The idea that the apostles & Gospel-writers made us miracle-stories to sell Jesus better does not hold up as they risked their lives to spread the Jesus Story AND CLAIMED TO BE ABLE TO DO THE SAME MIRACLES. So either they were total hoaxsters, or nuts, or were at least able to do some extraordinary things.
As for Christianity not making much headway among the Jews- sure it did. The synangogues throughout the Empire provided the members of the first churches- the pattern was - Apostle visits local synagogue to share Jesus Message, gets some followers, reaches out to sympathetic Gentiles, starts a church, either meeting for a while in the synagogue or getting thrown out of it. Finally, after 70 AD, the Synagogues completely severed the Christian assemblies & the Churches gradually became Gentilized.
I would disagree with your interpretation of Jesus’ words. What he said was that the son of nam had the authority to forgive. The son of man means “human being.” Jesus was saying that human beings have the moral authority to forgive other human beings. It was not a specific power that he arrogated for himself, nor was it a challenge to Jewish authority.
The phrase “son of man” acquired a Messianic connotation after the death of Jesus, but Jesus’ use of the word in the Q sayings would have been understood by his audience as refrences to humanity in general, not himself exclusively.
There is no evidence that Jesus’ direct apostles claimed any such thing as an ability to perform miracles. In point of fact, it was the authors of the gospels and 2nd century Christian tradition which made these claims for the apostles. I think it’s not unlikely that they performed “healings” and “excorcisms” (those were merely symbolic religous rituals with no supernatural component) we actually don’t know if the apostles believed that Jesus performed miracles since they left no writings or records of their beliefs in that regard. The miracle stories are absent from the early sayings gospels and (with the exception of the resurrection) from Paul’s letters. Their absence from the earliest strata of written tradition means they probably had no oral tradition before the gospels.
As for traditional stories of martyrdom, most are not historically confirmable (I believe that the stoning of James is the only example with any historical corroboration), but be that as it may, martyrdom proves nothing about the truth of a belief. Joseph Smith was a martyr for his beliefs. So was David Koresh. So were the 911 hijackers. People believe all kinds of nutty things and are willing to die for them.
>That would be an erroneous assumption. Jesus had done nothing wrong under Jewish law. The blame placed on the Sanhedrin in the synoptics is an apologetic interpolation of events designed to take the exculpate Pilate.
>Nope. The Romans didn’t care a damn about internal Jewish religious problems and would not have crucified sanyone for defying Jewish authority. If the crucified Jesus, they did it because they percieved him as a threat to themselves not to Jewish priests. Causing a ruckus at the temple at Passover was probably enough to get him crucified as a way to prevent or a possible uprising.
Unless the early church writers seriously twisted what Jesus had said,
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They did. Jesus probably only said about a quarter of what is atributed to him in the Gospels.
But if we follow that line of reasoning, namely that they twisted the truth to put the blame on the Sanhedrin, then basically none of the New Testament is credible. You may be right. However, on that logic then maybe Jesus wasn’t even crucified. Perhaps he fell off a cliff, and the had to come up with something that sold better.
>It wasn’t so much the apostles as the Pauline cult and its gentile converts. We don’t know what the apostles thought since they never wrote anything.
The letters in the NT are presented as being written by the Apostles.
They did. Jesus probably only said about a quarter of what is atributed to him in the Gospels.
Correct.
I am most definitely right.
Aha! If we only had the NT’s word for the crucifixion you might have a point, but as it happens, the crucifixion is virtually the only fact about Jesus which can be confirmed with extra-Biblical sources. Both Josephus and Tacitus say that he was crucified.
Some
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They weren’t really written by the apostles. Various analytical methods show them to be late pseudogriphical works-- i.e pious forgeries. Not one book of the NT is believed by contemporary scholarship to have been written by an apostle or anyone who ever knew Jesus.
>Aha! If we only had the NT’s word for the crucifixion you might have a point, but as it happens, the crucifixion is virtually the only fact about Jesus which can be confirmed with extra-Biblical sources. Both Josephus and Tacitus say that he was crucified.
You serious consider Josephus (or, what is ascribed to Josephus) credible??? Josephus wrote that Jesus did indeed rise from the dead. I consider that so fishy I suspect that Josephus didn’t write that, but instead that was added by later Christians. Tacitus however does seem a lot more credible. Most notably, where he writes about Jesus being crucified he also comments about Christianity being a “pernicious superstition”. Obviously, he wasn’t a Christian; and no Christian would edit his words to add in a reference about Jesus and also that the faith was pernicious. The open question is whether Tacitus actually verified that Jesus was crucified, or just swallowed the Christian claims without question?
>They weren’t really written by the apostles. Various analytical methods show them to be late pseudogriphical works-- i.e pious forgeries. Not one book of the NT is believed by contemporary scholarship to have been written by an apostle or anyone who ever knew Jesus.
NO contemporary scholarship believes that any of these letters were written by an apostle?
The Josephus passage is interpolated but it’s not a complete fabrication. The art about the resurrection is a forgery as are some other parts but there is a basic core which is original to Josephus (essentially just that there was a guy named Jesus who was crucified). There is at least one extant manuscript which does not contain the interpolations. It’s much more prosaic and Josephus-like.
