What counts as a historical Jesus?

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tsig said:
Yes there is an overwhelming consensus (of Christian scholars) that the Christian religion grew out of a small group of Jewish end-timers led by a man called (in translation) Jesus, who was crucified by Pilate.


Christians agreeing Christ was real, who'd a thunk it.
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I have met him though. Have you?
 
tsig said:
Yes there is an overwhelming consensus (of Christian scholars) that the Christian religion grew out of a small group of Jewish end-timers led by a man called (in translation) Jesus, who was crucified by Pilate.


Christians agreeing Christ was real, who'd a thunk it.
Click to expand...

Of course the apologists believe that.

But their beliefs are irrelevant.
 
kblood said:
Nah. Im trolling. You mad?
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Not mad, just confused and a little bit sad that a very interesting thread might be being hijacked by someone craving attention. Slightly annoyed at myself for giving you this attention which your contributions to this thread don't warrant.

Oh well. Back on topic:

I think the question of what counts as a HJ has been pretty thoroughly hashed out. Different posters have different criteria and the evidence is pretty sketchy either way and whether or not HJ existed will probably never be settled without new evidence.

Who knows? At this very moment some Bedouin might be out looking for a lost goat and stumbling into a cave full of old scrolls detailing more about 1st century Jerusalem. I suspect something like that is needed to properly answer the question.
 
Piggy said:
Being called Son of God was not all that special, no. Not in those days.

The claim to being the Son of Man was a much more radical and important claim on the part of his followers.
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Seriously? The standard kenning for "man" in both Aramaic and Hebrew, the one that appears 107 times in the OT (i.e., in the scripture they'd use at the time) as meaning just "man", the one that before the Christian texts only appears in an obscure apocryphal text as meaning anything but "man"... is a more important title? Really?

I mean, I can see how it might have been mistaken for a title by some early Greek speaking Christians, who were scouring the Greek translation of the OT for stuff to take out of context as being some Jesus prophecy. But to an ancient Jew, a native speaker of a language in which "son of man" means "man" just like "son of donkey" meeant "donkey"? Seriously?
 
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pakeha said:
What do you think we can tease out about his life?
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OK, a quite likely scenario….

Born in Galilee some time before year 0, Jewish, raised in Nazareth, which was just a small cluster of huts, really.

Folks had no land, not the eldest son, left home and became some sort of follower of John the Baptist in Judah to the south, where he either adopted or had reinforced an apocalyptic vision of the world, based heavily on the Daniel writings and Enoch literature, in which God was soon to send his angel army, led by the Son of Man, to strike down the powerful who had allied with the forces of Satan, and give to the righteous remnant new bodies made of heavenly stuff and they would live in an Edenic Jerusalem, to which all other nations bowed down.

(Keep in mind, these conclusions are not based solely on examination of the Biblical texts.)

At this time, Judah, Samaria, and the Galilee were under Roman control, typical setup with a good deal of local autonomy as long as the peace was kept and tribute paid.

Problem was, the High Priest was not an eligible Jew, and for many Jews -- such as the Essenes at Qumran, whose settlement was likely established by ousted Zadokite priests and who railed against the Temple -- that meant the Temple was corrupt, which risked God's wrath.

When Herod had John the Baptist beheaded, it must have been a terrible blow to Jesus, who would have viewed John as a prophet of God, and likely had no great love for Herod in the first place.

If Jesus wasn't fully radicalized before, he was now. He must have been quite a charismatic person, because he began to gather his own disciples (students) around him back in Galilee.

He taught in the rabbinic style of the day, using certain well established patterns of lay teaching, heavy on metaphor and analogy and references to agriculture. (This is prior to the later formal Rabbinic style.)

He was illiterate, but was familiar with the oral tradition which is eventually preserved in the targumim, or Aramaic paraphrases of and commentary upon the Hebrew Bible.

His central message was that the Day of the Lord was imminent, when the Son of Man prophesied by Daniel would lead the Heavenly Host to purge the wicked from power and would put the righteous remnant in palaces in the new eternal Jerusalem.

