What counts as a historical Jesus?

[Robrob]

IMO Jesus counts as a historical Jesus. If the guys who compiled/wrote The New Testament were half as wise and profound as Jesus was quoted to be, not only would they have taken credit for all those insights themselves the rest of the New Testament would have been much better written. I admit I haven't read the whole thing, but lemme tell ya, Jesus is the only part I ever liked. To me it's obvious that the quotations of Jesus at least come from a single philosopher of the time, and if it wasn't Jesus then it wasn't Shakespeare either but a rose by any other name..

Or from multiple philosophers of the time. Or from one of the time who was quoting aphorisms from previous (now forgotten) philosophers, etc...

As described above, there's just as much chance the NT Jesus stories are spun off of the adventures of one or more of the many wandering prophets of the time. Sure there might have been some itinerant prophet (possibly one not named Jesus or even a co-mingling of several persons into one) who did party tricks with jugs of wine or bread and fishes. Just like all those internet quotes that get attributed to Einstein. It's still myth.

 

[Emperor_Gestahl]

As described above, there's just as much chance the NT Jesus stories are spun off of the adventures of one or more of the many wandering prophets of the time.

Perhaps, yes. In my opinion, most great philosophers have proven to be individual people. Even if there was some club of guys, I'd still make the Shakespeare analogy of "a rose by any other name" for whoever guys were the talent of that hypothetical group.

Sure there might have been some itinerant prophet (possibly one not named Jesus or even a co-mingling of several persons into one) who did party tricks with jugs of wine or bread and fishes. Just like all those internet quotes that get attributed to Einstein. It's still myth.

I wasn't clear enough, I don't believe in the miracles. It's EASY for some dork in a robe to come up with nonsense like that after the fact. My personal belief is that dorks in robes did make up the miracles attributed to Jesus. But the words and general acts attributed to Jesus, I see largely as a philosophical curiosity. There is a unique mind or minds at work, and certainly not the minds of the same people who came up with all the other gobbledegook in the New Testament.

 

[Emperor_Gestahl]

There are many religious men, there are also some very good religious men. like Jacques Lusseyran:

http://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/2012/07/jacques-lesseyran-poetry-in-buchenwald.html

Also MLK, but I hope I don't need to quote him! Not so hard for me to imagine Jesus as such a man.. Is a historical Jesus really that unlikely?

 

[HansMustermann]

I'm travelling on business at the moment, so won't have the opportunity to reply in detail for a day or two. When I'm back I will dig out my "Rene Salm" file and go over the reasons no archaeologist takes his amateurish thesis seriously.

In the meantime you'll have to content yourselves with silly non sequiturs like "some people thought Sherlock Holmes was real, therefore Jesus was a fiction too". It's like a total logic bypass in this thread in places ...

Well, if the strawman that "some people thought Sherlock Holmes was real, therefore Jesus was a fiction too" bothers you, just don't do that strawman. Since the only one doing a "total logic bypass" is you, if that bothers you, you can just stop doing that. See? Problem easily solved.

What is actually said is actually that such examples of fictive people taken for real by others abound, so it doesn't follow that Jesus HAD to be based on a real guy.

 

[HansMustermann]

There are many religious men, there are also some very good religious men. like Jacques Lusseyran:

http://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/2012/07/jacques-lesseyran-poetry-in-buchenwald.html

Also MLK, but I hope I don't need to quote him! Not so hard for me to imagine Jesus as such a man.. Is a historical Jesus really that unlikely?

No, but then neither is a historical Little Red Riding Hood. Here, let me pull an Euhemerus-style stunt of confabulating a historical LRRH: See, maybe it's not REALLY about a talking wolf, just a silly little girl who pretended to talk to animals, and maybe she didn't get tricked by the wolf, but just left the door open and the wolves came in.

Doesn't mean that the Little Red Riding Hood is based on any real case, and in fact not only it's clear that Perault's version is a metaphor about sexual predators, but he adds a closing paragraph to say it point blank, in case someone missed it.

Just being able to confabulate something on the topic, doesn't make it real.

That said, it's not really about whether a HJ is "that unlikely". Although, yes, the fact that everyone has to cherry-pick a different style of Jesus to have a likely package, is at least an indication that there is a problem with the complete package. The problem is whether we actually need that extra entity.

