Formal Debate Peanut Gallery- El and Yahweh Are Separate Gods Redacted Into One

[BeforeTheFoundation]

Post 3

2.)What follows is a bibliography on Johannine research. This list is in no particular order. Also, forgive the non-academic way in which the list is compiled. I wasn't going to take the time to format it according to SBL style.

• Jesus and Archaeology ; ed. James Charlesworth. See especially Paul Anderson's "Aspects of Historicity in the Gospel of John: Implications for Invsetigations of Jesus and Archaeology" and Urban C. von Wahlde "Archaeology and John's Gospel" in which he identifies 20 unique features to the Gospel which were later shown by archaeology to reflect a 1st century understanding of Palestine (and this includes very specific features such as types architecture that was destroyed in 70 AD so the author of John must have known something about pre-70 Palestine)
• John and the Dead Sea Scrolls Edited by Charlesworth (many authors contributed)
• The Community of the Beloved Disciple; R. E. Brown
• The Fourth Gospel in Modern Research; R. E. Brown
• The Gospel According to John 2 vol. ; R.E. Brown
• The Problem of Historicity in John; R.E. Brown
• A Critical Comparison of the Dualism in 1QS III, 13-I, 26 and the 'Dualism' Contained in the Fourth Gospel" ; Charlesworth
• Historical Tradition in the Fourth Gospel ; C. H. Dodd
• Melchizedek and the Gods: Fresh Evidence for the Jewish Background of John X. 34-6 ; J. A. Merton
• The Dead Sea Sect and Pre-Pauline Christianity ; D. Flusser (a Jew, by the way)
• The Dualism of 'Flesh and Spirit' in the Dead Sea Scrolls' ; again, by Flusser, who is Jewish
• The next few are in German but are very important: Das Johannesevangelium 2 vols. ; R. Schnackenburg
• The Gospel According to St. John; R. Schnackenburg
• Origins matter; Charlesworth (see especially ch. 3 "Should the Gospel of John be Used in Reconstructing Jesus' Life?")
• "Jesus Research and Near Eastern Archaeology: Reflections on Recent Developments" ; Charlesworth
• Jesus within Judaism: New Light from Exciting Archaeological Discoveries ; Charlesworth
• Then I got bored

If it seems that that is kind of Dead Sea Scroll heavy, that's because a lot of the early recognition that John knew what he was talking about was because of comparisons with the DSS. I.e. that some of the 'spiritual' things that Jesus was saying in the Gospel of John did not come from later Gnosticism, but rather were perfectly at home in first century Palestine.

What archaeological features were uncovered that you feel begin to validate the Gospel of John's historicity?

See above.

What other things can we consider historical facts about Yeshua?

See above.

No, the reason is that we've got people declaring him and his message to be divine.

You realize the philosophical mess you walked into, right? You're basically saying that we can know less about a figure in history based off of what people believe concerning him today. Does that mean that if all of a sudden people started believing that Caesar was a god (again) that we would all of a sudden be cut off from our ability to make historical claims about him?

If the creator of the cosmos is going to send a message of salvation to humanity, you'd think it could be better recorded than a QVC sales pitch.

But again, your own quote is assuming that Jesus is the Messiah. Do you not see that? That is specifically what the historian is bracketing. The historian brackets whether any modern faith claim about Jesus is true or not. But you're not doing that. You are expecting more out of the historical record for this person specifically because some people do think he is God. But that's silly from a historical standpoint. We approach Jesus research just like we do research about Alexander.

I don't talk about things outside my knowledge-base

I'm sorry but yes you do. You have claimed that there is no consensus in the Third Quest beyond 7 very limited conclusions and you have claimed that there has been no development in Johannine research. Both of those are clearly outside of your field (indeed, you even admitted that you had not read the literature).

Besides, the bar isn't based on how much we know about figures of antiquity, it's based on how concrete a message that offers salvation from damnation should be from a creator who is smart enough to design quantum physics.

If you've got hundreds and hundreds of scholars spending centuries trying to figure out a few morsels about the real message of a 2,000 year old Jewish man, then maybe Yahweh should have sent down some VHS tapes or at least had someone take reliable notes.

From what I can tell, what you are saying is essentially this: That if the faith claims of Christianity are true, then God should have made the bible easier to understand.

Do you not see the problem here? You continually say that I have a bias toward proving Christianity. But you are the one that cannot bracket your faith claim. I am not seeking to claim that the bible is anything more than a historical document.

You do recognize that I do not believe that God wrote the bible, right?

I am treating the text as a historical document and your response is that it should be divine. I am saying we apply historical criticism to it and you are saying that if Christianity is true the bible should be better.

But here's the thing: I bracketed Christianity, but you can't seem to do that. I already said that historical studies of the text purposefully sets aside all questions of faith, but you cannot get past the question of why if Christianity is true the bible isn't perfect. But that's not the point. We're not talking about Christianity, we're talking about Jesus research, and Jesus research presupposes nothing other than what is actually before us: i.e. a text that is historically problematic that we have to deal with. It is you that is presuming a faith statement.

Moreover, it is interesting that you are falling into the same trap as many Evangelical Christians. Ever since the Enlightenment, Christians have believed that the Bible should be a history book. Either they blindly followed it glossing over any historical problems they find, or they rejected it because it wasn't history in their sense.

Either way, this was making the mistake of assuming that the bible was for them. They assumed either that God had or that he should have written the bible for modern people with modern sensibilities. But that's not what the bible is for. The bible was for the people that wrote it and their communities.

You claiming that the bible should follow Modern Western norms of history writing is like an Evangelical claiming that the 11th commandment should have been "Thou shalt not have a partial birth abortion." Both of those things only came into being in modern time.

Why should Yahweh have had a better note taker? So that you could be convinced? The bible is not for you. It's not for me. It's not even for one group of ancient people. Some of it was for Israelites. Some for Greek Gentiles. To say that they should have abandoned their understanding of the world and written it to answer the questions that we wanted to know is incredibly arrogant.

This represents your larger bias which is a bias to philosophical deism. I want to be clear, I am not criticizing you for that faith statement, but it is a faith statement, one that comes with just as much baggage as my Christianity. The difference is that I recognize mine as a faith statement so I can bracket it for historical considerations. You seem to think that deism is equated to rationality so there is no reason to bracket it.

Waiting to hear what you've got. It'll sit here on the largest Christian Forum on the web and I'm sure send many people towards your resources/references. Let's hear it.

Well, there you have it. It should be noted that the above is not a scholarly work. It is an incredibly brief sketch aimed at the layman concerning what scholars have been up to for the past century or so. Obviously, space did not permit me to actually argue for their conclusions, rather, I hope that everyone understands that merely because I did not include the arguments (that would have required thousands of pages) that that does not mean that they do not exist. If you would like more info, please see the bibliography above.

 

[BL2KTN]

You know what? You're actually correct here.

A person who admits when they're wrong? You and I are going to have a lot of fun. It's dull discussing things with people who are more interested in winning than the truth.

No it's not. While it is often taught in intro classes that אֱלֹהִים is the plural form of אֵל it is not.

Well, you're going to have to give me some references to refute this. You've got a pretty heavy burden in doing so given that every resource I can find supports my claim that "elohim" is the plural of "el," and given that when not translated in a "plural majestic" manner, "elohim" is always translated into an English plural.

http://www.theopedia.com/Elohim
Hebrew Streams: "Elohim" in Context
The Hebrew Name for God - Elohim
CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: Elohim
Elohim - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

1.) (implied though not stated in your quote) that means that conceptually, when we see elohim in the Hebrew Bible to describe their object of devotion they are thinking of one and only one god (at least 9 times out of 10).

Through the lens of a post-Josiah Hebrew monotheism, yes. However, at the time that many of these scriptures were written and accepted as profound, no. I think it's fairly clear that "elohim" referred specifically to a divine pantheon or divine hosts prior to the Josiah reforms, and then was used to denote the majesty of a singular god through plural form (a nice little grammar change if you want your kingdom to coalesce around a singular deity for worship). A clue to this is in the burning bush scene in which El reveals he has been Yahweh the whole time - a narrative that is obviously introduced (and contradicts other narratives) in order to merge the Elohist and Yawhist worshipers into one camp. This gives us a view (along with the ten commandments prohibiting worship of other gods - not written as dead or imaginary gods, but real gods) into a polytheistic Israel/Judah that used elohim differently than the monotheistic Hebrews later.

It is not as if the ancients had a bunch of texts which included the plural form אֱלֹהִים and then all of a sudden realized that they were monotheists and had to rush to change the verb tenses to singular and inform everyone that now the word אֱלֹהִים should be thought of as singular. It happened much more organically than that. By the relatively late Semitic language of biblical Hebrew, אֱלֹהִים could semantically be plural or singular depending on whether the writer was referring to the concept of a plurality of gods or their own one God.

If it had happened organically, we wouldn't have a plural acting as both plural and singular, while at the same time the singular exists. It is a jarring grammar rule, and one that I think gives ample evidence to a quick and clumsy change. Natural language evolution tends to invent new words and phrases for new concepts; what we have here is starkly different, and adds to the evidence that monotheism was enacted in a way to reinterpret the existing scriptures towards that goal.

You have not offered one reason why this statement is so unambiguously referring to the West Semitic deity El. You simply asserted it in post 45. I don't respond to assertions, I respond to arguments. But in lieu of an actual argument to respond to, I will remind you that the Torah is not codified until the Exile so, no, when this is written it is not about the West Semitic deity El. It is possible that in the earliest strains of tradition it did, but not by the time it is redacted. I go into more detail in the next section.

Although the Torah was not codified until the Exile, Genesis is generally accepted to have already become scripture to the Hebrews pre-Exile. Therefore, this passage wasn't going to be dropped regardless, and it was up to monotheistic priests to reinterpret how this scripture could be understood. The phrase "’el ’elohe yišra’el" is clearly referring to a specific god named El because of the redundancy. The first word, "el" refers to the god, the phrase "elohe" specifies that this god el is the god of the following word, and "yisra'el" is the place or person of which this god rules. It's like saying "God, god if Israel." The first "god" can't be ambiguous because the following "god" in the phrase forces it to be specific.

