Historical Jesus, Biblical Jesus

[Schrodinger's Outlaw]

well mythicists have Paul and all the gospels as evidence.
oh yeah, and a rational analysis of josephus and tacitus among others

[Minimalist]

The difference, again, is you see Jesus portrayed as a god, while I see only a man.

But Free, for 1,500 years the godly do-gooder was the only portrayal of jesus that was allowed.  You could be turned to charcoal for disputing that.  This HJ position that you now profess is a modern contrivance designed to salvage something from the mythology of the past.

[mordant]

I am still reading one of your cited papers, but what do you mean "based on an existing tradition, something similar to Acts 10:43" in this context ... that Acts predates Mark, and Mark is based in part on Acts? Most dating of authorship places Mark at least a decade or so ahead of Acts. Or are you saying both cite a yet earlier oral tradition?

I mean it's a witness to an earlier non-Marcan passion tradition. Yes it's written later than Mark, so is Matthew and Luke but they both used a source known as Q which contained earlier material - in the same way in a number of places the author of Luke-Acts has included a number of passion traditions from other sources (Acts 2:22-36, 3:13-15, 4:10, 4:27-28, 5:29-32, 10:39-43, 13:27-31). I would say those represent at minimum 3 or 4 "independent" passion-resurrection traditions. We don't know when Acts is written, but for argument's sake let's say about 95-105 CE and that Mark was written around 75 CE. That would put it about 20 or 30 years later - quite literally one generation later. Some of the traditions Luke is including in Acts could have changed in that time, heck he could have changed them himself if he wanted, but the fact that they're self-contradictory and they lack the themes of the Marcan/Lucan passions I think they represent a witness to a handful of pre-Marcan passion traditions.

It's actually a shame that in all of those there's only one burial tradition - however there are other burial traditions in the non-canonical material. This is what I expect there was because I accept what most historical-critical scholars think happened after the crucifixion - which is that the disciples and other followers of Jesus fled to Galilee and left him to die alone. Then after they have a christophany, or christophanies, they came to believe he had been risen. All of that is standard theory, and would be accepted by almost any historical-critical scholar today. I contend that because of this they wondered about how and where he was buried. This is the context that makes a tradition like Acts 13:29 make sense - buried by his persecutors - the disciples knew they were in Galilee, knew they didn't bury him so a legend has developed that after they fled his persecutors buried him. But this would have meant a dishonourable burial, so at least in some circles they said "in a tomb" which would give Jesus an honourable burial, however unlikely, in that tradition.

The reading I've proposed as mentioned answers other questions. Who would invent women's testimony? Well no one. Mark didn't have them testify at all. That was an accident of redaction that happens in the other gospels that are dissatisfied with the way Mark handled the followers of Jesus - both the disciples and the women.


In terms of the historical Jesus it means our knowledge about him ends once he's crucified. There's no good reason to accept Mark's theatrics and allegorical account of it that has him die of the course of six hours, the historical Jesus may have taken days to die and we can never know unfortunately.

Work is brutal so far this week and so have not yet had time to delve into this like I'd wish. For now I will just say that inferring redactions and traditions and source documents -- even Q, really -- has always struck me as treading on thin ice, as it's very easy to see what you need / want to see, as this is a situation ripe for straight-up confirmation bias. I can kind of buy the Q thing at least provisionally but don't know how comfortable I am divining as much from Mark and Acts as folks are doing here. It's a lot like historical Jesus -- interesting, even tantalizing clues teasing at a plausible possibility -- but at the end of the day, nothing you can really hang your hat on with certainty and so therefore to my mind not actionable, beyond calling into question traditional interpretations as well.

Still, I will hopefully get through one or two of these citations by the weekend and circle back.

[Free]

The difference, again, is you see Jesus portrayed as a god, while I see only a man.

But Free, for 1,500 years the godly do-gooder was the only portrayal of jesus that was allowed.  You could be turned to charcoal for disputing that.  This HJ position that you now profess is a modern contrivance designed to salvage something from the mythology of the past.

