(September 11, 2019 at 7:51 am)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote:

(September 11, 2019 at 7:28 am)Grandizer Wrote: Corresponding, sure, but not to the bits that aren't accepted as historical by secular scholars. Secular scholars searching for a historical Jesus don't expect him to have been born in Bethlehem; they expect him to have come from Nazareth because outside of the nativity accounts (which were each an attempt to force fulfillment of the Micah prophecy) not one mention of Bethlehem exists in the New Testament.

But there are (if I recall correctly), NO verses that claim Jesus was born in Nazareth. Why would historians look for his birth there?   He was called 'Jesus of Nazareth' because the family moved back to Nazareth after his birth.

Boru

Wherever a potentially historical Jesus would've been born, the fact is that neither of the two nativity stories have any credibility to them, so they these scholars don't expect a historical Jesus to have been born in Bethlehem just because the nativity stories say so. What secular scholars searching for the historical Jesus expect to see is a Jesus who was known to have hailed from Nazareth (regardless of his birthplace). A Jesus born in Bethlehem is not one they're looking for.

They’re not looking for a rabbi, either. Or anyone who traveled and spoke to great multitudes.

They’re looking for a guy named Joe that no one noticed. There’s no nice way to say this, but regardless of whether or not there ever was an anonymous joe, the historical Jesus is a racket.

- like it has always been.

(September 11, 2019 at 8:31 am)Gae Bolga Wrote: They’re not looking for a rabbi, either.  Or anyone who traveled and spoke to great multitudes.  

They’re looking for a guy named Joe that no one noticed.  There’s no nice way to say this, but regardless of whether or not there ever was an anonymous joe, the historical Jesus is a racket.

- like it has always been.

To be more accurate, they're looking for a Jesus who said and did some of the things in the synoptic gospels that are deemed to be credible and not a product of theological biases and such.

Which would those be? What thing crammed into the mouth of the character in magic book isn’t theology? What is credible.

It’s not like he sat down and talked about how his sister annoyed the fuck out of him, or is ever recorded in the “historical documents”....of the gospels.....having a single human conversation.

How about credible things he did, in the gospels? Such as what, stand up? They’re looking for a guy who sometimes stood up when he was sitting down? Or the guy who went Superman on the money changers? The guy who booked massive crowds in the middle of nowhere in 0ad?

I really can’t stress enough that the particulars of a historical Jesus are a racket. It’s well known that the gospels don’t provide any historic detail that can be taken as such at face value. Well known to historicists.

If there ever were biographic, or lets just call them human, details in magic book...that part was excised, written out, edited into non existence as heresy. It’s a story about a god, not a man.

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Just to add another wrinkle. The question between historicity and myth isn’t whether there was ever a man, but whether the story started out as myth that later authors casted for.

If we believe the establishment myth of Christianity, the three wise men knew right where to find the prophecied Demi-god. People were waiting for him. There was already a story about him.

This is both inconvenient and necessary to the historicists position. Chiefly in that one line of argumentation is explicitly based on a preexisting myth of Christ, and the wild contortions made to make an (alleged) man fit that narrative. This, famously, compelled people as hostile to Christianity as Chris Hitchens.

But it accepts the most important thrust of the Mythicists position without taking a single breath. That there was a Christ myth before there was a “Jesus” legend.

(September 11, 2019 at 9:04 am)Gae Bolga Wrote: Which would those be?  What thing crammed into the mouth of the character in magic book isn’t theology?  What is credible.

It’s not like he sat down and talked about how his sister annoyed the fuck out of him, or is ever recorded in the “historical documents”....of the gospels.....having a single human conversation.

How about credible things he did, in the gospels?  Such as what, stand up?  They’re looking for a guy who sometimes stood up when he was sitting down?  Or the guy who went Superman on the money changers?  The guy who booked massive crowds in the middle of nowhere in 0ad?

I really can’t stress enough that the particulars of a historical Jesus are a racket.  It’s well known that the gospels don’t provide any historic detail that can be taken as such at face value.  Well known to historicists.