Are you trying to suggest that the texts that we have somehow preserve a much much older theological position? I.e. that of El worship? Because that would be deeply problematic as the Redactor has clearly removed much polytheism already. Why on earth would he allow the worship of El in opposition to YHWH to remain in the text he was redacting? Indeed, even if this is true, as I make clear in the next paragraph, traditionally this verse is attributed to the P source, which itself is relatively late. Why would the late P writer allow for this?

Because these individuals are fallible. Compared to a modern-day scholar, they are not well educated in the least... a third grader in America has a greater knowledge base than these individuals. They're trying to modify the meanings of older texts in subtle ways that will not upset those who can read the scriptures, and it's a messy process. They can't make big, glaring changes without upsetting other religious followers. And they don't have a search engine to find all the places they're going against when they make a change. It's why we have contradictions galore. It's why we have Yahweh ordering child sacrifice in certain places and justifying genocide because of it in others. it's why we have Yahweh being known to the patriarchs in some stories, yet unknown and making a big reveal to Moses in others.

Good for us though, this messy process is a treasure trove of evidence as to the evolution of Hebrew religion.

It seems that you failed to actually read the paragraph that this is responding to. Had you done so you would have seen that the point was that contrary to the faith claim states, I am treating elohim as a name. Read that again: Contrary to the faith claim.

My point was that it is worrisome that it takes effort to go against the constraining statement of faith... in order to make a statement of fact.

~ the faith statement claims that YHWH is the 'name' of God
~but the text (i.e. the thing compiled well after the Iron Age as you say) seems to treat elohim as a name as well.

Clearly, when I am willing to say that the faith statement has it wrong, I am not blinded by my mad adherence to a dogmatic faith.

I applaud you for using facts and evidence to determine your position.

Ok, this represents another fundamental misunderstanding that you seem to have. Yes, the Hebrew people came out of the Canaanites, but the Canaanites are far far far far from uniform. They're not really one people group per se. They are a group of people groups. It is similar (though admittedly not as extreme due to the size of land involved) as the Native Americans. Yes, there are similarities between the Iriquois and the Cherokee, and yes, there may even be overlap in their religion (I must admit, I know very little about Native American... well, anything really). But they're not the same people group.

Yes, the Hebrews were a Canaanite group, but they should never be identified as the Canaanites. That would be like saying the Cherokee are the Native Americans as opposed to saying, the Cherokee are Native Americans.

I don't think I misunderstood anything since you are stating my position when you state your position. The Hebrews were Canaanites, but the Hebrews were not the Canaanites.

See, again, you are so close to being correct, but then you miss the point. Of course no serious scholar suggests that the Hebrews come (solely) from outside of Canaan (a few say that there was some level of immigration, but even they say that the vast majority come from inside the land).

Neither did I.

But that does not mean that all people living in the land have identical religions. That would be silly today, but when travel 'to the other side of the hill' was difficult, it is absolutely ludicrous to imagine. Indeed, it is much more reasonable to understand the religions as being dis-unified. Indeed, even centuries later we find within the religious texts (including the Hebrew Bible) the priests of the religion still struggling to force the religion to be uniform (see for instance the question of where and it is proper to sacrifice to YHWH, even the Torah disagrees on this point). And that represents a much later form of the cult. Before that it was only more difficult. So to say that any history fits "neatly with a Canaanite linguistic and cultural view" is certainly an oversimplification.

The history of the Hebrews as recorded in Genesis fits neatly within a Canaanite linguistic and cultural view. Context is everything, and again I was speaking specifically about the linguistic evidence in the genealogies there. We're in agreement that the Hebrew religion evolved over time in messy fashion as influenced by 1) Canaanite religious views, 2) religions of other areas, and 3) monotheistic Yahwism.

See also, yes, we see names that include the word el both late and early. So? I'm getting exasperated at having to repeat this, but 'el' means god. Not all occurrences of the word אֵל are referring to the proper name El.

The point is that the Hebrew narrative of their history is obviously false since the names of those pre-patriarchal characters should not have featured a Canaanite language reference to any god in their names. They may have featured linguistic references in an older language to a god, but not in the Canaanite language. Furthermore, I think you're the one oversimplifying... you'll note that none of the names in the oldest genealogies feature "yahweh," while many feature "el". This is yet more evidence that the Hebrews adopted Yahweh later, and worshiped El earlier.

You presume, without even questioning, that I accept the Exodus narrative at face value. Your logic seems to be this: I am a Christian, therefore I must take the narrative at face value which makes me unreliable as a scholar. As I have already made clear I do not make that historically rediculous assumption. I say that specifically about the exodus in this post, but it should come as no surprise seeing as what I have already said about Jesus research. I presume that you also assume that I think the world only came into existence 6,000 years ago as well? You do realize we're not all fundamentalists, right?

I don't know what the heck you're talking about in this one. I never mentioned the Exodus narrative, fundamentalism, creationism, etc. All I did was note my curiosity at how you didn't see the references to El in the early genealogies and see the linguistic evidence of El worship prior to widespread Yahwism. That led me to charge you with following the biblical narrative (in this case that the names predate Canaanite linguistics/culture) rather than following the real evidence.

I'll respond to the rest later... it takes me a while to get through these posts and I'm sort on time. It seems that we agree much more than we disagree.

 

[BL2KTN]

Again, this seems to be based on your misreading of my earlier paragraph. The one in which I expressly said that the faith claim that elohim is not a name is incorrect historically speaking.

Yes, it appears that in some regards I misjudged you. I think you're a reasonable scholar, interested in the truth above all else.

On the contrary, someone has made that claim. Namely you. You seem to be claiming that el only ever means El, the 'Canaanite' deity. At the very least you make that claim concerning Genesis 33:20 without giving any reason why that is the case in that text. That certainly leads one to believe that you take as a priori fact that all occurrences of el should be equated with El, the Canaanite deity. As that is clearly not the case and it (often) is used as a generic term for a deity I stated: "To pretend that el only ever functions as 'the name of a specific god - the chief god of the Canaanite pantheon.' is woefully ignorant of how the Semitic languages work." Your accusations of a straw man would work much better had I actually constructed one.

When we read the Hebrew bible, we're reading many different text from many different time periods, collected and composed achronologically. You and I both know that. When we read of El in the oldest passages, the original authors had a different idea of that El than the later scribes working with a monotheistic viewpoint but still using those old passages in new ways. Just as the protestant god, the catholic god, the Muslim god, the jewish god, and the mormon god are all different but similar, the same according to some and unique according to others, so too is the el of the Hebrews, the el of the Amelekites, the el of the Moabites, the el of the Edomites, etc. The more the Hebrews formed their own unique identity, so too their El (then Yahweh) did the same.

You claim that I am running solely on faith and ignoring true scholarship. However, the true scholar is the one that can recognize when there is not enough data. As my above quote clearly demonstrates, I believe that it is certainly possible that the Hebrews picked up El worship from their neighbors and eventually combined him with YHWH. But that is not proven.

I certainly do not say that you are running on faith alone. With that misunderstanding out of the way, let's identify what is most likely in regards to the Hebrew origins, as well as their culture/religion. We know from their oldest texts that they were worshiping a god called El, along with a belief in other Canaanite gods (Ashterah, Ba'al, etc). We know from the texts that many of the Hebrews worshiped those other gods, and we know that the writers of the texts discouraged that worship to varying degrees (you'll note in the first ten commandments, they're actually just told not to put the other gods above the Hebrew patron god). We know based on DNA testing that the Hebrews were not distinct genetically from their surroundings, but instead Jews of today (who tend to be genetically identifiable from non-Semitic individuals based on Cohen the modal haplotype) are remarkably similar to other Semitic groups (Palestinian, Syriacs, Assyrians, etc). Thus, when we have genetic evidence for a common ancestor, literary evidence of shared beliefs, and linguistic evidence of common worship, we can arrive at a conclusion that fits best with the best evidence.

Our best evidence points to a common origin for Hebrew and Canaanite people groups, with Hebrews differentiating from those other Canaanite groups due to a fictional heritage narrative and monotheistic redaction of their Canaanite religion.

Again, this comes back to the philosophical problem that I explain above and you do not respond to: how does one identify that two gods are the same without comparing them to each other? As I deny that one of these deities exists and you deny that both of them do, I find it rather improbable that we will be able to have a sit-down with them. The only other way of doing that is to interview adherents of the religions (modern adherents of Judeo-Christianity would obviously not count). However, they are all dead. Barring that we would have to investigate their literature, which we have. But what we have found is that they have not engaged in inter-religious dialogue, at least not like we would think of it. Therefore there are no claims from either side saying that they are or are not worshiping the same deity. So that leaves us with merely comparing their attributes as their adherents describe them. But, just because their attributes are similar, or even identical, does not mean that the adherents believe they are one and the same.

If we have a people group that show genetic hard evidence that they and another people group around them share ancestry, and if the aforementioned people group also share belief in the same gods as the people group with whom they are related (Ba'al, Molech, etc), and if we can see a literary history of evolving beliefs about these religious ideas diverging from the original material...

... it's safe to say then that the god of the distinct people group was shared originally by the ancestors of both people groups, but evolved along with the distinct people group's beliefs into a different version of the same thing.

Tell me, are Arabic Christians and Muslims worshiping the same god merely because their word for god comes from the same root? They certainly have similar characteristics, but I imagine that you would hesitate to shout in an Iraqi market that Isis should chill out because, after all, the Christians are worshiping Allah.

Muslims are worshiping a god named Allah, which is a version of Yahweh/El found in the Hebrew bible. The Muslim version of Yahweh/El is taken from Mohammad's writings, which were new fictitious spins on the milennia-old stories about Yahweh/El. Trying to determine if the Christians and Muslims are worshiping the same imaginary god is about as futile as trying to determine if you and I believe in the same Spiderman.

