"Historical Jesus"?

[Twilight Hue]

Thanks for contributing @Nowhere Man

What leads you towards this conclusion, if I may ask?

Well it's not a conclusion. Rather it's a very interesting theory put forth by Joseph Atwill I think around 1993 and published the book called Caesars Messiah.

It's very controversial even to this day, even "out of the box" , but there are aspects to his theory that really stand out as interesting and intriguing, such as subservience and obedience to the Roman government as reflected in biblical passages for which a fair portion of the New Testament seems very Pro Roman in that respect. In a nutshell, Jesus in essence was historically a very creative and unusual psychological experiment employed by the Romans used to address a potential uprising.

Controversial history of Jesus draws ire of Christians and atheists. Is Caesar’s Messiah legit? |241| | Skeptiko - Science at the Tipping Point

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

Could you provide me with an explanation of your understanding of eschatological expectations, or lack thereof, in Second Temple Judaism?

I could but I won't. Sorry.

 

[Vouthon]

I could but I won't. Sorry.

Why not?

It would certainly help me to better understand where you are coming from. But, I won't labour the point. Your choice, of course.

 

[Buddha Dharma]

I go with Jesus the Wisdom Sage, but I should probably clarify what I mean.

I hold that Jesus may have taught some kind of mysticism/union with God idea. Not in an exclusive sense though. He often spoke to his audiences as though they were just as divine as he was seemingly claiming to be. IE: My Father and I will dwell with them, and they in us.

Possibly, Jesus taught pantheism. I won't go into rather he taught reincarnation or not in this post, but there is one or two verses in there one might point to.

I know that the late Marcus Borg compares Jesus with figures like the Buddha in quite a number of his works.

I'm not a Christian, so I only have playful conjecture at best concerning Jesus.

I think he probably also taught non-violence, and as you know: I think he emphasized social justice greatly.

The idea he taught non-violence/Ahimsa is taken primarily from two places. That he arguably calls the animals the Jews sacrificed in their rites 'innocents'.

"If you had understood the saying 'I will have mercy and not sacrifice', you would not have condemned the innocent"- Jesus

You yourself @Vouthon have mentioned in other threads how Jesus often used animals in his parables and sayings, as though he had great admiration for them as living things.

The Ebionites are the other place though that I infer he taught non-violence to the level of vegetarianism. The Ebionites were strict vegetarians. They believed that's what Jesus taught.

Then of course, we have the famous episode of Jesus criticizing Peter for violence against the mob. That isn't as clear though about violence toward non-human life.

I infer from these few premises I've outlined that Jesus was a mystic. Wisdom sage could be another way of saying that.

 

[Faithofchristian]

"Historical Jesus?"

Let's return back to those days when Jesus was here on earth and after Jesus death and Resurrection.

Let's for say that your life depends on the truth or a lie.

Now let's say that your going to be put to death, if you do not confess, what you believe to be the truth is nothing more than a lie.

So we find the disciples and those who followed Jesus were put to death.

For what other reason were they put to death, other than up holding the truth of Jesus.
It's evidence that a person will not die for a lie. knowing it's a lie.

Now what about all those Christians that were put in the Roman Coliseum with wild animals, that died all because they would not give up the truth which they held.

What about all those Christians that were burned at the stake, all because they would not give the truth which they held.

The point being made is, No one will die for lie, knowing that it's no more than a lie,
but yet we have all these people, giving up their life for the truth which they held.

They could haved said, Hey look I was only fooling around, you didn't take me seriously did you. You really don't think that I am going to give up my life for some lie.

But what do we find in the Rome coliseum many Christians being put to death and burned at the stake. All because they would not give up the truth they held.

How many people do you know if ask, would you die for a lie, knowing factual that it's a lie.
How many of them do you suppose would die for a lie, knowing factual that it's a lie.

Therefore you have the Historical evidence of Jesus.

 

[Vouthon]

In terms of the prophet of social change paradigm, I concur with @sayak83 that Jesus' "social and moral teachings were based on his expectations of the kind of world this new Kingdom ruled directly by God was going to be."

I think this statement captures the truth very well, to the extent that this eschatological worldview played the main role in shaping his moral vision, rather than the case being that his ethical or social precepts were merely flavoured with metaphorical use of apocalyptic language (as Crossan argues).

