Hm, you have a point, I forgot about the people that don’t have concrete beliefs. They do exist. I don’t know what they’d be doing in a thread about Jesus, though.
Oh, piffle and tosh.
If we are going to be picky about it, we should be correct. The God you are talking about is worshipped by Christians but is not the Christian god. That god is more properly referred to as the Abrahamic God.
If a theist believes in a god but does not believe that god is the one described in the Old or New Testament, then I don’t think that god can properly be referred to by the name God, since that name is generally taken to mean the Abrahamic god described in those scriptures. Not all monotheistic gods are God.
(If you type the word God enough times it starts to sound like the name of a Star Trek character.)
What say what? How is the god worshipped by christians not the christian god? I mean, sure, they didn’t invent it, but nobody thinks they invented it.
No, the hypercritical dude has a point - more than one critter can have the same proper name. It’s really confusing when multiple entities are called by the same proper name, but it’s not illegal or anything.
I’m pretty confident that God was a Star Trek character. He’s also appeared in every Monty Python movie.
Well, then, he’s the Christian God, the Islamic God, the Jewish God. Referring to God as the Christian god is misleading in this context, especially when insisting on precision about what is supposed to be capitalized.
Of course he’s all of them. And you’re bending my brain by talking about “referring to God” as though that’s referring to a specific entity in the middle of a subdiscussion about how “God” doesn’t refer exclusively to a specific biblical entity, and doing so in the same sentence as an accusation that I’m using misleading imprecision. Yes, I get that your position is that the vaguely-theistic folks shouldn’t call their god God (perhaps you’d prefer they called him Fred?), but that’s hardly a settled position.
Oh, and for the record, the reason why I asked for people to be careful about whether “God” is a proper noun or not is because the terms “God” and “god” are slippery as all get out. In pretty much any discussion about whether God, god, or gods can or can’t be proven to exist or not everybody starts using the terms to refer to different things and everybody starts talking past one another right from the get-go.
Lots of really odd positions here.
“Miracle Jesus” requires special pleading, regardless. How does proof of historical Jesus make that more tenuous than non-proof?
Why would any historical scholar “full stop” after citing the Gospels? The Gospels, or at least the Gospels + Acts, certainly are a sufficient basis for a scholarly conclusion of historicity. Add the epistles and it is enough for consensus. Add non-Biblical sources and other positions can only be extreme minorities. My personal favored analysis is that Paul, Peter, James and “Luke” all are cross-referential historical figures, and each either wrote of a historical Jesus or were identified/defined by others in reference to a historical Jesus during a period in which Jesus’s life would have been in living memory.
Is your position that the non-Biblical sources are silent on miracles, such that if we rely on those sources for historicity we must take that silence as conclusive evidence that the miracles didn’t happen? I assume that’s it.
But: 1. As above, historical Jesus is a necessary condition for “miracle Jesus”; establishing the former is necessary (not sufficient of course, just necessary) for the latter. 2. The miracles of “miracle Jesus” were localized, and not the sort that necessarily would make it into histories - unless, like the Gospels, the histories focused on “miracle Jesus” specifically. Four guys said that they saw “miracle Jesus” walk on water? Some folks said “I didn’t think we had enough food, but we ultimately did”? As implausible then as now, and as likely to be discarded by serious chroniclers. The far more interesting thing, if you are sitting in Rome or Corinth or wherever, is the movement.
I’ve heard others argue that the inclusion of “miracle Jesus” makes the Gospels unreliable as historical documents, but that’s circular; the real argument already is “is there sufficient evidence of historical Jesus despite the religious/evangelical nature of the Gospels.”
I seem to vaguely recall some business about three days of darkness and a whole bunch of people rising from the dead, and while there was nothing documenting Jesus as being the direct instigator of these things, they’re still tied to the “miracle Jesus” narrative.
ETA:
Of course “miracle Jesus” casts doubt on the sections of the book describing him - there is ‘sufficient evidence’ that miracles aren’t possible in reality, which means that one must either presume that God (okay some God) is real, or accept that the documents contain counterfactual information.
Claiming I made errors without pointing them out rather invalidates your position, especially since you can’t respond to others explicitly pointing out the errors you made.
And I’d like everybody to send me ten bucks. My convention is to capitalize “God” when talking about a god with specific characteristics, including a particular God, and to not capitalize it when talking about the general, unspecified case. If it confuses anyone, I’ll be glad to clarify any statement I’ve made, but I think it’s absurd to assume that “God” means the Christian God in the context of my posts about a god who cares nothing for humans.
I have pointed your major error out at least twice, once to you and once to Colibri, but I’ll be happy to do it again: “We can’t detect X, therefore X does not exist” is shoddy logic, even if it’s not your entire argument.
Compare** Apollonius of Tyana** , a notable contemporary of Jesus. There are many stories of miracles he performed, but no historian doubts his existence.
Three serious articles:
From my third link above:
I might attempt an essay on why I think the probability that there was a Jesus of Nazareth who was crucified by Pontius Pilate is at least 95%. In this prequel, however, I’ll just lay out some of the supporting facts or ideas and quote from old threads on this topic. (It comes up once a year or so.)
The Gospel of Mark is dated to 33-37 years after the crucifixion, but is probably based on earlier drafts. It is comparatively matter-of-fact in its treatment of Jesus. It barely mentions the Resurrection!
