Why I think a historical Jesus is best explanation for earliest texts

[GakuseiDon]

And so do people who continuously talk about a HJ without specifying it one bit and then turn out to, when asked about it, have nothing in mind but a dude who got baptised by John B and impaled.

To be fair, I don't even have the John B baptism in mind. That part's speculation. I think staked is more solid though, since it comes from Paul.

Well, if that is all, why affix the big label "HJ" to all the waving that you REALLY DO do, Don

Because I think the evidence suggests that some kind of a historical Jesus is the best fit based on the earliest layer of Christian texts. For what it's worth: according to his OHJ, Dr Carrier scores it as about 3 to 1 in favour of a HJ over an MJ based on the letters of Paul and the Gospels (though I disagree with his approach overall) when looking at the best odds for historicity.

[GakuseiDon]

''Some guy who really lived'' - Are you really serious that you can argue such a position ? With a straight face? I really did expect more from you than such simplistic illogical reasoning.

I'd word it more like "I think some kind of a historical Jesus is the best explanation for the existence of the earliest texts -- the letters of Paul and the Gospel of Mark. But we can know so little about him that he may as well have not existed."

'Thousands of men (assuming your HJ is a male) walked the sands of Palestine - and as spin would say - historicity requires evidence. Existence does not bestow historicity. In actuality, what you are attempting to do is circumvent the whole HJ argument. Leaving yourself wide open to mockery from the mythicists - and, methinks, the blue blood historicists will shake their heads in shame that their prized possession is being so cold-heartedly trampled in the mud.

Who am I not to get mocked? A little mocking is good for the soul. Mock away! Sweet words butter no parsnips, as the saying goes.

[maryhelena]

''Some guy who really lived'' - Are you really serious that you can argue such a position ? With a straight face? I really did expect more from you than such simplistic illogical reasoning.

I'd word it more like "I think some kind of a historical Jesus is the best explanation for the existence of the earliest texts -- the letters of Paul and the Gospel of Mark. But we can know so little about him that he may as well have not existed."

''.....we can know so little about him that he may as well have not existed."

So - why on earth are you wasting your time.........

GDon - the NT story and it's multiplicity of interpretations provide both historicists and mythicists (or ahistoricists) plenty of room for their arguments. But interpretations and arguments are not evidence for a HJ. The best argument for historicists is not to do what you attempt to do - to circumvent the historicists arguments by reducing your HJ to a nobody. That argument is an admission of defeat not a support for a HJ.

Yes, mythicists usually run with their interpretation of Paul at the expense of neglecting, and acknowledging, the need for a historical approach to the gospel story. Historicists also fail - they fail to look beyond their assumption of a HJ and look into the historical context in which the gospel story is set. (Herod to Tiberius)

Perhaps what you want to say is that you think that there is some history in the gospel story, that's it's not just a whole cloth exercise in imaginative storytelling. A first century version of Harry Potter.

If that is your approach then you would be far better saying - ''I think there is some history in the gospel Jesus story but I don't know what that history is.'' That approach is a far more honest approach than opting for a nobody, a some guy really lived, useless theory. An open-ended approach to history or a dead-end nobody approach to the gospel story. One approach has potential - the other is digging it's own grave.

[mlinssen]

And so do people who continuously talk about a HJ without specifying it one bit and then turn out to, when asked about it, have nothing in mind but a dude who got baptised by John B and impaled.

To be fair, I don't even have the John B baptism in mind. That part's speculation. I think staked is more solid though, since it comes from Paul.

Well, if that is all, why affix the big label "HJ" to all the waving that you REALLY DO do, Don

Because I think the evidence suggests that some kind of a historical Jesus is the best fit based on the earliest layer of Christian texts. For what it's worth: according to his OHJ, Dr Carrier scores it as about 3 to 1 in favour of a HJ over an MJ based on the letters of Paul and the Gospels (though I disagree with his approach overall) when looking at the best odds for historicity.

You're turning apologetic, Don.
FWIW: I've never read Carrier

But the choice is not between and HJ or an MJ, the choice is very simple really: there is no evidence for any living Jesus ever having lived, and most certainly there will never be any evidence for someone performing miracles and riding from the dead

It's not like anyone has to argue for anything, as the story that we have is so outrageously fanciful and fabricated that it is clearly evident that there was no historical basis to any of it.
Was it an important story? Oh bloody hell, it frigging sure was, yes! It was a matter of life and death for decades, centuries, and everyone took it serious. But a story can only be turned and twisted into all these different kinds of directions when any possibly historical basis to any of it is either completely absent or has been completely forgotten

So the entire quest for a historical Jesus is nothing but narcissistic self-gratification and religious masturbation - and yours is particularly so as your HJ has turned out to be an MJ

And I just now see it, but yes: what maryhelena says

[Paul the Uncertain]

OK, the other poster resorts to mockery (hardly a rare tactic on the wild wild web). I am trying to make the same point while avoiding mockery. Your "best explanation" offers no explanation. "Some guy who really lived" and "Some guy who was both baptized and crucified really lived" have the same defect: there is no connection offered between this hypothetical guy and the emergence of a Jesus movement whose earliest extant authors are Paul and Mark.

