What counts as a historical Jesus?

[HansMustermann]

From the reading I've done on the subject, most of the Historical Jesus stuff relates to textual analysis like Rob DeGraves said earlier.

There are things like Paul writing about the Disciples running the Jesus show in Jerusalem. He has disputes with them over circumcision and what food to eat, but not about the existence of Jesus.

Exactly how many disputes do you think there are at the top level of Scientology about the existence of Thetans? Does that lack of a debate mean that the Thetans are literally here and arrived on Earth 75 billion years ago, according to the scripture?

Plus, we don't know in what kind of Jesus those believed, because Paul doesn't actually go into detail. Nor exactly what other arguments Paul had with them. Paul isn't exactly writing a history of his relationship with that group, but is mentioning them a couple of times about things relevant to some other stuff that he's actually preaching to his congregation.

Assuming that they were in perfect agreement about stuff that is not mentioned as debated, is exactly like assuming that Jesus never took a crap or wiped his ass, because the Gospels don't say he did.

And doubly so for stuff where Paul doesn't even say what HE thinks, much less how much those agree with it. E.g., he never says even about himself that he thinks Jesus was a rabbi or taught anything, or when he lived, etc, nor what do those guys in Jerusalem think about that. One can't just take that hole and fill it with whatever fairy-tale one would like there. Even assuming an agreement there is bogus, but doubly so also inventing what position they were agreeing about.

There is the fact that the Jews who denied Jesus was the messiah, never denied that he was a flesh and blood human. They never claimed that he was just invented.

And the Romans never disputed that Hercules or Odysseus existed either -- in fact, they treated both as very real persons -- but that doesn't make them historical.

But anyway, just because someone has a more important point to address than trying to prove a negative, doesn't mean you can assume the positive.

There is the business with having to invent an improbable nativity story to explain why this bloke that everyone knows is from Galilee, is in fact the prophesied Messiah from Bethlehem. Who was the bloke from Galilee, if the messiah is supposed to be from Bethlehem? Oh... his parents were passing through there on business... (I'll buy that for a sheckel!)

As I was saying, even as arguments from ignorance, that's weak sauce, because there are good reasons to make a Messiah which represents both provinces into which Israel had been divided. But most importantly, it still is an argument from ignorance either way.

I mean, I also can't imagine why such a staunch defender of the American Way as Superman is born on Krypton instead of in the USA, or why would they make Heimdall, the whitest of the norse gods, be black in the movie, but that doesn't mean I can assume Superman or Heimdall to be real persons

There is also something called Kerygma http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerygma
Which apparently shows signs that some of the sayings attributed to Jesus were originally Aramaic, not Greek.

There is other stuff, but it never adds up to 100% certainty.

Considering that they were working from a scripture translated from Hebrew -- a language pretty closely related to Aramaic, including in what expressions and idioms were used, e.g., "son of man" worked the same in both -- and undoubtedly had people around who could speak Aramaic, why is it surprising?

Again, it's like trying to make Superman historical, because the expressions he uses are clearly working in American English, and he's depicted as an American, so he must be real. In reality it just shows that whoever wrote the script knew English.

 

[catsmate]

I agree that appeal to authority is a weak argument. But my post was not meant as an argument (It offers no position on the thread topic.), but as an interesting aside. If the Bible is not a reliable portrait of the historical Jesus, the position Erhman held in the debate I linked to, what other reliable evidence does he have? If I remember correctly, he hinted that there were some reasons for accepting the historical Jesus, but didn't go into them.

Agreed, I was pointing out the weakness in Erhman's thesis that were was a historical figure significantly similar to the biblical Jesus.
Erhman certainly hadn't provided any evidence in his book, his research is poor and he really never gets beyond his argument from authority/popularity position that no historians of Christianity with professorships in the history of Christianity exist who doubt the historicity of Jesus. And that isn't even true.

 

[Dancing David]

Um considering that it is highly likely there was a messianic preacher who would fit the bill, it seems likely that you could say 'this individual is likely the historical jesus', it is part of the culture at the time.

I don't think it really matters as the majority of the NT is written at least one generation later.

 

[Belz...]

I don't see the problem. Especially if it's made up to fit a purpose, that two people would make it up differently is actually what I'd expect.

