Reconstructing the Historical Jesus

Thats not quite what the argument is. Its not just a question of, "Why would they make that up?"Its more like, "Why would they make that up when it seems like doing so would be counter productive to their purpose?"The inability to answer the question doesn't prove historicity, but it is still an important question and it does suggest that there was something more than JUST story telling.

---

If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be. --Thomas Jefferson

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.JonEdited by Jon, : v → f

---

Love your enemies!

I see that you want to equivocate over the word 'Messiah'.
You are a dull one-trick pony.

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!

Too funny. Mind showing where I equivocated?Jon

---

Love your enemies!

The people that made up the first version didn't like the Romans.
The people that re-wrote those parts liked the story but didn't want to offend the Romans as much."why on Earth mention the Romans at all?"
And why on Earth mention the Americans at all in a European thriller?Perhaps it was because the Romans were a world-power that had an effect on everyone's lives.
It's always exciting to have a 'baddie'. Sometimes you need to tone down the 'badness' for the children though.

Too funny. Minding showing where I said you equivocated?

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?Thanks,

---

If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be. --Thomas Jefferson

The Bible isn't one book. It's a collection of books by several authors so it isn't true that there is only one source. Also I don't find it at all surprising that there isn't a huge amount of literature as Jesus throughout most of His career had no contact with people in authority but travelled around the country, but not in Jerusalem, with a small rag tag group of followers, reaching out to the marginalized. It was only for a period of a couple of days that He really got the attention of the authorities.He wasn't leading a revolutionary movement trying to overthrow Roman rule or Herod's puppet government. The writings at the time pretty well all had political objectives. Josephus' writings were about politics and revolutionary movements. Philo was all about representing Jewish interests to the Romans.Read today's paper. I read a lot of stories about revolutions, disasters, governments falling etc. If there is some guy wandering around in the back country somewhere promoting the idea that we should all love each other we aren't likely to read about him even with modern mass media.It was only decades later that Jesus' followers actually started to have a large enough impact to be noticed. Also, it was until the war in 66 - 70 AD that what Jesus said had would happen actually transpired, giving the movement more credibility.Quick question. Why do you find it necessary to spell the name of Jesus as jezus?

---

Everybody is entitled to my opinion.

Why was John Frum invented? It's easy to work this out, since we know exactly where it happened - in Vanuatu in the late 1930s. Amongst a people whose traditional culture was being suppressed by British colonialism and European missionaries, stories grew of a hero who would throw the oppressors off the island, and who told everyone to abandon European ways and keep with traditional customs. The story was spread by traditional leaders. So, we have people losing their power over society making up stories which support their position, and people under colonial oppression embracing a source of cultural pride against their occupiers. This is an alternative explanation to an actual John Frum going around saying these things. Note that it contains more than 'people made things up'.Why Jesus Malverde? For starters, I'd say his genuine existence is more likely than John Frum's. The basics of the story aren't particularly outlandish - we can't just assume that he's a myth because we lack docmentary evidence. If there isn't a Malverde, then his invention as an urban myth makes sense. We're talking a time just before the Revolution, in a very unequal society that had always been very stratified in class (and continued to be, even after the Revolution), with corrupt security services. A story of a heroic bandit being brutally killed by the corrupt army would find easy traction in such a society. Note that nobody ever claimed Malverde was a Messiah or in any mystical - he simply got co-opted into Mexico's syncretic Catholicism, already rich with scores of local saints and traditions condemned by the Vatican as pagan or heretical.These are alternative explanations to the historicity of the characters behind them. 'He was made up' isn't. An attempt to give a similar explanation to the Jesus story, to me at least, would probably rest around people creating new myths to explain the fact that the messianic age never came before the Temple was destroyed - the earliest Gospel, Mark, may well have been written shortly after the Temple's destruction. The problem with this is that Paul's letters suggest belief in an executed and ressurrected Messiah who would come back soon already existed before the Temple was destroyed. This is the argument me and Jon were getting at before. Why did the Christians have their Messiah being executed and ressurected? Why not just a Messiah yet to come. Unless, of course, they'd already pinned their hopes on a genuine person who was executed before bringing about any Messianic Age?

It's mostly from Josephus. He lists a few different would-be Messiahs who got executed by the Romans.

quote:

---

Its more like, "Why would they make that up when it seems like doing so would be counter productive to their purpose?"

---

That assumes that they purposely made it up and lived by it, knowing it was wrong and not believing it.I hardly think that is the case. I think it's obvious that they sincerely believed all of it. But that also goes for the people who've been anally probed by aliens.So yes, I do think that asking that same question about every other religion out there is what the argument leads to.People make up stuff for all sorts of reason. It's not like we don't have any precedents of such cases.

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!

There were three real messianic attempts that reached the stage of full war with Rome, the first leading to the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple. The second began in Libya and Egypt but spread to Judea. The third major messianic war was the Simon bar Kokhba revolt sixty years after the first war.

---

Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!

Why?Do people not make things up? By the very definition of parsimony; it's always more parsimonious not to assume the existence of entities who are not required to exist. If the Jesus mythology can be explained without recourse to an actual Jesus it's more parsimonious to do so, by definition. Why what was lost?