Historical Jesus, Biblical Jesus

[jimhabegger]

I’m thinking now that maybe I’ve been misunderstanding what people mean by “biblical Jesus.” I already knew that the person that I’m thinking of as a real person who said most of what Jesus says in the gospels, is not what anyone would call a “historical Jesus.” Now I’m thinking that he’s not what anyone would call a “biblical Jesus,” either. His teachings, what he did, and what happened to him and around him are not what anyone would call a “biblical Jesus.” For example, he did not claim to be an incarnation of God, and no one thought that he was. He did not claim to be God’s son in any physical way. He was not resurrected in any physical way. He did not say that believing any or all of that, or being baptized with physical water, is necessary or sufficient to avoid eternal torment.

Since the person in my story is not what anyone would call a “historical Jesus,” and not what anyone would call a “biblical Jesus,” he is not relevant to what anyone else is discussing here, so I’ll stop posting about him, and I apologize for dragging the discussion off topic. Thanks to everyone who tried to answer my questions.

(later) Is there any place where it would be on topic to discuss a non-historical, non-biblical person who may or may not have been a real person who said most of what Jesus says in the Bible gospels, possibly as much as 90 years before they were first written? 

[eider]

That's quite accurate, Epy.  What the modern Historical Jesus crowd gets wrong is their own place in the chronology.

That's your first mistake. You've bunched 'the HJ crowd' all together as if they think and move as one. 

For 1250 years there was only one jesus.  The biblical jesus.  Anyone who questioned that risked execution by these loving xhristards!  Early Enlightenment scholars began questioning that story and eventually came up with the idea that jesus was just another ancient myth.  The jesus freaks defended their hero with everything they could muster but by the later 19th century the tide was turning against them.  Darwin had a lot to do with that.  The BJ story could not survive many hits and retain its credibility.  It was only towards the later 19th century that anyone started trying to dumb jesus down into something which could be called a "Historical Jesus" just, as you said, a cult leader who got himself killed but didn't or couldn't do any magic tricks.

Yes, I reckon that's right....... Any who questioned any part of 'church' was dead very quickly. And until last century it was dangerous to question church; closed groups kept challengers out of society, work, everything.

  The HJ crowd loves to pretend that they are in battle with the Mythicists but they really aren't. 

No...... the true HJ crowd just research HJ. Mythers are no problem to Christianity nor much interference upon HJ folks. 
Christianity stumbles when in conversation with competent HJ researchers. Christianity doesn't seem to bother with mythers.

They have conceded the field.  No one cares if there was some dumbass who got himself killed.  He is a historical irrelevancy.  It was the BJ who unleashed the Crusades and the Inquisition and the Wars of the Reformation on the world.  It was the BJ that had to be opposed so that humanity could break loose from the chains of heavenly slavery that the church bound them in.

But you do......  you do take interest in HJ, and write upon this thread.  It's true that in recent years I have wondered why I haven't walked away from HJ and taken up whatever..... but this thread is full of folks other than HJers, so the subject is still alive.

As an analogy consider Nazareth.  It has gone through the same dumbing down that the HJ crowd has inflicted on the godboy.  Nazareth started out as a city and was gradually reduced in importance down to the level of a small hamlet.  In fact, the archaeological remains suggest that what was there in the early first century was a farm for a single, extended family.  But the HJ crowd will concede that because it preserves the idea that there was a "Nazareth" at all which is all they care about.

I wonder what title Nazareth had when it was just a Hill which itinerant workers set up their family tents upon? The two Canas and three other hills were no doubt occupied as well, all within a morning's walk of Zippori which Antipas was throwing money in to? 
What was Nazareth titled in Eastern Aramaic, I wonder?  Was a 'city' some kind of 'secure place'?

[jimhabegger]

You want an example of what I think is bulldust. G-John is full of it, written 90 years after Jesus, and so here goes. 
1. I found this by scrolling rapidly through G-John and then stopping suddenly. My cursor lay within this stuff, and I've only shown part of it here. 
John 5:24} Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life. {5:25} Verily, verily, I say unto you, The hour is
coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God: and they that hear shall live.

The above is typical of G-John, it's telling people that unless they listen and follow this new religion that they will NOT avoid condemnation and will NOT live for ever, and it goes on to explain that the speaker (Jesus) was God's son and sent by him to sell all this.

Thank you. I'm thinking now that the person I'm hypothesizing, who may or may not have been a real person who said most of what Jesus says in the gospels, is not relevant to any discussions in this thread, so I've decided to stop posting about him and to stop asking questions about why he couldn't be real.

