Elisha, Joshua son of Nunn and Joshua son of Jehozadak ( Yahweh the righteous) are the fictional ones Jesus Ben Sirach may be a pseudonym – Sira is a small boat generally used by fishermen.
Isaiah and Hosea are closely related names as well, with Isaiah often quoted and Hosea notably using the 3 day theme in passing. These may just be theophoric names not meant to be savior types.
Together these Jesuses say and do just about everything significant the Jesus of the gospels is reported to have done except a virgin birth which we know is a Greek concept and dying on the cross which I am still befuddled as to how that comes into existence.
Here is where I might start to compare Paul to Joseph Smith. His closest followers swore they saw visions that he saw. In court, they denied seeing the visions and said they were influenced by Joseph Smith. Then almost all of them later said they really had seen the visions.
Paul seemed to have influence over others. At some point people seem to lose touch with reality. ( hopefully that’s not me)
As far as my odd view of the OT, I would like to compare my pretensions with those widely followed those of Richard Friedman.
Both of our views are built from a minimal foundation of historical reliability. He considers many more tales authentic, especially in the D Hist. But his view is untenable with a quick survey of the facts. While literacy seems to have blossomed in the 7th century BCE, it may have been limited to military and legal purposes. Clearly there is no scribal schools like we see in Memphis or Babylon. We should not expect to see such schools either. These were very wealthy regions, supporting the luxury of entertaining literature. Even when under the thumb of foreign rulers Egypt and Babylonia were the breadbaskets and sources of wealth for their empires. So we are left with the long established links between Bible stories and Greek literature. Again, wealthy traders like the Greeks would be expected to have a rich literary tradition, not Jerusalem. Proposing an ancient “Judean” literary tradition with historiographies shoulder to shoulder with all of Greek society is to anoint these people as exceptional peoples, again a theme from the Bible.
Friedman has said that paradigms not having most of the Torah before the Captivity is antisemitic, so we can see how our political views can affect our scholarship.
Stephen said
FocusMyView there is a word you’re using that I do not understand. That word is “Judean”. It appears you might mean something other than an inhabitant of the Roman province of Judea.Also could you list a couple of these “Judean Jesuses” you’re talking about? Sorry if you’ve done this already but I’m too lazy to go back and look. (Of course if you’ve done this already you can just cut and paste that part.)
Nongbri brings up the idea that ancient religions are a modern misconstruction, based on European Christian explorers and how they documented the cultures they came in contact with. I think he makes a compelling case in “Before Religion.”
Also based on “from the Maccabees to the Mishnah” I am convinced that post Mishnah Judaism is not reflective of earlier Judean culture. Using the Mishnah or the Talmud are off limits for determining what happened in Judea, mostly because oral tradition is bunk but also because historagraphy was a Greek philosophy, so it was shunned.
Whether one believes as I do that the Torah is a Hellenistic product or that it was written much earlier, clearly Judea was in the throes of Hellenization when the Maccabees fought for their ancient traditions. It was the rightful high Priest Onias III, of the Zadokite hereditary line, that began the Hellenization for the city of Jerusalem specifically. From the time of Alexander to the Maccabees the region’s other cities had already been modeled on the Greek polls, and the region was heavily Hellenized. So a Judean was basically a Hellenized Aramean basing his identity on some anti Hellenistic elements, including circumcision and antihomosexuality.
The Greek conquerors put a heavy emphasis on their superior Greek culture, converting cities and syncretizing religion. The Judean response was to define their own culture as a response. The lists of donors to early synagogues are mostly God fearers and prosecuted, not ethnic Judeans.
Some people, like a possible Peter or James, would naturally object to everyone being Judean. Obviously plenty of others believed in converting humanity to Judeanism because of their more perfect Torah. Paul was one of the many who believed in converting people to Judean -correct- culture.
As the Judeans moved into Rome and the Romans moved into Antioch and Alexandria, Judeans had the opportunity to best the Hellenes
Together these Jesuses say and do just about everything significant the Jesus of the gospels is reported to have done except a virgin birth which we know is a Greek concept and dying on the cross which I am still befuddled as to how that comes into existence.
The simplest historical explanation for our sources is that after Jesus’ death his disciples tried to explain the fact their Messiah was crucified by searching their scriptures, the Septuagint, for clues as to what it all meant. Not unexpectedly they found clues everywhere. They reinterpreted the Hebrew Bible. You’ve got it backwards. The New Testament is NOT historicized theology. It is theologized history.
Who would invent a crucified Messiah? Jews overwhelmingly rejected Jesus precisely because he was crucified. All they had available to them was a triumphalist model of the Messiah. Mark’s primary innovation (I make no claim as to whether he personally invented the idea) is to reinterpret the concept of the Messiah. Paul’s primary innovation was to interpret the crucifixion. Christians didn’t invent Jesus from the OT. They invented their own version of the OT from their response to what happened to the historical Jesus.