He was an analog to the end time preachers of our day. And like them, he was not alone by any means.

Not all his followers were peasants, however, which indicates that this guy, whoever he was, must have been really something to see. No doubt he was a very strong preacher.

Just some context, in that day, the synagogues were something like town hall meetings, but ones at which issues were decided by local theologues who would cite Torah and rabbinical sources to support their views. Jesus certainly would have spoken at some synagogues, but it's nothing like the later descriptions we get of Jesus reading from scrolls.

At some point, he's in Jerusalem for the Passover festival -- at which time Pilate comes in from the coast with his troops to make sure no radicals start stirring up trouble -- and starts preaching this stuff about how the Temple is corrupt and God's about to come down and kill everyone in power and only his followers will be spared and they'll be the blessed of God in the new Jerusalem.

It's not unlikely that he got into an altercation with merchants in the Temple compound colonnade.

This is reported to Pilate, who has Jewish police accompany Roman soldiers who go to where Jesus is staying and arrest him. By the following morning, he's been crucified as an example to other potential rabble-rousers.

His body is disposed of by the Romans, probably into a common pit, and his followers are unable to locate it. This particular fact becomes the basis for later claims with which we are all familiar.

His followers, unable to accept what had happened, invented a new theology, based on innovative interpretations of scripture, in which Jesus -- who was supposed to be the one at the head of the new community in the eternal Jerusalem -- was intended to be sacrificed… although even from the outset there was disagreement as to why, and what it meant.

To other Jews, however… the best analogy is probably to David Koresh. Even now, there are some of his surviving followers who believe he was the second coming of Jesus. To Jews of that day, saying that this executed criminal was the Messiah (who was anything BUT that) was simply crazy.

Then it gets interesting.

ETA: Jesus did preach peace and love and forgiveness, but this was in order to demonstrate that you were among the chosen, the righteous remnant. Jesus's followers would have expected the Day of the Lord in their lifetimes.
 
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HansMustermann said:
Seriously? The standard kenning for "man" in both Aramaic and Hebrew, the one that appears 107 times in the OT (i.e., in the scripture they'd use at the time) as meaning just "man", the one that before the Christian texts only appears in an obscure apocryphal text as meaning anything but "man"... is a more important title? Really?

I mean, I can see how it might have been mistaken for a title by some early Greek speaking Christians, who were scouring the Greek translation of the OT for stuff to take out of context as being some Jesus prophecy. But to an ancient Jew, a native speaker of a language in which "son of man" means "man" just like "son of donkey" meeant "donkey"? Seriously?
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Yes, seriously.

It's a bit like the current situation in Spanish, where el señor means that gentleman and El Señor means God.

In other words, a son of man was not the same thing as The Son of Man.

Daniel takes the term from Ezekiel, and turns it into a reference to an individual.

At the time of Jesus, apocalyptic Jews who were into Daniel and Enoch would have understood "the Son of Man" to be a specific individual prophesied by scripture, with a specific role in the Day of the Lord.

By contrast, all sorts of people were designated Son of God. Make no mistake, Son of God is an exalted title, but not as exalted as Son of Man by any means.
 
The correction still is that Daniel 7:13 reads: "In my vision at night I looked, and there before me was one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence."

Not only it lacks the definite article that Christians would give their "the Son Of Man", but it reads more naturally like saying that the person he saw was "like a man," once you know what "son of man" means in just about any other text in either language. (Heck, even in the NT, as Ehrman points out, the lord of the sabbath saying only makes sense if Jesus meant "man" by "son of man" there too.) Granted, this person was the great saviour and all, but Daniel doesn't use "the son of man" as a title or anything. He's just a man, or at least shaped like a man.

I mean, heck, it doesn't even make sense to read it as a title. Daniel doesn't say that he saw The Son Of Man coming, like you would for a title, but someone LIKE A son of man.

