Was Jesus an Historical Person?

[oldbadger]

This is nuts, man. You're reading in a modern understanding of a novel with an ancient work.

Even if we set this aside, Mark is telling the story of Jesus's life, which is going to have everything that you described.

Good Lord........ I need to agree with you.
no........no!......No!....... aaaaaaghhh!

Outhouse and I are going to try to get a G-Mark going on the HJ v MJ thread as from tonite.

Come over. We would actually be on the same side!
Outhouse and Steeltoes would be on the same side, battering it.
Amazing...... quite amazing.

 

[psychoslice]

For a man who supposedly did so much wonderful things, there is hardly nothing written about him in history, and what they have found has been proven to be forgery.

 

[oldbadger]

For me, it takes significant research, from journals and monographs to learning a half dozen other languages (ancient and modern). You are content to form opinions from youtube and other internet sites. I guess we just have different standards.

.....the above written to Steeltoes.....

Wow..... you do all that?
So...... try hard and you might win a debate.....

 

[oldbadger]

I don't need to cite anybody in order to dismiss your creationist view that the author of gMark was an historian. I mean, c'mon man, let's get reasonable.

Yep...... G-Mark was not compiled by an historian, but a lay person who needed to leave a record of (mainly) the last months of Jesus's life.

We may not agree on much, but no historian wrote G-Mark

 

[oldbadger]

For a man who supposedly did so much wonderful things, there is hardly nothing written about him in history, and what they have found has been proven to be forgery.

Hello....
G-Mark is a a very detailed account of the last months of Jesus's life. If you strip away the hyperbole and evangelical vigour, you will find a true record of the life of an amazing person.
You don't have to believe in God to be able to see this.
I am not a christian, just interested in the life of this man.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

.....the above written to Steeltoes.....

Wow..... you do all that?
So...... try hard and you might win a debate.....

Winning is a matter of perspective. I've seen plenty declare themselves a winner of a debate because they lack the basic knowledge to judge whether or not their arguments hold any water. You, for example, say the author of Mark wasn't a historian. Were there ancient historians? If so, how does one tell the difference between whatever such historians wrote, and what the author of Mark wrote?

 

[garrydons]

shalom try to study the writings of the different historians during that time like Josephus, Tacitus and etc. and you will know that Jesus or more correctly Yeshus was a real person.

 

[steeltoes]

This is nuts, man. You're reading in a modern understanding of a novel with an ancient work.

Even if we set this aside, Mark is telling the story of Jesus's life, which is going to have everything that you described.

Modern novel formulas have ancient roots. The idea of "good vs evil" influences modern story telling as well as modern day politics, western culture, etc. The idea is introduced in The Bible post Babylon exodus.

 

[metis]

To me, I do believe there's sufficient reason to believe that Jesus was a real person, but what is much more difficult is trying to determine whether what Jesus was quoted as saying was done so accurately, and whether events depicted were as well. We need to remember that scriptural writings from any religion tend to be highly subjective.

 

[oldbadger]

shalom try to study the writings of the different historians during that time like Josephus, Tacitus and etc. and you will know that Jesus or more correctly Yeshus was a real person.

Yes. Exactly.

 

[oldbadger]

Winning is a matter of perspective. I've seen plenty declare themselves a winner of a debate because they lack the basic knowledge to judge whether or not their arguments hold any water. You, for example, say the author of Mark wasn't a historian. Were there ancient historians? If so, how does one tell the difference between whatever such historians wrote, and what the author of Mark wrote?

Yes. Try Josephus. Plenty of others.....
Wake up.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

Yes. Try Josephus

I have. He writes about Moses as a historical person. He used Jewish scriptures as historical sources. Why does he qualify as a historian and not the author of Mark?

Wake up.

Interesting.

Aristotle stated that "history tells (λέγει&#957 the things which actually happened" (τά γενόμεν&#945.[ii] Cicero, in his De Legibus, also connects history with fact: “in illa [historia] omnia veritatem…quaeque referantur”.[iii] Lucian echoes Aristotle in his manual How to Write History, stating, “Τοῦ δὴ συγγραφέως ἔργονἕν—ὡς ἐπράχθη εἰπεῖν.”[iv] From these and similar quotes, it would appear that at least by Caesar’s time there was a genre of writing identifiable as “historiography” and that those who sought to write according to the conventions of this genre understood that their task was to write what had happened, i.e. “history.”

