In another thread, I wrote a little bit about my first impressions of historical Jesus scholarship:

http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,1859507,1859507#msg-1859507

To which poster “Bona Dea” replied: “Scholars do not start with a foregone conclusion and find evidence to prove it”. So I figured I’d let whatever Jesus scholar I’m currently reading speak for themselves. Flavour of the day is Helen K. Bond’s “The Historical Jesus. A guide for the perplexed”.

Like I said in the previous thread, there is precious little evidence for an historical Jesus and scholars know this. They start most of their anthologies with this admission, as does Bond. Luckily, this doesn’t really need to bother an aspiring Jesus scholar. German theologian Rudolf Bultmann (1884-1976) is often quoted as having said: “I do indeed think that we can know almost nothing concerning the life and personality of Jesus”. Bond explains that he didn’t really mean it like that but rather “stressed that Jesus had been a real person” (p. 13) - even though two pages later, she admits that “studies arguing that Jesus had never existed” are a logical inference from Bultmann’s approach (p. 15). To be fair, she doesn’t say “logical inference” (bit of a pleonasm, I guess) but “extreme inference” which Boyd Packer might have defined as “a logical inference that isn’t very useful”.

Incidentally, no one really cared about this until the dawn of the Enlightenment age some two hundred years ago. Our crime scene is hardly fresh. We’re dealing with 17 centuries of Christian witness tampering and fabricating evidence. Even the gospels, which are really all the Jesus scholars have, are “expressions of the faith of the earliest Christian communities rather than historical accounts of the life of Jesus” (p. 14). In fact, “form critical analysis [i.e. an analysis of sources by type, such as sayings, parables, etc.] of the synoptic Gospels could identify a primitive form of a tradition, but that was not necessarily a guarantee that the tradition went back to Jesus” (p. 17).

Form criticism was all the rage in Bultmann’s days between the two world wars but all it really did was show how thin the sources for an historical Jesus really are. Time for something more sciency! Enter the criteria of dissimilarity, of coherence, and of multiple attestation. I won’t bore you with the details because in the end, all of these criteria proved to be useless. Nevertheless, adding some sciency-sounding vernacular “had restored credibility to Jesus studies, but its findings were rather limited, to say the least” (p. 19). Yes, you read that correctly: it all turned out to be pseudoscientific bunk but nevertheless restored credibility to the field. You really have to want to see it.

And historical Jesus scholars really want to see it. According to Bond, being an historical Jesus scholar means committing oneself “to the fundamental belief that it is both possible and important to reconstruct something of the man of Nazareth” (p. 22). Never mind the facts (or lack thereof), armed with this fundamental belief, modern Jesus scholars can go all out and make up anything they want about Jesus. Bond discusses ten representatives of this proud tradition masquerading as scholarship:

Geza Vermes (Jesus as a charismatic healer and exorcist)
E.P. S a n d e r s (Jesus as an apocalyptic prophet respecting Jewish law)
Richard Horsley (Jesus as a social revolutionary)
The Jesus Seminar (Jesus as an illiterate peasant)
J.D. Crossan (Jesus as an Hellenistic sage)
David Flusser (Jesus as a well-educated Jewish carpenter)
J.P. Meier (Jesus as an apocalytic prophet disrespecting Jewish law)
N.T. Wright (Jesus as the resurrected Saviour)
J.D.G. Dunn (Jesus as he appears in the gospels as reliable oral traditions)
Dale Allison (Jesus as he appears in the gospels as accurate memories of his followers)

So what made this “rather bewildering array of competing portraits of Jesus” (p. 21) among modern Jesus scholars possible? Bond lists three important developments (p. 20-21):

1. The shift of Jesus scholarship from protestant German theologists to mainly Anglo-Saxon scholars with diverse backgrounds including (gasp) “Catholics, Jews and secularists”.

2. A new focus on what made Jesus Jewish, as opposed to the old emphasis on how Jesus pissed off his fellow Jews. This opens up a whole new array of “areas which may well have informed Jesus’ social critique”.

