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Author | Topic: Reconstructing the Historical Jesus | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Jon Inactive Member |
Ok, well, now you're directly contradicting Jon who insists that there was no early Christian church until decades after Jesus's supposed death. (If the crucifixion was supposedly in 33AD, which is what I thought everybody accepted, then there's no way Paul could have converted to a religion that wouldn't have existed for two years in 31AD, or have persecuted any Christians beforehand.) PaulK is using the term 'Christianity' to refer to the early Jewish sect of Jesus followers. This is pretty clear to anyone reading his posts.
So you keep saying, but I can't get you to show me any of it! What is this evidence for the existence of Jesus? Please be specific. The 100% revolution in Messianic thinking that arose in the Jesus movement is one bit. You've never offered a better explanation for this.
What evidence do we have for those things that leads us to believe that Paul really was persecuting Christians and really did convert? Well, he said as much, and there's not much reason to doubt his claims. It is less probable that he is lying and more probable that he is telling the truth. Thus, historians stick with the more probable conclusionlike any reasonable person.
I've demonstrated that the mythical Jesus explains all of the available evidence of the existence of Jesus - to wit, that people in the first century were telling each other stories about a guy we would later call "Jesus". No you haven't. Not at all. You haven't once demonstrated why your explanation is a better explanation, or why it is more probable.
I don't see how making up stuff to blame Jews somehow establishes the veracity of the Gospels in this regard. Let's start with the fact that unlike most CCoI idiots today, early Christians were well aware of the fact that Jesus was a Jew.
I don't see how this follows, you'll have to elaborate. Calling Jesus your savior and then telling everyone about how he failed to save you is a real unlikely thing, especially when you must then go quote mining and back tracking and Gish galloping around trying to prove that your claims are true. There are such better and more obvious things to make up than a savior who doesn't save, a messiah that isn't a messiah, a king that doesn't rule. What on earth would prompt folk to just make up all this contradictory and unreasonable crap? And is such an explanation more likely than the explanation that there was some Jewish apocalyptic preacher who got executed by the Romans? We're aware of many cases of the latter. What cases of the former are there? What makes Mythical Jesus more probable?
If there was no execution-specific or Judea-specific purge of Roman records, then all the records were lost coincidentally. And if it's all just a coincidence that all the records are gone, then there's no reason that the lack of execution records or records from Judea should imply that there may have been a Jesus execution record that also was lost - just as five heads in a row on a coin specified as "fair" doesn't imply anything about the result of a sixth toss, making a sixth heads result a complete coincidence. No one has argued that the lack of records shows us that there may have been a Jesus execution record. The point that others have tried (failingly, it appears) to get across to you is that the lack of records doesn't show the lack of a crucifixion. If it did, we'd have to say that the Romans didn't crucify anyone in Judea at the time, which is just nonsense.
No. I'm arguing that the odds of the loss of a Jesus-specific execution record are unrelated to the number of documents that survive in total, once you've stipulated that there was no purposeful purge of execution-related or Judea-related (or any other characteristic-related) documents. If there ever was a record created for Jesus' execution, how big do you suppose it would be?
That it's just a coincidence that both Jesus-specific and Jesus-nonspecific documents are missing, once you've stipulated that there was no effort made to purge those types of documents. But it's not a coincidence. The records are all linked. How massive and special do you think the Jesus execution record would have been?
But again, the fact that it is published as fiction is nothing but a reflection of the popular consensus - the argumentum ad populum - that the work is fiction. Similarly that a book is published as non-fiction reflects nothing but the popular consensus that the work is non-fiction. What stupidity. What nonsense. LotR is clearly a work of fiction because an historical setting for it has never been demonstrated to exist. We can find no evidence of an age of trolls and dwarfs and elves and hobbits and all other such crazy critters. The historical Jesus, however, fits perfectly into an established historical setting. This should make it obvious why the latter cannot simply be discarded as fiction while the former can be.
Again, maybe you could kindly let Jon know? Since he's adamant that the "historic Jesus" didn't actually found Christianity. It's a little difficult to keep up with the arguments for the "historic Jesus" when you can't seem to agree amongst yourself what they actually are. Lol. Really? I think we all know what PaulK is talking about, all of us but you.
The Gospels ARE evidence of a historical Jesus. Already refuted. A refutation that, ironically, appears as invisible and undetectable as your mythical Jesus. Jon Love your enemies!
