stevencarrwork wrote:

Byron wrote:

How could that narrative [Pilate killed Jesus] have got the Gospel authors killed?

By declaring that your new religion was against Rome. Which is exactly what did get a lot of Christians killed, regardless of the pro-Roman spin.

And just how suicidal was it to go into synagogues and say that a recently executed criminal was the Son of God that Jews should worship?

Depends on the synagogue, I guess.

So it was not suicidal to claim that a recently executed criminal would be punished?

But the Romans would be upset by claims that a dead man should be worshipped, rather than just laughing at the idea?

The Romans took deification of the dead very seriously. Suggesting that would bring some serious punishment down on you.

How was the new religion against Rome, when the earliest Christian writers would write things like 'Submit yourselves for the Lord's sake to every authority instituted among men: whether to the king, as the supreme authority, or to governors, who are sent by him to punish those who do wrong and to commend those who do right.'

How could such a writer have believed that the governors killed the Son of God?

A first century version of political-correctness.

When your rulers are likely to see your non-payment of taxes as sedition and would bring down the might of the Roman army on your head and turn you and all of your family into slaves, it's worth your while to "submit yourselves." It wasn't support for Rome it was survival.

Byron wrote:

stevencarrwork wrote:How was the new religion against Rome, when the earliest Christian writers would write things like 'Submit yourselves for the Lord's sake to every authority instituted among men: whether to the king, as the supreme authority, or to governors, who are sent by him to punish those who do wrong and to commend those who do right.'

I never said Christianity was against Rome: I said the opposite, that it went to great lengths (another example helpfully quoted by you, above) to appease the Empire, most notably the execution narrative.

Why do I think there's some historical basis for Pilate ordering the crucifixion? Because, if the gospel writers had a free hand to make things up, they'd surely have written Pilate out altogether. The awkward slew of justifications don't entirely succeed -- he comes out looking weak, which is better than tyranical -- due to the millstone of Pilate killing Jesus. If the gospel writers weren't tied to a preeixisting tradition, why not just say, "The Pharisies took Jesus into a back alley and bashed his head in with a rock", and leave Rome out of it?

There was no historical compulsion to blurt out the historical fact that the Romans killed Jesus.

1 Thessalonians 2
You suffered from your own countrymen the same things those churches suffered from the Jews, 15who killed the Lord Jesus and the prophets and also drove us out.

As one Christian was unaware of this need to say that it was NOT the Jews that had killed Jesus, then there could have been no historical fact forcing Christians to say that Pilate had killed Jesus.

Paul writes in Romans 13
Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. 2Consequently, he who rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves. 3For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong. Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and he will commend you. 4For he is God's servant to do you good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword for nothing. He is God's servant, an agent of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer.

How could such a person have thought that the Romans had killed the Son of God?

Byron wrote:

stevencarrwork wrote:How was the new religion against Rome, when the earliest Christian writers would write things like 'Submit yourselves for the Lord's sake to every authority instituted among men: whether to the king, as the supreme authority, or to governors, who are sent by him to punish those who do wrong and to commend those who do right.'

I never said Christianity was against Rome: I said the opposite, that it went to great lengths (another example helpfully quoted by you, above) to appease the Empire, most notably the execution narrative.

Why do I think there's some historical basis for Pilate ordering the crucifixion? Because, if the gospel writers had a free hand to make things up, they'd surely have written Pilate out altogether. The awkward slew of justifications don't entirely succeed -- he comes out looking weak, which is better than tyranical -- due to the millstone of Pilate killing Jesus. If the gospel writers weren't tied to a preeixisting tradition, why not just say, "The Pharisies took Jesus into a back alley and bashed his head in with a rock", and leave Rome out of it?

A little bit of passive-aggression that, making Pilate look like the bad guy. That way they could get more Jewish converts. If they'd said "the Pharisees did it" they would have alienated their client base, i.e. Jews they wanted to convert.

UnderConstruction wrote:It is only when he gradually becomes painted as the Son of God, with other attributes such as "sinless", that this matters.

Exactly. And it can be further nuanced by the nature of divine sonship. Mark, or elements of Mark, could be suggesting that Jesus was adopted as God's son at the moment of baptism. This is of course heretical by later Christian standards.

Append "likely" to everything below.

By the time the gospels are written, 40-100 years after events, there are Paul's letters, and stories about Jesus doing the rounds. These pericopes (coherent units of thought) are stitched together into the gospels, either starting with Mark and "Q", or with proto-gospels, containing perhaps collections of teaching, with a smattering of biography.

