Theos-Talk Archives (January 2005 Message tt01112)

--- In theos-talk@yahoogroups.com, Bart Lidofsky <bartl@s...> wrote:
> Perry Coles wrote:
> There probably was a prominent figure called "Jesus"; while the 
main 
> mention of Jesus by Josephus has been altered so much that we have 
no 
> idea what the original said, there was another, more reliable 
notation 
> where he talks about the death of James, brother of Jesus. The fact 
that 
> he identified James by his brother instead of his father implies 
that 
> whoever this Jesus he was talking about was, he was pretty 
prominent.

True, although it should be said the version of Josephus differs from 
that of Clement of Alexandria and Hegesippus, leaving open some 
reasonable dount whether the James he referred to is the same person 
as James the Just. There is no reason to doubt the story was true, 
but there were a lot of people named James back then. There was also 
another Jesus referred to by Josephus who lived during the prefecture 
of Albinus (long after the death of Pontius Pilate and the earlier 
Jesus) whose legend got confused in later years with that of the 
religious leader. This later Jesus was quite mad and was eventually 
killed for persistently predicting the destruction of Jerusalem. 
Later in the century credit for predicting Jerusalem's doom was 
credited to Jesus of Nazareth, but the less flattering aspects of the 
story (the fellow who really did predict this would be considered 
severely psychotic today) were not fobbed off on his earlier namesake.

As for the historical existence of Jesus, Paul interviewed several 
people who claimed to have known him personally, as did later figures 
such as Polycarp. However garbled his legend may or may not have 
become in later years, it is reasonable to believe that he did 
exist. It is doubtful he was socially prominent in the sense that 
Philo of Alexandria was. As an Essene his goal seems to have been to 
bring down the temple in Jerusalem, which was quite do-able since 
they depended entirely on superstition and not on force of arms to 
stay in business. If he could persuade enough people it made no 
sense to pay the priests to pray for rain and to keep their money in 
their own purses, the whole house of cards would surely come down 
without a spear being thrown. Considering the temple was the 
wealthiest institution in the Roman Empire the people who benefited 
from it would take whatever steps were necessary to maintain their 
cash flow. Killing a single peasant was a trifling matter 
considering what was at stake. Since then taking whatever steps are 
necessary, including killing people, has been standard operating 
procedure for Christian churches, not just to protect cash flow but 
to cover up child molestation and other crimes. Of course the temple 
interests in Judaea lost the whole wad a few years later anyway 
and "Judaism" had to be completely re-invented by the Pharisees, who 
were now top dogs within the sect.