E. P. Sanders argues that the eschatological goal of Jesus was the restoration of Israel, noting that "Jesus is to be understood in the context of Jewish apocalyptic expectations of an imminent and decisive end to the old order of things, featured in numerous Jewish texts" (Sanders, Jesus and Judaism, 375-76) and Borg explains this stance further as follows:

Jesus believed that the eschatological restoration of Israel was at hand. Its completion in the near future would be brought about by a dramatic intervention by God, involving the destruction of the Jerusalem temple
​

And somewhat similarly Richard Horsley writes,

Jesus' proclamation and practice of the kingdom of God indeed belonged in the milieu of Jewish apocalypticism. But far from being an expectation of an imminent cosmic catastrophe, it was the conviction that God was now driving Satan from control over personal and historical life, making possible the renewal of the people of Israel. The presence of the Kingdom of God meant the termination of the old order​

Which means, as Bart Ehrman explains in his book Misquoting Jesus:

Whose Word is It?

It is intriguing to ask what it was about Jesus’s message that particularly attracted women. Most scholars remain convinced that Jesus proclaimed the coming Kingdom of God, in which there would be no more injustice, suffering, or evil, in which all people, rich and poor, slave and free, men and women, would be on equal footing. This obviously proved particularly attractive as a message of hope to those who in the present age were underprivileged—the poor, the sick, the outcast. And the women...

One of Jesus’s characteristic teachings is that there will be a massive reversal of fortunes [in the Kingdom]. Those who are rich and powerful now will be humbled then; those who are lowly and oppressed now will then be exalted. The apocalyptic logic of this view is clear: it is only by siding with the forces of evil that people in power have succeeded in this life; and by siding with God other people have been persecuted and rendered powerless...

In his view, present-day society and all its conventions were soon to come to a screeching halt...Only when God's Kingdom arrived would an entirely new order appear, in which peace, equality, and justice would reign supreme...What mattered was the new thing that was coming, the future kingdom. It was impossible to promote this teaching while trying to retain the present social structure.
​

Interestingly, Jesus believed his followers were to live in the kingdom already - emulating its ideals even before a miraculous intervention by God arrived to inaugurate the restored Israel. This means it was more than simply future-oriented but rather had tangible consequences for the intermediate 'here-and-now'. E.P. Sanders suggests as much when he opines it is possible that Jesus, in addition to expecting the impending arrival of the Kingdom as a future epoch, also "may have spoken about the kingdom as a present reality into which individuals enter one by one".

As @sayak83 notes, Jesus seems to have regarded his purported miracles and cleansings to be acts of symbolic inauguration of God's Reign in the world, viewing himself as the divinely appointed agent of the kingdom's emergence on earth.

One of the most striking examples, of how this anticipation of a new social order resulted in a radically subversive (for his time) overturning of hierarchical convention, is the strong opposition he exhibited towards patriarchy - namely the patriarchal family unit of the ancient world.

Jesus is reported to have said:

"And call no one your father on earth, for you have one Father—the one in heaven...The greatest among you will be your servant. All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted." (Matthew 23:9, 10-12).

​

This text from the Gospel of Mark is especially instructive:

Jesus said, “Truly I tell you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields, for my sake and for the sake of the good news, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this age—houses, brothers and sisters, mothers and children, and fields with persecutions—and in the age to come eternal life." (Mark 10:29-30)​

A careful exegete will notice that the second half of the sentence omits "fathers" - mentioned in the first segment as one of the things his disciples must abandon for the kingdom - from the new family of the church.

The omission is significant: fathers “represent patriarchy, the old society in which the man alone ruled and decided. In the new family of Jesus into which the disciples are to grow there can no longer be anyone who dominates others.” (Gerhard Lohfink 2014). In their analysis of Mark 10:29–30, Osiek and Balch conclude, “The old family included a patriarchal father; the new one does not, since God is the only Father.” Elisabeth Fiorenza says that, in the answer of Jesus, “fathers” are among those to be left behind; “fathers” are not included in the new kinship to which the disciples aspire. For Fiorenza this is an implicit rejection of the power and status of all patriarchal structures in the messianic community.

