Why can't Christians Verify Exactly Where Jesus Was Buried?

[Thumpalumpacus]

You cannot reformulate the Sermon on the Mount from James, it is substantially different and includes other areas of Jesus's teachings that are consistent with but not included in that sermon. What's most important of all is that almost nothing in James is found in the gospel of Mark at all.

Wait, you went from Matthew to Mark here.

It is exclusively from a separate account of Jesus's teachings (that is we have Mark as one source, and another source whether Q or James himself or an oral tradition for James). In addition to the Sermon on the Mount we have yet another sermon (Sermon on the Plain) which is substantially similar, but not the same, to it found in Luke.

And now to Luke?

Now they could be the same sermon that has been recorded in two different ways, or they could be Jesus delivering the same or similar sermons on different occasions (which is the more likely because we would expect a preacher to give different audiences the same messages at different times).

That's kinda my point. It's not like they had tape recorders back then, and it's not like any putative authors had recordings to work from. So the idea that they could work with notes from one, or several, iterations of the same essential speech, seems pretty understandable to me.

Again, using James as a source would not give the sermon on the mount because nowhere does James inform the audience that he is directly quoting Jesus.

So what? He could simply be promulgating ideas he found nice enough without crediting the speaker, and even so Matthew, from other sources, could have found verbiage similar enough to regard James as useful, too -- corroboration in his own mind.

Your underlying assumption seems to be perfect knowledge on the part of the authors of the Gospels, and that seems pretty questionable, to me.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Just to add fuel to the fire, I think it is a huge mistake to view the Gospels and the Pauline Epistles as historical references, on a par with say, Tacitus or Dio.

Boru

[Minimalist]

Is it not possible for a writer to use more than one source?

Not if there is but one source.

[Pat Mustard]

Hi Aractus,
Thanks for your comprehensive reply. I know that Jesus's supposed friends and family didn't write the Bible, I was saying that despite all the commotion and supernatural events surrounding the tomb, everyone forgot where he was first buried.  This is very strange, if he was as popular as stated in the Bible and the tomb was already known from its wealthy owner.

It isn't at all strange. We didn't know where Ned Kelly's grave was for more than a century (we only found it five years ago), and he was very much a real person with legendary status attached to his escapades. And we would never have identified his remains without the use of DNA testing. That isn't available for Jesus since we don't know of any living relatives from his family's blood line (and even if we did after 2,000 years it'd probably be next to useless anyway).

As for Joseph of Arimathea's tomb, that was not Jesus's final resting place (nor was it ever intended to be). He was probably there for just the 2-3 days before his supposed resurrection, so why should anyone remember where it was? Can you remember other wealthy people's tombs from the first century?

First of all the Ned Kelly analogy doesn't work because we know Kelly was a real man, we have no idea whether Yeshua bar Yosef ever existed. There is plenty of independent primary and secondary documentation of Kelly's existence and quite a lot of his exploits, yet the very best we have for Yeshua is a 2 centuries later copy of a tertiary source which was originally written two generations after his supposed death. Plus what little of his life we have is contradictory and doesn't make sense, for example Yeshua was convicted under sanhedric law of basically being a heretic in Jewish religion, yet he was killed by a method used only under Roman law and in very specific circumstances, viz a man who rebelled against Rome or a Roman citizen convicted of treason. So as per the bible's telling we've a man killed in a way that he shouldn't have, and in a way no sensible Roman magistrate overseeing a client state (what Iudea was at the time) would have counternanced.

So it is pointless at this moment to talk about where Yeshua was buried because we haven't even come close to establishing whether he even lived.

[Minimalist]

we haven't even come close to establishing whether he even lived.

Bu...bu...bu...but it says so in the buy....buy....buy...buy...bull.

[Pat Mustard]

we haven't even come close to establishing whether he even lived.

Bu...bu...bu...but it says so in the buy....buy....buy...buy...bull.

Damn, I knew I forgot something! That's me convinced, PRAISE JEBUS!

[Gemini]

[...]

Jehohanan's remains were found in a Jewish ossuary sealed in a Jewish tomb, he was crucified by the Romans in the first century, just like Jesus he was first laid on a shroud to be later placed in an ossuary, he was significantly younger than Jesus, and a crucifixion nail along with traces of wood from the cross or tree he was nailed to was still embedded in his heel bone:

[...]

I did not know that. Thanks for the info.

[Gemini]

It's not the man who they worship.  It's the purported magic tricks.

