Historical Jesus

[Craig B]

No, he doesn't. He say that the Jesus described in the bible is impossible. But it's not the crucifixion that makes him impossible. Obviously, lots of people were actually crucified.

The resurrection on the other hand...

No, that's what I say. Here is what Darat says, with my emphasis and comments where necessary

My way is to look at the stories and when I do so I see stories about an impossible person. And we know impossible people can't exist apart from being characters in fiction.

Jesus is an impossible person, not "a possible person with some impossible things said about him in unreliable biographies". And impossible people exist only in fiction.

We also know this character lived in a fictional world, not our world.

But Jesus was crucified in our existing world, albeit long ago, on the order of a person for whose historicity we have literary and documentary evidence

so everything about the character of Jesus is consistent with him being a fictional creation.

There are no possible and impossible. Everything is consistent with him being a fictional creation. Therefore nothing is consistent with his real existence.

 

[Darat]

Darat says it

I think you are struggling to keep the different Jesus's straight in your mind. The Jesus in the christian biblical texts is an impossible character, as you have also posted, no one can raise the dead, no one is executed and then returns to life and so on.

Of course we have no such information among the tiny amount of stuff left to us from ancient times.

Why "of course"? It is astonishing what little bits of evidence survive down the centuries, some of it about the most mundane everyday lives of ancient people so it would not be fantastical for there to be an account preserved in some Roman record about a Jesus being executed. We have such information about other people being executed.

The evidence is from many sources, but they have all been canonised into Christian scripture or are embedded in scriptural texts, like the Synoptic Sayings Source. They have to be sorted out by critical undertakings applied to the text.

As Hans has said - there is pretty much an endless numbers of Jesuses that you can create by picking and choosing as you do what bits are "fact" and what are fiction from the biblical Jesus.

So let's say we re-construct one of these possible Jesuses from the biblical texts. What that does not do is provide one iota of evidence that 1) such a "real" Jesus did exist and 2) that it is a description of the Jesus that inspired the origins of Christianity as we know it today.

You still need to have evidence that links your reconstructed assumed to be the real Jesus to the biblical Jesus to be able to say a historical Jesus existed.

Given we know that religions are often founded by their originators based on pure fiction I see no explanation for the origins of Christianity that requires an actual real Jesus to have ever existed. Indeed one could argue that it would be an exception for Christianity to have been founded based on a real person.

So until we have some evidence that requires a real person to have existed I'm happy with my stance that there is no evidence of a real Jesus who originated Christianity. If such evidence turns up then of course I would change my mind.

 

[RecoveringYuppy]

I can't make sense of your post Craig B. In particular I can't tell if your words are meant to be your opinion or your (mis?)interpretation of Darat's words you are quoting.

 

[Darat]

No, that's what I say. Here is what Darat says, with my emphasis and comments where necessary
Jesus is an impossible person, not "a possible person with some impossible things said about him in unreliable biographies". And impossible people exist only in fiction.
But Jesus was crucified in our existing world, albeit long ago, on the order of a person for whose historicity we have literary and documentary evidence
There are no possible and impossible. Everything is consistent with him being a fictional creation. Therefore nothing is consistent with his real existence.

I really can't unpick what you are trying to convey in the above. Hopefully my post above this one will help you understand my opinions.

 

[Craig B]

I think you are struggling to keep the different Jesus's straight in your mind. The Jesus in the christian biblical texts is an impossible character, as you have also posted, no one can raise the dead, no one is executed and then returns to life and so on.

I have also posted that people can have brothers called James, be considered insane by their mothers, and be executed. These gthings are in the BIble and are not impossible. So we have sources attributing both possible and impossible things to Jesus, which makes him a possible character with unreliable biographers. You say he's impossible, only belongs infiction, and not in the real world. You have said that;don't deny it. Now you say you would change your mind if required, which is odd to say about an impossible person who can exist only in fiction. What you are in fact doing is saying contradictory things that "cover all the bases" as the Americans say.

