypothesis as it stands is unfalsifiable: there could always have been someone to serve as inspiration for the writers somehow no matter how much you whittle away as being myth. Look at your current definition: he was just some guy in about the right time and place who kind of minimally resembled the Jesus we know just enough to count. And he shall be called Brian, right?

So since it's unfalsifiable, the only sane thing to do after we've exhausted enough time and resources to say we've given it a fair shot, is give up the chase and accept the null. HJ is a big fish story with no fish, simple as that. Is it plausible? Sure. Is it true? Not that we can tell.

That's really my position too. Except instead of saying "therefore it is unlikely Jesus existed", I'd say the correct conclusion there would be just to say that there is no good evidential reason to believe that the Jesus figure portrayed in the biblical writing existed.

The difficulty for Christians and others who believe Jesus existed, is that we now know (or so it seems) that not only is the evidence so very weak, but apparently all the stories which are being treated as "evidence" actually come only from the devotional beliefs (often highly delusional miracle-beliefs) of the earliest Christian writers & worshippers themselves ... all the later writing from non-biblical authors is (a)hearsay, and (b)appears in any case to derive only from those same earlier Christian accounts anyway. IOW, there are (it seems) actually no other primary or independent sources of anything to do with Jesus apart from the beliefs of the early Christians themselves.

But the beliefs of those early Christians, eg the gospel authors, the beliefs of Paul, the beliefs of non-canonical gospel writers etc., all come to us as written accounts, not from any of those named individuals themselves, but instead from unnamed unknown writers who were writing some centuries after the events ... mostly (as I said several times earlier) as Christian devotional copies from the 4th century and later ...

... that is far too long after any of the claimed events to qualify as remotely reliable, especially as it comes to us only in the form of devotional hearsay from unknown unnamed copyists relying on equally unknown unnamed sources, who were all so hopelessly unreliable as to be solemnly swearing to have witnessed all manner of physically impossible miracles.

This is not remotely reliable as "evidence" by standards at all.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

On the contrary, I would say there is plenty of evidence about Jesus that would be admissible, and allow us to build up a reasonable picture of his life. These would include the following:

I) he was born a few years BC. Both Luke and Matthew agree on this, and so does John. It's true Luke has another date reference (the notorious census) but this is inconsistent with what he says elsewhere and thus can fairly be regarded as some sort of slip.

Actually, neither Paul nor Mark have a birth at all, and the only two that were arbitrarily chosen as canonical guess wildly different years. And generally others guess even more wildly differently. Sorry, that doesn't sound to me like much evidence.

Plus, it all hinges on deciding that some uncorroborated propaganda documents are actually good evidence. By that standards, Captain Kirk has been... err... will be born in 2233, because Star Trek said so. That's not even a random example, but most of what they think they know about Jesus's life IS based on taking some stories from the OT as prophecy. Well, then I'm taking Star Trek as prophecy

II) he was born in Nazareth, but his mission was centred in Capernaum a few miles away.

And Captain Kirk is born in Riverside, Iowa. Actually here we even have better evidence for Kirk, because we even have a monument in his home town

Actually, even more so, because at that point you don't even have any actual "evidence" to base it on. Mark doesn't say Jesus was from Nazareth, Matthew and Luke have him born in Bethlehem, and at that Matthew seems to say that Jesus's parents were in Bethlehem all along and only moved to Nazareth much later.

And again, it's a move that is justified by fulfilling a "prophecy" (read: disparate phrase in the OT that only a schizophrenic would take as a hidden reference) rather than knowing anything. If that's good admissible evidence, then I'm the pope.

III) he was a disciple of John the Baptist. Interestingly, just beneath the surface, the Synoptics tie themselves in knots trying to get around the fact that their ministries overlapped, and thus were probably seen as rivals in some sense (the Synoptics want us to believe that Jesus did not start his ministry until the arrest of John).

Again, that's a claim that comes from one highly-biased religious document, and they did have one of those "prophecies" that said someone else will pave the way for the messiah. Plus, generally, if you wanted to at least try to sell that snake-oil to more Jews, trying to connect it to a recent super-star preacher is exactly what you'd expect a snake-oil peddler to do. Doubly so when they inherited a baptism ritual from Paul anyway, so it's not like connecting it to JTB comes out of nowhere.

There is also no real evidence that there was any rivalry, as opposed to just being Mark's getting the timeline wrong for his made-up fiction. That's just confabulating.

IV) his mother was called Mary, and he had several brothers (most likely). There is no reason to think his father was not called Joseph although he doesn't feature in any way after the birth narratives.

Right, and Luke Skywalker's mom was Padme Amidala, because St George Lucas says so

Mary is first named by Mark in 6:3, which tells us where everyone else got that. There is absolutely no corroboration to say that it had to be a real person, as opposed to just naming a secondary character, something done by every fiction author ever.