Again, I can see how this would confuse a Greek working from the Septuagint, but I don't see how anyone can claim that they just know Jesus as an Aramaic speaking peon actually claimed to have that title.
 
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HansMustermann said:
The correction still is that Daniel 7:13 reads: "In my vision at night I looked, and there before me was one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence."

Not only it lacks the definite article that Christians would give their "the Son Of Man", but it reads more naturally like saying that the person he saw was "like a man," once you know what "son of man" means in just about any other text in either language. (Heck, even in the NT, as Ehrman points out, the lord of the sabbath saying only makes sense if Jesus meant "man" by "son of man" there too.) Granted, this person was the great saviour and all, but Daniel doesn't use "the son of man" as a title or anything. He's just a man, or at least shaped like a man.

I mean, heck, it doesn't even make sense to read it as a title. Daniel doesn't say that he saw The Son Of Man coming, like you would for a title, but someone LIKE A son of man.

Again, I can see how this would confuse a Greek working from the Septuagint, but I don't see how anyone can claim that they just know Jesus as an Aramaic speaking peon actually claimed to have that title.
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Are you seriously going to make that argument?

Take a look around you, at the way people justify their religious beliefs, and how they treat their sources. You think it was better back then?

The fact is, at the time of Jesus and James and Peter and Paul, the Son of Man was an identifiable apocalyptic figure within Judaism.

Yes, it's badly construed from Daniel, but go browsing through Paul's citations of scripture sometime, or any other writings of the time, and you'll see much more damage than that.
 
Just to add as an explanation for Daniel and the like, in Hebrew and Aramaic (and IIRC generally Semitic languages) words can be combined, and pretty much most nouns can work as adjectives too.

So if you want to say "a book of a king", you'd just say "book king". Or in the "son of man" combination, it's just "son man", literally.

They didn't really have an indefinite article, but they had a definite one. Exactly how it's done actually differs between Hebrew and Aramaic, but the rest of this discussion is the same.

The corollary is that everything is indefinite, unless specifically in the definite form. So unless there's that extra particle in there, and in Daniel it isn't, it's not a definite "the son of man".

The second corollary is that if neither word in such a combination is definite, then both are indefinite. (And if only the second one is definite, then BOTH are to be taken as having a definite article.) So Daniel's "son man" construct (or really all 107 instances of it in the OT) is more correctly translated as "a son of a man."

Now I can imagine someone saying that they are the son of a man prophecised in Daniel, in the same way they'd say they're the man prophecised in Daniel. But, you know, it needs that extra qualification.
 
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Piggy said:
Are you seriously going to make that argument?

Take a look around you, at the way people justify their religious beliefs, and how they treat their sources. You think it was better back then?

The fact is, at the time of Jesus and James and Peter and Paul, the Son of Man was an identifiable apocalyptic figure within Judaism.

Yes, it's badly construed from Daniel, but go browsing through Paul's citations of scripture sometime, or any other writings of the time, and you'll see much more damage than that.
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Well, yes, but Paul doesn't mangle "son of man" that way. It only appears in texts by Greeks for Greeks. In fact, IIRC only in the gospels. Even the other guys writing epistles don't use that.

And, as I was saying, I have no problem imagining that Greeks would mangle that translation. I'm just not sure someone can be that sure that Jesus himself did that, as opposed to being just that: someone mangling it later. ETA: presumably Mark, since he's the first one to use that.
 
tsig said:
Problem is Piggy we don't know of anybody that knew Jesus or heard him preach so you have no idea what his ideology was.
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Piggy said:
Come on, you can't really believe that.
History's always a game of probabilities, but it's simply not true that we know nothing about anybody for whom we don't have direct primary sources or evidence.

The core question is this: What was the group which Paul joined?

Or more specifically for this thread, when they said (as we know from Paul, who knew Jesus's brother and some of his disciples, and by examining later writings by later generations of the group) that their branch of Judaism was based on the teachings and life of a charismatic apocalyptic Gailean who was crucified by Pilate… why did they say that?

