Reconstructing the Historical Jesus

Hi Buzz,Please don't derail this thread. If you wish to offer scholarly objections to any of the background material presented to this point, please do so; but please give posters the courtesy of waiting until they have actually offered an opinion on the subject before you get worked up and start objecting to conclusions that have yet to be presented.Regarding your specific objections, I am not even going to address them at this point as they are quite premature and I have not yet even offered my argument. You will also find there is no need to bring them up again later, as my answers will be made implicitly clear in the arguments that are forthcoming.

Buzz,I haven't even begun to present my conclusions regarding my views on the Historical Jesus. Everything I have offered to this point is simply background material leading up to the main argument.You have jumped the gun and put words in my mouth. I am not sure where in this post you see that I have characterized the historical figure of Jesus as a charlatan, fraud, or liar. Again, feel free to offer scholarly objections to the specific background material I have already presented, but please wait until I construct the entire argument before claiming what I have formed.There is nothing stopping anyone from presenting their own coherent arguments that lead to a reconstruction of the Historical Jesus, but I will not respond to objections unless they are presented within the context of material already offered.

HI Buzz,We are having a clash over world views rather than the historical method. This is going to be inevitable as our world views are based on the presuppositions we bring to the table when analyzing the subject.Your presuppositions is that God exists and what is contained in the writings of antiquity is inerrant in relating facts and telling us about the nature of God and his interaction with the corporeal world. It is natural then that you are going to approach this subject by using the manuscripts of antiquity as self-validating tools to form conclusions about the Historical Jesus. All of your responses have been a direct result of this presupposition and are not a result of an objective analysis.I need to bring up a couple of things here that I have already offered:In order to retain objectivity, Historians are supposed to be skeptics and they must approach the subject under study with the eye of a skeptic. The only way to go about this is by assuming guilt until innocence is shown to be plausible.History is not Deductive and it is not Philosophy - the methods employed are incapable of establishing deductive truths and falsehoods. The goal of Historians is to reach a consensus as to the most plausible conclusions. Plausible certainly does not equate to fact. The only expression of absolute certainty so far has come from you.I have no animosity towards you or your beliefs and I recognize the importance that your faith has for you and others. The only agenda I have is the one motivated by my personal interest in the subject. My agenda is only to look objectively at the material and offer the conclusions I personally see as most plausible. You don't have to accept these conclusions and I am not naive enough to state that these conclusions represent historical facts.Finally, believing Christians tend to see the Historians interest in this subject as being motivated by animosity or an agenda to quash people's faith. The historian is not motivated by a sinister desire to gather children in a circle and then proceed to skin and eat the Easter Bunny and follow it up with an end zone dance over the discarded entrails.I will be pretty busy this week and won't have much time to work on this thread. My response to any further objections might be slow.

Just an FYI for iPod owners with an interest in this subject:itunes U has an excellant podcast on the subject of the Historical Jesus. The podcasts can be found under the Stanford University listings in the Arts and Humanities division. So far, there are ten lectures of about one-hour length.

I have been pretty busy lately. I have not abandoned this project/discussion and don't intend to unless it gets shut down.I thought I would change gears and shift the emphasis away from the raw presentation of opinions to a focus on methods. I was going to jump into inferences but I am a bit hesitant as I believe it will be counter-productive. Some of these inferences would be those I have personally formed, others would be a result of what I have learned through my own personal academic interest and would reflect the scholarly opinions of the professional historians who devote their careers to this subject -- the real experts. I can simply parrot these out, but I won't. Firstly, it will do no good, as to do so without presenting how and why I subscribe to these inferences and conclusions would result in confusion and a rush to judgement. Also, there is simply not enough time or space here to have an academic discussion with the requisite rigor and depth. Like any historical reconstruction, this one is quite complex and involves material from many other disciplines such as linguistics, archeology, anthropology, philosophy, and literature.As we have already seen here, the complexity of this subject is compounded by the fact that many of us have emotional attachments or deep-rooted personal opinions, whether positive or negative, that are formed by our interaction with modern Christianity. I will paraphrase Thomas Sheehan here and state that our biggest impediment to objectivity is due to the fact that the story of Jesus is a bit too familiar to us in the West. For many, it strikes a chord too close too home and at times it is indeed an impossible task to engage in an objective and scholarly discussion of the subject.For many of us in the West, particular in America, our exposure to the subject of Jesus began early in our childhood. It was at this time, before we have had the chance to form a world-view, before we possessed even a rudimentary understanding of the world, that we had certain ideas concerning this figure thrust upon us. These ideas have become so thoroughly engrained in our psyches that for many, objectivity is an impossibility.When confronted with the subject of the Historical Jesus, or when presented with a plausible inference that contradicts the pre-packaged account, many will simply opt-out or revert to a sub conscious mode of denial. Anything a secular historian would offer up that does not fit neatly into the die-cast mold will be immediately dismissed as an illusion, or worse yet, a secular conspiracy. There is safety in numbers and many would prefer to stick with the status-quo so as to further empower the conviction that they indeed possess the holy grail of absolute truth.There are also those who's interaction with modern Christianity has led to contempt or animosity and they too would be prone to replace objectivity with a rush to judgement that results in dismissing the historical Jesus as a figment of the collective imaginations of superstitious first-century Jewish mystics.Regardless of our viewpoints. if you really want to take a shot at getting close to the truth, you will not find it by taking short cuts or by circumventing those things that are potentially unappealing. It is all too easy to look only at the material that fits a pre-formed conclusion. This is why it is always important to listen to opposing viewpoints and judge these on their merits, rather than our emotions or a desire to see our view championed in the public square. History is not a popularity contest.In this subject particularly, often one's conclusions are formed based on a cursory familiarity with the material. Many will then proceed with a conclusion and only then will they delve into the minutia and detail. The goal then is to siphon out conflicting material and keep only those things that will serve to justify and rationalize the conclusion. The plan of attack should be to work from the ground up and reach a conclusion about what is most plausible based on an unbiased appeal to the empirical evidence available.Outside of academia, it is extremely rare to see a presentation on this subject that proceeds from the ground up. With few exceptions, most popular authors who write about this subject start with a conclusion then work their way backwards trying to find those bits and pieces that fit neatly into the slots that were pre-drilled. The odd-shaped pegs that don't fit the mold simply get tossed into the garbage can of history. The end result is usually something that is very appealing to the majority reader but lacks any rigor or consistency and certainly does not stand up to serious academic scrutiny. This is what historians refer to as "The Cafeteria."Bookshelves are full of this type of material. If so inclined, one can go grocery shopping for the view that fits your preferences and pre-formed conclusions. If you want to hear a 'historical' account of how Jesus traveled to India or how the Gospels were written by the apostles shortly after the death of Jesus, you certainly can find such an account to empower your pre conceived conclusions and stroke your convictions. There are also plenty of radio shows and other public forums where one can find an accommodating and safe environment where this approach is employed and all opposing views are simply dismissed as secular conspiracy. However, if you really want history, there are no short cuts and there is life outside of the Gospel manuscripts.The 'mythification' of popular figures that have captured the public imagination is a staple of history, regardless of the period or the subject. Historians, of course, do not actually hold the view that Isaac Newton obtained the impetus for the idea of gravitation by watching an apple fall from a tree and they certainly do not infer from the extant writings of the period that George Washington chopped down a cherry tree. These are simply Urban Legends and are literary devices used by contemporaries to answer the questions on people's minds or elevate the social status of a figure to the next level. Likewise, when browsing the literature of antiquity, we would naturally expect to see lots of cherry trees and falling apples, especially in the extant religious literature of various periods. There is no plausible or rational reason why one should expect early Christian literature to be any different in this regards.The historian seeks to makes a distinction between who Jesus was, what early Christian communities wrote about Jesus, and what people of various historical periods thought about Jesus. In the next thread, it will be made clear why the Gospels should not be read as a historical record. Everything presented in the Gospels serves a specific theological purpose with the goal of proselytization. The numerous Gospel manuscripts were written by numerous authors writing to specific communities with varying needs and in different geographical locations. It is neither rational nor plausible to accept the fundamentalist Christian presupposition that the Gospels made it into our hands with the word HISTORY implicitly engraved on the front.For the Historian, there is no plausible reason to conclude the historical figure of Jesus was simply a myth. The most plausible conclusion is that Jesus was an actual historical figure that walked the landscape of first-century Palestine and was later elevated to the status of deity by a community in the midst of a crisis. For the Historian, this figure would have been known as Yeshua ben Josaphat bar mariam ha-galil -- Joshua, the son of Joseph and Mary from Galilee.........