Why "of course"? It is astonishing what little bits of evidence survive down the centuries, some of it about the most mundane everyday lives of ancient people so it would not be fantastical for there to be an account preserved in some Roman record about a Jesus being executed. We have such information about other people being executed.

Yes, we even have the body of a crucified person. One out of how many? On the day of Jesus' Crucifixion we are told, with what degree of veracity we don't know, that four people were due to be put to death. Jesus, the thieves and Barabbas, who was allegedly reprieved. These executions were performed on a mass scale. What evidence is left to us?

We know how many legions there were, and how often soldiers were paid, so we know that millions of pay advice notices were prepared. Three examples survive, I have read, out of these millions generated over the centuries. We have the scanty debris of a vanished civilisation, that's all.

 

[dejudge]

I reject the virgin birth story because it is impossible. Even if it was mentioned by Mark I would reject it. However it is one of the elaborations of the Jesus story that was inserted subsequently to Mark. To Paul as you have said, "Jesus" as a supernatural being. appeared at the resurrection. To Mark, at the baptism. They need no birth stories and have none. To the later Synoptics Jesus appeared at conception. Earlier and earlier. To John he was with God at the creation. We can see this increasing supernatural singularity, and its retrojection in time, appearing before our eyes as we read later and later texts. Finally in postscriptural times Pliny tells us that Christians were singing hymns to Jesus as to a god, so apotheosis had been completed. But it took time to develop.

You are only confirming that the NT is not historically credible.

The very account of the baptism of Jesus in gMark with the Holy Ghost bird is fiction.

Every event with respect to Jesus in gMark and the Epistles are either impossible, implausible, fiction or without historical corroboration.

The writers called Paul are liars and deceivers. These deceivers not only lied about seeing Jesus alive after he was dead and buried but also lied about hearing from him after he was deceased.

In addition, Acts of the Apostles in the NT, a most fictional account, although mentioning Paul over a hundred times shows no awareness at all of a single Epistle written by the Saul/Paul character.

The claim that Pliny the younger wrote about Christians does not corroborate that Jesus of Nazareth was an actual figure of history. You ought to have known that people were singing Psalms [songs] to their myth Gods for hundreds of years before and after people called Christians.

So these sources are lies and fiction. That is clear. Thank you.

Why are you using sources that are clear lies and fiction to support your plausibility argument?

 

[Darat]

I have also posted that people can have brothers called James, be considered insane by their mothers, and be executed. These gthings are in the BIble and are not impossible. So we have sources attributing both possible and impossible things to Jesus, which makes him a possible character with unreliable biographers. You say he's impossible, only belongs infiction, and not in the real world. You have said that;don't deny it. Now you say you would change your mind if required, which is odd to say about an impossible person who can exist only in fiction. What you are in fact doing is saying contradictory things that "cover all the bases" as the Americans say.
...snip...

This seems to be an emotive topic for you so perhaps that is what is preventing you from understanding what I have posted?

I'll try again:

In the biblical texts we have a Jesus that could not have been real because that Jesus dies and is resurrected (to use just one example of one of the impossible things about that Jesus).

Do you agree with that?

 

[HansMustermann]

Yes, we even have the body of a crucified person. One out of how many? On the day of Jesus' Crucifixion we are told, with what degree of veracity we don't know, that four people were due to be put to death. Jesus, the thieves and Barabbas, who was allegedly reprieved. These executions were performed on a mass scale. What evidence is left to us?

We know how many legions there were, and how often soldiers were paid, so we know that millions of pay advice notices were prepared. Three examples survive, I have read, out of these millions generated over the centuries. We have the scanty debris of a vanished civilisation, that's all.

1. The problem is that a Jesus whose only defining characteristic is that he got crucified, is not much of a historical Jesus. Because it's so generic, that by sheer probabilities alone, there'd be hundreds of other crucified Jesuseseseses. It's like identifying what novel I have in mind (War And Peace) by just saying "it's about Russia."

