What were Jesus and early Christians like?

[robvalue]

Wow, he's a tricky guy that jesus.

[rexbeccarox]

If you're going to respond again I advise you make sure you are very clear on what you're saying and why. Or just don't respond.

Modhat:

And if you're going to respond again, I'd advise you to check your tone and cease flaming. Read the rules and quit being a dick for being a dick's sake.

[watchamadoodle]

---

From looking at wikipedia articles, Herod was in Judaea from 27 CE to at least 37 CE. Where do the traditional dates come from? Are they simply adding the traditional age of Jesus to the dates from the nativity stories?

If that was the case, the dates would doubtlessly be different, as needed to make the Gospel story work. The Gospel dates are so horribly off from the rest of history that if the rest of history were based on the Gospels, then someone did a lousy job.

By the way, I didn't mention this but according to the Gospel of John, the crucifixion is dated to 29 CE. How do I know this? Everyone open your Bibles to John chapter 2.

John 2:20 Then said the Jews [to Jesus], Forty and six years was this temple in building, and wilt thou rear it up in three days?

This quote was from the first Passover of JC's ministry in the Gospel of John. The Gospel of John tells us about three Passovers during that ministry. Temple construction started in 20 BCE. There was no year 0. So, doing the math, this conversation recorded in the Bible happened during the Passover of 27 CE. Plus two years gives us 29 CE.

...which is funny because Luke's Gospel tells us that John the Baptist didn't even start his ministry until 28 CE.

It's a mess.

---

Maybe Jesus wasn't very good at math?

On the war with the Nabataeans, wikipedia describes the divorce as one of several causes. Maybe Aretas was waiting for favorable military conditions or diplomatic arrangements, or maybe he needed a few additional grievances to make up his mind about war? That would explain the delay. I assume the Nabataeans would have been very concerned about Roman retaliation. Maybe they waited until it became obvious that Rome was going to attack them regardless? (I'm just imagining possibilities of course. )

There are several wikipedia quotes, but here is one that mentions other grievances:

Besides provoking his conflict with the Baptizer, the tetrarch's divorce added a personal grievance to previous disputes with Aretas over territory on the border of Perea and Nabatea. The result was a war that proved disastrous for Antipas; a Roman counter-offensive was ordered by Tiberius, but abandoned upon that emperor's death in 37 AD.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herod_Antipas

[DeistPaladin]

On the war with the Nabataeans, wikipedia describes the divorce as one of several causes. Maybe Aretas was waiting for favorable military conditions or diplomatic arrangements, or maybe he needed a few additional grievances to make up his mind about war? That would explain the delay. I assume the Nabataeans would have been very concerned about Roman retaliation. Maybe they waited until it became obvious that Rome was going to attack them regardless? (I'm just imagining possibilities of course. )

Disclaimer that I'm not a professor of ancient history. That said, Aratas had to know that Rome would retaliate for his attack on Antipas if he was thinking logically. It seems more likely to me that his decision to attack Antipas must have been an ill-thought out impulse, possibly brought on by the outrage of his daughter being jilted and humiliated in that manner. Taking several years to cool off and think about it makes the scenario more unlikely, not less.

But I will defer to those who are more experienced in the field of ancient history to clarify that point.

[watchamadoodle]

Disclaimer that I'm not a professor of ancient history. That said, Aratas had to know that Rome would retaliate for his attack on Antipas if he was thinking logically. It seems more likely to me that his decision to attack Antipas must have been an ill-thought out impulse, possibly brought on by the outrage of his daughter being jilted and humiliated in that manner. Taking several years to cool off and think about it makes the scenario more unlikely, not less.

I'm not a history expert either, but I was imagining something more Machiavellian on both sides. It's hard to imagine why Nabatea would attack a Roman client state. They got away with it too. Tiberius died and Caligula apparently forgave the Nabateans? It sounds like a Luciferian conspiracy to me.

[TimOneill]

Critically examining the story of all four Gospels, I can't see why anyone thinks they're all written accounts of the same story.

I’m not sure what “written accounts of the same story” means here. It’s pretty obvious to anyone other than a fundie that these are not works of documentary journalism and are theological elaborations on various stories floating around about Jesus. But there is enough overlap in them and a number of other indications that they were telling stories about the same guy and in some places obviously telling versions of story about the same events in his life.

1. Mark came first, whether or not Mark had some sort of basis in a Historical Jesus.

There are several clear indications in gMark that its author was working from an earlier source and one that was written in Aramaic. We can tell this from several places where the gospel writer has clearly misunderstood his source and mistaken one Aramaic word for another. Given that gMark is most likely the earliest gospel, this makes his Aramaic source or sources earlier still. Given that all of the gospels set Jesus’ life in the time of Antipas, Caiaphus and Pilate, this pushes these early Aramaic accounts back much closer to the 30s AD – i.e. when the stories are set. Which makes gMark much closer to the action, especially by the standards of ancient textual sources.