3. Abandoning the need for facts in favour of “a larger picture” for which matching ‘facts’ can then be cherry-picked.

OK, I’m paraphrasing here, but putting ‘facts’ in parentheses is not my idea (see e.g. on p. 23). Coming back to poster “Bona Dea’s” statement at the beginning of this post, historical Jesus scholars today do indeed start with a foregone conclusion – a fundamental belief that Jesus was a real person – and then go about finding evidence to prove it.

Although not even evidence is strictly necessary in the realm of historical Jesus fantasy land. Take J.D. Crossan, for instance. He “imagines a strongly Hellenized Galilee and, even though there is no concrete evidence for the presence of Cynics in the region, he thinks it quite likely”(p. 28).

Dale Allison tosses out “the standard criteria of authenticity” altogether because “they are unlikely to be able to determine with any accuracy whether a saying does, in fact, go back to Jesus; most of the time, we simply cannot tell”. Doesn’t that make the sources for an historical Jesus suspect? Sure, but even so, “the general gist of the tradition may well preserve an accurate memory of what the historical Jesus said or did” (p.35).

So there it is. To become an historical Jesus scholar today, specialize in an area of real historical scholarship somewhat close to first century Galilee, apply your fundamental belief that Jesus was a real person and use your imagination. I hear gay activist Jesus is up for grabs...



Edited 16 time(s). Last edit at 08/21/2016 08:57AM by rt.

We all know George Washington was a real person. His de facto "deification" started almost right after he died. The myths and legends surrounding his life are more real to people today than than the life of the mortal George Washington.

King Arthur may have been one person or the syncretion of several different people and events over time.


Jesus of Nazareth probably was a real person but the Jesus of the Christian religion is based on myth and legend. After all, Mithras also had a virgin birth.

Supposedly this is the exact spot where the Buddha was born:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gautama_Buddha#/media/File:Birthplacebuddha.jpg


Zeus came to the imprisoned Danaë as a golden shower which resulted in the birth of Perseus.

There's always a difference between what really happened and what people believe.

Truth always matters.

What if the passage of time and paucity of historical documentation make it virtually impossible to know what the truth is?

In such cases an educated guess is the best result you can hope for.

In such a case, the conclusion must be that there is not enough evidence for an historical Jesus.

rt Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> In such a case, the conclusion must be that there
> is not enough evidence for an historical Jesus.

Bingo. And that's exactly the situation we're in.
"Educated guesses" might be entertaining, especially to a public that already believes "Jesus" was a real person. But they aren't historical scholarship. They're pre-existing belief desperately searching for confirming evidence, finding none, and declaring the belief "true" anyway.

Masterful OP, rt :)

You flatter me, Sir. I'm glad you liked it!

Anybody wrote:
>We all know George Washington was a real person. His de facto "deification" started almost right after he died. The myths and legends surrounding his life are more real to people today than than the life of the mortal George Washington.

Compare Washington and Jesus to Wilhelm Tell, who led the Swiss in their fight for independence from Austrian tyranny. He has been the subject of patriotic plays, extolled in Swiss schoolbooks, and revered as the father of Swiss democracy. Tourists visit the places where important events in his life occurred.

But Wilhelm Tell did not exist. He is entirely a product of legend and myth.

See the Wikipedia article.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/21/2016 10:18AM by RPackham.

Most scholars agree that Wilhelm Tell probably existed. He may not have been the remarkable shot of Swiss lore but the gist of the tradition that he was a great freedom fighter is probably correct.

Rossini wrote an opera about him. The ouverture is probably one of the most famous pieces of classical music ever written. Literally billions of people know it. Surely it is more likely that Rossini based his magnum opus on a real character rather than a fictional one?

Wilhelm Tell mythicists are lunatic fringe conspiracy theorists. All Wilhelm Tell scholars agree that he was a real person. Going against the scholarly consensus is ridiculous and anti-intellectual.

I fear not everyone understood your sarcasm...:)

Well done!

It won't be very long until the heroine of the 'Hunger Games' was a real person...

