What does it mean for Jesus to have existed?

[Twilight Hue]

It is often said that most scholars believe that Jesus existed. In recent years, there's a fringe group of "Christ Myth Theorists" who claim the opposite, but the majority opinion is that he did.

But I often wonder... what do we actually mean by that?

(I'm deliberately excluding personal experience, visions and so on, here, since that does not at all translate across confession boundaries - the point below would still stand though. IOW, I'm not talking about Jesus as a religious concept, but about Jesus as a historical person.)

At the very first step of our inquiry, Jesus is simply a literary character. We know him through books, essentially. Now, a literary character consists of nothing but the words that the author wrote down - the opinions and deeds of that person are exactly equal to what was written down.

So, as long as we agree that the evangelists brought a whole lot of their own opinions into their respective texts, then the question of this thread arises -- just like with every biography, only more pointedly and with much further reaching consequences. The Jesus of, say, Matthew, is of necessity a literary fiction in that, even if Matthew knew Jesus personally, and even if he would have started writing a day after the crucifixion, this would be the memory of one man with strong opinions, tainted and skewed and not quite referring to the "original", as it were.

So yeah, what does the "historicity of Jesus" actually mean?

Who are the scholars?

 

[pearl]

Thing is, almost every christian apologist has this on their lips all the time. And THEN they move on to treat the gospels as history.

Of course there is history within the Gospels, but not a chronological history in the sense thought of today.

 

[vijeno]

Of course there is history within the Gospels, but not a chronological history in the sense thought of today.

That's okay (even though I think it is not true), as long as you don't turn around and treat it as history in the current sense anyway.

It's still completely beside the central topic of this thread, though.

 

[pearl]

The Jesus of, say, Matthew, is of necessity a literary fiction in that, even if Matthew knew Jesus personally, and even if he would have started writing a day after the crucifixion, this would be the memory of one man with strong opinions,

What we have is a collection from different authors from various times and various places. All of whom profess the historical existence of Jesus.
Did you never study literary form, criticism, in your high school English lit class? It is necessary to discern what is legend, myth, folk lore, etc. from the vehicle that conveys the authorial intent, which is the literal meaning.

 

[sayak83]

Thing is, almost every christian apologist has this on their lips all the time. And THEN they move on to treat the gospels as history.

/rant

Okay, just a shorty for now. I could go way more ranty on that for sure.

But this thread is not about what the gospels were intended as. Surely, we can ask the question about any person's historical existence: Julius Caesar, Jesus of Nazareth, Ned Ludd, me.

Now, if I see it correctly, those that do history of the bible in the context of historical-critical analysis agree on one, maybe two, MAYBE three points:

* Jesus was a man out of Judaea
* Jesus lived in the first century CE (duh)
* Jesus was crucified

On top of that, the following MIGHT have happened:

* Jesus was baptised
* Jesus was an itinerant preacher who preached the imminent coming of the "kingdom of god"

The rest is, pretty much, a question of faith.

Now, that is not an awful lot to actually know about a person's life.

If you excuse me for going all philosophical on you, that is pretty close to saying that Jesus exists as a non-historical person, indeed that he never existed at all. There really isn't an awful lot of difference.

And yet, this person (or their image in history, regardless of whether they existed) is at the center of the most extraordinary success story, a religion that forms this world even 2000 years later.

And, moving on from my original question, I do wonder if that is a necessary condition. I mean, I don't know about Mohammed, but I do know that the situation is not better, if not worse, in the case of Siddharta Gotama, the Buddha. And as for Hinduism, well... I doubt that any sane Hindu claims an actual historical basis for any one of their gods. (Judaism is interesting though, because most of their heroes don't really have such an enormous claim to extraordinary powers, so yeah, let's say Moses and David really existed and really did some of the things they were said to have done.)

I mean, maybe the power of the whole Jesus tale is not at all in opposition to his deficiency in tangible history, but on the contrary: BECAUSE he's ALMOST a myth, BECAUSE it makes us wonder even today whether he really existed or not, that is precisely why we're so fascinated and why it was possible to erect this gigantic building of faith on top of the gospels.

