Plenty of important stuff was not preserved. We know this because, for example, scriptures are clearly referred to in the Bible–meaning they were at least important enough to be quoted or described in the scriptures we do have–but so far as we know have not been preserved.
More generally, lots of really important stuff has not survived in the past two millenia. You know this. You know this.
Sorry for the emphasis but I confess this is a topic that gets my goat. People forget very simple facts. It’s the strangest thing.
I am not sure Luke believed Jesus was a fabrication, for one thing.
See above, I suppose.
But now on the other side of the granted argument–suppose Acts is (as scholars generally think) quite inaccurate, containing everything from maybe some bare facts to motivated distortions to outright legends. If this is so, it is reasonable to think its author knew this. And if that is so, it is not surprising if he did much the same thing in the gospel story he wrote–minus the bare facts part.
I have lost a thread or something–why are you talking about a persecution that occured in the 4th century? I thought that relevant to this discussion would only be very early persecutions.
So? If a false cult had already been started then these details are meaningless
And if Peter was one of the key figures who started the false cult?
According to whom (italics). Maybe James and Peter started the false cult - together - ???
So?
Interesting indeed!!!
I’m not saying there was a false cult. I’m saying their - could - of been. The reasonable assumption seems to be, clearly, there was a preacher type dude named Jesus. But there is no proof, like there is/was for Cesar, Scipio, Cicero, Marius etc.
When you base a whole world religion on one central figure, you need more certainty than the “most likely” existed. The burden of proof in this case should be higher than normal, not, less.
Some people may be inclined to say, “Hey Robert, lighten up man, it doesn’t really matter if Jesus actually existed there are still plenty of good reasons to…”
Well, no. If you can’t prove that he - actually - existed, then not one single word or parable or deed that has been attributed to him can be taken with any sense of validity - at all. Not if you can’t even prove he existed. Maybe half the stuff attributed was true, 25% was innocently misreported, and 25% was purposefully misreported or exaggerated. Well if you can’t even prove he lived, how are you supposed to sort out what he did and did not actually say/do???
This isn’t historical for this situation - while “most people” may never have left their villages, Jews often did - because Judaism at the time was a centralized religion, and many, many Jews made their pilgrimage to the Temple of Jerusalem. This fact is prominent in Josephus and isn’t doubted.
Josephus claims “three million” came to Jerusalem on Passover (which must be a wild exaggeration), but there is no doubt that it was hugely attended by Jews from far around. Cite:
Note that the trouble-making Jesus was supposed to have done took place in Jerusalem at Passover.
This would be hugely memorable and widely seen. It is difficult to credit that someone could just make it up and expect Jews (the original target) to simply not know the difference. Many Jews would have been in Jerusalem on that very occasion, because religious pilgrimage was an obligation. Which, no doubt, was the point of staging one’s trouble-making at that time.
That’s like saying you could claim you disrupted the Hajj when you didn’t, and Muslims a couple of decades later would not know the difference. Frankly, that’s unlikely.
Hardly. What impact did he make that a thousand other would-be Messiahs weren’t doing at the time. He was a nobody. He had a small following at first. You think if David Koresh made a scene during Christmas Eve, and pushed over a Beefeater at the Vatican and screamed about how silly his halberd was, that people would remember with specificity his name and the event 30 years later?
He simply wasn’t important enough to note in his lifetime, if he had an actual existence. Like I said, more likely he’s a pastiche of every cool story that faith-healers of the time had attributed to them.
Of course I know that many important things have not been preserved, but we’re talking about a very specific context, namely Jewish scriptures. We have the Septuagint, from two centuries before Jesus. We have the Dead Sea Scrolls, contemporaneous with Jesus. We have the Tanakh, containing stuff from a thousand years before Jesus, including (since you mention it) important parts of lost books, like the Book of Jasher.
So we have an unbroken chain of custody of Hebrew scriptures, plus extensive commentary on them that is almost as old. And nowhere in any of that is any reference to the Messiah being born in Nazareth.
We also have extensive Christian commentary on the Gospels, from the second century on, when many manuscripts that are now lost were extant. Again, none of those commentaries knows what Matthew was referring to. Nor does almost 2000 years of subsequent scholarship.
And you have yet to address why the other Gospel writers, writing with the specific intent to persuade people that Jesus was the Messiah, not reluctant to make stuff up if it served their purpose, wouldn’t include a genuine prophetic reference.