I mean, equally if you asked two fans to write the story of how Captain Kirk was born, you'd probably still get Riverside, Iowa, but they'd probably be very different stories otherwise.

Of course... but then it'd be marketed as fiction, not history, and we'd have evidence that Kirk was a preexisting character. Also, if Kirk was supposed to fit a prophecy, you'd make him fit in the first place.

 

[HansMustermann]

Except we do have characters which started as fiction, but then got passed around as real stuff. E.g., the story of the spammer found dead with a can of SPAM shoved down his throat. It was written as fiction, published as fiction, and trivial to check that it's fiction, but within a couple of years people were emailing it as real stuff. E.g., the story of Teddy Stoddard was published in a magazine as a work of fiction, but within years it was making the rounds in emails as a true story.

And that's just some those which were clearly published as fiction. Then comes stuff which was posted on some parody site, and is then taken as real.

Basically just because at one point it's sold as history, doesn't mean it couldn't start as fiction.

We don't even know if Mark was selling his story as allegoric fiction. Just because 100 years later some people take it for history, doesn't mean much. But that gets even shakier when we move into exactly what story would Paul's psychotic episode be based on. He might have heard something or another about a messiah, but we don't even know what, much less that it definitely started as accurate history.

Plus it's kinda silly to assume that someone selling a lie as history wouldn't use exactly the same tropes, including the leaving some room for it to not be absolutely perfect, as someone selling fiction. Pretty much any successful lie has got to not cross into being blatantly too good to be true.

E.g., Victor Lustig was successful in selling the Eiffel tower twice by pretending to be a corrupt government official who wants a bribe too. You'd think that someone working a confidence scam would on the contrary, try to seem perfectly honest and above any reproach, but what worked was exactly inserting a "nah, a scammer wouldn't make THAT up" element.

 

[Belz...]

A nice example, Hans, but I think we're talking bare possibility vs probability, here.

 

[HansMustermann]

Ok, I'm fine with probabilities. So, how do you calculate probabilities for that?

 

[Brainache]

Exactly how many disputes do you think there are at the top level of Scientology about the existence of Thetans? Does that lack of a debate mean that the Thetans are literally here and arrived on Earth 75 billion years ago, according to the scripture?

I have no idea. Maybe every top level Scientology meeting is totally taken up with debate about Thetans, I don't know. I do know that no one says L Ron Hubbard didn't exist, even though there is a lot of mythology around him.

Plus, we don't know in what kind of Jesus those believed, because Paul doesn't actually go into detail. Nor exactly what other arguments Paul had with them. Paul isn't exactly writing a history of his relationship with that group, but is mentioning them a couple of times about things relevant to some other stuff that he's actually preaching to his congregation.

Yes, it's as if Paul didn't know much about Jesus at all. He knows a lot about starting a cult and telling people what they want to hear. He knows how to belittle his opposition while talking himself up. The fact that those others exist and have different ideas about what Christians should do (circumcision and diet etc) suggests that Paul didn't invent the Jesus character.

Assuming that they were in perfect agreement about stuff that is not mentioned as debated, is exactly like assuming that Jesus never took a crap or wiped his ass, because the Gospels don't say he did.

But they were in agreement that James and Peter etc were disciples of Jesus. They were in agreement that Paul never actually met Jesus. Paul even claims that he is a better disciple than those guys because he got all of his Jesus information in a vision. Paul's Jesus info wasn't corrupted by the flesh, like James's who spent years hanging out with the flesh and blood Jesus who took craps and wiped his arse.

And doubly so for stuff where Paul doesn't even say what HE thinks, much less how much those agree with it. E.g., he never says even about himself that he thinks Jesus was a rabbi or taught anything, or when he lived, etc, nor what do those guys in Jerusalem think about that. One can't just take that hole and fill it with whatever fairy-tale one would like there. Even assuming an agreement there is bogus, but doubly so also inventing what position they were agreeing about.

Why does he mention those guys in Jerusalem at all? What do they have to do with Paul if this Jesus he is selling to the Greeks and Romans is just made up? Why would the guys in Jerusalem be sending "circumcision parties" after him, telling his followers that they have to obey the Jewish Laws? What authority do these Jerusalem guys have? How can they call Paul back home and review his teachings?