Did the Hebrews 'steal' their god from their neighbors? Possibly. Did they incorporate aspects of their neighbor's gods into their own religion? Almost certainly.

Neither of these is likely. The almost irrefutable answer is that the Hebrews and their neighbors were originally undifferentiated. As they evolved into their own people group, so too their once-shared beliefs evolved in their own, more-unique views.

Did they take on the Canaanite El and later change him into YHWH or did they talk about YHWH in terms of things they knew their neighbors were saying about El? I am not, nor have I ever, said that one is true and the other is not. I am enough of a scholar to know when we don't have enough information. Surely there is cross pollination, but we cannot know at what point the Hebrews began using the term אֵל for their own deity and him alone.

I tried to rebuff this biblical narrative idea that you are following before, and you reacted harshly... but here you do it again. This idea that the Hebrews were distinct from the Canaanites, and thus would have incorporated their religious views as imported alien concepts is untrue. The biblical narrative that the Hebrews were distinct is false. All linguistic, archaeological, literary, and genetic evidence points to a shared past by the Hebrew and Canaanite ancestors, including their religious views.

And before you simply accuse me of not wanting to address the question because it would impact my faith, a.) it would not impact it in the slightest. Like GCC this whole question does not affect my faith claim at all...

That is terrifying that you somehow follow logic and reason until you arrive at your faith claim... and then those things you cherish as a scholar go out the door. It reminds me of the professors who teach a 14.3 billion year old universe, but then go to Sunday School and teach a 6,000 year old world. I fail to see how you live with the cognitive dissonance, but it appears you have constructed some sort of means to live with it.

this is the same movement that I do with other deities. Are Jupiter and Zeus the same existential deity? Well, I can certainly trace a line of thought between them (the documentation is better than with El/YHWH) but even with that, it's not necessarily clear that they were believed by both parties to be identical. Heck, it's not even clear that all worshipers of Jupiter believed that other worshipers of Jupiter were worshiping the same deity. It's kind of a silly question at the end of the day.

Not all questions are worth answers. Your question of whether or not El in the pantheon of Canaanite gods is the same as the El in the early pantheon of Hebrew gods is the same as the El in the monotheistic view of later Hebrews would seem to be an unanswerable question. What is answerable is that the different versions are related to earlier shared ideas.

I have several. And have taken many more than 'several' classes in classical Hebrew. Moreover, my work in Hebrew is published by reputable publishing houses. Have you taken any courses in proto-semitic? This question is more than simply a 'let's go to the lexicon' sort of question. It requires an understanding in proto-semitic (we are talking historic linguistics here after all) which in turn requires an understanding of Ugaritic, Phoenecian, Aramaic, Akkadian, etc. (as a brief moment of levity, I think everyone should know that the auto-correct wants to make 'Akkadian' into 'Canadian'). I suspect that when LAC states that virtually all linguists agree that אֵל means 'god' he is saying that virtually all linguists agree that that phoneme אֵל relates or pertains to deity, which, if that is what he is saying then he is absolutely right.

We agree that in the area of proto-semitic linguistics, you have far more training. So far that hasn't proven problematic for our dialogue, but if I run into a place in which I lack the knowledge-base to respond accurately/adequately, I'll let you know.

But as LAC says, the origin of the word El is that of the generic term for deity.

Please provide proof for the origin of the term "El". I strongly disagree with what you have said here, and you provide zero evidence in support.

Again, at the risk of putting words in his mouth, el means god. That's just simply what the word means. The Canaanites use the word el to mean their specific god El. Then, one of a few things could have happened. Either, a.) the Hebrews break off of the El cult and combine El with YHWH and eventually become monotheists; b.) the Hebrews simultaneously name their deity El (for the same reasons, i.e. that el means god) or c.) the Hebrews develop a religion based around YHWH worship and incorporate the word el to mean YHWH (either because they identify YHWH with El or because el means god).

As I have argued earlier in this response, none of your scenarios are likely in the least, and fly in the face of all evidence.

Anyway you slice it though, it is an oversimplification to say that it "is simply false" to say that el can (and does) mean god.

Anyway you slice it, you've done that thing you seem to do. You've applied an argument to me that I'm not making. I never said that the term cannot or does not refer simply to god. I said the term is derived from the Canaanite concept of El.

100 level classes reach to the lowest common denominator. They present the absolute basics. She very properly identified the commonalities between El and the Hebrew deity. But in doctoral level classes we have long since realized that more nuance is needed.

For instance, this is an even more complicated chicken egg question. Here are a few models of how it could have happened:

You're joking. You speak to me about the nuance of doctoral level classes, then you provide me with incredibly juvenile flow charts???? I mean, good grief, I'm at a loss for how to respond. Surely any academic inquiry into the origins of the Hebrew El would look at the comparison of "El-Shaddai," and El who sits on the mountain according to Canaanite beliefs. Surely no student in any upper-level classes would ever need such elementary charts as what you have supplied.

Please tell me that these charts do not indicate "nuance" to you.

So which comes first and how much cross pollination happened? Well, almost certainly it is a combination of all of it. The work of real history rarely falls neatly or cleanly into models, but you model, which the best I can figure out is as follows:

And then you give me this image of a chart supposedly representing my view... which is so ridiculous that I don't even know what to say. I'm literally flabbergasted.

Here's what all the evidence points to:

El (proto-Hebrew, early Semitic) -> Becomes various versions of El, including the El of the early Hebrews.
Yahweh (Semitic, early Hebrew) -> Overtakes worship of Hebrew El in Judah. Polytheism is made into sin, but worship of El is absorbed into Yawhism through redaction of scripture.
Yahweh (Hebrew) + El (Hebrew) -> Canonized version of Hebrew god post-exile... continues to evolve according to Hellenistic ideas.

This is a very Bible 101 way of looking at it. I'd be hard pressed to say definitively that it is 'incorrect' as certainly there are elements of truth to it (namely that there is a commonality between the Hebrew god and the gods of their neighbors) but it is certainly an oversimplification.

And I have no idea how in the world you could possibly come up with such an asinine, ridiculous caricature of what I have been trying to present. It is such a foolish representation of what I've been saying that I can only conclude you haven't been paying much attention whatsoever.

 

[BL2KTN]

I'm really amazed, BLTN, at the degree to which you simultaneously assert that El and Yahweh were both worshiped by the proto-Israelites as father and son while also denying that we can know much about the historical Jesus besides the most basic facts (that you can find on Wikipedia).

I don't think my list matches the list on Wikipedia. If it does, bravo I suppose. That said, we have a literary, linguistic, genetic, and archaeological litany of clues as to the origins of El and Yahweh. For Yeshua we have four flawed stories, hand-picked for dogma from thirty other stories, the rest of the stories attempted to be destroyed, and 2,000 year old oral traditions.

There is far, far more first century evidence for various sayings and deeds and themes of the historical Jesus of Nazareth than there is for any relationship between El and Yahweh.

No. Yahweh and El have centuries of literary narratives applied to them (of course, they're imaginary, so keep that in mind). Yeshua has four very small stories written about him, with the others destroyed. Finding the historical Yeshua within these works of fiction is quite difficult, and mostly impossible.

Historical Jesus studies are characterized by an ongoing scholarly conversation characterized by the emerging consensus on Jesus' deeds (who fail to mention his action at the temple), parables (the parable of the sower is almost always accepted), themes (kingdom of God, much?) represented by almost every figure cited here and in the formal debate (except John Dominic Crossan, who has not done any serious scholarship in almost thirty years and is on the fringe of legitimate scholarship). Meanwhile, you dogmatically insist on your particular theory about El and Yahweh as father and son, which I had honestly never heard of in my wide reading of Ancient Near Eastern scholarship, and is one particular historical reconstruction among dozens.

Well, I really don't care if you've heard of it before. As you can see in my discussion with BeforetheFoundation, it's based on hard evidence. If you want to discuss it more in-depth, feel free to ask questions... but whether or not you've seen it previously matters none.

 

[BL2KTN]

The mis-quote itself states that there is no consensus. By using it you are claiming that there is no consensus. Especially since, it not being a real quote there is no context that we can go and look at like we can with the real quote that you think says the same thing (see below for another response to that). That is why I said this: "And to claim that he believes that that [sic] there is no consensus on who the historical Jesus is is completely inaccurate and shows very clearly that BlueLightning has not read any of his books." At which point you say I must not have read the debate.

But that's what the quote says and that is what you have maintained, namely that there is no consensus, beyond what you describe as being a miniscule 7 things. Indeed, in your last post you asked me to provide you with more consensus because you did not believe that it existed.

What you fail repeatedly to notice is that I was supporting a lack of consensus due to the Third Quest... not a total lack of consensus.

I have responded to this already. It does not mirror the real quote in sentiment. I will not repeat my reasons for this again until you respond to them. If you need clarification on what I have said feel free to ask specific questions. But simply reasserting your claim without support will not fly.

This one's not worth debating... I flubbed based on Wikipedia's error and we can leave it at that.

I am really not trying to be a jerk here, but even your terminology is so foreign to the people we are talking about it betrays the unreliability of what you are saying. "an agenda in reaching others for Jesus"? This is a foreign concept here.

Methodists generally accept the Great Commission. Charlesworth is a Methodist minister. I don't think this is foreign to him at all. I think you are purposefully (either consciously or not) underselling the evangelism aspect of your and his work. While you wouldn't distort facts to support Christianity, I suspect you went into your area of study in order to learn more about Christianity and support it. Am I correct?

Not all Christians believe that 'reaching people for Jesus' or 'saving souls' is the end all or be all of Christianity. For instance, the tradition of the school at which Charlesworth has taught for most of his career places very little emphasis on it. Indeed, for many throughout the centuries, Christianity has been not about saving souls, but rather coming to the truth. Which is why some Christians enter the the academy. Moreover, what is beyond doubt is that many of the historical claims he makes about Jesus would make many Methodists very upset.