If the gospel authors want their work to be accepted by Christianity at large -- much like Islam, with competing centres of power, at this stage -- they have to fit with what could be called the proto-orthodoxy. They can't just make up what they like. "Jesus was born in Gaul, travelled to Jerusalem, had a death-match with John the Baptist, and was shanked by Ciaphas behind the public baths" isn't going to fly.

So it comes down to whether there's a historical base for this proto-orthodoxy. There's nothing incredible about a colonial rebel being bumped off by Pilate, who was a cack-handed brute by Josephus and Philo's accounts. Personally I find that more credible than the suggestion that all these elements were invented. By whom? For what end? The internal-Jesus-movement squabbling described by Paul is not a description of a tidy invention, so it'd have had to have been created prior to his writing. It'd have to have been pretty close, chronologically, and geographically, to the alleged events. It's still possible, but not, given the material available, the most probable scenario.

Agrippina wrote:The Romans took deification of the dead very seriously. Suggesting that would bring some serious punishment down on you.

Really? Name a Christian who was ever charged with 'deifying the dead'.

Acts 23
26Claudius Lysias, To His Excellency, Governor Felix: Greetings. 27This man was seized by the Jews and they were about to kill him, but I came with my troops and rescued him, for I had learned that he is a Roman citizen. 28I wanted to know why they were accusing him, so I brought him to their Sanhedrin. 29I found that the accusation had to do with questions about their law, but there was no charge against him that deserved death or imprisonment. 30

Even the author of Acts had at least to make his stories plausible, and knew better than to make wild stories that the Romans punished people who claimed what Paul claimed.

The readers of Acts could be fobbed off by tales of raising the dead, miraculous escapes from prison, and Paul walking away after being stoned, but even they would have not swallowed claims that the Romans would have frowned upon Christians worshipping a dead man.

UnderConstruction wrote:

stevencarrwork wrote:In the real world, if there had been an embarrassing baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist, that would have been spun away before Jesus was cold in the grave, not 30 years later when 'Mark' wrote his Novel.

My original point was aimed at just this sort of thing, though I lack the specific knowledge of such as Byron.

Although i am only presenting this as a plausible explanation and not established fact, my whole point is that these issues were not necessarily a problem when Jesus actually lived, or even just after. It is only when he gradually becomes painted as the Son of God, with other attributes such as "sinless", that this matters.

Claiming that Jesus went through a baptismal ritual validates the ritual for all time, what better way to get people who don't bathe regularly, or who are terrified of drowning to allow themselves to be immersed in water than to say that if it was good enough for Jesus why should they complain.

Byron wrote:
By the time the gospels are written, 40-100 years after events, there are Paul's letters, and stories about Jesus doing the rounds. These pericopes (coherent units of thought) are stitched together into the gospels, either starting with Mark and "Q", or with proto-gospels, containing perhaps collections of teaching, with a smattering of biography.

So there is no evidence for these stories which are alleged to predate Mark of Jesus being baptised.

Or of John the Baptist having anything whatever to do with Christianity.

All that exists are claims that for 30 years, Christians had allegedly been hammered by people pointing out the embarrassment of Jesus submitting to baptism, and then a Christian writing a Gospel which did nothing to counter these decades of embarrassment.....

Clearly Mark made up that story, as only the first person to make up that story could have written it without putting any spin on it.

Agrippina wrote:
Claiming that Jesus went through a baptismal ritual validates the ritual for all time, what better way to get people who don't bathe regularly, or who are terrified of drowning to allow themselves to be immersed in water than to say that if it was good enough for Jesus why should they complain.

A very good reason for somebody to make up a story that Jesus had been baptised.

stevencarrwork wrote:

Agrippina wrote:The Romans took deification of the dead very seriously. Suggesting that would bring some serious punishment down on you.

Really? Name a Christian who was ever charged with 'deifying the dead'.

DidI say that christians deified the dead?

The Romans did. Or aren't you aware of the Deified Augustus and the Deified Caesar. Do you think they (the Romans) would have tolerated someone they saw as a criminal being called a 'god' after his death and thereby on the same level as Augustus and Caesar?

Of course not, so they had to be careful when calling him the "Son of God" around the Romans and it was their doing that that brought them into the arena with lions later on when the Romans were deeply offended by the idea that he was a god.

stevencarrwork wrote:

Agrippina wrote:
Claiming that Jesus went through a baptismal ritual validates the ritual for all time, what better way to get people who don't bathe regularly, or who are terrified of drowning to allow themselves to be immersed in water than to say that if it was good enough for Jesus why should they complain.

A very good reason for somebody to make up a story that Jesus had been baptised.

Exactly, add to that the enormous amount of ritual that goes with baptisms these days and the money churches make from doing it, so keep the idea that Jesus was baptised and make more money off giving your converts a bath.