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Jon Inactive Member |
LOL. This is too funny. Your own quote mines can't even support your misrepresentation of my position:
Jon writes:
As far as I can tell you keep saying it: No. I never said Jesus wasn't viewed as the Messiah.... quote: Your words or not? Emphasis added. You go through all this trouble to misrepresent me and then quote something of mine that clearly demonstrates that I do not hold to the view that you say I hold to. Jesus was most certainly believed to be the Messiah by his followers. Jesus' followers viewed him as the Messiah. I never claimed otherwise.
you believe that the historical Jesus, unlike the Biblical Jesus, was not considered to be a Messiah - that his "messianism", if you will, was a later invention of the Gospels or something. Nope. Never made such a claim. Were you any other member, I might believe your misrepresentation to be an honest mistake, but knowing you, Crash, I'm rather convinced you're just being a troll.
Otherwise I consider this statement another instance of the weird lacuna where "historical Jesus" proponents believe they've presented evidence even though they've simply waved their fingers over the keyboard without actually producing text. Whatever, it's been mentioned over and over and over again. You even quoted it in the post I'm replying to. Just go and address it; stop being a troll.
When real people produce religions based on their own philosophies, they quickly ossify and don't change substantially in the period after their death, don't spread rapidly after the leader dies, and so on. For instance, look at Scientology - almost all of its spread and growth occurred during the life of L. Ron Hubbard. When Hubbard died, the growth and evolution of Scientology died with him and decades after his death, it's almost the same religion with the same adherents as it was in 1986. Sorry, Crash, but you cannot use the spread of modern religious movements as a standard for interpreting the spread of past ones. Do try to stay relevant. What's more, the nature of the early Christian movement predicts that no such records will be found. Thus, once again, you attempt to use something that can offer no evidence for your position because it is true whether you or your opponent is right.
... it's not an argument. It's never been one... Then let's drop it and focus on something else.
And it does so much better and much more parsimoniously than the "historical Jesus" position which is so inconsistent with the evidence. You seem confused as to the meaning of the word 'parsimony'. The proposition of inventing something wholesale such as the early Christian movement requires more assumptions than the alternative proposition that such a figure as Jesus actually did exist. Perhaps if you can show how early Christian beliefs and practices might have developed in the absence of an historical Jesus, then we can address your argument. Until you do this, however, your repeated assertion that there was no Jesus is not an explanation. And it never can be because it consists of nothing: It specifically makes an assertion that there was nothing of some sort, and so can never have any explanatory power. Asserting there was nothing explains just as much: nothing. You need to explain the facts with an hypothesis that doesn't involve an historical Jesus. If you do, we can address your argument. If you don't want to, then that's fine too; we'll just learn to deal with the fact that you have nothing to support your unreasonable position. It wouldn't be the first time that such an allowance were made for you. Jon Edited by Jon, : clarity Love your enemies!
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Jon Inactive Member |
We have evidence for an early Christian church sometime in the mid-first century. We don't have anything before that for a "early Jewish sect of Jesus followers." You should familiarize yourself with some of the historical documents in play here. For example, if you read the letters of Paul, you will see repeated mention to the Jewish origin of the Jesus movement. Top this off with the fact that Jesus is referred to as the Messiaha title used by Jews to describe some of their kings and the hoped-for future ruler of Judeaand the case is pretty solid: the Jesus movement was first and foremost Jewish. Why else would Paul imply Jesus to be a Jew? It certainly didn't make his conversion processes go any smoother, a fact he was well aware of.
This seems like evidence against Jesus as the leader of a "early Jewish sect of Jesus followers" since why would they follow him if they didn't meet any criteria of the Jewish messiah? Because they believed he was the Messiah. How many times must this be repeated? His followers gathered around him hoping he would deliver on their beliefs of his messiahship and overthrow the Romans and re-establish Jewish rule in Palestine. They can believe he is the Messiah well before he actually performs any messianic functions, just like parents can believe their children are presidential material well before they are even eligible to run for that office. This really isn't too difficult.
As I explained, the "mythical Jesus" position explains more than the historic Jesus position: it explains why there's a Christianity, why it spread and grew in a way consistent with other observed examples of religions based on fictional individuals, why Jews don't recognize him as the Jewish messiah, and why there's no evidence for the historical existence of Jesus. And additionally it's more parsimonious than the historical Jesus position because it doesn't propose the existence of the unnecessary entity "Jesus" (or whatever his name was.) Again, it explains nothing. Your explanation does not offer up anything at all. Nothing. You do not propose an origin for the early Christian beliefs and practices. You do not propose an origin for the early Christian stories. You simply say that such and such wasn't real; and this cannot ever explain anything because it is, by definition, void of content. You have nothing because you are making an argument for nothing. It really is that simple.
