What were Jesus and early Christians like?

[watchamadoodle]

@Nestor, one book I have considered reading is "The Jewish Gospels" by Daniel Boyarin. His ideas are on the fringes, but he is a real historian and not just somebody who wrote a book. Boyarin claims that weird Christian ideas like the trinity and the resurrection existed in some Jewish sects before the time of Jesus.

[GrandizerII]

@Nestor, one book I have considered reading is "The Jewish Gospels" by Daniel Boyarin. His ideas are on the fringes, but he is a real historian and not just somebody who wrote a book. Boyarin claims that weird Christian ideas like the trinity and the resurrection existed in some Jewish sects before the time of Jesus.

I find the Trinity part hard to believe only because, as far as I know, the Trinity wasn't even part of the early Christians' beliefs in the first century.

[Mudhammam]

@Nestor, one book I have considered reading is "The Jewish Gospels" by Daniel Boyarin. His ideas are on the fringes, but he is a real historian and not just somebody who wrote a book. Boyarin claims that weird Christian ideas like the trinity and the resurrection existed in some Jewish sects before the time of Jesus.

Thanks watch, I'll look into that.

[Minimalist]

As a side note, as far as I know, no archaeological finds locate Nazareth as an inhabited village until many years until after Jesus is said to have lived. It may not prove that Nazareth didn't exist (even if no writer mentions it until the Gospels---not even Josephus, who mentions a number of insignificant towns in the vicinity) but mythicists have made something of it nonetheless.

A reasonably reputable xtian scholar, Steven Pfann, did some excavation under the aegis of the IAA in the late 90's and identified a single, first-century, family farm. That actually makes sense. It was a short walk to the major town of Sepphoris which meant that the farmers would have had a local market for their produce.

In any case it doesn't matter. The fairy tale known as 'luke' requires that it be a large enough town to have a "synagogue" and a population which had to be reminded who he was. This was not some shitty little hamlet of 10 houses with a population that was all inter-related. This fairy tale reflects a much later reality.

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I gave you the textual evidence that the Q material exists. Perhaps you could pause for a moment and explain why it is there if it isn’t evidence of some kind of lost source, sources and/or oral traditions.

Tim, I'm sure you find this far more compelling than I.

We have two obvious traditions. One, and for the sake of convention let's call it "pauline" which has a supernatural hero in the sky just like every other mystery cult god popular at the time. We do not have the original documents. We do not even have whatever it was that Marcion put out in his canon c 140. What we have is what emerged from the dispute. The notion that the proto-orthodox would have taken anything from Marcion in toto is absurd. Just as they fixed up the gluke to suit their needs we must assume that "paul" was equally massaged. The bad news is that it would take an archaeological find on the order of the Dead Sea Scrolls or at least Nag Hamadi to get the originals and it is just not likely to happen or at least no one should plan on it happening.

So on the one hand, here is "paul" with his space-cadet jesus and on the other is gmark with his live-in-the-flesh jesus walking around Palestine. Richard Carrier refers to this as "euhemerization." The attempted meshing of the two is hardly seamless.

Now, were there other groups wandering around with equally screwy beliefs? Doubtless. Pliny the Younger reports interrogating Xtians in Bythinia-Pontus in the early second century and there is nothing reported which bears any resemblance to what you would have us believe was standard xtian doctrine at the time. In fact, Pliny probably wrote Chrestians not Christians and was helped out by a well-meaning scribe who thought he correcting the spelling. But we can avoid that for the moment. Could those groups have influenced later xtian groups? Maybe. What is missing is actual evidence. As with my earlier example of the tachyon or even the sexier concept of Dark Matter one can theorize anything but don't sit there and insist because some bible-thumper thought it up that it means anything at all in the real world. I'm not the only one who points out that Q exists in the wind. The primary argument against it is that something so important should have been preserved.... or at least mentioned.

Xtianity emerges into the cold light of day in the mid 2d century. Far too much of anything before that is wishful-thinking.

[DeistPaladin]

Yes, that was what I was referring to. The different ways in which all the gospels deal with the awkwardness of the Baptist baptising his supposed superior is something that indicates this whole Jesus/Baptist story has a historical core.

Or perhaps the Christians were trying to do to the followers of JtB what later Muslims would do to Jesus: assimilate and subjugate. The religious icon of one becomes a "forerunner" of the other. Just because JtB does in the Gospels what he is known for doesn't mean we assume there must be a historical core, any more that we assume that Star Wars was real because the retcon of Luke being Laia's brother created some awkward incestuous kisses in retrospect. Sometimes "embarrassing errors" are just errors in either story telling or urban legend development.

Now don't get me wrong. I'm not saying this argument doesn't give me pause to consider that maybe there is a real story buried somewhere under all this mythology. Indeed, that and various other awkward glitches in the story are probably the most convincing arguments I've heard yet for historicity. However, there's a difference between "giving me pause to consider" and proving a case.