This, of course, fits in perfectly with the social ethic outlined elsewhere, in which all hierarchical relationships are to be transcended in a spirit of mutual service and equality of status:

So Jesus called them and said to them, “You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. 43 But it is not so among you; but whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, 44 and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. 45 For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.” (Mark 10:42-45)

​

This was to prove very significant, as the historian of liberal thought Larry Siedentop explained in his 2014 book entitled Inventing the Individual:

The paterfamilias (father) was originally both the family’s magistrate and high priest, with his wife, daughters and younger sons having a radically inferior status.

Inequality remained the hallmark of the ancient patriarchal family. “Society” was understood as an association of families rather than of individuals.

It was the Christian movement that began to challenge this understanding. Pauline belief in the equality of souls in the eyes of God – the discovery of human freedom and its potential – created a point of view that would transform the meaning of “society”.

This began to undercut traditional inequalities of status. It was nothing short of a moral revolution, and it laid the foundation for the social revolution that followed. The individual gradually displaced the family, tribe or caste as the basis of social organisation. ​

 

[Windwalker]

Many good points Windwalker, thanks for your intervention!

Mack is placed in the "wisdom sage" branch of scholarship because he stratifies Q into a number of competing layers, with the earliest stage in the development of the sayings tradition being (in his assessment) the portrayal of Jesus as a wise man with a penchant for paradox, who lived an itinerant lifestyle free from material attachments and uttered bold statements against prevailing social norms.

Although he refrains from making any direct assertions about the historical Jesus (unlike other scholars), he seems to suggest that these early Cynic-like Jesus followers were following the practice of their founder, since they represent the earliest chain in the tradition, with apocalypticism relegated to Q2 in his model.

In this respect, he is cited as an authority by those making an argument for Jesus as a "subversive wisdom" sage.

Yes, thank you. I added the thought that I could see how he would fit that as I was recalling his arguments. With what you posted here, it brings it back clearly that what you say is right. He favored the Q1 (the earliest) as the authentic one, and Q2 (the apocalyptic), and Q3 (the Wisdom) were later iterations. Then of course the other schools of thought with the various Jesus movements in their respective regions and cultures with their audiences in their mythmaking images of Jesus gives us all these different "Jesuses", as he put it in the quote I posted.

I've always found this mythmaking for creating their truths symbolized in the figure of Jesus an appealing view of the origins of Christianity, but the dependency on Q being valid casts some weakness in some of his premises, as I understand now that Q is not held that highly anymore, where it's been shown Luke directly took from Matthew, rather than the two independently taking from Mark and Q. Nonetheless, one not need throw out the baby with some maybe cloudy bathwater.

A lot of this understanding of the evolving narratives of Jesus reflecting the social movements plays an important role in a lot of my own thinking.

 

[blü 2]

The purpose of this thread is explore some of the theories put forward by contemporary scholars on the historical Jesus.

First there has to be an Historical Jesus to theorize about. Bart Ehrman's Did Jesus Exist? was hailed as definitive by some, but although I'm a big fan of his books, this is the exception. I was particularly disappointed to find no clincher, just the same old reliance on 'James the brother of the Lord' and the argument from authority, 'Everybody who has studied the matter thinks ...' I wanted to know why they thought it, but I heard nothing new that mattered.

The absence of an HJ becomes plausible when you consider that Paul never met him and is all but free from biographical detail, and Mark, the first and in effect the only biography (since the others copy it), can be explained as a story devised to connect a list of purported Tanakh messianic prophecies plus a list of sayings.

So I think the question is still open, waiting for a clincher either way.

There are roughly five "mainstream" perspectives, which can be laid out as follows (with the names of some prominent scholars advocating this viewpoint)

First, I think any interpretation of Jesus has to be based on Mark, because if there's an HJ, then Mark is the only gospel with a chance of containing actual information. We know the others are merely copying Mark and altering Jesus to suit the author's taste. This may be true of Mark's author too, but if there are facts there, Mark's the only substantial hope.

Second, I think Mark's Jesus is associated with John the Baptist's simple message, Get ready, the Kingdom is at hand!

Third, Mark's Jesus is on a mission that he intends will end with his death (Mark 2:20), so the sacrificial notion is present throughout.

So of your categories, I'd go with the first, Apocalyptic Prophet.

 

[Estro Felino]

The purported association between Jesus and "Zealotism" is a fringe idea (chiefly promoted by people like Reza Aslan), which is not considered to be credible or consistent with the available evidence by the vast majority of scholars. As such, I didn't think it belonged in an overview of the mainstream interpretations since there are so few proponents of this paradigm.