But Christians don't believe in "a savior who doesn't save, a messiah that isn't a messiah, a king that doesn't rule." They believe that Jesus did save, that he was the messiah, that he was the King of Kings. And the Jesus that they made up was all of those things; the Gospels say so. It's Jews who don't believe that stuff, but Jesus isn't the considered the messiah of Jews, he's considered the messiah of Christians. All that indicates is that Jesus wasn't invented by Jews for Jewish purposes, he was invented by Christians for Christian purposes. Proving that Jews didn't invent Jesus doesn't prove that nobody invented Jesus or that Jesus was historically real. You seem to be under the misapprehension that it does but it's completely unrelated to that. You need to learn more about the religious environment in first century Palestine. Your claims here reek or ignorance; they just downright stink.
PaulK has attempted to assert that the lack of Jesus execution records is insignificant, but he's wrong in that view as I've demonstrated. No he's not, and no you haven't. Stop being a troll.
You believe that somebody or some thing specifically expunged Judean execution records. No I don't, and I never said I did. But this is all irrelevant, so there's little reason to go further on the matter.
And, I'd just like to point out, a Judea-specific or execution-specific redaction or purge of Roman records is one more unnecessary entity that the "historical Jesus" position proposes, It doesn't propose such a thing. If it did, all of the historicists in this thread would be claiming it. They aren't; it is neither important nor relevant to the Historical Jesus hypothesis. So just stop misrepresenting people and get on with presenting your argument already.
You're right. And Christianity is clearly a work of fiction because its main character has never been demonstrated to exist. Good thing I never said that. Too bad you don't understand what an historical setting is.
So do James Bond and Romeo and Juliet. Verona, Italy is a real place, Jon. I've been there! I've been to James Bond's Great Britain as well. Yet that provides no veracity to either Shakespeare's greatest romantics or the world's sexiest secret agent. The presence of a real historical setting in a work of fiction is nothing more than tradecraft. It's nothing but an indication that the storyteller wants a claim to authenticity. It doesn't present a requirement that we provide it. These things are all irrelevant. They merely tell us that we must look at other things to determine historical reliability of the claims. And this is why no one has argued that the fact that some of the gospels got some things right is evidence of an historical Jesus.
Not at all undetectable. You read it, quoted it, and were unable to rebut it. Your hypothesis proposes nothing. Thus, it can explain nothing. Put some meat into the thing and then we can work on eating it. But none of us have come to the restaurant to stare at your empty plates. Jon Love your enemies!
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Jon Inactive Member
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So what's the relevance of the fact that Jews don't think he's the messiah, if Christians do? Doesn't it make sense that Christians would invent a messiah for Christians and not for Jews? Modern Jews don't, but there were many early followers of Jesus who were Jews and who thought he was the Messiah. Just read the New Testament: it's full of people talking about those Jews following Jesus the Jew doing Jewish things and who was believed to be the Jewish Messiah. If this is not clear to you, then you have not done your homework.
You're right. Over and over and over and over, "historical Jesus" proponents keep talking about all the evidence they've presented. Only one problem: they never present any of it. They just say they're about to, and then say that they did. It's really very astounding. Whatever, Crash. You got nothing, and everyone can see it. You ain't fooling anybody but yourself.
A prediction is what you do when, before something happens, you state that it will happen. What you're doing - what "historical Jesus" proponents are doing when they try to explain why there are no contemporary records of the life of Jesus - is a post-hoc rationalization of a fact that is disconfirming to the "historical Jesus" hypothesis. If only any of that had anything to do with how actual historians go about studying history. Too bad it doesn't.
I mean, you either have a historical Jesus about whom nearly everything Christians believe is a fabrication, or you have a mythical Jesus about whom everything Christians believe is a fabrication. In either case, the explanation for the development of early Christian beliefs and practices is identical: invention. Huh? Of course not. If there was a Jesus who was crucified, then that would be one thing that is not a fabrication. If there was no Jesus who was crucified, then that fails to explain the belief that there was. There may be a good explanation for this belief that doesn't involve an historical Jesus, and I've seen some put forward. Unfortunately you haven't offered anything yet.
It hardly consists of "nothing." It consists of everything that is in the "historical Jesus" explanation, minus a historical Jesus. Utter stupidity. Your position asserts nothingliterally. You still haven't been able to point out the substantive parts of your position and demonstrate how they function to explain anything. We're all waiting. Get to it already. Jon Love your enemies!