 

[Emperor_Gestahl]

What is actually said is actually that such examples of fictive people taken for real by others abound, so it doesn't follow that Jesus HAD to be based on a real guy.

Maybe not but.. much like Shakespeare, I'm not sure it much matters.. A rose by.. Oh, you get my drift by now.

 

[Emperor_Gestahl]

Although, yes, the fact that everyone has to cherry-pick a different style of Jesus to have a likely package, is at least an indication that there is a problem with the complete package.

They don't have to.. I don't see myself as silly thinking maybe the plausible things were said / did happen, nor that the implausible things weren't said / didn't happen. Let's not get all categorical here.

(edit)I guess what I'm saying is that your argument works much better against Christians as it might against "agnostics for Jesus". If Jesus wasn't a real man, he was a wise enough facsimile for me. So take that smell and soak your rose in it..

 

[HansMustermann]

Perhaps, yes. In my opinion, most great philosophers have proven to be individual people.

On the other hand, individual philosophers are not always the same person they put their words in the mouth of.

E.g., Plato uses the supposed great philosopher Timaeus to speak at length about some of Plato's ideas, but the thing is, Timaeus doesn't seem to have actually existed. It's what we now would call a sock-puppet of Plato, to seem like a whole bunch of wise and famous men agree with that idea. Seriously, if you had a forum user Plato nowadays who makes up persons like Timaeus and Critias to have whole pages of talks about his ideas, you'd call it sockpuppets.

E.g., the same Plato not only has Critias spew some other ideas of him, but apparently they're learned directly from the great and famous Solon too. When he needs to write some stuff about Atlantis and how things were all better when people were all righteous, he just takes a revered statesman and claims him as origin for it. We're pretty darned sure that didn't happen, though, because the time difference between Solon and Socrates is too large for any person to be alive to talk directly to both. Solon died in 558 BC, while Socrates wasn't even born until 469 BC or so. Adding the minimum requirement that Critias and Socrates had to be at least adults of SOME standing when they had the respective talks, say, 16 years old, we get a Critias of over 120 years old when he was giving that speech. And for Plato to be a witness to that speech, even as a child, we get a Critias that's something like 140 years old. We can be pretty sure it never really happened.

Or you can just look at all the people who wrote letters to Christians and signed them with the names of various apostles. Half the epistles in the NT are such forgeries.

So, yes, just because something did originate with a single philosopher, doesn't mean it's the same guy whose name they put on it

Even if there was some club of guys, I'd still make the Shakespeare analogy of "a rose by any other name" for whoever guys were the talent of that hypothetical group.

Well, nobody says they become untalented if they're a group, but it's still a bit of a difference.

 

[HansMustermann]

Maybe not but.. much like Shakespeare, I'm not sure it much matters.. A rose by.. Oh, you get my drift by now.

Well, it doesn't matter for whether what he says is smart or not, but it matters for which details are real about that entity.

E.g., unless the whole gang inventing stories about Jesus (based on the OT and minor prophets, mind you) were born in Nazareth, travelled to Jerusalem, caused a commotion in the temple, and got crucified, well, that's some biographical details that the gang of authors didn't share with their character. And we can be pretty sure they didn't, since Mark is dated after the destruction of the temple, and Matthew, Luke and John come even later. Not only Mark wouldn't go to a Jerusalem in ruins, to clear a temple that's a pile of rubble, and antagonize a high priest that ain't even there any more, etc, but AFAIK there is some indication that he may have written his stuff in Rome.

They don't have to.. I don't see myself as silly thinking maybe the plausible things were said / did happen, nor that the implausible things weren't said / didn't happen. Let's not get all categorical here.

(edit)I guess what I'm saying is that your argument works much better against Christians as it might against "agnostics for Jesus". If Jesus wasn't a real man, he was a wise enough facsimile for me. So take that smell and soak your rose in it..

Well, that's actually the problem, because different people find a different grouping of things about Jesus as plausible. E.g., you can pick a stoic philosopher quite versed in Hellenistic philosophy, or a progressive hippy rabbi, or a militant Essene, or an ultra-conservative Sadducee, or even an armed rebel, etc. And that's just the sane ones. None of those is particularly implausible, but he can't have been all of those at the same time. So which is the right one? It's kinda important to know if it was a rose or a tulip, so to speak.