The problem of Christianity (and Abrahamic religions in general) is that its central thesis is based on the idea that God acted in history in some powerful and awe-inspiring way at certain singular points in the past. For majority of people of Abrahamic faith and for most of history, faith in God relied upon and rested on the belief these actions and events really happened as told (Abraham, Moses out of Egypt, David, Crucifixion, Resurrection, Calling and activities of Mohammed...) . This sacred history was (and is) considered absolutely true by most orthodox Jews, Christians and Muslims in the world and the confession of faith is based on and relies upon its inviolable truthfulness. Thus when evidence based 20th century scientific history and archaeology fails to provide evidence for , and contradicts, the sacred history, a very very central pillar of the Abrahamic religion is threatened. There is no two ways about it.

In Gnostic faith traditions (traditions that relies on direct experience of the believers in a continuous fashion) like Buddhism, many parts of Hinduism, mysticism and Daoism...history is less of an issue. Their religious goal is considered to be access to certain ways of being and/or experience of God through certain methods laid out in their instruction manual, and learning of them from advanced practitioners who live here and now. Thus their truths relies on the efficacy of the method and truthfulness and meaningfulness of the goal that this method accesses, and not on who discovered the methods first. So a serious charge for them would be evidence that the method is not effective or the goal/experience is somehow false and not worth pursuing, i.e. philosophical and scientific challenges, not historical challenges.

 

[vijeno]

All of whom profess the historical existence of Jesus.

That may all be, or not be, the case, but it really does not answer the question of this thread, which is: When we debate whether or not Jesus was a historical person, what precisely do we mean by that?

Did you never study literary form, criticism, in your high school English lit class?

I fail to see how my education is of any concern in this context.

 

[allfoak]

Mat_10:24-25) as their warrant and affirmed their motto to be: "We also would be imitators of Christ" (Origen quoted by Schliemann). Jesus they asserted "was justified by fulfilling the Law. He was the Christ of God since not one of the rest of mankind had observed the Law completely. Had any one else fulfilled the commandments of the Law he would have been the Christ." Hence "when Ebionites thus fulfil the law they are able to become Christs" (Hippolytus Refut. Omn. Haer. vii. 34).
Ebionism and Ebionites - A Dictionary of Early Christian Biography - Bible Dictionary - StudyLight.org

 

[pearl]

When we debate whether or not Jesus was a historical person, what precisely do we mean by that?

The same meaning for anyone's historical existence; they lived and walked on this earth. One is always free to deny expert consensus of opinion.

I fail to see how my education is of any concern in this context

The Gospels are the context in which you are debating the historicity of Jesus.

then the question of this thread arises -- just like with every biography,

That is the problem, the Gospels are not just like every biography.

I fail to see how my education is of any concern in this context.

One must first know how to read/understand what one is critiquing.

Thing is, almost every christian apologist has this on their lips all the time. And THEN they move on to treat the gospels as history.

Best to go with the scholars, not apologists.

 

[vijeno]

That is the problem, the Gospels are not just like every biography.

If they are not, then that *might* at least imply that we cannot simply derive the historicity of Jesus from them like with any old biographical document.

 

[pearl]

If they are not, then that *might* at least imply that we cannot simply derive the historicity of Jesus from them like with any old biographical document.

This excerpt explains my position better than I can. It is what keeps today's exegetes busy. But nowhere does it suggest that a biography was written about an unhistorical person! That is a contradiction.

Dale C. Allison in his book Jesus of Nazareth: Millenarian Prophet writes concerning the general reliability of sacred biographies:

Hagiographical traditions and sacred biographies written by the devotees of a founder or religious savior are notoriously unreliable. Tradents gather what they can and concoct what they cannot gather, often reaping what their founder did not sow. The result is that everywhere history coalesces with myth....Once we doubt, as all modern scholars do, that the Jesus tradition gives us invariably accurate information, unvarnished by exaggeration and legend, it is incumbent upon us to find some way of sorting through the diverse traditions to divine what really goes back to Jesus. (p.1-2)

http://formerfundy.blogspot.com/2010/02/do-ancient-biographies-always-present.html

 

[lukethethird]

We all know the story about the Son of God coming down to earth and sacrificing his life for our sins, but an historical Jesus, what's that about?

 

[Marcion]

If you want to find a historical Jesus in the New Testament you first have to identify what are the clearly religiously inspired mythical parts of the texts written by its authors.