Sometimes future history is easy to predict!

Time will tell. The first eye-witness accounts will probably surface around 2065.

> I hear gay activist Jesus is up for grabs...

If Jesus existed he was almost certainly gay. If he was the perfect man and still single at age 30 there had to be a reason.

To paraphrase Bart Ehrman, when a person dies they are often seen by LOVED ones after their death (emphasis added). Who was Jesus first seen by after his death? Not his mother, not his wife, not his children, he was first seen by his male disciple Peter. Not that Jesus was interested in Peter. Everybody knew that the disciple that Jesus loved was John.

If we are to believe Christian authors, Jesus was executed alongside common criminals for claiming to be the king of the Jews. If Jesus was gay then perhaps the real reason he was executed was for Sodomy, a crime for which he would have been executed alongside common criminals. If someone claimed to be the monarch of the Jews, the execution would have been made more public as a deterrent to potential rebels.

If Jesus was gay then he was also an activist, especially if the saying "As I have loved you, love one another" can be attributed to him. You have to do some mental gymnastics to take Jesus' message of love for your fellow man to mean something other than exactly what it says.

Edit to add: I forgot to mention the betrayal of Jesus with a kiss. Why didn't Judas just point to the guy? Two grown men kissing is a bit weird, unless Jesus was accused of Sodomy with Judas, and Judas was cooperating with authorities to catch Jesus. A kiss between two grown men, witnessed by authorities, would have been considered evidence that the two men were engaged in Sodomy.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/21/2016 10:50PM by The Invisible Green Potato.

Crucifixion was a Roman penalty and homosexuality was common and accepted among the Romans.

Okay, being homosexual was not a reason for punishment by Romans. Apparently the Jews never took their laws seriously enough for anyone to have actually been executed for homosexuality (source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality_and_Judaism#Rabbinic_Jewish_application_and_interpretation_of_these_verses).

Being the recipient in a homosexual relation lowered your social status if you were a Roman citizen (source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality_in_ancient_Rome). By coincidence, or not, low social status made you more likely to be crucified as a punishment for crimes (source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crucifixion#Ancient_Rome).

So it seems that Jesus could not have been crucified for the crime of being gay, but it is possible that crucifixion was used as a punishment because of the social status of Jesus, which could have been lowered because of being a "passive" gay.

The traditional view, that crucifixion was used to convey extra disgrace, independently of Jesus' social status, presumes an extra heinous crime. The Gospel authors struggled to get a conviction from Pilate, suggesting that Jesus' crimes were borderline punishable.

If a religious leader was executed for a secular crime, the followers of that religious leader will always claim that the leader had done nothing wrong and was a martyr. For that reason, we should be skeptical of the reasons given by the Gospels for the crucifixion of Jesus. It could be that Jesus was crucified for committing a crime that had nothing to do with his religious beliefs. Without an independent source we will never know.

Certain homosexual acts such as taking the passive role lowered your status. Others were just fine.

This may well be true. There is no evidence, but I think it quite likely. Have you thought about writing a book?

Lol, no. Others have already written on the topic.

the sisters Mary and Martha and many other wives.

And she was the one who first saw him after the resurrection. (as the story goes)

If you remember the status of communications in the first century, a student of Christology (the study of /if a historical Jesus) can gain a new perspective by looking at the apostle Paul.

He was a johnny-come-lately who had the gall, the stones, to travel down to Jerusalem and present himself to the brother --the BROTHER--of Jesus and say that Jesus appeared to him on the road to Damascus and made him an apostle.

They could have said, "Get thee hence, you never seen nuthin' and we got this." But they didn't because he was a moneyed, powerful guy who used to be a Christian-hater, so they stroked their pointy beards and said, "all right, all right, all right."

This is where it gets enlightening. Paul left and began his mission, right? But he never heard of the virgin birth, the immaculate conception, the miracle in the Garden of Gethsemanee, and of course, no Trinity, and so on and on.

Those myths had not yet been embroidered into the story--yet. If you read Paul with the idea that he represents what was being talked about on the street at the time, it gives a thinker a completely different picture.


