The historical figure of Jesus is it's own story, the only factual story that can be told about who Jesus was. The stories themselves are also history as they present a factual historical record of what the story tellers believed Jesus to be. How do you separate the story that is actual history from the story telling? This is a very difficult task, as the only documentary evidence available was written down a generation following the death of Jesus and there are no independent secular documents to work with.
To put the challenge in context:
If you are a Christian, look back to the last sermon you heard. You could certainly present the theme and content of the conversation but it is highly doubtful you would be able to repeat verbatim the actual words that were spoken. Now imagine not just one sermon but many, spread out over a period of three years or more.
After a while, the preacher gains public popularity and the content of the prior sermons are shared verbally among the populace by those who were present. This verbal information slowly works its way around the city then into neighboring cities. This continues for a period of fourty years, at which time someone decides to record the content of the sermons in written form. In addition to the sermons, the populace also circulates information about the preacher himself - his life, his death, and activities. As the written form becomes more popular than the spoken word, others come along and do the same. Pretty soon you have not one document but twenty. Subsequent authors use information in the first document while adding information from the verbal accounts not previously recorded.
After time, one notices that the older the document, the more content it contains. In addition, one notices that not only has new information appeared, this information sometimes is so wildly divergent from the information and content contained in earlier documents that one has reason to suspect it's authenticity.
Two-thousand years later, you, the historian, now have the unenviable task of extracting the reliable details of the sermons and the history of the preacher from the documentary evidence that survives. The preacher himself has left no documentary evidence.
This is not a thread about Theology or one's personal religious beliefs regarding the nature of Jesus. How does one extract reliable History from the surviving documentary evidence available to reconstruct the Historical figure of Jesus? There is also a very small minority who believes the evidence available points to Jesus never existing.
What methods, sources, and approach do you use to reconstruct the history from the story and answer the question 'who was Jesus'?
Please, no preaching. Present whatever argument you wish as long as it is reasoned and based on historical evidence - from any source.
Edited by Grizz, : No reason given.
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