Hercules did a lot of magic tricks, too.

As Richard Carrier notes:

Jesus began life as a celestial being whose suffering, death and resurrection
was known only through revelations (real or pretended) and secret messages
in scripture, and who only later became a mythically historicized person
as a model to follow and hang new dogmas upon.

The process is called euhemerism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euhemerism

There's clearly some mythological stuff grafted onto the person, but if he was made up out of whole cloth, why did Matthew and Luke invent convoluted stories to have him born in Bethlehem but end up living in Nazareth? Why involve Nazareth in the story at all?

Then there's the passage in Luke where he goes to Nazareth and gets rejected when the people there who know him don't fall for his miracle-working shtick. That seems pretty plausible to me. He was the charismatic religious-leader type and able to bamboozle people with his mystique, but that didn't get him very far with the people who knew him since he was a bawling brat.

[Minimalist]

First ask yourself why these two authors came up with such radically different stories for the birth of their godboy?  Why... it's almost as if they made the whole thing up!  Matty has Mary living in Bethlehem and giving birth.  This seems to be a result of a misreading of Micah 5.  Later they leave.  Luke invents a phony census to get Joseph and Mary to leave "Nazareth" and go to Bethlehem and then has a completely different scenario to get them back to "Nazareth."

It seems that the authors of each had a copy of mark, given the liberal amount of copying they did from it but it seems as if their audiences were demanding to know the particulars of his birth that mark had not bothered to tell.  Hence they made up stories.  In matty's case it seems for a largely Palestinian audience which was familiar with jewish myths and legends.  Although matty also claims that jesus will be called a Nazorean from OT prophecy....except there does not seem to be any such prophecy that anyone can find.  There is speculation that the term is derived from netzer meaning "branch" and referring to a messianic concept.  When you start getting into this Greek-Aramaic translation shit and then insist that it can be reliably rendered into English you are automatically moving on to shaky ground.

Now, we do not get these named gospels until very late in the 2d century.  The earliest canon of xtian writings was put out by the heretic Marcion c 140 AD.  It included something called "the Gospel of the Lord" which turns out to be the gospel later known as "luke" without the first two chapters.  In fact Marcion's original work claims that jesus descended (from heaven) into Capernaum in the 15th year of Tiberius' reign ( 29AD).

http://gnosis.org/library/marcion/Gospel1.html

Feel free to look it over.

Later on when xtian writers rehabilitated the gospel of the lord they attached two chapters which included all the census/virgin birth/ bullshit.  But the earliest version of the gospel that we know about (and we are told about it from xtian writers themselves like Tertullian and Irenaeus) does not have any of that nonsense as part of it.

[Gemini]

First ask yourself why these two authors came up with such radically different stories for the birth of their godboy?  Why... it's almost as if they made the whole thing up! 

I agree that they made up the nativity stories. I'm hoping most historians do as well? (If they don't, then fuck historicity.)

Although matty also claims that jesus will be called a Nazorean from OT prophecy....except there does not seem to be any such prophecy that anyone can find.  There is speculation that the term is derived from netzer meaning "branch" and referring to a messianic concept.  When you start getting into this Greek-Aramaic translation shit and then insist that it can be reliably rendered into English you are automatically moving on to shaky ground.

I heard there was a minority view among scholars that Matthew wasn't even Jewish. He was a Greek christian working with the Septuagint, who knew nothing at all about Jewish theology. I don't know how credible that is, but it's no wonder that his attempts to shoehorn Jesus into the portrait of the Jewish messiah were not well received by Jews.

Now, we do not get these named gospels until very late in the 2d century.  The earliest canon of xtian writings was put out by the heretic Marcion c 140 AD.  It included something called "the Gospel of the Lord" which turns out to be the gospel later known as "luke" without the first two chapters.  In fact Marcion's original work claims that jesus descended (from heaven) into Capernaum in the 15th year of Tiberius' reign ( 29AD).

If Marcion's writings predate Luke, then why do historians think he borrowed from Luke? (Honest question. I'm not too familiar with this.)

http://gnosis.org/library/marcion/Gospel1.html

Feel free to look it over.

Later on when xtian writers rehabilitated the gospel of the lord they attached two chapters which included all the census/virgin birth/ bullshit.  But the earliest version of the gospel that we know about (and we are told about it from xtian writers themselves like Tertullian and Irenaeus) does not have any of that nonsense as part of it.

I read it. I think I would agree with you that if Marcion's gospel predates Luke, then mythicism is pretty plausible.