No historical Jesus

[irosie91]

Ah... so real people who did exist are forgotten about while made up people who never existed are remembered for 2,000 years and can become, arguably, the most important person in human history?



Sounds a little nutty to me.

right------like ROBIN HOOD. Another person whose actual existence
remains unproven is-----MOSES --------and daffy duck

None of which have been remembered 2,000 years and become the most important person in human history.

no one remembers ROBIN HOOD? In fact there have been many "putative messiahs" in jewish history with some followers----more or less. Not actually fully
forgotten Just not of interest to you. In fact there have been Christian spiritual leaders too-------not forgotten-----some so interesting to their followers that they
have been declared "saints" and people pray to them. I have known people who
mumble at Saint Anthony if they misplaced their house keys. So he is not forgotten. Some jews considered BAR KOCHBA to be a possible messiah ----
you may not remember him but I do-------not as a 'messiah'-----but I do know the
name and his importance. SO??? Are you suggesting that the more people
who BELIEVE indicates the greater importance of the person? Lots of people used to believe (and I have come to the conclusion still do) that the EMPEROR OF JAPAN was a "GOD" ------or who ever is the current biggest shot over there.
The PHAROAH of Egypt was "DIVINE" for thousands of years. Even
MONTEZUMA was a "GOD"

Wait... Are we still arguing whether or not an actual Jesus person existed? Or has then again morphed into the more philosophical discussion of Jesus the Messiah and Son of God? Because I don't have any dog in that hunt. Jesus DID exist... whether he was a Messiah or miracle worker, whatever... that's a different question and I can't answer it. You're free to have whatever opinion you please on that. My argument is merely for the existence of the actual person in question.

Was there lower-class Jewish preacher from the backwaters of rural Galilee who was condemned for illegal activities and crucified for crimes against the state? The idea seems more plausible than the subsequent claims that he was a divine being or even God himself, the greater plausibility making the theory an attractive compromise to the modern mind. But that plausibility is not by itself proof or even necessarily evidence.

The fact remains that there is no evidence for the existence of a rabbi Jesus outside the Gospels. The earliest parts of the NT are the letters of Paul. Paul admits that he never saw the rabbi except in an ecstatic vision. In fact, there is very little in the letters to suggest that Paul ever read the Gospel accounts as we know them. He doesn't refer to them and in numerous places where a reference to the words of Jesus as recorded in one of the Gospels would be dispositive to the point he is making, he never mentions them. Strange indeed for a Greek speaking Sadducee!

Then there is the sketchy provenance of the Gospels themselves, their obvious redactions and inconsistencies, and the fact that the ancient world was crawling with divine heroes and their miraculous deeds -- Zeus, Mithra etc. who never existed. To us, the idea of an entire faith centered around what we would consider a fictional character is hard to imagine. Not so for the early hearers of the Good News.

Saul of Tarsus----the greek was supposedly a Pharisee-----which is likely true ----Sadducees were a kind of dissident sect that got themselves the role of playing
roman shills. The theory is that saul or tarsus (paul) was the son of converts
to Judaism-----which seems to have been some kind of hippy greek thing----there
were other greek converts

 

[irosie91]

Boss ----one of the most prominent reasons to believe that Jesus was an itinerant
jewish ---"activist" preacher------who aggravated the romans but not the jews is the
fact that he was crucified. crucifixtion in that time and place was reserved
for CRIMES AGAINST ROME --------the romans crucified a few thousand jews
each year during the time that Pontius Pilate was in office. Killing people
was not all that difficult------if jews want to murder an itinerate jewish preacher----
the could have managed without the romans-------it happened now and then

 

[Fishlore]

To us, the idea of an entire faith centered around what we would consider a fictional character is hard to imagine. Not so for the early hearers of the Good News.

I'm sorry, I just don't buy it. First of all, we're talking about a relatively small group of people. They were very unpopular and the disciples of Jesus were hunted down and executed. Yet somehow, you want to claim their fictional Jesus endured for 2,000 years afterwards and became the most inspirational and important figure in human history. All these Messiah wannabe yahoos running around Rome and no one knows anything about them... but made up Jesus and his little band of devotees somehow stole the show? I don't buy it.

