An historical Jesus

[I, Brian]

I'm not sure if there is a specific thread on Secret Mark - feel free to start one if you wish.

As for the Jesus Seminar - I'm not at all sure how they claim to be able to make probability statements as to whether an historical Jesus made any single statement. Although there is room to make literary criticism based on surviving texts and fragments from within the first couple of centuries, the supposed thoroughness of the Jesus Seminar itself I view with strong scepticism. Essentially, we seem to have a crew of self-appointed experts making judgements on an apparently rather arbirary basis.

I stand to be corrected, of course.

[Avinash]

Originally Posted by I, Brian

As for the Jesus Seminar - []
Essentially, we seem to have a crew of self-appointed experts making judgements on an apparently rather arbitrary basis.

Namaskar,

I'm not sure how arbitrary their basis is, but it's very different from mine so I can't agree with many of the choices they make. I think many of these scholars were young in the sixties and are biased towards a Jesus as a social revolutionary.

[syzygy]

The Jesus Seminar types have investment in their Historical Jesus as they see him through the eyes of the NT Gospel writers, the people they've spent lifetimes professionally studying. The Talmud is out of their area of expertise so they don't even look there closely which is a shame for good investigative research as the difference between Talmudic and NT accounts of Jesus or Yeshu are extremely interesting. The slanderous accounts of Yeshu ben Pantera in the Talmud make no sense as Jewish false witness against the founder of Christianity because these accounts would only inflame ancient Roman Empire Christians against the Jews even more than the NT Gospels did. It is the fact that they exist at all that should have alerted Bible scholars to thoroughly research them before going with the Roman Catholic Church versions of the story of Jesus. Also, the early date of Yeshu, nearly a hundred years before Jesus, gives plenty of time for a Christ mythology to develop out of oral Yeshu traditions and also explains how Paul found developed Christian churches early on in his ministry as well as the presence of Christians in Rome at a very early date.