V) he had a somewhat peripatetic ministry in Galilee. This consisted of preaching and acts fully consistent with those of a folk healer/exorcist. His preaching was both apocalyptic (in the technical sense) and also squarely within the prophetic tradition as reflected in eg the Minor Prophets of the OT. Some of his rabbinic disputes about the interpretation of the Law with the Pharisees have been preserved (eg the Peah dispute about gathering corn from the corners of fields on a Sabbath).

Right, and Captain Kirk's actions are consistent with what we'd expect from a starship captain

Except for Jesus they're not entirely consistent. Even the imminent apocalypse theme is absent for example in the Q episodes, or in Thomas. His ministry is more in Judaea for Mark, more in Galilee for Q. His answers don't form a coherent position, but are all over the map in the whole genre of sayings attributed to him (e.g., some are a die-hard Sadducee position, some are so liberal that even the Pharisees balk, some seem more in line with various schools of hellenistic philosophy, etc), and most only work because the author says so.

Plus, again, there is no corroboration. You find evidence of Jesus only if you already decide that there was one, that the gosples preserved.

VI) he had a group of disciples, only some of which remained of importance after his death (yes, he died! )

And Captain Kirk had several crew members, and only some remained of importance after his death. E.g., Spock is still a major figure centuries later, in the timeline of Star Trek Online

VIi) although he had probably been there before (even the Synoptics have Jesus having friends in Bethany, after all) he ended up in Jerusalem during the tumultuous Passover week of (probably) 33AD.

Except again we're moving from the domain of what even that pseudo-evidence actually says, to personal confabulation. Even his having any actual friends in Bethany only really appears in John, as a setup for a miracle. Mark, from which the other two synoptics copied doesn't actually say so. (Check out Mark 11 and 14.)

Plus even the dating is actually based on some 3'rd century astrological considerations, and is going against the "evidence" that those synoptics give. In fact, from being a ministry that starts after John The Baptist is arrested and summarily executed, it is now moved to something that started and ended while John The Baptist was still at large.

That's not having evidence, that's going against the "evidence."

VII) he was, to coin a phrase, crucified under Pontius Pilate after having been arrested as a result of an incident in the temple.

An incident in the temple which

A) couldn't really have happened by some lone nutter with a couple of disciples, because it was a very large surface full of thousands of people and guards that were there to prevent exactly that kind of thing, not to mention Pilate being there in town for the occasion with at least one cohort of highly trained soldiers, and

B) would have been written about if it did. We're talking an attack and disruption on a major government institution. And

C) if Jesus did get arrested for it, it would be on the spot, thus we'd have no Lord's Prayer and no last supper, contradicting not only the gospels but Paul too. (The last supper is actually pretty much the only thing that Paul actually tells us about what Jesus ever did except die.)

There really are no two ways around this. A lone Jesus or small enough group to not even be worth noting by anyone writing at the time, wouldn't even be a disturbance, and if it were criminal (like, say, the armed assault that John makes it be), Jesus and his gang wouldn't even exit that courtyard other than dead or in custody. Not only a group of 13 people (let alone a lone kung-fu master Jesus) wouldn't really overpower the guards and the hundreds of merchants, but by the time they were done there, they'd have to deal with the wall of shields and gladii of Pilate's soldiers. And if Jesus did bring enough people to take over the temple in no time and get the f-bomb out before the Romans get their kit on, you'd think someone would notice such a big attack on a major government institution. Like, say, Josephus.

The only way you can have a last supper after that is if, in fact, there was no real disturbance in the temple, or at least certainly not one worth the whole covert op to get him, convoking the Sanhedrin on Easter Friday, etc. Maybe a nutter Jesus did start shouting that everyone get out, but even that must have stopped quite short of being enough of a nuisance, or the priests would have told the guards to get him right there and then.

Isn't that quite of detail about an obscure 1st century figure?

The real point is that none of that is corroborated by anyone else, nor do we have any real reason to take some stories that miraculous and propagandistic as evidence. By that standard of evidence, Kim Jong Il managed 11 holes-in-one on his first golf game, because his propaganda says so. (And at that, never defecated.) But there is no sane reason to believe that any of that is true.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

Oh then a few points around his life:
The Jewish temple authorities, with enough trouble on their hands as it was, were keen to suppress the cult both before and after his death. To their dismay (one can here safely speculate ) after his death, some of his disciples became convinced that he had risen from the dead again. The basis for this belief is not clear. The story of the empty tomb is present in all of the gospels, although not in Paul. There are also a number of resurrection appearance narratives, which are not particularly consistent (e.g. see the list in Paul and compare it to those in Luke and Matthew and John). In addition, where these appearances took place is also unclear - Jerusalem, or Galilee? The most interesting narrative here is the Emmaus one preserved in Luke. Oddly enough, although apparently keen to site all the appearances in Jerusalem, Luke later on has Jesus eat a piece of broiled fish - more Galilean, one might think...

Actually, some story details were more or less standard to make a point. Giving someone something to eat after they were raised from the dead is something that is a standard trope in such ancient stories, and seems to be there just to make the point that it's really a live person again. Because, you know, ghosts don't eat.

