Look on the bright side of life....words to live by.

That passage in Josephus is no evidence for Jesus. That's widely accepted as a "pious fraud". It reads like a commercial, not part of the surrounding text. It's a scribal insertion. It wasn't mentioned or seized upon by early church fathers, so it didn't exist in the copies of Jewish Wars available to them; it was a later insertion.

Not that there's zero reason to argue for the historicity of Jesus; this just isn't one of them.

Along with his nails....

@MrSoulSound He just did that one time.

To an extent, yes, but claims are typically made for Jesus that ascribe value to his teachings, not based on their actual content, but on his status as a deity and the whole salvific narrative of his significance. So a lot of people care very much that he was real, really god, and really man and effectively argue that IF those things are true then whatever came out of his mouth MUST be believed and obeyed.

@mordant Sure, but I thought I was replying to intelligent people.

@jerry99 You are here, for the most part. I'm just speaking to why it's more of an object of importance out there generally.

To me it's just an interesting technical point.

As a Buddhist, I’m inclined to believe that Siddhārtha Gautama was a real historical figure. I also believe that his teachings were probably a good representation of what was passed down in the Buddhist oral tradition. I also believe that many of his early teaching were probably edited some to “correct” what may have been thought of as mistakes. Further, I’m pretty sure that many of the Buddha’s later teachings were invented from scratch. So, whether or not the Buddha was a real person, we have a set of teachings which a lot of people have found to be of value. To me, that’s what’s important.

s
ure repeat it. I for one don't think I have seen it.

@Fretherne1 Well ... if you simply put the NT in chronological order, rather than in canonical order, you would read Paul's epistles first, and the gospels last (except for Revelation). Paul wrote beginning only about 15 to 20 years after Jesus' alleged life and ministry.

Yet -- particularly if you parse the Greek and read it pretending like you were alive in AD 47 looking at the original manuscript and knew NOTHING of the gospel accounts (which you wouldn't, in AD 47) -- Paul speaks of Jesus as a celestial being, not a flesh and blood man. He is "seated in the heavenlies". He is more apparition than person. Indeed, the Greek word used to describe Jesus "appearing" is the one used colloquially to write about ghosts.

In fact it's reasonable to suspect that what came to be called the "gnostic heresy" originated at least in part, from Paul. Gnosticism was the main competing orthodoxy to what the Jerusalem Council was putting forth.

Paul was personally (if fractiously) acquainted with the apostle Peter and others on the Council. If Jesus was an actual person with an actual earthly ministry, why would Paul not cite the testimony of the apostles to substantiate his teachings about Christ -- if not, in fact, seek their endorsement?

Instead, what does he do? He makes the weakest possible appeal for the authenticity of his teaching: he says god told him personally. In a vision. Yeah, right.

I also find it telling that Paul doesn't at all do what someone with a literal person in mind would do: he doesn't reminisce, or tell anecdotes about Jesus' aphorisms or activities or teachings. He doesn't relate to Jesus as a mentor, or leader who walked the earth just a short time before. He doesn't provide snippets of a proto-gospel narrative. Zip. Zero. Nada.

What ended up happening, and I suspect it was deliberate, is hundreds of years later when the NT canon was defined, the books were collected together and the gospels and Acts, where Jesus is suddenly a flesh and blood, miracle-working god-man, are put FIRST. So Paul's writings, when you get to them, are completely reframed in the context of those gospel assumptions. Now instead of talking about a celestial Jesus, Paul can be understood, in light of the gospels, to be talking about a post-resurrection, post-ascension Jesus, ruling in heaven -- a sort of Christian hermeticism ("as above, so below" ). His disagreements with the Council can be seen as mostly about whether Gentiles should be included in the Church, and as a product of his irascibility and activism over against the Council's more methodical, traditionalist bent.

And sure enough, not that long after the Council of Nicea, the gnostics were finally purged as heretics and something akin to modern Christian orthodoxy concerning Jesus was firmly established.

This is another factor not often considered in the debate about the historicity of Jesus: in the early days, there was not one established orthodoxy, and one of the main competing orthodoxies was a mystical take on Jesus as an idealized, spiritual being dispensing enlightenment from on high.

I suggest that the gospels were authored to establish Jesus as human, to generate a mythos around him, just at a time (AD 70 to 90) that there were few still-living and lucid people who were more than little children back in around AD 30 -- it was now a time when the legend could better be forged out of whole cloth, or embellished from one or more real people who could serve as templates for the mythos.

When you add this to all the more commonly-heard arguments -- such as the total absence of corroboration from external sources, particularly secular, for the existence of Jesus, much less the fabulist narratives concerning him, it puts me nicely over the top in strongly suspecting Jesus wasn't real at all.

The only things we know for sure is that (1) Christianity sprang up around that time; (2) early on it did not possess the monolithic dogma that defines it today; (3) some early followers of Jesus themselves did not believe in a literal Jesus (the gnostics); (4) the testimony of the surviving and canonized NT scriptures is inconsistent and conflicting on this score when understood without the convoluted hermaneutics of modern Christian denominations that attempt to harmonize it; (5) most of the clarity we think we have on the topic is the product of centuries of hegemony by people who believe Jesus was real, and the knock-on assumptions that flow from that.

@mordant well I guess Nehushtan is in there for if they ever choose to get that far, and Two Greeks came to worship Him and He "hid from them" right, much more obvious, even if not taught in seminary. Even "why have You forsaken Me?" comes to = "I desire mercy, not sacrifice"

Ha, nice, ya. If you want life more abundantly you will read one way, and if you want death More Abundantly you will read another way. Most Xtians are really Mithraists seeking the Elysian Fields I guess

The fact that it did in the bible was another attempt at working in prophesy to herald a coming Messiah.

The fact that it did in the bible is proof that the name "Jesus of Nazareth" was invented at the Council of Nicea in the 4th century.

I love richard carrier and his arguments. I actually watched this whole thing about a week ago