Agrippina wrote:
Of course not, so they had to be careful when calling him the "Son of God" around the Romans and it was their doing that that brought them into the arena with lions later on when the Romans were deeply offended by the idea that he was a god.

The Romans had no objection to people having other gods.

' After receiving this account, I judged it so much
the more necessary to endeavor to extort the real truth, by putting
two female slaves to the torture, who were said to officiate' in their
religious rites: but all I could discover was evidence of an absurd
and extravagant superstition.'

'An absurd and extravagant superstition' is not a crime. Meeting in assemblies was.

http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/world/ ... files=2025

Name a Christian who was charged with deifying Jesus, rather than not offering praise to the Emperor.

For ease of use, I'm referring to the gospel authors by name, and in the singular, although this is unlikely historical fact.

Agrippina wrote:A little bit of passive-aggression that, making Pilate look like the bad guy. That way they could get more Jewish converts. If they'd said "the Pharisees did it" they would have alienated their client base, i.e. Jews they wanted to convert.

It's playing with a fire, if that's the purpose. Given the utter demonisation of the Jews in Matthew, I don't think appeasing Jewish sensibilities was high on the agenda. Mark already has in place the conspiring priests of Judeophobic myth and the baying lynch mob. If appeasing the mainstream Jewish believers was on the cards, this wouldn't be there. You'd leave the Sanhedrin out of it, and blame rogue elements.

stevencarrwork wrote:So there is no mention of anybody called 'John the Baptist' and no verse which says Jesus was baptised.

In fact, all we have is a proof that 'John' used Mark to get his story, and 'mangled' it.

So there is no independent evidence whatever to back up the claim in Mark's Novel that John the Baptist baptised Jesus.

Christians were stuck with Mark's Novel, as they did not have any other stories to use.

Most of ancient history isn't, by the remotest stretch of the imagination, backed up by independent evidence. (Nor is much modern history, but the further back you go, the more the problem is exacerbated.) You have to go on probability. Josephus mentions John the Baptist. There's nothing improbable about Jesus being baptized by such a man. If the tradition began with Mark -- this is very late in the day, post-Paul, and post AD 70 -- why didn't Matthew discard it, given the obvious trouble he has with it? The mumbling explanation Matthew inserts into Jesus' mouth is weak, more likely to indicate a widely-accepted tradition Matthew is stuck with, rather than an Markian invention that Matthew is happy to adopt.

As for John in, well, John, referring John the Baptist, given the obvious relation to the stories in other gospels, and the biographical info, I don't think this is seriously in doubt.

stevencarrwork wrote:

Agrippina wrote:
Of course not, so they had to be careful when calling him the "Son of God" around the Romans and it was their doing that that brought them into the arena with lions later on when the Romans were deeply offended by the idea that he was a god.

The Romans had no objection to people having other gods.

' After receiving this account, I judged it so much
the more necessary to endeavor to extort the real truth, by putting
two female slaves to the torture, who were said to officiate' in their
religious rites: but all I could discover was evidence of an absurd
and extravagant superstition.'

'An absurd and extravagant superstition' is not a crime. Meeting in assemblies was.

http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/world/ ... files=2025

Name a Christian who was charged with deifying Jesus, rather than not offering praise to the Emperor.

The Romans of course didn't care about people having other gods, in fact they adopted a lot of the gods from places they conquered but they had a serious problem with the idea of the criminals being seen as gods. And no, I'm not going to name names because the historians merely refer to the idea that the christians saw their hero as a god, they don't mention names. And that's the end of that discussion, if you want to know :

Pliny the Younger

Pliny the Younger was proconsul of Bythinia, in Asia Minor, between A.D. 111 and 113. Pliny wrote a letter to the Emperor Trajan asking for advice on how to deal with the rapid growth of the Christian community in his area. Among other things, he describes the Christian custom of holding weekly meetings to sing praises "to Christ as to a god" (Letter 10. 96).

Lucian

The Roman satirist Lucian of Samosata lived from A.D. 115-200. In The Passing of Perigrinus, Lucian mocks the Christian life, describing Christians as those who worship "that crucified sophist [Jesus] himself," and live "under his laws."

The Romans, especially in the first century, saw Christianity as a sect of Judaism, so they were tolerant of them. It was when the Christians refused to sacrifice to the Roman gods that the Romans started persecuting them. And that wasn't because they weren't paying taxes but because they refused to regard dead Emperors as gods but rather that they regarded their hero as a god.

Byron wrote:For ease of use, I'm referring to the gospel authors by name, and in the singular, although this is unlikely historical fact.