You can see that even in the gospels, really. E.g., in Mark 5:43, after resurrecting the girl, Jesus "told them to give her something to eat."

So basically instead of seeing something you should take as evidence somehow, you're seeing a standard trope that you shouldn't take as evidence at all.

 

[grahbudd]

Yup and the question is did he exist. Everything you have put forth is derived from the Gospels or the writings of Paul. The authors of the Gospels are unknown, the date they were written is unknown, where they were written is unknown, they were written in a language that it is unlikely to be that of a hypothetical HJ spoke, they are self contradictory, they contain implausible events (including some non-supernatural ones), only one of them has much historical credibility, the birth narrative was made up out of whole cloth and is presented as real thereby seriously discrediting the reliability of the works as a whole, there are significant geographical errors in them, there are cultural errors in them suggesting that at least some of the Gospel writers weren't Jewish (my guess is that none were), there are probably at most only two independent sources for the Gospels beyond what the writers themselves dreamed up. they were written well after the death of a hypothetical HJ. But despite all these issues there is a contingent of people that think they can derive a reliable truth out of the Gospels if they stare at them long enough.

Maybe together with some common sense, a knowledge of the first century Jewish customs and culture and careful use of the a few external biblical sources like Josephus and Tacitus somebody has arrived at a reliable theory about the nature of early Christianity that includes an HJ. I doubt it. It looks to me like some of the pillars of the case that an HJ existed have been seriously challenged in this thread. Strong evidence has been put forth that the Testimonium Flavium was a forgery in this thread. The Josephus reference to James the brother of Christ has been seriously challenged and the evidence of Tacitus, even if one assumes it is an accurate representation of what Tacitus wrote only provides evidence that there were Christians in 64AD and that is based on something written in 115AD.

That only leaves the writings of Paul to provide much corroboration for the Gospels and for the most part they don't do that. We don't know much about the HJ that Paul is referring to since he doesn't talk much about him. That makes it difficult to corroborate the Gospel description of Jesus based on Paul, but Paul does mention interactions with the brother of Paul and some of his followers and for me that is the basis of my guess that an HJ existed. But there are lots of Paul theories and most of them can't be disproved:
1. Paul made most of it up. He saw an opportunity to exploit the burgeoning market for Jesus speakers and he made most of his story up. He made his living going from God-fearer group to God-fearer group pitching his religion and his connection with the group of Jesus followers that he made up.
2. We don't know what Paul said. About half of the letters attributed to him are known to be forgeries, the rest may have been heavily interpolated, who knows?
3. Paul didn't exist. The travel stories are a bit tough to swallow. He goes from place to place and everywhere he finds groups susceptible to his message. Who's paying the bills?

Once again I would urge a critical, rather than speculative, approach to the material in hand.

For example, it's far too strong, in my view, to regard "about half of the letters attributed to him" as forgeries, and the rest as being heavily interpolated.

Given style, substance and continuity, it's generally accepted that Romans, 1 & 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians, and Philemon are by Paul. Hebrews makes no claim to be. Of these, at least what has come down to as as 2 Corinthians seems to have some complex history (i.e. it may well be a composite of Pauline writings). The ending of Romans is also problematic.

Now the others. For 2 Thessalonians, there is simply no consensus about whether it is by Paul or not. For Colossians, there is more doubt, but again, it's not, as one might say here, a "slam dunk". In other words, we don't know *for sure* whether or not they are by Paul.

Ephesians is singular in that it seems to be an epitome of Pauline writing. Although (I would judge) certainly not by Paul, it seems best to regard it as a sort of "covering letter" for an early edition of Paul's letters. I'm not sure this really makes it a "forgery".

Finally there are the Pastorals. I think most (but not actually everyone) regards these as being late (1 Clement however seems to know them, so they are not *that* late). However, what this does not address is whether or not they originally possessed a Pauline core or not.

Now one thing I would urge is to take such documents on their own merits, and not a priori impose "written by psychotic nutter" on them. Of course, if you do that then you can write them off without any more ado. But why should one do that unless one had an agenda? It seems a very peculiar approach. and to say this is ok because Paul apparently had a vision shows a highly prejudicial view (in my view!) about the nature of mental illness in general. Many people have visions (or even hear voices) without showing any signs of mental illness. As wikipedia puts it (quite correctly): "Brief hallucinations are not uncommon in those without any psychiatric disease."

Paul shows every sign of being able to follow through complex and integrated arguments at length, to be able to hold different thoughts in tension, and in general to show no signs of the sort of mental disintegration common of people with true disturbing psychosis.

So in short I don't see any reason not to take what he writes seriously. That is, of course, not to say we should always just take him at his word, any more or less so than any other writer from the ancient world.

One of the more interesting features about Paul is that we can put, independently of Acts (although this broadly at least corroborates what he says) a time line on his version of events. And that's because of the fascinating and incidental detail in Galatians about his escape from Damascus:

2 Corinthians 11:32
In Damascus the governor under King Aretas had the city of the Damascenes guarded in order to arrest me.

