Ulan wrote: It is as if I spoke Chinese. The text makes historical claims. Which you can check against other texts. Why don't you try and address what I said, not what you think I said? The rest of your post is irrelevant to what I said and also to the historicity question. Except maybe at some Christian apologetics website.
I notice, Ulan, that you ignored my point: “historical claims” about a fictional character, cannot be checked “against other texts”, to obtain history, using sources of mythology. Your “other texts” here, are of dubious authenticity, see below.
Ulan wrote: Of course this can be a starting point. The gospels are placed in a historical context, in particular gLuke. As far as I know, the search for direct evidence came up empty. Which leaves us with Josephus and Tacitus and the problems attached to this (are those texts original? Where are Tacitus' sources? Are they just evidence for the existence of the movement or the existence of the person?). You may rightly or wrongly dismiss these pieces of evidence, but they are there. You have to deal with them.
We know nothing, reliably about Tacitus' Annals, XV, for our only extant copy was produced in an Italian monastery during the Inquisition. We know without doubt, that at least one page of that text had been tampered with, changing the “starting point” from chrestus to christus. (n.b., not “Jesus of Nazareth”). Josephus' writings have been disputed for decades. Jay's suggestion, and the raison d'etre for this thread, is that the argument that Jesus was a fictional character in a Greek mythological fantasy, is now gaining so much traction, that the masses are now moving against Christianity, towards atheism.
I am unconvinced that the tide has turned, as Jay hopes. When I see a person as talented as Ulan, still asserting that gLuke, offers scholars a chance to derive historical facts about Jesus, (“a starting point”), I cringe. I must ask, sincerely, Ulan, which historical fact about Jesus is contained in gLuke?
Ulan wrote: If there really was a world that forgot who Tolstoy was, they could go and search for clues about the persons in this book. You would find lots of evidence that it's a novel.
At what point in time did folks on planet earth forget who Mark was? Oh, that's right. No one ever knew who wrote gMark, or any other gospel, nor, for that matter, any of “Paul's” letters. Gee Ulan, do we “find lots of evidence that” gLuke is a novel?
Yes, we can search the gospels, and find clues about the fictional characters contained therein. At what point, mathematically, does a fictional character, surrounded by a mountain of historical evidence, become real?
Can I multiply i by n to get a real product?
Ulan wrote: It's nice how you basically answer your examples yourself. You say yourself that Philo regarded Herakles as a myth. This still doesn't answer the question whether there was some real person at the root of the myth. Which is basically the real problem with the "Jesus historicist" position: the claim the historicists make is reduced to such a miniscule detail that they made it near impossible to debunk the historicist claim. Proof of non-existence is much harder than proof of existence.
“a real person at the root of the myth.” Captain John Yossarian is widely acknowledged to be the persona representing the author of Catch-22, Joseph Heller. So, yes, there was a real person, who served as template for the main character of the novel. However, Catch -22 is not a biography, it is not an accurate account of the life of Joseph Heller. It is a work of fiction, like gMark. Was there, in ancient times, an itinerant religious figure wandering from locale to locale preaching doomsday? Sure, why not? Was his name Jesus? Sure, why not? So what? Was there a guy crucified by the Roman army? I am certain that there were thousands of men tortured and killed by the Roman army, including Germans, Persians, Egyptians, and Jews, including some, having the name Jesus. Did one of those guys, three days post mortem, rise up from the dead? Of course not.
I am not obliged, nor is anyone else, to “prove” that Jesus did not exist, any more than I need to “prove” that the square root of minus one is “i”. Must I “prove” the non-existence of Jimmy Olsen? We know, that in the 1930's newspapers were still relevant, still being read, still required reporters to gather the “facts”, so we are confident that there were men and women like Jimmy Olsen and Lois Lane, who had been employed as reporters for New York City newspapers. Does that mean, then, that we should analyze Superman comic strips for facts about Jimmy Olsen and Lois Lane, as historical persons, not fictional characters? I need not “prove” the non-existence of these two fictional characters. Their status is self evident.
What is the status of Jesus of Nazareth? How is his stature different from that of Superman?
Ulan wrote: Which is your silly and outright idiotic claim for proof needed you already made further up. No, this proof is not needed, as that is not the claim of most serious NT scholar historicists. You misrepresent the historicist position.
Well, apologies, if I have hurt someone's feelings by misrepresenting “the historicist position”. To me, the idea that person X is “historical” implies, first and foremost, that this person X actually existed as a human, on planet earth. Is that a “misrepresentation” of the “historicist position”? If I claim that Einstein was an historical figure, is it not necessary for me to offer evidence of his existence? Where is the evidence of Jesus' existence? What then, is this “claim of most serious NT scholar historicists”? I don't know a single NT scholar, so I will just take a shot in the dark:
Jesus of Nazareth had lived and breathed as a real person, i.e. he was not a fictional character in a Greek mythological tale.
So, we return to Jay's link. Where's the evidence for Jesus' existence, from folks living at the same moment in time, when Jesus supposedly inhabited terra firma?
Ulan wrote: And my point, in case you misread what I wrote, was that historicists have done away with all those miracles, "Son of God" and resurrection parts. Which means you are fighting windmills here.
Gosh, Ulan, on whose authority do you have permission to reject those components of the gospels which offend you, while retaining components attractive to your world view? Upon discarding “those miracles”, what remains?
Was it not spin, himself, who claimed “slam dunk” victory by citing the childish paintings at Dura Europos, one of which supposedly portrayed the miracle elaborated in your favorite gLuke, about the fishermen, seas rising, Jesus walking on water, etc, ad nauseum? The portrayal of “miracles”, as if genuine events of history, is what spin and others illustrate, as evidence of the existence of an organized christianity in mid third century, in the Syrian desert, in that Roman fortress, constructed on the west bank of the Euphrates river, not too far from the path traveled by caravans, following the traditional silk route en route to, or coming from Ctesiphon, capital of the Persian empire in ancient times.
How can you reject “son of god”, when that is the entire basis of the religion? That concept was so critical to the earliest Christians, that the tiny letters representing the Greek words corresponding to “son of God”, were added to gMark in codex Sinaiticus, after it had already been completed. Andrew thinks that the letters may have been added even in the Scriptorium itself. Every bible created after Codex Sinaiticus bears that distinctive epithet. “son of god” is to Jesus, as “man of steel” is to Superman. In fact, I would argue, that the three word phrase adds to the overlap between Jesus and Superman. That observation only applies, obviously, to the English version of the text.
“fighting windmills”? I understand the idea of Don Quixote, but I don't follow which tenet you find insurmountable? Which force of the historical camp is so mighty that my jousting lance will be broken like a toothpick? Is the mighty gale propelling the “Jesus was an historical figure” windmill, based on the gospels, or some other documents? I see their windmill as a wooden concoction, located in the Florida everglades, where there are, most days, two kinds of wind forces: absolute calm, or hurricane. There are, in that locale, inland, not along the ocean, essentially no economically productive windmills: they either sit at rest, blades not rotating, or remain in fragments after the storm.
Ulan wrote: They mostly immunized their position against refutation and just stick to the miniscule leftover that is extremely hard to disprove. Which is the real unfairness in the historicist vs. mythicist debate.
Edit: Or, to put it differently: Most so-called "historicists" are "mythicists" where it actually counts. The whole battle is more or less over an inane detail.
Hmm? Which inane detail is that? Is it found in gLuke?