Did they say it because it was true?

Or did they say it for some other reason?

That is the key to the question of the historical Jesus.

What we find is that if we assume that they said it because it was true, everything falls very nicely into place. In other words, the artifacts as we have them are consistent with that particular claim being accurate.

The problem for contrarians is that nobody so far has been able to come up with any other reason for them making this claim in particular which actually fits the body of evidence we have.

That's why there are not even half a dozen publishing scholars in the field who doubt that there was a historical Jesus.

And when you listen to the contrarians, you'll notice they never provide, or even attempt to provide, any such coherent narrative. It's always attempts to peck at this or that point, and even so, they've never been able to muster a point that can't be either debunked or dismissed as irrelevant.

That's why there simply is no academic debate about the existence of a historical Jesus. Because 2 or 3 lone wolves out there howling, does not constitute a real academic debate.
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Please don't tell me what I believe, it's extremely rude because it implies I am deliberately lying.

As far as I know there are no accounts of Jesus written by eyewitnesses, if you have any now would be a good time to produce them.

Claiming Paul knew Jesus' brother is already assuming that Jesus existed.

"Assume"
There's the problem with your argument.
 
kblood said:
I have met him though. Have you?
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Did you ask him why he drowned everybody but eight? Maybe why he allowed humans to disobey him in the Garden? Or just what his doctrine really is? Maybe what church is his true church?
 
tsig said:
Did you ask him why he drowned everybody but eight? Maybe why he allowed humans to disobey him in the Garden? Or just what his doctrine really is? Maybe what church is his true church?
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They are all true somewhat, but if I had to pick only one I would say the Mormon church based on my own research.

He drowned them to save them from themselves.

He gave humans free will, or he would have to lose his own.

His doctrine is world peace, as much as possible. Or love. Pick one.

Should I ask him anything more specific?
 
Piggy said:
OK, a quite likely scenario….

Born in Galilee some time before year 0, Jewish, raised in Nazareth, which was just a small cluster of huts, really.

Folks had no land, not the eldest son, left home and became some sort of follower of John the Baptist in Judah to the south, where he either adopted or had reinforced an apocalyptic vision of the world, based heavily on the Daniel writings and Enoch literature, in which God was soon to send his angel army, led by the Son of Man, to strike down the powerful who had allied with the forces of Satan, and give to the righteous remnant new bodies made of heavenly stuff and they would live in an Edenic Jerusalem, to which all other nations bowed down.

(Keep in mind, these conclusions are not based solely on examination of the Biblical texts.)

At this time, Judah, Samaria, and the Galilee were under Roman control, typical setup with a good deal of local autonomy as long as the peace was kept and tribute paid.

Problem was, the High Priest was not an eligible Jew, and for many Jews -- such as the Essenes at Qumran, whose settlement was likely established by ousted Zadokite priests and who railed against the Temple -- that meant the Temple was corrupt, which risked God's wrath.

When Herod had John the Baptist beheaded, it must have been a terrible blow to Jesus, who would have viewed John as a prophet of God, and likely had no great love for Herod in the first place.

If Jesus wasn't fully radicalized before, he was now. He must have been quite a charismatic person, because he began to gather his own disciples (students) around him back in Galilee.

He taught in the rabbinic style of the day, using certain well established patterns of lay teaching, heavy on metaphor and analogy and references to agriculture. (This is prior to the later formal Rabbinic style.)

He was illiterate, but was familiar with the oral tradition which is eventually preserved in the targumim, or Aramaic paraphrases of and commentary upon the Hebrew Bible.

His central message was that the Day of the Lord was imminent, when the Son of Man prophesied by Daniel would lead the Heavenly Host to purge the wicked from power and would put the righteous remnant in palaces in the new eternal Jerusalem.

He was an analog to the end time preachers of our day. And like them, he was not alone by any means.

