Reddit mentions of The Historical Figure of Jesus

There is also another layer to this, which is the denial of the Pauline letters and the synoptic Gospels as reliable sources do to their mentions of miracle workings, as well as the question as to why Jesus would not have been more famous had such signs of divinity truly been present.

The reality is that miracle workings were not an anomaly at the time. There were many miracle workers and magicians in the time of Jesus^1 and miracle workings were not a sign of divinity.^2 Josephus mentions several miracle workers in his works^3 and in the gospels themselves other miracle workers are presented.^4

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Footnotes:

|^1 Sanders, E. The Historical Figure of Jesus (p. 135-143). Penguin UK. Kindle Edition.

|^2 Sanders, E. (p. 157-168).

|^3 Flavius Josephus, William Whiston, trans. (1895). Antiquities of the Jews, (Auburn: John E. Beardsley, 1895), XIV, II, 1

|^4 Mark 6:7 & parr.⌂, Matt 12:27⌂

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Further Readings:

The Historical Figure of Jesus by E. P. Sanders

> It is harder to say positively what Jesus meant by 'kingdom of
God'. Intensive efforts over the last hundred years to define the
phrase have left the issue more confused rather than clearer. There
are, however, two meanings that would have been more or less self evident
given standard Jewish views. One is that God reigns in
heaven; the 'kingdom of God' or 'kingdom of heaven' exists
eternally there. God occasionally acts in history, but he completely
and consistently governs only heaven. The second is that in the
future God will rule the earth. He has chosen to allow human
history to run on with relatively little interference, but someday he
will bring normal history to an end and govern the world perfectly.
Briefly put: the kingdom of God always exists there; in the future it
will exist here. These two meanings are perfectly compatible with
each other. Anyone could maintain both at the same time, and in
fact millions still do.

• The Historical Figure of Jesus

In researching it, did you read the arguments of mainstream historians like Bart Ehrman and E. P. Sanders as well as mythicists like Carrier and Price, or the mythicists alone?

Sorry that this will sound patronizing, but how educated are you about the Bible as a historical document? I majored in religious studies with a focus on Christian origins. I know a good bit about it.

> Jesus claiming to be God IS the whole point of the new testament

This is basically true. But that's not the same as what Jesus, the historical figure, said or believed.

The Bible is inarguably a hodge-podge of different stories and accounts, many of which conflict with each other. The book of John was written much later than Matthew, Mark, Luke, or "Q" and reflects an advanced notion of Christian theology. It's no coincidence that Jesus says things in John that are much different than in the other three. The author of John wasn't somehow aware of Jesus-sayings that the other authors weren't.

> Most everything in the Gospels is proof of the fulfillment of the OT prophecy about the messiah.

Most everything in the Gospels is certainly written to be proof. The authors definitely had that goal in mind. But it doesn't mean that the actual historical events were proof.

> I don't know where you got this nonsense about later sources being less accurate, but there is simply no basis for that.

Yes, there is. I got it from my bachelor's degree (and, ya know, from common sense). I invite you to start your research here and continue with books like this and this (or even this). If you've never performed comparative study of the gospels, this is a neat resource too. (Note that the latter book doesn't even mention John, which is just that far removed from the other gospels.)

> to say Jesus never reliably claimed to be God is just insane

As wrong as you are about the historical facts, I will back off a little here: there is sufficient evidence that Jesus believed himself to be the "Son of Man," and probably even the Messiah. However the more historically reliable documents suggest that he was extremely cagey about saying this himself (Matthew 16 is a perfect example of this), whereas the less reliable documents have him declaring it quite explicitly.

All that being said, I think we left the primary point a little bit. Jesus most certainly was a moral inspiration (whether he called himself that or not), and it's that example—not literal salvation—that my mother (and I, for that matter) are inspired by.

Except there are better ones out there.

When I say Aslan's scholarship isn't there, the issue is he uses flawed scholarship and presents it as fact. Some of this scholarship has actively been discredited, others are widely criticized for methodological issues (using circular logic to back up their conclusions), and is very contentious on some fundamental problems. Aslan makes a lot of claims as if they're truth but which cannot be proven because we lack the evidence to make such conclusions.

I'll be upfront on my bias here: Aslan relies on 19th century German scholarship and the Jesus Seminar and I simply think these sources of the historical Jesus are not sound. I contend that the streams of scholarship he relies upon tends to present speculation as fact (and a lot of the speculation has been treated as fact). The Jesus Seminar in particular is roundly criticized for using circular logic to make conclusions. I think these critiques are fair and do suggest that the conclusions of the wider Jesus Seminar should be handled as suspect. I believe archeological evidence disproves assumptions made by the Jesus Seminar when it comes to aging texts. This matters because the Jesus Seminar went through texts and voted on each one's authenticity based on their unproven assumptions -- deeming passages inauthentic (and thus later additions) based on criteria that were unproven and perhaps even disproven.

Aslan is a bad starting point because he uses questionable scholarship, doesn't question it, and then presents this "historical" portrait of Jesus based on his reading of this scholarship. Scholarship which archeological evidence actively contradicts at times.

I haven't read this book, but I've read some of his articles, and E.P. Sanders is commonly seen as a good starting point who makes good use of archeological evidence to draw conclusions.

N.T. Wright and Marcus Borg co-author a book which goes through various aspects of the search for the historical Jesus. Wright and Borg are friends (and I think went to school together? They both had the same mentor, anyhow) but have very different views. Wright is highly critical of the Jesus Seminar, Borg was part of the Jesus Seminar but is also a bit of an outlier due to his more mystical understanding.