You have to narrow it down a bit for it to actually have any value.

2. And there start the problems.

For a start, which of the half a dozen or so cherrypickable Jesuseseseses is yours? What evidence do you have that it's your cherrypicking and not that of some other (and probably more reputable) scholar.

Second, most cherrypickable stuff would make him actually noteworthy. Sure, they didn't record everyone who was nailed, but for example Josephus made a point of mentioning (A) messiah claimants, because he was making the point that those were false, Vespasian was the real thing, (B) anyone speaking against Jerusalem or the Temple, for the same reason, down to mentioning a random peasant who did so, (C) conflicts with the Roman governors, because of the point he's making that the Jews were just another people, and weren't creating friction with the governors just because of being unreasonable religious nutcases on the whole, etc. A guy actually creating a major scene in the Temple? How'd he never hear about that one?

And that's not even counting other ancient authors who should have been very interested. Philo of Alexandria for example is THE guy who wrote the theology of John, namely the whole Logos thing being a second deity and firstborn of God. And around Passover he might even have been right there on site in Jerusalem. Don't you think he'd be VERY interested if someone claimed to BE his Logos, like Jesus does in John? Hell, even if the sect of some recent dead guy claimed that posthumously about their guru, don't you think he'd be interested?

E.g., the claim to be THE son of man, when that's in both Hebrew and Aramaic just a kenning for "man", and only exists as a special title in a foreign language and in apocrypha... don't you think SOMEONE would be interested in that kind of radically different theology?

3. Even the crucifixion as described in the Bible takes a massive leap of faith to take at face value.

It's a highly irregular proceeding that
- doesn't fit Jewish law,
- breaks Roman law in the process too (more than once: giving a body to a stranger was also a capital offense),
- doesn't fit the historical character of Pilate,
- doesn't fit the historical character of Caiaphas,
- is in the wrong place (turning Jesus unwittingly into a tropaeum, a symbol of VICTORY, by making it on the hill),
- breaks the law again by making an innocent carry the cross in a crucifixion procession,
- is for an offense that would have him killed or arrested on the spot instead of the next day, yet somehow Pilate finds nothing punishable about it
- has just one convict be given a different coup de grace than the standard Roman coup de grace, for no obvious reason, and nobody even asks why
etc.

And that's not including other details that require a leap of faith, such as that Jesus debates priests in the Temple and whatnot, but the next day they need to bribe Judas to identify the guy. Or that one of Jesus's followers actually commits assault with a deadly weapon, but I guess everyone forgives and forgets, because it is never mentioned ever again. Etc.

So did Mark know ANYTHING about that crucifixion? More importantly again, when someone writes a dozen things that are wrong about an event, why would you believe anything else about that event from him?

 

[Oystein]

Uhm no.
Having at least six siblings is perfectly mundane - plenty of people in antiquity had at least six siblings.
Whether or not Mark writes about six siblings has absolutely zero effect on the veracity or plausibility of the eternal virgin doctrine or the Holy Ghost dogma: Both have zero plausibility and possibility, with or without the mention of six siblings.

No they don't.

Huh? Which they don't what? Are you saying the two doctrines do NOT have zero plausibility and possibility from the get-go? I.e.you think they have some non-zero plausibility and possibility from the get-go?

The eternal virginity dogma vanishes at once, and the idea that Mary had one divine child and also at least six mundane ones or that the Holy Ghost had his wicked way with Mary seven or more times, is laughable;

The eternal virginity dogma is laughable with 1 or 7 or 666 children.

and it is resolutely eschewed by the churches despite the plain message of the gospel texts.

Now that's a problem of the churches. I was talking about the Jesus stories in the NT.

You don't really think that this reductio ad absurdum has no implication for the plausibility of the doctrine.

But yes, yes I do think it has no implication for the plausibility of the doctrine.
The plausibility is zero with Jesus as an only child, and it is zero with Jesus having 6 siblings. It makes no difference.