Could it be that Paul wanted to claim some of their religious credibility by associating himself with them? If so, it would be totally counter-productive for him to preach about some guy who wasn't associated with that Jerusalem group, wouldn't it? Like someone trying to sell a new version of Scientology would have to claim some new revelation from LRon, because a revelation from anyone else wouldn't be Scientology.

And the Romans never disputed that Hercules or Odysseus existed either -- in fact, they treated both as very real persons -- but that doesn't make them historical.

But anyway, just because someone has a more important point to address than trying to prove a negative, doesn't mean you can assume the positive.

There are stories in the Jewish literature about Jesus being a magician and the son of a whore etc, but none about him being fictitious. To me that suggests a failed fanatic false prophet, not a fiction or allegory.

As I was saying, even as arguments from ignorance, that's weak sauce, because there are good reasons to make a Messiah which represents both provinces into which Israel had been divided. But most importantly, it still is an argument from ignorance either way.

By the time the gospels were written the place had pretty much been destroyed totally, so that would be moot except to people who wanted to make a real preacher match up with OT prophecies, wouldn't it?

I mean, I also can't imagine why such a staunch defender of the American Way as Superman is born on Krypton instead of in the USA, or why would they make Heimdall, the whitest of the norse gods, be black in the movie, but that doesn't mean I can assume Superman or Heimdall to be real persons

If there was a body of literature pre-existing the first Superman comic which predicted a Superman from Krypton saving the world... Where would future fanboys say their personal superhero came from? Even if he actually came from Pittsburg, a hundred years later they would be making up stories about how he was really from Krypton and that time he saved his girlfriend from a big fire, he actually made time go backwards... Fanboys do that stuff.

Considering that they were working from a scripture translated from Hebrew -- a language pretty closely related to Aramaic, including in what expressions and idioms were used, e.g., "son of man" worked the same in both -- and undoubtedly had people around who could speak Aramaic, why is it surprising?

What Hebrew scipture are you talking about? I thought the NT was written in Greek.

Again, it's like trying to make Superman historical, because the expressions he uses are clearly working in American English, and he's depicted as an American, so he must be real. In reality it just shows that whoever wrote the script knew English.

Yes, but Mark didn't know anything about Palestine and the later writers knew even less, but some of the parables contain puns that only work in Aramaic.

 

[AlaskaBushPilot]

There are over two dozen persons by the name of Jesus mentioned by Josephus in the first century.

One was the son of a high priest. One was a leader of mercenaries against Roman forces. One was a kook that ran around Jerusalem yelling "Woe is Israel". (My favorite). Pilate had him interrogated and tortured but let him go as a harmless nutball. Etc.

None of them were itinerant preachers, and had there been one of any fame whatsoever, Josephus would have written of him. He also wrote extensively on the different sects of the Jews through the 90's CE. Christians were nonexistent.

Christianity is a second-century phenomenon and there was no historical Jesus.

 

[davefoc]

I guess in terms of the OP what would qualify as an HJ for me is a 1st Century fundamentalist Jewish Preacher who was opposed to the Temple as it was run under the Roman puppets, who was associated somehow with John The Baptist and got himself nailed up by the bloody Romans.

I'm not sure if anyone actually fits the description.

These are roughly my own thoughts on this also

My minimal criteria for the characteristics of an historical Jesus:

Absolute requirements:
1. Lived and died roughly in the time alleged for the biblical Jesus.
2. Spent at least part of his life as a religious proselytizer.
3. Was Jewish by birth and at least loosely by religion
4. His story was a triggering event for the creation of Christianity.

Plus I'd like to see at least one or two of the following of these kind of things true:
1. Died by execution.
2. Died by crucifixion.
3. Had some family members that had names that were roughly consistent with names in the NT.
4. Knew John the Baptist.
5. Had a brother that served as a leader of a religious movement associated with his life.
6. Had a brother that was killed around 60 AD

My guess is that there was an individual that would meet my minimal criteria. The strength of belief I have in that guess has gone up and down over the years. Right now, it's a particularly low ebb given that I've been participating in a thread with Hans Munsterman and a few of JREF's other leading Jesus Mythicists and I found some of their arguments in the plausible range.

