1 Jesus of the Synoptics – has multiple attestations but Gosp of Mark shows signs of the Homeric epics.
2 Jesus of Gos. of John – no multiple attestations
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3 Jesus of Acts – The Ascension – not historical
6So when they came together, they asked Him, “Lord, will You at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” 7 Jesus replied, “It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by His own authority.
Steefen:
John the Baptist and Jesus had people preparing for the Kingdom but the urgency stopped after he died on the cross. Then two men dressed in white suggested that they stop looking at the sky because as Jesus came, he will return–0Jesus said, you will see the Son of Man coming in his glory…
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4 Jesus of Paul – cannot be historical because Jesus is a vision from one person
5 Jesus of Revelation – cannot be historical
6 Jesus of Gos. of Thomas – TBD
7 Jesus of Gos. of Judas – TBD
Jesus of the Synoptics, Jesus of Gos. of John, Jesus of Acts, Jesus of Paul, Jesus of Revelation, Jesus of Gos. of Thomas, and Jesus of Gos. of Judas–were each of them historical?
I thought you didn’t think any of them were historical.
Can we find find more than one Jesus in individual works? If so, how many Jesuses might we find?
The reason I ask is that you believe John 10:34 somehow proves Jesus isn’t Jewish, but six chapters earlier we see John 4:9, 20, 22.
…Gosp of Mark shows signs of the Homeric epics.
Debatable. Students likely used passages from Homer in their Greek study but would they have received a formal classical education outside of Greece? The examples of such hypothetical Homeric influence on mark usually provided aren’t very compelling. And the text of Mark is so steeped in the Hebrew Bible that a Homeric dependency seems superfluous. I suspect the author of Mark was a diaspora Jew like Paul, not a gentile convert.
Stephen said
…Gosp of Mark shows signs of the Homeric epics.
Debatable. Students likely used passages from Homer in their Greek study but would they have received a formal classical education outside of Greece? The examples of such hypothetical Homeric influence on mark usually provided aren’t very compelling. And the text of Mark is so steeped in the Hebrew Bible that a Homeric dependency seems superfluous. I suspect the author of Mark was a diaspora Jew like Paul, not a gentile convert.
Surely in Alexandria or Antioch or other major centers of the post-Aelxandrian successor states, some small number of children would have received a formal classical education, and there’s no particular reason to think it would be a substantially different number than in similar sized cities inside Greece.
Some of those could well be the scions of successful diaspora Jews. And in particular, if they were successful as merchants, one could see them insisting that their son be taught to write in addition to being taught to read, given the advantage of being able to send a member of the family to a distant location to send confidential reports home without having to rely on a scribe.
And one could well see a believer who had received such an education being prevailed upon to contribute work to the faith community as a scribe.
So if we are looking at the already limited fraction of believers at the time who were literate in writing as well as reading, and then further narrow it down to those with who felt they would be able to set down Jesus’s story in a text for the benefit of fellow believers, I don’t see why it is at all implausible that that person would have some classical training. That classical training could easily have been the difference between putting down on paper various sayings of Jesus in circulation and composing a coherent story of Jesus’s path to the Cross.
So I don’t see any big “gotcha” in noting that the compositional structure of Mark looks like the work of someone who had originally been trained in reading, rhetoric and composition with exposure to Homeric epics. It strikes me that concluding that “therefore” Mark was a reworked Homeric epic based on a character who did not exist reflects more a desire to arrive at a mythicist conclusion than following the evidence where it leads.
>> Jesus of the Synoptics, Jesus of Gos. of John, Jesus of Acts, Jesus of Paul, Jesus of Revelation, Jesus of Gos. of Thomas, and Jesus of Gos. of Judas–were each of them historical?
Stephen hints at this, but I think we need to be somewhat more direct: What does the question even mean in asking whether they are “historical”?
We can affirm that Jesus was an historical figure who did, more or less directly, inspire these several works and which may even have occasionally preserved–inter alia–some historically accurate details about him, without affirming that any of those works are generally reliable, historically accurate portrayals of him, even if they pretended to be. That is basically what a legendary figure is.
3 Jesus of Acts – The Ascension – not historical
4 Jesus of Paul – cannot be historical because Jesus is a vision from one person
5 Jesus of Revelation – cannot be historical
6 Jesus of Gos. of Thomas – TBD
7 Jesus of Gos. of Judas – TBD
Dr. Ehrman,
When you scholars talk about the Quest for the Historical Jesus, is that mainly Jesus of the Synoptics?
Can the Gnostic Jesus, the Jesus of Revelation, the Jesus of Paul and Jesus of Acts’ Ascension be ruled out as historical?