On the contrary, the modern historical view is designed to bring truth to the lies. No man walked on the water, rose from the dead, or performed any miracles. Those are merely the tall tales of early Greek Christians regarding a Jewish Rabbi who got crucified. There is no magic or mystery with this Jesus fellow. It's like, 

"Dear Christians. 

We've exposed your 2000 years of bullshit with actual factual history. Sorry about your luck.

Thank you, have a nice fucking day."

[Minimalist]

Dear xtians,

We exposed your bullshit god long ago using your own words and some scientific observation.  No need for any Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Christ and their little shitball kid jesus.  No one else needed an actual human and neither do you.

Atheists


See how easy that is.



The problem with your attempt to dumb down the story to something that you can intellectually live with is that it would also work for Goldilocks and the 3 Bears.

[Free]

Dear xtians,

We exposed your bullshit god long ago using your own words and some scientific observation.  No need for any Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Christ and their little shitball kid jesus.  No one else needed an actual human and neither do you.

Atheists


See how easy that is.



The problem with your attempt to dumb down the story to something that you can intellectually live with is that it would also work for Goldilocks and the 3 Bears.

And the problem with your position is that any knowledgeable Christian can look at your Mythicist theory and tear it to shreds by merely using the same evidence that historians have. 

But they cannot tear apart my position at all.

[Minimalist]

Your position is wishful thinking.

There "must" have been a human jesus and, oh look, if I discount 99% of the story I found him.

And you simply cannot face that reality.



A "knowledgeable xtian" ( something of an oxymoron, there) thinks that his godboy performed miracles and came back from the dead or he is not a xtian.  He is some form of heretical asshole.

As Caesar said "men willingly believe what they wish were true."  That has always been your problem.

[Free]

Your position is wishful thinking.

There "must" have been a human jesus and, oh look, if I discount 99% of the story I found him.

And you simply cannot face that reality.



A "knowledgeable xtian" ( something of an oxymoron, there) thinks that his godboy performed miracles and came back from the dead or he is not a xtian.  He is some form of heretical asshole.

As Caesar said "men willingly believe what they wish were true."  That has always been your problem.

It's not about "there must have been ..." anything.

It's always been about what the evidence logically and reasonably indicates, and what it does not logically and reasonably indicate.

We all know the miracle stories are bullshit. Once you take that all away- because it defies logic and reason- you are left with a man in the gospels who get's crucified by Pontius Pilate. You see that same theme in Tacitus, Paul, Josephus, Celsum, etc. 

Why?

The Romans viewed the Christians as wanna-be Jews, and since they hated the Jews, they likewise hated the Christians. Therefore, the Romans have no reason whatsoever to propagate any Christian bullshit as part of their Roman history. To think otherwise just shows ignorance and blatant fucking stupidity, and those who assert Christian influence- and do so without evidence- get fucking kicked to the curb for simply being fucking retarded.

I already don't like stupid people, and I won't tolerate it at all among fellow atheists. If you are going to say stupid shit, I am going to fuck you up for it in the exact same way you will fuck up a Christian for their stupid shit.

I expect better from atheists.

[Minimalist]

You are highly selective about what you consider "evidence." 

If some jesus freak says it you fall for it.  If not.  They aren't "real scholars."

The propaganda that the early church put out has certainly destroyed your ability to think.

Why are you so scared to find out that jesus isn't "special."  He's bullshit like every other fucking god.

[Free]

You are highly selective about what you consider "evidence." 

If some jesus freak says it you fall for it.  If not.  They aren't "real scholars."

The propaganda that the early church put out has certainly destroyed your ability to think.

Why are you so scared to find out that jesus isn't "special."  He's bullshit like every other fucking god.

Let me show you something.

Tacitus - Annals 15:44

"Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judæa, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular. "

Now, why is that not evidence to support the existence of Jesus who was called Christ?

I don't want to see unsupported assertions. I don't want to see conspiracy theories.

I want FACTS brought forth by EVIDENCE.