Kathleen

I think there are real figures at the heart of these myths, but if we were to see the real Buddha, Mohammed, Jesus, Confucious, etc., we would say WTF?

They are but the speck of sand upon which the pearl is spun.


Kathleen

Remember that story about Theseus and the Minotaur? Plutarch opined that it all started as a report of some guy (probably Theseus himself, according to Plutarch) who spent a night in a Cretan hoosegow.

There really was a guy named Paul Bunyan. He was a logger, and he was on the large size.

And to think that I saw it on Mulberry Street!!

I'll go back to sleep now.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/23/2016 12:54AM by slskipper.

Hey, you guys remember when Joseph Smith translated the Golden Plates by not putting his head in a hat so he could see the words appear on a rock?

Yea, me neither.

Probably the only thing true about that story is that he had a rock and a hat. And even that is iffy. Bottom line is Joseph Smith isn't historical either. He's just hysterical. (first time ever in the history of the world that joke has been used.)

When the word scholar and the term make shit up become synonyms you get Joseph Smith's history.

with ample historical and factual evidence to prove his existence -- as a total fake.

Very nice post rt.

Offhand, I have difficulty accepting the proposition that the man described in the New Testament as Jesus of Nazareth never, in fact, existed.

For me, a main problem of this proposition involves the story of John the Baptist and his baptism of Jesus, referred to in each of the Gospels.

If we accept the proposition that Jesus of Nazareth never existed, then it follows that every story about him is not true. In other words, it follows that every story we have about Jesus was fabricated.

This means that the story of Jesus' baptism by John was fabricated.

The story of Jesus' baptism by John can be seen as posing a difficulty for most Christians. Taken at face value, the story seems to imply that Jesus joined John's ministry, as as a subordinate, and was baptized by John. These actions (joining John's ministry and submitting to baptism by John) would tend to place Jesus on a level of lower authority than John.

Indeed, due to the amount of explanation offered in the New Testament for this, it would appear that these actions did pose a difficulty for Christian apologists. Such statements by John referring to "one greater than I", and not being worthy to remove Jesus' sandals would appear to be attempts by the writers to reverse the perception implicit in the story, and restore Jesus to a position superior to that of John.

All this being said, I can hopefully now present the problem a little more clearly. As I said earlier, if we accept this proposition, then every story about Jesus was a fabrication. That includes the story of Jesus' baptism by John.

The problem is this: if the story was fabricated, then why would it contain these actions that are so difficult for Christians to resolve? Why would Christian writers make up a story that tends to lessen Jesus? Why would they make up a story about Jesus that would almost immediately require a strong apologetic defense?

All of us have lied at some point in our lives. When we decided to lie, and began the process of constructing the lie, our most immediate concern was that the lie ultimately be believable. In accord with that concern, we typically produced a lie that had few if any barriers to acceptance. We do not normally build "problems" into our lie that people will question, and will tend to create resistance to acceptance.

I suppose one could argue that those who fabricated this story of Jesus' baptism built "problems" into their lie intentionally, trying to throw us "off the scent" by making their fabricated story difficult and in want of a resolution.

Bottom line: Would people who are fabricating stories of Jesus, and are clearly attempting to portray him as practically equal to God deliberately include important descrepancies in their account that would make us question his divinity?

This, in my opinion, follows directly from the proposition, and I'd say that it was a fairly big stretch.


Anyway, just my two cents.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 08/22/2016 03:50PM by mormonrealitycheck.

mormonrealitycheck Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Offhand, I have difficulty accepting the
> proposition that the man described in the New
> Testament as Jesus of Nazareth never, in fact,
> existed.

First, don't fall into a false dichotomy.
That there isn't enough evidence to say an actual Jesus DID exist does not mean the claim is being made that Jesus of Nazareth never in fact existed.
That's an opposite claim, which would require just as much evidence as the original claim. And the fact is, we don't have enough evidence to say one way or the other.

