Bit of an aside, but have you read Reza Aslan’s Zealot, and if so what are your thoughts? Reza Aslan is another interesting point here as he doubted his faith during his studies, although instead of becoming agnostic he reverted back to Islam.
However I brought up the book more because it provides a middle way out. Aslan’s historical Jesus is someone very different from the Christ figure, whose existence seems more plausible than fabrication given the scale involved. There was, after all, an active cult of his followers in Jerusalem for decades after his death, and his brother James “the Just” is very much a historical figure … it seems far less plausible to me that James invented his brother, and convinced 100′s of others in the early Jerusalem church to claim that they knew Jesus as well.
I’m a non-believer myself, but nevertheless it seems crazy to me to deny the historical existence of a messianic Jew that was a follower of John the Baptist and was later crucified by the Romans. Deny the miracles, sure, but you have to start getting into serious conspiracy theory territory to deny the guy ever existed at all, given how the Jerusalem cult was known to be structured.
The parallel to Moses isn’t really there because unlike Moses we have significant non-contradictory historical evidence of existence to within a single generation after Jesus’ death, whereas with Moses we lose the trail with scribes living in exile dozens of generations later and synthesizing the Torah stories from multiple sources in a non-Jewish context.
Have you seen Carrier’s description of the sub-lunar Jesus theory? This says that the first Christians thought Jesus lived in some heavenly realm, a belief which apparently had precedent in the Roman world. (Carrier doesn’t mention the idea that Paul thought “Jesus” lived on Earth, but much earlier than the standard date derived from the Gospels. The self-appointed or vision-appointed disciple could have changed the way people thought about some alleged Teacher from long ago.)
In any case, Paul would supposedly have learned a rhetorical style that had people shorten a long phrase like “brothers of the Lord” most of the time, only occasionally using the full phrase for emphasis. And he certainly calls Christians “brothers” many times.
The fact that he only seems to use the long phrase in connection with one name is Bayesian evidence against this theory. I don’t know if that matters or not. My opinion on this subject is generally wishy-washy. But for completeness, I should say that I think Paul refers to exactly two events in the life of Jesus—the Crucifixion and the Last Supper—and Mark’s earliest account has some pretty explicitly allegoricalparts. (Compare the first link to verses 28-29 in the second.)
Bit of an aside, but have you read Reza Aslan’s Zealot, and if so what are your thoughts? Reza Aslan is another interesting point here as he doubted his faith during his studies, although instead of becoming agnostic he reverted back to Islam.
However I brought up the book more because it provides a middle way out. Aslan’s historical Jesus is someone very different from the Christ figure, whose existence seems more plausible than fabrication given the scale involved. There was, after all, an active cult of his followers in Jerusalem for decades after his death, and his brother James “the Just” is very much a historical figure … it seems far less plausible to me that James invented his brother, and convinced 100′s of others in the early Jerusalem church to claim that they knew Jesus as well.
I’m a non-believer myself, but nevertheless it seems crazy to me to deny the historical existence of a messianic Jew that was a follower of John the Baptist and was later crucified by the Romans. Deny the miracles, sure, but you have to start getting into serious conspiracy theory territory to deny the guy ever existed at all, given how the Jerusalem cult was known to be structured.
The parallel to Moses isn’t really there because unlike Moses we have significant non-contradictory historical evidence of existence to within a single generation after Jesus’ death, whereas with Moses we lose the trail with scribes living in exile dozens of generations later and synthesizing the Torah stories from multiple sources in a non-Jewish context.
Have you seen Carrier’s description of the sub-lunar Jesus theory? This says that the first Christians thought Jesus lived in some heavenly realm, a belief which apparently had precedent in the Roman world. (Carrier doesn’t mention the idea that Paul thought “Jesus” lived on Earth, but much earlier than the standard date derived from the Gospels. The self-appointed or vision-appointed disciple could have changed the way people thought about some alleged Teacher from long ago.)
In any case, Paul would supposedly have learned a rhetorical style that had people shorten a long phrase like “brothers of the Lord” most of the time, only occasionally using the full phrase for emphasis. And he certainly calls Christians “brothers” many times.
The fact that he only seems to use the long phrase in connection with one name is Bayesian evidence against this theory. I don’t know if that matters or not. My opinion on this subject is generally wishy-washy. But for completeness, I should say that I think Paul refers to exactly two events in the life of Jesus—the Crucifixion and the Last Supper—and Mark’s earliest account has some pretty explicitly allegorical parts. (Compare the first link to verses 28-29 in the second.)