Evidence of a historical Jesus Christ

Great Debates
141

DtC: why does this not increase the likelihood of historical Jesus to, say, 60%+? There are other aspects that would not be expected of a mythologically amalgamated Jesus, starting with his common name.

I’ll make some observations: please ignore as appropriate. I’m not sure the visionary experience is necessary: gregarious traveling rabbi-magicians aren’t necessarily all that mystical. I imagine Jesus as a big fish in the very small pond of Nazareth and its environs, who simply gets in over his head in Jerusalem, making some naive errors and earning summary execution. That’s not to say that your story is inconsistent with the historical record, or even that mine matches it particularly well.

Within your scenario, when and how did the country yahoos set up a branch in Jerusalem? Or is that not that big a deal? (Feel free to simply ignore this question, or consider it rhetorical.)

142

I’ve asked both those questions of mythicists myself. Typically they give explanations of how both the name of Joshua, and his designation as a “Nazarene” can be derived from the OT. I don’t necessarily find those explanations very strong, but they have them, and they are not definitively falsifiable.

In my version, only Peter has a visionary experience - visionary experiences of recently deceased people are not uncommon in people who are grieving a loss. It’s happened to me. It’s an interesting experience. My Jesus does not have visionary experiences, but is an ecstatic mystic, which is also not that uncommon, and ecstatic mystics typically are reported to have magnetic personalities. It’s also very common for people to claim that they can induce ecstatic states in others. I’ve done a lot of research om mysticism, and I’m very comfortable with this approach (I’m using the Bengali mystic, Ramakrishna, as something of a model).

I don’t think it’s a big deal. They were one obscure sect in a big city. I also think they were still essentially Jewish, and did not worship Jesus as a God. That there WAS an early church in Jerusalem is one of the only things about the early movement which has primary attestation, so I think it’s a pretty strong bet that there was one. Even mythicists like Earl Doherty do not say there was no church in Jerusalem, only that it was not an artifact of a historical Jesus, but predicated on beliefs about a Jesus lived and was crucified in a “spiritual” realm.

143

Jesus was the new Moses, or so an argument goes, therefore to conform to that hero archetype, a slaughter of the innocents must have occurred.

144

That and it also had to be shoehorned in post hoc to conform with some of the “prophetic visions” of the Old Testament. The Book of Jeremiah had visions of Jerusalem being destroyed and innocent children being slaughtered and the Messiah comes from that.

Oddly, the two gospels that talk about this conflict each other by ways of omission.

Matthew skips the census, manger, shepherd tending the flocks.

Luke skips the star of Bethlehem, the Magi, and Herod’s slaughter. Luke then has Jesus circumsized and taken to Jerusalem and then to Nazareth. I would think that a trip to Egypt to evade death would be a teensy bit interesting to the narative to keep in.

145

This is a discussion over whether or not Jesus existed. It is not a discussion about whether or not he was the Messiah and the Son of God.

Despite a scientific study of the gospels lasting nearly two centuries, there is no agreement about who wrote the gospels, where they were written, and when they were written.

Nevertheless, a consensus has developed. I will explain what in the consensus I consider plausible. Mark was the first gospel that was written. The authors of Luke and Matthew used Mark as a source. They also used a more primitive gospel that no longer exists, but which has been reconstructed that is called Q. The same author wrote Luke and Acts. That author was Luke, whom St. Paul described in Colossians 4:14 as “the beloved physician.”

An event that needs to be considered when evaluating the accuracy of the gospels is the Jewish Uprising that happened from 66 to 73 AD. That revolt was completely crushed by the Roman Army. The Holy Lands were devastated. Written records about the life and ministry of Jesus were destroyed. Eye witnesses to that life and ministry were killed or dispersed. Anything written before the revolt is bound to be more accurate than anything written afterwards.

The epistles of St. Paul, which make up about half of the New Testament, were written before the uprising. Unfortunately, they tell very little about the life of Jesus.

I cannot read the Kione Greek in which the New Testament was written. Nevertheless, I have read the Bible from cover to cover eight times in seven translations. I have read many books about the Bible. Some were written from a Fundamentalist standpoint. Some were written using the higher criticism.

