A lot of debate on this board lately about this which I quite enjoy, but I find it seems it has not even been defined what a historical Jesus means.

At what point is there sufficient evidence to say we have found the historical Jesus?

How many people would even agree on what a historical Jesus would look like?

I don't think we would find near the consensus on this as some seem to think that there is.

To me a historical Jesus means a human named Jesus on which the sect of Christianity was based upon. It does not mean a conglomeration of separate men named Jesus nor a conglomeration of stories about separate preachers that molded into Christianity. Nor does it mean to me that a mythical, Messianic, or other heavenly figure which Christianity came from.

What other definitions are people operating on?

Part of the "problem" is that it means different things to different people.

I agree with what it means to you. However, I've had others tell me that even if the "Jesus" of the bible is a result of the combination of sayings from a dozen or so "teachers" of the time, none of which were named "Jesus," and none of which had a "history" matching anything in the gospel stories, that would still mean there was an "historical" Jesus.

My own conclusion, which ironically matches that of a large number of "Jesus scholars" who think he DID exist, is that the evidence isn't sufficient to ever determine whether there was or was not an "historical Jesus" with any certainty (noted Jesus scholar, and Roman Catholic priest John P. Maier, for example -- who clearly and honestly states that "...any claim is only to the probable, not the certain.").

In my case, since the claim that there was an historical Jesus can't be established with any certainty, I give the claim no merit (despite some others on this board who use fallacious reasoning to claim that makes me a "mythicist," it does not). I'd give the claim merit if and when evidence lets us reach a conclusion with some certainty. That's not the case now.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/25/2015 08:43PM by ificouldhietokolob.

I usually fall on the side of their probably was a historical J, but I think a more accurate position would be "I have no idea"

My thoughts exactly. For me this is a subject that is the very embodiment of the word, "agnostic." I don't know one way or the other, and whether the answer turns out to be yes or no, it makes no difference to me whatsoever.

I am afraid that I would not be satisfied that Jesus was historical unless history books told of his doings.

Just imagine this: A powerful mage appears. He feeds 5000 people. He performs miraculous healings. Huge mobs of people gather to listen to him preach. The religious leaders turn on this upstart and convince the political leaders to publicly execute him. But it does not work. He rises from the dead and walks about talking to people.

The Romans were a very literate people and wrote all sorts of history books. They recorded even some very commonplace and dull things in great detail. Why did the Romans fail to notice any of the remarkable events in the life of Jesus?

If a powerful mage came to modern America and did all the things that Jesus did, you can be certain that it would be clearly recorded in the history books, and people would be able to read them in the year 4000 CE and know that this amazing person actually existed.

Most Biblical scholars dont believe in the miracles and the Romans for the most part were not anywhere near Galilee. Those arguments do not hold water.Jesus was an apocalytic peasant preacher and people like him were common. So were aith healers.Josephus writes a sentence or two about some of them,including Jesus but they were not unusual enough to get much attention.If Jesus was going around feeding thousands with two fish and raising the dead,you would have a point but few scholars are saying that.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/25/2015 08:40PM by bona dea.

If Jesus was an apocalyptic peasant preacher that few people had heard of, and who never performed any miracles, then this kind of makes it sound like the New Testament and Christianity are not true.

I think the thing that most people are concerned about is whether or not Christianity is true.

The three main possibilities:

(1) If Jesus is historical and did the things the New Testament said He did, then Christianity may be true.

(2) If Jesus is not historical, then the New Testament and Christianity seems false.

(3) If Jesus was a real man who never did any miracles and did not come back from the dead, then the New Testament and Christianity seem false.

The effect of option 3 is practically indistinguishable from the effect of option 2.

I don't think people are all that concerned merely about the piece of academic trivia of whether or not there was a man named Jesus. They are concerned about the implications and whether or not the religion is true. If they went arid academic trivia, they may as well debate whether or not Shakespeare wrote his plays.

I think that is way too much generalizing. Besides history is important even if a certain segment of society doesnt think so. The truth of Christianity is not relevant to the fact that it influenced history.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/25/2015 09:03PM by bona dea.