What about you? Do you want others to believe in Christ and become Christians?

Likewise, the fact that you a priori assume that a historian is untrustworthy because of their background is a fallacy. Is a Southern historian not to be trusted on the Civil War because they lost? Is a Northern one not to be trusted because they won? Again, no historian is completely free of bias. (Thanks Post-Modernism! ).

If the Southerner were pro-Southern, then yes, that would result in extra scrutiny for sure. Your former boss is a Christian advocate, as well as a historian of Christian material. The latter is made much more suspect because of the former.

You admitted you are not familiar with his work and yet you (seemingly) have no doubts that it is rife with bias. Historians point out each others biases. It's cutthroat. When they appear they are destroyed.

In academic circles, yes. I'm not sure that Jesus studies always garner as much scrutiny given that many write it off as pseudo-academics.

You say you cannot trust me or Charlesworth or the Third Questers because they are biased toward proving some faith claim, and yet you appear to be:

How many times can you characterize my positions? Where in the world did I say that I mistrust Third Questers? All I said was that I apply additional scrutiny upon Charlesworth because of his advocacy position within Christianity.

Why should I do the leg work for you? I mean, I know this isn't true, but it almost feels like you are taking a class in the historical Jesus and you have an assignment to write a paper about the consensus of the Third Quest and instead of going and researching you are asking me to do it.

You made an assertion, I asked that you clarify that assertion so we can discuss it. Now, with some whining, you have done so. We can now discuss the assertion.

However, I will bite. I will begin with your bare bones list and expand upon it. However, before I do, it needs to be noted that I am not Dr. Charlesworth. This list is what I believe most Third Questers could generally agree with. Finally, with the exception of a very few explanatory notes, I have not included the arguments for each claim. That would literally make it into the length of several books. But please do not come back and complain that I did not back these up. Keep in mind what you asked for, namely a list of things that would be agreed upon, not an argument for them:

Okay, here's how I'm going to respond to the list. I am going to leave the ones I agree are accurate in the color black. I am going to color blue any of the ones that are redundant or overly obvious as to be unnecessary (such as if I listed Yeshua lived on Earth or that he was covered in skin). I will color in red any that I disagree with, and then I'll give the reason.

 

[BL2KTN]

1. Yeshua was a Jew.
2. He was born sometime between 6 and 4 BCE
3. He began his work during the Emporership of Tiberius, the procuratorship of Pilate, and tetrarchy Herod Antipas.
4. He was believed to be, by himself and his followers, to be descended from David (whether he was or not is irrelevant, the historical claim is not that he was descended from David, something that, even bracketing the historical question of whether or not David himself is historical, would not have been possible to prove in the the first century, let alone today. The claim is that he and his followers believed he was) - I see no hard evidence of this claim. All we have are the assertions of flawed gospels from decades later, likely advocating this position in order to validate prophecy.
5. He spoke Aramaic as his primary language
6. He was likely literate - Again, I see no evidence of this whatsoever.
7. He may have spoken some Greek (he was a craftsmen around the time that Greek cities were being built and likely worked there) and he may have been able to speak or possibly read some Hebrew though it would not have been his primary language. - Speculative
8. He was probably trained as a tekton (stone mason) and likely worked in the Decopolis which was being built at the time. - Zero evidence
9. As a young man he was a follower of the apocalyptic teacher John the Baptist - We have essentially no information about the young Yeshua. This is bogus.
10. He was baptized by John, we don't know where or when
11. He lived and taught primarily in Galilee
12. He taught primarily on the outskirts of town - Towns were tiny... I don't know how descriptive this point can be.
13. His primary home base in his early ministry was Caupernaum. I don't see any hard evidence for this.
14. However, he was an itinerant preacher. Probably, but there's no hard evidence for this.
15. His journeys took him relatively far afield, probably even into the Gentile regions like the Decapolis. - There is no evidence for this.
16. Nonetheless, he believed that his message was directed at Israel. - Likely, but still conjecture. The gospels are not reliable in this regard.
17. However, his message had resonance before his death with people outside of the Jewish community proper. - No evidence.
18. Following in the footsteps of his teacher John he was apocalyptic in style. - Probably, but again, speculative.
19. He had disagreements with other Jewish sects, but specifically not the (main) one of the Gospels which were inserted because of later concerns. His primary foes would not have been the Pharisees with whom he shared a fair amount in common, but rather the Herodians and Saduccees. - Because we don't know his teachings, we have no clue who he would have disagreed with. We have fictional narratives that tell us who fictional Jesus would have disagreed with, but nothing historical.
20. His teaching included an expectation for judgment by the Son of Man. - Zero evidence.
21. one of his primary teaching tools was the parable or aphorism. The authors of the parables, sure... but again, no evidence that Yeshua did.
22. he preached a generally new interpretation of the "Kingdom of God" and this was central to his teaching (and one of the reasons he was killed)
23. He believed that God's reign was only partially realized - No evidence.
24. However, he believed that in very short order that Kingdom was to be fulfilled (indeed, he would have been quite baffled that we are still having this conversation) - This was the belief of his followers decades later, but hard to say what he thought.
25. This belief would not have been all that odd, except that he believed that he would somehow be the one to bring in God's reign in fullness. - No evidence.
26. Some scholars maintain that he believed that he was the messiah. However others do not. - Some think he had green eyes, others do not.
27. The lowest common denominator though is that he certainly believed he was a prophet
28. He believed that when he marched on Jerusalem God would vindicate him. No evidence.
29. He was tried before Pontius Pilate, who, unlike the what the Gospels claim, had no reason to care if this random Jew died.
30. Unlike some other sects, i.e. the Essenes of the DSS community, Jesus believed that the re-dedication of the Temple after the Abomination of Desecration worked. As such he worshiped at the Temple and believed that it was a good thing
31. However, he had many disagreements with the Temple authorities.
32. These were mirrored by the differences he had with the Saduccees and the Herodians which essentially revolved around the treatment of the poor. - No evidence.
33. When he interpreted Torah he tended to decrease the burden of following the law in a similar way to Hillel.
34. Because of this he was popular in the rural areas but unpopular in the city of Jerusalem. Speculative.
35. Unlike the Saduccees, but like the Pharisees, Jesus believed in the resurrection of the dead (notice not 'going to heaven' like modern evangelicals, but a real bodily resurrection; coming back to life; and certainly not just saving souls) which would happen at the end times when God judged his people. Difficult to say given the gospels are advocacies for their authors' contradictory positions (and then handpicked by those who agreed with these four over the others).
36. he 'performed' deeds that were believed to be miracles by eyewitnesses e.v. exorcisms and healings (n.b. performing such things does not mean that they are effective. But even non-Christian scholars claim that he was doing things that were interpreted as miracles. I don't mean some kind of charlatanism, but more like saying and believing he was casting out demons even though demons aren't real, indeed, even Crossan believes that the people thought he was performing miracles). This point gives such breadth in what could have occurred that it is rendered nearly meaningless.
37. one of these was the healing of Bartimeaus which is a particularly salient example as several scholars cite it as one of the prime examples of how oral tradition functions. - Oral tradition and historical fact seem to be at odds... please explain.
38. Simon of Cyrene, father of Rufus assisted in the carrying of Jesus' cross No evidence.
39. Of the Seven Last Words of Jesus, the one that has the highest probability is the cry of deriliction And the highest probability of all is that none are true.
40. Yeshua taught a version of Judaism that resulted in his death.
41. This version of Judaism is more than simply being nice to each other like a frightening number of modern Christians claim, it was something that would be offensive to the authorities, i.e. it preached insurrection or at least something that looked like insurrection.
42. He caused a riot in the Temple on a feast day. Most scholars would claim this is the primary reason he was executed. Replace "riot" with "commotion" and I'd agree.
43. He preached the Kingdom of God in opposition to the any theological justification for the Kingdom of Rome No evidence.
44. Jesus prayed to God as Abba Zero, zilch, nada evidence.
45. He taught his disciples to pray for the coming kingdom in similar terms (a tradition which comes to us in the Lord's Prayer). - Requires Q Source be historically accurate... simply can't be known.
46. Yeshua had disciples.
47. His disciples were primarily lower class individuals mostly from Galilee (read backwater) like himself.
48. Many were fisherman and they spent much time on and around the water
49. After his death some of those disciples were persecuted.
50. While not specifically about Jesus, since you included what happened to the disciples after Jesus' death I will add this: Regardless of whether it actually happened, the disciples believed that Jesus bodily came back from the dead. I know that that will be contentious, but keep in mind what this list is. It is not me attempting to prove these things, merely to state what scholars of the Third Quest believe to be true about the historical Jesus and they uniformly agree that the disciples believed that Jesus had come back from the dead, even though many of the scholars don't believe it happened (even some of the ones claiming to be Christian) - No evidence, and you knew that when you typed it.
51. We know at least 8 of the names of the disciples. - How?
52. Jesus gave Peter some kind of leadership. - That depends on the assumption that Peter didn't assume leadership afterwards.
52. We know Jesus' parents names
53. Jesus taught subversive teachings about the nature of blessedness. - No evidence outside of unreliable gospels.
54. Yeshua was (likely) from Nazareth.

If you'd like to answer my objections to the red ones, I'd enjoy reading your responses.

Gotta stop here for the day. Also, I need to ask all responders to drop your word counts - I can't keep up at this rate.

 

[Melethiel]

BLTN, a lot of your objections to the points you have marked in red seem to be that the primary evidence of the objection is from the Gospels. The sense that I'm getting, and please correct me if I'm wrong, is that you feel the Gospels are not acceptable as sources because a lot of people consider them to be inspired works of Scripture. However, even if you don't believe they were divinely inspired, they are still primary documents which were written within 30-70 years of the time being described, which is a whole lot better than we have for a lot of other historical figures. So, why should they be not admitted as evidence? While they obviously contain some bias, a good historian should be able to read through that.