Hi Straggler. Thanks for the reply and vote of interest. Jump in at any time with your opinions.

Hi GDR, thanks for joining the discussion.There are two approaches to the story of the Historical Jesus -- the secular and the theological. These two approaches overlap at times and the conclusions are not always mutually exclusive. It should come as no surprise that the major disagreements revolve around claims of the miraculous. NT Wright is associated with the latter school and his work is certainly well-respected in the field of NT scholarship, among both secular and religious. As a Christian, his interpretations of the texts is liberal enough to make the fundamentalist Christian cringe but also Conservative enough to not offend the traditional sensibilities of the mainstream Christian.The only parties who really work themselves into a furor over the secular activity in the field are those in the fundamentalist camp who adhere to a literalist tradition of scriptures. They are a but irked by the explosion of secular interest in the subject and would rather they get off the swing set and find their own place to playAlso, you bring up a good point about faith and it mirrors the one I made earlier regarding presuppositions. Which side of the story you are on depends on the presuppositions you bring to the table. Ultimately, a belief in the existence of the miraculous will depend on your world view and whether or not your subscribe to the notion of the supernatural.As I discussed earlier, the inhabitants of antiquity possessed a world view very far removed from ours today. Everything and anything about this existence is so foreign to us that we cannot comprehend the true context of the period in which these stories took place. If we say we can, we are only fooling ourselves. We simply cannot fathom what it would be like to inhabit a world without physics, astronomy, chemistry, universities, TV's, cars, books, telephones, magazines, radio, newspapers, and so on . For the majority of those in the first-century, an appeal to divinity or supernatural forces was the only rational and plausible explanation for the mode of operation of the world and man's place within it. Most first-century inhabitants of the Empire explained things via superstition by appealing to unseen forces and deities. God(s) were in control of all facets of existence and the miraculous was not a rare exception, rather it was the norm.Furthermore, anything out of the ordinary, whether an epileptic having a seizure or the sudden appearance of a comet in the night sky, had something to do with the unseen supernatural activity of these disembodied spirits or gods. This was true whether you were a Pagan, Jew, or Christian. Claims of supernatural events might be met with fear, but rarely, if ever, with outright rational skepticism. Someone might believe a story was fabricated but it would be rare to find someone who would hold the view that it would be unreasonable to conclude such things being claimed were irrational and unbelievable. Outside of some of the early Greek schools of Philosophy of the period, such as epicureanism, this type of rational skepticism is found only in more modern times. Within the cosmological view of antiquity, miraculous events were expected to occur and indeed the literature of antiquity is filled with claim after claim of the miraculous.Now, if we were to look at such claims as recorded in antiquity, a Christian would likely dismiss the miraculous events attributed to Mohammad on the same grounds that a secular Historian would dismiss the miraculous events early Christian authors have attributed to Jesus. They would likely put on the hat of the secular historian and by employing the same methods would likely state such claims were either the result of superstitious urban legend and folk tale or outright fabrications. Likewise, a modern Orthodox Jew would dismiss the claims in a like manner, most likely seeing them as outright fabrications. The same would hold for a Muslim evaluating the Jewish and Christian literature. The only time they would agree would be when claims of the miraculous overlapped with each respective religious tradition.Everyone approaches history with the eye of the secular historian, unless of course, it is their own dogma under scrutiny. As Joseph Campbell stated, "Mythology is always defined as the other guys religion." It naturally follows that miracles are always defined as those things that occur only within the confines of 'my' own personal orthodox dogma. Belief in the validity of ones convictions is further emboldened by the number of believers who have accepted the claims and the fact that these beliefs have survived for many centuries and made their way into the hands of contemporaries. It is my opinion that it is the deep-rooted emotional attachments and group prejudices that is the real force of argument that reinforces ones personal convictions in these matters, not the historical veracity of the religious literature.The Christian scholar has the even more arduous task of concluding how and why specific cases of the miraculous should be accepted. It is interesting to note that among many liberal Christian biblical scholars who accept Christian dogma on faith, there is debate about which miracles attributed to Jesus occurred and which were inventions and literary devices. Some believe the resurrection is the only miraculous event; others, like NT Wright, believe many of the 'nature miracles' should be considered inventions. It is only the most conservative of biblical scholars that believes everything recorded in the New Testament literature represents a factual recalling of historical events. There is a plethora of views and opinions on the miraculous among the faith-community and these views span the spectrum.Whether or not you accept the miracles depends entirely on your beliefs. I certainly cannot scientifically demonstrate or deductively prove that miracles do not occur nor can I demonstrate from the documentary evidence available that such things as written in the Tanahk, the New Testament, or the Koran did not occur. In light of all that I have mentioned so far, I simply have no valid or plausible reason to suspect that the miraculous claims contained within any religious writing of antiquity should be given any credibility. I am skeptical of claims of the miraculous in the here-and-now and I am certainly skeptical of any claim regarding the miraculous that has arrived to us from the periods of antiquity, regardless of the source or how many times the claims were subsequently recorded or how well subsequent authors later succeeded in integrating the stories into an intelligible theological or prophetic framework.Regarding the claim that the miracle-accounts as recorded in the synoptic gospels are to be justified by their historical veracity, we can conduct a mini thought-experiment that will hopefully force us to evaluate this claim objectively:Suppose one of the many competing Christian sects which rivaled the traditional Christian views, such as Marcionism, made the final cut and made its way to us today. Or suppose Christianity simply died out and some other obscure apocalyptic sect like the Essene Qumran community made its way into the hearts and minds of the Empire. Instead of digging up the Dead Sea Scrolls, one day a shepherd boy stumbles upon a cache of documents containing all of the christian texts of the Gospels we posess today.Using these newly discovered documents and our understanding of Judaism and the historical framework of the first century, how would we and how should we answer the following questions?:Who was Yeshua ben Josaphat? Was he real? What did people think of him? When did he live? When did he die? Why did he die? What was he really preaching? Would we conclude that it was a historical fact that this man really was resurrected as is claimed in these documents?In short, if you divorce yourself entirely from the familiarity with the dogma and cut off any emotional attachments and biases, what would be the most plausible and unbiased answers to these questions?This is really my goal for this thread. I am not trying to to counter any claims or opinions and I am not attempting to disprove any assertions. I am presenting what I see as the most plausible and objective answers to these questions.