If there ever were biographic, or lets just call them human, details in magic book...that part was excised, written out, edited into non existence as heresy.  It’s a story about a god, not a man.

---

Just to add another wrinkle.  The question between historicity and myth isn’t whether there was ever a man, but whether the story started out as myth that later authors casted for.

If we believe the establishment myth of Christianity, the three wise men knew right where to find the prophecied Demi-god.  People were waiting for him.  There was already a story about him.

This is both inconvenient and necessary to the historicists position.  Chiefly in that one line of argumentation is explicitly based on a preexisting myth of Christ, and the wild contortions made to make an (alleged) man fit that narrative.  This, famously, compelled people as hostile to Christianity as Chris Hitchens.

But it accepts the most important thrust of the Mythicists position without taking a single breath.  That there was a Christ myth before there was a “Jesus” legend.

Maybe it's all a racket, and maybe nothing from the Gospels can be taken with enough certainty that they're historical, but historicist scholars do nevertheless agree on some commonalities regarding what Jesus might have said or done.

For example, probably that he hailed from Nazareth, was baptized by a man named John, did some healings (interpreted as supernatural), talked to a group of people, said some cryptic mystical stuff, was crucified (for whatever reason), then died. You might not agree with the criteria they use to determine probable historicity, but that's the common general conclusion.

Matthew's nativity and Luke's nativity most probably are false stories (so the three wise men easily locating the Messiah would then make sense in such light), but this does not necessarily mean (say) the Sermon on the Mount started as a myth.

They don’t actually agree on that, at all. All that historicists agree on, was that there was some guy. That’s the consensus being referenced by the “the majority of scholars” comments.


I don’t envy their jobs or positions. It’s a tough line of work given the likelihood of ever coming across any additional biographic detail about this assumed person who was the hypothetical patient zero of a globe spanning faith with a penchant for revision.

As to the sermon on the mount...that isn’t required to be myth for Christ to be myth. A lot of things thought to be wise, ostensibly said by someone, were crammed into the mouth of the character.

I keep trying to stress this. If I wrote that bugs bunny told the “I have a dream” speech....the real existence of mlk and that speech won’t make the bunny more if s real person or less of a cartoon.

- there’s no “maybe”, not even among historicists. They understand that the details of the character were chosen for their theological importance, not biographical accuracy. They assume that there simply must have been some guy close enough (for government work) to the character they expected from the messiah. To get people writing, talking, worked up.

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Mind, I’m not arguing for Mythicism here. I see no point between us, just trying to present mythicism in a more accurate light than the derisive conspiracy theory that filters down to us through apologetics and professional defense, lol. It’s nit about whether or not there is legitimate human detail in the text. Or that nothing even remotely like the (potentially historical) events of the gospel ever happened. It’s about the order of development of the character.

If a man or many men were grafted onto an existing myth, the mythicists are right. That’s what they’re arguing. That the character of Christ in the New Testament never existed, was never a man. That there isn’t any specific Jesus-the-man in there.

(September 11, 2019 at 6:08 am)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote:

Quote:There is some evidence that a man named Jesus may have existed in or around that time.

I think we can take it as a fact that there were lots of men about with that name at that time. As you say,  'Yeshua' wasn't a particularly unusual or unique name, and would have been about as common then as 'Joshua' (to which it is related) is now.

But as we narrow down all the Jesuses of the first century to get one that corresponds with the Jesus of the Gospels, the field gets thinner and the picture gets murkier.  We need to have a Jesus who was a rabbi from Bethlehem, the son of a carpenter, travelled a fair bit (for the period), spoke to large crowds, was acclaimed by those crowds, got in trouble with the local authorities, and all the rest of it.  Even if we leave out the magical bits and bobs of the story, we progress to a vanishingly small probability that ANY historical Jesus would be fairly represented by what we find in the synoptics.

Boru

For sure. This is why I can't stand that phrase that gets repeated by Christians, and Christian apologists, so often...

"No serious historian doubts the historicity of Jesus!"

It's a gross over-simplification of the issue and it's a statement that's meant to shut people down, not create a dialogue on the topic.