 

[BeforeTheFoundation]

I will start by responding to your very last statement:

I need to ask all responders to drop your word counts - I can't keep up at this rate.

Truly, I understand this sentiment. I recognize that my last 'post' was in fact three posts long and that is a bit much for an online forum, but that's actually kind of the point.

You cannot ask me to cite for you the consensus of the Third Quest and explain to you the new things happening in Johannine scholarship and respond to your views on El/YHWH and keep my response a few hundred words long.

Likewise, you cannot ask me to defend my list above and expect it to be kept short. However, I will try to be brief.

Indeed, as I have said before, that's the very thing I am trying to prove. These theories take book lengths to explain. They are not simple. They cannot be refuted by casually saying that there is no evidence. a lot of research by many many people goes into each of these claims. And actually, that's the problem that we are going to run into in a bit, but more on that later.

I suspect you went into your area of study in order to learn more about Christianity and support it. Am I correct?

No, you are absolutely incorrect. I mean, I'm sorry, but it just simply isn't why I went into this field. Quite the contrary, really, when I entered this field I assumed that my work would be too abstract and complicated for the average Christian to even understand, let alone use it to 'prove' their faith. Indeed, I spend a great deal of my time talking about things that I think that the Gospels got wrong about Jesus.

What about you? Do you want others to believe in Christ and become Christians?

Do you want other to recognize their foolishness in believing in Christ and become deists? This is irrelevant to the field of history and gets to the point I make at the end of post 61 above.

Methodists generally accept the Great Commission.

And once again, you demonstrate your lack of of knowledge of the Third Quest. I’m going to do something I usually do not do. I’m going to emphasize something with bold and color and underlining and italics, because this next point is incredibly important:

Most questers, Charlesworth included, would deny that the Great Commission goes back to the historical Jesus.

Indeed, denying that the Great Commission was uttered by Jesus is taken so for granted that it isn’t even argued for in Charlesworth’s Jesus Within Judaism, but rather is taken for granted and used to make another point. Read this:

Certainly, solid historical fact is encountered in the traditions that emphasize Jesus’ concern only for Israel, enunciated in the narrative of his initial rebuff of the Syro-Phoenician woman, the charge to the disciples - “Do not go into the way of the Gentiles… but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (Mt 10:5-6) - and his self-perception for being sent only “to the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (Mt 15:24). Surely these sayings found only in Matthew were offensive to and could not have been created by Matthew, because his church became increasingly more directed to the Gentiles (see Mt 5:13, 10:18, 21:43, 24:14, 28:19[n.b. this is the 'Great Commission']).

What is going on in this passage is he is arguing that the sayings of Jesus in which he says that his mission is directed toward the Jews (see number 16 of my original list) are likely to be historical. Why? Because, as everyone knows, Matthew made up passages (like the Great Commission (the Matthew 28:19 from the quote above) in order to legitimize his own community which means that the places where Jesus says the opposite of the Great Commission are more likely to be historical.

Listen to that again. Charlesworth isn’t even bothering to argue that the Great Commission did not come from the historical Jesus. He is assuming that anyone reading his book would already be well versed enough in Jesus scholarship to know that no one thinks Jesus said those words (after all, any intro to the NT class worth its salt would teach that.

So back to your quote:

Methodists generally accept the Great Commission.

Whether Methodists generally accept the Great Commission is irrelevant to the conversation. If you had even a passing understanding of the Third Quest you would already know that Charlesworth does not accept it as being from the original mouth of Jesus.

I think you are purposefully (either consciously or not) underselling the evangelism aspect of your and his work.

Again, and I cannot emphasize this enough. You have admitted that you have not read his work! On the flip side, I have read it, and I have chewed the fat with him concerning how we dislike it when pseudo-scholars do this very thing you are saying we do.

Also, see the pink text above.

Your former boss is a Christian advocate

Again, you haven't read his work. He is not an apologist. So your comparison to the Southerner being pro-South is completely off base. Charlesworth does not argue for Christian doctrine. In fact, he often ends up saying things that would overturn it.

Also, see the pink text above.

How many times can you characterize my positions? Where in the world did I say that I mistrust Third Questers? All I said was that I apply additional scrutiny upon Charlesworth because of his advocacy position within Christianity.

See below, particularly my response to you calling the whole field pseudo-academics. If that’s not saying you can’t trust it then I don’t know what it is.

In academic circles, yes. I'm not sure that Jesus studies always garner as much scrutiny given that many write it off as pseudo-academics.

Being unfamiliar with the academic field, you are in no position to judge. At the very least, there is scrutiny between the Christian and Jewish scholars. Moreover, this is why we have peer review.

In academic circles, yes. I'm not sure that Jesus studies always garner as much scrutiny given that many write it off as pseudo-academics.

quote removed for formatting reasons

How many times can you characterize my positions? Where in the world did I say that I mistrust Third Questers? All I said was that I apply additional scrutiny upon Charlesworth because of his advocacy position within Christianity.

Notice the two things in red. When I go on the attack and remind you that you don't trust the Third questers even though you are unfamiliar with their work you try to retreat and claim that you never really said that. And yet, in the same post you say that Jesus studies don't get enough scrutiny to squash biases because it is written off as pseudo-academics, which itself is ridiculous to anyone with a passing understanding of the work, but is made all the more amusing by your attempt to still maintain that you don't mistrust them as scholars (while of course maintaining things like the misguided notion that there is an "evangelism aspect of your and his work.")

When you asked where you had stated that you mistrust the Third Questers I thought I would have to scroll up at least to one of your previous posts, not literally your preceding sentence.

You made an assertion, I asked that you clarify that assertion so we can discuss it.

I know you begged me to let the topic of your misquote drop, and I really would like to do so. Honestly, I would as I am exhausted from arguing about properly researching your claims. But when you say things like this I just have to cringe a bit.

I was not the one that made the assertion. You made the assertion that modern Jesus Research only could conclude 7 very minimalistic things. If you want to talk about burden of proof, then the burden of proof should be on you to defend such a ridiculous claim. However, when it became apparent that you were not versed in the literature and had based your claim, at least in part, on the error of Wikipedia, I opted to come in and explain that there really was more consensus.

Now, with some whining

I am prone to whine when people make things up. I will own that.

Okay, here's how I'm going to respond to the list. I am going to leave the ones I agree are accurate in the color black. I am going to color blue any of the ones that are redundant or overly obvious as to be unnecessary (such as if I listed Yeshua lived on Earth or that he was covered in skin). I will color in red any that I disagree with, and then I'll give the reason.

Ok, so I knew that this would happen (which is why I planned for it). Would the reader please look at this quote from my post:

This list is what I believe most Third Questers could generally agree with. Finally, with the exception of a very few explanatory notes, I have not included the arguments for each claim. That would literally make it into the length of several books. But please do not come back and complain that I did not back these up. Keep in mind what you asked for, namely a list of things that would be agreed upon, not an argument for them:

Now I need to be clear. You are not complaining and I am not accusing you of that. In fact, taking out the sarcasm in the end of your quote (which admittedly I have been prone to as well so I have no ground to complain) you are quite cordial in this section.

However, I must emphasize again that the list was not stuff that I was arguing for. The list, like you asked, was a list of things that people like Charlesworth and mainstream scholarship would likely be able to agree upon. Indeed, here is your original request:

Summarize for us, please, what he would likely say are historical facts about Yeshua, and note for us in some ways the facts which were derived specifically through the Third Quest.

You did not ask for, nor did I promise to provide, nor did I provide an argument for these conclusions. As such I will not go point by point and defend them. Nor will I tolerate the (potential) claim that because I have not supported the arguments I have somehow lost our informal debate. As is clear to anyone who reads this, arguing for each and every one of these claims would be far too much material to argue for in an online forum. Indeed, as I have said, that is why books are written, if you are particularly interested in one or more of these claims I would suggest looking them up.

What you did ask for was a list of things that would be agreed upon. You also asked for me to delineate the ones that were “derived specifically through the Third Quest” I made clear that all of them were (hence why there is consensus).

However, I will respond in general to your refutations. (See next post).

 

[BeforeTheFoundation]

My response generally:

I would like to point out that even if all of the ones on the list that you flag are bogus, that still leaves a total of 19 claims that you are now willing to admit. Seeing as the actual original debate we were having was over whether there was any consensus in Jesus Research and you were resting your case on the assumption that there were only 7 meager things that they could agree on, the fact that we have moved to 19 (and who knows how many more we would have had I continued with the list as I said that I could have!) I'd say we have made considerable progress.

That being said, your concerns basically fall into one of four categories:

1. an appeal to unreliability ("Requires Q Source be historically accurate... simply can't be known."),
2. a claim that something is insignificant that really isn't ("This point gives such breadth in what could have occurred that it is rendered nearly meaningless."),
3. merely the (erroneous) claim that we have no evidence whatsoever, often times ignoring the other texts that we have concerning Jesus ("No evidence, and you knew that when you typed it."),
4. or simply a misunderstanding of how the ancient world worked ("Towns were tiny... I don't know how descriptive this point can be.")

My general response to that is admittedly weak. Essentially it boils down to this simple statement: you simply don't seem to be knowledgeable on how history is done. I will briefly sketch that in the first 3 of those critiques above, then I will respond in depth to number 4.

1.

45. He taught his disciples to pray for the coming kingdom in similar terms [i.e. 'Abba' fro number 44] (a tradition which comes to us in the Lord's Prayer). - Requires Q Source be historically accurate... simply can't be known.

This clearly shows you are unfamiliar with the Didache an ancient text about Jesus which comes from the first century and includes the Lord's Prayer with Abba and the coming kingdom.

2.

36. he 'performed' deeds...This point gives such breadth in what could have occurred that it is rendered nearly meaningless.

How you could think that people living within Jesus' lifetime believing that he was a healer, with the significance of healers in first century Judaism, is insignificant is absolutely beyond me.

3.

50. ... the disciples believed that Jesus bodily came back from the dead... - No evidence, and you knew that when you typed it.

