Weighing up the evidence for the ‘Historical Jesus’

[outhouse]

you have to supplement your position with evidence from the Gospels, which are not reliable or even credible.

Nonsense, dribble

The Nt is not devoid of credible historical data either. That is a fact. So quit using your "no true Scotsman"

[outhouse]

What do you mean by "most" educated and how do you know everyone's educational background?

It takes an education to know an education.


You cannot tell who possesses educated knowledge on these topics?

You cannot spit out a name and repeat said persons position and how recreates his personal version of what happened to some extent, including the differences of many different credible scholars? And how their version lines up in comparison?

[Bernard Muller]

No amount of analysis of the NT texts can prove Jesus was a real person or the person as described in the NT. Even the name Jesus means 'saviour'.

We don't have to go further than the Pauline epistles in order to find that Jesus was a real person.
There were many "Jesus" existing in the Jewish world of the 1st century. For those, the name "Jesus" (Greek for Aramaic/Hebrews "Yeshua"/"Joshua") was probably taken from the name of biblical servant/later_successor of Moses and nothing else.
And about name, my first name is Bernard, of German origin, which apparently means "bear-hardy", or "brave as a bear". I just learned that a minute ago. Does that mean I am "bear-hardy" or "brave as a bear"? I do not think so. Actually, my mother told me I was named like that because she liked a little boy in the neighborhood of the same first name.

Josephus 20, 9 is likely an interpolation of scribal-emendation -
Carrier R (2012) 'Origen, Eusebius, and the Accidental Interpolation in Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 20.200'
Journal of Early Christian Studies Volume 20, Number 4, Winter edn

"Analysis of the evidence from the works of Origen, Eusebius, and Hegesippus concludes that the reference to "Christ" in Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 20.200 is probably an accidental interpolation or scribal emendation and that the passage was never originally about Christ or Christians. It referred not to James the brother of Jesus Christ, but probably to James the brother of the Jewish high priest Jesus ben Damneus."

I debated Carrier & his fans on Carrier's own blog.
I have also three blog posts on the matter:
http://historical-jesus.info/33.html
Comments on Josephus' Antiquities, XX, IX, 1 and "the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James". With UPDATE as of Jan 14th 2013
Mythicists have been proposing that Josephus did not write "who was called Christ" or had "son of Damneus" instead. Both cases create problems as explained here.
http://historical-jesus.info/67.html
More comments on Josephus' Antiquities, XX, IX, 1 and "the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James"
I got involved again on Richard Carrier's blog on the same topic.
http://historical-jesus.info/104.html
Here are Carrier's comments on Josephus' Antiquities 20, 9, 1, trying to prove "Jesus called Christ" is an accidendal interpolation.
I reproduced the whole of Carrier's text in OHJ on the matter, with many of my notes against his arguments.

In conclusion, Carrier's proposal does not make sense. It is also far-fetched & convoluted & unevidenced.

Cordially, Bernard

[cienfuegos]

What do you mean by "most" educated and how do you know everyone's educational background?

It takes an education to know an education.


You cannot tell who possesses educated knowledge on these topics?

You cannot spit out a name and repeat said persons position and how recreates his personal version of what happened to some extent, including the differences of many different credible scholars? And how their version lines up in comparison?

I can barely decipher what you are attempting to say here. I do think you make unwarranted assumptions. Besides, I do have a master's relevant to historiography which has been my main topic here. I'm also a doc student where I have learned both quantitative and qualitative methodologies for testing hypotheses. In my first post I stated my interest in subjecting Paul's writings to a structured qualitative analysis.

[outhouse]

I can barely decipher what you are attempting to say here. I do think you make unwarranted assumptions.

That what happens when one lacks the knowledge to comprehend a topic.


You cannot tell who possesses educated knowledge on these topics? You cannot answer this honestly, because you lack the knowledge to see it, is my guess.

Besides, I do have a master's relevant to historiography which has been my main topic here. I'm also a doc student where I have learned both quantitative and qualitative methodologies for testing hypotheses. In my first post I stated my interest in subjecting Paul's writings to a structured qualitative analysis.

Has little to do with biblical scholarships. They are only small pieces of the pie here.

[MrMacSon]

I can barely decipher what you are attempting to say here. I do think you make unwarranted assumptions.

That what happens when one lacks the knowledge to comprehend a topic.

You cannot tell who possesses educated knowledge on these topics? You cannot answer this honestly, because you lack the knowledge to see it, is my guess.

