Stranger_On_A_Train wrote that “Self-proclaimed prophets were a quadrans a dozen in Roman Judea.” That’s what I was thinking about when I questioned Jay_Z. I agree that miracle claims were then fairly common.
There were lots of miracle workers wandering around Israel at the time. Most didn’t make it into the histories. Outside of the new testament, because only barely made it into the histories. There’s a line that probably refers to him in Josephus, and there are a couple of passages in the Talmud that arguably refer to Jesus, or allude to his followers. That’s it. He wasn’t mentioned by the Romans n any documents that survived. They executed hundreds of messiah-wannabes, and he wasn’t terribly exciting to them at the time.
As for other miracle workers in the Jewish tradition, Moses worked a lot of miracles. Elijah did a couple of showy miracles.
One verse can provide proof…if the interpretation of that verse is rather loose and all other verses on the subject are ignored.
No, the James passage is accepted by everyone to be 100% authentic- Festus was now dead, and Albinus was but upon the road; so he assembled the sanhedrin of judges, and brought before them the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James, and some others; and when he had formed an accusation against them as breakers of the law, he delivered them to be stoned: but as for those who seemed the most equitable of the citizens, and such as were the most uneasy at the breach of the laws,
Note the offhand mention. Also note that that was how James- the brother of Jesus was supposed to have died.
So, that one is solid, the other one. meh.
Your source says,
Modern scholarship has largely acknowledged the authenticity of the second reference to Jesus in the Antiquities , found in Book 20, Chapter 9, which mentions “the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James.”[7]
I don’t think “largely acknowledged” is exactly the same thing as “accepted by everyone to be 100% accurate”.
But i thought Philly guy was asking about other miracle workers, not about proof that Jesus existed.
You wake up one hungover useless bum who happens to be the kid of the widow you’ve been shacking up with, and next everyone thinks you are a miracle worker and won’t stop hassling you to make it rain. Elijah just wished that coincidental bear attack which shredded the kids mocking his baldness would have occurred years previous; the rumor that he could beckon his god to send animals to attack on command would have come in useful, especially in dealing with that b***h Jezebel.
Stranger
[coughs politely]
Elisha
[/coughs politely]
Damnit, why can’t these people pick more distinct names! It’s worse than trying to keep track of all the Edwards, Richards, and Johns in the House of Plantagenet.
Stranger
I’m sure you’re joking, but their names are all constructed from roots that mean related things; often describing their relationship with God - El - hence all the El___ and ____el names.
Eta;
These two names in particular, though, are only similar when Anglicized.
Elisha is alright but Elijah is a terrible rendition of “Eliyahu”.
And it was not a stretch at all for the Roman world, where the Emperor was considered divine, and where demigods were a Roman dime a dozen.
The trick with the bear was cute, but Elijah was the one meditating on top of a hill in the wilderness wearing nothing but a loincloth and incinerating interlopers with giant fucking fireballs like a combination of Gandalf and Tim the Enchanter. Not a dude you’d be likely to forget, assuming you survived the encounter.
I generally accept variants of two source theory. Mark was the first gospel: Matthew and Luke are derived from Mark and a set of Jesus sayings called Q. John was the last gospel to be written, came from a separate tradition, and was written in a later political environment. It is reasonable to set John aside in the context of the OP: we’re discussing plausibility after all.
I’m no expert, but I think we can say definitely that Paul believed in Christ’s divinity and there’s no record of disagreement on this issue with Peter’s church. As an example consider Philippians 2:5-11 written from prison near the end of Paul’s life, emphasis added:
Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus,[a] 6 who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped,[b] 7 but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant,[c] being born in the likeness of men. 8 And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. 9 Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, 10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
I’m not fully convinced that the all main aspects of the life of the historical Jesus are recoverable. But I think the evidence suggests that Paul considered him divine and this wasn’t considered heretical among Christians at the time.
I think both John and Paul believed that Jesus was divine. I doubt Jesus believed that, and I’m dubious about the other gospels.
If Jesus Christ wasn’t divine he was just some loon, right?
I don’t think that automatically follows. He might have been a loon; or he might have been a prophet, presuming that there is such a thing; or he might have been a wannabe king; or he might have been a preacher, who had some interesting ideas and some good ideas, some of which were drastically misinterpreted by his followers – probably all of them, by some followers at some times. Or he might have been a combination of two or more or all of those things. At this distance of time, translations, and both accidental and deliberate bendings of stories it’s kind of hard to tell.
My idée fixe is that — well, the story is that Joseph wasn’t really on board with the whole thing until he met an angel in a dream, at which point he accepted it; and the audience is supposed to hear that and say, yup, that makes sense; he had a dream where an angel told him that, and, not being a loon or anything, he of course took it to be, uh, the gospel truth, instead of, y’know, just a dream.
So what follows if Jesus had a dream like that? Guys back then did, or so I’ve heard, and then they — reacted accordingly?
In this context, a prophet is someone who speaks the will of God so I think that at least touches on divinity. Jesus wasn’t just some dude with some cool ideas about loving your neighbor and being a good person. He specifically said “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Light. No one comes to the Father except through me.” If there’s no divinity there then that’s just loony person crazy talk.
I get where you’re coming from, but if that’s the position you want to take then what’s the point of even participating in the conversation? Not much grounds for a debate, no?
That’s limited to the Gospel of John. Unlike other gospels, John has a number of I Am sayings. From the Jesus Seminar:
This expression was widely used in the Greco-Roman world, and would have been recognized by John’s readers as an established formula in speech attributed to one of the gods. … In virtually every case, the reader is being confronted with the language of the evangelist and not the language of Jesus.
The Jesus Seminar is not the final authority on these matters, but it does represent a consensus among a subset of reputable Biblical scholars.
A prophet is a human. Not a god.
Presuming that it’s an accurate quote.
For one thing, to say that I don’t think ‘divine or loon’ are the only possibilities.
It isn’t,
John 14:6 (King James Version)
Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.
(If that is even accurate of course!)