Reconstructing the Historical Jesus

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I never said that they got everything wrong or that if they did, that would be proof of the non-existence of Jesus.

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You asked: I pointed out that it wasn't. And then you tried to spin that as an attempt to prove that Jesus didn't exist.

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My contention - and please pay attention to it this time - is that getting some things right doesn't lend them any veracity.

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Of course I never made the argument that getting somethings right made anything else they said right. I was responding to your argument, which I repeat: And you tell me to pay attention ? When you can't even read the quotes to work out which point I was responding to ?

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Maybe that Jews don't crucify people? Wouldn't that be even more unrealistic?

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That would still require death by crucifixion to be established prior to the Gospels. And who says that the Jews would never crucify anyone ? And if not the Jews in general, why not the hated Herodians who were more Idumaean than Jewish anyway.

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But that doesn't lend veracity to the story. Not in any way. For all you know, the Gospels adapt, to blame the Jews, a story that was already widely known that blamed the Romans. Certainly the Gospels present a kind of "forget what you heard, here's the real story" kind of tone.

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Which assumes that such a story existed. Again predating the Gospels and associated with Jesus strongly enough that the Gospel writers couldn't just ignore it in favour of their own inventions.You see, even your suggestions assume at least part of the story predates the Gospels and is solidly established, so that the Gospel writers cannot simply ignore it.

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Jesus, Paul, it's been in all these posts you keep replying to!

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No, it isn't.

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I did. I've never contended that your argument was anything but wrong.

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You agreed that the form was valid, and you used an argument with the same form yourself. And your other "criticism" was that you were arguing that Jesus did not exist is even sillier because the argument that you are denying IS an argument that Jesus did not exist.So what exactly is wrong about it that is not wrong about your own argument (noting that form and conclusion are the same and you have not raised any other objection) ?

Ramoss is not talking about the Testamonium Flavianum - read his Message 220. He's talking about a Samaritan leader.(The Testamonium itself seems to me to be unquestionably Christian to the point where I cannot accept it as fully authentic. But it may have an original core, which would be significant extra-Biblical evidence for the existence of a historical Jesus. Antiquities 18 is also worth reading for it's description of Pilate's behaviour. He was hardly one to give in to Jewish pressure, and was quick to resort to violence.)

Did you read the quote Ramoss offered, and see the reference there ? Did you not recognise that it is not the Testamonium ? Isn't the fact that it is about an unnamed Samaritan enough to tell you that ?

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What fills in the blanks better than "the actual historical Jesus" is "the Jesus stories were made up". (Try it- cut and paste the phrase in, and you'll see how easily all of this nonsense "evidence" is explained.)

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You're going to have to offer more explanation than that.

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Invention by storytellers is such a common and mundane phenomenon that it's easily the more reasonable, more parsimonious explanation.

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Why is it more parsimonious ? You still need an explanation for why those stories were made up, and you need an alternative story for the founding of Christianity and an explanation of why that was lost. Seems to me the idea that the Gospels were based on real events is more parsimonious just for that. In fact it's hard to see how anything could be more parsimonious.

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You're going to have to offer more explanation of why more explanation than that is required.
It exactly meets the 'challenge' set by Jon.

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The challenge was to provide explanations. For instance John would describe the change in the view of the Messiah to be a reaction to Jesus' failure and death. How is it explained by "Jesus was made up" ?

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This seems a strange question.
Why were the Harry Potter stories made up?
Why were the Bilbo Baggins stories made up?
Why were the Jesus stories made up?

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It seems less parsimonious that the answer to the first two (and many more like them) is: "Because people like fantastical stories.", but the answer to the last one has to be "Because a Jesus existed.".

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If you do not consider the relevant history or the usage of the writings your view might have merit. Unfortunately, ignoring these things is not rational. As Jon has pointed out there are features of the Gospels that seem inconvenient to the authors, or to go against views they would be expected to have. These features need to be explained. We need an explanation for the origin of Christianity, too. Why is it more parsimonious to assume some unknown origin than to accept that there is some basis to the claims of Early Christians ?

