-
Welcome to Religious Forums, a friendly forum to discuss all religions in a friendly surrounding.
Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to the following site features:- Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
- Our modern chat room. No add-ons or extensions required, just login and start chatting!
- Access to private conversations with other members.
We hope to see you as a part of our community soon!
The Historical Jesus
- Thread starter S-word
- Start date
- Status
dogsgod
Well-Known Member
Gospels can't be used to reconstruct a history of ancient humans or events. But I think you know that.
Gospels can be shown to exist.
He doesn't. Although angellous and I disagree on any number of points regarding the historical Jesus, we both realize that they can be used to reconstruct history.
You don't. But then, you I would be suprised to find that you have read a single work of ancient history from the first to the last word. And I know how little you actually have read on this topic.
A
angellous_evangellous
Guest
Didn't you ask for "just one example" of ancient historians mentioning Jesus? That was provided quite easily, and look what happened with that.
Demonstrating historicity in the Gospels is far more complex, but far different from your unicorn analogy.
The Unicorn:
1) Cannot be shown to exist today or in the fossil record
2) No relevant ancient witnesses
Jesus in the Gospels
1) Have a distinct historical and social context. This means that the Gospels portray a community of people following a man who was at the very least a visionary teacher. This is historically plausible.
2) There are elements of the Gospels that have no historical cause. That is, the miracle stories of Jesus can be shown to have rhetorical motives rather than historical ones.... so we dismiss the miracle stories as part of the historical reconstruction.
3) Some of Jesus's teachings are unique. For example, nowhere else in the ancient world are the teachings concerning divorce, which Jesus forbade under any circumstances.
4) Concerning the method and madness of the preservation of eye witness accounts in the ancient world, I defer to Oberon, who puts much more stock in it than myself. He can waste his time trying to explain that to you if he desires.
IMHO, the Sermon on the Mount most captures the essence of the historical Jesus, being a collection of his original teachings.
With all due recognition of the slimy and disingenuous character of the request: Hezekiah's tunnel ...
Rainbow Mage
Lib Democrat/Agnostic/Epicurean-ish/Buddhist-ish
I don't think the gospels are perfect history records of Jesus. Quite the contrary. There's probably a lot of things in them not very true in regards to the humanity of Jesus. I would trust the Gnostic Gospels more then the Christian ones, just because Christians chose their gospels with a bias to present Jesus in a certain way, with no regard that there were other accounts about him. There might also be some genuine events of Jesus' life or his teachings in Islamic tradition, but I'd be careful with that, that's speculation at best
dogsgod
Well-Known Member
Uh oh.
logician
Well-Known Member
If you read the gospels and the rest of the NT, it reads much more like stories of fiction to teach the simple lessons of Christianity, not like a history text full of dates and hard facts. With so many conflicts between the gospels, and no correlating historical data to corrborate anything, one can hardly conclude otherwise.
dogsgod
Well-Known Member
Beware the wrath of Oberon.
A
angellous_evangellous
Guest
Spoken like someone who has never read Luke or Acts.
*if you close your eyes, it's almost like Luke, Acts, and Josephus don't correspond at all*
A
angellous_evangellous
Guest
dogsgod
Well-Known Member
Luke and Josephus
conclusion: Luke almost certainly knew and drew upon the works of Josephus (or else an amazing series of coincidences remains in want of an explanation), and therefore Luke and Acts were written at the end of the 1st century, or perhaps the beginning of the 2nd. This also results in the realization that almost every famous person, institution, place or event mentioned in L that can be checked against other sources is also found in Josephus, so that efforts to prove the veracity of L by appealing to these checks is cut short by the fact that he appears to have gotten all this information from Josephus, and simply cut-and-pasted it into his own "history" in order to give his story an air of authenticity and realism. He could thus, for all we know, have been writing historical fiction--using real characters and places, and putting them in fictional situations, all dressed up as history--history with a message, and an apologetic purpose. We thus cannot really know what in L is true or false with regard to the origins of Christianity or the actions of early Christians, since these particular details are the most prone to manipulation for didactic, symbolic, politico-ecclesiastical and apologetic reasons, and have very little if any external corroboration (and no external corroboration from a non-Christian).
Luke and Josephus
conclusion: Luke almost certainly knew and drew upon the works of Josephus (or else an amazing series of coincidences remains in want of an explanation), and therefore Luke and Acts were written at the end of the 1st century, or perhaps the beginning of the 2nd. This also results in the realization that almost every famous person, institution, place or event mentioned in L that can be checked against other sources is also found in Josephus, so that efforts to prove the veracity of L by appealing to these checks is cut short by the fact that he appears to have gotten all this information from Josephus, and simply cut-and-pasted it into his own "history" in order to give his story an air of authenticity and realism. He could thus, for all we know, have been writing historical fiction--using real characters and places, and putting them in fictional situations, all dressed up as history--history with a message, and an apologetic purpose. We thus cannot really know what in L is true or false with regard to the origins of Christianity or the actions of early Christians, since these particular details are the most prone to manipulation for didactic, symbolic, politico-ecclesiastical and apologetic reasons, and have very little if any external corroboration (and no external corroboration from a non-Christian).
Luke and Josephus
A
angellous_evangellous
Guest
What a load of crap.
dogsgod
Well-Known Member
If you say so.
A
angellous_evangellous
Guest
Yes, I do, and for a few good reasons.
First of all, one has to consider WHEN THE WORKS OF JOSEPHUS WERE WIDELY KNOWN.
And, one has to consider when Luke-Acts was read and quoted by early Christians.
The idiot who thinks that the author of Luke-Acts both knew and relied on Josephus is completely pulling the argument out of his ***. Of all the lying, two-bit crappy **** that passes as research, this takes the cake.
A
angellous_evangellous
Guest
angellous_ evangellous, although I commend righteous anger and agree with you on this particular point, I did not expect to ever hear an outburst like that from you, it shows that I never really knew you, but good for you my friend.
I believe that if you lived in the days of Jesus, on the night in Bethany, before his return to the Temple on the day following his triumphant entry into Jerusalem, see Mark 11: 11-16; you would have made yourself a whip also, in your righteous anger, to help Jesus drive out the dishonest money changers and the market sellers from the place of prayer.
- Status