The scholarly consensus is that there was no such prophecy. I don’t understand why it’s so important to you that there was.
Speaking of unlikely, how likely is it that a Roman governor, during the busiest time of his year (precisely because of the influx of Passover participants), would personally examine a hick from the sticks rabble rouser, or would free a convicted insurrectionist on the whim of the crowd?
Speaking of memorable events, how likely is it that people would forget all the Jewish saints coming out of their tombs and “appearing to many” in Jerusalem?
OF COURSE there were people available 40 years later to call bullshit, but like I said, what difference would they make to a True Believer? What good did posting Obama’s birth certificate do for a True Believer?
I don’t want to misrepresent you. Do I have your view correct, as follows:
It is highly improbable that any Jewish scripture exists which was read in Judea ca 100bc to 100ad, of which the only present trace is a single reference to it in some other Jewish scripture.
To a Christian, it certainly matters whether or not Jesus existed, but a Christian isn’t going to be satisfied with mere historical existence. Probably relatively little that Christians believe about Jesus can be proved in a sense that would satisfy you; they have to rely on some combination of faith, and reasons to believe that the believer finds compelling but which fall short of proof.
To non-christians, any of the sayings, parables, deeds, etc. of Jesus that they find compelling or intriguing or wise are still going to be so regardless of who originated them.
To a historian, the question of whether or not Jesus existed is probably an interesting historical question, to be decided on the basis of the available historical evidence; but do historians actually talk in terms of proof?
And to find the real person you need to strip away the myth. You say God does not exist, I say he does, neither of us can prove who is right. I believe that the main problem is the church who over the centuries may (probably)have manipulated the Jesus story
There is no rock hard evidence Socrates existed. We think he did, but there is no proof, conclusive proof, as far as I know. And there doesn’t need to be. People are not being forced to drink hemlock for teaching the wrong thing. If, this did become the case, then the question of whether or not Socrates actually existed becomes much much more important.
With “Jesus” you have a whole society/culture built around him. People have been burned or hanged for being the wrong kind of christian. It’s kind of an important question, then, did he exist.
There are no facts which say he did.
The question, I think, is more important than you seem to think it is.
Ah, so you saw Josephus’s notes and know who he spoke to about this. That’s pretty good as no one else did. What he says about his sources point to Jewish sources and to his direct witnessing, not Christian ones. He was compiling a history of the Jews, not of the Christians.
He was actually around at the time of the execution of James the Just. He was part of the Priestly order of Jehoiarib and was known and major force in Jerusalem at that time.
You know little about him to think he was interviewing random Christians about the Jewish history he was part of and making at that time.:rolleyes:
You are misrepresenting me, consistently, because you continue to imply that the only evidence of Matthew’s prophecy being an invention is its absence from the Tanakh (and every other Jewish source we know). That is conclusive evidence that it was not considered canonical, and strong evidence that it was not considered highly important, but that’s all I claim from that fact.
Nor are we talking about “any Jewish scripture.” We’re talking about a scripture that foretells a key fact about the Messiah; a fact that, if widely known, would have had all 1st-century Jewish eyes eagerly watching Nazareth for the advent of the Messiah. We would have had the Magi following the Star of Nazareth, and Herod ordering the slaughter of all male infants in Nazareth. But we don’t have that, do we?
What we do have is a (non-canonical)proverb about Nazareth, quoted by the Gospel of John: “Can anything good come from Nazareth?” THAT has been preserved for 2000 years.
What I have said, repeatedly, and you have ignored, repeatedly, is that the more compelling evidence that it was either nonexistent or unimportant is that nobody but Matthew cited it, in spite of the fact that “Jesus of Nazareth” was a constant theme of the other Gospels, Acts, and contemporaneous Christian commentary. And since Matthew was known to have misquoted or twisted many of the cites that we can find, the reasonable conclusion is that he was more concerned with persuasion than accuracy, and used whatever he could find to claim that important details of Jesus’ life were foretold.
Maybe he made it up, or maybe he found it on the bulletin board at the laundromat. We’ll never know. But what we do know is that his fellow Gospel writers knew that Jesus was from Nazareth, and included all sorts of details to emphasize his claim of Messiah-hood, but with the same access to Jewish scriptures as Matthew, didn’t seem to notice that prophecy.
He has, as far as I know, no credible source. A passing reference, to some dude, brother of so and so 2 towns removed, 2 decades removed… is not what most historians consider a credible source.