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Well, the initial view of a messiah was made up and the subsequent view of a messiah was made up.
This is similar to the initial view of Gollum as being a simple 'monster' that attacks Bilbo in The Hobbit, but who then develops into a more complex sympathetic character in LoTR.

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Of course, you just made that up... Or in other words just asserting that something was made up without understanding what happened is more a cheap excuse than a good explanation.

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There is no relevant history of a Jesus, except in the bible. To include that circular argument is not rational.

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I said "relevant history", not "history of Jesus". The history of Christianity is relevant, and certainly the context of the Gospel stories needs to be taken into account.

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And you need an explanation of why the stories are not well written? Perhaps because there were many people making up different bits.
This can often be seen in spin-off books from TV series. Authors have their own 'agenda' and will twist existing background stories to suit their wishes.

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I said nothing about the quality of the writing. I am more interested in aspects of the story that appear to go against the agenda of the Gospel authors. For instance - to reuse a point made earlier - the Gospel authors are not happy to let the Romans take the blame for Jesus' execution. Why would they make that up ? Or are you proposing that the story predates Mark ?

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I am not suggesting that the origin is unknown. I am suggesting that people made it all up.

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But apparently you don't know who or when or why. Or how the Gospels came to be accepted as fact.

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There is no evidence for the claims of early christians in relation to a Jesus, But there is plenty of evidence of people making stuff up.

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There is plenty of evidence that not all documents are made up, too. Perhaps you would like to explain why we should assume "made up" as a default.

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Yes, I made up an explanation - based on the massive amounts of evidence that we have the people make up fantastical stories.
This is compared to the zero non-biblical evidence we have for a historical Jesus.

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Obviously then, the evidence that people also write historical accounts, and stories which are elaborated historical accounts is evidence against your hypothesis, then. Perhaps you would like to explain why you did not take this into account.

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My last post answered these questions: Badly made up stories are made up badly.

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In other words you have to assume that they made up things contrary to their own agendas. WHich goes against what you said earlier.

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Did your parents conceive you? Do you know where or when or how or why? No? Then clearly you were not conceived.

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Actually I have a pretty good idea of when and where. But more importantly, you are using a strawman. I am not using lack of evidence against your hypothesis (although you have nothing much) I am pointing out that you haven't got much of an explanation. This is why the hypothesis that there was a historical Jesus is better than your hypothesis - it really explains more evidence (as opposed to proposing ad hoc explanations)

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And the reason they became accepted as fact is because people are frequently ignorant, superstitious and irrational.
Lots of people believe (as fact) that you will get 7 years bad luck if you break a mirror. That doesn't make it even slightly true.
But this is off-topic, I expect.

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But the Gospels would be competing with the real story of how Christianity arose. What happened to that story ? Have you any evidence for your explanation of that ?

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Because extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
'Made up by people' is the simple, common, parsimonious choice.
Even non-biblical documents have to be validated.

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But there are no extraordinary claims being made here. That an ancient document should be based on true history is not extraordinary at all.

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Because there no other source besides the bible to be found about this jezus character, that's why.

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Because the only "evidence" people can come up with is essentially a circular argument, that's why.

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The first misses the point that the Bible is a collection of works, fails to deal with the possible references in Josephus and Tacitus and would not be a rational argument even if it were entirely correct.The second has already been shown to be false in this discussion.

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Maybe they truelly believed it.

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That isn't a reason to make things up.

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The "i can't imagine why they would make it up" argument is not a good reason to simply accept the claims are truthfull. In fact, it's a fallacy.

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Of course that isn't even an accurate presentation of the argument. "It was so unpalatable to them that they invented excuses to try to defuse it" seems a pretty good argument against the idea that the Gospel writers made up the idea that Jesus was executed by the Romans (which doesn't mean it is true)

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Not to mention that if that is the standard to accept claims, you'ld be required to accept every single religion out there.

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You really need to deal with your addiction to strawmen. What's wrong with evaluating the evidence rather than taking a dogmatic hard line right from the start - as you are doing. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence - ordinary ones don't.