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Jon Inactive Member
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Paul made it very clear that Jewishness was not at all part of being a follower of this new religion. Whatever Paul thought of the Jewishness of the Jesus movement is irrelevant to the fact that he makes it pretty clear that the Jesus movement started out Jewish. No one really cares if he thought that was a bad thing or not.
This shows that gentiles were being attracted to this new religion. Yup. And?
Paul's writings clearly show that the movement was a gentile movement with roots in the Jewish religion. I'm not sure what this means; it seems pretty much in line with what I stated: the Jesus movement started out Jewish. Jon Love your enemies!
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Jon Inactive Member
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Why does that methodology negate the usefulness of a null hypothesis? Of course we should look at the evidence and look for the best explanation. One thing that historians do is propose explanations for various historical phenomena. The early Christian beliefs and practices are such phenomena as require explaining. I believe that there are many ways to explain these things, and I think any reasonable historian would agree with me that any phenomenon can be explained in pretty much any imaginable way. The issue for historical study, then, is to sift through the explanations offered and rank them according to their explanatory power (how much they explain) and their probability (how plausible they are and how many unevidenced assumption they might require). One way of explaining some of the early Christians' peculiar beliefs and practices is to propose the existence of an historical Jesusa real man likely named the Aramaic/Hebrew equivalent of Jesus or something similar whose followers believed to be the Messiah and who was executed by crucifixion or some very similar method. Now, one could go further in to the probability and explanatory power of this explanation. But since no one has yet offered up an alternative explanation, then there isn't much reason to bother rating it, since it remains the best one by virtue of being the only one. I can certainly say that it is not at all unreasonable that such a person would have existed, and his existence serves to explain a good deal of early Christianity's most peculiar beliefs and practices. If someone were to offer up a different explanation, then we could rank them according to their probability and explanatory power and attempt to judge which one might be the better explanation. Until that happens, though, the Historical Jesus hypothesis stands uncontested, and thus remains the most acceptable available explanation, and so is the one that reasonable people will accept (reasonable people accept that which is most acceptablenaturally). In this sense, an historical Jesus actually is something of the 'default' position. Jon Love your enemies!
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Jon Inactive Member
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No, there are always 2 explanations. That is the point that I am making. Science has progressed from Sherlock Holmes. Absent any evidence the default is that there was no Jesus. We then need to ask ourselves what evidence it would take to cause us to change that. Then we can apply the evidence we do have to see if it is up to par. We really aren't even dealing with whether or not there was a Jesus. What we're dealing with is an explanation for a set of phenomena, namely the early Christians' peculiar beliefs and practices. Whether there is contemporaneous evidence for an historical Jesus or not is completely irrelevant; if an historical Jesus is the best explanation for the current observation, then it is the explanation we should favor. It is precisely the same as Darwin proposing an ancient, unobserved, undocumented process as the explanation for his then-present observation of the peculiar features of some island birds. Has the historical Jesus proposition been as well supported as Darwin's evolution? Hardly. But that does not change the fact that for the particular phenomena that the explanation was devised to explain it still remains the best explanation. Does contemporaneous evidence help in supporting our explanation? Sure; but its existence (or lack thereof) is by no means make or break on the matter of an historical Jesus.
Well, I think we already have 2 that we do in fact need to examine as I have stated above. It is simply not the case that there is only one choice. I would like to see what the second one is. So far I have only seen one in this thread (since I started participating).
Just because a homeopathic remedy performs .05% better than a placebo in one particular trial does not mean that "water memory" becomes the default to "no water memory". "no water memory" is clearly the default and has a VERY strong prior on it because of what we know about physics and chemistry. One would need to demonstrate a significant effect of any homeopathic preparation before that prior would budge. I think that in the absence of any other evidence on homeopathic and placebo treatments to favor the treatment that shows better results is absolutely the most reasonable position to take. The only reason we don't take that stance after a fluke increase in cure rates from homeopathics is because of the other evidence available. In the case of an historical Jesus, however, we don't have any evidence that tells us he shouldn't have existed. This isn't Lord of the Rings (to use an analogy already presented) where we have evidence pointing to the implausibility of the scenario. An historical Jesus is an entirely plausible character, and there is no reason to reject such a proposition if it explains our observations, unless... ... there is a better explanation available. Since no alternative explanation has even been offered, then we're pretty much stuck with just the one: historical Jesus.
