Historical Jesus, Biblical Jesus

[Dancefortwo]

Well, let's think about this for a minute.   Jerusalem has been attacked 52 times, captured 44 times, beseiged 24 times and before the first century it was totally destroyed once.  

Anyone with half a brain and half aware of the current and past political tension of that area could have predicted something was gonna give in Jerusalem.  

I agree. That's exactly the point I was making.

But  remember that a writer writing long after the life of an individual has died can retroactively assign prophecy to that person.   It's an easy writing technique, not prophecy.

I'm curious. What are your reasons for thinking that the synoptics were first written long after the life of Jesus?

For many reasons.  Whoever wrote Mark never set foot in Palestine.  His knowledge of the geography and the location of well known communities are all wrong.   The synoptics are writing for an already existing Christian audience.  The Greek they write in is a rather aristocratic style of Greek prose that none of the followers of Jesus would have ever know how to compose.  Yup.  These stories are from experienced writers not poor followers of Jesus.  Remember that illiteracy was 98%.  Only a few people could read and write.  BTW, there is no fucking way on this planet that Peter, an illiterate fisherman, wrote any of the pieces attributed to him.  

As each gospel is written Jesus becomes more and more magical which is to be expected when one writer builds on the stories of another writer in a four part series like the gospels.  (Some of the other gospels written later but not included in the NT have Jesus growing to the size of a huge tree so at least we don't have to contend with that stupidity.)   The writers do not identify themselves.  They are written in third person and in an omniscient, distant voice.  Mark, the first written doesn't contain a birth story and actually the post resurrection scene was added in the 4th century so it would match the other three.  The other writers gave Jesus a nice magical birth story as is the custom of divine figures.   (Fun fact: The Buddha was born out of his mother's side.  Ouch!) 

These Christian gospel writers fell all over themselves trying to shoehorn Jesus into the messiah role but the messiah they give us is nothing like what the Jewish messiah was supposed to actually be.  This shows us that these writers were already separating themselves from the traditional messiah traditons and this places these compositions later.  BTW, the Jewish messiah is supposed to be a mortal human, NOT an immortal being or the son of god.  Geesh!   

Ummmm, what else.      It's usually the case that when a religious or mythical figure dies unusual and uncommon events are attributed to their deaths.  Jesus' death is certainly in keeping with with this tradition.   

Unlike some of the others here I do believe Jesus existed but I'm not going to argue for... what is it now?....185 pages of back and forth shit.  What I see is that uneducated people are willing followers of personalities.  We see it even in modern times with Trump, David Koresh, Jim Jones, Joseph Di Manbro and Marshall Applewhite and his Heaven's Gate cult.   And remember, we have mass information today so imagine the idiocy of cult followers 2000 years ago and how easily they would have attached themselves to one of the many messiah claimants roaming the countryside. 

Ok, that was a sort of meandering post, sorry.  I'm off to other threads.