Wow, what a difference a day makes. I figured the first mention of the resurrection stories would bring about interest in the subject.GDR, thanks for your presentation and links. I downloaded the debate and lecture to my IPod and have not yet listened in. I have already read a number of Wright's works over the years. I have an on-again/off-again interest in this subject and when I get time I like to keep up with what's going on.Wright is certainly one of the prominent experts on the Jewish temple culture and the conservative messianic traditions. Many of the points in the argument he puts forth for the historicity of the resurrection are certainly hard to dispute. It is realistic to conclude a conservative orthodox temple Jew would have great difficulty with the idea that an individual who was executed by the pagan authorities should be given serious consideration as a potential messiah. It is also valid and plausible to conclude that an orthodox temple Jew would scoff at the suggestion that such a figure had been resurrected without actually seeing this for himself. Given our understanding of the period, one would be very hard pressed to find any rational argument to counter this conclusion.Wright's critics will contend, however, that he leaves too many stones unturned and has left a bit too much to the imagination. For Wright, everything seems to boil down to how such a messianic figure like Jesus would appear to the traditional temple Jew. At times, he appears to have an obsession with this issue. There is life outside the temple tradition, however, and we know from the Gospel canon itself that Christianity was a very hard sell within Judaism.It would be hard for anyone to objectively state by reading the gospels that the Christian campaign to convert the Jews was a success; if anything, it was a failure. It appears there was rare success making the case with the orthodox and only limited success elsewhere within Judaism. The documents indicate early Christians were thrown out of the temple, hunted down, and to a great degree persecuted by the orthodox culture. Indeed, the majority saw the early Christian movement as heretical nonsense filled with absurd messianic claims.It wasn't until after the destruction of the temple in 70 CE when the temple culture disappeared from the scene that the message would likely become an easier sell. We also know the Christian mission to convert the Jews soured rather quickly due to the lack of success. By 55 CE, Paul of Tarsus was already taking the message to the gentile Hellenistic communities; by 80 CE, the Christian literature was taking on a very anti-Jewish tone and the break from Judaism was taking place.Most scholars conclude that the very early Jewish converts to Christianity were likely coming from the same pool that Jesus gained popularity with before his death --- those well outside Jerusalem and far away from the establishment. These are the Jews on the outskirts and fringes of society and those who fall well outside the established orthodoxy. Among many Jewish communities outside Jerusalem, and Galilee in particular, there was distaste for the temple culture and the hypocrisy of the dominant temple sects like the Sadducees and the Pharisees. Many Jews were marginalised by the temple authorities and the poor were treated like outcasts and pariah. These were the folks out there in the dessert hanging out with the unorthodox sects and fringe groups like the Hemerobaptists. This crowd was just the type that would be more easily swayed and less likely to see the gospel message as something threatening to their particular Jewish sensibilities.Regarding Wright's claim that Christians would have a hard time convincing anyone had the resurrection not occurred and people did not have the opportunity to see for themselves:I simply don't understand this one. According to the documents and claims, the resurrected Jesus appeared only to a very small handful of his close followers for an extremely brief period of time. If seeing is believing, how did they convince Jews or Gentiles that Jesus was resurrected once he disappeared? Also, if the goal was at first to 'save the lost sheep of the house of Israel', as Wright claims, why were the appearances so clandestine and secretive and limited to only a select number of his immediate followers?The real question to be answered is, what was it about Christianity that appealed to the gentiles and pagans? Christianity may have started as a small Jewish apocalyptic sect, but it became an entirely gentile movement within a generation following the death of Jesus. None of these converts would have witnessed the bodily resurrection of Jesus, nor would they have seen Jesus when he was alive.Wright seems to be playing the numbers game and making the argument that the Christian message was simply too radical for many contemporaries to accept the beliefs had they not been based on fact. I guess one could make the same assertions regarding the explosion of Islam or even Mormonism. How is it that Joseph Smith was able to convince so many Conservative fundamentalist Christians that he had a new vision of a new covenant, had it not been true? It seems quite odd that conservative Christians who held a literal interpretation of the bible would suddenly believe these strange stories and eventually endure serious hardship and suffering to move halfway across the nation. That makes little sense either, but I certainly wouldn't make the claim that it implies Mormonism is based on facts anymore than I would claim that the spread of Christianity implies it was necessary that Jesus was raised from the dead.Joseph Campbell would note here that the power of myth is awesome and it makes people accept and do any manner of things. In the twenty-first century, if Oral Robert can convince his followers that though prayer he had raised someone from the dead, I certainly see no reason why members of an apocalyptic Jewish sect could not be sucessful in convincing first-century inhabitants of the empire that Jesus had raised from the dead. Given people with the right dispositions and mind sets, anything is possible. One need only look at some of the beliefs floating around the world today to figure this out.The point here is simply that people often believe things to be true that are not and group dynamics and peer pressure often have a lot to do with that. Why any religious system takes hold of the minds of people at any particular time and place is probably an issue better addressed by sociologists and anthropologists rather than historians or biblical scholars. What selective pressures allow one particular sect to flourish while others die off?. I lack the expertise to answer this question but I suspect the answers have a lot to do with the social and political environments in which the beliefs take hold.As a side-item, here are a couple of interesting maps outlining the history of religious thought and the control of the Palestine. I wish I could overlap these map with the political and social crisis that would coincide with the events listed. Notice the steady growth of Christianity and the extremely rapid rise of Islam.History of ReligionImperial History of the Middle EastIt is true for anyone who adheres to a religious belief system that the way they see the world now is closely tied to the beliefs about what they think happened in the past, not what they see occurring in the present. The epistemological problem for believers in the twenty-first century is that the way the word is seen now has no resemblance to the world described in the religious literature of antiquity. When conflict and confusion arrsies, how should one evaluate the evidence? Should we trust the accounts of early first- century religious literature more than what we see now? Wright will say we should not dismiss the methods of secular research but ultimately should give the latter the benefit of the doubt when it comes to resolving confusion or making decisions.I often hear Christians asking why it is that the miracles as described in the religious literature of antiquity do not occur with the same frequency or intensity that they did thousands of years ago. For me, the answer is quite simple: Following the enlightenment, we slowly figured out that schizophrenics and epileptics are not possessed by demons and comets are not divine messengers of evil; angels and spirits are not controlling the ebb and flow of nature; tidal waves are not created by giant stadium-sized lobsters flipping over rocks in search of food.For some odd reason we no longer witness visitations from beyond and we never see people become resurrected after their bodies have begun to decay. The more our knowledge of the world has grown, the more we realize that many of the stories of our childhood no longer make much sense when viewed in the context of what we see going on around us in the here-and-now. This is the reason why I am hard pressed to give the extraordinary stories of antiquity any credibility.I will repeat what I stated earlier -- I cannot disprove those things recorded in the religious literature of antiquity; I simply see no reason to believe such things do occur, or have. I will also repeat what has already been stated many times by many people - - extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. I do not consider arguments such as Wright's that kind of evidence.....Postscript:Rodney Stark, who is a prominent sociologist dealing with the spread of religious belief systems has this to say about the growth curve of early Christianity:"I shall assume that there were 1,000 Christians in the year 40 CE. Based on historical analysis, a growth rate of 40 percent per decade seems the most plausible estimate of the rate at which Christianity grew during the first several centuries... So long as nothing changed in the conditions that sustained a 40-percent-a-decade growth rate, Constantine's conversion would better be seen as a response to the exponential wave in progress, not it's cause... The projections reveal that Christianity could easily have reached half the population by the middle of the fourth century without conversions en masse. The Mormons, thus far, trace the same growth curve, and we have no knowledge of their achieving mass conversions." Rodney Stark, the Rise of Christianity. PP 5,10,14.Edited by Grizz, : Addition