[Rhythmcs]

Since the person in my story is not what anyone would call a “historical Jesus,”

The person in your story is a historical jesus candidate.  It's just a very difficult candidacy to establish as it makes unrepresentative demands on the source text.

[jimhabegger]

The person in your story is a historical jesus candidate.  It's just a very difficult candidacy to establish as it makes unrepresentative demands on the source text.

I'm not calling my reasons for what I'm thinking "historical evidence," and I don't think that anyone else in this discussion would either. Do you think that there is historical evidence for what I'm thinking?

[Rhythmcs]

It doesn't matter what you're calling it. The idea that there was a guy in the region that lived and died at the alleged time and said even some of the things in the gospels is a historical jesus candidate.

I think there's a hell of alot of historical and textual evidence against it, as well as a mound of logical issues in the form of it's assertion. I think, put simply..that assuming there was some guy who said some stuff who lived and died at some time...magic book is the worst possible source of information on that. It's not about that guy, and it's not full of things that guy said. Like I was giggling about back in the thread. Poor hypothetical guy got edited out of his own purported biography. That's not jesus voice or words you're hearing. It's "Matts". They're "Lukes". It's mark and john and paul and ringo and...

[Minimalist]

That's your first mistake. You've bunched 'the HJ crowd' all together as if they think and move as one.

Nope, you've missed the point, Eider.  The HJ crowd looks at these stories and tries, desperately, to find some evidence of historicity of an actual person in it.  The fact that they cannot agree among themselves suggests that "historicity" is in the eye of the beholder.  The reason for this is actually quite simple.  They have given up on the BJ - the miracle-working son-of-god who came back to life after being crucified and flew up to heaven.  In that they are intellectually honest.  That is just a silly story as Mythicist scholars began pointing out centuries ago.  The HJ crowd is looking for evidence that there was a real, living, breathing, human who served as a model for those stories as if that matters to the original dispute.  I suppose they feel that if they can find or at least interpret something which substantiates the idea that there was a real jesus (no matter how lowly) that they can then take all the rampant speculation they indulge in and say that "it could have happened."  The problem is that as soon as they do that they pull a sleight of hand and change that to "it must have happened," which is the point that I lose all patience with them.

And no, if you look closely at my arguments with Free, you will see that we are disputing the quality of the evidence that he uses to pump life into whatever vision he has of this jesus guy. 

But whatever they come up with they will never convince the BJ fundies that jesus was just some asshole who got himself killed.

Don't forget the words of Robert Cardinal Bellarmine:

To assert that the earth revolves around the sun is as erroneous to claim that Jesus was not born of a virgin".

Bellarmine asserts the BJ position with that comment.

A mythicist would say :  "That is a load of shit."

An HJist would say :  "That is a load of shit..... but he was born to someone."


That is the nature of the dispute.

[mordant]

That's your first mistake. You've bunched 'the HJ crowd' all together as if they think and move as one.

Nope, you've missed the point, Eider.  The HJ crowd looks at these stories and tries, desperately, to find some evidence of historicity of an actual person in it.  The fact that they cannot agree among themselves suggests that "historicity" is in the eye of the beholder.  The reason for this is actually quite simple.  They have given up on the BJ - the miracle-working son-of-god who came back to life after being crucified and flew up to heaven.  In that they are intellectually honest.  That is just a silly story as Mythicist scholars began pointing out centuries ago.  The HJ crowd is looking for evidence that there was a real, living, breathing, human who served as a model for those stories as if that matters to the original dispute.  I suppose they feel that if they can find or at least interpret something which substantiates the idea that there was a real jesus (no matter how lowly) that they can then take all the rampant speculation they indulge in and say that "it could have happened."  The problem is that as soon as they do that they pull a sleight of hand and change that to "it must have happened," which is the point that I lose all patience with them.

And no, if you look closely at my arguments with Free, you will see that we are disputing the quality of the evidence that he uses to pump life into whatever vision he has of this jesus guy. 

But whatever they come up with they will never convince the BJ fundies that jesus was just some asshole who got himself killed.

Don't forget the words of Robert Cardinal Bellarmine:

To assert that the earth revolves around the sun is as erroneous to claim that Jesus was not born of a virgin".

Bellarmine asserts the BJ position with that comment.

A mythicist would say :  "That is a load of shit."

An HJist would say :  "That is a load of shit..... but he was born to someone."


