Loading...Q. Various mythicists have tried to argue that in fact there is only one source, namely Mark, that provides evidence that Jesus existed and presumably he made up the idea? Why is this not a fair representation of the evidence, and why do you think it is that various of them hardly even deal with the evidence from Paul?
A. Most mythicists claim that Paul never mentions the historical Jesus or says anything about him, but that he only speaks of a “mythical Christ” who was not a real human being. That is completely wrong. Paul tells us that Jesus was born of a woman, that he was born Jewish, that he had brothers, one of whom was named James (whom Paul personally knew), that he had twelve disciples, that he ministered to Jews, that he taught that it was wrong to get a divorce and that you should pay your preacher, that he had the last supper (Paul indicates what Jesus said at the time), and that he was crucified. Anyone who says that Paul never mentions the historical Jesus or never refers to his teachings simply hasn’t read the letters of Paul
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Some of Ben Witherington’s most popular books are The Jesus Quest, and The Problem with Evangelical Theology.
When reading parts of Paul, I have often asked myself, “How on earth could a first century Jew believe such things?”So now I’m reading your version of the third criterion: “any tradition about Jesus that cannot plausibly be fit into a first-century Jewish Palestinian context cannot be accepted as historically reliable.” I ask myself, How on earth could a Jew believe that anyone other than God himself could forgive sins? How could a Jew believe in human sacrifice? A point you made earlier–How could a Jew believe in a messiah so different from everything we know about Jewish expectations of and for the messiah? The answer would appear to be that Paul made them up. But why and how could a Jew make them up? Then I say to myself, well, probably a Galilean tekton would never have said or taught or believed such things but a VERY Hellenized Jew might. It is no wonder he went to the gentiles.