The interesting thing here is that this incident, the idea of Damascus being under the control of Aretas, is not *quite* recorded elsewhere (although the events surrounding it are). Nevertheless we know from Josephus and other considerations when it happened and the small window of opportunity is around late 36/early 37 AD (Campbell 2002).

And this puts Paul's conversion (by his own lights) around AD 34 or perhaps even late AD 33.

Of course, this date corresponds rather well with the date for the crucifixion one can extract (give or take) from the gospels. And yet it is entirely independent. We also know from Paul's writing that the crucifixion can't have been too long before his conversion, simply because he writes of some of the characters involved being around decades later.

It is this sort of detail that one can mine out of the texts at hand that convinces many that we are not simply dealing with a tissue of lies here, but with a true historical core.

 

[grahbudd]

On the implausibility of the gospels etc: Again, this seems to be to show a lack of analysis, i.e. the " breaking a complex topic or substance into smaller parts to gain a better understanding of it" (Wiki!). Of course if you lump together the synoptics, john, Paul, Irenaeus etc etc into one huge wobbling lump they are hard to understand. But peer beneath the surface, and one gets a much better view.

For example: Even though it shows some remarkable flashes that may well be traditional, it's pretty obvious that John is the product of reflection rather than historical account. The best example of this is the raising of Lazarus. Unlike the headings of say, Mark, this is done in the most flashy and supernatural way possible. The contrast in itself is quite instructive. If everything is made up, then why isn't everything like the raising of Lazarus, or even more amazing? John places the raising of Lazarus as central to the reason that Jesus was arrested - but the synoptics don't even mention it.

As a result of this, we can see that the raising of Lazarus didn't happen (I mean, its unlikely there was even a sort of historical core that might correspond to something a modern skeptic might accept as possible): or even if there is, it is so obscured that we have no idea what it is.

But that judgement only throws light on the nature of the healings and exorcisms in the synoptics.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

But here's the problem I have with extracting supposed truth from uncorroborated pieces of religion: MCIs. Minimally Counter-Intuitive worlds or cocencepts. It's a concept from the psychology of cognition.

Virtually every single piece of super-natural belief has to balance the interesting/unusual and the expected. You can take even the most outlandish piece of belief that we're sure never actually happened in history -- e.g., a sacred tree hearing your prayers -- and it will still have to strike a balance of those two.

If you tell someone a tale that completely goes against their mental model, they'll just balk. If I told you my messiah is an invisible floating lead anvil, who eats the sound of fish, and lives just around the corner of last week, and a bunch of similar stuff that doesn't fit anything in your mental model of the world, I will venture a guess that you won't actually believe any of it. In fact, nobody would.

To have a religion or even just piece of nonsense belief, it has to be a blend of what you know is real, and a twist of what else I'm expecting you to accept.

E.g., a tree that under peculiar circumstances hears prayers, still has to be just a tree otherwise. It has to have roots, leaves, a physical location, and generally stuff you can use to fit it in your normal model. A tree in a grove will be less unexpected and more believable than a tree growing on a cloud, for example. Then comes the twist that on the spring solstice its spirit listens to you. Even having a spirit is nothing really outlandish, but an anthropomorphising we normally do. We're naturally inclined to ascribe intent and intelligence to everything, and explain stuff by it. So it's interesting, but again it's not unexpected.

It's not even just a hypothetical, but essentially old German animism.

E.g., a god of the sun still has to be visible like a ball of fire in the sky. He goes up in the morning, goes down in the evening. Taking a random one, say, Ra, he's still otherwise just a guy. He does and thinks stuff that we expect a guy to think. He uses props like a boat to sail over the sky. It's something which would actually have been very familiar to people living along the Nile and not just seeing such boats, but using them rather routinely even just to get from one side to the other. The unnatural twists are counter-balanced by a lot of mundane stuff to make a palatable package.

E.g., even modern day nonsense beliefs are still anchored in expected stuff to make them palatable. Quantum chi crystal pendants are just crystals and packaged with a lot of properties of crystals that we already know and expect. For example that they'd have certain resonances.

Even if someone tried to buck the trend, ultimately we have a kind of genetic algorithm and natural selection of those memes. Superstitions which are entirely outlandish and unbelievable die out, while the variations which are closer to optimum thrive and replace them.

And that varies with time and place too. E.g., nowadays you would no longer be inclined to believe that a whole city of the gods exists on top of Mount Olympus, because you can know that we don't see one there. E.g., nowadays you wouldn't find it palatable any more that there's a giant snake around the world, basically keeping the water from spilling over the edge, because you know there is no edge and no need for something like that. Plus nowadays such a giant snake would contradict anything you expect about the biology of such snakes.

So, anyway, OF COURSE that a supernatural Jesus -- of for that matter even the OT God -- would have stuff that is entirely believable and is otherwise just a guy. It's required to have that around the supernatural pill you're supposed to swallow, or you'd spit it right out.