We have more evidence for this claim, i.e. that the disciples believed Jesus had come back from the dead, than probably any other claim we can make about him. Any of the books that we have mentioned so far will do a far better job explaining this than I could in this format.

4.

12. He taught primarily on the outskirts of town - Towns were tiny... I don't know how descriptive this point can be.

This will be addressed later.

I recognize that those passing remarks are not satisfactory, unfortunately, I am quite busy at work. As such I cannot respond to the individual arguments that you offer. However, I don’t want it to seem as if I am simply trying to dodge the question. As such, I have asked that GCC would carry on with that aspect of the debate. Obviously he and I are two different people, but we are both trained in this field. I am sure that if we looked hard enough we could find someplace where we disagreed, but for this particular debate you can assume that there is reasonable continuity between what I have said and what he will now argue for.

That being said, I would like to respond to one claim that is of particular note to me personally. Also, I’m sorry, but it is kind of lengthy. Unfortunately historical scholarship does not simply make conclusions from no evidence like you seem to think that we do. Historical scholarship weighs a great deal of evidence before it makes any claim. To properly do what you have asked and provide an argument for these things will take many words, though it should be noted that the following is about 1/5 the length of the usual presentation and skips giving the citations of ancient relevant texts.

12. He taught primarily on the outskirts of town - Towns were tiny... I don't know how descriptive this point can be.

Clearly you have not spent much time around archaeological digs in Israel. As it turns out, towns could be reasonably sized. This is simply not open for debate. Add on top of that a town wall and the edge of town becomes clearly delineated. Moreover, it is common in the literature to speak of inside and outside of a town. As such the claim that the distinction of being on the outskirts of town cannot be descriptive is simply not true.

Beyond that, the argument for this begins with a brief history of the Essenes and the Dead Sea Scroll community. As virtually all scholars agree the DSS community can basically be identified with the Essenes (this is a slight oversimplification due to the fact that the ones not living at Qumran seem to have ever so slightly different rules compared to the ones living inside the community. Virtually all scholars suggest that this is actually by design, much like there are different rules governing Catholics that live inside a monastery compared to those living outside. Even those scholars that disagree would generally agree that there is nonetheless a relationship between the Essenes outside of Qumran and those living inside).

Anyway, as is clearly attested, Qumran is wiped out in 68 CE (That doesn’t need to be ‘proven’; there is no debate, in fact, I have actually held in my hand one of the projectiles that the Romans fired at Qumran).

With the destruction of Qumran in 68, followed by the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE, and finally the destruction of Masada (where many of the Qumran community sought refuge) in 73 or 74 CE we have a very clear terminus ad quem. The Essenes and their theology quite literally drop off of the face of the earth (indeed, this is why we knew virtually nothing about them until after the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls). There was no meaningful continuity between the Essenes and post-70 Judaism. They are simply gone. Incidentally, this is for more reason than simply they were all killed. Their theology also no longer worked. Like the people that gather on top of a mountain waiting for a Rapture that never comes, the Essenes put all of their eggs in the basket: God stepping in and saving them from the Gentile invaders. When that didn’t happen, their theology no longer works and they cease to exist. It’s not the first time it happened to a sectarian religion and it wasn’t the last.

The Scrolls (as well as the other scant evidence we have concerning the Essenes, i.e. Josephus, Philo, Pliny) all tell us that the Essenes practiced a radical separation, not only from Gentiles (as many of the sects did) but also from other Jews.

This led to the practice, indeed the command, that the Essenes living outside of Qumran not live in the towns proper, but rather live on the outskirts of town. This was to limit their contact with other Jews who they saw as not following the Law and so therefore not being pure. The Essenes wanted to remain pure (by their definition of pure) and believed that other Jews could contaminate them. So they lived on the outskirts of town to avoid them. Indeed, there are even reports that they would do things like go to the well at odd times specifically to avoid (potential) contact with other people.

Now, remember that I said their theology is wiped off of the face of the earth? Well, that’s not entirely true. Some Essene theology was recorded, but in a very unlikely place, namely the New Testament. Indeed, as I mentioned in my defense of the Gospel of John in post 61, many of the conversations that Jesus has reflect a similarity to the theology that we find in the DSS. In some places Jesus seems to agree with the DSS and in other places he seems to disagree with them. But either way, he is engaging it.

What is important to remember here is a few things:

1. The Essene theology is unique in first century Judaism.
2. It is wiped out and forgotten about by 74 CE (indeed, Josephus, Pliny, and Philo all can only offer scant summaries of what they believe)
3. they live on the outskirts of town
4. The Gospels preserve a knowledge about the theology which is not preserved in any other tradition, including Christianity (in other words, when Jesus argues against Essene theology, this cannot be interpreted as the Gospel writers putting words in his mouth in order to argue against their own contemporaries, because their own contemporaries were not adherents of Essene Theology).

As such, one comes to one of a few conclusions. Either:

1. The Gospel writers made up hypothetical opponents for Jesus that had no similarities to their own contemporaries and also, coincidentally, mirrored the Essenes perfectly.
2. The Gospel writers, instead of learning about Jesus, searched for and found the Qumran scrolls and learned about the Essenes, who they then, for no apparent reason, made into the opponents of Jesus.
3. A pre-70 tradition existed of Jesus being in conversation with a group notably hostile to outsiders.

The importance of that ‘notably hostile to outsiders’ bit is that, from the information that I have supplied, one could posit that the Gospel writers themselves were pre-70 experiencers of the Essene community.

The problem with that is two-fold. First, it assumes that the Gospel writers were active before 70 (a claim I imagine you would not be uncomfortable with) and second because it assumes that Christians would have somehow had access to the Essene community at the very time that they were becoming even more secretive (they were preparing for war). How would the Gospel writers have come to know the Essene theology?

Well the only way is if oral tradition preserved a tradition of Jesus arguing with them which also included an (accurate) understanding of what the Essenes believed. This in turn would only be possible if the earliest Jesus community, i.e. Jesus and his disciples had experience with the Essenes and as the Essenes were living on the outskirts of town, you guessed it, this would only be possible if Jesus spent a great deal of time in the outskirts of town. Indeed, even by the time that the disciples, who had followed Jesus were working to spread Jesus’ message after he died, they would have had no reason to make up stories in which Jesus argued with the Essenes. The Essenes were not a threat to that generation of Jesus followers. What one would expect, and we also see, would be for them to make their Jesus argue with the Sadducees, Herodians, and Pharisees (incidentally, three groups that the Essenes also didn’t like). They would not have had a reason to make Jesus argue with the Essenes, who were radical sectarians and not mainstream enough for them to make up stories about.

But we’re actually still not done because we then look to see if this all corresponds with the internal evidence, and yes, yes it does. The Gospels describe Jesus as preaching on the outskirts of town, a claim that the Gospel writers would have no reason to make up (why would they?) and which happens to also correspond to the other evidence (above) that we have.

So, therefore, scholars agree that he spent a great deal of time on the outskirts of town.

Notice though, something interesting here. We did not start with the bible. That wasn’t our starting point because we were not trying to ‘prove the bible right’. Indeed, you may choose to not believe me, but as I was writing this, the addition of turning to the Gospels for confirmation was something that only even occurred to me when the bulk of the argument was already done. So, no, we weren’t ‘trying to prove the bible.’ We were trying to get to the root of a historical question, i.e. where did Jesus teach? A question that scholars ask concerning everyone from Socrates to Muhammad to Buddha to Gandhi. We want to know where teachers teach and we investigate that question. It just so happens in this case that the Gospels got it right. Of course, that’s not that surprising because, again, why would they make that up?

Now, I am sure that you are going to want to push back on this, and that’s fine, but I hope that you at least see that more goes into these questions than simply ‘let’s prove that Jesus did what we want him to do’. Indeed, from an apologetic perspective, what I have tried to prove above is nearly useless. So Jesus argued with a bunch of people that were wiped out less than a generation after his death? How could that be useful to convince people to believe in him? What is a preacher going to use that information for?

Indeed, based off of your implication that we believe that historical scholarship should conclude that the bible is ‘right’ and so therefore should be able to convince people to ‘come to Jesus’ we would have a vested interest in arguing against this claim because it would be ‘better’ if Jesus had been arguing with people that were more like our own opponents, or at least more like the opponents of the early church.

But that’s not where the scholarship has lead us. Where it lead us was to the conclusion that he was arguing with people that in short order were going to be non-existent and he was doing it on the outskirts of town. And that’s ok.

I also hope that you recognize that, even if you disagree with the analysis above, this is historical scholarship. I mean this is the same stuff that people do for other figures in the past, especially those that are pre-modern. We analyze the information that we have. What things do they say that we can say are unique to them (i.e. the fact that Jesus argues with people that the evangelists wouldn’t have known)? What are their unique features (i.e. that the Essenes stayed at the outskirts of towns)? What conclusions can we draw from that (i.e. that Jesus most likely had contact with the Essenes in the outskirts of town)?

Anyway, as I said work this week is preventing me from responding to any of your other points specifically. However, GCC has graciously agreed to do so. I am, however, still waiting for a response to the Johannine information.

 

[GratiaCorpusChristi]

I'm not sure that Jesus studies always garner as much scrutiny given that many write it off as pseudo-academics.

Pseudo-academic? Pseudo-academic?

No documents from antiquity have been subject to the level of enduring scrutiny by professional scholars in peer-reviewed settings as have the documents of the New Testament and the Tanakh. The only documents that even come close are the Iliad and Odyssey, and they form far distant seconds.

 

[BL2KTN]

BLTN, a lot of your objections to the points you have marked in red seem to be that the primary evidence of the objection is from the Gospels. The sense that I'm getting, and please correct me if I'm wrong, is that you feel the Gospels are not acceptable as sources because a lot of people consider them to be inspired works of Scripture.