Wright uses the phrase, "It is impossible that" quite a bit in his analysis of the resurrection stories and this is something that should never be stated when it comes to inferring the motives or intent of any figure of antiquity. Also, if it is valid to use incredulity to establish motive and intent and then use this as a basis on which to assign historical facts, then it is also valid to use incredulity to establish the truth of any claim related to any arbitrary belief system.One could conclude that Mormonism must be true since it is impossible that so many conservative Christians would willingly face death, starvation, and suffering to travel halfway around the country had Joseph Smith not received a visit from the angel Moroni. In fact, this argument is one that many Mormons use today -- if Mormonism were not true, it is implausible to conclude that with little formal education, Joseph Smith would have the ability to make up such elaborate stories in such a short period of time without the help of divine revelation. Furthermore, without divine assistance he certainly would not be able to convince so many people who adhered to such a strict and orthodox conservative Christian theology.Certainly, a Mormon would give this argument significant weight, but for anyone else this would be considered an argument built upon very shaky ground(the phrase in vogue today is 'straw man'). One would obviously object that this argument used by Mormons is not exhaustive and makes use of many assumptions about the texts and the actual circumstances that went into their construction. Of course, very few outside of Mormonism would ever consider such inference valid and nobody outside orthodox Christianity would make the clam that the resurrection stories as told in the documents of antiquity must have been factual simply because had it not occurred, the followers of Jesus would have went back to fishing.On an unrelated note(see my PostScript at the end of my last post), sociologists have noted that it is quite plausible to conclude that Christianity had the same growth curve as present-day Mormonism. Their study of social trends within Mormonism has led to many plausible inferences regarding the growth of early Christianity.One statement Wright made in his address that would give one pause is: "No Christian group or sect in the first two centuries following the death of Jesus denied the resurrection and his appearance to the disciples." This statement is true or false depending on how you define resurrection and appearance. I will attribute this statement to a poor choice of words; unfortunately, it might very well lead someone to a false conclusion about the uniformity of early Christian beliefs.Early Gnostics denied the bodily resurrection of Jesus. Wright knows this and so does anyone who has ever read or studied the apocrypha literature of early Christianity. Many of the numerous Gnostic Christian communities that flourished alongside the synoptic tradition in the first few centuries had always denied the accounts of bodily resurrection. The Gnostic gospels tell a completely different story: following the death of Jesus, he appeared as an ethereal spirit in the form of "an angel of light" that visited the apostles and dwelt among them. In other gospels, Jesus sent the holy spirit to his followers upon his death. Another Gnostic account also tells the story that Jesus was never crucified and Simon was crucified in his place. I am sure many here have heard of these stories in the media. Regardless, the story of an empty tomb and physical appearances to the disciples is absent in most of the Gnostic literature.It is false to believe that the synoptic eschatology on the resurrection was universally accepted in the first two centuries, because it was not. This simply is not true and again, Wright knows this. Regardless, all of the Gospels, whether canonical or apocryphal, make an implicit claim that the source for the information contained within them was the apostles themselves.It is believed that the Gnostics started putting their stories into writing in response to the rise of the synoptic literary tradition. The reason historians possess so many complete apocryphal manuscripts is because they were kept out of the elements. Archeologists now find them buried in the sand inside pottery jars because they were being destroyed as heretical documents by the establishment in the second century. All of the various Christian sects of the second century were hiding their stash of documents from not only each other but also the mainstream Christian orthodoxy that was forming. Most of the non-canonical apocrypha are in very good condition.Once again, here is a link that displays the timeline of early Christian manuscripts: Early Christian Writings: New Testament, Apocrypha, Gnostics, Church FathersWhen interpreting the texts, the methodology employed in orthodox circles is not exhaustive and assumes only a supernatural explanation for events. Here again, they will use incredulity to establish an inference and pose the question, "Why would so many followers of Jesus make such a claims if it wasn't true? " For any objective historian, there is obviously a naivety in this approach.What starts in Mark as a relatively simple story of an empty tomb later appears in Luke and John as elaborate accounts detailing how Jesus wined and dined with his disciples. All of the Gospels also disagree on when, where, and how these things took place. In Luke, these events occurred in and around Jerusalem. Earlier, Mark and Matthew imply that the post-resurrection encounter with the disciples took place far to the north in the district of Galilee.Claims of Visions, apparitions, and visitations from beyond are not exactly something unique to Christianity, nor is the belief in resurrection. In fact, if we are to believe the story, the Gospels themselves tell us that "Herod believed Jesus to be John the Baptist raised from the dead." Inhabitants of antiquity(and even inhabitants here in the twenty-first century) often believed they were being visited by angels, spirits, or deities.If anyone has ever read the Autobiography of Malcolm X, they will hear the claim that he received a personal visit from Elijah Mohammad while in prison. Malcolm X recalls how he saw a vision of Elijah Mohammad in his prison cell and how he appeared as a "shining light so bright that I could hardly gaze upon him." He then details how they engaged in an elaborate and lengthy conversation.Was Malcolm X fabricating this story or did something personal and subjective happen to him? The answer really isn't that important because what matters is how other people react to such claims. History is full of these kinds of stories and claims. Even today, just about every year someone claims to have been the beneficiary of a personal visit from the blessed virgin or someone claims to see the face of Jesus in a slice of toast or a bowl of spaghettios.How do you explain claims such as these and how do you explain claims like those made by thousands of people who tell us they saw the sun fall to the earth at Lourdes? Are these outright lies, fabrications, or subjective personal experiences intepreted as supernatural events? I haven't the slightest idea. I don't claim to be able to get inside someone's head now and I certainly don't claim to know what someone was thinking two-thousand years prior. This is a question that would likely be of interest to psychologists, anthropologists, and neuroscientists. It is an interesting question but I am not concerned with it here in this thread.All you have to do is cry "Fire!" in a crowded theatre to get everyone to run away. Today, all one has to do is cry "Apparition!" to get people to run towards you. Why would yesterday be any different than today in this regards?The very strange thing about modern Theologians is that they assume it is only a staple of the modern period whereby people would be inclined to see visions of Jesus in their morning breakfast. This stuff only happens to us here in the twenty-first century. It is as if they are implicitly telling us that people only believe crazy things in the modern era and it is only the stories of antiquity that should be considered factual regarding claims of personal visitiations from beyond.The theologian views the past as an age of miracles when people walked on water, men were raised from the dead, and the blind had their sight restored. For some unknown reason, the structure of the Universe suddenly changed and these miraculous events no longer occurred. We no longer see people rise from the grave or see the blind regain their sight. The closest we get today to encountering the miraculous is hearing the story of someone who saw the outline of the blessed virgin on a banana peel. We then will be inclined to call these people superstitious kooks and charlatans. Of course, we only assign these labels to those individuals today who make such claims. It would never enter our mind that perhaps it is possible that such labels should also be applied to those from the past.The moral here is that if you are looking for a supernatural explanation to events then you will certainly find them. This approach is sufficient for a theologian immersed in Christian orthodoxy but from the perspective of a historian whose goal is to be exhaustive, this won't fly.I have stated this before and will state it again: method is more important than results. We will never know with certainty the details of antiquity. However, if your methods are sound and exhaustive, you can at least have confidence in your results.For the Christian, the resurrection is the main event, but for the historian it is only one small aspect of the story. We really have got a bit ahead of ourselves here and we need to turn to the texts. If we want to understand history, we must first understand the documents............Edited by Grizz, : No reason given.