I don't think it would make much difference now either way.

I think this is more true than a lot of secular people might suspect. It is true because
1. The key issue is whether a Jesus with supernatural power existed. Once you decide an historical Jesus didn't matter the rest isn't all that important.
2. Almost certainly, assuming he existed, an historical Jesus didn't found Christianity in any normal sense of the word. So whether he existed or not is not very important as to the nature of Christian philosophy or to Early non Jewish Christian history.
3. Hans Munsterman made the point in another thread, that the time frame for Jesus was at the end of the time when a messiah had been predicted and it is conceivable that the most important aspect of a hypothetical historical Jesus is that he was a Jewish sect proselytizer that lived in exactly the right time. (Of course, HM also pointed out that this might have been such an important issue that the powers that be in the pre-Christian religious communities made up the Jesus character to fill the messiah niche they had created by claiming that he was coming).

 

[HansMustermann]

Well, just to be clear, I don't necessarily mean they started with only a messiah-shaped hole. They could have started with, say, some sicarius called anything else, and changed the details to the messiah (Christ) that was supposed to be the second Joshua (Jesus.) Or not. Then, just like in Reubeni's case, some crazy person starts having visions of him and getting messages from him, and the rest is history.

My point is merely that if they changed enough details about the character, and indeed we see that they don't actually know any details and are making them up to fulfil prophecy, presumably because their chain of information goes through something as opaque as Paul... is it still the historical Jesus? How much information can you change about someone, or be known to just make up, and still count as the same person?

I mean, if I tell you of a cat with feathers, and which swims, and flies, and goes "quack! quack!", am I still talking about a cat?

 

[IanS]

But that just begs the question of what those "basic requirements" of the Jesus figure really are.

As Hans describes above, the gospels themselves give a completely ambiguous picture of what we are even looking for.

As I've described before, if you look at very basic requirements, you can find a "historical Dorothy" from the Wizard of Oz. Frank Baum's niece fits the bill - little girl, named Dorothy, lived in Kansas, had an Aunt "M". Those are the basic requirements of the Dorothy figure. Is that sufficient to claim that Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz was a real person?

Note that the question of this thread is not whether there was or was not a historical Jesus, but what are the requirements someone would need to fulfill to be good enough to satisfy being called a historical Jesus?

OK, well just to explain why I put it that way above -

- firstly, as a matter of objective fairness/honesty, I'm just recognising that of course we do have to accept that it is perfectly possible that a single preacher named "Jesus" (ie "Iesous" or "Yeshoua", or whatever the actual name) was actually the source of what later became the Gospel accounts. That is perfectly possible.

But by "basic requirements", I just mean the entirely general idea of a particular individual preacher who might have lived and died in that general area around Palestine, roughly around that time, and who would therefore (ie, if he existed) have been known to a group of religious followers as one of many street preachers at the time. Something quite general like that. Ie, excluding any consideration of detailed written claims about what that “Jesus” figure was ever supposed to have said or done.

I have not yet read what Han’s wrote about any of that. However, one reason I have not read it, is that in general I think it’s a mistake, and likely to be highly misleading, to try making deductions about what a Jesus figure might have ever done or not done, simply from an analysis of what was written in anonymous copies of devotional documents such as any of the gospels (inc. non-canonical works), and Paul’s Letters etc.

That is - it seems to me fraught with danger, to the point of being quite worthless, attempting to draw logical deductions, from reading what is clearly unreliable writing like that. And in fact it would seem to be actually worse than useless trying to make any analysis like that, because it’s leaves you wide open to building arguments founded on what are likely to be entirely fictitious and quite erroneous claims in the first place.