2. Then Luke and Matt were fanfiction elaborations on Mark, adding a birth story and so on, but working separately so as to create contradictory narratives with one another, often going in opposite directions.

That’s true for the infancy narratives but much less true for the rest of their accounts. They also share the Q material, which seems to have been based on at least one common source, possibly more. So we now have gMark’s early source/s, and the Q source/s as well as any “fanfic” material the authors of gMatt and gLuke made up. And that’s assuming that the material unique to them – the “L” and “M”material –actually was made up by them and not gleaned from oral traditions or any further lost sources.
So it’s not quite as simple as “Mark wrote a story and then Luke and Matthew came along and elaborated on it, but it all goes back to Mark”. There are number of sources in the mix, and at least one of them predates gMark. The source/s behind the Q material could do so as well, since there are some parallels between it and some of the Pauline material.

3. Then John comes along much later and offers a complete rewrite.

A substantial rewrite, but not a complete one. gJohn is clearly much later and has a completely different theological agenda – pretty much all the earlier apocalyptic stuff has gone, for example. And it’s not a “rewrite” anyway, since there is no evidence at all that the writer or writers of gJohn had any knowledge of any of the synoptics, let alone used them as sources. Yet gJohn tells some of the same stories and deals with several of the same issues (eg. Why was Jesus being baptised by his supposed subordinate John?)

So with gJohn we are dealing with a new strand of tradition where the author must be getting his information from somewhere, but we can tell that it wasn’t from any of the synoptics. This means there was yet another source or sources out there, though judging from the differences between gJohn and the earlier gospels, they are unlikely to have been early ones (though this is not impossible).
Does all this mean these gospels are “all written accounts of the same story”? Not really. But it does mean they are all accounts about the same person drawing on earlier sources that are now lost. And some of those – especially the Aramaic source/s of gMark and proabably the source/s of the Q material – seem to be quite early and fairly close to the time of the events described. And that means that at least some of what they say is quite likely to have a historical core under the theological spin.

So, putting it together, if Jesus was crucified in let's say as late as 33 CE, that would mean JtB was put into prison earlier than that, which means he would have mouthed off about the divorce/remarriage of Antipas earlier than that, which means the divorce happened earlier than that. Let's say 31 CE, which gives Jesus' ministry its minimum year between the arrest of JtB and Jesus' crucifixion. That would mean Aratas' daughter fled in 31 CE, Aratas twiddles his thumbs in 32 CE, he twiddles his thumbs in 33 CE, he twiddles his thumbs in 34 CE, he twiddles his thumbs in 35 CE and finally in 36 CE he gets outraged and says "ATTACK!" ...or the whole drama with the arrest of John the Baptist occurred closer to 36 CE.

It doesn’t matter to me much whether he was crucified in 33, 36 or 37 AD. But there are some possible reasons Aretas could have chosen to wait until 36 AD to have his revenge on Antipas. Antipas was a loyal vassal of Rome and an Arabian king would hesitate in attacking him if it meant an intervention by the Roman governor of Syria on the behalf of Rome’s Jewish client. But in 36 AD Rome was at war with the Parthian shah Artabanus III and the Syrian governor Vitellius and his legions were marching to the Euphrates. Which made it a good time to get revenge on Antipas both for the divorce ofAretas’ daughter and for the ongoing border disputes that were most likely the real cause of the war. If this was the reason he launched the war in 36 AD, the strategy almost didn’t work. The Parthian war concluded pretty quickly and Tiberius then ordered Vitellius to punish Aretas. The Arabian king was only saved by Tiberius’ death, upon which Vitellius returned to base in Antioch.

[Wyrd of Gawd]

Apparently, three hundred years after Jesus' supposed death, the early Christians weren't a peaceful lot.

http://www.luc.edu/roman-emperors/julian.htm

Julian the Apostate has always interested me because his way to defeat Christianity actually made sense. He didn't make them martyrs but refused financial incentives that they received under earlier Christian emperors and tried to point out that although Christianity came from Judaism it went against traditional Jewish thought.