 

[Emperor_Gestahl]

Well, that's actually the problem, because different people find a different grouping of things about Jesus as plausible. E.g., you can pick a stoic philosopher quite versed in Hellenistic philosophy, or a progressive hippy rabbi, or a militant Essene, or an ultra-conservative Sadducee, or even an armed rebel, etc. And that's just the sane ones.

Can he possibly have been the one man quoted in the Bible? Is there some inherent inconsistency in the claimed positions of that particular Jesus which disqualifies him from being one man? Ignoring the supernatural, what did Jesus say that was inconsistent with what else Jesus said?

(edit)I really want to know, I damn well haven't read the New Testament in its entirety. So far this Jesus seems like a reasonable man..

 

[TimONeill2]

It isn't a non sequitur ...

Really? Fascintating. This should be a laugh.

.... as Sherlock Holmes is known to be fictional by the majority of people and yet millions believe he did and still does exist.

Yes. And?

The Game shows that it is possible to take a known fictional character and shoehorn him into a historical framework especially if you are willing to pulled events out of thin air.

Highlighted that for you. For the statement "some people thought Sherlock Holmes was real, therefore Jesus was a fiction too" not to be a non sequitur, you have to do a lot better than merely "possible".

I'm hoping you guys might grasp this before we all die of old age, but I'm getting less and less optimistic. As I keep explaining, saying "Something MIGHT have happened, so I've decided it DID happen because I WANT it to have happened (because Christians are all poopyheads)" isn't actually an argument. It's little more than a stentorian exercise in wishful thinking.

Of course, if you have actual evidence that people in the First Century believed Jesus was fictional (or mythical, or allegorical, or celestial, or otherwise ahistorical, or whatever) then now would be a good time to actually produce it and use it to make a frigging argument. Because without that, all this speculative, wordy hand-flapping about what you fondly imagine might have happened isn't worth a steaming bucket of crap.

Well, if the strawman that "some people thought Sherlock Holmes was real, therefore Jesus was a fiction too" bothers you, just don't do that strawman.

*chuckle* Says Logic Man, straight after "maximara" boldly declared that the "strawman" statement in question "isn't a non sequitur" and then tripped over his own feet trying to back that ludicrous claim up. You guys need to co-ordinate your illogical bumbling better.

What is actually said is actually that such examples of fictive people taken for real by others abound, so it doesn't follow that Jesus HAD to be based on a real guy.

Speaking of strawmen, can you show me where I or anyone else in this thread said Jesus HAD to be based on a real guy? Because I can't see that anywhere. As I keep saying, there are a number of alternatives which are merely possible. I've seen dozens of them suggested over the years. Simply flapping them around isn't making an argument. Backing them up with evidence and a cogent argument that is it likely one of them did happen is where you need to get to.

But you guys keep running away from doing that. Why is that Hans?

Wait. I think I know.

 

[HansMustermann]

Well, you can certainly cherry-pick a reasonable and nice Jesus. The problem is, yes, that the guy is horribly inconsistent and even hypocritical, if you don't exclude SOME stuff attributed to him.

E.g., you have the guy preaching non-violence on the mount, but in John 2:15 he actually puts in the time and effort to make a nasty weapon, a scourge (really, it's the same word as for the one used on him at the end), to clear the temple of merchants with. In the synoptics, Jesus just loses it on the spot and starts shooing people, but in John he first goes and makes a weapon, i.e., it's a premeditated armed attack. Not quite so nice Jesus now.

Plus, if he did clear the temple, that's some tens of acres and some hundreds of merchants and probably like a dozen armed guards who were there just to prevent this kind of thing from happening. No matter how strong his Kung Fu was, it would take an armed attack to clear that place of merchants. So, you know, an armed attack on a government institution, hmm, that doesn't quite sound like he's practicing what he was preaching just a couple of days before. In today's terms, it's like if some guy went to Washington DC and did an armed assault on the IRS headquarters. Not only it wouldn't pass for a nice guy, but I think even most Teabaggers would distance from him as fast as they can.