Hey.. I just watched a "documentary" on YouTube (wish I had that time back) about the Moon Landing Conspiracy! There are a substantial group of people out there who have convinced themselves there is no "real evidence" for the moon landings. This is fascinating to me because I remember watching in 1969 on television and grew up in that era. Of course, that's 46 years ago now... so these "youngsters" who've started this conspiracy theory nonsense weren't even born when this happened.

So we see... once removed from the generation it happened in, it becomes easier for people to conjure up the idea that maybe it didn't really happen? Wouldn't it be strange if we traveled into the future and they were teaching grade school kids about the great moon landing hoax of 69? If we became so enamored with our own ideas that we literally convinced ourselves we didn't really go to the moon.... would that not be crazy?

But you see... there is no way to really confirm things because it was all on television. We can't go to the moon and see the footprints or the landing sight. So we have a situation similar to Jesus where time has passed and there is little actual hard evidence to evaluate. Of course, over 400,000 scientists and engineers worked on the project. None of them blew the secret?

You don't have to buy it; I'm not selling it. I makes no never-mind to me whether you think the Jesus of the Gospels once lived in the Galilee. I would point out that your argument about the subsequent widespread fame of Jesus is not proof of an historically existent person. The growth of the Christian sect was not due to the historicity of the hero any more than the popularity of Ovid's Metamorphoses was due to the historicity of Jupiter. In fact, the growth of the early churches was based on a variety of beliefs about Jesus (docetism, arianism etc.) which were incompatible with the idea of a historical Jesus. Even today, Christians are vague about whether Jesus was a man who turned into a god or a god who turned into a man. Neither transformation is historical.

It was the brutal ideological simplification and state sponsored orthodoxy which made the Christ sect the established religion of the Roman Empire. Political considerations, especially the parallel between Jesus and the Emperor as men who turned into gods was central to the process and obliterated the alternative view expressed by Paul that Jesus was an eternal, pre-existing god who turned into a man.

Faced with the biological improbability of such a process, the most common view (as far as we can tell) in the first two centuries of the sect was that Jesus as a god who came "down" to Earth and appeared as a man to those around him. He wasn't a man in the historical sense.

I am puzzled as to why believing Christians today seem to think it important that the hero of the Gospels got some sort of apotheosis promotion into divine status rather than think he came to earth as a divine appearance the way that Mercury came to dinner with Philimon and Baucis. Belief in a mythic descent is more compatible with everything we know now about the cosmos that the idea of a heavenly upgrade. In either case, does it make any real difference?

 

[irosie91]

To us, the idea of an entire faith centered around what we would consider a fictional character is hard to imagine. Not so for the early hearers of the Good News.

I'm sorry, I just don't buy it. First of all, we're talking about a relatively small group of people. They were very unpopular and the disciples of Jesus were hunted down and executed. Yet somehow, you want to claim their fictional Jesus endured for 2,000 years afterwards and became the most inspirational and important figure in human history. All these Messiah wannabe yahoos running around Rome and no one knows anything about them... but made up Jesus and his little band of devotees somehow stole the show? I don't buy it.

Hey.. I just watched a "documentary" on YouTube (wish I had that time back) about the Moon Landing Conspiracy! There are a substantial group of people out there who have convinced themselves there is no "real evidence" for the moon landings. This is fascinating to me because I remember watching in 1969 on television and grew up in that era. Of course, that's 46 years ago now... so these "youngsters" who've started this conspiracy theory nonsense weren't even born when this happened.

So we see... once removed from the generation it happened in, it becomes easier for people to conjure up the idea that maybe it didn't really happen? Wouldn't it be strange if we traveled into the future and they were teaching grade school kids about the great moon landing hoax of 69? If we became so enamored with our own ideas that we literally convinced ourselves we didn't really go to the moon.... would that not be crazy?

But you see... there is no way to really confirm things because it was all on television. We can't go to the moon and see the footprints or the landing sight. So we have a situation similar to Jesus where time has passed and there is little actual hard evidence to evaluate. Of course, over 400,000 scientists and engineers worked on the project. None of them blew the secret?