I am asking why a modern inductive procedure such as the above is not preferable in this case or if it really is, what are the parameters? But a modern inductive procedure is exactly what is being used. Someone offered up 'historical Jesus' as an explanation for our current observations. An historical Jesus is entirely feasible and not at all out of place in the supposed time period and region. Since no other explanation has been offered, and since there is no reason to reject the explanation that has been offered, we are left with only one thing: historical Jesus. Jon Edited by Jon, : clarity Love your enemies!
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Jon Inactive Member
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caffeine writes: His followers, having seen their predictions fail, needed to come up with a post-hoc explanation for this, and create the new idea of the resurrection, the second coming and the impending kingdom of God, a theology which, whilst it gained little traction with the Jews, proved popular amongst Gentiles and spread rapidly. I find it interesting that the synoptics mention a belief in Jesus as a resurrected John the Baptist or prophet (Mk 6:14—16; Lk 9:7—9, 19; Mt 14:1—2). In addition, the gospels state the inability of Jesus' followers to recognize his physical form post-resurrection (Lk 24:13—16, Jn 20:14—17). It may be the case that the disciples didn't invent anything, but rather were victims of an identity heist: someone who claimed to be the resurrected Jesus knowing that no one expected resurrected folk to resemble their pre-death form. (Now my money is on a friend of that Joseph character, who only the 'women' and some nobody named Nicodemus are said to have seen put the body in some tomb.) It might be worth saying more on that, but perhaps in a different thread, like the one I started long ago. Speaking of which, time to do some resurrecting of my own. Jon Love your enemies!
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Jon Inactive Member
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It would have been nice to have seen some of this "evidence for Jesus" that everybody keeps talking about. For those who might still be interested, let me quote part of a topic that I started over at FRDB:
quote: These are some of the 'evidences' for an historical Jesus. They've been mentioned several times in this thread already, but never laid out quite so plainly (see Message 230). The challenge, in the other thread, was for folk who deny the historicity of Jesus to fill the blanks in with non-Jesus explanations, the point being that any alternative position to the Historical Jesus hypothesis would have to be capable of explaining these matters. For now, it appears as though an historical Jesus explains all of these phenomena while remaining the least assumptive and, therefore, most probable explanation. So if there are any ahistoricists still interested in this thread, perhaps they may be able to come forward with what they feel to be the alternative explanations for these phenomena. Jon Love your enemies!
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Jon Inactive Member
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You only push the matter further with such answers, Crash.
Now you must address the question of why these things were made up. Why were these things invented? Why did these Jews revolutionize their messianic thinking? And so the list goes on. It is with every blank you filled in with 'it was made up': it answers nothing but just pushes the questions back to something else. You cannot evade the questions... they know where you live. Jon Love your enemies!
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Jon Inactive Member
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It's nice to see that you don't have an answer, Crash.
Let me know when you come up with something better than 'People make things up'. Jon Love your enemies!
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Jon Inactive Member
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Because extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. It's not an extraordinary claim. The historical Jesus is one of many just like him in his day. 'Messiahs' were common; almost all of them ended their lives executed by the Romans. What is so extraordinary, then, about supposing there was a 'Messiah' who ended his life executed by the Romans? It's a little more extraordinary than supposing there were women by the lake washing their clothes, but not by much. Jon Edited by Jon, : v → f Love your enemies!
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Jon Inactive Member
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I seem to recall some that were designed to soften the imposition that it was Rome who killed Jesus. That's the point that PaulK was making, though: the gospel stories are told to remove blame from the Romans in Jesus' death. So, the question becomes: If the whole story was just made up, and the Roman involvement in Jesus' death is clearly not a favorable point to the story tellers, why on Earth mention the Romans at all? The other Jews could have just stoned Jesus to death. Why include Romans who supposedly play no role in anything? Jon Love your enemies!
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Jon Inactive Member
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I see that you want to equivocate over the word 'Messiah'. Too funny. Mind showing where I equivocated? Jon Love your enemies!
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Jon Inactive Member
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I am curious, where did you get this information? I am not saying you are wrong, just that I have never head this before. Do you have some reference about how common 'Messiahs' where and that they were "almost all" executed by the Romans? Well, there is a list here and here. Clicking on various ones will reveal a trend of 'was crushed brutally by the Romans' or something other of the sort. Even excluding Jesus from the list, we still see that there is a reasonable number of 'Messiahs', and these are just the ones who actually did something worthy enough of getting recorded. Suffice to say: Jesus was not unique; he was certainly not extraordinary. Jon Love your enemies!
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