Yet this is too simplistic an account of historiography in the classical world. Aristotle, immediately after his definition of history quoted above, goes on to state that poetry is more scientific or philosophic (φιλοσοφώτερο&#957 and more serious (σπουδαιότερο&#957 than history because it captures more general truths.[v] Quintilian, on the other hand, doesn’t even draw the distinction between poetry and history, apart from poetry’s reliance on meter (historia…est proxima poetis, et quodam modo carmen solutum est).[vi] From Herodotus to Livy and beyond, history was never free of myth or story-telling.[vii] Rather, these authors tended to rationalize received myth and relegate religion to digressions.[viii] Xenophon, for example, notes in passing that it was the gods who punished the Spartans because of their seizure of the Theban acropolis.[ix] Polybius, not unlike Thucydides, made Fortune a dominant historical force.[x] Despite an often conscious and frequently explicit attempt to separate the genre of myth and/or poetry from that of history, “[c]lassical historiography, which was born out of myths and invented “the mythical” as its foil, did not succeed in putting myth out of business.”[xi]

Even had it done so, however, the wish to record facts and the ability to do so are two different things. Greek and Roman historians, whatever their conception of history as a genre, required methods and sources which would enable them to record fact rather than fiction. However, not only were historical documents, even during Caesar’s time, unbelievably scarce by modern standards, ancient historians didn’t really trust them anyway. They preferred in general to relate either personal or orally/aurally transmitted accounts.[xii] Quintilian and Pliny both assert the superiority of a viva vox over a written account.[xiii] For Polybius, investigation (ἀνακρίσεις) is the most important part of a historian’s work, but because a historian can’t be everywhere, their only option is πυνθάνεσθαι… ὡςπαράπλείστων and somehow judge these people as reliable or unreliable, rather than to look to texts, inscriptions, or similar sources used by modern historians.[xiv] Lucian likewise recommends that the history seek out information from those who were present (παρόντ&#945 for the relevant event, and if none are available to listen to those relating (ἐξηγέομαι) the more impartial (ἀδεκαστότερον) account of what happened. This methodology not only limits the ancient historian’s ability to reach back very far in time, but also allows the ready mixing of rumor with fact. Sallust, for example, in “all three of his writings begin with gross chronological distortions, and continue with an almost unbroken series of unproven rumours and vague or irrelevant generalizations.”[xv] Tacitus too reports rumors time and time again, even ones he knew to be false.[xvi]

[ii] 1451b.

[iii] “In [history] everything is judged according to truth.” 1.5.

[iv] ΠΩΣ ΔΕΙ ΙΣΤΟΡΙΑΝ ΣΥΓΓΡΑΦΕΙΝ 39

[v] Poetics 1451b.

[vi] “history is close to poetry, and is a sort of poem unbound by meter.” 10.1.31.

[vii] Momigliano, 1977, chap. 10. Saïd, 2011.

[viii] Ibid.

[ix] Hellenica 5.4.1.

[x] Usher, 1969, pp. 118ff.

[xi] Saïd, 2011., p. 87.

[xii] Rhodes, 2011.

[xiii] 2.2.8 and Ep. 2.3, respectively.

[xiv] 12.4c.3-5.

[xv] Grant, 1970, p. 209.

[xvi] Mellor, 1993, p. 44 no. 56.

 

[steeltoes]

The author of gMark an historian, tough sell. Anybody else buying this?

 

[FranklinMichaelV.3]

Well I don't think you can compare the definition of a historian today as you do with historian in the past?

 

[oldbadger]

The author of gMark an historian, tough sell. Anybody else buying this?

Hi.....
No. I can't buy that either.
You might not agree with me either, but I see G-Mark as more of a witness statement, written decades after the event buy an old man who also has notes written by himself and other people (Cephas?) to help refresh his memory. But I ain't looking for an argument this evenoing.....

 

[s2a]

Brilliant, Holmes.

As Watson might observe… pathetic and empty no-nothingness of unsustainability…

and...

Whatever that nonsense means.

Ignorance and lack of facts are common… you had a secret point to offer?

Oh. So Julius Caesar didn't exist, The Onion could be correct that classical scholars invented the Greek language and wrote The Iliad, and Alexander the Great is as supportable as a historical person as Hector and Achilles. Right.

No, wrong as most peeps might suspect. What many might question is the claim of divinity at the foremost (I am the “Son of the Almighty”).