Agrippina wrote:A little bit of passive-aggression that, making Pilate look like the bad guy. That way they could get more Jewish converts. If they'd said "the Pharisees did it" they would have alienated their client base, i.e. Jews they wanted to convert.

It's playing with a fire, if that's the purpose. Given the utter demonisation of the Jews in Matthew, I don't think appeasing Jewish sensibilities was high on the agenda. Mark already has in place the conspiring priests of Judeophobic myth and the baying lynch mob. If appeasing the mainstream Jewish believers was on the cards, this wouldn't be there. You'd leave the Sanhedrin out of it, and blame rogue elements.

I suppose you're right. However, I do think (my personal opinion) that it didn't hurt to be friendly with the general folk around you just to keep them on your side when you're looking for a support base for your new religion.

stevencarrwork wrote:As one Christian was unaware of this need to say that it was NOT the Jews that had killed Jesus, then there could have been no historical fact forcing Christians to say that Pilate had killed Jesus.

Taken alongisde the gospel accounts, and 1 Corinthians 1:22-24, "... but we preach Christ crucified ..." it fits with the narrative of the Jews having the moral blame, while the Romans did the deed. Or are you claiming that Paul thought the Romans played no part in Jesus' death?

How could such a person have thought that the Romans had killed the Son of God?

Non-resistance and blame aren't mutually exclusive. Although as you've helpfully pointed out, Paul didn't blame the Romans, but the Jews, for Jesus' murder.

Byron wrote:

Shrunk wrote:I think that's the kind of thing that distinguishes some Biblical "scholars" from actual historians. They actually consider the possibility of miraculous occurrences as realistic.

Sanders discounts miracles in The Historical Person of Jesus. You'd be hard pressed to argue that he, at least, isn't an actual historian.

Like I said, I have no wish to cast aspersions where they are not warranted, and I am not familiar with Sanders. My comment was mainly meant to draw attention to the strange situation that exists in Biblical scholarship, where even an (I assume) respectable scholar needs to "discount" stories of miracles. Again, using the example of Gilgamesh: It is generally accepted that he was an historical figure. Yet, to my knowledge, there is no academic debate over whether he actually travelled to another world filled with jewel laden trees thru the tunnel that the sun uses in its daily journey about the earth, etc. Yet, for some reason, there seem to be academics who do not simply dismiss the resurrection of Jesus out of hand for the simple reason that it is impossible. This seems inconsistent, to say the least.

stevencarrwork wrote:All that exists are claims that for 30 years, Christians had allegedly been hammered by people pointing out the embarrassment of Jesus submitting to baptism, and then a Christian writing a Gospel which did nothing to counter these decades of embarrassment.....

Who's making these claims? I've said it's likely that, when, or at least where, Mark was writing, the theology of sinless birth wasn't dominant. So no problem with baptism. Matthew clearly has a problem with it, but, unable to get shot of it, tries to rationalise. If Mark had invented it (post AD 70) how has it become so established that Matthew feels unable to reject it? In all likelihood the gospels were rival accounts, since they implicitly criticise the preceding works by "correcting" the theology. Why didn't Matthew at least omit the baptism?

To give a comparison, John (probably, but not certainly) was written last, doesn't feel bound to include the -- competing -- birth narratives of Luke and Matthew. But John the Baptist shows up yet again, and the event, already mythologised in Mark, is now garbled out of all recognition to remove any hint of Jesus needing to be cleansed of sin.

Some contents appear more expendable than others.

Shrunk wrote:Again, using the example of Gilgamesh: It is generally accepted that he was an historical figure. Yet, to my knowledge, there is no academic debate over whether he actually travelled to another world filled with jewel laden trees thru the tunnel that the sun uses in its daily journey about the earth, etc.

Neither are there millions of Gilgamesh followers asserting that this is all the literal truth.

Historians who focus on the gospels have to set out their stall, and give reasons for ruling out various bits of material as historical fact. Beyond that, the miracle stories are useful historical evidence for emerging Christian theology, something else that's absent with Gilgamesh.

Shrunk

Surely Sanders is saying about the resurrection that the Jesus followers seem to have had resurrection experiences, but that it is impossible to discern what the reality behind them was. He is clearly averse to physical resuscitation, but many theologians also are. But then there seems to be disagreement at the time about this, in the light of Paul's discussion of 'spiritual bodies' and so on.

stevencarrwork wrote:It's hard to know why 'Mark' wrote his Novel, let alone why he would make things up.

After all, wasn't the world supposed to be ending soon? Why write books when the world was about to end?

On that one, I think its the fact it was about 40 years after the alleged life of Jesus ended and this immediate end of the world wasn't materializing so maybe some of this stuff should be written down.