OF COURSE that if you want to tell some people that Jesus told them to do X or to not do Y, you have to make it only minimally counter-intuitive. Like make up a believable episode which sets up the stage for him to say that.

OF COURSE that if you want to illustrate that he has power over life and death, you want to make minimally counter-intuitive episodes where that is shown. You want him to be super-natural, but still mostly in line with what those people's model of the world was. You want him to look like the kind of healer which saves the girl at the last moment that those people were already expecting. (See Justin Martyr for someone actually making the point that it's no different from what the Greeks already expected.)

OF COURSE that if you want to make the case that he's more powerful than the other side, and indeed have divine power, you want to show him driving out demons. And you have to make that minimally counter-intuitive too. He has to fit the pattern of the kind of exorcist guy they're prepared to accept.

Etc.

Trying to take something as true just because it's the not-impossible part of those stories, is IMHO illogical, absent any corroboration. We already have a pretty good idea why those parts are there: to make the story only minimally counter-intuitive. Positing a second reason, like that they actually knew Jesus did any of that, without any reason that needs such an extra entity, is just failing Occam.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

On the implausibility of the gospels etc: Again, this seems to be to show a lack of analysis, i.e. the " breaking a complex topic or substance into smaller parts to gain a better understanding of it" (Wiki!). Of course if you lump together the synoptics, john, Paul, Irenaeus etc etc into one huge wobbling lump they are hard to understand. But peer beneath the surface, and one gets a much better view.

For example: Even though it shows some remarkable flashes that may well be traditional, it's pretty obvious that John is the product of reflection rather than historical account. The best example of this is the raising of Lazarus. Unlike the headings of say, Mark, this is done in the most flashy and supernatural way possible. The contrast in itself is quite instructive. If everything is made up, then why isn't everything like the raising of Lazarus, or even more amazing? John places the raising of Lazarus as central to the reason that Jesus was arrested - but the synoptics don't even mention it.

If both are scams, why is Victor Lustig's selling the Eiffel Tower (twice) not ham-fisted like a Nigerian 419 scam? Or if it's made up, why does Perault's version have the Little Red Riding Hood take off her clothes and get in bed with the wolf, while the later Brothers Grimm version makes no mention of that? If it's made up, why does our version of Cinderella have something as outlandish as glass footwear, yet the ancient Egyptian version makes it just a normal slipper? Etc.

The notion that you can know what is true by it just sounding not unbelievable to you is already a logical nonsense. To some it sounded believable enough that there would be a giant dog-headed saint, but that doesn't mean it was true just because it sounded believable.

Plus, the most successful lies are pretty much by definition those which aren't raising all sorts of warning flags, and sound believable. And even include the kind of imperfections that make it easier to swallow. (E.g., Victor Lustig's success was partially because he didn't pretend to be a government employee whose honesty and honour are above any kind of reproach, but the kind of corrupt government employee asking for a bribe that the buyer was more ready to accept.)

But that something must be true because some OTHER author wrote more unbelievable stuff is downright silly. By that criterion, the canon adventures of Spock or Captain Kirk must be true, because OTHER authors writing fanfic made up far more spectacularly wrong incidents. It just doesn't follow in any form of shape.

Or that Picard must be true, because Gene Roddenberry's version of it is putting him through FAR less spectacular stuff than the later movies do

Or that Han Solo and Chewbacca must be real because the version of them from our prophet St George Lucas is far less brain-dead than the Star Wars Holiday Special edition

 

[Beelzebuddy]

On the contrary, I would say there is plenty of evidence about Jesus that would be admissible, and allow us to build up a reasonable picture of his life. These would include the following:

I) he was born a few years BC. Both Luke and Matthew agree on this, and so does John. It's true Luke has another date reference (the notorious census) but this is inconsistent with what he says elsewhere and thus can fairly be regarded as some sort of slip.
II) he was born in Nazareth, but his mission was centred in Capernaum a few miles away.
III) he was a disciple of John the Baptist. Interestingly, just beneath the surface, the Synoptics tie themselves in knots trying to get around the fact that their ministries overlapped, and thus were probably seen as rivals in some sense (the Synoptics want us to believe that Jesus did not start his ministry until the arrest of John).
IV) his mother was called Mary, and he had several brothers (most likely). There is no reason to think his father was not called Joseph although he doesn't feature in any way after the birth narratives.
V) he had a somewhat peripatetic ministry in Galilee. This consisted of preaching and acts fully consistent with those of a folk healer/exorcist. His preaching was both apocalyptic (in the technical sense) and also squarely within the prophetic tradition as reflected in eg the Minor Prophets of the OT. Some of his rabbinic disputes about the interpretation of the Law with the Pharisees have been preserved (eg the Peah dispute about gathering corn from the corners of fields on a Sabbath).
VI) he had a group of disciples, only some of which remained of importance after his death (yes, he died! )
VIi) although he had probably been there before (even the Synoptics have Jesus having friends in Bethany, after all) he ended up in Jerusalem during the tumultuous Passover week of (probably) 33AD.
VII) he was, to coin a phrase, crucified under Pontius Pilate after having been arrested as a result of an incident in the temple.

