by The 12 Apostates 51 Replies latest jw friends
I think you are joking with this thread.
Haven't you watched TV around Easter and see those movies like The Robe, The Gospel of John, Apostle Peter and the Last Supper, etc. ???
Would they make all of these movies if the person never existed? I've seen them. They are real.
Rub a Dub
I think you may be misinterpreting me somewhat here. I didn't go into very much detail in my opening post, and re-reading it I can see that there was a lack of clarity on my part in what I was saying. So I will add some just so we understand each other. I am not saying that Jesus wasn't in any way based on anyone, simply that whoever he was based on (if he was), that person remains unidentified and so there's no reason to assume that anything in that person's life resembled the life of Jesus beyond perhaps him being a Jew with a following, of which there were many at the time, rendering it a rather unremarkable thing. To that extent, can we really say he was 'Jesus'? We don't even know his name, if there even was a person.
The dispute over the existence of Nazareth adds further doubt to the veracity of the 'earthly' details within the story of Jesus. And it is heavily disputed, with many of the claims that it must have existed at the time resting on the Bethlehem birth issue.
That is a very convoluted post.
Are you saying that there probably was a Jewish Rabbi who gathered a following who later wrote down stories about him, but we can never be certain which details are historically true?
PS - Don't click the post button twice. If your patient it will load.
I'm gonna chime in with Alfred Lousy, the critical Catholic theologian. He claims Jesus came into Capernaum one day, announced the arrival of God's kingdom from heaven, and riled people up enough that he convinced a few of them to go with him to Jerusalem to wait for it. When he got there, he denounced the wrong people and they killed him after they discovered that he made statements implying he saw himself as the Messiah, i.e., threatened Roman rule. That's it, that Jesus. The only important thing he ever did in his life might have taken no more than a week or two.
To that extent, can we really say he was 'Jesus'? We don't even know his name, if there even was a person.
12 Apostates ...
I don't know about the name Jesus and the Jewish thing, but the only two people I know named Jesus are Puerto Ricans. Maybe the Last Supper was lamb stuffed into mofongo with rice, red beans and gandules.
Rub a Dub
I wouldn't say it's so much convoluted, rather just long, I didn't sit down and craft it for hours, so apologies if it's not structured in the most comprehensible way. I write quickly and don't bother proof-reading when it's just internet forum stuff.
Yes, that's what I'm saying. I think it's hard to communicate exactly what I mean by 'Jesus', because it's such a complex realm of study. After all, you have those who believe he was real and everything in the gospels is true. Those who believe he was real but only the non-supernatural elements are true. Those who believe he was real but only some or even none of the stories are true, and those who don't believe he existed at all. And then within those there is some overlap. I would place myself somewhere around the third option.
There was probably someone (or several amalgamated people), but we know nothing about them beyond the most vague superficialities (I.e. they were Jewish). I mean, I agree that there were lots of Jewish radicals around at the time, and no doubt the Christ story used one or some of them as a basic template for the kind of person he was, but my argument I suppose is, so what? That's not the Jesus of the gospels any more than William Randolph Hearst is Charles Foster Kane.
As for the PS, I didn't click it twice. I posted once, then added an edit, then noticed that someone else had posted and moved us onto a new page, so I re-posted the edit in a new post, so it wouldn't be missed if you'd perhaps already read the original post prior to the edit.
TL;DR: I don't think we disagree to the degree you may have thought, although we do disagree on Nazareth it would appear, but I am willing to be proven wrong on that if you would like to post more about it.
Did you read the article at the link I posted where Bart Ehrman deals with the question of Nazareth? Even if the claim about Nazareth was true it wouldn't matter. It would just be another historical error regarding the Jesus of history.
We know that there was a community of followers of a dead teacher from an early period. They had oral traditions about him long before these were written down. The gospels were also based on earlier written sources.
There is clearly an evolution of Christology within the gospels. Mark doesn't even mention the birth narratives and leaves his audience hanging regarding the resurrection.
Nobody can be certain about which historical details are based on fact and which are exaggeration and which are pure fiction, but exactly the same can be said about almost every character of history.
We don't actually know any of that. We know little about the oral tradition of early Christians because the only records we wrote at that time containing such information that the authors claim they received from specific people (two elders named Johm and Aristo/Aristion) both mysteriously vanished, that being the 2nd century 'Exposition on the Sayings of the Lord' by Papias of Hierapolis and Hegesippius' 'History.' Fascinating ain't it? We know Matthew and Luke based their gospels on earlier written sources, that being Mark and something else (Q probably) but we don't know that Mark did, he might have made it all up for all we know. Did he? I doubt it. A story about a guy who gets himself killed when he plots to take down the Romans doesn't really sound that crazy. Happened all the time back then. The fact that we know about some of the earlier or later false Messiahs from Josephus, while a Christian obviously and all but nakedly interpolated the 'Testimonium Flavious,' only shows how little impact Jesus really had when he came charging into Capernaum that long ago afternoon.
Did you read the article at the link I posted where Bart Ehrman deals with the question of Nazareth? Even if the claim about Nazareth was true it wouldn't matter. It would just be another historical error regarding the Jesus of history.
I've bookmarked it for tomorrow. I'm open to anything else you wish to add as I will read it all.
We know that there was a community of followers of a dead teacher from an early period. They had oral traditions about him long before these were written down. The gospels were also based on earlier written sources.
Exactly, we agree, a teacher. Just a nameless guy of some description, maybe more than one. But was he born in Bethlehem? Did he claim to be the messiah and have 12 apostles? We cannot say.
There is clearly an evolution of Christology within the gospels. Mark doesn't even mention the birth narratives and leaves his audience hanging regarding the resurrection.
Yes.
Nobody can be certain about which historical details are based on fact and which are exaggeration and which are pure fiction, but exactly the same can be said about almost every character of history.
Most of them aren't venerated as messiahs or gods who punish people with eternal damnation for disbelief. The claims aren't quite of the same magnitude.
Jesus's existence is crucial to the narrative, Socrates's existence isn't.
Exactly, we agree, a teacher. Just a nameless guy of some description,
Why not an actual man called Jesus?
was he born in Bethlehem?
No of course not. That was invented to connect him to an OT prophecy. Matthew and Luke use very different stories to achieve that.
Did he claim to be the messiah and have 12 apostles?
I think he did make claims of that sort. Otherwise an account that was entirely fictional would not include failed claims.
Jesus's existence is crucial to the narrative, Socrates's existence isn't
Why? Are the words attributed to Socrates any less interesting if they were written by somebody else and put in the mouth of a mythical Greek philosopher?