It doesn't matter to me if people consider them to be inspired works of scripture or not... what does matter is that they are highly contradictory and factually erroneous works. For example, we've got four books and three different "last words" of Jesus. We have Matthew garbling the Hebrew prophecies the author is trying to cite. We have geographical errors. The list goes on and on. They are not reliable historically, especially given that there were many more gospels before being destroyed and these four selected based on dogma and a belief in the four corners of the world.

However, even if you don't believe they were divinely inspired, they are still primary documents which were written within 30-70 years of the time being described, which is a whole lot better than we have for a lot of other historical figures. So, why should they be not admitted as evidence? While they obviously contain some bias, a good historian should be able to read through that.

There are some very basic things one can figure out via the gospels. That's what I and BeforetheFoundation are discussing.

 

[BL2KTN]

Can't get a response into the rest yet... busy with work. That said, I have read and enjoyed it. Hopefully this weekend...

 

[BeforeTheFoundation]

I somehow missed that you responded to my El/YHWH post.

A person who admits when they're wrong? You and I are going to have a lot of fun. It's dull discussing things with people who are more interested in winning than the truth.

Indeed, I do try to admit when I am incorrect. Actually, this is a good opportunity to check in. I do hope that we are all having fun. I know that I for one can certainly get a little fired up over all of this. But at the end of the day it is meant to be enjoyable. We are all after the truth and we are all here because we enjoy debating.

Anyway, back to the debate. Even though I admitted I was incorrect concerning the comparison of what GCC and I were saying that still doesn't change the fact that I am correct on the three general uses of the word which you seem to have neglected to respond to.

This is important, because I am seeking to prove that אל does not always mean the Canaanite god. That is the crux of this debate as that is what your argument, namely that the Hebrews worshiped El even into the Exile (when the redactor worked) hinges upon.

Well, you're going to have to give me some references to refute this.

Well, let's start simply with the lexicons shall we?

BDB lists words by root. All of these words are listed under the root אלהּ but as the quote makes clear they see this as dubious. Please note, do to some formatting issues some of these quotes are transliterated (with very basic transliteration).

אלהּ (assumed as root of el (eloah) elohim god, God, but question intricate, & conclusion dub. It is uncertain whether el and elohim are from the same root. Following are the chief theories: 1.a. Thes makes el & elohim distinct, and both really primitive, but associates el in treatment with el strong, Pt. of root 'wl; strong, according to Thes, being derived from mng. be in front of;... b. el &elohim distinct; former fr. 'wl strong ; latter pl. of אלהּ... 2. el & elohim possibly connect; el=leader, lord, fr root 'wl... 3.a el & elohim connected, & both fr. a root אלהּ... b. el fr. root אלהִ [n.b. no hireq is meant to be under that he] (not אלה&#1468 & elohim expanded from el... c. similarly, el, being very early & common Shemitic word, formed pl elohim fr which sing eloah was afterward inferred... 4 el (eloah, elohim disregarded) fr. root 'lh stretch out to, reach after...

BDB sought to give the largest possible explanations in their day (it's been a while) so they offer several different theories. All but one of them conclude that elohim is not the plural of el. As we will see, more recent scholarship has ruled out that one theory that does claim that.

Holliday:

אל: ... pl. אֵלִים Ex 15:11 אֵלִם : very old Semitic term for deity, often appearing in compounds with proper names (אֱלֹהִים does not make compounds)...

eloah & elohim...

This shows that he is pairing el with the plural elim and eloah with the plural elohim.

Now that we have looked at the scholarly material, let's look at what the internet has to say:

Following your links we have theopedia saying this:

“The word Elohim is the plural of El (or possibly Eloah)

From what I can tell the Hebrew-Streams link does not ever make your claim (perhaps I missed it?)

Hebrew4Christians says the same thing as theopedia (indeed, clearly one copied from the other):

“The word Elohim is the plural of El (or possibly Eloah)

Catholic encyclopedia says this:

Elohim has been explained as a plural form of Eloah or as plural derivative of El.

And finally Wikipedia says this:

It is generally thought that Elohim is a formation from eloah, the latter being an expanded form of the Northwest Semitic noun il (אֵל, ʾēl[3]).

So each of your citations actually support my claim, not yours (except the one that doesn't seem to mention it at all). They all at the very least allow for the idea that אֱלֹהִים is the plural of אלוהּ. Several of them make the point that אלוהּ may be an expanded version of אל (which I say in my original post). Either way, though, your citations do not support the idea that אֱלֹהִים must be the plural of אל but say that it could be the plural of אלוהּ. Now scholars say more than that it could be. It in fact is.

Lets go ahead and look at why.

To pluralize a masculine noun in Hebrew you (generally) add the 'im' ending (י&#1501. The important thing to remember here is that the ending is NOT 'him'.

What that means is that if you take the word אל and pluralize it, you do not get אֱלֹהִים as you claim. Instead you get אֵלִים. That' s incredibly basic, and if it weren't for the 'baggage' of th fact that most first year Hebrew students 'know' the word אֱלֹהִים so well, then any first semester student would give אֵלִם as the plural of אל (indeed, pluralization is usually the first thing one covers after looking at the alef-bet (alphabet).

Now let's look at how we actually do get אֱלֹהִים. Well, one only need take off the 'im' (י&#1501 ending and see that we get the singular אלוהּ (the fact that there is an extra waw (looks like a lower case L for those not in the know) need not concern us overmuch as it simply means that the singular is being written with full spelling. This is an incredibly common phenomena and has absolutely no bearing on the argument above.

Or, going the other way, starting with the singular form אלוהּ how would we pluralize it? Well, we would add the 'im' ending and we would get אֱלֹהִים.

Anyway, what becomes clear is that:

אל pluralizes into אֵלִים
אלוהּ pluralizes into אֱלֹהִים

I have supported this with academic works, the very links you provided, and an explanation of how to pluralize the nouns. I hope this puts this particular side debate to rest.

The reason why all of this is important is as follows. Your argument rests on the notion that אל only ever means ‘El’ the god of the Canaanites, and yet you cannot even pluralize it properly. Why should we trust you to know what it ‘really’ means?

and given that when not translated in a "plural majestic" manner, "elohim" is always translated into an English plural.

Indeed, and as I said before and reiterated in this post, despite the fact that elohim is not the plural of el, the words both semantically mean god(s). I'm not arguing that elohim is not a plural word for 'god' merely that linguistically speaking it's not the plural of the word el.

If it had happened organically, we wouldn't have a plural acting as both plural and singular, while at the same time the singular exists.

No, this is actually precisely what we would expect. See my next 2 responses.

It is a jarring grammar rule, and one that I think gives ample evidence to a quick and clumsy change.

Actually we see other odd pluralization rules very similar to this in Hebrew so it's not actually that jarring. Pluralization in Hebrew is not the same as in English.

Natural language evolution tends to invent new words and phrases for new concepts

This is simply not true. Old words are appropriated for new meanings all the time. That's simply how language evolution works. In fact, it is relatively rare that someone will invent a new word whole-clothe (That happens fairly frequently now, but that's more of an internet phenomena than anything else).

Genesis is generally accepted to have already become scripture to the Hebrews pre-Exile

No it's not. Some scholars believe that the individual documents had taken on significance, but the book of Genesis? Simply no.

Therefore, this passage wasn't going to be dropped regardless, and it was up to monotheistic priests to reinterpret how this scripture could be understood.

But we see the redactor significantly tweaking away polytheistic themes in other passages? Why would he so brazenly include this mention of 'El'?

The first word, "el" refers to the god, the phrase "elohe" specifies that this god el is the god of the following word, and "yisra'el" is the place or person of which this god rules. It's like saying "God, god if Israel." The first "god" can't be ambiguous because the following "god" in the phrase forces it to be specific.

You are correct, the first "el" is to be understood in specifics, but not necessarily as 'El' of the Canaanite pantheon. By the time it is redacted it certainly refers to YHWH. Now, if you are arguing that in the very earliest strains of the tradition of this story that it referred to the Canaanite deity, I would remind you that I have maintained from the very beginning that it is perfectly possible that the Hebrews worshiped El (the Canaanite deity) and combined it with YHWH at a later date. Indeed, that may be what we are seeing in this very passage (see my models above for more info).

My point was that it is worrisome that it takes effort to go against the constraining statement of faith... in order to make a statement of fact.

There was no extra straining. I am a historian, my concern in all of this is not faith. The only reason that I brought the faith part up was to explain to any of the readers that are on these boards specifically for faith (not uncommon seeing as it is christianforums.com) that I was specifically going against the faith claim. Indeed, my suspicion is that you and I are much more alike on this than you think.

I applaud you for using facts and evidence to determine your position.

Thank you, but don't applaud too loudly as I am merely doing my job. If I ignored facts then I wouldn't be good at what I do.

I don't think I misunderstood anything since you are stating my position when you state your position. The Hebrews were Canaanites, but the Hebrews were not the Canaanites.

Then admittedly I must have misunderstood what you were saying/implying. It seemed to me that when you were so willing to conclude...

Neither did I.

This isn't the part I said you were incorrect about, that comes later.

The history of the Hebrews as recorded in Genesis fits neatly within a Canaanite linguistic and cultural view. Context is everything, and again I was speaking specifically about the linguistic evidence in the genealogies there. We're in agreement that the Hebrew religion evolved over time in messy fashion as influenced by 1) Canaanite religious views, 2) religions of other areas, and 3) monotheistic Yahwism.

I'm confused. You admit that the Hebrews should not be identified one-for-one with the CAnaanites. And you admit that not all Canaanites (including the Hebrews) had identical culture. But you still seem to insist that they all worshiped El until an incredibly late date?

Moreover, "The history of the Hebrews as recorded in Genesis fits neatly within a Canaanite linguistic and cultural view." is not entirely accurate either. Certain aspects of it do, but a lot of it betrays later developments as well (notably Babylonian).

The point is that the Hebrew narrative of their history is obviously false

I can certainly agree with this.

But not because of this:

since the names of those pre-patriarchal characters should not have featured a Canaanite language reference to any god in their names.