It seems to me a better approach (ie “better” than trying to make deductions about any part of the Jesus story from attempting to analyse what now remains only as anonymous hearsay copies of devotional religious documents), is to simply to look first at the fact that we do actually have genuine contemporary original writing from precisely that time and precisely that location, ie the Dead Sea Scrolls. Secondly to look at what we do know about the pre-existing (before Jesus) history of religious beliefs in that region, ie the well known material which comprises the ancient Jewish Bible dating from about 500BC. And lastly, just to examine all of that writing (ie the DSS and the Jewish Old Testament) in the light of what we now know about the unreliability and inaccuracy of religious claims in general … ie (to explain that last remark), the simple fact that it’s now obvious that religious groups such as the early Christians, and indeed their forerunners described in the DSS, were clearly in the habit of believing in, and writing about, all manner of religious myths as if the myths were true … eg, (from memory, though I could check), it is clear from the DSS that people not only believed in, but frequently claimed to witness, giant flying Angels who were thought to be sent by God to procreate with the women of the region, in order to produce malevolent flying spirits …

… accounts of that sort are obviously untrue, but at the time people really did commonly claim to witness such things. And similarly, at risk of labouring the point, the same religious believers were clearly claiming to witness all sorts of miracles and miracle workers, who were quite likely to be equally fictional in their entirety.

But all that said, we do have to accept that the Jesus story might be based on a real individual figure.

Against that, the reason for doubting the existence of Jesus as a real individual, is that the evidence is almost non-existent. Whilst the history of myth making about such “Messiah figures” is rife.

 

[Belz...]

Ok, I'm fine with probabilities. So, how do you calculate probabilities for that?

I have no idea. But apparently, there seems to be a relative consensus about the subject among those who are qualified to calculate them.

 

[HansMustermann]

I have no idea. Maybe every top level Scientology meeting is totally taken up with debate about Thetans, I don't know. I do know that no one says L Ron Hubbard didn't exist, even though there is a lot of mythology around him.

That would be a case of affirming the consequent. If X then Y, doesn't mean you can flip it around and pretend that also if Y then X. In that case, if a bunch of people have reliable information that character X existed, then sure, they don't go saying he never existed. But you can't flip it around. Doubly so when really it's compounded by an argument from ignorance: we don't have all arguments those did, just the ones that theologians were arguing against.

But to go deeper into why the "but they didn't say back then that he didn't exist" is silly in its lack of logic even when reputable authors did it:

First and foremost, it's fully irrelevant. In fact, it couldn't be a bigger non-sequitur, if it involved Snow White and Santa Claus.

What we are interested in is actual information to confirm or disprove certain events or people. Not in the unfounded beliefs of some 2nd century rabbi. Now if that rabbi claimed to have information, e.g., "yeah, I talked to the grand-niece of Jesus and she says he was no messiah", that would be information. But just that some guy who doesn't know either way, is willing to accept a premise for the sake and scope of a discussion, WTH does that prove?

What matters is what EVIDENCE a position has, not how many uninformed people didn't challenge it.

Second, the way apologists usually make it work is by claiming that, no no no, see, there were witnesses of Jesus around, and all those people writing gospels or debating Jesus knew exactly what he did and who he was. That's when their not disputing it sounds like it means something. But actually as I've explained repeatedly, we see that not only there are no witnesses to complain about the miracles or physically impossible 3 hour long eclipse on a full moon, but there are no witnesses to even settle basic points like exactly how old was Jesus, or when was he born, or exactly what did he say or do. Not only the rabbis and philosophers arguing against the Christians have no knowledge of Jesus, but even the early Christian apologists have not much knowledge either. They're just pulling things out of the ass to fulfil prophecy.

I.e., you know why it doesn't matter what they believed about Jesus's existence? Because we don't see any evidence offered in support of that belief. You can't have a sound logical inference by taking an unsupported proposition, and using it as a premise. You can't follow an Y => Z, when Y hasn't been unsupported and hinges on an X => Y that has never been supported. As long as those people's acceptance or non-acceptance of Jesus's existence isn't grounded in some evidence to support said existence, it's unsound to use it as a premise.

Third, as IIRC Ian already pointed out in the other thread, that was not the modus operandi in those days. People also didn't dispute the existence of Zeus or Odin either. Even when IIRC Saxo Grammaticus wants to denigrate the old Norse Gods, he claims they were just some old kings. (Much as the stories about such characters as Thor or Heimdall bear no resemblance to anything a king would do.) When Justin Martyr and other early Christians attack the pagan gods and demigods, they also don't go "they didn't exist", they go "the devil did that to trick you." Etc.