That is the nature of the dispute.

Great post; it sums it up about as well as anything here.

[Minimalist]

For all the knock-down, drag outs, that I have had with Free - and it has been great fun - I have never once heard him say that he thinks a dead jew came back to life and flew up to heaven.

[Inkubus]

A very excellent post Min, this is:

Nope, you've missed the point, Eider.  The HJ crowd looks at these stories and tries, desperately, to find some evidence of historicity of an actual person in it.  The fact that they cannot agree among themselves suggests that "historicity" is in the eye of the beholder.  The reason for this is actually quite simple.  They have given up on the BJ - the miracle-working son-of-god who came back to life after being crucified and flew up to heaven.  In that they are intellectually honest.  That is just a silly story as Mythicist scholars began pointing out centuries ago.  The HJ crowd is looking for evidence that there was a real, living, breathing, human who served as a model for those stories as if that matters to the original dispute.  I suppose they feel that if they can find or at least interpret something which substantiates the idea that there was a real jesus (no matter how lowly) that they can then take all the rampant speculation they indulge in and say that "it could have happened."  The problem is that as soon as they do that they pull a sleight of hand and change that to "it must have happened," which is the point that I lose all patience with them.

As decent a synopsis as I have ever read.

[eider]

Thank you. I'm thinking now that the person I'm hypothesizing, who may or may not have been a real person who said most of what Jesus says in the gospels, is not relevant to any discussions in this thread, so I've decided to stop posting about him and to stop asking questions about why he couldn't be real.

OK.......  fair enough. So-long for now.
Maybe I'll see your posts on another thread?

[Free]

For all the knock-down, drag outs, that I have had with Free - and it has been great fun - I have never once heard him say that he thinks a dead jew came back to life and flew up to heaven.

Like I keep saying, if that bastard ever comes back again I hope he's so stupid as to forgive and resurrect Pontius Pilate just so Pilate can turn on him and crucify him again.

[Minimalist]

See what I mean?





Hey, how do you say "Bring more nails," in Latin?

[Bucky Ball]

See what I mean?





Hey, how do you say "Bring more nails," in Latin?

Plures ungues, quaeso. (More nails, please)

[jimhabegger]

Like I keep saying, if that bastard ever comes back again I hope he's so stupid as to forgive and resurrect Pontius Pilate just so Pilate can turn on him and crucify him again.

Why do you hate him so much, if you don't know anything about what he ever said or did, or about what kind of person he was? All you know is that he was crucified under the authority of Pontius Pilate. Do you hate all the people that much, who were crucified under the authority of Pontius Pilate? Or is it because his name was "Jesus," or because he had a brother named "James"? Or because some people injected that into a story about a purely fictional person, which has been used to excuse crimes against humanity? What do you think you know about him, that makes you hate him so much?

I'm thinking that maybe you're confusing your historical Jesus with some other Jesus.

[Minimalist]

There is only one jesus, Jim.  The mythical character that die-hard believers think was real and who they murdered millions of people for disagreeing.  The MJ crowd agrees that there is only one story and the main character is a MYTH.

The HJ crowd is trying to salvage something out of that one story.  In that, they always remind me of this Dilbert cartooon.

[Free]

Like I keep saying, if that bastard ever comes back again I hope he's so stupid as to forgive and resurrect Pontius Pilate just so Pilate can turn on him and crucify him again.

Why do you hate him so much, if you don't know anything about what he ever said or did, or about what kind of person he was? All you know is that he was crucified under the authority of Pontius Pilate. Do you hate all the people that much, who were crucified under the authority of Pontius Pilate? Or is it because his name was "Jesus," or because he had a brother named "James"? Or because some people injected that into a story about a purely fictional person, which has been used to excuse crimes against humanity? What do you think you know about him, that makes you hate him so much?

I'm thinking that maybe you're confusing your historical Jesus with some other Jesus.

It's not really hatred as much as just joking around.

Jesus is not really responsible for Christianity. In fact, if he could see what Christianity is today he would take a big dump all over it. Christianity is nothing but a mixed bag of fuck, and has nothing to do with what a Jew like Jesus would have advocated.

Paul is the fucker who should be blamed.

[Minimalist]

Well, you don't really know that, Free.  I mean, let's say for the sake of argument, that there was some kind of jesus character.  For all you know he might have been a total scumbag.




Let's be honest.  You can't wear a hat like that and have all your marbles.

[Minimalist]

Psst:  Aside to Jim.  There are no irrelevant questions!