GDR,The question I am posing is: what does the Jesus of History look like when freed from the trappings of established theology and dogma? Without theologians and their institutions to define for us who Jesus was and is, what can we conclude? Who is Jesus without Paul, Marcion, Martin Luther, or the Pope?In short, if you read the documents without someone else interpreting them for you, what do you see?Some musings and a bit of history:If you are a Christian or were brought up a Christian, you soon realize that you could not fly solo when it comes to understanding scripture or understanding Jesus. One must be 'guided' and this means one must also have availability to the sages and seers who interpret the scriptures. This is not something exclusive to Christianity; It doesn't matter if you are a Christian, Jew, Muslim, or Buddhist, someone will always be needed to answer the inevitable questions: what?, why?, how?, and when?. In addition to the sacred texts, we will always need those who have attained the status of enlightenment to interpret the meaning of these texts and lead the way.We rely heavily on these individuals and their mojo to counter any claims of contradictions and define the ambiguous in absolute terms we can all relate to. Of course, there will always be those pesky individuals who claim "No no no !, you are wrong !, the scriptures clearly tell us that...." The institutions that gave rise to orthodoxy have been a direct result of such disputes about Jesus. Today, these institutions have various names: Catholicism, Protestantism, Seventh-Day Adventism, and Baptists. The byproduct of such institutions is what we call dogma and the dogma becomes just as scared as the texts themselves. Often, dogma and the resulting pomp and circumstance upstages the texts themselves.If the follower of any religions is going to invest their time and energy, they will demand certainty. The individuals who traffic in certainty are called theologians: Paul of Tarsus, Polycarp, Jerome, St Augustine, Martin Luther, John Calvin, and the Pope. In order that people do not go astray in their interpretations, these individuals made their interpretations available to the common man in the pew who lack the mojo.To question authority is to question certainty and in the past this could be detrimental to your well-being and could easily result in the loss of your life. Following the council of Nicaea, orthodoxy figured out quickly that the best way to quell dissent was to remove it, often violently. Today, outside of Islam, such removal of dissent usually takes less violent tones and comes in the form of excommunication whereby one is severed from the community and severed from any hope of eternal paradise. It becomes perfectly clear to ay initiate that if one wants to be a member of the club you must leave your own formulations and opinions at the door: Thou shalt not interpret the sacred texts on your own.The question, "What does this all mean?" is nothing new and it should come as no surprise that it has been around since the beginning of Christianity. This is why churches schism and why there are so many Christian denominations and sects.Jesus offers very little in the way of lengthy theological discourse. The Jesus portrayed in the synoptic gospels is brief and clandestine. At times, he speaks in often confusing and ambiguous parables and metaphor. We are offered no deep theological discourses on abstract concepts like justification by faith or the number of sacraments. Jesus appears to answer questions by posing other rhetorical questions and never really attempts to string out any esoteric theology about the existence of the sacraments or the nature of transubstantiation. If anything, the texts indicate that the figure of Jesus shunned this type of dogmatic approach to spirituality.The Jesus of the synoptics spent a considerable amount of effort to rail against the establishment for its hypocritical attachment to dogma which served to accomplish nothing but reduce the individual to a servant at the whims of the theologians who sat in judgement. The simpilcity of this approach seems to lie in stark contrast to the lenghty theological prognostications that would follow his death.Paul of Tarsus is really the first figure we are aware of to offer a legnthy attempt at explaining the why and the how. It is no surprise that on any given Sunday, the vast majority of scriptural citations related to theology will come from the Old Testament or Paul's letters and epistles.Protestants spend the majority of their time discussing the theology of Paul, and Catholics spend the majority of their days fretting over the proper form in which to engage in the sacraments. In fact, even Paul himself never mentions anything at all about the miracles or words of Jesus. Like the God of a Deist, Jesus is kind of implicitly hiding in the background as the figure who set it all in motion. Jesus is upstaged by the sectarian theologians who, through their own mojo, claim to possess this special gnosis.Other major players who followed Paul were the Gnostics, the Ebionites and Marcion of Sinope. There were divisions in early Christianity over the nature of Jesus's divinity and the nature of the resurrection and its meaning for Christians. There was often fierce debate over the new abstract theological concept of the triune godhead.Of these three, Marcion of Sinope offered up the most popular rival to traditional Christianity. At its height, Marcion's theology rivaled that of the early church in both popularity and number. Marcion was the first public theologian we are aware of that suggested that the details of the God described in the Jewish scriptures cannot be reconciled with the nature of the God that Jesus was proclaiming to represent. In the early second century, marcion was vehemently opposed to the growing popular theology and claimed that Jesus represented the appearance of a completely different God than was described in the Jewish scriptures.For Marcion and his followers, the idea that God could one day order a mass slaughter of innocents at Jericho and another day extend an olive branch to humanity was absurd. How could the God of war who ordered Joshua to slay every man, woman, and child suddenly have a change of heart and become a god of peace, love, and brotherhood? Jesus came to rescue mankind from what Marcion saw as the vengeful and blood-thirsty tyrant described in the old testament. Marcion was considered by his followers to be the successor to Paul. The Marcion canon consisted only of his Epistles, The Gospel of Luke, and Paul's Letters.By the middle of the fourth century, Christianity had become a bit fractured on theological grounds. Although all of the various sects shared in common an understanding of the importance of Jesus to the world, they often contentiously disagreed on the details. Early Christians were hoping for and expecting the imminent return of Jesus and it did not materalize. People began to ask more and more questions: Who really was Jesus?, what really happened?, and what does it mean for us today and tomorrow? The council of Nicae was the first attempt by the Christian community to establish a universal dogma and define heresy.The first nicene creed composed in 325 CE concluded with a warning to dissenters who chose a different path:'And let it be known to all that those who state: 'There was a time when Jesus did not exist;' or 'He was not before he was made' or 'He was made from nothing,' or 'He is of another substance or essence,' or 'The Son of God is created or changeable or alterable' ” they are condemned by the holy catholic and apostolic Church.All of the sects whose theology fell outside of this dogma were deemed to be heretical. Furthermore, to question the divinity of Jesus would soon be punishable by death. The church would become a global power with the ability to physically impose its will on those who dissented or questioned its authority on matters of interpretation. Very quickly, the oppressed became the oppressor. Documents that were deemed to be heretical were destroyed and dissenters were persecuted and run out of dodge.