Isn't that quite of detail about an obscure 1st century figure?

Not really - that's all assertion (not evidence) from the same specious source. If I and my fishing/drinking buddies come back with the same big fish story, aside from minor details like where it was caught, how big the fish was, what kind of fish it was, and how it got away, does that make it any more likely there actually was an historical fish (HF) and that we all weren't just out drinking all weekend (FM)?

 

[Belz...]

Hans, tell me if what my current thoughts on this subject make sense...

Assuming Paul existed, it seems to me like he made up the 'vision' he had after the fact, probably to justify his choice to go into the religious leader business and latch on to the Jesus thing (must've figured there was some money to make at this.) The gospel writers basically were attempts to make a coherent narrative out of Q and whatever oral tradition it was associated with, maybe with some influence from Paul, but making up the details of the story as they went. Q itself probably contains confabulations, exaggerations and some true quotes from some guy who probably lived quite a bit before the traditional date of Jesus' ministry, and probably wasn't called Joshua at all. At this point it seems pretty much impossible to know anything about this guy, except that he probably has nothing in common with any of the versions in the Bible.

 

[grahbudd]

I am afraid (it seems to me) that you have misunderstood my comments to a certain extent.

Once again, surely, in analysis one has to do things in stages. First off, one examines the texts and gets rid of ones (or components thereof) that can be seen on general grounds to be unreliable - for example, the medieval romances about King Arthur.

In *general* terms, one can see gJohn like this. There are some interesting details in gJohn that appear to be both traditional and unique to John (i.e. not compositions by the author but yet not based on synoptic material), but I will bracket these here.

In terms of Lazarus, of course the modern mind is likely to be repelled by such stories in terms of their lack of verisimilitude. Technically, one can just "bracket" them, i.e. note their appearance, note that the ancient mind may well have accepted such things, and move on.

However, in this case it goes further, because the plot line in John here flatly contradicts that of the synoptics (i.e. why Jesus was eventually arrested. John has in his account moved the cleansing of the Temple to the beginning of the gospel, not the end, so it can no longer play the role it does in the synoptics). Given that it contradicts it in this way, and with an event whose supernatural nature is deliberately heightened by the text (e.g. the deliberate delay of Jesus in getting there etc), from our perspective we can drop this as a real explanation of the arrest of Jesus.

Within the synoptics themselves, we can do more whittling down - e.g. some accounts of the trial of Jesus in Mark are very implausible; we can see where Matthew has heightened some of Mark's events, etc.

This analysis leads us with a core of what one might call “historical plausibility”, ie things that might actually have happened (as far as we can tell of course). This relies on a wide perspective of language and description, comparative works, archaeology, etc etc.

Once one has gone through this analysis, one is then left with the core of material that one wants to investigate for two extra but critical components: traditionality and historicity.

Traditional here means something that the evangelist (or Paul etc) inherited from someone else (as opposed to being a composition of the author themselves); historicity is something that (more or less) actually happened.

Of course, these two things are not the same thing, even though traditionality is a necessary but not sufficient component of historicity. For example, all our sources have the resurrection of Jesus (one way or another); but this fact in itself does not make it historical. Similarly, all the gospels have an empty tomb (which is of course, as a historical possibility perfectly plausible); and it is thus clearly traditional (or at least for Matthew Luke and John). But that does not on its own make it historical either.

Comparison of the gospels and Paul allow, with difficulty, an approach to traditionality within our preserved material.

I have tried to sketch out a subset of this “plausible” material in a way that is in deliberate contrast to how the gospels are viewed here in general, which is as hopelessly “supernatural”. I don’t think they are – certainly not the synoptics. Instead, with the notable exceptions of the nature miracles (which have features all of their own), the so-called miracles show what might be considered to be a remarkable restraint. It’s not simply a case of cherry picking out the “possible bits” and dumping the rest, but rather, noting that as a set, they fall into a certain type of event – one that we can see from the perspective of the first century specifically, and folk perspectives on healing and illness more generally, fit well into folk healing (I do not by any means wish to use this in a denigratory manner here). I think, given this pattern, one is entitled to ask: what is this restraint sourced in? I shall return to this point.

I now want to turn to a certain set of sayings recorded in the synoptics (and partly in John): the so-called doublets. These are sayings that appear once in Mark, Matthew and Luke in a Marcan context (ie form part of the triple tradition); and once in “Double”/q material shared only by Luke and Matthew.

Here is an example (there are quite a few, around 30 or so)

TMk γὰρ ἐὰν θέλῃ τὴν ψυχὴν αὐτοῦ σῶσαι ἀπολέσει αὐτήν• ὃς δ᾽ἂν ἀπολέσει τὴν ψυχὴν αὐτοῦ ἕνεκεν ἐμοῦ καὶ τοῦ εὐαγγελίου σώσει αὐτήν.
For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it.

