Quest for the historical Jesus

[Quagmire]

I agree completely and have listed 3 of my top reasons for leaning toward a non-historical Jesus (Msg#73). Synoptic gospels, Paul's silence and hero-worship.

Maybe give each it's own thread then? Although tbh I don't see how the third item qualifies as evidence one way or the other.

 

[maxfreakout]

People have been debating the historicity of Jesus for centuries.

Such as? In fact they haven't, people have been assuming uncritically that Jesus was a historical person for centuries, avoiding the debate over whether or not he existed.

I'm not well read enough to give the names of books or authors dealing with the topic myself off the top of my head, but I'm guessing there are at least a few people in here who are and could (if they haven't already done so in this thread).

And just a quick Bing provided this list:

Bibliography on general historical Jesus studies

• Paul Barnett, Messiah: Jesus - the Evidence of History.[This is a simple introductory text which examines the historical evidence for Jesus - whether it be the sources within the New Testament or outside the NT. Barnett discusses what we can know.]*
• Paul Barnett, Finding the Historical Christ. [An expanded and more advanced, although still quite straightforward historical Jesus study by Barnett]
• James K. Beilby and Paul R. Eddy (Editors), The Historical Jesus: Five Views. [A great interaction between some reputable scholars, including Christ Mythicist Robert M. Price.]* James McGrath has reviewed this book, and the contribution by Price here.
• Darrell L. Bock, Studying the Historical Jesus: A Guide to Sources and Methods.
• James D.G. Dunn, Jesus Remembered (Christianity in the Making, Vol. 1).
• Ben Witherington, The Jesus Quest: The Third Search for the Jew of Nazareth. [A review of the major schools within the third quest for the historical Jesus]*

Where did you get the impression that Ehrman is the only modern scholar to address this?

None of these books even mention the mythic/ahistorical Jesus idea, or any 'debate' over Jesus' historicity. As far as i know, Ehrman is the only scholar to actually address the question "did Jesus exist?" explicitly, but please correct me if i am wrong. (CORRECTION the Dunn book does mention some mythic views, but only to dismiss them offhand.)

 

[Desert Snake]

I agree completely and have listed 3 of my top reasons for leaning toward a non-historical Jesus (Msg#73). Synoptic gospels,

Why wouldn't it be the entire gospels, you're not making sense.

[edit] any gospel that doesn't state "this is fiction".

 

[AmbiguousGuy]

Maybe give each it's own thread then? Although tbh I don't see how the third item qualifies as evidence one way or the other.

Yo, that sounds like actual work. I'd rather just put one of them here, to focus us.

ITEM #1: The synoptic gospels. Why do we view Matthew, Mark and Luke as three different books rather than what they seem so obviously to be, which are revisions of the same story? Not retellings. Revisions of the same text, whose sole purpose was to make the story better. That's what revisions are.

I know of no other three books in all of human history which we would accept as separate accounts if they contained such language tracking. Why do we accept Matthew and Luke as anything more than revisions of the Mark text?

As for hero worship, I see that human writers create heroes all the time, and Jesus seems to fit the mold of a created hero. Robin Hood and Paul Bunyan and Beowulf and Jesus may have been inspired by some actual human, but that doesn't make me think of them as 'historical.'

Jesus is a man written about as a super-hero but for whom there is virtually no physical evidene. So I see him more like Paul Bunyan than like Robin Hood.

Sorry if that offends people. I'm just saying how it seems to me.

 

[Desert Snake]

If there was no historical Jesus then the entire NT is completely ficticious.

 

[AmbiguousGuy]

Why wouldn't it be the entire gospels, you're not making sense.

If you don't understand the concept of synoptic gospels, I can see how my message wouldn't make sense to you. Would you mind at least a little research on the concept?

[edit] any gospel that doesn't state "this is fiction".

I'm sorry but I really just can't seem to understand what you are saying much of the time.

Are you thinking that 'synoptic gospel' means 'any gospel which doesn't claim to be fiction'?

 

[Desert Snake]

If you don't understand the concept of synoptic gospels, I can see how my message wouldn't make sense to you. Would you mind at least a little research on the concept?



I'm sorry but I really just can't seem to understand what you are saying much of the time.

Are you thinking that 'synoptic gospel' means 'any gospel which doesn't claim to be fiction'?

No, I'm saying that if the historical Jesus isn't real then the entire NT is fiction.