Again, you are erected too firm a way between 'Canaanite' language and Hebrew language. el is a Semitic word that means or pertains to deity. Why would we not expect to see it feature in Hebrew names?

Furthermore, I think you're the one oversimplifying... you'll note that none of the names in the oldest genealogies feature "yahweh," while many feature "el".

Indeed, and this fits perfectly with several of the models that I put forward in my earlier post.

I understand not being able to respond to my entire lengthy post, but you must keep in mind that I wrote it all to be read at once.

I don't know what the heck you're talking about in this one.

Indeed, I assumed that when you mentioned that the Hebrew people did not come in from outside of the land (at least primarily) that you were going to the usual critique against the Exodus. I apologize for making that assumption. Disregard that paragraph.

I'll respond to the rest later... it takes me a while to get through these posts and I'm sort on time.

Fair enough. I know the feeling.

It seems that we agree much more than we disagree.

I was going to say much the same thing. I do think that you are still mistaken in assuming that אל must always be the name for the Canaanite deity. For that, please refer to the models that I provide in my last post.

 

[BL2KTN]

Still buried with work, but hope to have a chance to respond tomorrow.

 

[GratiaCorpusChristi]

1. Yeshua was a Jew.
2. He was born sometime between 6 and 4 BCE
3. He began his work during the Emporership of Tiberius, the procuratorship of Pilate, and tetrarchy Herod Antipas.
4. He was believed to be, by himself and his followers, to be descended from David (whether he was or not is irrelevant, the historical claim is not that he was descended from David, something that, even bracketing the historical question of whether or not David himself is historical, would not have been possible to prove in the the first century, let alone today. The claim is that he and his followers believed he was) - I see no hard evidence of this claim. All we have are the assertions of flawed gospels from decades later, likely advocating this position in order to validate prophecy.
5. He spoke Aramaic as his primary language
6. He was likely literate - Again, I see no evidence of this whatsoever.
7. He may have spoken some Greek (he was a craftsmen around the time that Greek cities were being built and likely worked there) and he may have been able to speak or possibly read some Hebrew though it would not have been his primary language. - Speculative
8. He was probably trained as a tekton (stone mason) and likely worked in the Decopolis which was being built at the time. - Zero evidence
9. As a young man he was a follower of the apocalyptic teacher John the Baptist - We have essentially no information about the young Yeshua. This is bogus.
10. He was baptized by John, we don't know where or when
11. He lived and taught primarily in Galilee
12. He taught primarily on the outskirts of town - Towns were tiny... I don't know how descriptive this point can be.
13. His primary home base in his early ministry was Caupernaum. I don't see any hard evidence for this.
14. However, he was an itinerant preacher. Probably, but there's no hard evidence for this.
15. His journeys took him relatively far afield, probably even into the Gentile regions like the Decapolis. - There is no evidence for this.
16. Nonetheless, he believed that his message was directed at Israel. - Likely, but still conjecture. The gospels are not reliable in this regard.
17. However, his message had resonance before his death with people outside of the Jewish community proper. - No evidence.
18. Following in the footsteps of his teacher John he was apocalyptic in style. - Probably, but again, speculative.
19. He had disagreements with other Jewish sects, but specifically not the (main) one of the Gospels which were inserted because of later concerns. His primary foes would not have been the Pharisees with whom he shared a fair amount in common, but rather the Herodians and Saduccees. - Because we don't know his teachings, we have no clue who he would have disagreed with. We have fictional narratives that tell us who fictional Jesus would have disagreed with, but nothing historical.
20. His teaching included an expectation for judgment by the Son of Man. - Zero evidence.
21. one of his primary teaching tools was the parable or aphorism. The authors of the parables, sure... but again, no evidence that Yeshua did.
22. he preached a generally new interpretation of the "Kingdom of God" and this was central to his teaching (and one of the reasons he was killed)
23. He believed that God's reign was only partially realized - No evidence.
24. However, he believed that in very short order that Kingdom was to be fulfilled (indeed, he would have been quite baffled that we are still having this conversation) - This was the belief of his followers decades later, but hard to say what he thought.
25. This belief would not have been all that odd, except that he believed that he would somehow be the one to bring in God's reign in fullness. - No evidence.
26. Some scholars maintain that he believed that he was the messiah. However others do not. - Some think he had green eyes, others do not.
27. The lowest common denominator though is that he certainly believed he was a prophet
28. He believed that when he marched on Jerusalem God would vindicate him. No evidence.
29. He was tried before Pontius Pilate, who, unlike the what the Gospels claim, had no reason to care if this random Jew died.
30. Unlike some other sects, i.e. the Essenes of the DSS community, Jesus believed that the re-dedication of the Temple after the Abomination of Desecration worked. As such he worshiped at the Temple and believed that it was a good thing
31. However, he had many disagreements with the Temple authorities.
32. These were mirrored by the differences he had with the Saduccees and the Herodians which essentially revolved around the treatment of the poor. - No evidence.
33. When he interpreted Torah he tended to decrease the burden of following the law in a similar way to Hillel.
34. Because of this he was popular in the rural areas but unpopular in the city of Jerusalem. Speculative.
35. Unlike the Saduccees, but like the Pharisees, Jesus believed in the resurrection of the dead (notice not 'going to heaven' like modern evangelicals, but a real bodily resurrection; coming back to life; and certainly not just saving souls) which would happen at the end times when God judged his people. Difficult to say given the gospels are advocacies for their authors' contradictory positions (and then handpicked by those who agreed with these four over the others).
36. he 'performed' deeds that were believed to be miracles by eyewitnesses e.v. exorcisms and healings (n.b. performing such things does not mean that they are effective. But even non-Christian scholars claim that he was doing things that were interpreted as miracles. I don't mean some kind of charlatanism, but more like saying and believing he was casting out demons even though demons aren't real, indeed, even Crossan believes that the people thought he was performing miracles). This point gives such breadth in what could have occurred that it is rendered nearly meaningless.
37. one of these was the healing of Bartimeaus which is a particularly salient example as several scholars cite it as one of the prime examples of how oral tradition functions. - Oral tradition and historical fact seem to be at odds... please explain.
38. Simon of Cyrene, father of Rufus assisted in the carrying of Jesus' cross No evidence.
39. Of the Seven Last Words of Jesus, the one that has the highest probability is the cry of deriliction And the highest probability of all is that none are true.
40. Yeshua taught a version of Judaism that resulted in his death.
41. This version of Judaism is more than simply being nice to each other like a frightening number of modern Christians claim, it was something that would be offensive to the authorities, i.e. it preached insurrection or at least something that looked like insurrection.
42. He caused a riot in the Temple on a feast day. Most scholars would claim this is the primary reason he was executed. Replace "riot" with "commotion" and I'd agree.
43. He preached the Kingdom of God in opposition to the any theological justification for the Kingdom of Rome No evidence.
44. Jesus prayed to God as Abba Zero, zilch, nada evidence.
45. He taught his disciples to pray for the coming kingdom in similar terms (a tradition which comes to us in the Lord's Prayer). - Requires Q Source be historically accurate... simply can't be known.
46. Yeshua had disciples.
47. His disciples were primarily lower class individuals mostly from Galilee (read backwater) like himself.
48. Many were fisherman and they spent much time on and around the water
49. After his death some of those disciples were persecuted.
50. While not specifically about Jesus, since you included what happened to the disciples after Jesus' death I will add this: Regardless of whether it actually happened, the disciples believed that Jesus bodily came back from the dead. I know that that will be contentious, but keep in mind what this list is. It is not me attempting to prove these things, merely to state what scholars of the Third Quest believe to be true about the historical Jesus and they uniformly agree that the disciples believed that Jesus had come back from the dead, even though many of the scholars don't believe it happened (even some of the ones claiming to be Christian) - No evidence, and you knew that when you typed it.
51. We know at least 8 of the names of the disciples. - How?
52. Jesus gave Peter some kind of leadership. - That depends on the assumption that Peter didn't assume leadership afterwards.
52. We know Jesus' parents names
53. Jesus taught subversive teachings about the nature of blessedness. - No evidence outside of unreliable gospels.
54. Yeshua was (likely) from Nazareth.

If you'd like to answer my objections to the red ones, I'd enjoy reading your responses.

Gotta stop here for the day. Also, I need to ask all responders to drop your word counts - I can't keep up at this rate.

All of your objections aside (which I hope to get to, at least in a representative sample), proving these data is not the point. The point is that this list largely reflections the consensus of mainstream Jesus scholarship across denominations, religions, and continents.

And, to go back to the whole reason this was brought up, it may pose challenges to forms of Christian belief, but it does not pose any challenge to Christianity qua Christianity.

 

[huffnpuff]

I personally believe that Yahweh is the physical manifestation of the spiritual El Elyon, the express image of the invisible God, none other than Jesus.

The name Yahweh is not spoken by Jews when reading the Torah, instead they say Adonai, or Lord. The name Yahweh does not appear once in the new testament, instead we have Jesus. Jesus is Lord. Jesus is Adonai. Jesus is Yahweh.

I'm not big on Trinity doctrine, I find it confusing as nowhere do I see in scripture the Holy Spirit described as a person. A person has a soul. God is Spirit, the Holy Spirit is spirit, only Jesus is a person with a soul. There is only 1 person in the Godhead, not 3. One person with 3 manifestations.

I understand the nature of the Godhead like speaking to a friend through Skype, although it may seem like we are talking to a screen, we are actually talking to a person. In the same way, just as the image of our friend on the screen is the person, so Jesus is the image of God, and the Holy Spirit is like the signal through which communication is achieved, God speaks to us through Jesus by the Holy Spirit, and when we speak to Jesus, we are speaking to God. Father, Son and Holy Spirit are all simultaneous manifestations of 1 God. This makes much more sense to me than traditional Trinity doctrine, which is even confusing to those who believe it and try to teach or explain it.

Our undivided faith in Jesus is faith well placed.

 

[BL2KTN]

I'm finally back... let me know if I need to respond to any old posts.