Besides, I do have a master's relevant to historiography which has been my main topic here. I'm also a doc student where I have learned both quantitative and qualitative methodologies for testing hypotheses. In my first post I stated my interest in subjecting Paul's writings to a structured qualitative analysis.

Has little to do with biblical scholarships. They are only small pieces of the pie here.

Does outhouse mean cienfuegos are not enough of a believer? not enough of a Christian?

[Sheshbazzar]

Conformity to status quo 'consensus' is what that is all about.
Any opinion that does not bow down in conformity before majority opinion must be 'uneducated' and 'ignorant'.

Of course not all rationally thinking persons are going to persuaded by that kind of argument.

[Sheshbazzar]

'One funeral at a time' is quite descriptive of the academic problem and its most likely long term solution.
'Consensus' academia has now spent over two hundred years in the task of painting itself into its present corner.
At this late date, with a hundred thousand academics having supported and written their various theses cleaving to the popular status quo assertion of the existence of a 'historical' Jesus ...in an academic CULT-ure that demanded it, to now reverse, or to admit; 'We have long erred by the assuming of the unevidenced', would cause such a loss public confidence in pronouncements of religious history professors that religious 'scholarship' would become a public laughingstock and embarrassment that no sane collage applicant would dare touch it with a ten foot pole.
Not that it won't eventually happen anyway, but no one presently involved in that back scratching CULT-ural status quo wants it to happen while they are still around, and have to be the ones to deal with the ensuing academic embarrassment themselves.
Nope, they would much rather continue to squeeze together in that painted in corner, playing their one note harmony on their one string fiddles till their massive 'historical Jesus 'papers' house burns right to the ground with them in it.
Kind of like taking a vow of "Death before dishonor" ....but where in the futility of their sacrifice for the cause, that discrediting and dishonor will come afterwards anyway.
Future academics, consistently employing concise standards and criteria of evidence, will likely chortle in mirth over the bass-ackwards and primitive 'scholarship' methods of appeal to popular 'consensus' that is presently de rigueur. One that is notably founded and grounded in roots that lead right back to the writings and pro-Jesus theological assumptions of the 'academic' theologians of previous centuries.

[cienfuegos]

to cienfuegos,

History would be the same with or without your unknown Jesus.

How do you know about what course history would have taken without Jesus?

Even by minimalist historicism, actual Jesus doesn't matter. Actual Jesus was unknown to most people who accepted Christianity. Those people did not know if there was an actual Jesus or not and had no way to confirm what they were told. They just accepted it. We know that people will accept untruths as well as truths. So there actually having been an unknown man crucified doesn't really matter. As Paul says (in the Last Testament of Christ), "If you never existed, we would have to make you up."

Unknown? not according to Paul & gMark & Josephus Ant. 20, 9 (1st cent.).

Paul seems to know very little about Jesus. More on that later. Please use source criticism to establish gMark as a suitable source from which to derive historical data. Who is the author of gMark? How reliable is that author? How is that author thought of by his contemporaries? Is he cited by his contemporaries? Josephus never mentions Jesus. Both the TF and 20.9 are interpolations. 20.9 is dependent on the TF. If Josephus doesn't mention Jesus in Book 18, there is no reason to think he would introduce Jesus called Christ in Book 20 without explanation.

Maybe you expect some accidental healer from Galilee to have been reported early on in CNN report style. That's not reasonable, more so that most writings in antiquity did not survive up to our days.

So if the evidence doesn't say what we want it to say, we just make it up? Was Jesus well-known or not well-known?

Paul may not be mentioning Nazareth & Pilate, but he had Jesus as a full human/earthly being (dead by then) with some attributes:
Jew, poor, of no reputation, humble, ministering only to Jews, not revealed to be Son of God before his death, with brothers, one of them named James, who Paul met several times, crucified as "Christ" in the heartland of the Jews.
Mark's gospel had to react to eyewitness' account on key issues, because the testimony was not supporting the Christian beliefs.

It is explained here where I derive the data:
http://historical-jesus.info/6.html

From the link (numbers 1 through 11):

1) His name is Jesus (Ro 5:15 "the one man Jesus Christ", 1 Cor 11:23 "the Lord Jesus the night in which he was betrayed [or delivered] took bread", 2 Cor 8:9, etc).