You're "jest kiddin'" In a desire to make a point at any cost about the alleged unreality of Jesus. Presumably because you believe that if you admit his historicity you will be mistaken for a Christian, which is nonsense.

Wowowowow, you do a lot of presuming. And you are presuming it all wrong.
You also lost the plot.
I wasn't making a point about the unreality of Jesus. I was making a point about the mundaneness (mundacity? mundanity?) of one gospel inserting six more children.

 

[Craig B]

You are only confirming that the NT is not historically credible.

The very account of the baptism of Jesus in gMark with the Holy Ghost bird is fiction.

Every event with respect to Jesus in gMark and the Epistles are either impossible, implausible, fiction or without historical corroboration.



In addition, Acts of the Apostles in the NT, a most fictional account, although mentioning Paul over a hundred times shows no awareness at all of a single Epistle written by the Saul/Paul character.

The claim that Pliny the younger wrote about Christians does not corroborate that Jesus of Nazareth was an actual figure of history. You ought to have known that people were singing Psalms [songs] to their myth Gods for hundreds of years before and after people called Christians.

No doubt, but Pliny was commissioned to write a report about Christians specifically and he described what he learned through his investigation. Jesus was now a god. What happened hundreds of years previously was not what Pliny had been commanded by Trajan to investigate, so it is not relevant. And it is only a claim, that he conducted an investigation, is it? Pliny didn't exist and his report to Trajan is a Fiction concocted by a gang of unidentified miscreants for unknown purposes? Did Trajan exist? Perhaps his surviving coins are the work of a gang of forgers.

Why are you using sources that are clear lies and fiction to support your plausibility argument?

I am using sources that YOU believe to be lies and fiction

The writers called Paul are liars and deceivers. These deceivers not only lied about seeing Jesus alive after he was dead and buried but also lied about hearing from him after he was deceased.​

you have told me. It is significant that you believe the epistles were written by a gang of liars for purposes of deception. That is not a mainstream view, and it requires explanation which of course you don't provide. What is the origin and motive of this gang? What did they do with poor Paul, if Paul ever existed. Did he? Presumably he was just invented by the liars to cover their deceit. Then the disciples must be a gang of liars as well, and not honest but deluded, unless Paul invented them too. Did Cephas and James exist or are they also inventions? If so, who invented them? The Paul gang?

 

[dejudge]

No doubt, but Pliny was commissioned to write a report about Christians specifically and he described what he learned through his investigation. Jesus was now a god. What happened hundreds of years previously was not what Pliny had been commanded by Trajan to investigate, so it is not relevant. And it is only a claim, that he conducted an investigation, is it? Pliny didn't exist and his report to Trajan is a Fiction concocted by a gang of unidentified miscreants for unknown purposes? Did Trajan exist? Perhaps his surviving coins are the work of a gang of forgers.

You very well ought to know that the supposed Pliny letter to Trajan about Christians does not mention anyone called Jesus and does not claim Jesus was now a god.

In addition, it cannot be assumed that all people called Christians believed the Jesus stories when Christian writers admitted there were many heretics and heresies even since the time of Claudius.

I am using sources that YOU believe to be lies and fiction

The writers called Paul are liars and deceivers. These deceivers not only lied about seeing Jesus alive after he was dead and buried but also lied about hearing from him after he was deceased.​

you have told me. It is significant that you believe the epistles were written by a gang of liars for purposes of deception. That is not a mainstream view, and it requires explanation which of course you don't provide. What is the origin and motive of this gang? What did they do with poor Paul, if Paul ever existed. Did he? Presumably he was just invented by the liars to cover their deceit. Then the disciples must be a gang of liars as well, and not honest but deluded, unless Paul invented them too. Did Cephas and James exist or are they also inventions? If so, who invented them? The Paul gang?

It is quite illogical and utterly useless to assume Paul and Jesus were figures of history because plenty people believe they were.

You will never ever be able to present a single shred of historical evidence for Paul and Jesus from your mainstream or any other "stream".


