DCHindley wrote: ↑Sun Jan 28, 2018 4:52 pm
I'd kinda say your 3a & b are really related to 2 of my list.
I saw your 2 as suggesting that events which had actually happened during the 'quiet' time were sanitised or erased?
DCHindley wrote: ↑Sun Jan 28, 2018 4:52 pmI think that I have seen that "dry spot" in Josephus' history of Judea being due to a "lack of sources" available to him when and where he wrote, but I find it hard to believe that he could access every other governors' records (for Pilate's predecessor Cumanus he was listing them yearly, but perhaps because he was appointing a new High Priest annually) then nothing until the several "tumults" under Pilate, when he enters the city of Jerusalem with his army standards and folks riot. As Josephus stands now, that means nothing from Pilate's predecessor's 4th year (18 CE) to Pilates "first" year 26 CE.
And only one coin for Gratus after 18 CE, which coin has come under metallurgical scrutiny and may not be a Gratus coin (or so I read). Daniel Unterbrink used this to suggest that Pilate had arrived prior to 18 CE. Which, quelle surprise, fitted with his not altogether flawed timeshift thesis.
DCHindley wrote: ↑Sun Jan 28, 2018 4:52 pmFor me, though, it is easier to think that a real life Jesus whose figure became adorned with myths that developed in the course of time on account of socio-economic pressures, than to imagine an entirely mythical figure who has been "grounded" so to speak.
Same here, in principle. But imho it nonetheless has to be admitted that there is (a) that pesky 'silence' in Paul, (b) the fact that at least a good slice of the content of the (anonymous and non Judean-seeming) canonical gospels appears ahistorical, allegorical or fictional in one way or another and (c) the plethora of non-canonical, pseudographical, aprocryphal texts (and heresies apparently) which muddy the waters. If it were only one of those, not all three, it would be easier to arrive at a historical-person-conclusion.
When the answer to the question, 'what can we reliably say about Jesus' is 'not much at all, if anything', I can see why some of the questing bible scholars who arrived at that point, still wanting to know, to have 'an answer', perhaps got the christian collywobbles and wondered if he existed at all. Whereas to a less invested mind, 'we merely and unfortunately don't know what he did, it's obscure, and/or a bit of a mystery' could have sufficed, without throwing the baby Jesus out over the end of the pier with the bathwater, so to speak, with 'New Atheists' subsequently joining forces with their recently-acquired non-mainstream scholar chums (a match made in heaven, surely) in the search for the washed-up body, if there ever was one.
As to psychological and cultural biases, I find it very difficult to get a handle, at any given juncture, on how much my opinions might be influenced by the fact that I live in and grew up in a culture saturated for thousands of years with the historical Jesus. I equally find it very difficult to get a handle on when my thinking goes too far in the other direction (see for example my even thinking Jesus possibly avoided execution, above). At times, it seems that recent Jesus ahistoricism is a fashionable 'Dan Brown-ish' meme which appeals partly because of the novelty, the imaginative possibilities (and on occasions, for some atheists, because of a spicy dash of anti-theism) and at other times it feels rationally warranted. Is it easy to tell when an interpretation is forced and does not just seem forced to the culturally Jesus-steeped mind prone to taking certain things for granted?
So for lack of any reliable way to assess and compare those two potentially distorting and opposite predilictions, and because the majority of recent secular historians don't lend their weight (either not caring enough or not wanting to 'go there') I end up on the fence or near it most of the time (except when I'm dissing Carrier's and Doherty's outer space Jesus theses, though even there I could be awry and being too put off by the fact that both of them come across as cranks at a personality level).
Sometimes, when I'm being at least what feels like somewhat lucid and neutral, I know there is no conclusive answer (to the existence question and possibly also to the 'what was christianty originally like' question) and I say, occasionally online, 'look, someone probably existed as the piece of sand in the oyster of Christianity; get over it and move on'. But it is, oddly (to an atheist like myself especially perhaps, or someone not naturally inclined to or familiar with copious hermeneutics or translating dead languages) an intoxicating and beguiling question. Not to mention distracting.
And surely there must be some theists at least pleased that so many heathens are still apparently so fascinated by Jesus.
Here endeth the first lesson from the book of archibald.