There is no issue of "speculation." You are stating a hypothesis and comparing it with other hypotheses with respect to explaining the observed narrative content of Paul and Mark's work. You don't state what the other hypotheses are, and this best one lacks any stated connection with Paul and Mark.

Your reader, then, has no way to follow how you arrive at your conclusion. This is not mockery; this is not giving you a hard time. The title of the thread is why you think something. There must be something in your mind, maybe a range of possibilities, whereby some guy who was both baptized and crucified at the very least came to Paul's attention. How did that happen in your view?

I appreciate that this is an unusual historical reasoning problem, since Paul and Mark agree that the role of Jesus in "founding" a movement during his natural lfe is minimal: either not discussed at all (Paul) or running a boot camp for a dozen "ninety day wonders" whose training prepares them to found a movement later on (Mark). They bring themselves to Paul's attention (a reasonable inference from Galatians IMO).

Now, I do not want to put words in your mouth, but the "boot camp" model states a connection between a baptized-then-crucified guy and a Jesus movement. That is, this guy ran a private face-to-face ("secret" in one sense of that word) operation whose alumni did the heavy lifting of founding a movement.

I offer that as an example of what's missing so far, I am not suggesting that that is or should be your answer. I am just saying you need some answer, probably something like that. Notice that this is as well founded in the evidence to be explained (Paul and Mark) as that there is a single relevant baptized-then-crucified guy. It is no more "speculative" than that, its foundation is on the page in black letters.

[GakuseiDon]

GDon - the NT story and it's multiplicity of interpretations provide both historicists and mythicists (or ahistoricists) plenty of room for their arguments. But interpretations and arguments are not evidence for a HJ. The best argument for historicists is not to do what you attempt to do - to circumvent the historicists arguments by reducing your HJ to a nobody. That argument is an admission of defeat not a support for a HJ.

If it's a defeat for a HJ, then that's fine. I'm not a Christian. Even when I called myself a liberal Christian, I never thought that Jesus was virgin-born or the Son of God, just a regular guy. I have no metaphysical stake in the question of whether there was a HJ or not.

Perhaps what you want to say is that you think that there is some history in the gospel story, that's it's not just a whole cloth exercise in imaginative storytelling. A first century version of Harry Potter.

Yes, gMark is fan fiction, like "Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter".

If that is your approach then you would be far better saying - ''I think there is some history in the gospel Jesus story but I don't know what that history is.'' That approach is a far more honest approach than opting for a nobody, a some guy really lived, useless theory. An open-ended approach to history or a dead-end nobody approach to the gospel story. One approach has potential - the other is digging it's own grave.

Fair comment.

[GakuseiDon]

But the choice is not between and HJ or an MJ, the choice is very simple really: there is no evidence for any living Jesus ever having lived, and most certainly there will never be any evidence for someone performing miracles and riding from the dead

I'd argue that Paul is evidence for some kind of Jesus, a man who lived in Paul's recent past: a Jew, seed of David, first-fruits of the resurrection. All those things that have been argued often on this board. People disagree, and that's fine.

What I'd like to point out is that few people think that there was a Gospel Jesus, so it is inconsistent to see meaning in a Gospel Jesus not appearing in Paul (for those people who do that).

[GakuseiDon]

OK, the other poster resorts to mockery (hardly a rare tactic on the wild wild web). I am trying to make the same point while avoiding mockery.

Sure, I don't think I've ever seen you use mockery at least on any of my posts.

Your "best explanation" offers no explanation. "Some guy who really lived" and "Some guy who was both baptized and crucified really lived" have the same defect: there is no connection offered between this hypothetical guy and the emergence of a Jesus movement whose earliest extant authors are Paul and Mark.

I thought I'd outlined that in my OP? Paul saw Jesus as someone "obedient unto death" which led to his resurrection as Son of God. He saw Jesus as a Jew who lived in Paul's recent past.

Not much to go on, obviously not enough for some, but the evidence from Paul is what it is.

There is no issue of "speculation." You are stating a hypothesis and comparing it with other hypotheses with respect to explaining the observed narrative content of Paul and Mark's work. You don't state what the other hypotheses are, and this best one lacks any stated connection with Paul and Mark.

Ultimately you are correct. Eventually I'd need to show how my hypothesis has more explanatory power than any of the other ones.

Your reader, then, has no way to follow how you arrive at your conclusion. This is not mockery; this is not giving you a hard time. The title of the thread is why you think something. There must be something in your mind, maybe a range of possibilities, whereby some guy who was both baptized and crucified at the very least came to Paul's attention. How did that happen in your view?

