(February 26, 2019 at 12:25 pm)Gae Bolga Wrote: None of that is part of the historical jesus candidates. Historicists and mythicists agree that these portions of the narrative are fiction and not at all informative as to the life of an actual man.
(to assert otherwise, you see, is to wholly abandon the pretense of "doing history", lol)
Their only historical value is in the description of the beliefs of a religious movement, in the case of matthew, a specific community within a broader religious movement, itself removed in time and ideology from it's typifying source material, mark. This was something that came to be believed as we see it* sometime between 70 and 110 ad.
*caveat emptor
Matthew's claim made sense, though, at least to the author of Matthew. If Jesus truly performed miracles, then, yes, news of that would spread like wildfire. All scholars agree (well, nearly all) that the authors of Matthew and Luke used Mark and Q, but in the process, both Matthew and Luke changed Mark's narrative to suit each of their theological bents. And, Matthew no doubt felt that a "secret Jesus", as described by Mark, was not the true, public Jesus whom he and his community believed existed.