E.g., he tells people not to judge, yet he feels entitled to rant at length against the Pharisees and call them pretty nasty words, like "sons of vipers." In John 8:42 he flat out calls the Jews (John doesn't make distinctions like "the Pharisees", for him it's always "the Jews" that are the evil guys) "children of the devil" for not just believing Jesus that he's the messiah. Heck, in the same sermon on the mount where he tells people to not judge, he compares people to dogs and swine if they don't believe his stuff. Which would be an insult even nowadays, but back then in Judaism swine were fundamentally unclean animals that even God told people to stay away from, so, you know, it's a pretty nasty judgment to pass.

E.g., he's usually cherrypicked as some progressive guy who established that doing away with most of the OT stuff, like Christians very soon did. And really, clearing the temple of, erm, people who were doing things in accordance to what God said that temple should be for, would kinda point that way. But then he has a nasty out-burst against the Pharisees for not stoning children who give lip to their parents any more. It's a "wait, WHAT?" moment, at least for me. You have him suddenly arguing the exact opposite, when it helps him do a tu quoque.

E.g., he's supposedly a peacenick hippy, but a possible non-miraculous reading of John 9:6-7 is that Jesus and his buddies find a beggar pretending to be blind near the temple (he supposedly can see afterwards, so if you don't believe in miracles, he was probably just one of those fake disabled beggars), rub mud in his eyes (presumably by force, because I don't imagine any guy blind or not would just let you rub mud in his eyes, not the least because it would scratch and hurt like heck) and send him to wash his eyes in a pool that was at the frikken other end of town and down some stairs. Sounds more like what an annoyed psychopath would do, than a gentle and caring hippy Jesus.

Etc.

Plus, it doesn't help that Jesus reads as a complete Black Hole Sue. He's always in the centre of attention, things always go exactly how the Black Hole Sue planned them, people always deliver the lines that just set Jesus up to say his line, they always fold no matter how much that line would suck IRL. (E.g., as I keep saying, when the objection to Roman coins and taxes was precisely that putting the emperor's head on them makes it idolatry, saying basically, "it's ok because, see, it has the Emperor's face on it" would be exactly the wrong thing to say to that crowd.)

So, really, you have to tone him down a bit there, before he starts being an even remotely plausible real person.

Mind you, it's not flat out impossible that Jesus was a hypocritical politician type, who argued both sides of an argument even in the same speech. But it's not quite the kind of Jesus most people want to cherrypick.

 

[HansMustermann]

Highlighted that for you. For the statement "some people thought Sherlock Holmes was real, therefore Jesus was a fiction too" not to be a non sequitur, you have to do a lot better than merely "possible".

Except again, nobody except you actually said, "some people thought Sherlock Holmes was real, therefore Jesus was a fiction too", that's your own strawman. What was claimed all along was exactly that it's possible. You don't get to demand that someone defends a strawman statement that they didn't actually make.

And really, I'm getting tired of your alternating between broken logic and flat out dishonest mis-representation of the opposing arguments. You seem to treat it as a prom queen contest, where the quicker you bad-mouth those darned mythicists, the better. That's still not the way logic works.

I'm hoping you guys might grasp this before we all die of old age, but I'm getting less and less optimistic. As I keep explaining, saying "Something MIGHT have happened, so I've decided it DID happen because I WANT it to have happened (because Christians are all poopyheads)" isn't actually an argument. It's little more than a stentorian exercise in wishful thinking.

And again, that's your own strawman too. If it bothers you, just stop doing it.

Of course, if you have actual evidence that people in the First Century believed Jesus was fictional (or mythical, or allegorical, or celestial, or otherwise ahistorical, or whatever) then now would be a good time to actually produce it and use it to make a frigging argument. Because without that, all this speculative, wordy hand-flapping about what you fondly imagine might have happened isn't worth a steaming bucket of crap.

The only thing that "isn't worth a steaming bucket of crap" is your comprehension of elementary logic. A possibility is all that's claimed, and it's all that NEEDS to be claimed to poke a hole in an unsupported positive claim.

