I’m skeptical. I guess that’s a degree less than dubious?
I do believe that he was a political rebel / attempted revolutionary. I think it’s more likely that he would present himself as the Messiah because other people said he was, rather than being the source of it.
How do we know that? All the accounts that have been written about Jesus were written after his death.
That’s what “Messiah” meant to his contemporaries.
What point do you think you are making? The biographies of Geo Washing were written after he died also.
That’s moving the goalpost. I didn’t say biographies; I said accounts.
There are thousands of accounts written about George Washington during his lifetime. There are no accounts written about Jesus during his lifetime. Which means we have no record of what people were saying about Jesus while he was alive. The closest we have are some accounts long after his death of people retroactively saying what they had said decades earlier.
This is an important point because the main evidence cited for Jesus being the Son of God is his resurrection after his death. So it would be surprising if a lot of people already believed he was the Son of God while he was still alive.
General Washington wrote a few things down himself, y’know. Not to mention hundreds of documents, articles, and letters about him written during his lifetime that don’t fall under a “biography.”
There are no remaining accounts. The Q hypothesis argues that His saying, etc were collected while He was alive.
But still, what do you think your idea proves? The Biographers/Gospels made that claim and there is no reason to doubt it.
What I’ve read of the Q source, even that was 40- 60 CE.
If this were true, it would actually reduce the credibility of the Gospels.
What you’re arguing is that the writers had already decided that Jesus was the Son of God before they had the evidence to support that belief.
Suppose I told you that I believe Santa Claus is real. You’d ask me what evidence I had of this. I’d admit I have no evidence that Santa Claus is real; it’s just something I strongly believe in despite no evidence.
Now suppose it’s twenty years later and I again tell you that I still believe Santa Claus is real. But this time I tell you I have proof; I woke up in the middle of the night on Christmas Eve ten years ago and I saw Santa Claus in my living room.
Would you consider my account of seeing Santa Claus to be credible? There are other explanations like I might have been dreaming or that I’m lying. But the fact that I had already established that I believe something is true makes the evidence that I later reported questionable.
What caused them to change the very definition of “Messiah” during Jesus’ lifetime? The only way this works is if the definition changed over a long period of time, after his death.
One minority viewpoint is that these were the words of Jesus collected while he was alive. Most proponents of the 2 source Hypothesis (the other source supposedly being Mark) just go so far as to propose that where the stories of Matthew and Luke match up that cannot be traced back to Mark come from a single separate source (the Q Document). Not all scholars think that there is a single source-some have put forth that Q is actually a variety of sources, both oral and written. There is no consensus on this at all, and little to no evidence for any of it.
This brings to mind the time Elijah challenged the prophets of Ba’al to a contest to see which deity was more powerful. When the prophets of Ba’al were unsuccessful in having fire sent down to consume an altar, Elijah said that maybe he was sleeping, on a trip, or taking a dump. Of course Yaweh sent fire down and consumed everything.
Excellent example. Parson Weems wrote a biography of Washington just a year after he died. It included myths liking chopping down the cherry tree and throwing the dollar across the Potomac. He no doubt thought he had a good, patriotic reason for making things up. Don’t you think the Gospel writers thought that they had a good, godly reason for making the story sound more convincing? Especially when they had even less contact with the true story than Weems did?
Indeed, there were some myths added to the Legend. But most of what Weems wrote was correct. That Geo Washington was indeed the General of the Continental Army, that he was President, twice, etc.
You can say you do not accept that part of the Gospels, but it is still there.
Joseph Smith made the claim that the Book of Mormon was translated by divine power and there is no reason to doubt it.
Mohamed made the claim that he was visited by angels and wrote the divinely inspired Quran and there is no reason to doubt it.
Except that they are mutually exclusive claims.
True, but by the same token, what reason is there to believe it?
Which is my point. See my edited post.
I can accept the parts about Jesus going around and talking to people.
The parts about dead people coming back to life? Those I don’t believe.
The point is that if all the information we had about George Washington was from Weems’ biography, we’d have reason to be suspicious of everything because of the clearly impossible stuff he inserted. We have independent sources that verify the facts of Washington’s life, source from when he was alive.
If we had such sources for the life of Jesus, there wouldn’t be so many people doubting he ever existed.
How to we separate the fact from the myth? Fairly easy to do for Washington, a lot harder for Jesus.
If you take out the more incredible and/or unbelievable parts about Jesus in the Bible, what you have left is plausible…and totally not worth worshipping.