It just occurred to me…I’m wondering if you could game the system by using the fact of someone’s continued recognition (albeit it garbled over the course of time) as the relevant description. For Jesus, one could describe him as “the historical figure on whom the biblical character Jesus is based”. That’s vague enough that if anything worked, that would.
But if he’s based on more than one prophet, you’re BZZZTed.
Yes here; although the article is mostly about the Shroud of Turin.
That’s actually a point of debate in historical Jesus scholarship - exactly what are the minimum requirements by which someone could be defined as a historical Jesus?
Generally it’s agreed that he should have at least been crucified by Pilate and founded the movement that continued in his name.
Given that the great odds are that he was pretty similar to a David Koresh type, I can’t say that I’d want him in my house. If nothing else, he probably stunk and carried any number of horrible diseases.
This seems a little vague to me, crediting him with doing stuff that happened after his death. What exactly did he DO to “found” this movement? Lincoln ended slavery by signing the Emancipation Proclamation, Einstein wrote a paper on General Relativity, etc. What did Jesus DO? Speak the Sermon on the Mount? Are you sure?
It doesn’t really matter. All that matters is whether or not Paul was talking about a real person when he talked about “Christ,” claimed that he was crucified, that he appeared to people after his death and that there was a group in Jerusalem who believed he would return. What that person said or did is secondary. If Paul was making any kind of reference to someone who knew to be a real, historical person, then that is sufficient, at the barest minimum, to constitute a historical Jesus.
Well, answering questions like that would be the interesting part of having him as a dinner guest. Though I agree that the communication barrier might make it a lot less interesting. I wouldn’t even know where to begin finding someone that can speak aramaic to translate.
My Latin is alright, so maybe Paul would be a better choice.
Maybe I’d rather have Paul over for dinner.
I’d say that it’s likely that Jesus preached benevolence towards your enemies to his cult, which included Ananias of Damascus. Even though they were enemies, Ananias cared for Paul when he was sick. Paul started Christianity some time after Jesus’ death, based at least in some small part on the lessons of Jesus as taught by Ananias – but probably 90% pulled from his own ass.
I think that the proposition that Jesus called Christ, central figure of the Christian religion, did not exist at all is sufficiently ludicrous that I would have no hesitation at all in putting him on my list. Was he a prophet? A miracle-worker? The Messiah? The Son of God? On those points, reasonable people can disagree. But his mere existence? What, Paul and the gospel writers and whoever it was who wrote all the other Epistles just get together and decide to write about their collective imaginary friend?
Okay, what did he do that you would put in your description specifying the person you want at dinner? “Central figure of the Christian religion” doesn’t make it since there was no Christian religion during his lifetime.
The Gospels and the non-Pauline epistles were written in the late 1st century at best, so aren’t contemporary, are not written by witnesses or based on primary accounts and can’t be read as independent attestation of historicity. They are products of an already established mythology. Only the 7 Pauline letters considered to be authentic are early enough to be historically useful, and Paul is maddeningly vague about grounding his Christ figure in a historical context.
Can we invite historical figures over just to poison them? I wouldn’t bother with Jesus, but I have a few ideas in mind.
Yep, sure would.
See above.
Considering He raised the dead, I’m not worried about a language barrier.
So we have to get Jesus’ name exactly right or he doesn’t exist right? We can’t just say Jesus of Nazareth, because Jesus was a common name then and still is so we might get the wrong guy.
What was his last name? Did they even use first and family names then? Middle initial? SSN?
How would we be able to ask for the proper individual in the first place?
I believe that it is fairly clear that some person, now refered to as Jesus, existed and caused some kind of pre-internet phenomenom. How I would correctly list this person on my guest list, I don’t know.
I don’t know. That’s what I’m asking: “How would you design a description that will conjure up the right person?”
I can do it with Lincoln pretty easily. I can do it with Shakespeare. I can even do it with Sophocles or King Tut, I think, more easily than I can with Jesus. The most important person who ever lived and you can’t come up with an accurate, factual, historical description? Really?
Do you have to invite all of them at the same time? If not, why not just invite Paul, and ask him for specifics? And having the two of them in the same room would probably be endlessly more illuminating then either one alone.
Rasputin could provide the evening’s entertainment, at any rate.
The way I’ve set this up, yes.
I envision you make up a (long) list of names and/or descriptions, and if everyone of them checks out, then you get to invite all of them to a series of dinners (not all of them at once–I never got that. Why on earth would you want to have to choose between talking to Paul or Lenin, when you could spend an entire one-on-one dinner talking with each?)
It’s called “conversation,” dear boy. Rousseau and Descartes challenging one another, with occasional interjections from Aristotle and bon mots from Nietzsche would be far more entertaining and enlightening than any one of them alone having to endure waiting for you to catch up over the course of an evening.