Since at least the 4th century it was already known that Paul and Jesus were without historical corroboration by well known writers who mentioned events in the time of Tiberius and Claudius.

To historicise Paul and Jesus numerous writings were forged or corrupted.

 

[Craig B]

You very well ought to know that the supposed Pliny letter to Trajan about Christians does not mention anyone called Jesus and does not claim Jesus was now a god.

In addition, it cannot be assumed that all people called Christians believed the Jesus stories when Christian writers admitted there were many heretics and heresies even since the time of Claudius.



It is quite illogical and utterly useless to assume Paul and Jesus were figures of history because plenty people believe they were.

You will never ever be able to present a single shred of historical evidence for Paul and Jesus from your mainstream or any other "stream".


Since at least the 4th century it was already known that Paul and Jesus were without historical corroboration by well known writers who mentioned events in the time of Tiberius and Claudius.

To historicise Paul and Jesus numerous writings were forged or corrupted.

This isn't a study of religious origins; it is a delusional conspiracy theory. Not only is evrrything a lie, but people don't even believe the lies, forgeries and corruption from which their religion was formed. This is a freakish marginal position, and it is not surprising that "plenty people" reject it.

 

[David Mo]

"Thirty years later" than when, by the way, if Jesus never lived?

Thirty years after his hypothetical death.
What I was stressing was the difficulty of establishing the facts and sayings of Jesus the Galilean, even though we admit that the person existed.

 

[David Mo]

And that's a big IF, as there are problems with even that.

1. For example a "disturbance in the temple", much less the attack in the synoptics, and much less the ARMED attack in John, would have been dealt with on the spot by the whole cohort of armed soldiers posted there as guards to prevent exactly that kind of thing from happening. There would be no last supper or anything.

2. It would also be a noteworthy event. Josephus even writes about some random schmuck who was arrested and beaten up for prophecising against Jerusalem on the STREETS. Which was significant for Josephus since the point he repeatedly is trying to make is that the the destruction of the temple and the coming of Vespasian as the messiah were God's will and prophecized ahead of time. Also, because the Jews had altered the shape of the temple. So any crazy guy speaking cryptic prophecies against Jerusalem was been of GREAT interest to Josephus as supporting his point. A guy even speaking in the temple against what the temple had become, doubly so before passover, and doubly so one actually prophecising the destruction of the temple like in John, would have been of even greater interest to Josephus. Yet apparently he's never heard of that Jesus guy.

3. But let's even talk about WHAT would Jesus even say against the temple there. Having merchants right in front of the actual temple (it was only in the courtyard, mind you) was just how it had always worked, and because what God through Moses had demanded that the people sacrifice there. There were all sorts of animals required for various sacrifices for occasions as mundane as that the wife had her period, and a peasant couldn't be expected to haul his own goat or whatever from Bethlehem to Jerusalem each time. A Jesus who accused the Jews of not keeping the laws of Moses had no real reason to rail against people buying a fresh required sacrifice right in front of the temple, in order to stick to the Law.

And it's not a view we find represented or attributed historically to any of the Jewish groups that people try to fit Jesus in.

The view that the whole temple is a house of a god, and any public affairs had to be kept outside was in fact a Roman not a Jewish view. Mark is accepted as having written in Rome, so, yeah, we can take an educated guess that the whole thing came from Mark not from any Jew named Jesus.

4. "if there was such a person called Jesus" is actually another thing that's not clear at all. Paul for example seems to say that his messiah got the name Jesus AFTER his death and resurrection. In effect he BECAME Jesus because of his sacrifice. It's his apotheosis name. Which as I was saying, is the same name as Joshua, the guy whose return as a messiah a bunch of other guys were awaiting.

So for all we know, the guy who inspired it all could have even been called Alexander, and people only started to refer to him as the returned Jesus after his death.

The anti-Mystist replies that perhaps the evangelists are swelling up what was just a heated discussion.
How can we know if it was like that or if it is a total invention of the evangelists?