​

My question still stands. It is not credible a Roman procurator delivered a death sentence on a sort of harmless Rabbi (not that different than Hillel the Elder), unless he had conspired against the Roman Empire. We are speaking of a vassal state where the Roman authorities had a very limited jurisdiction.

What justifies such a specific penalty?

 

[metis]

My question still stands. It is not credible a Roman procurator delivered a death sentence on a sort of harmless Rabbi (not that different than Hillel the Elder), unless he had conspired against the Roman Empire. We are speaking of a vassal state where the Roman authorities had a very limited jurisdiction.

What justifies such a specific penalty?

If I can interject. To the above, quite possible two things, one is Jesus' claim of a "kingdom" and also his turning over the money-tables in the Temple area. For some reasons, kings and their henchmen don't tend to like that, and Pilate was notoriously brutal, having to return to Rome to justify why so many were being executed.

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

@Vouthon , I owe you an apology. My only excuse is that I've been party to Historical Jesus discussions/debates for decades and have referenced Kirby's work on innumerable occasion. Still, they've almost always evolved into verbose and seemingly erudite discussions long on inference and short on facts on one side, and an almost manic mythicism on the other.

So, for example, you note that baptism of Jesus as a probable fact. What does that mean? 20% certain? ... 50% certain? ... 75% certain? How might one come to such an estimate?

Never mind. Let's just accept it as fact, so knighted by the criteria of embarrassment. What shall we infer from such an episode? You write:

The gospel accounts wax lyrical to try and diminish the extent to which this act of baptism isn't a subjection of Jesus to John, and so it's unlikely to be ahistorical because it was obviously bothering them. As such, most accept that Jesus was originally a follower of John, as inconvenient or unpalatable as this idea might have been for later Christians.

And John was by most reckonings eschatologically focused, and since the Jesus Movement emerged from the Baptist movement.....well, it isn't hard to make a claim for influence.

But elsewhere we can read:

According to the non-canonical Gospel of the Nazarenes, the idea of being baptized by John came from the mother and brothers of Jesus, and Jesus himself, originally opposed, reluctantly accepted it.[24] Benjamin Urrutia avers that this version is supported by the Criterion of Embarrassment, since followers of Jesus would not have invented an episode in which Jesus changes his mind and comes to accept someone else's plan. Plus, the story came from the community that included the family of Jesus, who would have guaranteed the authenticity of the narrative.[25] [source]

This 'fact', likewise knighted by the criteria of embarrassment, gives little support to your presumed 'fact' of a disciple of John evolving his Jesus Movement from the Baptism Movement.

One additional comment about the criteria of embarrassment. Let us assume:

• that gMk was the first of the Synoptics,
• that it was written in Greek circa 66 CE,
• and that it was written for a Gentile audience.

Udo Schnelle, in his The History and Theology of The New Testament Writings, adds:

Since Mark demonstrably writes for a Christian church (cf. 3.4.4), he can be described as a Greek-speaking Gentile Christian who also has a command of Aramaic, probably a native of Syria who grew to adulthood there.​

It seems to me that to claim a firm grasp of what some anonymous first century C.E. Gentile Christian, operating in the diaspora might find embarrassing is a stretch.

But feel free to differ. Who knows -- you might be right.

Again, my apology for being so dismissive.

 

[roger1440]

The third quest for the historical Jesus (of which all the scholars mentioned in the OP are part) starts with this question: where do we locate him within Second Temple Judaism?

More than likely the Gospels were written after the destruction of the Temple. If I’m right Jesus doesn’t fit within the Second Temple period. He is meant to replace it. Hence, New Covenant. But the New Covenant is not greater than the Old Covenant. The New Covenant is the totality of the Old Covenant. In other words, the Old Covenant is meant to lead the Jews into holiness. The New Covenant is that very holiness, using Jesus as an anthropomorphic literary device.

 

[pearl]

So, for example, you note that baptism of Jesus as a probable fact. What does that mean? 20% certain? ... 50% certain? ... 75% certain? How might one come to such an estimate?

The 'historical' Jesus is found only in the 1st stage of Gospel formation, that of Jesus and his disciples, of which nothing remains, nothing written. Even in the 2nd stage there is oral tradition, but that represents the post resurrection faith of the Apostles. In credible Biblical Criticism fact, certainty, absolute are not part of the language. What scholars present can be no more than a hypotheses, a reconstruction, that enables a 'most probable solution'.

