The discovery of the “Jesus Tomb”, as predicted, has precipitated questions about the history of Christianity, questions that most Christian clerics or for that matter, Christian scholars cannot answer.
Even though I believe the people involved in promoting the “Jesus Tomb” story on TV, book and DVD are basically just shysters looking to make a buck; I do believe that they raise legitimate questions.
The speed at which various supposedly knowledgably people attacked the Jesus Tomb premise and the arguments they used points to a lack of knowledge of historic facts and an overdependence on Gospel literature that clearly is theological in nature and written to convince and not to relate any sense of actual history.
The problem is that history says nothing about Jesus, what he did and what happened to him. The man that changed the world as we know it had not one word written about him by anybody. That does not mean that we do not have any recorded contemporary data of the period, we do and we have a lot but nowhere is there a mention of Jesus yet most historians agree that he did exist.
In very general terms, our calendar / system of time, places the birth of Jesus at “0” and his death at 30 A.D. The first Christian literature appears as letters from St. Paul around 55 A.D. That is 25 years after Jesus’ death.
Paul did not know Jesus- never met him and judging by the content of his letters, knew nothing first hand about the life of Jesus and very little about what Jesus did and what he taught. Paul’s only contribution to the historicity of Jesus was to tell us that Jesus had several brothers and one of them was called James and that James was the leader of the Jerusalem Community of Jesus followers – that is it!
This community was not a Christian community as we know the word Christian. It was a community of observant Jews that were somehow related to Jesus; either by blood or by philosophical conviction.
What then happened after the crucifixion? What happened to Jesus’ family and his followers? Is it possible to know what happened between 30 C.E. and 60 C.E. – 60 C.E. being the death/murder of James the Just, brother of Jesus and leader of the Jesus Community in Jerusalem?
It is here that I usually hear a lot of opinions that are based somehow on the Gospels as they appear in the Christian Bible and it is here we must pause because we cannot carry on a realistic discussion if we don’t put the Gospels in historic perspective.
More to follow…
Even though I believe the people involved in promoting the “Jesus Tomb” story on TV, book and DVD are basically just shysters looking to make a buck; I do believe that they raise legitimate questions.
The speed at which various supposedly knowledgably people attacked the Jesus Tomb premise and the arguments they used points to a lack of knowledge of historic facts and an overdependence on Gospel literature that clearly is theological in nature and written to convince and not to relate any sense of actual history.
The problem is that history says nothing about Jesus, what he did and what happened to him. The man that changed the world as we know it had not one word written about him by anybody. That does not mean that we do not have any recorded contemporary data of the period, we do and we have a lot but nowhere is there a mention of Jesus yet most historians agree that he did exist.
In very general terms, our calendar / system of time, places the birth of Jesus at “0” and his death at 30 A.D. The first Christian literature appears as letters from St. Paul around 55 A.D. That is 25 years after Jesus’ death.
Paul did not know Jesus- never met him and judging by the content of his letters, knew nothing first hand about the life of Jesus and very little about what Jesus did and what he taught. Paul’s only contribution to the historicity of Jesus was to tell us that Jesus had several brothers and one of them was called James and that James was the leader of the Jerusalem Community of Jesus followers – that is it!
This community was not a Christian community as we know the word Christian. It was a community of observant Jews that were somehow related to Jesus; either by blood or by philosophical conviction.
What then happened after the crucifixion? What happened to Jesus’ family and his followers? Is it possible to know what happened between 30 C.E. and 60 C.E. – 60 C.E. being the death/murder of James the Just, brother of Jesus and leader of the Jesus Community in Jerusalem?
It is here that I usually hear a lot of opinions that are based somehow on the Gospels as they appear in the Christian Bible and it is here we must pause because we cannot carry on a realistic discussion if we don’t put the Gospels in historic perspective.
More to follow…
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