So show me EVIDENCE to support your position that this should not be considered as evidence to support the existence of Jesus as an ordinary man who got crucified.

That's how this thing works. It doesn't work with throwing fucking spaghetti against the wall to see if it sticks, because with me, if it aint cooked at all, it aint gonna stick and will break into a thousand pieces. And if it only breaks into 500 pieces, I will kick the shit out of it until I can count 1000 pieces.

Therefore, give me evidence to support your position that what Tacitus says isn't evidence.

[Minimalist]

Now, why is that not evidence to support the existence of Jesus who was called Christ?

Well for one thing it doesn't mention any fucker named "jesus."  Neither does any other Roman writer until the late 2d century. 

Suetonius wrote about Chrestus and Tacitus' sole remaining manuscript refers to Chrestianos not Christianos before some medieval scribe tampered with it and don't even bother with your "it's just spelling" horseshit because we've gone around that circle enough so that you know I think you are full of shit.

You were the kind of kid who would never think to color outside of the lines, weren't you?  Again.  Why so afraid to question the existence of a god you don't believe in?

[Free]

Now, why is that not evidence to support the existence of Jesus who was called Christ?

Well for one thing it doesn't mention any fucker named "jesus." 

The elements are there to easily determine he was speaking about Jesus. We have Christ and the Chrestians/Christians, as well as Pontius Pilate, and that it happened in Judea. 

Neither does any other Roman writer until the late 2d century.

That has nothing to do with the evidence presented.

 

Suetonius wrote about Chrestus and Tacitus' sole remaining manuscript refers to Chrestianos not Christianos before some medieval scribe tampered with it and don't even bother with your "it's just spelling" horseshit because we've gone around that circle enough so that you know I think you are full of shit.

And we already know with actual historical evidence that Chrestianos was variant spelling of Christianos. We also know from historical records that Chrestus was a variant spelling of Christus.

My argument has evidence, and your argument does not. That's exactly why I take the historicist position. I will always take the side of evidence, not assertion. Everyone should.

So why should I or anyone accept your unevidenced argument?

You were the kind of kid who would never think to color outside of the lines, weren't you?  Again.  Why so afraid to question the existence of a god you don't believe in?

That's an ad hom, not an argument.

[Aractus]

Work is brutal so far this week and so have not yet had time to delve into this like I'd wish. For now I will just say that inferring redactions and traditions and source documents -- even Q, really -- has always struck me as treading on thin ice, as it's very easy to see what you need / want to see, as this is a situation ripe for straight-up confirmation bias. I can kind of buy the Q thing at least provisionally but don't know how comfortable I am divining as much from Mark and Acts as folks are doing here. It's a lot like historical Jesus -- interesting, even tantalizing clues teasing at a plausible possibility -- but at the end of the day, nothing you can really hang your hat on with certainty and so therefore to my mind not actionable, beyond calling into question traditional interpretations as well.

Still, I will hopefully get through one or two of these citations by the weekend and circle back.

Redaction criticism is just about asking what is the intention of the author:

"Redaction criticism operates on the principle that Mark, or a pre-Marcan collector, has chosen or created the material in his Gospel for reasons important to his broad theological concern." (Scroggs & Groff 1973 p.532).

You don't need to appeal to hypothetical texts, but they can be useful in explaining something as well. Also the gospel of Mark is just as hypothetical as the Q source. What we call the gospel of Mark doesn't exist in antiquity - it has been recovered through textual criticism from later witnesses of the text. We have a critical text that recovers an earlier form than any found in a single manuscript. What's interesting is that we don't have that for the Hebrew Bible, yet. But we will in about 20 years from now because there's a SBL project to get it done. Now you might say "what's the point" - well the point is we don't yet have a text that is the earliest recoverable form - for example take the book of Isaiah. There were two main witnesses to it - the Leningrad codex (the 11th century Masoretic Text), written in Hebrew, and the Hexaplaric LXX found in the great uncial codices (4th and 5th century texts in Greek). But with the dead sea scrolls two copies were found written in Hebrew and much earlier than the Leningrad codex:

"The Dead Sea Scrolls have revealed to us two texts of the Book of Isaiah. One, written in an archaic square script, deviates considerably from our MT in spelling, in grammar and in contents;¹ the other, written in a latter square script, is practically identical with the MT, to judge from the scanty specimens so far published.²" (Segal 1953).