The reason I have trouble with the methodology of the theologian is because their methods are not exhaustive. I am quite skeptical that theologians such as Wright would use the same criteria of judgement and draw the same conclusions about the historicity of the resurrection accounts without their immersion in present-day Christian theology.As I offered in a prior post, if Christianity had died out in the second century and two millennia later archeologists discovered a small cache of documents containing the synoptic Gospels buried in the sand, I doubt the same conclusions would be reached based only on the information contained within them and our understanding of Temple Judaism. If someone were to opine that one could not get all those early Christians to accept the tradition had the resurrection not occurred, the response would likely be, "I am not quite sure what happened but of course I do not take seriously the claims within these documents of antiquity that an individual was raised from the dead."Like any objective historian, most individuals with no emotional interest in the truth or falsehood of the claims would likely state that these documents just unearthed are religious literature and we know as a fact that they are notoriously biased documents with the intent purpose of proselytization. Some here might make the assertion that Christianity did survive and it was through divine providence that the message made its way to us today and this reinforces the veracity of the claims contained within the documents. The point of contention here, however, is that a theologian like Wright is making the assertion that their arguments for the historicity of the resurrection are based only on an appeal to the documents and the theological norms of first-century Judaism, nothing more.I certainly will not claim to speak for anyone else on this matter and I cannot read anyone's mind. Perhaps Wright would draw the same conclusions and it would be unfair and wrong for me to put words in the mouths of others and attempt to form their opinions, especially when they are not present to speak their mind. I will just say that I find it plausible to conclude that the opinions and judgements that are now being offered ny many might be a bit different if it was not for the present exposure to Christianity and the emotional attachments that come with it.To really understand what happened, we need more information than is supplied in the Gospel documents. Unfortunately, we do not have at our disposal any forensic psychological profiles of the individuals of antiquity. To put it bluntly, the historian often has no way of knowing if the major players being described in any story from antiquity were playing with all their marbles, especially when making grandiose claims that are atypical for a time and place.Were any of these individuals possibly mildly schizophrenic and prone to seeing hallucinations or hearing voices? I am not asserting the answer to this question is yes. I am simply pointing out we lack too much information and are making too many assumptions about the main figures of early Christianity.We also have no personality profiles. Were the main players of early Christianity prone to exaggeration? Did their non-Christian contemporaries consider these individuals to be honest and trustworthy? There are simply too many unknowns to state anything with a degree of certainty and one cannot make an exhaustive assessment of the motives, intent, and mental state of any of the prime figures. Motive and intent it is very hard to establish with people today, even more so for people of antquity. The same can be said for other religious figures like Mohammad or Joseph Smith. Were these individuals sincere chaps who believed what they were saying or were they lunatics and/or charlatans?Essentially, we are left holding documents containing information that early Christian authors felt it was necessary for people to hear. What we do not hear are those things that happened that went unrecorded or things that might not have shed a positive light on the movement. The historian has no plausible reason to conclude that the sectarian religious documents from antiquity that were first composed a generation following the death of Jesus give us the complete story. Essentially, we are hearing a story the way certain individuals wanted others to hear it. It is very hard to pass judgement when you are receiving only one side of the story and this story comes from a sectarian group whose goal it is to advance a movement.That first-century inhabitants of Judea managed to convince a pre-enlightenment culture steeped in superstition that a man was raised from the dead and would soon return to rescue his followers is not exactly a shocking puzzle and enigma. Barring future archeological discoveries that reveal more information, we may never know the specific details. Many questions in history remain unresolved and under dispute. Many of these mysteries are much more complex and hard to solve.To give an example: How did the Rapanui manage to move all those giant stones on Easter island to create the moia bird-men statues that circle the island looking out to sea? Why did they situate them as they did? Of course, there are those who state the existence of the stones can only be accounted for by an explanation that transcends our existence on Earth.Modern historians and engineers are not exactly sure of the methods employed but suspect a rockered lever system. Upon hearing of such possible explanations, the transcendent crowd responds with skepticism -- How on Earth could a primitive culture without any understanding of physics or engineering possibly manage to figure out a way to use tree branches and human power to move 65' tall, 270 ton stones miles away from a volcanic query and into position on a sloped hillside? Admittedly, such an extraordinary feat would even present serious challenges using today's modern hydraulic equipment.The fact is, the Rapanui did manage to find a way to accomplish the task and such a feat is a testament to human ingenuity and creativity. Nobody claims with certainty to know how the job took place. We weren't there and we simply lack the necessary information that would allow us to be more accurate in our inferences. History is full of such mystery and that's what makes it interesting. Whenever there is something that appears highly improbable or bizarre, there will always be those who first look for transcendent explanations. For the 'Chariots of the Gods' crowd, the bird-men statues are undeniable evidence that we have been visited and the Rapanui obviously had the assistance of an advanced civilization levitating stones with a neutron tractor-drive suspended from the mother ship.Edited by Grizz, : No reason given.