TL ὃς γὰρ ἂν θέλῃ τὴν ψυχὴν αὐτοῦ σῶσαι ἀπολέσει αὐτήν· ὃς δ' ἂν ἀπολέσῃ τὴν ψυχὴν αὐτοῦ ἕνεκεν ἐμοῦ οὗτος σώσει αὐτήν.
For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it.

TMt ὃς γὰρ ἐὰν θέλῃ τὴν ψυχὴν αὐτοῦ σῶσαι ἀπολέσει αὐτήν· ὃς δ’ ἂν ἀπολέσῃ τὴν ψυχὴν αὐτοῦ ἕνεκεν ἐμοῦ εὑρήσει αὐτήν·
For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it.

QM ὁ εὑρὼν τὴν ψυχὴν αὐτοῦ ἀπολέσει αὐτήν, καὶ ὁ ἀπολέσας τὴν ψυχὴν αὐτοῦ ἕνεκεν ἐμοῦ εὑρήσει αὐτήν.
Whoever tries to keep his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life will preserve it.

QL ὃς ἐὰν ζητήσῃ τὴν ψυχὴν αὐτοῦ περιποιήσασθαι ἀπολέσει αὐτήν, ὃς δ᾽ἂν ἀπολέσῃ ζῳογονήσει αὐτήν.
Whoever tries to keep his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life will preserve it.

(T: triple tradition material, Q, q material: Mk, mark; L, Luke; Mt, Matthew).
As you can see, each of these sayings is preserved no fewer than five times (there are some sayings related to this but I’ll stick to the classical ones here).

What one can see here is that Luke and Matthew both derived one version from Mark; and one version from another source that preserved a different version of the saying (ie q). In general, Matthew and Luke diverge more in the q versions than in the Mark versions.

How to account for these two versions? There are several options. One is that one set is derived from the other, but that is quite hard to see how in most cases, and therefore what has always seemed most reasonable is to regard the q versions as being “sisters” to those in Mark – ie both versions are derived in turn from an older version.

This allows us, I think, to assign traditionality to these sayings: they were not simply “made up” by Mark, or by Matthew, or by Luke. Irrespective of the actual contents of the (somewhat overhyped!) supposed text called “Q”, they point to the existence of a Sayings Collection. The way that Paul uses allusions or quotations in his epistles shows that he too was aware of one or more collections of sayings.

We can see this in other ways, for example in the Semitisms including parallelisms found in both Luke and Matthew, including possible examples of mistranslations in one but not the other from an Aramaic source. However, I’ll pass over this stuff and move on to…

Content – the so-called Sitz im Leben.

One of the great things that biblical criticism has achieved is to stop people looking at the gospels and (especially!) the epistles as something produced in the Reformation. Rather, they are all, and contrary to what is often asserted here, profoundly Jewish documents. That is not to say, however, that all their authors or editors could be viewed on that way.

Mark once again provides a series of excellent examples, and I’ve pointed to some of them already. In particular, Mark provides a series of essentially Jewish rabbinic disputes, not about whether or not the Law should be kept, but how it should be kept. What is permissible to do on the Sabbath? Who is allowed to avail themselves of poor law? What is the use of ritual? Similarly, it is amazing, one might think, how little reference there is to the Gentiles in it all. Mark’s gospel was clearly written for a non-Jewish audience, because it feels obliged to explain Jewish ritual etc in it. And yet it is stuffed full of arguments about the Jewish Law that the Gentiles didn’t even keep in the first place – and has hardly anything about the Gentiles in it themselves!

Another oddness here is the Galilean material. Why is there so much pottering around so utterly obscure places on the Galilean coast – why not set the whole thing in the more glamorous Jerusalem? How would a Roman evangelist living in Rome even have a clue that places like Capernaum even existed – a lucky guess? There was no google maps, remember. Were there any maps at all?

These instances too point to the evangelists not freely composing, but once again working under restraint of some kind. Why stick to disputes about the law? Why have hardly any Gentile-friendly material in? Why not have Jesus gluing people’s ears back on (as in Matthew) or making limbs regrow? And as far as plot goes, how did this crucifixion theme get stuck so early in every stratum we can see (Mark, Paul, q etc), given its total obnoxiousness? How did the Galilean and Jerusalem themes end up in the same set of stories – what was the constraint here?

A further type of restraint is seen in how the transmission works. Although all the evangelists rather obviously edited their material, sometimes vigorously, a distinct difference can be seen between how they treat the sayings and the narratives that the sayings are set in. In essence, there is about twice as much variation in the narratives as there is in the sayings. Why this restraint?

Let me recap a bit. We can reconstruct Paul as having converted (in his own words, at least) in around AD 34. By the time he is writing about 15 years later or so, he is quoting to or alluding to a wide spread of Jesus material; furthermore, he is also writing to churches that he claims he has already passed this material on to (presumably in the 40s).