(September 11, 2019 at 12:23 am)EgoDeath Wrote:

(September 6, 2019 at 9:40 pm)Jehanne Wrote: No first rate scholar doubts the existence of the historical Jesus.

There is some evidence that a man named Jesus may have existed in or around that time.

who was crucified by the Roman Governor, Pontius Pilate, just as definitive.

(September 15, 2019 at 10:08 pm)Jehanne Wrote: who was crucified by the Roman Governor, Pontius Pilate, just as definitive.

And why would you claim that?

The thing is that the crucifixion and whole martyrdom of Jesus was created from the scriptures themselves or, should I say, the way that some Jews read them. There are many passages in the Bible that say how all these "events" occurred "according to the scriptures" (e.g. 1 Corinthians 15:3-5; Matthew 27:9-10; Mark 14:21; John 13:18, 17:12; Acts 1:16, 20, and many more). Writers of NT used these Old Testament texts to create a myth about crucifixion and Jesus.

Indeed, if you take Isaiah 53 it already had a tradition among Jews to interpret it in light of the suffering of Jewish hero-martyrs like the Maccabees. There's even a book about it by Jarvis Williams called Maccabean Martyr Traditions in Paul’s Theology of Atonement: Did Martyr Theology Shape Paul’s Conception of Jesus’s Death?

Or in later Jewish books that have dying messiah motif like Apocalypse of Zerubbabel there you have two messiahs: a Messiah ben David, and a Messiah ben Joseph. It prophesies the Son of Joseph would come first, only to be killed by an evil tyrant named "Armilus" (a Hebrew for Romulus, i.e., Rome). But all would not be lost, because the second messiah, the Son of David, would soon appear and resurrect him just before the end of the world. Sound familiar?

So it seems that early Christians combined two messiahs from a strand of earlier Jewish apocalyptic thought: martyred son of Joseph plus resurrection plus a triumphant, anointed son of David equals Jesus Christ.

(September 11, 2019 at 9:54 am)Gae Bolga Wrote: They don’t actually agree on that, at all.  All that historicists agree on, was that there was some guy.  That’s the consensus being referenced by the “the majority of scholars” comments.


I don’t envy their jobs or positions.  It’s a tough line of work given the likelihood of ever coming across any additional biographic detail about this assumed person who was the hypothetical patient zero of a globe spanning faith with a penchant for revision.

As to the sermon on the mount...that isn’t required to be myth for Christ to be myth.  A lot of things thought to be wise, ostensibly said by someone, were crammed into the mouth of the character.

I keep trying to stress this.  If I wrote that bugs bunny told the “I have a dream” speech....the real existence of mlk and that speech won’t make the bunny more if s real person or less of a cartoon.

- there’s no “maybe”, not even among historicists.  They understand that the details of the character were chosen for their theological importance, not biographical accuracy.  They assume that there simply must have been some guy close enough (for government work) to the character they expected from the messiah.  To get people writing, talking, worked up.

---

Mind, I’m not arguing for Mythicism here.  I see no point between us, just trying to present mythicism in a more accurate light than the derisive conspiracy theory that filters down to us through apologetics and professional defense, lol.  It’s nit about whether or not there is legitimate human detail in the text.  Or that nothing even remotely like the (potentially historical) events of the gospel ever happened.  It’s about the order of development of the character.

If a man or many men were grafted onto an existing myth, the mythicists are right.  That’s what they’re arguing.  That the character of Christ in the New Testament never existed, was never a man.  That there isn’t any specific Jesus-the-man in there.

Exactly right. The miracle-working god-man of the gospels is not what historicists are arguing for. They are arguing, to some degree or other, for the fabulist Jesus mythos being rooted in some way in "some guy". Whether that's "based on" or "inspired by" the public ministry of that "guy", or entirely made up, no one can say.

I have various reasons for leaning Mythicist, but if I'm totally wrong, it presents no problem at all for me because that would say zilch about, and add zero credibility to, the Jesus mythos. Your analogy to Bugs Bunny being a cartoon character no matter what words you put in his mouth, is very apt.