My impression from reading Acts is that it was written when St. Paul was still alive. There is no obvious indication that he is going to be martyred. It ends with St. Paul experiencing a fairly comfortable house arrest in Rome. The reader has been told several times that he has not violated Roman or Jewish laws. Members of the Jewish community visit him. He convinces some that Jesus is the Messiah. Others remain unconvinced. Nevertheless, the conversations seem to be civil.

According to Eusebius, who lived from AD 263 – 339, St. Paul and St. Peter were martyred in Rome before the Jewish Uprising began. Archaeological excavations beneath St. Peter’s Basilica indicate that at one time St. Paul and St. Peter were buried there.

Where I disagree with the consensus is in dating Mark, Luke, and Acts. According to the consensus Mark was written about 70 AD. Luke and Acts were written ten or more years later. I do not see why Luke would have waited so long to write an account of events that would have been fresher in his memory much earlier.

If Acts was written before 66 AD, Luke was written earlier, and Mark was written earlier still. They would have been written when eye witnesses to the ministry of Jesus were available. These would have been consulted.

146

But by its very nature we have to determine which Jesus we are looking for in the first place:
The Jesus that did everything and experienced everything everyone in the New Testament claims he said and did?
The Jesus that did some things, while other things were allegories?
The Jesus that was a preacher that inspired others that never met him to embellish his accomplishments?
The Jesus that only one of a number of holy man in the area that just got lucky publicity-wise because someone liked his message?

Before you can state whether or not you have found something, you have to first determine exactly what it is you are looking for in the first place.

147

Acts was written about 100 CE, actually, and it wasn’t written by a traveling companion of Paul’s. The author of Luke-Acts (who was not the traveling companion of Christian folklore) did not “wait” for anything. He wasn’t writing a memoir, he was constructing a history from previous sources.

Mark knows about the destruction of the Temple, therefore it has to date after 70 CE and Luke and Matthew are dependent on Mark.
There is also no archaeological evidence that Peter or Paul were executed in Rome. There are traditional tombs, but nothing real (and Peter’s tomb was found to contain nothing but animal bones).

148

There are any of a plethora of possible reasons. Just off the top of my head, he may have considered direct preaching a more worthwhile activity than writing until he got too old to stay on the road, or he may have been inspired to write only after other (flawed, in his opinion) accounts began circulating and he decided to set the record straight.

149

The “discoveries” of Christian relics are as hard to believe as the Bible itself. If Christian mythology is right, then the greatest archaeologist of all time is Helena, the mother of Constantine.

At about 80 years of age, she went on a tour of the Holy Land, and apparently could not swing a cat without knocking over a rock that revealed treasures underneath. She allegedly found the True Cross, plus the ropes and nails used to fasten Jesus to it, plus his tunic, plus the bones of the Magi. She also discovered the site of Jesus’ birth. She even located the site of the burning bush of Moses. We have her (and her son) to thank for all those churches built on those sites, which gullible tourists visit in their thousands every year.

How atheists can remain skeptical in the presence of such scientific genius is beyond me.

150

It’s my understanding—and Wikipedia backs me up, FWIW—that there’s no scholarly consensus either way.

151

An appeal to conflicting authority?

What is the actual evidence for the author of Luke having been a companion of Paul’s?

There certainly is a consensus on the late dating of Acts, evidence of multiple prior sources, contradictions with the letters of Paul himself and basically nothing at all supporting the 2nd Century legend that the author was the physician mentioned by Paul. It’s not a claim that’s even made by the author himself.

152

I’ve seen with much Biblical scholarship, that the scholars are divided between “conservative” and “liberal” ones. Translated, this seems to mean “scholars who are pre-committed to a traditionalist view of the Bible” and “scholars who are open to change their minds based on evidence.”

Just saying that Biblical scholars are divided doesn’t indicate that both sides of the divide are equally compelling.

153

There’s good scholarship and bad scholarship. The methodology either stands up or it doesn’t. There is no such thing as “liberal” scholarship. That’s just a word which gets assigned to critical scholars who don’t operate with any a priori religious agenda or assumptions. There are many critical scholars (some of the best) who are believers, but they are able to do their research and analysis objectively and adhere to scientific standards. There are others who literally take oaths to adhere to a doctrine of Biblical inerrancy/literalism and who are operating from a confessional/apologetic standpoint rather than a critical/scientific one. These are the ones who argue for early datings of the Gospels, un critical acceptance of authorship traditions, etc.