The Great Isaiah Scroll is 1QIsa^a, and it's mostly identical to the MT. The other one is 1QIsa^b and it's believed to be a witness to an earlier form of the text (yes that's still the opinion today). Sadly, while 1QIsa^a is virtually extant, 1QIsa^b is not. So I would imagine within 20 years we will no longer talk about the book of Isaiah as we have it from the Leningrad codex as the "authoritative form", we'll talk about a hypothetical document that's been edited, and that will be what bible translators will use when translating the book. Same for every other Hebrew book.

Going back to redaction criticism, it's helpful to enquiries about the author's intention to know what their source was, or, what kind of source they had. As Spong discusses one of Mark's sources, surprisingly for most Christians I'm sure, was the Hebrew bible. You can't write an accurate account of 40 year ago history from the Old Testament, nor would you try to. He must have been using it for a theological purpose, for example to show that Jesus has "fulfilled the scriptures", not for the purpose of writing an accurate historiography of the ministry of Jesus.

[Minimalist]

And we already know with actual historical evidence that Chrestianos was variant spelling of Christianos.

Bullshit.  You and your apologist buddies assert that.

What we know from archaeology is that the name Chestus and the term Chrestianos far predate the invention of your pal, jesus.  Sorry but you are going to have to fucking face reality some day.  Let me know when you are ready to do so.

[Free]

And we already know with actual historical evidence that Chrestianos was variant spelling of Christianos.

Bullshit.  You and your apologist buddies assert that.

Nope, no one asserts anything. Rather, we conclusively prove it with actual evidence as demonstrated at the link below.

http://www.mountainman.com.au/essenes/ch...stians.htm

Denying the existence of evidence will never deny the evidence exists.

[Bucky Ball]

Denying the existence of evidence will never deny the evidence exists.

Oooohh look ... a deepity.  
Do you even read the tripe you write ? 
Denying the existence of evidence is exactly the the same as "deny the evidence exists". 
You just wrote yourself a stupid little tautology. Snort. 

[Free]

Denying the existence of evidence will never deny the evidence exists.

Oooohh look ... a deepity.  
Do you even read the tripe you write ? 
Denying the existence of evidence is exactly the the same as "deny the evidence exists". 
You just wrote yourself a stupid little tautology. Snort. 

I see someone has a comprehension issue. I'll dumb it down for you.

When someone denies the existence of evidence, it will never deny the fact that the evidence still exists nonetheless.

Now ... read ... that ... very ... slowly.

[mordant]

Going back to redaction criticism, it's helpful to enquiries about the author's intention to know what their source was, or, what kind of source they had. As Spong discusses one of Mark's sources, surprisingly for most Christians I'm sure, was the Hebrew bible. You can't write an accurate account of 40 year ago history from the Old Testament, nor would you try to. He must have been using it for a theological purpose, for example to show that Jesus has "fulfilled the scriptures", not for the purpose of writing an accurate historiography of the ministry of Jesus.

That seems rather obvious. If you're writing a fable or a fabulist distortion of real events, even absent ubiquitous OT references, you have a primarily theological purpose, right out of the chute. It has been Christianity's assertion since its earliest days, as a basic tenet of their claim to legitimacy for their champion, that he "fulfilled the scriptures", and the scriptures in those days WERE the OT.

Beyond the OT who knows what sources Mark had at his disposal, or whether he HAD any others or NEEDED any others. If for example he was entirely or mostly inventing his narrative, then other than making it (or shoe-horning it) into OT expectations or prophecies, the sky was the limit. Since Mark was likely the first gospel authored, he didn't even have to make an effort to harmonize with other written accounts, unless there were other written accounts that (1) would have been known to both the author of Mark and his likely audience and (2) are now lost to us.