*chuckle* Says Logic Man, straight after "maximara" boldly declared that the "strawman" statement in question "isn't a non sequitur" and then tripped over his own feet trying to back that ludicrous claim up. You guys need to co-ordinate your illogical bumbling better.

Yet if you had read what Maximara said and actually were able to comprehend basic English, instead of just looking for something to distort into an easy strawman, you'd notice that nowhere it was actually argued as more than just a possibility. Not even Maximara argued "therefore Jesus didn't exist either." In fact, the strangest part is that you even highlighted the word "possible", and still pretend that someone was actually arguing "therefore Jesus didn't exist." Exactly what kind of comprehension problems do you need to not just read a message that just says "it's possible", but actually highlight the word "possible", and still come out pretending that someone actually argued a nonsense like "some people thought Sherlock Holmes was real, therefore Jesus was a fiction too"?

Look, seriously, it's pretty silly to make up what someone said, when it's on a forum and still visible.

Plus, you still don't seem to get logic. It's fully irrelevant if afterwards someone did get baited into answering to your strawman. At the time you made that claim, nobody was actually claiming that, so it IS a strawman. (And, again, even afterwards, even Maximara wasn't actually espousing that position.)

Speaking of strawmen, can you show me where I or anyone else in this thread said Jesus HAD to be based on a real guy? Because I can't see that anywhere. As I keep saying, there are a number of alternatives which are merely possible. I've seen dozens of them suggested over the years. Simply flapping them around isn't making an argument. Backing them up with evidence and a cogent argument that is it likely one of them did happen is where you need to get to.

The fact is that you argue that someone has to do anything extra to disagree with your personal plausibility considerations. That's unjustified unless you want to claim some kind of pretty high standard of proof.

Now I get it that in your case, it's just a case of not understanding the burden of proof, rather than claiming a high standard of evidence -- after all, you already said it wasn't even possible to have such evidence -- but believe it or not, you don't get to demand that everyone should be talking for you or about your points. We can discuss about exactly what possibilities are there, even without it being in reaction to anything you said. My message about Sherlock Holmes was to Maximara and in response to something Maximara said. You don't get to demand that everything is about your nonsense.

Briefly: You're not Jesus. You don't get to demand to be some Black Hole Sue that gets center stage and sucks all attention. Things can be discussed here that have nothing whatsoever to do with what you said.

But you guys keep running away from doing that. Why is that Hans?

Wait. I think I know.

Yep. Because your lack of understanding elementary logic, still doesn't constitute an obligation on anyone's side to accept that a sophistry contest is how it should go. It's still about 2500 years too late to argue whether sophistry is not just an acceptable substitute for logic, but verily the RIGHT thing to do.

And that also goes for your strawmen, ad-hominem circumstantials, appeals to motives, and so on. You seem to be treating it as a sophistry contest, where what was asked was logic.

Get this: it doesn't really matter what you think about me or my motives. I could be a baby killer and motivated by bringing forth the antichrist, and it still wouldn't really matter. That's not how logic works.

The question still is: are you going to claim a high standard of certitude about Jesus? And if not, what's your problem, Beavis? WTH kind of confusion of mind can lead one to think it's unreasonable to point out possibilities, when the positive claim HASN'T been -- and according to yourself CAN'T BE -- proven to the point where it excludes those possibilities, or makes them entirely unreasonable. You can't have it both ways. Either you want to claim it's unreasonable to even point out those possibilities, OR you can retreat behind the fact that, yes, it's not even possible to support Jesus to the point where it would make those unreasonable, but it's silly to try to have both.

 

[catsmate]

"
John Henry could be another such example. There are those that say that the story is based on a real event at the Big Bend tunnel somewhere between 1869-1871 while others say it happened at Coosa Mountain Tunnel or the Oak Mountain Tunnel on September 20, 1887.

At the risk of diverting the thread a bit, this is an interesting and valuable point; the legend of Jesus, like the legends of Arthur and Robin Hood are historically distant in origin while John Henry is closer to us and a better recorded era. Rather like showing the nonsense in Mormonism and Scientology is easier than Christianity, as their origins are temporally closer to us.