[QUOTE=Wikipedia]
The earliest and most reliable manuscripts of Mark end at Mark 16:8, with the women fleeing in fear from the empty tomb: the majority of recent scholars believe this to be the original ending, and this is supported by statements from the early Church Fathers Eusebius and Jerome. Two attempts were made to provide a more satisfactory conclusion. A minority of later manuscripts have what is called the “shorter ending”, an addition to Mark 16:8 telling how the women told “those around Peter” all that the angel had commanded and how the message of eternal life (or “proclamation of eternal salvation”) was then sent out by Jesus himself. This addition differs from the rest of Mark both in style and in its understanding of Jesus.
[/QUOTE]
Given this, it can be seen that the evolution of Jesus was NOT myth to man, as Smapti suggests, but man to myth. Paul the Apostle’s writings make an exception, but recall that Paul never even met Jesus. The writings of John the Apostle may also be viewed as exceptional. (Note BTW that many feel the writings of “John” may have been influenced by Essenes and/or followers of John the Baptist.)
Summary of some relevant evidence:
[ul][li] Hypnotic methods were used as remedies for medical and psychological conditions early in Egypt’s Middle Kingdom, in ancient Greece and Rome, and in Islamic Persia.[/li][li] Earlier I mentioned that expensive sheepskin would have been used for manuscripts. In fact, cheaper papyrus would probably have been used — but papyrus deteriorates far more easily than parchment. Anyway, whether parchment or papyrus very few documents from 1st century Palestine survive. (The Gospel’s dates are inferred — the earliest surviving manuscripts are much later than those dates.)[/li][li] Paul began his ministry about 48 A.D. The “Q Source” is dated to about 50 A.D. Even the Gospel of Mark (probably based on earlier, now-lost documents) is dated to 64-70 A.D. These are all dates when many of Jesus’ followers would still have been alive.[/li][li] There is documentation of schisms in the early Christian church no later than 20 years after the Crucifixion. This doesn’t conform to a myth made after the details of Pilate’s victims had been forgotten.[/li][li] Some of the evidence for Jesus depends on the evidence for John the Baptist, and for James the Righteous. How well is their historicity agreed? Was James the brother of Jesus? Paul says so in one of his Epistles.[/li][/ul]
Here are some posts that turned up when I skimmed some of the old threads:
Originally Posted by tape recording 39 A.D., recorded in a Jericho tea shop, found in cave 1973 years later
[translation]
Judas the Essene: Have I told you my friend Mark is writing an inspirational story? He wants to base it on Melchi and the cute parables he tells. The hero of the story will be a miraculous healer.
Eliacim the Essene: Melchi, that drunken klutz? Mark had better change the name.
J: Yes. For one thing he wants the Messiah to die a martyr’s death, but Melchi will probably die of syphilis. He said if I help him with the story, he’ll write me in to the plot as one of the disciples.
E: Well, that Baptist guy, John, would be an obvious choice. But so many people remember him that Mark wouldn’t be able to take any poetic license. It would be nice to base it on a real guy though.
J: Wasn’t there a fake Messiah crucified by Pilate on Passover Day a few years back? What was his name? Yehoshua or something?
E: Yeah, I remember that. That guy was from Galilee. That would be perfect. Galileans are all illiterate: there’d be nobody to contradict the story details.
J: Which village in Galilee?
E: Does it matter? Just pick one of the tiny villages few have heard of. It sounds like Mark’s going to have a lot of fun. I hope he writes a lot of thieves and whores into the story.
J: Sounds good. I wonder what kind of role Mark is going to give me?
There is no record of a census either.
I always wonder why the report that somebody had come back from the dead and spoken to living people did not get more publicity at the time. Or was it such a common (claimed) occurrence that people just dismissed it?
As always, the historical record is sparse. Most of what survives from that era was either copied and recopied, or exists only only on a very fragile medium such as papyrus that is often fragmentary. But what will future people make of the way that things are reported today, what with having to sift out the fake news and the nutjobs on YouTube.
Not just Jesus rising but the earthquake and all the other dead rising. Not mentioned anywhere but the bible, why because it didn’t happen. The gospels are propaganda not history.
What?
I mean, seriously, what?
"… don’t have concrete beliefs. "
Good grief.
This is incredibly insulting. I mean … I just don’t get it.
And yet you think criticisms of such ridiculous statements you make are “piffle and tosh”???
Nitpick: Quirinius, Governor of Syria, did order a census in 6 B.C. But it was just a census of Judea, not “all the world” and of course there was no absurd rule that the residents had to return to their distant ancestors’ home to be enumerated and taxed!
(Luke’s Gospel even celebrates this factuality, though King James used an alternate spelling of Quirinius: “And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria.”)
No, 6 CE, which is why it’s impossible to be the right one, since King Herod died ten years earlier.
Which is another reason to accept a historical Jesus. If they were making one up, they would have him be from Bethlehem as required by the Messianic prophecy, and not have to invent a lame census story to make Jesus, known to all as being from Nazareth, be born in Bethlehem.
There are records of several censuses, but not the one mentioned in the NT.
They werent all that good at telling “dead” from “Mostly dead”, and today we bring hundreds of people back from mostly dead every day, no one remarks on it, except maybe that person.
True, historical record quite sparse.