 

[Craig B]

Thirty years after his hypothetical death.
What I was stressing was the difficulty of establishing the facts and sayings of Jesus the Galilean, even though we admit that the person existed.

At least, if he lived he had a date and circumstance of death. If he never lived, he had no date and no cause of death, or his imagined lifetime could have been in any period at all. As it is, his magic virgin birth stories disagree on the date of birth, Matthew says it was in the reign of Herod - who died in 4 BCE - while Luke puts it in the year of the Census, which was 6 CE. Ten years' discrepancy. In the gospels nobody even suggests a date for the crucifixion.

 

[HansMustermann]

Well, I'm ok with the idea that maybe some guy -- who may or may not have been called Jesus -- was going to the temple with his pal Peter, and Peter slipped in some goat dung, to which our guy muttered that maybe those guys could just flippin' set their stall OUTSIDE the temple courtyard. And maybe 30 years later this got embellished to "yeah, he actually drove them out." It can happen.

My problem is that that's not the Jesus the Bible describes, even if you take out the supernatural stuff. So is it really a "historical Jesus"? If you change enough identifying attributes of someone or something, are you really talking about the same person?

My canonical example is Lovecraft's mad Arab called Abdul Al Hazred. We know who inspired that character. It's Lovecraft's mom. It's even based on her maiden name Hazard. But she wasn't a man, wasn't Arabic, didn't live in the 8'th century, as far as we know never found the ruins of an ancient city, as far as we know didn't actually write the Kitab Al Azif, a.k.a. Necronomicon, didn't die in Damascus, and we're pretty sure she didn't die by being lifted in the air and devoured by an invisible demon in front of a terrified crowd.

So my question to the HJ gang would be this simple question: would you call Lovecraft's mom "the historical Abdul Al Hazred". If yes, then I will cheerfully grant that there might have been a Jesus that was about that historical. If no, well, then that's my problem with that identification.

 

[David Mo]

This isn't a study of religious origins; it is a delusional conspiracy theory. Not only is evrrything a lie, but people don't even believe the lies, forgeries and corruption from which their religion was formed. This is a freakish marginal position, and it is not surprising that "plenty people" reject it.

Conspiracy theory is the weakest part of mysticism.
A hard core of counterfeiters would have built a god with a very different image. Suffering, he may be, but not humiliated in his dignity. Like a block and not with so many contradictions. As Abdul Alhazred, the Mad Arab.
The form of New Testament literature refers to a collective work with fissures and contradictions, with loose fringes and fillings, typical of the uncontrolled evolution of a folk legend. But a legend does not have to be the fruit of a conscious conspiracy, but a collective-popular creation. In that case there is no reason to suppose that this popular creation rests or does not rest on a real figure.

 

[David Mo]

Well, I'm ok with the idea that maybe some guy -- who may or may not have been called Jesus -- was going to the temple with his pal Peter, and Peter slipped in some goat dung, to which our guy muttered that maybe those guys could just flippin' set their stall OUTSIDE the temple courtyard. And maybe 30 years later this got embellished to "yeah, he actually drove them out." It can happen.

You're very "optimistic". It may be possible to talk about the "historicity" of Jesus. Peter's, historicity and much more of his wanderings and speeches, seems to me so inevitably wrapped up in legend that to say whether or not it existed is pure speculation.

 

[David Mo]

You will never ever be able to present a single shred of historical evidence for Paul and Jesus from your mainstream or any other "stream".

This does not mean that Jesus did not exist, but that, due to his characteristics, he is not a "historical" character.

Keep in mind that the same criteria you use to affirm that Jesus of Galilee did not exist would disqualify the existence of a certain Thales of Miletus. However, no one doubts that such a philosopher existed. Where is the difference?

 

[HansMustermann]

You're very "optimistic". It may be possible to talk about the "historicity" of Jesus. Peter's, historicity and much more of his wanderings and speeches, seems to me so inevitably wrapped up in legend that to say whether or not it existed is pure speculation.

Well, I did say "maybe".