There may be a tiny core of truth to the legend of John Henry; whether the John William Henry leased by the C&O railroad to work on the Lewis Tunnel (favoured by Scott Reynolds Nelson) or a John Henry on the C&W line in Alabama, on the Oak Mountain or Coosa tunnels (preferred by John Garst) or the Big Bend tunnel in West Virginia (suggested by Guy Johnson and Louis Chappell).

However whatever the (possible) core of truth, it's fascinating to me to see the agglutination of stories, tales and legends around the casual reference in original ballad of 1909-ish. Rather like Jesus in fact...........
Indeed the "mythic hero" parallels are strong, especially comparing John Henry to King Arthur; the women in the west associated with water who travel to his death site, the final orders for the disposal of his hammer in water, dying with his society (steam drills happen anyway), even John Henry being taken "up North" (with it's Avalon-ish implications).

A person could even draw some parallels with John Henry Holliday and John Henry Kagi if they were so inclined.

Anyway, apologies for the digression, back to the usual attempts to show evidence for a historical Jesus.

Some further reading:

• Brett Williams: John Henry: A Bio-Bibliography
• Norm Cohen: Long Steel Rail: The Railroad in American Folksong
• James Cloyd Bowman: John Henry: the Rambling Black Ulysses

 

[Bad vibe]

The reason I and alot of others I'm sure read JREF is to learn something, alot of highly educated people frequent this site so can we put the egos back in the boxes and see some of the evidence you find so compelling please? I'd be very interested in that and responses to it, this **** slinging match? .......not so much.

 

[tsig]

IMO Jesus counts as a historical Jesus. If the guys who compiled/wrote The New Testament were half as wise and profound as Jesus was quoted to be, not only would they have taken credit for all those insights themselves the rest of the New Testament would have been much better written. I admit I haven't read the whole thing, but lemme tell ya, Jesus is the only part I ever liked. To me it's obvious that the quotations of Jesus at least come from a single philosopher of the time, and if it wasn't Jesus then it wasn't Shakespeare either but a rose by any other name..

Can you post those wise and profound insights?

 

[Emperor_Gestahl]

Hans, is this all in John? I'm not a bible scholar by any stretch.

Can you post those wise and profound insights?

Can I? Yeah. I'll go ahead and do the mandatory quote-mining tomorrow night, it's late.

 

[IanS]

The reason I and alot of others I'm sure read JREF is to learn something, alot of highly educated people frequent this site so can we put the egos back in the boxes and see some of the evidence you find so compelling please? I'd be very interested in that and responses to it, this **** slinging match? .......not so much.

Earlier in the thread (page 5) the canonical gospels were said to provide the evidence. Though that just appears to beg the question of who those gospel writers actually were, where they got the stories, and how reliable the original sources were.

And the answer to each of those questions is that we have no idea. We do not know who the gospel authors were. We only know that they do not themselves talk about any of them personally ever seeing or hearing Jesus. Instead they are merely reporting what was believed by other unnamed unknown individuals. And those unknown individuals were apparently so unreliable as to be constantly claiming all manner of impossible miracles.

Similarly, sources like Tacitus’s and Josephus can again only be reporting hearsay (for what little they tell us of Jesus), because those authors were not even born at the time of the events. Again, we have no idea how to stories came to them.

However, one rather obvious source of the Jesus stories appears to be the ancient Hebrew Bible, which apparently contains numerous prophecies which, although typically written in mystical and obscure language, seems to be quite clear in paralleling much of what was later claimed (500 years later!) as the works of Jesus.

 

[HansMustermann]

Hans, is this all in John? I'm not a bible scholar by any stretch.

Well, it depends on what you call by "all". The verse numbers I gave from John are, obviously, in John, but there are Jesus WTH moments in the synoptics too. E.g., comparing unbelievers to dogs and swine is in the sermon on the mount, i.e., only in Matthew. More specifically in Matthew 7:6. E.g., calling the Pharisees "sons of vipers" is Matthew 23:33, although pretty much the whole page is a foaming-at-the-mouth anti-semitic rant. E.g., the WTH of snapping at the Pharisees for not stoning to death kids that give their parents lip is in the synoptics, and originates in Mark 7. The offending line is more specifically Mark 7:10. Etc.