You don't have to buy it; I'm not selling it. I makes no never-mind to me whether you think the Jesus of the Gospels once lived in the Galilee. I would point out that your argument about the subsequent widespread fame of Jesus is not proof of an historically existent person. The growth of the Christian sect was not due to the historicity of the hero any more than the popularity of Ovid's Metamorphoses was due to the historicity of Jupiter. In fact, the growth of the early churches was based on a variety of beliefs about Jesus (docetism, arianism etc.) which were incompatible with the idea of a historical Jesus. Even today, Christians are vague about whether Jesus was a man who turned into a god or a god who turned into a man. Neither transformation is historical.

It was the brutal ideological simplification and state sponsored orthodoxy which made the Christ sect the established religion of the Roman Empire. Political considerations, especially the parallel between Jesus and the Emperor as men who turned into gods was central to the process and obliterated the alternative view expressed by Paul that Jesus was an eternal, pre-existing god who turned into a man.

Faced with the biological improbability of such a process, the most common view (as far as we can tell) in the first two centuries of the sect was that Jesus as a god who came "down" to Earth and appeared as a man to those around him. He wasn't a man in the historical sense.

I am puzzled as to why believing Christians today seem to think it important that the hero of the Gospels got some sort of apotheosis promotion into divine status rather than think he came to earth as a divine appearance the way that Mercury came to dinner with Philimon and Baucis. Belief in a mythic descent is more compatible with everything we know now about the cosmos that the idea of a heavenly upgrade. In either case, does it make any real difference?

I have a little theory------I absolutely agree that the Christian concept of jesus is
utterly incompatible with the history of ---Israel/Judea at that time and with the
many activist preachers at that time that the romans crucified and with the situation
which existed politically between Pharisees and Sadducees -----HOWEVER I do
believe that a LEGEND grew which served as a very unstable bridge between
various sects and religions----including Judaism and Mithraism and some stuff
that developed in Egypt and greek and roman forms-----and THAT is christianiy---
that unstable mass was bound to fractionate------and it did

 

[Fishlore]

Boss ----one of the most prominent reasons to believe that Jesus was an itinerant
jewish ---"activist" preacher------who aggravated the romans but not the jews is the
fact that he was crucified. crucifixtion in that time and place was reserved
for CRIMES AGAINST ROME --------the romans crucified a few thousand jews
each year during the time that Pontius Pilate was in office. Killing people
was not all that difficult------if jews want to murder an itinerate jewish preacher----
the could have managed without the romans-------it happened now and then

The political situation in Judea as a province of the Roman Empire had some striking parallels with the USA jam in Iraq today. The Herodian monarchy -- there were four separate Herods in different executive offices over the period -- was Jewish, at least nominally and well connected with imperial court circles in Rome. Roman policy following the Maccabee revolt had been relatively moderate towards the famously prickly and violent Jewish population. The much hated Herod puppet rulers were inclined to get jumpy and over-react, fearful that a repeat of serious unrest could bring their employment to an end. The government was concerned primarily with taxation, trade and security, leaving the wild unrest in religious affairs to the Sanhedrin. The Gospel account suggests that it was Caiaphas, the High Priest of the Sanhedrin who was behind the execution of Jesus and who put the pressure on Herod to sentence him as the Sanhedrin lacked the authority.

The gospel account of the procedure is plausible but, interestingly enough, there is no hint about what should have been a spectacular show trial and public execution during the Passover holiday when Jerusalem was packed with tens of thousands of religious visitors and the city (according to the Passion story) seething with disorder which could at any moment break out into open revolt. The Roman records of this period are quite detailed and the absence of any reference to the event curious to say the least.

