The Best Case for Jesus

[neilgodfrey]

to Neil Godfrey,

... a personal charismatic figure is the best explanation for how it all got started then we have our evidence for a historical Jesus.

Why did he have to be charismatic? The Jesus I got from my research is not charismatic, just an accidental healer and admirer of John the Baptist.
That is the problem with most, if not all, historicist scholars who assume, before beginning their study, that Jesus had to be charismatic.
http://historical-jesus.info/digest.html

Cordially, Bernard

Then feel free to change the message to

... a personal quotidian figure, a local quack who had some lucky successes and kept a bust of John the Baptist on his mother's mantlepiece, is the best explanation for how it all got started then we have our evidence for a historical Jesus.

[Bernard Muller]

to Sheshbazzar,

2. But who may abide the day of his coming? and who shall stand when he appears? for he is like a refiner's fire, and like fullers' soap:
3. And he shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver: and he shall purify the sons of Levi, and purge them as gold and silver, that they may offer unto Yahweh an offering in righteousness.
I note you did not comment at all on these verses.

Why should I comment on Mal 3:2-3? These two verses are not in Mk 1:2-3.
Do you think "Mark" was expecting his readers to find that text (which would tell "Mark" was highly dishonest by taking Mal 3:1 out of context)?

You believe that one written of in these verses is supposed to be the messenger John the Baptist? ....The guy that lost his head without ever accomplishing diddly-squat as far as purifying the sons of Levi?

No I do not believe that. And that's why "Mark" omitted these verses, because he was only after pretending a prophecy foresaw the messenger (alias John) preparing the way for Christ, which he achieved by cut & paste part of Mal 3:1 with part of Isa 40:3.
"Mark" conveniently dropped Mal 3:1b and replaced "me" (God) by "you" (Christ). For Isaiah 40:3, "Mark" conveniently omitted "in the wilderness a highway for our God" and replaced that by "paths for him" ("him" meaning Christ).
Nice work! All of that in order to "prove" the prophetic Scriptures foresaw John the Baptist preparing Christ's coming.

Mk 1: 2-4a NIV
as it is written in Isaiah the prophet: “I will send my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way”
“a voice of one calling in the wilderness, ‘Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him.’ ”
And so John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness, ...

Cordially, Bernard

[neilgodfrey]

For those discussing the Markan intro, don't forget Exodus 23:20 and the probably influence of Sirach . . .

markanIntro.png (88.61 KiB) Viewed 8792 times

With compliments.

[Bernard Muller]

To Neil Godfrey,

Then feel free to change the message to

... a personal quotidian figure, a local quack who had some lucky successes and kept a bust of John the Baptist on his mother's mantlepiece, is the best explanation for how it all got started then we have our evidence for a historical Jesus.

What you wrote is not how I would describe the substitution for your charismatic Jesus.
That's how I described it (that is Jesus' last year), in a few words:
http://historical-jesus.info/digest.html
The belief Jesus had to be charismatic would prove he did not exist:
Paul didn't say much about him (of little reputation, humble, poor), others (except the gospel authors) didn't say much or nothing about him, so charismatic Jesus wasn't, so Jesus wasn't.

Cordially, Bernard

[neilgodfrey]

To Neil Godfrey,

Then feel free to change the message to

... a personal quotidian figure, a local quack who had some lucky successes and kept a bust of John the Baptist on his mother's mantlepiece, is the best explanation for how it all got started then we have our evidence for a historical Jesus.

What you wrote is not how I would describe the substitution for your charismatic Jesus.
That's how I described it (that is Jesus' last year), in a few words:
http://historical-jesus.info/digest.html
A charismatic Jesus would prove Jesus did not exist:
Paul didn't say much about him (of little reputation, humble, poor), others (except the gospel authors) didn't say much or nothing about him, so charismatic Jesus wasn't, so Jesus wasn't.

Cordially, Bernard

You misunderstood my point. If a particular theoretical model best accounts for Christianity and that model's explanation points to a personal Jesus [charismatic, quotidian, magician, revolutionary, rabbi, peasant cynic sage, whatever] then you have your evidence for an historical Jesus. And it will be just the sort of Jesus that your model requires to best explain the evidence by normal historical processes.

By "charismatic" I originally was thinking of a "pentocostal" type and only secondarily as the personality cult-figure.

(I personally suspect anyone who inspires a belief that he was resurrected and worthy of at least a little bit of worship was someone a bit more than just another faceless pedestrian type, or a bit more than just another "Brian" like in the movie. We have to remember how easy it is to find a historical Jesus in our own image and if we ourselves are just ordinary folks. . . .

(Besides, I'm currently reading Hanges who talks about such charismatic figures in this tongues-speaking sense.)

But it doesn't matter what sort of Jesus you put in there.

[andrewcriddle]

What I think is overlooked when such statements are made is a point made by Niels Peter Lemche recently in response to Eric Cline's newest publication, 1177:

What I was really referring to was the traditional craft of the historian: Source criticism. It is the alpha and the omega of an historian’s craft. Then we can put everything else on top of that. . . . But few archaeologists (including also people such as Israel Finkelstein) have had the training in textual analysis which has been a must in historical research since the days of Barthold Niebuhr c. 1810.