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Why was Islam made up? Or Hinduism? Scientology? Mormonism?

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Another silly comparison. After all I'm not saying that Christianity is true, or even that the Gospels are as reliable as the average ancient history. Just that there is probably a historical basis for the character of Jesus

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Mormons believe Jezus came to America. Why would they make that up?

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More accurately Joseph Smith made it up. But why not? He was starting his own take on Christianity, with his own made-up scriptures almost entirely set in the New World. How could he leave Jesus out of it? Putting words in Jesus' mouth is a pretty obvious tactic, too.
Now, if the text had a bunch if excuses about how Jesus didn't really mean what he said, you might have something interesting. But even then it WOULD still qualify as an extraordinary claim, so you still wouldn't have a good parallel to the crucifixion argument.

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It is perfectly possible, perhaps even likely, that the politics of the crucifixion blame are an artifact of the lateness of the gospels.

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Which still requires the story to be firmly established before Mark, which may be as early as 60AD. In fact, before Christianity took a pro-Roman (or maybe anti-Jewish) turn, which would probably start earlier than Mark.

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Its hard to keep track of all the Biblical edits but I seem to recall some that were designed to soften the imposition that it was Rome who killed Jesus.

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It's in Mark 15:6-15 and a quick check didn't find any suggestion that it was an interpolation. Later Gospels, especially Matthew go further, but it is right there in Mark.

Too many posts to reply to all, so I am restartlng replies here.

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People keep repeating this but I don't see the relevance. It may be a "collection of works" but its a single thing. The different books of the Bible can't corroborate each other because the later books are based on the earlier ones. All the books of the Bible are the fruit of a single tree. It's a collection of works but not a collection of independent works, thus it's appropriate to treat it as a single source.

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Different authors have different agendas, and may have different sources, The question id John's relation to the Synoptics and the origin of the 'Q' material need to be addressed, for instance. The Bible is NOT a single source and should not be treated as one.

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See, Josephus and Tacitus report claims by Christians that there was a man called Jesus;

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False. Tacitus refers to Jesus as a historical person. In my view he almost certainly got his information from Christian sources - however I have seen it argued that Tacitus used official sources, and although I found the argument unconvincing, I cannot disprove it.
The Josephus references, if genuine (and I am undecided on that) also refer to Jesus as a historical person and Josephus is likely to have had Jewish sources to work with, and would not have to rely on Christians.
And of course, they are references to Jesus outside of the Bible.

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Only if you equivocate on "they". The "they" who made up that Jesus was killed by Roman by no means has to be the same person, or even the same type of person, as the person who tried to defuse Roman blame. We have no idea how the story might have spread, grown, and changed in the decades before the Jesus story was ever put to paper.

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Of course this is nonsense. The only "they" I am talking about is the Gospel writers. And you implicitly accept the argument by arguing that that aspect of the story was invented earlier. But how does this work with your foolish version of parsimony ? Is there any difference between postulating an earlier inventor of a story and postulating a historical person the story is based on ? The number of persons is the same.

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How can you argue for a historical jesus and NOT think xtianity is true? IF jeebus existed in the context the bible paints him, xtianity IS the one trve religion and all that.

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The same way that I can argue for a historical D'Artagnan, while thinking that The Three Musketeers is fiction. And there WAS a historical D'ArtagnanThe same way that I can argue for a historical Arthur without believing Malory.Christian churches don't accept that Jesus was just another cult leader, no more divine than David Koresh or that he was a failed wanna-be Messiah. So how is arguing for that, arguing for Christianity?Edited by PaulK, : No reason given.

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But that's not what I asked, is it? If you are granting that jesus was just some dude and the bible is not telling an accurate depiction, then what is the point? That's just pointing to more proof that it's all a big fairy tale.

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Well you said that accepting a historical Jesus - which means accepting that there was a real person behind the stories, not believing those stories - meant accepting Christianity.
If you didn't understand the concept, maybe you shouldn't have jumped into the conversation.

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Do they? What's the evidence that there are any more "sources" for the Jesus mythology than what's in the Bible?