Fourth, they argued their own domain. The guys arguing the theology about whether a certain character fits the requirements to be a messiah, were theologians, not census records keepers, and AFAIK nor even historians. Which directly determines that:

Fifth, they had more important stuff to argue. Whether Jesus actually existed or not, would be a relevant point if he DID qualify as the messiah and indeed God. But when, as those guys argue, the stories about him don't add up to someone they should give a damn about, then whether he existed or not is an irrelevant point for someone discussing theology (as opposed to, say, reconstructing the history of a cult.) Even if he did, so what? If he wouldn't qualify as the messiah you should worship anyway, and that's the point you're trying to make, why would you devote more pages to also disputing his existence?

But again, one can't just take their lack of showing any interest in a topic, and definitely not showing any evidence either way, as confirmation of anything.

Yes, it's as if Paul didn't know much about Jesus at all. He knows a lot about starting a cult and telling people what they want to hear. He knows how to belittle his opposition while talking himself up. The fact that those others exist and have different ideas about what Christians should do (circumcision and diet etc) suggests that Paul didn't invent the Jesus character.

It depends what you mean by "invent". Awaiting a messiah (Christ) who's the new Joshua (Jesus) was definitely there long before Paul. If you mean the actual person, then, no, you don't have enough information to base such a claim on. And we've been over both aspects before.

But they were in agreement that James and Peter etc were disciples of Jesus. They were in agreement that Paul never actually met Jesus. Paul even claims that he is a better disciple than those guys because he got all of his Jesus information in a vision. Paul's Jesus info wasn't corrupted by the flesh, like James's who spent years hanging out with the flesh and blood Jesus who took craps and wiped his arse.

Again, you don't know that. Paul in fact never says that anyone was a disciple. He doesn't even use the word disciple. Nor does he ever say that anyone there knew Jesus while alive.

He speaks of missionaries, of which were obviously more than 500, and nowhere does he mention at all that anyone even knew Jesus. He says that Jesus revealed himself to some people after his death (see 1 Corinthians 15), but that's just the thing: after his death. Paul never says that any of those knew Jesus before.

Maybe they did. Maybe they didn't. We don't know. Paul certainly isn't saying.

Why does he mention those guys in Jerusalem at all? What do they have to do with Paul if this Jesus he is selling to the Greeks and Romans is just made up? Why would the guys in Jerusalem be sending "circumcision parties" after him, telling his followers that they have to obey the Jewish Laws? What authority do these Jerusalem guys have? How can they call Paul back home and review his teachings?

First of all, and what is really the important part why I don't have to give a damn about that: it's still an argument from ignorance. If you don't know why Paul mentions them, then you don't know. It doesn't mean you can just fill in the gaps with whatever fairy-tale most appeals to you.

But again, you introduce distinctions and details that aren't there in the the text.

E.g., he doesn't say they're sending "circumcision parties" after him, he uses the term "circumcision party" for the faction that favoured circumcision. There's an important difference there.

E.g., he doesn't say that Peter or the others from Jerusalem gave his congregation ideas about circumcision. In fact he never says who was it. You can't just play madlibs with it and insert whatever names you wish into it. That's the realm of pious apologetics, not of honest historical scholarship.

Could it be that Paul wanted to claim some of their religious credibility by associating himself with them?

Maybe, but we still don't know exactly what this group believed, nor even really who they were, nor even much about exactly what Paul discussed with them. Even if they believed in some form of that new Joshua The Messiah, we don't know their details, nor exactly how many details did Paul change. One can't simply assume agreement between them and Paul, and much less between them and the later gospel writers.

If so, it would be totally counter-productive for him to preach about some guy who wasn't associated with that Jerusalem group, wouldn't it?

Maybe, but "associated" is such a weak term. Even taking it for granted that there is some association (as opposed to, say, Paul just making up the agreement or even the whole group), that's such a vague claim. We don't know exactly how closely Paul's Jesus mirrored their ideas of Jesus, much less how closely do the gospels mirror it.

Plus, by now you're going into the territory of the argument from personal incredulity.

Like someone trying to sell a new version of Scientology would have to claim some new revelation from LRon, because a revelation from anyone else wouldn't be Scientology.

Except that's both

A) a bogus analogy, since after all Paul still had the same OT to base his Jesus on. So it's nothing like that.

B) such things occasionally do happen. E.g., Mormonism introduces a new revelation that isn't from any existing Christian group in its founder's time, but it's an invented group of ancient Christians.