So the situation is this: nobody can provide evidence he DID exist. That's it. That doesn't mean he DIDN'T, necessarily -- it just means the claim he DID exist lacks supporting evidence.
> Bottom line: Would people who are fabricating
> stories of Jesus, and are clearly attempting to
> portray him as practically equal to God
> deliberately include important descrepancies in
> their account that would make us question his
> divinity?

Fiction often has "conflicts." And it's important to keep in mind that the "divinity" of bible Jesus was a subject of argument among early Christians for more than 400 years. And the subject isn't even clearly mentioned in the bible.
At any rate, it's not at all surprising that stories by disparate authors with disparate "traditions" and disparate views of what Jesus supposedly was would include some things that contradict other parts of other stories. Not surprising at all. This isn't much of a "problem," and in fact there are far bigger contradictions (and "problems" for a "divine" Jesus) in the new testament tales than this one, which can also be chalked up to different authors of the tales with different ideas, and an unsettled/widely varying set of beliefs about what Jesus was.

The issue of his "divinity" wasn't settled, at last, by appeals to the gospels anyway. It was "settled" by committee, then enforced by book burnings, persecutions, imprisonment of heretics, and executions. The attempts to make the gospels "fit" seamlessly with the newly defined orthodoxy came later -- after elimination of contrary sects & ideas by force.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christology

ificouldhietokolob Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> mormonrealitycheck Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > Offhand, I have difficulty accepting the
> > proposition that the man described in the New
> > Testament as Jesus of Nazareth never, in fact,
> > existed.
>
> First, don't fall into a false dichotomy.
> That there isn't enough evidence to say an actual
> Jesus DID exist does not mean the claim is being
> made that Jesus of Nazareth never in fact
> existed.
> That's an opposite claim, which would require just
> as much evidence as the original claim. And the
> fact is, we don't have enough evidence to say one
> way or the other.
>
> So the situation is this: nobody can provide
> evidence he DID exist. That's it. That doesn't
> mean he DIDN'T, necessarily -- it just means the
> claim he DID exist lacks supporting evidence.
> > Bottom line: Would people who are fabricating
> > stories of Jesus, and are clearly attempting to
> > portray him as practically equal to God
> > deliberately include important descrepancies in
> > their account that would make us question his
> > divinity?



Absence in specific situations is an indicator that there is no smoking gun.

There are specific places where evidence should be traced, but it's not there. That's extremely significant absence.


Another common detractor phrase is, "You can't prove a negative.”
Skeptic James Randi uses the phrase "you can't prove a negative". "James Randi giving one of many talks where he uses the phrase". Youtube.com. 2009-11-05.

Philosopher Steven Hales points out that typically one can logically be as confident with the negation of an affirmation. Hales, Steven D. (2005). "Thinking Tools: You canProve a Negative". Think 4 (4): 109–112.

Hales says that if one's standards of certainty leads them to say "there is never 'proof' of non-existence", then they must also say that "there is never 'proof' of existence either". Hales argues that there are many cases where we may be able to prove something does not exist with as much certainty as proving something does exist.

With reference to a real Jesus, there is not evidence in specific areas that should have evidence.

Many of the ''scholars'' are either funded by religious money or have some type of internal horse in the race. I noticed the latter show up in Bart Ehrman who claimed he is agnostic.





Going back to Mormonism, once we look at the comparison of the book of Mormon with other stories from that era and prior to that era it isn’t difficult to see how Smith and his Masonic friends came up with the storyline as a compiled enmeshment of stories, names and places from Smith’s era and prior to that era. People who fail to review Mormonism critically, but instead choose to believe in it based on a family cultural and mental/emotional testimonial indoctrination process, or an inner magical feeling, will disregard any glaring signs that point to its fraudulence. They hear the word 'Go' spoken in connection and believe it is true based on centuries of programming. They will ensconce themselves in Mormon apologetic literature and stories as truth. They will only use Mormon extant texts to confirm their belief and omit any extant texts that might cause them to question.