You think I am doing too much generalizing. You do not agree with my view of the world. How would you rewrite what I said so that it matches your view of the world and does not generalize too much?

I wouldnt say most people wouldnt care about Jesus unless he was divine. Historians,professional and amateur, would care.I am sure others would too. In other words, I do not see this as academic trivia considering the history of the last 2000 years and the part Christianity,true or not, played in it.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/25/2015 09:34PM by bona dea.

In your opinion, what does the historical evidence concerning Jesus tell us about the truth or falsity of Christianity?

I am not a believer in a divine Jesus although I like many of the moral teachings

Much like Thomas Jefferson whom JFK considered to be one of the smartest men who ever lived.

Jefferson's created "bible" was actually a single harmonized (all four NT gospels combined into one) gospel and excluded the virgin birth, resurrection, and miracles leaving only the moral teachings which Jefferson stated that he intended to follow. He entitled his creation "The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth". His final product is commonly called "The Jefferson Bible" and is available on Amazon.

I find no fault with Jefferson's approach. One does not have to accept the Christian version of Jesus life to appreciate the wisdom found in many of his so-called "teachings". One writer commenting on his final result observed that "Jefferson's was a search not so much for the historical as for the intelligible Jesus".



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 02/26/2015 09:42AM by Templar.

Hysterical Jesus is probably more like what they mean

Richard Carrier describes the "minimal historicist" position as:

1. An actual man at some point named Jesus acquired followers in life who continued as an identifiable movement after his death.
2. This is the same Jesus who was claimed by some of his followers to have been executed by the Jewish or Roman authorities.
3. This is the same Jesus some of whose followers soon began worshiping as a living god (or demigod).

(On the historicity of Jesus, p 34). I think Carrier's definition is a very good starting point.

Note that there is no mention of crucifixion, birth in Nazareth, parents called Mary and Joseph, a brother called James or claims by Jesus of being the king of the Jews or a Messiah. Carrier's minimal historicism therefore lacks key components of the Jesus that Bart Ehrman describes in "How Jesus Became God". If Jesus lacked the qualities described by Bart Ehrman then he couldn't have later become known as God, therefore I believe Bart Ehrman's Jesus is the most minimal historical Jesus that could plausibly be behind the myth.

Carrier isnt the final word on what Jesus was and was not.

Perhaps not, but that is still a pretty good definition of the minimum requirments of calling your Jesus historical.

Robert Eisenman's 'James The Brother of Jesus' cleared up a LOT of things for me. Very well thought out and scholarly work on a subject that most Mo's never venture down outside of Jesus The Christ by Talmage.

Cake

Can I hear an amen for sista dea?

:o)

Proto-Christianity, that is, Christianity in its raw form, where they believed a Messiah had been born, died and resurrected for their sins, actually goes back a few hundred years before the common era. In the original version, Jesus was not a man who ever lived on the earth, but a god being, sometimes just an arch-angel, other times the son-of god, who lived and died in heaven. Heaven was believed to be the sky, and the place where Jesus was murdered, by demons in the original version, was believed to be just beneath the moon. His tomb was on the moon itself. This was the Jesus Christ that Paul believed in. None of his original letters spoke of a Jesus who lived on the earth, and the ones that did, have been shown to have been written by other people, sometime after Paul's death.

Paul was actually a super successful missionary, and his role was probably in getting this Jewish mystery religion main stream. Shortly after Paul's death though, mystery religions about gods who lived in the sky fell out of favor, and it became more popular to tell stories about gods who lived on earth, in real places, and interacted with real historical figures. The Jesus story was rewritten, and we know this by looking at contrast between earlier accounts of Jesus, and the ones that started appearing in the second century of the common era.

This is why the New Testament has a bunch of historical figures living in the wrong eras. King Herod, who ordered all the babies murdered (an event strangely missing from all historical records) and Pilot were several decades apart in their reigns, but both were notorious enough figures that authors felt compelled to add them. Kind of like that story about how Joseph Smith got saved by Mark Twain, when Mark Twain was a riverboat captain, despite the fact that Mark Twain was only a very small child at the time of Smith's death. It is also why Jesus does not show up in any reliable historical documents.