Of course, in Romans 5:15, Paul also speaks of the one man, Adam. In fact, he is comparing Adam to Jesus. We know that Paul thinks of Jesus as different than Adam. In 1 Cor 15:45-48, Paul says:

45 So it is written: “The first man Adam became a living being”[f]; the last Adam, a life-giving spirit. 46 The spiritual did not come first, but the natural, and after that the spiritual. 47 The first man was of the dust of the earth; the second man is of heaven. 48 As was the earthly man, so are those who are of the earth; and as is the heavenly man, so also are those who are of heaven. 49 And just as we have borne the image of the earthly man, so shall we[g] bear the image of the heavenly man.

It is clear that Paul can believe that Jesus is a celestial being, with celestial flesh, and be a celestial man.

2) He was a Jew (said to be descendant of Abraham (Gal 3:16), Israelites (Ro 9:4-5), Jesse (Ro 15:12) & David (Ro 1:3)).
3) He was a minister/servant to Jews (Ro 15:8).
4) He was of no reputation (Php 2:7).
5) He was crucified (1 Cor 1:23, 2:2, 2:8, 2 Cor 13:4).
6) The crucifixion happened in the heartland of the Jews: see here.

I believe this is all based on the Suffering Servant in Isaiah. Notice that #3, it isn't just that he "was a servant" but that he became a servant:

For I tell you that Christ has become a servant of the Jews on behalf of God’s truth, so that the promises made to the patriarchs might be confirmed 9 and, moreover, that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy.

Notice Paul says "has become," that Jesus is a servant, not "was," but the Jesus in heaven is a servant of the Jews.

7) He had brothers (contemporaries of Paul) (1 Cor 9:5).
8) These brothers were travelling with "a "sister", a wife" (1 Cor 9:5).
9) One of Jesus' brothers was named "James" (Gal 1:19), whom Paul met several times (Gal 1:19, 2:9).

I think you are misinterpreting what Paul means by "brothers of the Lord."

10) James lived for a long time in Jerusalem (Gal 1:19, 2:9).
11) James was also an important member of some Jewish sect (Gal 2:2, 9, 12).

I don't dispute this about James.

I do not need interpretations, mythicists do in order to counteract the evidence.
Can you explain why any of these items are taken out of context? Supply a few examples.

I did above.

On my blog, I addressed objections and mythicist interpretations of Carrier & Doherty on Paul's admission of an earthly/human Jesus in the near past.
I am afraid you understand by "context" that Jesus was mythical, consequently all indications to a human/earthly Jesus in the Pauline epistles are actually not possible.

No, I believe that you cherry pick phrases which within the context of Paul's writings do not have the connotation that you want to cast. For example, Romans 15:8 which I discussed above and Paul referring to Jesus as "a man."

gMark might not be reliable, but that does not mean it is all fiction. And I have strong reasons to know it is not so (all fiction).

You have to establish a methodology for determining what is fiction and what is not fiction. How do you do that? One way would be independent confirmation from at least one other reliable source. For data about Jesus (not Pilate, not Herod, not the census, etc), there is no independent confirmation.

I already answered most of that. And by reading the gospel of Mark, we can have some idea who wrote it, and more so why. He certainly intended his writing to be read as a history of actual events, and I do not see where he hinted his text was an allegory.

Maybe you didn't read far into the text. I think this is where the first hint is:

4 And so John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. 5 The whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem went out to him. Confessing their sins, they were baptized by him in the Jordan River. 6 John wore clothing made of camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey.

I bet you know who I think the author of Mark is referring to.

You treat gMark as it cannot contain any pieces of true fact. How can you know that?

What are you talking about? Did you not see my posts about the novel Little Big Man, responses to outhouse?
Fact: George Armstrong Custer attacked an Indian village camping on the Little Big Horn.
Fact: Custer died that day.
Fiction: Jack Crabb's family was massacred by Cheyenne warriors who then raised him.

see? Even a purely fictional work is not devoid of facts. But you have to be able to find what is fictional and what is factual. You need a methodology to do that. I used the criterion of embarrasment to demonstrate that Jack Crabb's family was killed by Cheyenne warriors. Yet we know that the entire account is fictional. It is plausible that a small group of settlers would be attacked crossing native territory in the mid to late 1800s (we know it happened). We know it is plausible that natives would raise white children, it happened. Yet and still, Jack Crabb is entirely fictional. How do you know that anything about Jesus in gMark is based on something that actually happened? How can you make that determination?

[Sheshbazzar]

assertion. ...and hope no one notices. And if they do, pretend their objections are of no consequence.
Hell, it has worked for religionists since the dawn of human history.

Example; The first verse of Genesis.