I would leave out everything outside the synoptic gospels and concentrate on the story line in gMark excluding the clearly mythical passion story part (including the predictions that come before the passion story really starts).

To that I would add "the" reconstruction of Q-lite as extracted from gMatthew and gLuke because the ideology in these sayings goes against (conflicts with) the personal theologies of the gospel story authors and show that there is a separate personality behind these sayings who is different from the gospel authors themselves.

The ideology behind Q-lite in my opinion matches the personality in the non-passion part of gMark and my conclusion would be that this personality could possible be that of the historical Jesus, a personality that was substantially changed by the authors of the narrative gospels during the early heterodox development of christianity.

 

[GoodbyeDave]

Let's have a look at the evidence from an historian's point of view. What early documents do we have?

1. Mark's Gospel, based on the remininscences of Peter and written after Peter's death about 35 years after the crucifixion. The earliest reference to this text is in Papias, about 50 years later.

2. The letters of Paul, who arrived in Jerusalem a few years after the crucifixion and so who was able to meet the disciples. The earliest reference to these is in Clement of Rome, writing in the 90s.

3. Josephus, writing in the 90's. Warning: use the modern Loeb text, not English versions you find on the web, which are generally very old translations from a very poor text.

4. The sayings of Jesus held in common by the gospels of Matthew and Luke. These are probably based on the lost Aramaic collection compiled by Matthew and known to Papias.

What do we learn?

Jesus was an itinerant Jewish preacher and faith-healer. He offended the Jewish establishment with criticisms of them and they maneuvered the Roman procurator into executing him on a charge of treason. His followers claimed that he was the promised messiah. After his death, his body disappeared from his tomb and his followers decided that he must have been brought back to life by God as an endorsement of his status as the messiah. Note: there is no mention of the incarnation or virgin birth. Nor does any of these sources say that anyone had seen him after his resurection: the last paragraph of Mark's gospel was known to be a forgery in antiquity.

 

[Marcion]

There is no historical proof that the so-called 'letters of Paul' existed before a part of them appeared in the bible of the Marcionite church. Nor is there any proof that the letters were real letters written by a historical Paul of the first century. They may just as well be forged letters projecting a new form of christianity (more gnostic) that steers away from that of more jewish christians.

There is no proof that aLuke did not know gMatthew and aLuke therefore may have copied some of his Jesus sayings from gMatthew.

There is no proof that the direct followers of Jesus saw him as the promised messiah before the end of the Jesus mission nor that he died by crucifixion or was raised.

 

[lukethethird]

The Story About The Son Of God, based on the real life historical Jesus, coming to a theatre near you.

 

[lukethethird]

Let's have a look at the evidence from an historian's point of view. What early documents do we have?

1. Mark's Gospel, based on the remininscences of Peter and written after Peter's death about 35 years after the crucifixion. The earliest reference to this text is in Papias, about 50 years later.

2. The letters of Paul, who arrived in Jerusalem a few years after the crucifixion and so who was able to meet the disciples. The earliest reference to these is in Clement of Rome, writing in the 90s.

3. Josephus, writing in the 90's. Warning: use the modern Loeb text, not English versions you find on the web, which are generally very old translations from a very poor text.

4. The sayings of Jesus held in common by the gospels of Matthew and Luke. These are probably based on the lost Aramaic collection compiled by Matthew and known to Papias.

What do we learn?

Jesus was an itinerant Jewish preacher and faith-healer. He offended the Jewish establishment with criticisms of them and they maneuvered the Roman procurator into executing him on a charge of treason. His followers claimed that he was the promised messiah. After his death, his body disappeared from his tomb and his followers decided that he must have been brought back to life by God as an endorsement of his status as the messiah. Note: there is no mention of the incarnation or virgin birth. Nor does any of these sources say that anyone had seen him after his resurection: the last paragraph of Mark's gospel was known to be a forgery in antiquity.

Yes, a lot of ink was spilled over whether or not the story about the Son of God was based on an historical figure, but does it ever end? Never ending arguments exist when square pegs don't fit into round holes, while proving one emotional view over another requires some kind of never ending devotion. Perhaps it's no coincidence that a religious figure fits this bill.