There are stories in the Jewish literature about Jesus being a magician and the son of a whore etc, but none about him being fictitious. To me that suggests a failed fanatic false prophet, not a fiction or allegory.

Again, that's irrelevant. What matters is what evidence those guys have, not what unsupported fanfic of their own they were willing to write on the topic. The existence of fanfic which makes Jesus a magician and SOB, is no more making him real, than the existence of gay fanfic about Spock makes Spock real.

By the time the gospels were written the place had pretty much been destroyed totally, so that would be moot except to people who wanted to make a real preacher match up with OT prophecies, wouldn't it?

Or to invent a new preacher.

If there was a body of literature pre-existing the first Superman comic which predicted a Superman from Krypton saving the world... Where would future fanboys say their personal superhero came from? Even if he actually came from Pittsburg, a hundred years later they would be making up stories about how he was really from Krypton and that time he saved his girlfriend from a big fire, he actually made time go backwards... Fanboys do that stuff.

Bingo. And a bunch of fanboys of a certain interpretation of the OT as a prophecy of the upcoming Jesus Christ, would write their Jesus Christ to match the prophecy. Just like Superman in your example.

But just as that doesn't automatically make Superman a historical person, it doesn't do that for Jesus either.

What Hebrew scipture are you talking about? I thought the NT was written in Greek.

The Tanakh, a.k.a., the Old Testament. That's the "scripture" that Paul uses, and what the later Christians quote-mine for stuff to support Jesus with.

Yes, but Mark didn't know anything about Palestine and the later writers knew even less, but some of the parables contain puns that only work in Aramaic.

Actually, in Mark's case, it's more like just his mis-understanding the Greek translation.

But anyway, I still don't see the relevance. There were early apologists who knew Aramaic. E.g., Paul himself. I just don't see how you can get from a pun working in Aramaic, to it pointing out at specifically Jesus.

It's like finding a pun that actually works in Russian in Chekov's lines in Star Trek and using it to argue that therefore it must come from a historical Chekov. Why? Why can't it simply be some Russian saying that the screenplay writer heard somewhere?

 

[HansMustermann]

I have no idea. But apparently, there seems to be a relative consensus about the subject among those who are qualified to calculate them.

Fine. Then point me at where those calculate the probabilities.

Otherwise, I hope I can be excused if I'm less than impressed if you just postulate the existence of some probabilities, but you don't know what they are, what they're based on, or even who exactly calculated them. Just postulating that some evidence or calculation must exist somewhere that supports your position, isn't the same as showing the evidence.

I mean, if I just postulated that a document exists somewhere making me the new owner of your house, you wouldn't just believe it and start paying your rent to me, right? You'd want to also see that said evidence exists, not just me postulating that it's there somewhere, I'm just not telling you where

 

[davefoc]

I wonder if it would be better to reserve this thread for a discussion of what is meant by the term historical Jesus. And perhaps people could give an appraisal of their personal view right now on whether such a fellow existed.

There is an active thread right now to discuss the issue of whether an historical Jesus existed.

On this question from the OP:

Suppose instead that the Jesus-as-rebel hypothesis is true. That is, the idea that Jesus was really a rebel/bandit/revolutionary (who could well have claimed to be the Messiah as such, like Simon bar Kokhba) who was crucified by the Romans, and the legends then remade him into a Messiah who preached peace. Would this be a close enough fit to talk about a historical Jesus?

Simon bar Kokba would not meet my personal criteria since he lived in the wrong time period. But, a militarily oriented Jesus that met the criteria I laid out above would qualify as the historical Jesus to me. Over the years I have tried to pin down facts about the earliest stages of Christianity and I haven't had much success. There is an enormous amount of speculation about this period but there just aren't hard facts floating around to constrain the speculation. So even if some kind of historical Jesus existed the available evidence isn't reliable enough to know much about him and if we restrict the definition of an historical Jesus very much the chances that he actually existed fall off quickly.

Ians's approach is to look at the possibly reliable DSS information and make guesses about what an historical Jesus might have been like. Perhaps there is something there but from what I saw of the Eisenman theories that Brainache discussed in the other thread there is no hard connection there between an historical Jesus and what is in the DSS and all we are left with again is speculation that isn't built upon hard facts which is basically like all the other speculation about this issue. i.e. speculation built on speculation built on speculation. Almost nothing is knowable.