What Paul wrote: Jesus was obedient to God, to such an extent that he was killed for it. As I wrote in my OP, this is a theme that reaches through a lot of early Christian literature.

Going even further: I'd say that the Ebionites were the earliest Christians, and I'll probably create a thread with my theory that 'Ebion' was a code name for James the Just (warning: speculation!), like Saul/Paul and Cephas/Peter. The Ebionites thought that Jesus was Christ by election due to his virtue. They believed that anyone could have become the Christ had they been virtuous enough. Jesus Christ was apparently virtuous enough. As I posted in my OP: In Hippolytus of Rome, Refutation of All Heresies 7.22

The ancients quite properly called these men Ebionites, because they held poor and mean opinions concerning Christ. For they considered him a plain and common man, who was justified only because of his superior virtue, and who was the fruit of the intercourse of a man with Mary.

That's how I see Paul's thinking about Jesus. But that's a post for another day.

I appreciate that this is an unusual historical reasoning problem, since Paul and Mark agree that the role of Jesus in "founding" a movement during his natural lfe is minimal: either not discussed at all (Paul) or running a boot camp for a dozen "ninety day wonders" whose training prepares them to found a movement later on (Mark). They bring themselves to Paul's attention (a reasonable inference from Galatians IMO).

Now, I do not want to put words in your mouth, but the "boot camp" model states a connection between a baptized-then-crucified guy and a Jesus movement. That is, this guy ran a private face-to-face ("secret" in one sense of that word) operation whose alumni did the heavy lifting of founding a movement.

I offer that as an example of what's missing so far, I am not suggesting that that is or should be your answer. I am just saying you need some answer, probably something like that. Notice that this is as well founded in the evidence to be explained (Paul and Mark) as that there is a single relevant baptized-then-crucified guy. It is no more "speculative" than that, its foundation is on the page in black letters.

I appreciate where you're coming from, but I've tried to keep my theory in line of what evidence we do have. If you feel I need some answers to questions around this, then fair enough, but I have none here as I want to stick as closely as possible to the evidence of what is in the texts.

By "evidence" I mean the writings of Paul that I've interpreted in a particular way: i.e. that Paul thought Jesus was a Jew who died in Paul's recent past. People will disagree with my interpretations and that's fine. Anything beyond the texts is speculation. Now, I can speculate until the cows come home, I just wanted to avoid bringing in speculation at this early time. The idea of Jesus being baptised by John the B is pure speculation, to answer a question by another poster.

I believe that Paul was one of many independent religious entrepreneur who took advantage of the new heavenly Jesus Christ power, and ran travelling miracle shows. This was being done by all the apostles. The Christ appearances in 1 Cor were invoked during those travelling shows and are what attracted growing numbers of converts, Jewish and pagan, to the movement. This is what led to the large variety of Christian groups in the First Century CE: Marcion, Valentius, Simon Magus, Ebionites, etc. All of it was driven by Christ dying and being raised to heaven, and not driven by a Gospel Jesus going around and performing miracles. The Gospel Jesus didn't become important until the mid-Second Century.

The latter part about Paul and his travelling miracle shows is speculation but it is based on what we find in the early Christian texts.

[Sinouhe]

I'd argue that Paul is evidence for some kind of Jesus, a man who lived in Paul's recent past

I see nothing in Paul to date the crucifixion of Jesus as recent.
The revelation of his death is recent, yes, of course.

But the death itself ?

[mlinssen]

I appreciate where you're coming from, but I've tried to keep my theory in line of what evidence we do have. If you feel I need some answers to questions around this, then fair enough, but I
I believe that Paul was one of many independent religious entrepreneur who took advantage of the new heavenly Jesus Christ power, and ran travelling miracle shows. This was being done by all the apostles. The Christ appearances in 1 Cor were invoked during those travelling shows and are what attracted growing numbers of converts, Jewish and pagan, to the movement. This is what led to the large variety of Christian groups in the First Century CE: Marcion, Valentius, Simon Magus, Ebionites, etc. All of it was driven by Christ dying and being raised to heaven, and not driven by a Gospel Jesus going around and performing miracles. The Gospel Jesus didn't become important until the mid-Second Century.

The latter part about Paul and his travelling miracle shows is speculation but it is based on what we find in the early Christian texts.

That actually is a pretty good and fun and reasonable theory really. The shows could go on for decades of course, and the variety of shows world explain for the assumed variety of sects allegedly deriving from them - in essence you have turned these into additional gospels, and those may even have existed simultaneously

I'll leave you to it, as this entire OP can be reduced to "I believe that a really crucified guy is the prerequisite for Christianity but that's just an opinion which I can't defend"

1. What you theory now appears to be trying to explain is how Christianity came into being, not what the minimal prerequisite for it was
2. There were no Jewish converts, there have never been any, and mid 2nd CE is precisely when the FF start to write, and the first and foremost they write about is how the Jews got bypassed, and how that was the will of Gawd - which is precisely what Paul says