One of the main results of Christian impiety that offended Julian was their propensity to cause disruptions in the communities they lived in. One such case was in Alexandria, where the citizens lynched the unpopular bishop George after he had threatened to destroy the temple to the emperor's Genius.Wiki: Julian wrote a scathing letter to the citizens of Alexandria in 362 in which he asserted that the actions of the citizens had threatened the welfare of the community. According to Julian, the perpetrators had forgotten their forefathers. Furthermore, because the gods had appointed him to rule the world, the citizens had acted immoderately in slaying George without consulting Julian.Wiki: Similarly, he wrote a letter to Hecebolius in which he denounced the Arian Christians in Edessa for causing public riots and disturbing the harmony. He threatened to withdraw his clemency from that region if such continue

So, George was lynched because he threatened to destroy the temple belonging to another faith and Christians rioted in Edessa. It doesn't sound as if Christians were very peaceful, law abiding citizens

I think that I read somewhere, and I can't find it now, that Julian also favored groups of Christians who had been thrown out of cities by other sects of Christians.

They were the early Taliban, IS, and Al Queda factions.

[watchamadoodle]

I was reading the chapter about the Gospel of Thomas last night in Ehrman's "Lost Christianities". The Gnostic theology explains so much about Christian texts and practices. I keep wondering if the earliest Christians (including Jesus) were Gnostics. The modern day followers of John the Baptist are Gnostics. The Gnostic Christians worshiped alongside proto-orthodox Christians in the same churches.
It's like proto-orthodox beliefs and gospels are censored and watered-down versions of the Gnostic beliefs and gospels.

[Mudhammam]

Do you recommend that book? I would also suggest How On Earth Did Jesus Become a God by Larry Hurtado. I think he is a Christian but he is a damn fine historian. I actually read his book thinking that it gave a perfectly reasonable explanation for the birth of Christianity without appealing to any funny business.

[DeistPaladin]

I’m not sure what “written accounts of the same story” means here.

I mean rather than "A" happened, then B, C, D, and E all reported on A, my proposal is A happened, B wrote a story about A (to what extent of accuracy or fanciful addition is another matter), C and D each wrote their own mutually incompatible fanfic versions of B's story and then E comes along and writes a new story based on the political/religious needs at the time.

Just to introduce where I come from on this issue, I'm a "Jesus Mooter". The biggest problem with the Jesus Myth is that The Historical Jesus is so vaguely defined as to be little more than some-guy-named-Yeshua-who-was-some-kind-of-religious-leader-or-something. This shadowy character quickly disappears into the gaps of our knowledge of the time and place and, with a little slight of hand, either the fundy or the secular historist can shift the burden of proof on the mythicist.

I also think it's a tactical mistake for the skeptic to debate the Christian apologist using the mythicist approach. This is the kind of debate they seem to love, since, for a change, they're actually supported by scholarly consensus. It's a better application of time and energy to focus on the Bible and how inconsistent and unreliable it is.

The existence of some-guy-named-Yeshua does nothing to help their position. Crazy cultists have been "dying for a lie" for all recorded history including the 20th century. The Elvis sightings pretty well discredit any notion that people wouldn't have come up with a resurrection story if it wasn't true. The "Trilemma" argument is easily dealt with as an over-simplified false dilemma (or trilemma as it were) with strawmanned alternatives.

Now my willingness to leave The Historical Jesus alone doesn't mean I don't tear apart the Gospel stories. I will point out how they contradict one another or contradict history, how they have been subject to change over time (Mark 16:8 forward is a good example), how unreliable the "eye-witnesses" were even if we accept the traditional attributions of authorship, etc.

Since The Historical Jesus makes no difference as far as arguments for the supernatural go and since we know next-to-nothing about what the real story was, then Jesus becomes moot. Hence, I'm a Jesus Mooter.

That’s true for the infancy narratives but much less true for the rest of their accounts. They also share the Q material, which seems to have been based on at least one common source, possibly more.

This is not inconsistent with my point, that Mark came first and Matt and Luke both wrote their stories according to what was in Mark. It's kind of like playing "Telephone" where "A" tells "B" who tells "C" rather than "C" relating his own account of the witnessed events of "A".

I note that Matthew does correct Mark on occasion where Mark's knowledge of Jewish theology seems faulty. One example that leaps to mind is how Mark's Jesus forbids divorce while Matthew's Jesus notes the exception if the bride wasn't chaste before marriage. It does seem from reading Matthew that he was taking the story written by Mark, making some corrections, inserting alleged "fulfillment" of OT prophecy here and there and adding a birth narrative.

Yet gJohn tells some of the same stories and deals with several of the same issues (eg. Why was Jesus being baptised by his supposed subordinate John?)

John actually glosses over the whole baptism. Notice how JtB never baptizes Jesus at all in John.

Perhaps my use of the word "complete" was a bit dramatic. That said, I wouldn't be the first to notice how John sits oddly alongside the others. The new Jesus is bolder, bombastic and much closer to Trinitarian ideas of a "Son" who is equal to his "Father".

It doesn’t matter to me much whether he was crucified in 33, 36 or 37 AD.

Or sooner. I posted earlier that reading John indicates a date of 29 CE, based on the reference to the temple construction.