Theos-Talk Archives (August 1996 Message tl00117)

Paul K. Wrote:
>Regarding the various arguments of when Jesus lived or - whether
>he even existed...
>
>I find it interesting, given that the early Christian had so
>many enemies between both Jews and Romans that no one seems to
>have brought up the issue in the early days. Consider -- the
>canonical gospels, which were (according to mant scholars)
>around in one form or another by the early second century. If
>indeed the stories in them were a total fabrication in the sense
>that Jesus either didn't exist or existed a hundred years
>earlier, why didn't some enemies of the Christians catch on to
>this and trumpet the news throughout the Roman empire? The Jews
>were certainly interested in slandering Jesus the best they
>could  - A rumour, quoted by Origen, was in circulation around
>150 AD that Jesus was an illegitemate child of Miriam and a
>Roman soldier Pantera. It's hard for me to believe that the
>Christian's enemies never suggested that the entire person was a
>fabrication - if indeed that was the case. It's just too good an
>opportunity to miss.
>
>Paul K


JHE
Actually the issue of early Christian "enemies" (would critics be
a better term?) came up rather early in this discussion.
Abrantes and I came to the agreement that the winner of a
struggle gets to write its history.  In this case, the Christians
won over their critics.  As a result, there is precious little
documentation concerning Christianity's forerunners and rivals
except from the early church father's point of view.  The Nag
Hammadi find, though a drop in the bucket in comparison to what
has been lost, has thrown a great deal of light on the subject,
but there is much yet to discover.  The Jesus ben Panthera
"rumor" is an example.  Though we can trace this "rumor"  to at
least 70 A.D. and that the Rabbi's claimed the information to
have been taken from actual temple records, we no longer have
those records, and thanks to the Christian persecution of the
Jews, our earliest actual surviving fragment of the Panthera
story dates only to the thirteenth century.

As for the extant documentation of challenges against the Church,
most of this is covered in Blavatsky's ISIS UNVEILED, when serves
as the central core of this discussion.

Therefore, I agree that the question of the historicity of Jesus
was "too good of an opportunity to miss,"  and I submit that it
indeed was not passed up.  But by the fourth century, the
political tide changed and the Church saw to it that most of
those challenges were erased from historical memory.  Of course
we have records of refutations written from the point of view of
the victorious Church: but concerning the records of the loosing
factions, we have only the slightest traces of evidence that they
ever existed at all.


JHE
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   |Jerry Hejka-Ekins,                      |
      |Member TI, TSA, TSP, ULT                |
         |Please reply to: jhe@toto.csustan.edu   |
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