Not all his followers were peasants, however, which indicates that this guy, whoever he was, must have been really something to see. No doubt he was a very strong preacher.

Just some context, in that day, the synagogues were something like town hall meetings, but ones at which issues were decided by local theologues who would cite Torah and rabbinical sources to support their views. Jesus certainly would have spoken at some synagogues, but it's nothing like the later descriptions we get of Jesus reading from scrolls.

At some point, he's in Jerusalem for the Passover festival -- at which time Pilate comes in from the coast with his troops to make sure no radicals start stirring up trouble -- and starts preaching this stuff about how the Temple is corrupt and God's about to come down and kill everyone in power and only his followers will be spared and they'll be the blessed of God in the new Jerusalem.

It's not unlikely that he got into an altercation with merchants in the Temple compound colonnade.

This is reported to Pilate, who has Jewish police accompany Roman soldiers who go to where Jesus is staying and arrest him. By the following morning, he's been crucified as an example to other potential rabble-rousers.

His body is disposed of by the Romans, probably into a common pit, and his followers are unable to locate it. This particular fact becomes the basis for later claims with which we are all familiar.

His followers, unable to accept what had happened, invented a new theology, based on innovative interpretations of scripture, in which Jesus -- who was supposed to be the one at the head of the new community in the eternal Jerusalem -- was intended to be sacrificed… although even from the outset there was disagreement as to why, and what it meant.

To other Jews, however… the best analogy is probably to David Koresh. Even now, there are some of his surviving followers who believe he was the second coming of Jesus. To Jews of that day, saying that this executed criminal was the Messiah (who was anything BUT that) was simply crazy.

Then it gets interesting.

ETA: Jesus did preach peace and love and forgiveness, but this was in order to demonstrate that you were among the chosen, the righteous remnant. Jesus's followers would have expected the Day of the Lord in their lifetimes.
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The turning over the tables of the merchants in the Temple intrigues me as something a historical and angered man would do. One should expect that the Son of God would have done much worse to the merchants, at least turning them into pigs or whatever.
 
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Thomas Bowers said:
The turning over the tables of the merchants in the Temple intrigues me as something a historical and angered man would do. One should expect that the Son of God would have done much worse to the merchants, at least turning them into pigs or whatever.
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The son of YHWH would have introduced pigs into the Temple? That's what Antiochus Epiphanius did and it made pious Jews go bananas. Imagine if the son of their god did it! They'd have had apoplectic fits.
 
Thomas Bowers said:
The turning over the tables of the merchants in the Temple intrigues me as something a historical and angered man would do. One should expect that the Son of God would have done much worse to the merchants, at least turning them into pigs or whatever.
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Actually, singlehandedly doing all that is what's ahistorical too. The temple courtyard was stadium sized, and not only would contain hundreds or possibly thousands of people, but had its own armed guards. Not the least because it was a government institution.

I mean, imagine an angered man walking into the IRS headquarters in DC and starting upturning tables and driving people out. (The temple was kinda like their IRS.) Yeah, he wouldn't get far.

Not to mention that by the time he'd be done there, Pilate's own cohort would be arriving to stop the attack on the temple on passover. That's why they were in town in the first place: to prevent a riot on passover.

So, uh, yeah, I don't care if he's Jesus or Bruce Lee or Chuck Norris, he wouldn't drive out anyone. In fact, if he even tried, he wouldn't walk out scot-free and have to be arrested later. He'd leave under guard directly to Pilate and there'd be no last supper. (Which actually is mentioned in Paul too.)

Not to mention that, since you seem to favour John, in John the curious thing is that the supposed attack on the temple is at the beginning of the ministry, not before the crucifixion. Jesus is not just free to go on the spot, but for the next 3 years nobody seems to have any such charges against him. So, you know, whatever happened there must have been a lot more minor.

And in fact even by the half of the episode, the discussion with the priest and letting him go make no sense if he had just attacked people there, but makes a lot of sense if he didn't really do much more than maybe have a fit and shout nonsense.
 
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