Now back to our regularly scheduled programming.

[Rhythmcs]

Getting perilously close to the truth, aren't we? Paul may indeed be the fucker to blame. For the synoptic gospels.

[jimhabegger]

It's not really hatred as much as just joking around.

Okay. Thanks.

I have another question. I got the idea from some of your posts that you think your historical Jesus is better ground to stand on than a purely mythical Jesus, for discrediting the idea that there was a real person who said and did some things that Jesus says and does in the gospels. I don’t see how your historical Jesus can serve that purpose. Your historical Jesus might not have anything to do with the gospel Jesus at all. Maybe the authors of the gospels or their sources got the name, title, and brother’s name of their crucified Jesus from some other crucified Jesus with a brother named James, that some people thought was a promised king of Israel. Or maybe they just chose his name and his brother’s from names that were popular at the time.

I’ll put it a different way. Someone had the idea of making a dying and risen god story into a story about a real Jew who was a promised god-king of Israel, and was crucified and resurrected. They didn’t get his name and his brother’s name from your historical Jesus. They never even heard of your historical Jesus. They just took the name and the brother’s name of their crucified and resurrected god-king from names that were popular at the time, which just happened to be the same as the name and brother’s name of your historical Jesus.

(later) You seem to me to think you know some other things about your historical Jesus besides being called “anointed,” having a brother named “James,” and being crucified during the prefecture of Pontius Pilate; for example what kind of person he was. Where are you getting those ideas from, if not from the gospels? You say that Christianity has nothing to do with what a Jew like Jesus would have advocated. How do you know that he wasn’t the same kind of Jew as Paul?

[Free]

It's not really hatred as much as just joking around.

Okay. Thanks.

I have another question. I got the idea from some of your posts that you think your historical Jesus is better ground to stand on than a purely mythical Jesus, for arguing against the beliefs of Christians about their Jesus. I don’t see how your historical Jesus can serve that purpose. Your historical Jesus might not have anything to do with the gospel Jesus at all. Maybe the authors of the gospels or their sources got the name, title, and brother’s name of their crucified Jesus from some other crucified Jesus with a brother named James, that some people thought was a promised king of Israel. Or maybe they just chose his name and his brother’s from names that were popular at the time.

I’ll put it a different way. Someone had the idea of making a dying and risen god story into a story about a real Jew who was a promised god-king of Israel, and was crucified and resurrected. They didn’t get his name and his brother’s name from your historical Jesus. They never even heard of your historical Jesus. They just took the name and the brother’s name of their crucified and resurrected god-king from names that were popular at the time, which just happened to be the same as the name and brother’s name of your historical Jesus.

Since the argument for an actual human being called Jesus is far better than the argument for total mythology (and well educated Christians know this as well) then arguing for mythology is a fruitless endeavor as they all will point to the exact same evidence for historicity as has been presented here.

Meanwhile, while I argue with them only on the merits of historicity, I also point out that their beliefs are every bit as unsupported as the arguments made by Jesus Mythicists. Think about it, Christians are using the gospels to argue that Jesus was real, and Mythicists are using the Gospels to argue he wasn't. Both are using the exact same bogus bullshit for their arguments, and neither can ever prove their arguments, nor can they well support them.

But the historicity argument is the only argument that provides any evidence that all Jesus ever was was some 1st century Jew who got himself crucified by the Romans. There's no external evidence that he raised anyone from the dead, walked on water, flew to heaven, and likewise there is no external evidence that he never existed as an ordinary man.

With actual evidence on my side demonstrating that all there can ever be honestly and historically supported is that a man named Jesus, called Christ, was executed by Pontius Pilate circa CE 33, it is much easier to convince a weak (or even an occasional church going Christian) that all that can really be said about it is that most likely he existed as an ordinary human being. I can show evidence to support my position, and then appeal to their reasoning with questions such as, "Do you really honestly think people came up out of the graves like zombies?"

I'm an atheist. The best argument wins.

[jimhabegger]

I’m starting to think that maybe you don’t really understand the arguments for a purely mythical Jesus, and/or you’re aiming at a different audience.

[Free]

I’m starting to think that maybe you don’t really understand the arguments for a purely mythical Jesus, and/or you’re aiming at a different audience.

I understand them all, and they suck. They have no evidence whatsoever. The argument is 100% assertive.

[jimhabegger]

I'm curious. Have you ever seen or heard of anyone being convinced by your argument, to give up some of their beliefs about Jesus?