I think there is a consensus of sorts that the historical Jesus was indeed a holy man belonging to the charismatic stream of Judaism, a sage, a renewal movement founder and prophet.

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

The 'historical' Jesus is found only in the 1st stage of Gospel formation, that of Jesus and his disciples, of which nothing remains, nothing written. Even in the 2nd stage there is oral tradition, but that represents the post resurrection faith of the Apostles. In credible Biblical Criticism fact, certainty, absolute are not part of the language.

Very erudite.

I think there is a consensus of sorts that the historical Jesus was indeed a holy man belonging to the charismatic stream of Judaism, a sage, a renewal movement founder and prophet.

People believe all manner of things.

 

[joelr]

Although not a widely accepted theory, I tend to think Jesus was for greater part a creation of the Roman government.

I think Richard Carrier has shown this theory to be false but the idea of Jesus as a myth created by Jews has been shown to be the most probable.

 

[pearl]

Jesus as a myth created by Jews has been shown to be the most probable

Even the predominate scholar of demythologizing the Gospels, Bultmann, does not deny the historicity of Jesus.
Bultmann has it that the historical man named 'Jesus' was an eschatological Jewish prophet whose original disciples(A.D. 30's) knew him only as such, and whom the post-apostolic (i.e. non-apostolic) Hellenistic church (late first century A.D.) deified as the Son of God: "Jesus proclaimed the Kingdom of God...,...the kerygma of the Hellenistic church proclaimed Jesus as the crucified and risen Christ". Bultmann recognized the two predominating cultural influences which shaped each New Testament document: [a] the historical Jesus dressed in the mythical garb of the Gnostic "heavenly redeemer". And from a Jewish NT scholar, Pinchas Lapide, who finds the Resurrection to be an historical event, though does not believe Jesus the awaited Messiah.

 

[sayak83]

@Vouthon , I owe you an apology. My only excuse is that I've been party to Historical Jesus discussions/debates for decades and have referenced Kirby's work on innumerable occasion. Still, they've almost always evolved into verbose and seemingly erudite discussions long on inference and short on facts on one side, and an almost manic mythicism on the other.

So, for example, you note that baptism of Jesus as a probable fact. What does that mean? 20% certain? ... 50% certain? ... 75% certain? How might one come to such an estimate?

Never mind. Let's just accept it as fact, so knighted by the criteria of embarrassment. What shall we infer from such an episode? You write:

​

But elsewhere we can read:

​

This 'fact', likewise knighted by the criteria of embarrassment, gives little support to your presumed 'fact' of a disciple of John evolving his Jesus Movement from the Baptism Movement.

One additional comment about the criteria of embarrassment. Let us assume:

• that gMk was the first of the Synoptics,
• that it was written in Greek circa 66 CE,
• and that it was written for a Gentile audience.

Udo Schnelle, in his The History and Theology of The New Testament Writings, adds:

Since Mark demonstrably writes for a Christian church (cf. 3.4.4), he can be described as a Greek-speaking Gentile Christian who also has a command of Aramaic, probably a native of Syria who grew to adulthood there.​

It seems to me that to claim a firm grasp of what some anonymous first century C.E. Gentile Christian, operating in the diaspora might find embarrassing is a stretch.

But feel free to differ. Who knows -- you might be right.

Again, my apology for being so dismissive.

I don't get you. Both of these narratives try to apply a gloss on the baptism event. The problem is why the supposedly divine sinless Jesus needed a baptism to cleanse sin from John. This "awkward" fact was explained away in different ways between the orthodox and the unorthodox gospels. But there was this embarrassing fact that required explaining. That's what gives the baptism historical weight.

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

I don't get you. Both of these narratives try to apply a gloss on the baptism event. The problem is why the supposedly divine sinless Jesus needed a baptism to cleanse sin from John.

If you say so. I was not aware that all streams of 1st century CE Gentile Christians in the diaspora held Jesus to be divine and sinless, but presumably you know this stuff better than I.

 

[sayak83]

If you say so. I was not aware that all streams of 1st century CE Gentile Christians in the diaspora held Jesus to be divine and sinless, but presumably you know this stuff better than I.

Yes they did. That's what one had to believe in to be a Christian at that time.

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

Yes they did. That's what one had to believe in to be a Christian at that time.

If you say so.