They will point to erroneous information that claims 12 witnesses signed affidavits saying they SAW the gold plates. Later they will discard any indication that the 12 witnesses didn’t see them with their physical eyes, but claim they saw with spiritual revelation “eyes” while supporting only what they want to support.

They end up having an invested interest and believe in information. We have a myth 150 years after the Mormon event was alleged to occur, not 2,000 years of indoctrination after it occurred. They will trust the extant Mormon texts based on their trust for Smith and his group. Can you imagine how the Mormon story will be changed in 950 years time? (interesting to note that even Smith’s original story was not as confusing as the Roman backed storyline, but had far more clarity and less contradictions.) You see Dan, you have seen
People are able to apply absence of evidence in mormonism but aren't able to apply the same reasoning with your views about Christianity.

If one uses the same points of criteria; lack of data along with agendas and character toward the Jesus storyline as they have with the Mormon storyline they would no doubt notice that there is more erroneous information and lack of substantive evidence AGAINST the Jesus storyline rather than supporting it.



All one can do for believing Mormons and hopeful Christians is find the many flaws that show it was fabricated, find the extant texts that fill in the blanks to understand why they came up with a story such as this, or historical locations that should have evidence, and often that isn't sufficient to break through a 2,000 yr old cultural based indoctrination.

Yep, people cling to their beliefs tenaciously.

correction:
the word 'Go' should read God.

Also, I believe that there was some prophecy (in Isiah I believe) that mentioned the Messiah being baptized. The writers of the New Testament would have been highly aware of messianic prophecies. To not have Jesus be baptized would have eliminated him from being the messiah.

At least that is my understanding, I reserve the right to be wrong.

Hey, Richard ... do you have the OT reference to this? I've never heard of some scripture in the OT that refers to baptism that is also commonly interpreted by Christians as being messianic. Certainly not saying there isn't one. Just saying that I'm not familiar with it.

Thanks!

I'll see what I can find.

According to Josephus, John the Baptist baptized those who were already righteous for the cleansing of their bodies. That is a fact that seems to be ignored far too often. The evidence that we have is that the Gospel authors lied about the purpose of John's baptism.


If the baptism of Jesus was so problematic, why was it the first thing mentioned by the first gospel author?

I don't believe the baptism of Jesus was problematic at all for the gospel authors. By that time, baptism had become a common initiation ritual which lacked scriptural authority. The time and place of Jesus' fictitious life on earth needed to be set somewhere in the not too distant past. The gospels practically admit that the former followers of John were conversion targets. Writing John the Baptist into the gospel narrative served several purposes. Once Mark had started his gospel with it, it was easy for subsequent authors to modify the story to suit their theological objectives.

The whole point of the Jesus narrative is that Jesus was an angel who secretly came to earth, to suffer humiliation and death, in order to gain access to the underworld, so that he could free those who were enslaved by death. Being baptized was nothing compared to being born through a woman's vagina, or being persecuted and crucified. The Jesus story would be boring if he kicked ass all through it.

The only embarrassing thing that needed to be explained was that people had heard of John but not Jesus. Maybe Jesus wasn't as famous, or maybe Jesus didn't exist, take your pick.

"If the baptism of Jesus was so problematic, why was it the first thing mentioned by the first gospel author?"

An interesting question, but in my opinion, there is a straightforward answer.

Most scholars support the assertion that Mark is our earliest Gospel writer, and he does, indeed, begin his account with the story of Jesus' baptism.

If one follows the Gospels chronologically, they transition from a "low" Christology to a "high" one. In Mark, Jesus is very "human" ... making mistakes, failing to heal people, being "amazed" at lack of faith, and uttering the cry of dereliction on the cross. Contrast this with the Gospel of John (the last written), where "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." By the time we get here, Jesus of Nazareth is actually God.

So, back to the original question. Mark was not as concerned with the issues of divinity as were later gospel authors. He just appears to be (rather honestly/naively) relating the story of Jesus as he had heard it. The issue of Jesus' being subordinate to John only appears to have become an "issue" with later writers (as we can examine how Matthew and Luke modified Mark's account to better fit their "higher" Christology).