154

You’re assuming that Luke and Acts are written by eyewitnesses, not later historians and compilers. That is, as you know, not the consensus view. Why would Luke, were he an eyewitness, copy verbatim from two other sources? (Either Mark and Q or Mark and Matthew, depending on your opinion of the Farrer Hypothesis.) Why would an eyewitness, who had actually met and ministered with Paul, record that Paul circumcised Greek converts, along with other things that contradict Paul’s actual letters? Finally, why would an eyewitness writing a Gospel not appeal to his own authority, claim his own authorship, or otherwise name himself? Other historians of the time claimed authorship of their own works-- I’m thinking in particular of Josephus, the Roman Jewish historian who worked around 70 C.E..

Wikipedia, like other media sources, often gives far too much credit to minor competing views. This happens because people who are passionate about their minority views have just as much leverage as the majority to influence the article. Look at this page on the Pastoral Epistles; to read it, you’d think that the secular scholarly community was evenly divided about the authorship, while in reality the idea that Paul wrote any of those three texts is fairly discredited. I would tend to read that page on Luke-Acts as a little skewed.
If Luke was an eyewitness, why does he open up his Gospel by saying this?

“Accounts… as handed on to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses…”? Surely, if Luke were an eyewitness, he would claim to be so, rather than claiming to have talked to eyewitnesses? The introduction alone seems to show that the author is certainly not Luke the Evangelist. Were this book written by a traveling companion of Paul*, you’d likewise expect the author to say so, especially in Acts. Besides, wouldn’t a traveling companion of Paul know that Paul opposed circumcision for Greek converts? The author of Acts has Paul circumcise Timothy, in direct contradiction to Paul’s letter to the Romans, Corinthians, and Galatians.
*A companion referenced only three times in the whole New Testament, and only once in a book fairly certainly written by Paul. (Philemon)

155

Luke didn’t even claim to have spoken to eyewitnesses. he says he made a study of the accounts “which have been handed down to us,” i.e. previous written sources (Mark and Q, to be exact). He probably made use of Josephus as well.

156

Luke 1:1-4 Forasmuch as many have taken in hand to set forth in order a declaration of those things which are most surely believed among us, even as they delivered them unto us, who from the beginning were eye witnesses, and ministerrs of the word: it seemed good to me also, having had perfect understanding of all things from the first first to write unto thee in order, most excellent Theophilus, that thou mighest know the certainty of those things, wherein thou has been instructed.

It may read somewhat differently in the original Greek. My interpretative of this is: “they,” who were “eyewitnesses,” told “us,” including me Luke, of the events pertaining to the life of Jesus.

If St. Luke was a traveling companion of St. Paul, even if he was a generation younger, he certainly had the opportunity to talk to several, perhaps most, of the twelve disciples, St. James, the younger brother of Jesus and the first Bishop of Jerusalem, and perhaps Mary herself.

157

Exactly analogous to the “scientists” who promote Creationism or Intelligent Design. “Answers in Genesis” was in the news for receiving favorable treatment from the state of Kentucky for their Creation Museum, a Mecca for home-schooled fundamentalist kids. Their Statement of Faith includes this recipe for scientific accuracy: “By definition, no apparent, perceived or claimed evidence in any field, including history and chronology, can be valid if it contradicts the scriptural record.”

158

I am not claiming that Luke and Acts were written by an eyewitness. I am suggesting that they were written by St. Luke who had access to eyewitnesses.

Where does it say in the New Testament that St. Paul circumcised Greek converts? St. Paul wrote that circumcision was unnecessary. However in order to satisfy Jewish Christians he had one Greek convert circumcised.

159

Colossians 4:14 Luke, the beloved physician, and Demas greet you.

2 Timothy 4:11 Only Luke is with me. Take Mark and bring him with thee, for he is profitable to me for the ministry.

Beginning with Acts 16:10 “we” and “us” is used instead of “they” and “them” indicating that St. Luke has joined St. Paul.

160

You seem well informed on the Bible. To get the subject back to Jesus, may I ask how you reconcile the birth narratives of Matthew and Luke?