Perhaps you can't understand what I'm saying because your arguments are so ridiculous.

I'm stating the obvious.

 

[AmbiguousGuy]

If there was no historical Jesus then the entire NT is completely ficticious.

If there was no historical Adam, is Genesis completely fictitous? Maybe so, but lots of people find value in religious writings. Some people find value in Paul's theology, but I'm not sure that Paul consdered Jesus to be historical.

 

[Desert Snake]

If there was no historical Adam, is Genesis completely fictitous? Maybe so, but lots of people find value in religious writings. Some people find value in Paul's theology, but I'm not sure that Paul consdered Jesus to be historical.

I'm not stating otherwise.

 

[AmbiguousGuy]

No, I'm saying that if the historical Jesus isn't real then the entire NT is fiction.

Perhaps you can't understand what I'm saying because your arguments are so ridiculous.

I'm stating the obvious.

In what way do you consider Paul's letters to be fiction?

 

[AmbiguousGuy]

I'm not stating otherwise.

Would you consider addressing my point about the synoptics? I am really curious if anyone has a good explanation for it.

 

[Desert Snake]

In what way do you consider Paul's letters to be fiction?

I'm talking about this in the context of Christianity.

 

[Desert Snake]

Would you consider addressing my point about the synoptics? I am really curious if anyone has a good explanation for it.

I'm not sure what you're argument is.

 

[AmbiguousGuy]

I'm not sure what you're argument is.

See my message #184, just a few messages back. Would you mind addressing it?

Why do we accept Matthew and Luke as different books, when they contain verbatim language from Mark?

Why don't we see them as revisions of Mark instead?

 

[AmbiguousGuy]

I'm talking about this in the context of Christianity.

Why would Paul's letters (books of the NT) be fiction if it turned out that Jesus never existed in first-century Judea?

You said that the whole NT would be fiction if Jesus didn't exist.

 

[maxfreakout]

If there was no historical Jesus then the entire NT is completely ficticious.

The NT is a collection of myths, just like every other ancient religious scripture. Myth is not the same thing as fiction.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

Myth is not the same thing as fiction.

And neither are appropriate designations for the genre of the gospels. Nor would they be equated to myths in the ancient world, even by non-christians. One of the earliest records we have of a pagan maligning Jesus explained the would-be miraculous birth by repeating a claim going back perhaps as far as Jesus himself that his father was a roman soldier and he was an illegitimate child. The same critic also compared Jesus to mythic heroes, but not to say they were equivalent, only to say that the stories about Jesus' miracles weren't particularly special. Indeed, we can see similar stories told about Pythagoras, Alexander the Great, Apollonius of Tyana, Caesar, and others. Mythos didn't mean myth. But what we consider myths of the Greco-Roman world (e.g., the Homeric epics) were similar in ways that don't hold for the gospels. The gospels, for example, aren't in meter. They don't situate the stories they tell in some ambiguous time long, long ago such that nobody can check the facts or would even care to, as the reception of myth was not about the details (the most famous version of Medea's story, in which she kills her own children, was an addition added by Euripides), but about both entertainment and the transmission of culture through a collection of loosely connected, often contradicting body of stories connecting the present to the distant past (usually linking the present to some ancient founding hero/warrior, demi-god, or actual god, or multiple warriors, demi-gods, and/or gods).

The gospels do have literary parallels in the ancient world. In fact, the same stories about Alexander the Great or Caesar which include miracles and so forth are types of ancient biographies, and fall into a (rather nebulous) genre to which the gospels belong.

 

[Repox]

This seems sort of contradictory, if you think that Jesus is God then we aren't dealing with two Gods.
As to the OT, it is monotheistic.

Assuming God is two entities, both equal in power, glory and holiness, then Jesus would be two entities. Since I have no evidence of God as duality, I'll let the rest of you debated historical Jesus.

Also, there is no evidence from the Old Testament.

 

[Desert Snake]

Assuming God is two entities, both equal in power, glory and holiness, then Jesus would be two entities.

I have a theory without evidence from the Old Testament.

True, I wasn't clear on what you meant by "Jesus is God".

 

[outhouse]

And neither are appropriate designations for the genre of the gospels. Nor would they be equated to myths in the ancient world, even by non-christians. .

But what is we run with views that it was allegory, told in parables, metaphors, poems and songs, and in place mythology was used as well as history?

What if the authors wrote mythologically while trying to focus on what was important for them.?