 

[Indeependent]

right------like ROBIN HOOD. Another person whose actual existence
remains unproven is-----MOSES --------and daffy duck

None of which have been remembered 2,000 years and become the most important person in human history.

no one remembers ROBIN HOOD? In fact there have been many "putative messiahs" in jewish history with some followers----more or less. Not actually fully
forgotten Just not of interest to you. In fact there have been Christian spiritual leaders too-------not forgotten-----some so interesting to their followers that they
have been declared "saints" and people pray to them. I have known people who
mumble at Saint Anthony if they misplaced their house keys. So he is not forgotten. Some jews considered BAR KOCHBA to be a possible messiah ----
you may not remember him but I do-------not as a 'messiah'-----but I do know the
name and his importance. SO??? Are you suggesting that the more people
who BELIEVE indicates the greater importance of the person? Lots of people used to believe (and I have come to the conclusion still do) that the EMPEROR OF JAPAN was a "GOD" ------or who ever is the current biggest shot over there.
The PHAROAH of Egypt was "DIVINE" for thousands of years. Even
MONTEZUMA was a "GOD"

Wait... Are we still arguing whether or not an actual Jesus person existed? Or has then again morphed into the more philosophical discussion of Jesus the Messiah and Son of God? Because I don't have any dog in that hunt. Jesus DID exist... whether he was a Messiah or miracle worker, whatever... that's a different question and I can't answer it. You're free to have whatever opinion you please on that. My argument is merely for the existence of the actual person in question.

Was there lower-class Jewish preacher from the backwaters of rural Galilee who was condemned for illegal activities and crucified for crimes against the state? The idea seems more plausible than the subsequent claims that he was a divine being or even God himself, the greater plausibility making the theory an attractive compromise to the modern mind. But that plausibility is not by itself proof or even necessarily evidence.

The fact remains that there is no evidence for the existence of a rabbi Jesus outside the Gospels. The earliest parts of the NT are the letters of Paul. Paul admits that he never saw the rabbi except in an ecstatic vision. In fact, there is very little in the letters to suggest that Paul ever read the Gospel accounts as we know them. He doesn't refer to them and in numerous places where a reference to the words of Jesus as recorded in one of the Gospels would be dispositive to the point he is making, he never mentions them. Strange indeed for a Greek speaking Sadducee!

Then there is the sketchy provenance of the Gospels themselves, their obvious redactions and inconsistencies, and the fact that the ancient world was crawling with divine heroes and their miraculous deeds -- Zeus, Mithra etc. who never existed. To us, the idea of an entire faith centered around what we would consider a fictional character is hard to imagine. Not so for the early hearers of the Good News.

Saul of Tarsus----the greek was supposedly a Pharisee-----which is likely true ----Sadducees were a kind of dissident sect that got themselves the role of playing
roman shills. The theory is that saul or tarsus (paul) was the son of converts
to Judaism-----which seems to have been some kind of hippy greek thing----there
were other greek converts

There were standards for Smee-Cha (Rabbinic ordination). If Saul was a Rabbi, I'm the Pope.
Supposing Paul authored the Epistles, his references to TJS are piss poor.
The SOLE alternative IF Paul was a Rabbi is that someone other than Paul wrote the Epistles.

 

[HaShev]

quote:"someone other than Paul wrote the Epistles."
Saul was given a new name because Paul is a combine character just as they created the Jesus figure using more then 1 figure.
Paul seems to be a trinity of Saul, Sergius Paulus called Paul and Apollonius of Tyana called Pol who was from Tarsus and used for the escaping through the window and Syria travel stories. Pol had a vast library and was into many cultures beliefs just like Constantine was.
One of those was Krishna called Christos.

 

[irosie91]

quote:"someone other than Paul wrote the Epistles."
Saul was given a new name because Paul is a combine character just as they created the Jesus figure using more then 1 figure.
Paul seems to be a trinity of Saul, Sergius Paulus called Paul and Apollonius of Tyana called Pol who was from Tarsus and used for the escaping through the window and Syria travel stories. Pol had a vast library and was into many cultures beliefs just like Constantine was.
One of those was Krishna called Christos.

Hashev------I have wondered for a very long time why a person with the name
SAUL would come to be called Paul. It "seems" to make sense in English----
but that fact actually makes it silly. It IS very clear that whoever was "PAUL"---
had a very very eclectic background and was trying to create a NEW ALL INCLUSIVE
CREED -----like a little bit of everything for ALL PEOPLE. That "fact" makes it
hard to swallow the idea that he was -----somewhere along the line----a committed
Pharisee. I could accept the idea that he falsified his background a bit to make
himself seem credible. "I used to be a Pharisee" inspires more confidence
than ------"I LIKE TO DABBLE"