Hi GDR, Thanks for continuing to participate in the discussion. It is good to have another side of the story involved in the dicussion.I agree that we can never be entirely objective, especially when dealing with a subject in which many of us have found ourselves immersed throughout our lives. Judging the claims contained within the documents of early Christianity without any prejudice may be impossible for most of us, but I believe that it is possible to remain somewhat objective by approaching the subject in the manner I suggested earlier -- we should analyze the historical documents using the same methods and criteria of judgment we would had we just discovered them.If we really want to be historians, we should give no weight to arguments that are influenced by our present exposure to theology and we should not use the existence of our contemporary institutions as support for the veracity of any of the claims contained within the documents.In such a case where a new documentary discovery is made, the first thing we would do is consider all natural explanations for the events and claims contained with them. As with any new documentary discovery from antiquity, we would expect to encounter some things that are a bit puzzling and mysterious. Of course, we would question how such a movement got started and what social and political factors had a hand in its popularity and expansion. We would then infer what is plausible fact and what is plausible fiction. In other words, having just discovered these documents, we would proceed by using the same approach as employed by the secular historian.As already stated many times, we must not brush off the fact that the period under scrutiny is totally foreign to our present existence. The world view of the inhabitants of the first-century, whether pagan, Jew, or Christian, was ruled almost entirely by superstition and an appeal to unseen sprits and divine forces. We cannot use the same type of approach to this genre of literature as we would when evaluating documents that are more contemporary to our time. Unfortunately, many theologians do just that; it is quite obvious that many theologians appear to approach the documents with an implicit presupposition that the authors of the documents were not in any way influenced by popular sensibilities or prone to superstitious reasoning. When using the word "Fabrication", we need to be very careful of exactly what we mean. Fabrication is a very strong word with specific connotations. Fabrication implies a specific intent which involves outright fraud that is knowingly perpetrated upon an audience.It is certainly appropriate to use this label when it is warranted, but when it is used inappropriately it can lead to a misunderstanding of intent. For example, when someone sees an unidentified object in the sky that behaves in an unfamiliar manner and then writes a story detailing how they witnessed an alien spacecraft, should we label this indivual as being fraudulent or would we conclude that the individual is adding interpretations to actual sensory experiences? Certainly, there are people who often create outright fabrications when offering such stories to the public; however, there are also people who, for whatever reason, believe they are actually experiencing what they claim to have seen. There are much more appropriate labels for these individuals: "mistaken" or "naive."Also, if we assume a piece of information is fabricated, whom should we pin the fraud on? Which party shall we conclude was responsible for the initial transmission of the fraudulent information? Lets say I had the intention of fabricating such a story and with intent to deceive I fabricate a story involving a UFO that descended on my front lawn and doctor-up a few photos and pass it around on the Internet.Those who might be susceptible to this type of story might, in their willingness to believe, take these stories at face value and use this information as part of a book detailing UFO sightings. The individual may be complicit in fraud by not checking out the story but he would certainly not be guilty of fabricating the story. If one believes the information presented to one is true and then uses that information to create a narrative, I would certainly be hard- pressed to label that individual a fraud. They perhaps are guilty of being misguided, misinformed,or duped, but not fraudulent..................................................................Do I personally believe that the authors of the Gospels engaged in outright fabrication when relaying certain stories and events? If one is objective, I believe such an inference is largely unavoidable in certain instances(one example will be noted below). Does one instance of fabrication immediately negate the validity of all other claims? Certainly not. Each claim should be evaluated according to their merits. However, the existence of fraud anywhere does present a credibility problem that should not be ignored when looking at the overall picture.If an author is willing to employ methods that involve outright fabrications, then one should be looking for other cases where fraud may be employed. If you see enough occasions where misrepresentations or fabrications are employed then you begin to suspect everything that you are being told.There are a good number of cases where the historian of antiquity analyzing the gospel documents has every reason to believe that an author has purposely interjected false information into the story with the specific goal of proselytization and propaganda. I will outline one of those here. My goal in this thread is not to point out the contradictions or inconsistencies in the documents but I present this example to show how and why a historian will come to suspect the overall veracity of a claim and of the documents themselves..................................................................Case Example: The slaughter of the innocents.This alledged event as recorded exclusively in Matthew is almost certainly a fabrication and not an actual historical event. The story appears nowhere else but in the texts of the gospel of Matthew, which is considered to be written primarily for a Jewish audience following the destruction of the temple in 70 CE.The consensus, without exception, among nearly every biblical historian outside of Evangelical circles is that this narrative was used as a literary device to appeal to the sentiments of traditional Jews by drawing parallels between the lives of Jesus and Moses. Just as the story of Moses began with divine providence allowing Moses to flee from the wrath of the Pharaoh who had ordered the slaughter of the firstborn of Israel, so does the story of Jesus have as a beginning his escape from the wrath of Herod, whom the Jews of the first-century despised equally as much. Essentially, the author(s) of Matthew begins the story with an approach that a Jewish audience would be familiar and comfortable with.Unlike the common Hollywood portrayals, Judea was not a Colosseum where gratuitous and indiscriminate slaughter took place and Roman society was not currently taken in by the excesses and insanity of Nero. Governments cannot collect taxes from dead people. This period marked the reign of Pax Romana. In Judea, the Roman prefect would do whatever was necessary to keep the peace and keep his head.Although the Romans at this time were brutal in their administration of Justice, they did not condone lawlessness and they valued peace and stability above all else. Had such an event been carried out and ordered by a ruling Jewish ethoncrat, there would no doubt have been outrage and a cry to Qurinius, the Roman provincial in Syria. Monarchs have been deposed for much less and in fact it was the complaints of the citizens of Judea against Archelaus that had a hand in his ethnocracy being quashed by Rome. Furthermore, Jospehus, who is meticulous in recounting the happenings from this period, would have certainly given such a barbaric travesty at least a mention.It is true that Herod was a man known for his ruthless measures and barbarity; however, it defies common sense that such a mass-scale genocidal event would go unrecorded by a Historian like Jospehus and unheeded by the Roman authorities. An appeal to common sense indicates that the existence of so many dead newborns lying around the streets of Judea would not go unnoticed or unmentioned by the historical figure who had the pulse of first century Judea.Had this event indeed occurred, it is also highly implausible that other gospel authors and early Christian writers would fail to mention such an emotionally significant event, were it common knowledge. As already stated, events are much easier to recall than words, especially if they have emotional significance. The silence of the subsequent gospels are a further testament to this event being a myth.That the slaughter of the innocents was a fictitious literary device used for the purpose of proselytization is as close to a statement of fact as any historian of antiquity could possibly arrive. The absence of any external historical references to such a horrific mass-scale event, the singular occurrence of the story in Christian literature, and the lack of any response by Rome leaves no other plausible conclusion. It is almost certain that such an event did not take place and was an attempt to interject prophecy into the story.Any objective historian worth his weight would be hard-pressed to not conclude that given the information at our disposal, such a narrative was an intentional misrepresentation of facts with the specific purpose of appealing to traditional Jewish sentiments and norms. This is only one example and the literature is replete with such questionable statements of historical facets. It is obvious that the early Jewish Christian was attempting to frame the story within the context of the Jewish prophetic tradition. The manuscripts are replete with examples whereby it is highly plausible to conclude that author was using the established prophetic writings to fill in blanks, create theological narratives, or add information which contributes to the acceptance of the story.A rather bizarre attempt at using the prophetic tradtion to create information was also used by the author of Matthew: "And he came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets , He shall be called a Nazarene. " Matt 2:23 There is no such messianic reference to Nazareth in the prophetic literature and most scholars believe the author was attempting to appeal to Isaiah: " And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots. " Isaiah 11:1 The Greek word for branch is 'netzer' and quite embarrassingly, the author somehow managed to interpret this as Nazarene. The Historian sees this particular entry as damage control and an attempt to explain why and how such a figure would come from a region that was pretty much despised by the traditional Jewish populace. Nazareth was located north of Judea in the district of Galilee. The capital city of Galilee, Caeseria, was the seat of Roman power during this time. Galilee was the home of the Roman Prefect and housed the legions stationed within the province. Galilee was thought of as the home of violent extremists, pagans, marginal Jews, and heretics. The idea of Jesus being a Nazarene was probably so imbedded in the earlier verbal tradition that there was no alternative but to attempt to appeal to some prophetic explanation for this slight embarrassment. I would liken this embarrassment to someone showing up at a southern fundamentalist tent revival meeting and claiming to be an anointed prophet from Berkeley, CA."Surely the Christ is not going to come from Galilee, is He?" John 4:17"They answered him, "You are not also from Galilee, are you? Search, and see that no prophet arises out of Galilee." John 7:52
.................................................................Basically, what the historian infers from all of this is that the authors of the Gospels were working overtime to force a story to conform to popular prophetic tradition. As the Gospels developed in sophistication over the next few decades you will see more and more of these types of interjections in the story. For example, Mark never mentions the virgin conception. A decade later, Matthew first mentions the virgin birth and does so in a manner that appeals to prophetic sensibilities: "All this happened to fulfil what the Lord had spoken by the prophet: 'Behold the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and his name shall be called Emmanuel, which being interpreted is God with us'". Matt 1:22 Another decade passes and Luke gives an extended narrative with even more quotations from prophetic literature.Jews were a people immersed in prophetic tradition. The objective historian has every reason to suspect the use of prophetic inference to establish relevant events that likely never occurred. The reasoning likely used by the early Jewish Christians was: since Jesus was the messiah, everything claimed in the prophets about the messiah must be true. Therefore, these things must have occurred. Jesus must have been born of a virgin and must have been born in Bethlehem, not Nazareth. We see none of this mentioned in the first Gospel, Mark. What we see is a very simple story that later develops into elaborate accounts of Mary and Joseph leaving Nazareth for various reasons then getting stuck in Bethlehem where Jesus is born. They then return to Nazareth etc etc. This appears to be Prophetic reconstruction rather than historical narrative.Edited by Grizz, : No reason given.

