Quote:We know that 1st century Palestine was filled with apocalyptic preaching.
We do?
What history tells us is that things were fairly quiet in Palestine for the most part. Direct Roman rule of Judaea began in 6 AD and ended with the appointment of Herod Agrippa I in 37 AD. He died in 44. There was a brief interregnum while Herod Agrippa II came of age during which Roman procurators ruled under the auspices of the Imperial Legate of Syria. By 51 the Romans had officially washed their hands of Palestine again although they continued to appoint procurators who also had deal with Agrippa II. However, things had begun to get awkward.
But during the reign of Tiberius and mostly for that of Augustus the Jews had it pretty well. It was the jews themselves who petitioned Augustus to remove Archaelaus and become a Roman praefecture and he gave them what they asked for. They had certain military requirements waived and were exempt from certain taxes. Ironically, this special treatment led to an anti-semitic uprising in Alexandria by Greco-Roman citizens protesting the special treatment they were getting. Philo's famous "Embassy to Gaius" was written as a result of this incident. It did lead Caligula to determine that the special treatment had to stop and he went so far as to order a statue of himself installed in the temple. The governor of Syria, Publius Petronius, no idiot he, delayed and was rewarded when Caligula was assassinated. Crisis averted but attitudes had changed and things started going down the shitter. It was 41 AD and according to the bible fables jesus had been dead for between 5-12 years.
So, yes, we start to see in Josephus that various rebels were showing up but dating them from the procurators who crushed the revolts these are all post 44 AD. Unlike Herod the Great, Herod Agrippa I and II were more Roman than Jew. Herod Agrippa II didn't even take up residence in his "kingdom" until 53 or so. Given the change in attitude by the Romans and the prospect of yet another foreign Herodian prince it does not seem unreasonable that there would have been some trouble. But. Even if the story is true, jesus was long dead by the time this stuff started.
First off, I reject the term "conspirators." Far too modern. This shit evolved over a period of time. No one sat down to create it. That's a red-herring. What we can see is that whoever wrote "luke" had no idea that at the time he was setting his tale that Galilee ( Nazareth?) and Bethlehem were in different polities. Galilee ruled by Herod Antipas and Judaea, as we have seen, a Roman prefecture initially governed by one Coponius. With all the changes which had taken place in the 2d century it certainly seems possible that a poorly educated writer might miss that but had he lived in the first century then, no. I can't buy it. The events would have been too recent.
Second, we don't know what the "original" epistles of "paul" said. We don't have any of them...as far as we know. We are told by church fathers that they were included in the canon created by Marcion who they condemned as a heretic. Justin Martyr, writing 20 years after Marcion never heard of any "paul" and, in spite of his alleged scriptural knowledge that 'scripture' turns out to be predominantly OT stuff. All we know is that while the proto-orthodox (to borrow Ehrman's term) were tossing Marcion out on his ear they decided to keep "paul" in the mix. Further, it looks like they decided that Marcion's idea of a canon had some merit, too, because that is when it seems they began to concoct one of their own. If you ever read up on Marcionism he makes a number of good points about the relationship of 'jesus' to 'yhwh.' What better time to separate from the jews than shortly after the end of the bar Kohkba revolt? The jews were on the top of the Roman Empire's shitlist after 3 revolts in 80 years. The key to understand xtian origins lies with Marcion, IMHO.
#3 is easy. Mark is the most primitive but generally matt and luke follow it and only go off on tangents if Mark is silent on a subject ( i.e. the nativity.) Luke seems to have been targeted to a Greco-Roman audience while Matty is more geared to Palestine itself. John is the oddball in the mix but you must remember that the xtian canon is the result of committee work. Ever serve on a committee? Lots of compromises are made. Sometimes really stupid compromises are made. John had its fans and those fans held out for its inclusion probably agreeing to support another group's favorite just like the horse-trading that goes on in Congress or Parliament to get a bill through.
Quote: but sentiment favored these four.
Politics favored those four. You're a great guy, X-P but the world does not run on 'sentiment.' Shit happens for a reason.
Quote:My own explanation is that Jesus was the most eloquent, see for instance, the Sermon on the Mount and the parables.
Blessed are the cheesemakers. The point remains that as of right now we have no evidence whatsoever for any jesus until the second century. If what Suetonius and Pliny say can be taken at face value ( i.e., they did not originally write 'chrestus" instead of "christos") then while they heard of xtians, they never heard of any "jesus" either. The first Greco-Roman writer to make reference to "jesus" is Lucian of Samosata c 165 and even he does not know the name:
Quote:It was now that he came across the priests and scribes of the Christians, in Palestine, and picked up their queer creed. I can tell you, he pretty soon convinced them of his superiority; prophet, elder, ruler of the Synagogue--he was everything at once; expounded their books, commented on them, wrote books himself. They took him for a God, accepted his laws, and declared him their president. The Christians, you know, worship a man to this day,--the distinguished personage who introduced their novel rites, and was crucified on that account.
--The Death of Peregrinus
No, we must wait for Celsus to actually write the name "Jesus" into the Greco-Roman narrative....c 185 AD.
No, thanks to Ehrman's work I find all of the NT thoroughly discredited. It's the old axiom "where one lie is detected a thousand are suspected." Best to dismiss the whole tale and just concentrate on the facts.