(All of that of course assumes he would even WANT to harmonize, rather than compete with, any other accounts; sometimes I think we imagine various NT authors to be way more concerned with acting in concert than they likely were).

[Minimalist]

Denying the existence of evidence will never deny the evidence exists.

We have hard, ( as in carved in fucking stone!) evidence that the name of Chrestus was known in Rome in the mid first century BC and the term Chrestianos was in use in the early first century AD.

Get it through your thick fucking head that all the mental gymnastics of asswipe apologists can never erase that kind of evidence.  Chrestus and Chrestianos were known, in Rome itself, long before your hero JC was invented.

Deal with it and stop being a dipshit.  If you can.

[Free]

Denying the existence of evidence will never deny the evidence exists.

We have hard, ( as in carved in fucking stone!) evidence that the name of Chrestus was known in Rome in the mid first century BC and the term Chrestianos was in use in the early first century AD.

And the evidence you have is from "Christian sources." The 2 oldest bibles in existence have the name "Christian" spelled as "Chrestian." We have a Roman historian, Tacitus, telling us that the "Chrestians" got their name from "Christ." We have ancient documents showing how Christians objected to being called "Chrestians," and Christus being called "Chrestus."

Get it through your thick fucking head that all the mental gymnastics of asswipe apologists can never erase that kind of evidence.  Chrestus and Chrestianos were known, in Rome itself, long before your hero JC was invented.

Deal with it and stop being a dipshit.  If you can.

I am not the one who needs to get anything through my head. Rather, you need to get something INTO your head; a fucking brain.

[Minimalist]

Chrestus was old when your boyfriend jesus was invented, dickhead.

Deal with it.

You are so transparent.  You stick to quoting St. Scrotumsniffer and ignore anything which wasn't written by some churchie propagandist.  Well science works across disciplines.  Something that a religious studies ignoramus seems to know nothing about.

[Bucky Ball]

Denying the existence of evidence will never deny the evidence exists.

Oooohh look ... a deepity.  
Do you even read the tripe you write ? 
Denying the existence of evidence is exactly the the same as "deny the evidence exists". 
You just wrote yourself a stupid little tautology. Snort. 

I see someone has a comprehension issue. I'll dumb it down for you.

When someone denies the existence of evidence, it will never deny the fact that the evidence still exists nonetheless.

Now ... read ... that ... very ... slowly.

I did old fella. It's the same fucking thing. 
Your deepity sucks.

[Schrodinger's Outlaw]

what evidence? what is the topic?

[Bucky Ball]

We have hard, ( as in carved in fucking stone!) evidence that the name of Chrestus was known in Rome in the mid first century BC and the term Chrestianos was in use in the early first century AD.

You have no evidence whom that referred to. It was not a name. It was a title.

And the evidence you have is from "Christian sources." The 2 oldest bibles in existence have the name "Christian" spelled as "Chrestian." We have a Roman historian, Tacitus, telling us that the "Chrestians" got their name from "Christ." We have ancient documents showing how Christians objected to being called "Chrestians," and Christus being called "Chrestus."

So they were all quite confused then.

[grympy]

We have hard, ( as in carved in fucking stone!) evidence that the name of Chrestus was known in Rome in the mid first century BC and the term Chrestianos was in use in the early first century AD.

You have no evidence whom that referred to. It was not a name. It was a title.

And the evidence you have is from "Christian sources." The 2 oldest bibles in existence have the name "Christian" spelled as "Chrestian." We have a Roman historian, Tacitus, telling us that the "Chrestians" got their name from "Christ." We have ancient documents showing how Christians objected to being called "Chrestians," and Christus being called "Chrestus."

So they were all quite confused then.

 Quick question:Why do some people keep insisting 'evidence ' is synonym for 'proof' ?.  It ain't. 

Evidence is ANYTHING presented in support of a claim.  It may be  but is not necessarily proof. 

Hence the  bible and various ancient sources such as say Flavius Josephus and Tacitus
 are all evidence  in support  of Christianity. What they are not is proof .