What were Jesus and early Christians like?

[robvalue]

Well, we can assume they were christians, we don't actually know that. I admit it's very highly likely though, yeah. We don't even know if the stories were circulating or if they just entirely made them up themselves. Again, it seems likely they were circulating but we have no evidence of that, as far as I know.

So sure, we can make a few decent assumptions, but I think that's far from enough to "get into their heads". God knows what kind of messed up people they could be, or what bizarre reasons they could have for writing stuff. Maybe they ate a bunch of mushrooms and hallucinated. Who knows.

[TimOneill]

"What does "be agnostic about them" mean here? Because if it means "don't try to assess anything based on them at all" then we would have to "be agnostic" about most ancient sources. And the whole enterprise of ancient historical study would be totally untenable. Does that strike you as reasonable?"

No, however, historians need to be very careful and critical of their sources. Do you know how much blatantly political and moral propaganda is in many ancient sources? Just look at all nonsense claims people make about Obama today, good or bad! All we can say honestly say half the time is this is what someone at the time claimed. We shouldn't have a strong commitment to them being right. We shouldn't be too surprised if we found evidence against them.

Yes, historians do have to have this level of care. So what they do is stay alert for any sign that they are dealing with a political or ideologically biased source and handle it with care if they do. Take Tacitus’ account of Germanicus’ campaigns over the Rhine. There he presents Germanicus as the golden-haired wonder boy who was doing just fine until evil old uncle Tiberius made him withdraw, leaving Arminius and the rebel Cherusci not fully subjugated. Except we know that Tacitus was no fan of Tiberius and there is evidence even in his account that things didn’t quite as smoothly for Germanicus in that campaign as Tacitus makes out. So we seem to be dealing with a biased source here and need to look sceptically at what Tacitus says and what he leaves unsaid. Critical scholars of the New Testament texts do the same thing – these are not unbiased documentary sources, far from it.

I'm saying that the figure we find in the NT is most likely based on an apocalyptic preacher called Yeshua from Nazareth in Galilee who was baptised by John, crucified in Jerusalem by Pilate and whose followers formed a Jewish sect headed by his brother James. The later stories arose out of traditions from this sect as they reconciled his sudden death with their belief that he was Yahweh's anointed one.

I don't think that is "in some unspecified way". I think that's pretty specific.

For someone who claims he's not making very precise claims, you sure act like it.

Where did I say I don’t make “precise claims”? I say I don’t make claims about certainty, only assessments of likelihood. I’m quite clear about which elements I feel we can do that about and leave the rest alone.

Most likely compared to what? That the story was made up whole cloth?

Yes. Amongst other things. Or most likely compared to him being originally a purely mythic, celestial being who was crucified in the sub-lunar heavenly realm and worshipped by a form of proto-Christianity that then vanished without trace. Or most likely compared to a purely allegorical Messiah who somehow got historicised into a non-existent historical one who was depicted as being crucified etc despite the fact this wasn’t part of the Messianic expectations of the time. Or most likely compared to whatever it is that the woman who calls herself “Acharya S” gets out of her incoherent tangle of word similarities, New Age non sequiturs and hoary theosophist fantasies.

Not an impressive claim. It's like the claim "Socrates was kind of like what Plato said he was like," it is a weak claim no one denied.

Given the nature of our evidence, is about the only claim that can reasonably be made. Though I’m not sure what you mean by “weak” here. “Weak” because I don’t make it with any great assertions of certainty or proof? “Weak” because I don’t go beyond a few key details of what probably happened? What would be a more “impressive” claim that could be made with the kind of evidence we could expect about an early first century Jewish preacher, prophet or Messianic claimant? I couldn’t make any more “impressive” claims about Theudas or Athronges or the Egyptian. In fact, I could say far, far less about any of them. We can only deal with the evidence left to us and the evidence for all of these guys is thin at best.

That doesn’t mean it’s non-existent or that we can’t draw conclusions about what is likely to be historical from it.

[Pizza]

We agree then.

[TimOneill]

the story of Jesus contains all of the elements of any great tale: The hero begins poor, works his way up and gains popularity and power, some evil force knocks him down and it looks like he will not get back up... until lo and behold that's exactly what happens, tenfold. It's the most overused plot of all time. Even the Old Testament contains numerous versions.

Lots of historical people have life stories like that as well. And the retellings of lots of historical people's lives often take on that shape, thanks to a few tweakings and additions. So stories which have this shape can be told about both mythical and historical people. The children's story of Dick Whittington takes this form, for example. It's pretty unlikely that Whittington's fortunes were really all due to the skill of his mouse killing cat or a prophecy rung out by the bells of London's Bow Church, but the fact remains that there was a Lord Mayor of London called Dick Whittington who rose from lowly beginnings to be friend to two kings.

---

Oh dear, Tim, you do seem to be the type who thinks "coherent" means treating this gospel shit as "real."

Anyone who has read my posts here can see that is nonsense.

You remind me of the type who asserts that "all real scholars think jesus existed" and then denounce any one who doesn't as "not a real scholar."

I have never said that either. Please stop trying to disagree with things I haven’t said and pay attention to what I have said. Unlike some, I take the time to state my positions clearly and support them with arguments and citations of the evidence. I find that works better than vague allusions, sneering and dodging.

It's a very convenient position for you to take.

I haven’t taken it, so stop wasting your time and mine imaging things I’ve never said.

Sorry, pal. I'm not playing your game. Until some actual evidence can be presented that any of this shit is factual and not a later story concocted by a bunch of xtians to establish the primacy of their particular bullshit sect I shall regard it as the latter.

“Actual evidence” of what, exactly?

We have archaeological evidence that the term Chrestians was in use in Rome by 37 AD.

We do?

The Chrestiani inscription naming Jucundus, Antonia Minor and her husband Drusus establishes Chrestianity in Rome during the Augustan period.

This seemed to be a quote from someone or other, but you didn’t attribute it or give a citation for it. So I Googled it on the small chance it may actually be from a scholarly article. Google led me to a gloriously inarticulate (in fact, barely literate) “paper” on academia.edu by someone called “John A. Bartram”, uploaded there (of course) by none other than John A. Bartram. This “paper” was a crazed series of assertions, non sequiturs and illogical acrobatics that seemed to argue … something or other. It was hard to tell what this person was trying to say. But it seemed to be saying there was a cult called “Chrestianity” which was like Christianity but … wasn’t. Or something.

The inscription is here if you'd like to see it.

https://html1-f.scribdassets.com/4sxyy5z...3fe2db.png

That’s an inscription referring to someone with a name or (more likely) nickname meaning “good, useful”. Nothing more.

So, Chrestians in Rome.

From that? You can’t be serious. This is like someone in some future century finding a reference to someone nicknamed “Happy” and using it to make an argument about the existence of hippies. After all – “happy”/”hippy”; only one letter apart.

So, you see, if you pull your head out of those silly books …

And pay attention to this kind of gibberish by a semi-literate nobody called John A. Bartram? I’ll stick to the books thanks. I haven’t seen nonsense this bad since I made the mistake of browsing on the forum of “Achaya S” and her blank-eyed acolytes.