None of this material, conversely, appears before the early-30s, and so to the best of our knowledge, it is sourced within this decade, from the early thirties to the early forties.

We therefore have quite a lot of rather different type of material – narratives, sayings, disputes, healings, exorcisms, and types of restraint can be seen in every one of them: conservatism, in tranmission; in place, in types of event, in types of dispute, in translation. And every single one of these restraints can be placed, not in the needs of the later evangelists, who were trying to sell a “Law-lite” version of Judaism to the Gentiles, but to mid-century, Galilean and Jerusalem second temple prophetic Judaism. Someone made up all this stuff before Paul started getting hold of it, by which time it was already in collections, had had theological, OT-based reflection on it, etc etc: healings, crucifixion, Galilee, Jerusalem, all this material rapidly converged – if, that is, it was ever apart.

I think – and I hope the material I have presented makes a case for this – that the one clear and obvious reason that solves all these problems of restraint is that the earliest authors were writing under a common restraining set of circumstances – ie what happened. In other words, the only plausible way to explain all these types of restraint is both that the events actually happened, and that the community were keen to pass them on. Of course, we know on other grounds that second temple Judaism was well set up to do precisely this sort of thing (see eg the work of Gerhardsson etc).

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

Hans, tell me if what my current thoughts on this subject make sense...

Assuming Paul existed, it seems to me like he made up the 'vision' he had after the fact, probably to justify his choice to go into the religious leader business and latch on to the Jesus thing (must've figured there was some money to make at this.) The gospel writers basically were attempts to make a coherent narrative out of Q and whatever oral tradition it was associated with, maybe with some influence from Paul, but making up the details of the story as they went. Q itself probably contains confabulations, exaggerations and some true quotes from some guy who probably lived quite a bit before the traditional date of Jesus' ministry, and probably wasn't called Joshua at all. At this point it seems pretty much impossible to know anything about this guy, except that he probably has nothing in common with any of the versions in the Bible.

Well, I could go into a couple of pages about what we don't know about Paul or Q or Mark... and in fact, I almost did But at a basic level, yeah, I don't think we can know much about the poor sod whose crucifixion Paul hallucinated about (or as you say, possibly he just lied about that vision), or even if he existed at all.

 

[maximara]

That's really my position too. Except instead of saying "therefore it is unlikely Jesus existed", I'd say the correct conclusion there would be just to say that there is no good evidential reason to believe that the Jesus figure portrayed in the biblical writing existed.

This is what John Remsburg meant over 100 years ago when he said:

"Jesus of Nazareth, the Jesus of humanity, the pathetic story of whose humble life and tragic death has awakened the sympathies of millions, is a possible character and may have existed; but the Jesus of Bethlehem, the Christ of Christianity, is an impossible character and does not exist."


The problem this thread has tired (very poorly in my opinion) to address this issue he raised:

"While all Freethinkers are agreed that the Christ of the New Testament is a myth they are not, as we have seen, and perhaps never will be, fully agreed as to the nature of this myth. Some believe that he is a historical myth; others that he is a pure myth. Some believe that Jesus, a real person, was the germ of this Christ whom subsequent generations gradually evolved; others contend that the man Jesus, as well as the Christ, is wholly a creation of the human imagination."

Saying the the Jesus figure portrayed in the biblical writings (ie Resmburg's the Jesus of Bethlehem) didn't exist doesn't answer the fundamental question--just where on the huge mythological spectrum does the Gospel Jesus sit?

1) Is the Jesus of Bethlehem (Gospel Jesus) like Paul Bunyan or Pecos Bill with no real flesh and blood man what-so-ever behind him?

2) Is the Jesus of Bethlehem like Robin Hood or King Arthur where oral tradition and mythology has all but destroyed the foundation core personality to the point that other then the idea of core concept based on one man nothing else (actual date of life, actual action, actual words, etc) can be determined?

3) Is the Jesus of Bethlehem like Davy Crockett in "Davy Crockett and the Frozen Dawn" where a real man is essentially turned into a fictional character?

4) Is Jesus of Bethlehem like Custer where the core story is more or less true but embellishments have produced distortions?

When talking about a HJ we must realize that there is still a spectrum and that the question is not the simple yes or no we wish it to be.

 

[Belz...]

Well, I could go into a couple of pages about what we don't know about Paul or Q or Mark... and in fact, I almost did

Oh, please do. This is a fascinating subject and it's hard to reach any conclusion about it.

 

[Belz...]

1) Is the Jesus of Bethlehem (Gospel Jesus) like Paul Bunyan or Pecos Bill with no real flesh and blood man what-so-ever behind him?

I'd think that, if this is the case, then there's a good chance that Q was a fabrication or fraud. If the first writing about this tradition was made by a true believer, I'd bet on a flesh-and-blood guru, though still completely alien to the Jesus we know.

 

[grahbudd]

Technically, myth is the wrong word to use anyway (legendary is probably the right one) but I guess that won't hold anyone up here...