Anyway, that's how I see it.

mormonrealitycheck Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> All this being said, I can hopefully now present
> the problem a little more clearly. As I said
> earlier, if we accept this proposition, then every
> story about Jesus was a fabrication. That
> includes the story of Jesus' baptism by John.
>
> The problem is this: if the story was fabricated,
> then why would it contain these actions that are
> so difficult for Christians to resolve? Why would
> Christian writers make up a story that tends to
> lessen Jesus? Why would they make up a story
> about Jesus that would almost immediately require
> a strong apologetic defense?
>
> All of us have lied at some point in our lives.
> When we decided to lie, and began the process of
> constructing the lie, our most immediate concern
> was that the lie ultimately be believable. In
> accord with that concern, we typically produced a
> lie that had few if any barriers to acceptance.
> We do not normally build "problems" into our lie
> that people will question, and will tend to create
> resistance to acceptance.
>
> I suppose one could argue that those who
> fabricated this story of Jesus' baptism built
> "problems" into their lie intentionally, trying to
> throw us "off the scent" by making their
> fabricated story difficult and in want of a
> resolution.
>
> Bottom line: Would people who are fabricating
> stories of Jesus, and are clearly attempting to
> portray him as practically equal to God
> deliberately include important descrepancies in
> their account that would make us question his
> divinity?
>
> This, in my opinion, follows directly from the
> proposition, and I'd say that it was a fairly big
> stretch.
>



One must look at the reason Rome invested in a Jewish Messiah. It was an on-going purpose of Romanizing and Hellenizing the Jews which also provided Rome ownership of the Messiah.
Only a Jew could hold the Messiah role, although Caesar and Vespasian wanted to usurp the role Philo was adamant against that in spite of Philo working for Greece and Rome's Hellenization project. Philo had his limits.

In many cases you can see how Rome used the stories as propaganda to induce the Jews to convert.

- Jesus followed John, you can be a follower too by converting.John bowed to Jesus. You should too. The ritual of baptism had roots in paganism and not in Jewish tradition.


- Jesus NEVER fought against Rome, he fought against the Jews. Be like Jesus, don't fight against Rome, convert and fight against the Jews. The new testament shows the Jews as the bad guy, while Jesus apparently did nothing against the Romans sufficient to cause Rome to execute him.

Paul was Jewish born but worked for Rome and was a Roman citizen, meaning his allegiance wasn't toward Judea. Paul fought hard to get rid of the Jewish rituals that Rome and Greece detested, such as circumcision.
The discrepancies allow the Judaizers to leave their Jewish rituals and follow the Roman version.


I don't think it was his divinity that was the main issue of question, I think it was a way to establish the leader thereby producing allegiance to following Rome through conversion.

Paul spent a lot of his time fighting against circumcision ritual for converts. Rome spent a lot of effort taxing the Jews while providing tax exemptions for the converts, but the Jewish rituals remained troublesome. Paul had established the divinity with his conversion experience, and subsequently had to go to a desert to get guidance rather than the disciples. hmmm.
The divinity was established but the need for a conversion role model wasn't yet established.

By showing Jesus as a man who'd fight against the Jews while doing nothing to show insubordination to Rome he became a leader and model to pattern the Judaizers who were having trouble renouncing their pesky Jewish rituals.

70ce war showed no sign of Josephus informing his abductors (Vespasian and Titus soon-to-be emperors) of Jesus as Messiah.
This absence is remarkable.

After the war Rabbi Yachonon struck a deal with Rome in hope of retaining some of their customs. Rome agreed under the condition that they could sensor ALL OF RABBI'S information. Rabbi complied and started a special school for this purpose. Rome redacted for centuries.
During all the redaction and interpolation of the 1st century the Jewish records showed nothing to conform to a man Jesus in that era. If he was a real person the Romans would have inserted it and the Jews, known as the best record keepers of that era, would have inserted it.
Its absence is explained the only way possible, which is that there was no person to record.