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That's kind of what I'm getting at. An independent, not-Biblical source of knowledge about Jesus that isn't just a credulous repetition of Christian claims.

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You're asking two different questions there. There is reason to believe that the Gospel authors used sources lost to us. If 'Q' existed, it would be one. That doesn't mean that those other sources weren't credulous - but then the mere existence of other sources says nothing about the credulity of their authors.

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Only because Christians do.

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That is what I believe, although it can't be proved. However the point was to give the lie to you false assertion that Tacitus did not make such a statement and that I was taking it out of context.

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Also wrong. Again, Josephus is nothing more than a credulous repetition at face value of Christian claims of the existence of Jesus. It's quite clear from the context.

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It can't be "also" wrong because you admitted that I was right about Tacitus. However, it is you that is wrong. You appear to be referring to the so-called Testamonium Flavian which - as we have it - is TOO Christian to be plausibly written by Josephus. The possibility you have to deal with there is that a genuine Josephan reference was corrupted - perhaps by the mistaken incision of Christian marginalia. This is certainly a plausible possibility, and it is hard to argue against.

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The Gospel writers didn't make up Jesus, PaulK. They wrote down Jesus mythology that they already accepted as true. Therefore their motivations and agenda are irrelevant and can't be used to refute the mythical Jesus position.

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Well we are getting a little more meat to your proposal. So, who did make up the story, and how do you know that they didn't have a real person to hang their fictions on ?

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Yes, there's abundant difference: being someone who makes up a story is common and mundane. Being somebody who forms the historical basis for a religion of a billion adherents is extraordinary. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Ordinary claims - "somebody made up a story" - do not. Historical Jesus proponents have never even tried to rise to their extraordinary burden of evidence. Instead, like you, they prefer to obfuscate with invective.

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Well that's a pretty silly argument. The religion exists. Someone must have started it. Why you think that the founder is far more likely to be lost and forgotten rather than remembered by his followers is something you need to explain.And it is pretty clear who prefers to obfuscate with invective.

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No, I'm asking a single question, and it's the same question I've been asking throughout: The Gospels and Paul make a claim that a person called Jesus existed. What evidence exists to support this claim?

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But that is a different question from which sources the Gospel writers had and used.And of course my question is what evidence is there for Crashfrog's claim that Jesus was a complete fiction? There doesn't seem to be much.

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Which you failed to do, because my assertion is accurate. It's right there in the context of Tacitus:

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Which confirms my claim that Tacitus - who was not especially credulous - did refer to Jesus as a historical person. As you ought to remember I believe that Tacitus DID rely exclusively on Christian sources, so any argument for that hardly argues against my position.Let us also note that you have quietly dropped your claims about Josephus.

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The argument from silence. If there really had been a genuine person to hang the Jesus stories onto, we'd have independent, corroborating evidence of someone existing and doing things that are like what Jesus is supposed to have done.

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Then please make your case for that assertion.

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By definition the "historical Jesus" can only be the Historical Jesus if he actually was the basis for the Jesus legends. If the figure you're fingering as the "historical Jesus" didn't actually do any Jesus-stuff then by definition he can't be the "historical Jesus", because he can't have intelligibly been the basis for any of the legends.

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Well, that is exactly what is proposed, so it seems quite unnecessary to raise the issue. We already have that.

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Yes. But that doesn't mean that a historical Jesus had to start it,

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Which is not the claim. You are taking the point completely out of context. The actual point is that there is no extraordinary claim being made. The existence of Christianity is an established fact, you may find that extraordinary, but the evidence is more than adequate. You also accept that someone started Christianity, so that is not the sticking point. So we just come down to the question of whether Christians would have kept stories about their origins or buried them under fictions. I certainly see nothing extraordinary in the former. Why do you ?

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This could be an endless list of 'turtles all the way down'.

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But it isn't because we are only interested in Jesus, for the purposes of this discussion.

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Since the jesus myth seems to be based on the horus myth and/or the mithra myth, I doubt we will ever be able to answer that question.

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My understanding is that those claims are extremely dubious.