Not even a difficult stretch is the secondary claim that “Jesus of Nazareth” was an actual…. and singularly identifiable individual of “eyewitness” and unimpeachable “fact” um, at very least, 70 years after HIS passing (a fact no legitimate biblical scholar today denies),

Not to overly confuse matters, But your poorly afforded anecdotal comparisons To Julius, Hector, and Achilles… are AT BEST, a plaintiffs cry for equal consideration in some time-traveling class-action suit of disaffected mythology role-models…

… unless it is your argument that Jesus and “Julius”, and Alex, and Hector all be regarded in the same light and claims of legitimacy?

If that is so… then why are ANY “gods” of the Romans, Greeks, Sumerians, blatant Heathens, or any other “faith based” religions to be deemed any less credible or “real” than your own claimed diety?

Have you ever actually worked as a researcher in some field? If so, do you know what a "literature review" is?

Yep, and yes., even employed as such

Have you?

Next?

 

[Quagmire]

If you keep :banghead3 you'll inevitable end up

This much is certain: attempting to :fight: the Dunning-Gruger Effect will prove to be a fools errand. :yes:​

Seriously. :yes:

Really, LegionOnomaMoi (and a cpl others): do you realize you're arguing with a lot of people who probably don't even understand half of the words you're using and probably wouldn't understand the definitions if they bothered to look them up?

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

As Watson might observe

He wouldn't. Conan Doyle's character is a 1-dimensional narrator who serves to depict the genius of Holmes. That's why the only good modern incarnation is actually a more faithful representation to the characters than the author.

Ignorance and lack of facts are common… you had a secret point to offer?

Yes. Do some actual ******* research before posting.

No, wrong as most peeps might suspect.

Even "history" (within this context of time) is, at best, a "wild guess".

If "'history (within this context of time) is, at best, a 'wild guess'", then how do we know anything about it?

What many might question is the claim of divinity at the foremost (I am the “Son of the Almighty”).

Which isn't a historical question and has nothing to do with this issue. Jesus was hardly the only historical person to be called a god or son of god.

Not even a difficult stretch is the secondary claim that “Jesus of Nazareth” was an actual

What does this even mean? Do you know what kind of evidence we have for persons from ancient history?

That's true of virtually everyone we know of in the ancient world. What evidence do we have that Nero existed? Or Diogenes the Cynic? or Diogenes of Appolonia? Or Apollonius of Tyana? Or Pythagoras? Or Apollodorus of Alexandria? Or Rufus of Ephesus?

Richard carrier talks about some first century people in his dissertation. One is Pedanius of Dioscorides. First, other historians have argued, unlike Carrier, that this individual is the same one we know of as Dioscurides Phacus. Second, what sources does Carrier use here? Two: the Dictionary of Scientific Biography and The Oxford Classical Dictionary. Why? Because all the information we have on this individual is passing references in much later works.

This is also true of Carrier's sources for the first century individual Archigenes of Apamea, the abovementioned Rufus of Ephesus, Scribonius Largus, Claudius Agathinus, and every other first century person Carrier talks about.

I already went over the treatment of historicity in Homer here, but as for Socrates? If you look in the collection Mémoires de literature tires de l’Academie Royale des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres depuis l’anness 1761 jusque et compis l’année 1763, you'll find a paper by M. L'Abbé Garnier titled “Caractére de la Philosophie de Socrate.”. The lecture (published by the academy it was for) was given in 1761. It concerns something that had become problematic: who was the historical Socrates? Before Garnier, Fréret gave a lecture himself read to the same academy on the same issue in 1736. Only two years later Dresig's De Socrate iuste damnato came out and addressed the same issue (who was Socrates?). 4 years after that, the first part of J. J. Brucker's Historia Critica Philosophiae was published. And these are just some of most important early works, not all of the 18th century scholarship on the historical Socrates.

Thanks to the English translation of Schweitzer's von Reimarus zu Wrede we now talk about the "quest" for the historical Jesus. There's an equivalent for Socrates, known as "the Socratic problem". Schleiermacher, Hegel, Schweitzer, Taylor, Bertrand Russell, Burnett, and hundreds of historians whose work is now known only to those who do care about the historical Socrates have produced a mass of scholarship. Nor have the various links between Socrates and Jesus studies gone unnoticed.