Generally John's Jesus is a bit more Rambo Jesus than the synoptic Jesus, and especially more than the first Jesus found in Mark. Mark's Jesus is a bit more like keeping it a low profile and all, while John's Jesus might as well have a business card that says, "I'm the messiah, bitch." Plus the one in John dies on a different day, has a ministry 3 times as long, etc. So, well, I guess John as a whole IS tempting to just exclude, if one wants to cherry-pick an even half-way coherent Jesus.

But John isn't the only problem. Even if we just proclaim John a heresiarch, we still have a bunch of contradictions between what Jesus says and what Jesus does, or what Jesus says to gang X and what Jesus says to gang Y. E.g., even strictly inside the same gospel Mark 7 has him snap rather insultingly at the Pharisees for basically allowing people to not honour their parents, instead of stoning such people, yet in Mark 3:31-35 he had pulled this stunt:

31. Then Jesus’ mother and brothers arrived. Standing outside, they sent someone in to call him.

32. crowd was sitting around him, and they told him, "Your mother and brothers are outside looking for you."

33. "Who are my mother and my brothers?" he asked.

34. Then he looked at those seated in a circle around him and said, "Here are my mother and my brothers!

35. Whoever does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother."​

Now I can see why the author wanted to make such a symbolic point, but, you know, it makes that Jesus a bit of a hypocrite.

 

[HansMustermann]

If the guys who compiled/wrote The New Testament were half as wise and profound as Jesus was quoted to be, not only would they have taken credit for all those insights themselves the rest of the New Testament would have been much better written.

Just to address that too, it's not hard to see why someone would put someone else's name on his ideas. As Ehrman points out, if you're a guy called Jehoshaphat and want to write a letter to the Ephesians telling them to get their crap together, and you're sure you're right, you're not going to sign it Jehoshaphat. They've never heard of a Jehoshaphat, and have no reason to take orders and rules from a nobody. You'll sign it Paul.

Well, maybe not YOU, but such forgeries were incredibly common. A lot of people did just that, and saw no problem with it.

Incidentally, that's a real example. Paul's epistle to the Ephesians is actually a forgery, by someone else than Paul, yet the author signed it Paul. You'd think the author would want to take credit and be remembered as the great pious church father Jehoshaphat who talked some Christian sense into the Ephesians, but obviously he doesn't. He presumably just wants the Ephesians to take those rules seriously, instead of going, "Who the heck does this guy think he is?" and chucking the epistle into the garbage bin.

Paul very soon has to mention stuff like "I'm writing this in my own hand, so you know it's not a forgery" because there were already forgeries in his name while he was still alive and travelling around. As soon as he wasn't in one place for a few months, even in those tiny communities he had, some berk or another was already forging letters from Paul to give his ideas more authority.

But that goes not just for Paul. There are forgeries written in the name of Peter. In fact, just for Peter alone there's a whole genre of forgeries written in his name, including epistles, gospels, apocalypses, acts, etc. And for each of the other apostles. And even letters claiming to be written by all apostles working together.

And even for Jesus, there are literally dozens of Gospels which even the early Christians didn't think were actually the real thing. All the gnostics, for a start. A LOT of people wrote whole books putting words in Jesus's mouth. Some proto-feminist guy (or girl) wanted to say "hey, it's ok for a woman to take male roles; we should be equal", but he doesn't say, "I, Jehoshaphat from Caesarea, say that it's OK for women to take male roles." Nobody would listen to him, because he's a nobody. So he writes a whole gospel of sayings about Jesus, where he makes Jesus say that he'll make Mary Magdalene a male. Now it comes from Jesus, so he can tell you to listen to that. And he signs the book with the name of an apostle too, for good measure. (Otherwise you might ask, "who the heck is this Jehoshaphat guy, and why should I believe him that he knows what Jesus says?")

That's a real example, btw. That particular surrealistic set of words put into the mouth of Jesus is a real section from the Gospel Of Thomas.

So, yes, you'd think that if there's some really smart guy called Jehoshaphat, and he has some brilliant ideas (or at least he thinks so), he'd want to get credit for them and go down into history as the great philosopher Jehoshaphat. And many did. But many just wanted to have some authority to give rules to other people, e.g., because they want to save those people from Hell.