Thank you,
Steefen
Matthew Chapter 1
…24 When Joseph woke up, he did as the angel of the Lord had commanded him, and embraced Mary as his wife.
25 But he had no union with her until she gave birth to a Son. And he gave Him the name Jesus.
Steefen:
An historical Jesus has to come from an historical Mary.
Mary had no sexual union with her husband until she first gave birth to Jesus without a sexual union with Joseph.
That is NOT historical, Porphyry. Mary until the birth of Jesus was not an ascetic Catholic nun.
Mary was abducted and impregnated by an extraterrestrial or extra-dimensional alien of more intelligence and power than human beings, for you? Mary was impregnated by a Higher Being, for you? Then eventually, she had James in the usual historical manner?
Steefen said
1 Jesus of the Synoptics
In what way is the “Jesus of the Synoptics” not three different Jesus’s?
There are specific passages that, taken out of the context of their individual gospels, could be seen as “the same Jesus”, but that would be because that’s where “Matthew” and “Luke” are copying the text of “Mark” … but that’s not three independent attestations, because copying an attestation does not create a second independent attestation.
Post 4 by BJH:
You really think The Book of Revelation gives readers an historically accurate depiction of Jesus?
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Salvation of the Soul is partly based on being free from Archons and remembering being one with the Monad.
Read the following texts:
The Apocryphon of John (Nag Hammadi)
The Enneads (Plotinus)
The Gospel of Thomas
The Upanishads (especially Chandogya & Brihadaranyaka)
= = = =
Why didn’t the Gospel of Judas make the list of four?
A person can understand the Gospel of Judas (which is brilliant at exposing false worship) and still miss the Monad.
But no one can deeply understand the Enneads or the Upanishads and remain lost.
Judas reveals the lie.
The others teach the return.
= = = = =
In The Apocryphon of John, Jesus is a cosmic teacher not an itinerant Galilean.
Jesus is detached from:
Parables
Healings
Conflicts with Pharisees
Roman execution as a historical event
The crucifixion is not central.
The kingdom of God is not central.
Repentance, Torah, Israel, and Rome are absent.
That alone places it far from the historical Jesus.
= = = =
Historical accuracy is holy AND salvation of the soul to the Monad is holy.
Steefen, in Post 4, I asked you:
Can we find find more than one Jesus in individual works? If so, how many Jesuses might we find?
John 4 clearly shows a Jewish Jesus. Do you think we can have both a Jewish Jesus and a non-Jewish Jesus in the same work?
In the same post, I expressed confusion as to why you’re even asking the question about the historicity of Jesus, seeing you don’t believe in any historical Jesus.
Comment 8
Bart:
No, the Quest of the historical Jesus is the investigation into what we can say Jesus really said and did, based on all the surviving sources. ALL of them. Using the same criteria for each one, without prejudice.
Steefen:
Paul’s Jesus was his vision of Jesus after Jesus’ ascension.
Second, the Gospel of Judas seems to have been written between 130-170AD (Coptic translation dates to 300 AD).
Gospel of John is known to be more theological than historical. So, you’re saying A singular vision of Jesus after the lifespan of an historical Jesus gives us an historical Jesus. I disagree.
And you are saying a Gospel of Judas written 100 years or more after the biblical Jesus gives us an historical Jesus. I disagree.
And you are saying Gospel of John which gives us on the only theological claim that Jesus was the Logos; and the only attestation that Jesus resurrected Lazarus is giving us historical accounts. I disagree.
Even if you found an historical Jesus that does not mean the accounts of Paul, Gospel of John, Gospel of Judas, Book of Revelation, and the genealogies of Matthew and Luke are factual.
BJH1960 said
Steefen, in Post 4, I asked you:
Can we find find more than one Jesus in individual works? If so, how many Jesuses might we find?
John 4 clearly shows a Jewish Jesus. Do you think we can have both a Jewish Jesus and a non-Jewish Jesus in the same work?
In the same post, I expressed confusion as to why you’re even asking the question about the historicity of Jesus, seeing you don’t believe in any historical Jesus.
And I answered you:
You really think The Book of Revelation gives readers an historically accurate depiction of Jesus?
As for Gospel of John, that was already answered by the Gospel of John.
As for my asking about the historicity of Jesus, I posted comment 3 and wrote to Dr. Ehrman an edited version of Comment 3 because I wanted clarification.
Comment 14
Change The Enneads by Plotinus (because it is six books, not one book).
Change The Enneads by Plotinus to Ennead VI (the core text for the Monad).
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