Schweitzer, in the above mentioned book, says we have more evidence for Jesus than for anybody in antiquity, but he singles out Socrates as an example: “Für Sokrates liegt die Sache viel ungünstiger: er ist uns von Schriftstellern geschildert, wobei der Schriftsteller selbst schöpferisch war.” Why are we in such a better position when it comes to Jesus? Schweitzer's use of "Schriftsteller", literary authors rather than historians, is deliberate. He was neither the first nor the last to say that all we have of Socrates are literary depictions. The approach to recovering this historical Socrates in the 19th century had simply ensured that for every argument that a particular source was trustworthy, there were dozens more saying that it wasn't.

That's because historians had continued trying to argue in the tradition set down by Garnier: compare the sources, and try to show all the ways that one author is correct and all the others are not.

Finally, we have lots of arguments that none of the sources could be trusted because relative to those that x source can. Also, thanks especially to those like Gigon and Dupréel, it wasn't just a matter of which was more reliable because all belonged to a specific type of fiction, not history. Dupréel is a perfect example of this view. For him, we artistic literature that is both artful and complicated (“une composition très travaillée”). Like Homer’s heroes, Socrates was just another legend, a philosophical version of Achilles. If there was history anywhere were weren’t going to find it: “Le très authentique personnage du nom de Socrate ne fut ni l'homme ni le penseur qu'en a fait la légende.”

Aristotle, in his discussion of poetry, refers to τούς Σωκρατικούς λόγους, a “genre” of Socratic dialogues. Like the gospels, many modern scholars have argued that the logoi Sōkratikoi belong at least in many ways to a specific genre. Diogenes Laertius, writing centuries later after Socrates, claims that a certain Simon the Shoe-maker invented the genre, and even gives us an origin story: ἐρχομένου Σωκράτους ἐπὶ τὸἐργαστήριον καὶ διαλεγομένου τινά, ὧν ἐμνημόνευεν ὑποσημειώσεις ἐποιεῖτο [“Whenever Socrates came into his workshop and they discussed something, he would remember these talks and would take notes”].


Thus, the idea that all we have are on Socrates is a genre of fiction was around long before Schweitzer. And it continues today for a few scholars.

and singularly identifiable individual of “eyewitness” and unimpeachable “fact” um, at very least, 70 years after HIS passing (a fact no legitimate biblical scholar today denies)

Virtually every single biblical scholars denies that we have no "unimpeachable" (insofar as any historical text from in or around that time may be said to be unimpeachable, a ridiculous notion) until 70 years after his passing. Paul knew Jesus' brother. Josephus knew of Jesus' brother's trial. And the gospels are biographies (check out gospel genre on wiki).

Not to overly confuse matters, But your poorly afforded anecdotal comparisons To Julius, Hector, and Achilles… are AT BEST, a plaintiffs cry for equal consideration in some time-traveling class-action suit of disaffected mythology role-models

let's see what non-Christian historians do with what really is myth: the Iliad.
Latacz's final section of Troy and Homer: Towards a Solution of an old mystery opens with a reference to a chapter from Bryce's The Kingdom of the Hittites: "In 1998 one of the leading Hittite scholars, Trevor Bryce, attempted to collate some of these facts, if far from all, in order to present a general picture in a separate chapter of his book, The Kingdom of the Hittites, which he entitled ‘The Trojan war: myth or reality?’ He concludes that there can no longer be any doubt that the story of the Trojan War has a basis in history".

Latacz concurs, and says of the Iliad's historicity that it "has not diminished as a result of the combined research endeavours of various disciplines during the last twenty years or so. Quite the reverse: it has grown ever stronger.
The abundance of evidence pointing precisely in this direction is already almost overwhelming...The earlier uncertainty dissolves and the solution seems nearer than ever. It would not be surprising if, in the near future, the outcome states: Homer is to be taken seriously."

So non-Christian historians find merit in using an epic poem composed centuries after the alleged story it tells (we're not quite sure which century it was composed in, but probably around the 8th). Homer continues to be the quintessential myth, and yet non-Christian historians think it a useful historical source.

Have you?

Yes. Cognitive neuroscience. So if you know what a literature review is, please try one.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

Really, LegionOnomaMoi

It's a problem. I'm working on it. One of my therapists and 4 of my psychiatrists think that two of my social workers are correct and I'm making progress!

 

[psychoslice]

Hello....
G-Mark is a a very detailed account of the last months of Jesus's life. If you strip away the hyperbole and evangelical vigour, you will find a true record of the life of an amazing person.
You don't have to believe in God to be able to see this.
I am not a christian, just interested in the life of this man.

That could be true, but its certainly not the man in the bible who supposedly did what he did.