Nope- at least not any objective scholarship. The only academics who still try to argue for apstollic authorship for the epistles do so from a position of faith and religious assertion, not from anaylitical method or research. The dating of the epistles is too late (2nd century), and the language and theology is all wrong to make any credible case for the letters having been written by apostles.
Do you have a link about that one extant manuscript which does not contain the interpolations? Every time I’ve seen that Josephus quote was the interpolated one, and by confused Christians using it to somehow try and prove Jesus existed independent of the Christian tradition. The problem being that Josephus was born after Jesus was supposedly crucified. Thus he couldn’t have been an eyewitness to the Resurrection. Any historian who would uncritically report that Jesus rose from the dead obviously wouldn’t be an objective one. He’d have to have become a Christian.
What is wrong with the language and theology of the epistles that points to them not being written by the apostles?
Well, I am loath to cede the power to forgive to Vietnam veterans, but if you say so…
Seriously, “Son of Man” could have two potential meanings: the one you target here, with the significance of “human being,” or the Messianic connotation. As you know, Diogenes, but as most Dopers don’t, this is highly colored by the cryptic references to a Messianic sort of figure prophesied in the apocalyptic portions of the Book of Daniel and identified as the Son of Man. My recollection is that the Qumran Essenes made a significant issue out of this in terms of their Messianic expectations, beginning in the first century B.C.
So the connotation Jesus and his hearers would place on the term would depend in part on how widespread the Daniel/Qumran Messianic connotation was, and to what extent the term was still a trope for “human being” and no more. Again I’m handicapped by not having a Greek Testament at hand, but I suspect strongly that the “the” of the English-language pericopés translates a Greek to (or its grammatic variations) with the implication of the (Messianic figure) son of man, used as a slightly cryptic self-referent by Jesus, since it would still have carried the other, very neutral meaning as well. The healing miracle of the paralytic in Matthew 9 carries precisely this point – Jesus teaching that we are to forgive each other’s sins would not be seen as blasphemy.
Cite. It’s an Arabic translation. My linked page also contains a version of the interpolated passage which ahs the forged portions highlighted.
Josephus didn’t claim to be an eyewitness, he’s cited because he is a non-Christian historian of semi-contemporary vintage. Moreover, when it cmes to purely verifying Jesus’ existence, Josephus contains another reference to the stoning of James who he calls the brother of Jesus. This part is not thought to have been interpolated and is taken by most ( but not all) scholars as confirmation that Jesus at least existed. This part says nothing about the crucifixion, though.
Read the uninterpolated text. Josephus made no such claim. Depending on which part you go by, he either said nothing about a resurrection at all, or simply that his disciples “reported that he had appeared to them three days after his crucifixion, and that he was alive. .” The latter case is not a report of a resurrection but simply a factual report about what his followers believed.
Personally, though, I don’t even think he said that much. I think he just said the disciples “did not abandon their loyalty.”
The language is Koine Greek, a literary form of the language which would not have been known to Palestinian Jewish peasants.
The theological aspects are pretty windy, but the basic crux is that they represent theological developments which came from the Pauline cult, not the Jerusalem cult, they are Hellenistic rather than Jewish, they downplay or ignore Jewish law. James, who is supposed to be the brother of Jesus, makes no mention of that relationship. There are references to intramural Christian debates which did not occur until after the deaths of the figures who are alleged to have written the epistles. They also show awareness of the gospels which pushes them to a pretty late date. Early Christian Writings is a good cite for info on the books of the NT Info on the Epistle of James Info on Peter
You can go through the ECW index yourself for the others. The arguments are pretty similar for all of them. The late datings are really the killers for the traditional attributions of authorship.
I’m up in the air as to whether the Qumran community really intended “Son of Man” to be titular so much as cryptic. It’s obviously an allusion to Daniel (a text which did not intend the phrase to be titular but merely descriptive). “Son of Man” is also used Messianically in Enoch, but again, I think it could just have been a sort of ad hoc sobriquet akin to calling the Messiah “The Man” (or maybe "Da Man ;))
In any case, like you say, it’s unclear how widespread it’s Messianic association was outside the of the Qumran vernacular. It certainly seems that it’s primary application was still as a generic term for humans in general and in the context of the Q sayings, I think that Jesus was attempting to make empowering satements about the moral authority of humanity (or at least about the moral validity of human compassion) rather than making special claims for himself. I believe this is the view that Funk has taken (unless I’m confusing him with Crossan but I dn’t think I am) and it makes more sense to me. YMMV.
Oh…one more thing. Even if Jesus intended “Son of Man” to be a self-identification as the Messiah, that was still not the same thing as a claim to personal Godhood.
No, at best it’s a claim to be the Right-Hand Man of God (esp in his declaration before Caiaphas), his claim to personal Godhood are that he has authority to forgive sins, to cast out the demonic, to be the main determinator as to one’s inheriting eternal life, and most of all “Before Abraham was, I am.”