One can find online the sort of thing Lemche sees as the sine qua non of historical method since Niebuhr:

But the consideration that the early history, such as it has come down to us, is impossible, must lead us to enquire whether the earliest annals are deserving of credit. Our task now is to prove that the earliest history does contain imposslbilitics, that it is poetical, that the very portions which are not of a poetical nature, are forgeries, and, consequently, that the history must be traced back to ancient lays and to a chronology which was invented and adapted to these lays at a later period. (Neibuhr, Lectures on The History of Rome, p. 1)

And Neibuhr is addressing work that has all the appearance of being a genuine (by ancient "definitions") historical narrative.

Niebuhr was not arguing here that the earliest annals were unusable as historical sources for the early history of Rome.

He was distinguishing between the material in the annals that plausibly goes back to a poetical maybe oral tradition (ancient lays), and the materials such as the detailed chronology which is of no historical value save in so far as it is based on the ancient poetical tradition.

Macaulay's Lays of Ancient Rome are an attempt to imagine what this hypothetical poetical tradition would have been like. Niebuhr is in effect suggesting that the annals are based on legendary/semi historical ballads such as horatius. Niebuhr believed that by isolating this poetical/legendary material from the annals, and analyzing it critically, one could reconstruct the true history of Ancient Rome. (Niebuhr may have been over-optimistic but that is another issue.)

There is a general issue here. Criticism of texts, not only historical criticism of texts, must begin with an analysis of the nature of the text one is criticizing. That really is fundamental. But this is quite different from the claim that only a rather narrow group of texts, texts that are primarily historical in nature, can be used in historical reconstruction. This claim is increasingly accepted in modern history, where the vast quantity of texts available makes it workable and maybe even correct. This claim is simply not workable if one wishes to do ancient history as normally understood. There is just too little narrowly historical material available.

Andrew Criddle

[neilgodfrey]

Niebuhr was not arguing here that the earliest annals were unusable as historical sources for the early history of Rome.

And I'm not arguing that the gospels are unusable as historical sources for the early history of Christianity. I never intended the Niebuhr quotation to point to a one to one correspondence with how the gospels as a class should be treated.

He was distinguishing between the material in the annals that plausibly goes back to a poetical maybe oral tradition (ancient lays), and the materials such as the detailed chronology which is of no historical value save in so far as it is based on the ancient poetical tradition.

What is important is the critical method that arrives at such a determination.

Macaulay's Lays of Ancient Rome are an attempt to imagine what this hypothetical poetical tradition would have been like. Niebuhr is in effect suggesting that the annals are based on legendary/semi historical ballads such as horatius. Niebuhr believed that by isolating this poetical/legendary material from the annals, and analyzing it critically, one could reconstruct the true history of Ancient Rome. (Niebuhr may have been over-optimistic but that is another issue.)

And it could well be that we can reconstruct something of the early history of Christianity from the gospel narrative structures and images. The account of the Exodus in the OT, for example, may well be explained by a coming out of Egypt of some kind at some point but that does not mean we have to gratuitously assume the mythical tales themselves are shadows of historical events. What is important is what influenced the author to compose and structure the narrative as he did. Source criticism begins with the author and his world. This is where the gospels run into problems if we want to treat their narratives in a particular way that supports traditional cultural assumptions.

There is a general issue here. Criticism of texts, not only historical criticism of texts, must begin with an analysis of the nature of the text one is criticizing. That really is fundamental. But this is quite different from the claim that only a rather narrow group of texts, texts that are primarily historical in nature, can be used in historical reconstruction.

Not quite sure what you mean by "historical in nature". Do you mean something that looks like "a history" (e.g. Tacitus, Thucydides)? I don't mean that. I only used Tacitus as a convenient example. The gospels, especially Luke and Acts, "look like history", too, by the way.

This claim is increasingly accepted in modern history, where the vast quantity of texts available makes it workable and maybe even correct. This claim is simply not workable if one wishes to do ancient history as normally understood. There is just too little narrowly historical material available.

Historical sources can come from a wild array of materials, genres, etc. I'm not objecting to the gospels simply "because they are gospels", if that's what I led you to believe.

[neilgodfrey]

In brief, we have many reasons to know that we can never assume a narrative is an attempt to convey a historical record (whether midrashically, metaphorically, literally). We always need to be able to demonstrate that this is what it's about. And we can't use the self-attestation of a narrative as that demonstration. That's simply circularity.

This is surely especially so when it comes to literature that is making primarily theological rather than historical claims.

We have many ways to demonstrate the historiographical character, intent and credibility of Tacitus, Arrian, Polybius, etc. I know of no way to do the same with the gospels.

[maryhelena]

In brief, we have many reasons to know that we can never assume a narrative is an attempt to convey a historical record (whether midrashically, metaphorically, literally). We always need to be able to demonstrate that this is what it's about. And we can't use the self-attestation of a narrative as that demonstration. That's simply circularity.