Later redactions in the 1st century still missed a story line. If they had one to record it's unlikely they would have omitted it.
The same thing happened in the 2nd century, which is evident in all the varying stories that arose in the 2nd century sects.

No truth was presented by the disciples. Was that because there never were any apostles with the 'real'' truth to set them straight?
These apostles were supposed to be appointed by Jesus, the Messiah of God, to teach God's truth.
How could God and Jesus, not to mention their 11 remaining disciples, fail in such an undertaking?



In mid 130a.d. Simon bar Kokhba denounced Jesus as a myth, which uprising Rome squashed inn a bloodbath that would threaten the Jews into silence and conversion.

There was a few groups at that time who fought against the Jewish rulers, but nobody recorded like Jesus.

All the multitudes would have told stories about him, whether they believed him or not.
Any type of Jewish story that would fit this person was absent in the 1st century.
Bart Ehrman claims it was an oath of secrecy, which doesn't make sense. Non believers would have no such compunction to keep any type of oath. To the contrary, after a crucifixion they would have talked about it even more as a penalty against anyone going against Judea or Rome.
This was one of many, many incidents that led me to believe that Ehrman is not scholarly and not unbiased in spite of his agnostic claim. He has an invested belief that there was likely a historical Jesus, then proceeded to explain why there was, while offering a few doubts, while claiming to be agnostic.


If you re-read the new testament and look at the records as a Roman means of showing Jesus as the ultimate model for conversion you'll come up with a lot of situations.

Although some of the situations look confusing on the surface, as you've noticed yourself, if you look at the reasons for Rome making Jesus a conversion model to hellenize the Jews it might provide more apparent clarity.

Why would Rome even care about "hellenizing" the Jews? Rome dominated the country with a rod of iron turning it into a blood bath around 70 AD. They could do what they wanted there by force of arms. I doubt sensitivity to the Jews even in their own interests was high on their priority list.

Research the Roman hellenization project and the Grecian hellenization project for your answers.

It began a few hundred years bce and took a very odd twist after Roman Christianity got hold of it. Although pre-Christian hellenization looked very different, Paul worked tenaciously as it took on a very different approach during post 70ce war and post Pauline/Christian hellenization projects.

Philo, the Jewish Egyptian, worked for both Greece and Rome in this project, but if you read Philo's records you'll notice that even he rejected the idea of a Roman usurping the role of the Messiah. It seemed like it was a very political project, however Philo objected to Caesar's desire of usurping the role of Messiah.



for what it's worth there are some similarities between Jesus and the revolutionist Judas of Galilee, during Judas 6ce revolt.
Josephus writes about Judas of Galilee almost 90 years later, around 94ce, which time frame is very telling in context with Paul and the emperor's cousin Clement who held the position of the first bishop while providing the first documentation of a stamp of approval on Paul's messages.
If I remember correctly Josephus blamed Judas of Galilee for the 70ce war, calling Judas a failed Messiah.

not to hog, but I forgot to mention that Rome had political power but they did not have their own religion.

Greece had their own religion but Rome was polytheist.
I can't recall which Roman politician discreetly mentioned the competition between Grecian power and Roman power; Roman having no national religion was somehow alluded to. I'd have to slog through pages of stuff to check the exact political leaders quote.

Usurping the Jewish Messiah wasn't an easy task, (rome and Greece hated the barbaric Jewish rituals like circumcision) but Rome eventually got their religion to go with their political power and the Grecian religion went the way of the dinosaur.

I guess I never cared enough, one way or the other, to delve into the subject thoroughly enough to allow me to form an opinion. I admire those of you who have posted your opinions and scholarship on the subject :) I do enjoy reading others' opinions about this.

Come on, guys.....Just have a little faith here. I believe "faith" is the glue that bonds "educated guess" and "historical fact" together. ;)


Also;

If the apostles were sleeping, who was the person who was spying on Jesus while he was suffering in the garden? To be able to give an accurate account of an angel comforting him, and quoting Jesus verbatim?

Would it be more convincing if the entire Whitmer family had seen Jesus?

Well done, rt!