I can certainly understand the person of faith taking this position; however, such a position does raise further issues. This position presupposes knowledge of the nature of revelation, its goals and aims, and it never addresses the obvious limits we see in the revelation itself. If one is going to presuppose that the texts were divinely inspired and this involved a supernatural act whereby general wisdom was implanted into the minds of the authors, why did this revelation not go deeper and involve the divine implantation of the information content of the entire story into the minds of the authors? This would be just as easy for an omnipotent being and this approach would certainly leave out any potential for subjective inferences, misunderstandings, or additions. If the goal of revelation is to transfer accurate information to humanity, why limit revelation and leave everyone in the future hanging on points of contention that are not clear? We get most of our popular ideas about Rome from Hollywood or the extravagant stories about Nero and the Colosseum. Rome wanted someone who could exude power but they also required a ruler who would bring peace and stability to the region. You do not obtain peace and stability by having rulers who indiscriminately execute the infants of the citizenry. Rome would never have overlooked an act which would serve no purpose but to bolster the personal ambitions of an appointed ehtnocrat and inflame the public sentiment. As I stated earlier, the Romans were brutal in their administration of Justice but they did whatever was necessary to keep the peace and keep the people from rebelling. They did not and would not tolerate a self-centered and gratuitous acts of violence that would lead to dissent, anger, and instability.It was not until 6 CE that Judea officially became a Roman province. After Herod the Great's death in 4 CE, Herod's son Archelaus was doing such a terrible job at managing the affairs of the state that he was inciting the citizens to rebellion. Octavian Augustus stepped in and handed over direct control of the territory to the Roman prefects. Prior to this event, Judea was a Client Kingdom of Rome. Although Rome had overall power and control of the kingdom, the day-to-day operations were left to the client King appointed by Rome -- in this case, Herod the Great. The main importance of Judea to Rome revolved around the shipping lanes in the Mediterranean and the position of the port of Caesarian along the route. The shipping lanes and ports were crucial to Roman commerce and allowed Rome to quickly exert its military influence within the desert kingdoms. Outside of that, Judea was a low-income region with minimal tax benefits for the Empire.Herod's client Kingdom was a special arrangement approved by the Senate. Normally, territorial expansions led to direct Roman rule of a new province. Herod was an opportunist and because of his allegiance to Rome and his personal friendship with Caesar, he was able to convince the senate to appoint him tetrarch of Judea. He eventually even managed to convince Octavian and the Senate to appoint him 'King of the Jews' following the uprising of Antigonus. Such a position was not an absolute position of power, however, and was not without stipulations.The false premise here is that Judea was Herod's to do with as he pleased. This is completely false -- Judea officially fell under the watchful gaze of Rome and the prefect of Judea was constantly watching for any signs of trouble. Herod was simply the bureaucrat who did the daily work. Herod would be much more concerned with brown-nosing the Romans than with worrying about any potential rival. He would have absolutely no reason whatsoever to be the least bit concerned with a potential messiah usurping his power.Appointments to positions of power over a territory came only from the emperor and senate and such an internal threat to his status would be the last thing on Herod's mind. The Romans would never allow this. Herod had the Roman legions ready to quell any potential insurrections and ensure the peace and stability of the area should his position remain untenable. It is hard to think of any rational reason whereby Herod would feel in any way threatened by a rumor of an infant who would later take away a kingdom that was not even his to begin with. Also, Herod was up there in age and on his last legs.So, the initial premise that Herod would be worried about someone usurping both himself and the ruling roman seat of power in Judea is quite absurd actually............................................As far as Herod's brutality, what happened between Herod and his family members takes place in an entirely different context and this did not involve Herod taking such behavior to the streets on a mass scale. Rome would certainly take notice and would not stand for such a breech of stability in the public arena. Again, Archelaus was deposed for much less and the Citizens of Judea were free to complain to the provincial and they did indeed complain of Archelaus to Quirinius and this in part had to do with his being deposed. Herod was more concerned with brown-nosing the Romans than worrying about any internal oppositions. He would be more concerned with how the Roman authorities would react to an unprovoked mass slaughter of innocents.Also, this alleged event went entirely unrecorded except for the Gospel of Matthew and the Protevangelism of James in the late second century. None of the other synoptics or any of the hundreds of apocryphal gospels or any other external source ever gives any slightest hint or mention of such an event. Why would such an event with profound emotional and theological significance go unmentioned by all subsequent authors? Furthermore, Archeologists who have done extensive excavations in Bethlehem have seen no archeological evidence of any infant remains or any physical evidence which indicated such an event took place.In conclusion, not only would Herod have no reason to fear for his position, which was backed by the power of Rome, it defies common sense and imagination that such an event would go unheeded by anyone but Matthew.On a side note, there are Christians who will reject the claim simply on moral grounds. Some theologians find the story totally incompatible with Christian ethics. Why would God send an angel to warn Mary and Joseph but not also warn other parents of the imminent danger? Essentially, the angel is telling Joseph that, "I was sent to warn you that a bunch of infants are about to be massacred. You better leave before the killing starts." Why did Mary and Jospeh neglect to warn others of the imminent danger to their children? If the story is factual, it appears that their primary concern was their own safety. The narrative was likely used as a literary device to appeal to the sentiments of traditional Jews by drawing parallels between the lives of Jesus and Moses. Just as the story of Moses began with divine providence allowing Moses to flee from the wrath of the Pharaoh who had ordered the slaughter of the firstborn of Israel, so does the story of Jesus have as a beginning his escape from the wrath of Herod, whom the Jews of the first-century despised equally as much. Essentially, the author(s) of Matthew begins the story with an approach that a Jewish audience would be familiar and comfortable with.Matthew is considered the "Jewish Gospel" in that it appears by scholars to be addressed to a Jewish community following the destruction of the temple in 70 CE. After the revolt, most Jews found themselves scattered throughout Palestine. There was a very large traditional community that set up camp to the north in Galilee and most scholars believe this was the target audience of Matthew. It is inferred that the author was writing for a Jewish audience and was employing many narrative tools in which a Jewish audience could find their home.Regardless, after Matthew, the 'Massacre of the Innocents' disappears entirely from the literature and only reappears a century later as an obscure mention of the event in a short apocryphal manuscript. Luke and John, who both used Matthew as a source, never mention this event. Nor do the hundreds of other Gospel authors who penned all of the extant apocrypha. It goes beyond reason that if the Christian community believed this event to be factual that it would never again be mentioned given its emotional and prophetic significance. It also is defies understanding or common sense that none of the Jewish contemporaries of the event would ever record this brutality and they too would somehow fail to remember.Even for a Christian, accepting the reality of this event takes more than the normal leap of faith. It also requires one to scratch their head and just state, "I guess everyone else just plain forgot about it." Accepting this event as fact certainly stretches the historical sensibilities of all but the literalist. But if they were willing to assume things without witnessing events then perhaps they assumed other things as well.As I stated earlier, the Historian has no reason to believe that we are getting the whole story. Opinions - everyone's got one. If we all agreed, it would be no fun. If everyone on this forum agreed on everything we would get bored pretty quickly. Wright is certainly a brilliant orator and author and one does not rise to his position by being an idiot. He simply approaches the subject with different presuppositions than someone like Crossan or Borg. Ultimately, whether ones accepts or rejects a position depends less on the argument than on the acceptance of the presuppositions.I really don't think anyone who is approaching the subject with faith is going to be swayed by any of my positions and that is really not my goal. We are pretty much laying out our reasoning and people will either relate to what we present or they won't. I don't think anyone should really enter such a discussion with the goal of trying to convert or convince as they will likely not be successful when it comes to debating a subject that often has profound personal significance to one's life.Such discussions are often beneficial simply because they cause one to research things on their own or perhaps learn a bit from what others have to say. I always come away knowing a bit more about my own positions and in the process I also end up understanding more about the position of others.Edited by Grizz, : Addition

HI GDR.Thanks for participating. I am far from an expert on the subject and most of my knowledge has come through my own personal interest. This is not my area if speciality but I have always had an interest in Greco-Roman history and my interest in this particular subject was sparked by a summer field trip to Israel while an undergraduate at Notre Dame.I also apologize to you and PaulK if my posts are a bit long-winded. Unfortunately, this subject just cannot be discussed without some mention of the historical details surrounding the period contemporary to Jesus. Too often these discussions focus entirely on the gospel manuscripts themselves. In the case of the evo-devo debate, most folks already have somewhat of an exposure to facts and information. With this subject, most simply are not aware of the information external to the gospel documents. It is absolutely impossible to really make an informed opinion without referencing this historical information and often it is ignored.With that being said, it probably would be better if I stopped the lengthy posts and this thread started moving towards a more general discussion. My approach is probably not the most productive use of space. If there is something specific about the subject everyone is interested in, we can proceed from there. The Resurrection narratives seem to draw the main interest so if you both would like to focus on this we can have a go at it.

Hi,There are no literary sources contemporary to the life of Jesus. The earliest writings that contain any mention of the figure of Jesus come from Paul of Tarsus, roughly 20-30 years after the death of Jesus. As already mentioned, this was not a literate society and information was shared verbally.If you want an overview of what was written and when you can consult, Early Christian Writings: New Testament, Apocrypha, Gnostics, Church FathersNearly all scholars hold the position that the stories are based on an actual historical figure. Those who question the historicity of Jesus present arguments that detail how the figure of Jesus could have been based on a complete fabrication. What they never do is present an argument showing how and why this inference should be considered more plausible than the inferences that have been reached by the majority of secular scholars. Possible does not mean probable; anything is possible. The historians of antiquity are presented with multitudes of possibilities and the goal is to consider each argument and then reach a consensus as to which inference is most plausible. There will always be the minority who argue against this consensus. The mythicist position is in the extreme minority among scholars. Of course, this is not a statement that the position is false, as we will never know with certainty what is true. History is not an empirical science and there are no experiments that can be performed to test the theory. The historian is after the most plausible inference.There are many highly compelling reasons why the majority of historians have reached a consensus which concludes that it is highly plausible that the legends as presented in the early Christian literature were based on an actual historical figure. The compelling reasons are numerous; If you like, we can discuss some of these here. Also, perhaps someone can jump in and present a case for why the majority of secular scholars are wrong and why one should accept the mythicist inference as the more plausible conclusion that can be reached based on an understanding of the information at our disposal.