For references, please see this handy lecture by a noted scholar and professor who has studied the whole matter. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwUZOZN-9dc

Uh no. Another crackpot theory. Herod may not belong in the narrative,that is debatable, but he is separated from Pilate because Herod was part of the birth story and Pilate presided at the crucifixion. Jesus was in his thirties when he died.Carrier has already been discussed by several posters. The nicest thing you can say is that he is almost alone in his views



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/25/2015 11:31PM by bona dea.

While researching the historical Jesus, it seemed to me that it means a lot of different things to different people. Every generation and every profession brings their own interpretation to the table: Jesus as a rebel, Jesus as a sage, Jesus as a revolutionary, Jesus as a socialist, etc. I guess we'll have to wait a decade or two for Jesus as a hacker...

His factual existence does not appear to be questioned by these authors. I'm not yet sure whether this is cause or effect. Jesus not having existed as a person would make all of these discussions rather silly.

Most modern authors seem to agree, though, that the supernatural and miraculous aspects of the story are not historical (several cultural, sociological, psychological, etc. explanations are then delved into ad infinitum). The problem I see with this, is this: if you strip the few sources we have about Jesus of all the miraculous stuff, there is nothing left.

I may be over-generalizing here, but every random factual statement in anyone of the gospels is contradicted by at least one gospel and often more.

Let's take Jesus' empty tomb. The core of this story is that the tomb was empty because Jesus had risen. This, of course, is a supernatural thing so we strip that away. What are we then left with? A set of statements that an uncertain number of partly identified women went to Jesus' tomb at an uncertain point in time for uncertain purposes and meeting God knows who saying who knows what.

I have a really, really hard time seeing this as actual history and at the moment, I am trying really, really hard to keep an open mind.



Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 02/26/2015 09:05AM by rt.

The NT is history mixed with myth. The gospels were written after the fact by four different people who probably didnt know each other. Each had an agenda. It isnt surprising that there are contradictions. You read two separate accoumts of something that happened in our lifetime and they may differ. That is common



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/26/2015 11:18AM by bona dea.

And, of course, those different "versions" were further massaged by the Catholic Church in it's development of orthodoxy.

Do you have evidence for that or did you get that from The DaVinci Code

Yes. Gospel Parallels lists in footnotes hundreds of instances in which the oldest NT manuscripts do not contain what are clearly later additions in more recent manuscripts and appear in the Bible. The women taken in adultery and the longer ending of Mark are two quick examples off the top of my head.

I know, but most are not important and were probably mistakes. There is no evidence of some vast Catholic conspiracy. The woman taken in sin may have been added because it was a traditional story. We dont know

What is the history and what is the myth? Is the history that it has a historical context - meaning placed in a real world setting during a set period of time?

What apart from this is actually historical?

You might want to read Michael Grant's Jesua An Historian's View of the Gospels. This is not a question that can be answered in a short post

Another addition is the ending of Mark, The original ended with the empty tomb. Most though are just a change of a few words and are not that signicant
considering books were hand copied and mistakes happenex

I would say a historical Jesus, would be a person/persons who the Mythical Jesus is originated from. I.E. an antecedent actual person who the stories however magnified was based on. This person need not be completely the same as Mythical Jesus, because the tales have obviously been "telephoned" enough that they may bear only small kernels of the true person.

I'd agree it means different things to different people.

One thing it means: Christianity has a clear historical beginning, started by a real person who existed. In this it is like Christianity, Islam, Mormonism, Sikhism, and different from Hinduism, Shinto, etc.

Eric3 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I'd agree it means different things to different
> people.
>
> One thing it means: Christianity has a clear
> historical beginning, started by a real person who
> existed. In this it is like Christianity, Islam,
> Mormonism, Sikhism, and different from Hinduism,
> Shinto, etc.

Yeah. Too bad we have no idea who the "real person" that started Christianity is, though. :)