Stephen said
The simplest historical explanation for our sources is that after Jesus’ death his disciples tried to explain the fact their Messiah was crucified by searching their scriptures, the Septuagint, for clues as to what it all meant. Not unexpectedly they found clues everywhere. They reinterpreted the Hebrew Bible. You’ve got it backwards. The New Testament is NOT historicized theology. It is theologized history.
Is it really simpler? Your explanation is that an itinerant preacher was crucified and his followers turned him into a god. Why? If the stories of him healing the blind and lepers and turning water into wine are all fictional, why would those in the garden carrying swords turn this defeated messiah into a god? They did not do it to any of the other false messiahs mentioned in Josephus. They did not do it to Bar Kochba (you may see variations in my spelling of that name as well). None of the Maccabees were turned into gods (unless Simon is the high priest forever like Melchizedek). Onias iii was a slain rightful high priest. Not turned into a god. Even if a historical preacher told his followers he was a god, the crucifixion would have fixed that, no? As the honorable and oft published Robert Price has often opined, “If Jesus was not that special, why would anyone follow him? ” (badly paraphrased)
Perhaps Jesus Christ of 0-30 AD was just so very beguiling, much more so than any other leader?
Besides, Paul knew of Christ crucified from the scripture. So no historical Jesus needed there.
Paul gives us the answer. Jesus had already existed, up in heaven, and come down. This is what Paul knew as a Pharisee that read the OT. And the OT has Jesus, we just dont see him because they are not translated consistently in the Bibles we carry.
Robert said
FocusMyView said
Some people, like a possible Peter or James, would naturally object to everyone being Judean. Obviously plenty of others believed in converting humanity to Judeanism because of their more perfect Torah. Paul was one of the many who believed in converting people to Judean -correct- culture.
You’ve got it backwards, James seems to have been the one who wanted to convert gentiles to Judaism, whereas Paul zealously protected their right to believe in the Jewish Messiah while remaining gentile. Peter was somewhat caught in the middle.
Thank you for that.
Your thumbnail sketch of late-2nd-temple Judaism is all well and good, but it does not support your idea that the Torah is a Hebrew translation of an original Septuagint.
I think it outdoes the Persian Imperial Authorisation by Peter Frei… the Greeks encouraged Hellenizing more than the Persians were into mandating such things. Maybe it was the children of those Ptolemy deported from Jerusalem when he took the city?
Is it really simpler?
My friend I’ve already told you that I’m not interested in rehashing these arguments. Mainly because the first thing it would require me to do is go through your comments and correct your misunderstandings. Try to look at it from my point of view. I would rather spend my time discussing issues I think are important and interesting.
Less YouTube. More books.
“Can you provide a quote in context? There has indeed been a regrettable history of Christian anti-Semitic biblical exegesis. Is he referring to something like that perhaps?”
I cant find it, perhaps your search capabilities are up to the task (if so, I would be fascinated exactly how you searched it out). In the ABC subreddit Weekly Open Discussion, I was doing one of my many rants on Friedman’s alluring but improbable propositions as to authorship. It was either “extraspicy” or some form of “spiker” (He went by same or nearly the same name on this blog, which is where I got the idea to check out ABC subreddit) who replied to my rant and mentioned the incident with Friedaman and provided a link to the interview in the post. The commentor implies it is concerning the dating of P before the Babylonian captivity.
“See already ** you do not have permission to see this link ** dated to the 11th/10th-century. Although it can be variously translated, note the translation of Gershon Galil seems rather prophetic in its moral focus:”
two things:
1) The dating of Law material needs to be done by the latest legal material we find. So if it has material very similar to Hellenistic material and it has material very similar to Assyrian or Hittite material, then it seems we would have to date it to the Hellenistic material.
2) this is a bit of an aside. While the prophets do talk about these issues quite a lot, the above ostracon is more legal than prophetic (prophet as in “truth teller” not “fortune teller” lol). It seems to me that the prophets are looking for why the lost the war/faced destruction. The blame is on wrong conduct. I did a review once of Churchill’s and Hitler use of the word “evil.” It turns out both of them used the term almost exclusively to blame various decisions that caused their side a lot of tragedy. I see the same pattern in the biblical prophets!
Stephen said
Is it really simpler?My friend I’ve already told you that I’m not interested in rehashing these arguments. Mainly because the first thing it would require me to do is go through your comments and correct your misunderstandings. Try to look at it from my point of view. I would rather spend my time discussing issues I think are important and interesting.
Less YouTube. More books.
I am looking forward to learning more about Mark. From my perspective his book is the most fascinating. While Matthew and Luke introduce things that become essential to Christianity, I think Mark summarized the Judean Jesuses so well that now we have 1) mythical Jesus, 2) itinerant preacher, 3) militant Jesus, and of course 4) Almighty Jesus.
Then again, maybe I give him too much credit. It seems human to take things the wrong way. “Let the reader understand!”
BDEhrman
FreedomBen
evgendob
Robert