To underscore the difference between the two, let me use another example. There have been a number of times in history where the US and Russia nearly nuked each other, destroying human civilization as we know it. Yet, somehow we made it through the last 70 years in one piece. The most recent brush with nuclear armageddon was in January of 1995, even after the former Soviet Union had ceased to exist. This number of "near misses" is enough to give me pause to consider that maybe there is a friendly God watching over us. Does this mean I'm convinced? That I'm now a believer? Of course not! Perhaps we were lucky? Maybe cooler heads prevailed? There are plenty of other explanations available that don't invoke the supernatural. To assume that it must be some favored explanation because you "can't imagine how else to explain it" smacks of the Argument from Incredulity fallacy.

Now speaking of the true story buried somewhere under all this folklore and mythology, I'd like to ask you a question I've asked every other historist I've run into:

What, if anything, can we actually know about The Historical Jesus and what is that knowledge based on?

I've yet to hear an answer any more specific than "some religious leader who was crucified by the Romans".

[Minimalist]

Amusing, D-P. In the last episode of Finding Jesus on CNN some theologian said something along the lines of "the one thing we can be absolutely certain of is that jesus was baptized by john."

I found myself laughing and thinking "you dumb shit."

[dyresand]

All in all christianity back in those days
Stones here get your stones here ready to pelt the shit out of those sinners with these fine stones
just for 5 shekels you can get these stones ready to ready to use.

[TimOneill]

Tim, I'm sure you find this far more compelling than I.

As I’ve noted several times now, the Q material is right there in the text. It’s not some kind of “hypothesis”, it’s there for all to see. What is a hypothesis is the idea that it comes from one, single, lost source. I happen to think it comes from more than one, for some fairly complex textual reasons. But it’s not some figment of the imaginations of scholars (let alone “Bible thumpers”) because it is there in the text for anyone to see. And it is clearly based on a source or sources, now lost, because the verbatim correspondences between the Q material in gMatt and the Q material in gLuke are too many and too close for any other explanation to make sense.
I’ve asked you how you can just dismiss all this. I notice you haven’t responded.

We have two obvious traditions. One, and for the sake of convention let's call it "pauline" which has a supernatural hero in the sky just like every other mystery cult god popular at the time.

No, Paul does not just talk about a supernatural hero in the sky. He talks about a man, who was born as a human, of a human mother and born a Jew (Galatians 4:4), who had a "human nature", was a human descendant of King David (Romans 1:3) and who had a human brother, who Paul himself had met (Galatians1:19). Paul seems to have believed that this man had come from heaven and returned there. And that he was coming again very soon. But he was not just a supernatural hero in the sky – he was one who had recently been a man on earth. Doherty’s theory is wrong.

We do not have the original documents. We do not even have whatever it was that Marcion put out in his canon c 140. What we have is what emerged from the dispute. The notion that the proto-orthodox would have taken anything from Marcion in toto is absurd. Just as they fixed up the gluke to suit their needs we must assume that "paul" was equally massaged. The bad news is that it would take an archaeological find on the order of the Dead Sea Scrolls or at least Nag Hamadi to get the originals and it is just not likely to happen or at least no one should plan on it happening.

I’m afraid I don’t understand this paragraph at all. You think they got the Pauline letters from Marcion? Pardon?

Richard Carrier refers to this as "euhemerization." The attempted meshing of the two is hardly seamless.

Richard Carrier blithely skips over the idea that the Jesus figure is not a product of euhemerization but is actually the result of apotheosis. And, unfortunately for Carrier, the evidence fits apotheosis far better. This is one reason Carrier’s recent clunker of a book has sunk without trace.

Now, were there other groups wandering around with equally screwy beliefs? Doubtless. Pliny the Younger reports interrogating Xtians in Bythinia-Pontus in the early second century and there is nothing reported which bears any resemblance to what you would have us believe was standard xtian doctrine at the time.

You expect Pliny to have given Trajan a crash course in Christian doctrine in that letter? Why? Though he does tell us that these Christians “meet on a fixed day before dawn and sing responsively a hymn to Christ as to a god”. So why does he use the expression “as to a god” if he didn’t understand that this Christ was a man?

In fact, Pliny probably wrote Chrestians not Christians and was helped out by a well-meaning scribe who thought he correcting the spelling.

“Probably”? Evidence?

Could those groups have influenced later xtian groups? Maybe. What is missing is actual evidence.

What, you mean like the reference to this same Christian cult who worshiped a guy crucified by Pilate during the reign of Tiberius by Tacitus?

I'm not the only one who points out that Q exists in the wind. The primary argument against it is that something so important should have been preserved.... or at least mentioned.