 

[IanS]

Ians's approach is to look at the possibly reliable DSS information and make guesses about what an historical Jesus might have been like. Perhaps there is something there but from what I saw of the Eisenman theories that Brainache discussed in the other thread there is no hard connection there between an historical Jesus and what is in the DSS and all we are left with again is speculation that isn't built upon hard facts which is basically like all the other speculation about this issue. i.e. speculation built on speculation built on speculation. Almost nothing is knowable.

Absolutely. And that's one of the reasons why I think it's safer not to accept the Christian claims that Jesus must have existed, ie because as you just pointed out - the actual genuine evidence that we do have, such as the DSS, does not seem to describe any particular figure who could be confidently identified as "Jesus".

Ditto my remark about the beliefs and prophecies set out in the ancient Jewish Old testament stretching back to at least 500BC ... that work was already describing a belief in the coming of a figure just like Jesus, ie 500 years and more before Jesus himself was subsequently claimed to have lived ...

... so that Old Testament writing appears quite obviously to be the source of much of description of the figure later identified (though never witnessed) as Jesus. On that basis it would appear that Jesus was a mythical figure prophesised centuries before in the ancient Jewish religion of the region.

I should perhaps take this opportunity to say that re-reading my previous post it might sound as if I am dismissing the analysis given earlier by Han's. Actually that was not the impression I meant to give. What I was trying to say is simply that I don't think it's worth expending a great deal of effort reading in detail any of those ancient religious scripts such as the Gospels etc., because it seems to me that they are so unreliable that it will inevitably lead us into all sorts of mistaken arguments if we try to formulate logical deductions drawn from the detail in texts such as those ...

... hence, my suggestion that it's probably better to stick with whatever was written in genuinely contemporary original material such as the DSS, and/or from reading the much earlier religious writing of that region which was already describing prophecies, acts and sayings which 500 years later turned out by "coincidence" to be very similar to what was then attributed to Jesus.

 

[pakeha]

Like other posters here, before reading these threads I'd never imagined questioning Jesus' existence was an option.

...But all that said, we do have to accept that the Jesus story might be based on a real individual figure.

Against that, the reason for doubting the existence of Jesus as a real individual, is that the evidence is almost non-existent. Whilst the history of myth making about such “Messiah figures” is rife.

Why do we have to accept " that the Jesus story might be based on a real individual figure"? Especially since the evidence is "almost non-existent"?

 

[Brainache]

Like other posters here, before reading these threads I'd never imagined questioning Jesus' existence was an option.



Why do we have to accept " that the Jesus story might be based on a real individual figure"? Especially since the evidence is "almost non-existent"?

Because it is the hypothesis with the fewest assumptions. We don't have to accept that it is based on a real person, only that it might be.

We know that there were a lot of apocalyptic Jewish preachers at that time in that place.

We know that a movement grew around stories of an apocalyptic preacher called Jesus.

We can either assume that those stories started from an actual preacher or they grew from something else.

What was that something else? The Old Testament? But without someone to hang the old Testament prophecies on, you run into problems like why parts of the Jesus story are not compatible with the OT prophecies. Where do these incompatible elements come from?

If as Hans and others suggest, the whole story was just cobbled together from OT Scripture, a man crucified by Romans wouldn't have been called the Messiah by anyone. The Messiah was supposed to unite the tribes and defeat the enemies of Israel.

I think Paul chose a (locally) famous failure to hang the label "Messiah" onto to try and subvert the messianic rebels who were threatening war against Rome. A war they couldn't possibly win. Paul's strategy didn't work, the Zealots took over the Temple and Vespasian's legions wiped the floor with the Jews.

The churches outside Judea grew by attracting slaves and poor people who liked the idea of getting rewarded in heaven for their suffering on earth. And whoever the real Jesus was (if he existed at all) he probably wouldn't recognise the religion that eventually became the state religion of Rome.

 

[Darat]

Because it is the hypothesis with the fewest assumptions. ...snip...

Why? I'd say it has at least one additional assumption based on what we do know about how religions/cults are founded i.e. they are made up and not based on anything real.