The point is that there's much better starting points. I think any of the links I've provided are good ones. But Aslan simply because if Aslan is your jumping off point, you're mostly going to get scholarship that he agreed with to make his point.

I would highly recommend The Historical Figure of Jesus by E.P. Sanders. He's a Christian and a great historian. If you want to get up to date with what is popular in the Historical Jesus conversation, Bart Ehrman is a good place to start. I think he has a bit of an axe to grind against Christianity, and I have some problems with his methods, but he's relatively conservative historically. I'd also recommend Jesus and the Victory of God by N.T. Wright, but it's huge.

>"Most historians would agree on"?? Lol!

That's pretty much what the majority of critical historians believe, yes. Christian, Jewish, atheist, agnostic ...

Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium,
Jesus of Nazareth: Millenarian Prophet,
The Historical Figure of Jesus are all very good books on the historical Jesus, easy accessible and mostly stick to the consensus of the historical community.

>What evidence is there for any of this outside of christian scripture? When topic like this arise there are always a few posters who don't seem to understand that a religion's own faith based holy books can't be used as evidence to support a religion's historical claims.

All written historical sources have some kind of bias. Historians are well aware of that. The job of the historian isn't to take everything written in the gospels, or in any other source, at face value. They have to approach it critically so they could find out what really happened in the past.

Hello happybadger,

I'm not a historical Jesus scholar, but you might find the following stuff useful:

Summary of some scholarship with suggested readings here.

Long video documentary from Frontline, 'From Jesus to Christ' here

I've read 'The Historical Figure of Jesus' by E.P. Sanders (listed in the summary above), but wasn't very pleased with it--mainly due to the problem with such scholarship pointed out by Luke Timothy Johnson and summarized by William Lane Craig here. Others reading in this vein like Geza Vermes' work.

You might also reread the canonical gospels and Acts with an outsider's perspective. As these are your most reliable source materials, any books or videos you study from will be constantly referencing them. In fact, that's probably the best place to start.

I hope that something there proves useful in your research.

EP Sanders is good. Very well respected and honest. His book, The Historical Figure of Jesus is a good read.

I highly recommend The Historical Figure of Jesus by E.P. Sanders.

http://www.amazon.com/Historical-Figure-Jesus-E-Sanders/dp/0140144994/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1256229581&sr=1-1

>you imbecile

I can already tell this is going to be fun.

>Jesus has literally ZERO contemporary historical data.

That's not what you asked for. You asked for peer-reviewed arguments for the historical existence of Jesus, of which I said there are thousands, and to which I said you'd have a much more difficult time finding the opposite--- peer reviewed articles and books arguing that Jesus was entirely a myth.

>I’ll wait for those libraries of sources you have.

Where do you want to start?

Probably the best place for you to start is with Bart Ehrman, a leading scholar of on the development of Christianity, and he's also a popular skeptic speaker and writer. In addition to publishing he's written popular books about how many of the books of the Bible were forgeries, and how the belief that Jesus was divine developed in early Christianity, he also wrote an entire book laying out the widely accepted case that Jesus was likely a real historical person, written directly to skeptical lay people like yourself.

If you want a great introduction to the scholarly debate about the historical Jesus, you could start here or here. I also think Dale Allison's work is great critical look at some of the issues at work in the debate. There are lots of historical reconstructions of Jesus' life. Some of the more popular ones like Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan tend to sell books to liberal Christian audiences, so I've always thought E.P. Sanders treatment was perferable. I'll spare you the links to scholars who identify as orthodox Christians, like Luke Timothy Johnson or N.T. Wright. It sounded like you specifically wanted more scholarly sources and not popular books, so you could just look at the scholarly journal dedicated to the study of the historical Jesus. Or the Jesus Seminar. Or either of the following Introductions to the New Testament textbooks which are used in secular universities throughout the english speaking world:

Introduction to the New Testament by Mark Allen Powell

Introduction to the New Testament by Bart Ehrman

These are the ones I'm personally most familiar with. There are tons more like Geza Vermes and Amy Jill Levine I haven't read and I'm not as familiar with.

But I'm not telling you anything you wouldn't learn in any basic 101 intro to New Testament Class. The academic consensus is that regardless of what you think about him as a religious figure, it is extremely likely that there was a first century Jew named Jesus who started a faith movement that led to him being crucified. Why do scholars think this? Because by the time Paul started writing his letters 20 years later there was a growing, spreading religious movement that worship a crucified Jew named Jesus as their messiah, and given critical analysis of the texts produced by this movement, some of which are now in the New Testament, there really doesn't exist a coherent argument for the development of this movement that doesn't include the existence of a first century Jew named Jesus who was crucified.

This book I found was pretty good in summing up the political and social climate of Jesus http://www.amazon.com/Historical-Figure-Jesus-P-Sanders/dp/0140144994

Can someone say why this was downvoted, it seemed like a good book, the Straight Dope used (which is where I heard of it from) is the guy like a Nazi or something?

Don't forget Josephus.

The Christ myth theory is a joke in academia. I'm inclined to have more faith in people who spend a good chunk of their lives looking through the evidence than people who have an ideological motive to claim he never existed coughSamHarriscough.

If you genuinely want to investigate arguments for his existence I recommend The Historical Figure of Jesus, written by a 'skeptic' and widely agreed to be the best starting point for any serious academic research on the subject.