That’s the primary argument against it? No wonder most scholars accept that it exists. Firstly, as I keep pointing out to you, the Q material is right there in the text. You need to account for it some other way if it is not there because it is based on a common source or sources. Secondly, why should it have been preserved? In the very early decades of the Jesus sect it consisted of a few thousand people who produced a number of texts. Most of those very early texts would have consisted of only a few copies. It would have been very easy for all of those copies to be lost – the survival rate of ancient books was not good. And it seems it was preserved – by being incorporated into gMatt and gLuke.

Xtianity emerges into the cold light of day in the mid 2d century. Far too much of anything before that is wishful-thinking.

Sorry, but that is ridiculous.

[TimOneill]

Or perhaps the Christians were trying to do to the followers of JtB what later Muslims would do to Jesus: assimilate and subjugate. The religious icon of one becomes a "forerunner" of the other.

That certainly seems to have happened. John’s following lasted after his death – we have the story in Acts of Jesus’ apostles meeting some guys in Greece who were giving people John’s baptism and (according to the story) were convinced to baptise in Jesus’ name as well. Interestingly, nowhere in the synoptics are Jesus or his disciples depicted baptising anyone and the only references to Jesus’ followers being baptised or baptising are in sections of gMatt and gMark that are acknowledged as later additions to the text. It’s not until gJohn that we find baptism depicted as a practice of Jesus and his followers. So it seems the absorption of the John the Baptist sect brought this practice into the Jesus sect later in the first century.

Just because JtB does in the Gospels what he is known for doesn't mean we assume there must be a historical core, any more that we assume that Star Wars was real because the retcon of Luke being Laia's brother created some awkward incestuous kisses in retrospect. Sometimes "embarrassing errors" are just errors in either story telling or urban legend development.

Sometimes, but I don’t think that works here. The Luke/Leia relationship forms a coherent part of the larger story. But the Baptism (or, in gJohn, non-baptism) scene doesn’t actually fit in the story at all. This is why all of the gospel writers after gMark have to come up with different ways of dealing with it to make it fit what they are trying to say about Jesus. Obviously the meeting of Jesus and John was in the tradition and deemed important enough to tell about, but it didn’t fit the later Christology. So they have to embroider around it, add an excuse to it or leave the most awkward element in it out. This makes the question of why it was in the tradition at all if it doesn’t fit the story one that can’t be ignored. That it was historical is the most parsimonious answer I can think of.

Now don't get me wrong. I'm not saying this argument doesn't give me pause to consider that maybe there is a real story buried somewhere under all this mythology. Indeed, that and various other awkward glitches in the story are probably the most convincing arguments I've heard yet for historicity. However, there's a difference between "giving me pause to consider" and proving a case.

As I find myself saying repeatedly in these discussions, people who want cases to be “proved” should avoid this subject altogether. As usual, this question comes down to trying to make an assessment of likelihood. It is likely that this odd element that doesn’t really fit the story is in there because it happened historically. The alternative – saying “well, it’s in there because … ummm … it just is” doesn’t have much force.

Now speaking of the true story buried somewhere under all this folklore and mythology, I'd like to ask you a question I've asked every other historist I've run into:

What, if anything, can we actually know about The Historical Jesus and what is that knowledge based on?

I've yet to hear an answer any more specific than "some religious leader who was crucified by the Romans".

I can give you a bit more than that:
(i) Born in Nazareth and grew up there
(ii) Had a brother called James
(iii) Was an apocalyptic preacher like John the Baptist
(iv) Was baptised by John and probably inspired by him
(v) Preached that the coming apocalyptic cleansing of the world was going to happen in his lifetime or soon after
(vi) Crucified in Jerusalem by Pilate sometime between c. 30 and 37 AD
(vii) Was claimed to be the Messiah, though whether he made this claim himself is unclear.

[DeistPaladin]

As I find myself saying repeatedly in these discussions, people who want cases to be “proved” should avoid this subject altogether.

Fair enough. Actually, that fits with my identity as a Jesus Mooter.

I can give you a bit more than that:
(i) Born in Nazareth and grew up there
(ii) Had a brother called James
(iii) Was an apocalyptic preacher like John the Baptist
(iv) Was baptised by John and probably inspired by him
(v) Preached that the coming apocalyptic cleansing of the world was going to happen in his lifetime or soon after
(vi) Crucified in Jerusalem by Pilate sometime between c. 30 and 37 AD
(vii) Was claimed to be the Messiah, though whether he made this claim himself is unclear.

I'll set aside my question of "what do we base this knowledge on?" and just take your assertions about The Historical Jesus at face value:

Let's review. The Historical Jesus was...
1. Born in a town where lots of others were from.
2. Had a brother. And hey, his brother had a common name.
3. He was one of many apocalyptic preachers of that time.
4. He was one of many baptized by and inspired by JtB.
5. Did we mention he was one of many apocalyptic preachers of the time?
6. He was one of many Jews crucified by Pilate.
7. He was one of many claimed messiahs of that time.

Heck, there were probably a dozen or so Historical Jesuses (Jesusi?).

Let me know if historians find anything of substance.