The Historicity of Jesus

The Historicity of Jesus





The Jesus Question : A Conversation with Robert M. Price

via The Thinking Atheist

On June 6, 2015, Seth Andrews presented Dr. Robert M. Price, author and expert on the historicity of Jesus, with several questions in regard to the Christ story.

Book on the Christ-Myth Theory by Robrt M. Price :

  • The Christ-Myth Theory and Its Problems

" ... New Testament scholar Robert M. Price ... has assembled evidence that shows that almost the entire "biography of Jesus" has been created from Greek Old Testament stories and themes and even incorporates motifs from Homer, Euripides, and perhaps Aesop. Because readers will have a hard time "taking it on faith" that the Jesus biography is merely a reworking of previous material, broad swaths of "Old Testament" context are quoted in association with each New Testament equivalent, so readers can judge for themselves whether or not Dr. Price's claim be true: the "Live of Christ" was not fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies; it was, rather, a conscious reworking of earlier literature. ..." -- from Amazon Book Review






Robert M. Price   Lecture

  Subjective Conscious and the Historical Jesus






Richard Carrier  Lecture - Did Jesus Even Exist?

via Atheists United

• Book : On the Historicity of Jesus

• Still Looking for a Historical Jesus?






Richard Carrier  Lecture : Acts as Historical Fiction

via Purdue Non-Theists

Richard Carrier surveys the literary evidence that Acts is not an attempt at recording what actually happened at the origin of Christianity, but is a mostly fabricated story invented as internal propaganda. He also surveys the clues the original story Acts did not have a real historical Jesus behind it.



     

Lena Einhorn on "Historical Jesus"

• Book : A Shift in Time ( 2016 )

• Article : Jesus and the ‘Egyptian Prophet’
  Presented at the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL) Annual Meeting, Chicago, 2012

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"What if historians cannot find Jesus because they have been looking in the wrong places? Or, more to the point, the wrong time? That is the suggestion of television documentarian turned New Testament scholar Lena Einhorn, based on a bold and eye-opening new reading of Josephus. Sometimes it takes new eyes to see old things. While she may not convince everyone, her presentation of sources is so meticulous and clear, no one will be able to say after reading A Shift in Time they have not benefitted by immensely widening their horizons and immeasurably increasing their insight."

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"Lena Einhorn shows that there is still gold in Josephus for New Testament researchers to mine. What a fascinating, striking hypothesis! In the manner described by Thomas Kuhn in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, she makes a fresh start from the ‘anomalous data’ which stumped the conventional paradigm and makes it central to a bold new paradigm. The gauntlet is thrown!"
-- Professor Robert M. Price, author of “The Christ-Myth Theory and Its Problems” and “The Empty Tomb: Jesus Beyond the Grave”

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Lena Einhorn discusses "Shift in Time hypothesis"

Interview with Lena Einhorn ( the interview begins at 00m :21s )

via The Deeper You Go

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Lena Einhorn discusses "the historical Jesus" in her book [ A Shift In Time ] with Phil Robinson of New Skeptics.

The Interview begins at 01m:11s.

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from Lena Einhorn's Reply, September 5, 2016
to Richard Carrier's Review on A Shift in Time

... Interestingly, however, both my conclusions and those of mythicists are sparked by the same thing: the dearth of historical evidence for Jesus existence, outside the New Testament texts. Despite the fact that first century Judea and Galilee are very well covered by Roman and Jewish historians (Josephus in particular), and despite the fact that Jesus in the Gospels is portrayed as someone with a large following, and one whose trial involved both high priests in Jerusalem, as well as the Jewish ruler of Galilee, and the Roman ruler of Iudaea, nothing of this is visible in non-biblical historical narratives of the 30s CE.

The traditional conclusion has been that Jesus must have been much less known in his own time than the Gospels suggest. The alternative explanation has been that he never existed at all.

These are reasonable conclusions, they make sense. If you can’t find him – despite volumes of text covering the era – it is logical to come to the conclusion that he never existed. Or that he was highly unknown.

But what if the evidence for his presence is there?

No, the time shift theory is not built only on the numerous similarities between Jesus and the messianic leader Josephus calls “the Egyptian” (the large following, the prophecy of the tearing down of the walls of Jerusalem, the betrayal to the authorities, the violent reaction of the authorities, the pivotal events on the Mount of Olives, previous time spent in Egypt, and in the wilderness). It is built on a slew of additional parallels between the Gospels and Acts, on the one hand, and events Josephus places in the 40s and 50s CE:

* The activity of robbers, lestai
* Known crucifixions of Jews
* An insurrection (Mark 15:7; Luke 23:19)
* A messianic leader gathering people on the Jordan river, who is subsequently decapitated by the authorities
* An attack on a man named Stephanos (Stephen) on a road outside Jerusalem
* Two co-reigning high priests
* A conflict or war between Galileans and Samaritans, limited in time
* Galileans on their way to Jerusalem for the festivals being stopped in a Samaritan village (Luke 9:51-56)
* A conflict between the Roman procurator and the Jewish king (Luke 23:12)
* A Jewish king with a prominent and influential wife (Matthew 27:19)
* A procurator slaughtering Galileans (Luke 13:1)
* A procurator and a Jewish king sharing jurisdiction over Galilee (Luke 23:6-7)
* Likely noms de guerre such as “the Zealot”, “Boanerges”, “Bariona”, or “Iscariot”
* The death of Theudas (Acts 5:36)
* A messianic leader who had previously spent time in Egypt, and in the wilderness, who prophesies about tearing down the walls of Jerusalem, and who is defeated by the authorities on the Mount of Olives ....

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Reza Aslan Lecture - In Search Of Jesus

via Westminster Townhall Forum

Reza Aslan is the author of the bestselling books No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam and Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth. He is an associate professor of creative writing at the University of California and a research associate at the University of Southern California's Center on Public Diplomacy. He holds a Master of Theological Studies from Harvard Divinity School and a Ph.D. in the history of religion from the University of California, Santa Barbara.





Bart Ehrman Interview

Did Jesus Exist? The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth

via NPR All Things Considered

[ Did Jesus Exist? : The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth ] With his new book Bart Ehrman, historian and professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, wanted to provide solid historical evidence for the existence of Jesus.

"I wanted to approach this question as an historian to see whether that's right or not," Ehrman tells weekends on All Things Considered host Guy Raz.