This is surely especially so when it comes to literature that is making primarily theological rather than historical claims.

We have many ways to demonstrate the historiographical character, intent and credibility of Tacitus, Arrian, Polybius, etc. I know of no way to do the same with the gospels.

I have suggested one way. Put Jewish history on the table and lay the gospel story side by side. That the gospel story has an overlay of theology etc does not take away the underlying political/historical context from which it sprung. An historical context that the gospel writers found relevant to the development of their gospel story and the creation of their Jesus figure - as the chart, linked to below, demonstrates.

chart

Once one makes the decision for Jesus being a literary creation - then a historical search for early christian origins is not confined to the time of Pilate - as can be observed from the chart. The setting of the gospel story in the time of Pilate is just that - a setting for a story. In this case a romanticized origin story using all the prophetic and mythological tools available. However, the backstory, the actual political and historical context that led to the creation of the gospel story, is reflected in that gospel story. The romanticized origin story was built upon solid historical realities. It was not built upon sand.

[GakuseiDon]

(3) (c) 1 Clement

Before on this blog I have presented my partition hypothesis regarding 1 Clement. However, I have not presented it formally and know of nobody who’s suggested it before (so perhaps I really should present it formally at some point). In any case, the letter refers to the apostles being appointed by Christ. There’s only one passage that comes close to saying anything regarding a historical Jesus:

42:1 The Apostles received for us the gospel from our Lord Jesus Christ; our Lord Jesus Christ received it from God. 42:2 Christ, therefore, was sent out from God, and the Apostles from Christ; and both these things were done in good order, according to the will of God.

However it isn’t really a clear reference, is it? If the apostle Paul, who did not know Jesus on earth, could say regarding the institution of the Lord’s supper the words “I received from the Lord” (1 Corinthians 11:23), then how are we to say that 1 Clement means anything other than the appointment of apostles by Christ through revelation?

I think you missed 1 Clem.32: http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/t ... berts.html

• For from him [Abraham] have sprung the priests and all the Levites who minister at the altar of God. From him also [was descended] our Lord Jesus Christ according to the flesh. From him [arose] kings, princes, and rulers of the race of Judah.

On the face of it, 1 Clement (which refers to Paul and his letters) seems to indicate a historical Jesus. The question comes down to whether "according to the flesh", which is used often by Paul, can be used of non-historical or non-earthly beings as well. Carrier believes that early Christians thought that God had taken King David's sperm and put it into a cosmic sperm bank (ETA I've quoted Carrier's reasoning on this in my next post below), though AFAIS the usage of "according to the flesh" doesn't seem to support this. The Text Excavation website has a page on its usage here: http://www.textexcavation.com/accordingtotheflesh.html

(3) (d) Epistle of Barnabas

The Epistle of Barnabas, written between 70 and 135 AD, almost certainly does not have any historical information regarding Jesus handed down to him. The centerpiece of the text is the very model of Crossan’s “prophecy historicized,” as the author explicitly works out the attributes of Jesus from the scriptures. (While Barnabas 4:14 might appear to quote Matthew 22:14, it quotes something absent from the critical text of the Gospel of Matthew, which should lead us to think that some other source is being quoted with a scriptural formula here.)

I think you missed Barnabas Chapter 5: http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/t ... berts.html

• The prophets, having obtained grace from Him, prophesied concerning Him. And He (since it behoved Him to appear in flesh), that He might abolish death, and reveal the resurrection from the dead, endured [what and as He did], in order that He might fulfill the promise made unto the fathers, and by preparing a new people for Himself, might show, while He dwelt on earth, that He, when He has raised mankind, will also judge them. Moreover, teaching Israel, and doing so great miracles and signs, He preached [the truth] to him, and greatly loved him. But when He chose His own apostles who where to preach His Gospel, [He did so from among those] who were sinners above all sin, that He might show He came "not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance." Then He manifested Himself to be the Son of God. For if He had not come in the flesh, how could men have been saved by beholding Him? Since looking upon the sun which is to cease to exist, and is the work of His hands, their eyes are not able to bear his rays. The Son of God therefore came in the flesh with this view, that He might bring to a head the sum of their sins who had persecuted His prophets to the death.

I've highlighted examples of "in the flesh" above. It might be argued that Barnabas has in mind Jesus crucified in the lower heavens, then coming to earth to dwell. But the idea that he 'came in the flesh' to earth after being in the flesh in the lower heavens and killed and resurrected in glory (if Barnabas belonged to that particular group of proposed mythicists) seems to be at odds. Barnabas would need to be a member of yet another different group of mythicists.

Most importantly, before we can determine what else the above passages might be referring to, it would be good if we can agree to what they appear to be saying. A key part of that is determining the range of usage of "according to the flesh" and "in the flesh". I think it can be taken for granted that it can refer to beings on earth. If that is the most likely reading, then much of the rest (Christ being placed in time and space by appointing the apostles, which both letters above state, for example) would follow. It would be a shame if the readings got drowned out by a chorus of "perhaps this" or "perhaps that".