POI wrote: ↑Tue Sep 02, 2025 2:26 pm
[
Replying to historia in post #94]
What else? Once you have listed your point(s), I will summarize them and leave them here for debate. Thanks.
Again, my argument is that all of the historical evidence is best explained by the hypothesis that Jesus of Nazareth was an historical figure. There is simply too much evidence to give a thorough analysis. But let me offer a few more examples:
Paul tells us he met James, the "Lord's brother" (Gal. 1:19) -- "the Lord," of course, being a frequent way in which Paul refers to Jesus. Mark (6:3) and Josephus (
Antiquities 20.9.1) provide corroborating evidence here, as both refer to James as the brother of Jesus who is "called Christ," as Josephus puts it. That's rather strong evidence in favor of James being Jesus' relative, and thus strong evidence Jesus was an historical figure.
The countervailing explanation here is usually that "brother of the Lord" is a title or position of some kind, Mark is constructing mythology, and the reference in Josephus is perhaps an interpolation. But there's no place in early Christian writings where "brother of the Lord" is listed as a title, even in places where early Christian authors describe various positions of the primitive Christian community. And the argument in favor of an interpolation in Josephus at this particular spot is weak. This hypothesis just doesn't explain the evidence well.
As Difflugia noted above, Paul also repeatedly refers to Jesus as having been a human being on the earth, "born of woman, born under the Law," etc. (Gal. 4:4). Jews were born under the Law, not angels or other types of celestial beings.
The alternative explanation here -- as articulated by Richard Carrier -- is that Paul did, in fact, believe that Jesus had taken on human form, but that this happened in "outer space," resulting from a "cosmic sperm-bank," to use Carrier's unfortunate terminology. This has always struck me as a quirky way to read these texts.
Even something as simple as the name "Jesus" is better explained on the hypothesis that he was an historical figure. "Jesus" was a common Jewish male name in first century Judea, and not at all the type of name Second Temple Jews would give to an angel, as the mythicist hypothesis holds (Carrier even asserts, contrary to all the evidence, that a belief in a "celestial Jesus" pre-existed Christianity).
Daniel N. Gullotta, in "On Richard Carrier’s Doubts: A Response to Richard Carrier’s
On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt", in
Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus, vol. 15 (2017), pg. 327, explains this well:
Gullotta wrote:
Scholars have long noted that Second Temple Judaism marks a pivotal shift in how some Jews began to understand angels, and one of these changes is the use of distinctive names when they are addressed or referenced. In surveying references to angels during this time, one of the most common features in the names of angels is the appearance of the element of 'el'.
This survey reveals that the most common angelic characters of this period were named Michael, Gabriel, Sariel/Uriel, and Raphael. In other words, a prosopographical analysis of the names of the particular angels known to Jews in the Second Temple period shows that the name Jesus does not conform to the way angelic beings were designated as such. Because the name Jesus is never associated with an angelic figure, nor does the name conform to tropes of celestial beings within Judaism, Carrier’s assertions are unconvincing.
Again, this is the tip of the iceberg.
