Elaine Pagels on Jesus's Historicity

[John Cole]

Today there are many scholars who are looking for the historical Jesus. Not a new endeavor, but certainly with a great new impetus provided by these new sources. There are those who say, with John Dominic Crossan, that Jesus was a peasant Jewish sage of some kind, and there are others who say, with another group of scholars, that Jesus was, on the contrary, an apocalyptic teacher of the coming end of time. Both groups claimthat they can get to the real Jesus. And that if you read the sources right, you make the right selection of the sayings and the materials, you will find the real Jesus. I have doubts about that. It seems to me that history doesn't get you there. It would be fascinating if it did. If we had videotapes, if we had transcripts. We don't have those. We have... a series of refractions of some extraordinary person, seen from a variety of quite different viewpoints. We have fragments, we have sayings, we have impressions, we have vignettes. That's what we have. And actually, as I read them, they're quite different, and they're quite contradictory. They may not be irreconcilable, but to me, it's not satisfactory to go back to one type of evidence and say, "this is the real Jesus," or," that's the real Jesus." What I see is that as far back as history will take us, we see an enormous range of different people. Now there's nothing really so dismaying about that. I mean, what if we saw the origins of the Christian movement as, in fact, a movement with strong disagreements, with powerfully different perspectives, people in conversation with one another struggling to understand what is the most important truth of their lives. Is that so different from the way we look for truth today?

This might sound as though one were saying, "We'll never know who Jesus is." But that question is only because the perspective from which I spoke is a historian's perspective. I can't get back as a historian to Jesus. I don't think history will get you that far. Now that hasn't stopped Christians, all over the world, millions and millions of them, from having an intimate relationship with Jesus. Whether they're Russian Orthodox or whether they're Roman Catholics or whether they're Baptist or whether they're Quakers. So there is certainly access, religious access, in these sources to a spiritual presence of Christ, which is quite different from what would you say as a historian. Because there are many people today who base their lives on a relationship with Jesus as they perceive it.

The fact that we don't have historical sources to get back to the so-called real Jesus has never stopped the movement from existing. It's very powerful, and that to me is totally fascinating. The sense that millions of people all over the world have found, in the figure of Jesus, a spiritual focus for their lives is absolutely extraordinary, it's fascinating. How does that happen, particularly when we don't have a guaranteed way to get you back there in some factual way?

Note that Pagels is a Christian.

[udontknowmickey]

For those of you who are interested in the material about the historical Jesus (and live in the area), there actually will be a debate between the aformentioned Crosson and a prominant Christian apologist James White in Seattle.

http://www.aomin.org/cruise/debate.htm

25 bucks at the door.

[RJT]

The quest for the historical Jesus actually started in the 18th century. Hermann Samuel Reimarus initiated the quest.

In the 19th century Albert Schweitzer was one of the leading scholars in the field.

[ QUOTE ]
The quest for the historical Jesus actually started in the 18th century. Hermann Samuel Reimarus initiated the quest.

In the 19th century Albert Schweitzer was one of the leading scholars in the field.

[/ QUOTE ]

http://www.jesusneverexisted.com/scholars.html

Bottom of the page

[srm80]

there were 2 known historians in the city where Jesus was said to be executed, at the time of Jesus' death, but there are no known historical documents writing about the death of Christ. Why is this?

[PairTheBoard]

That view of Elaine Pagels is pretty close to how I see it. While the work done by the Jesus Seminar is interesting I don't think it's anywhere close to the last word on the subject.

PairTheBoard

[sexdrugsmoney]

[ QUOTE ]

Note that Pagels is a Christian.

[/ QUOTE ]

I didn't know this and suspect she is a 'gnostic christian' and she seems to favor the gospel of Thomas.

It is important to note that the earliest fragment of the Gospel of Thomas we have dates back to 200 AD (over 100 years after "Revelations" - the last book of the New Testament) was written, and contains some strange information that the original Christian groups rejected: (all texts in quote-form taken from the Gospel of Thomas - Patterson/Meyer translation)

[ QUOTE ]

14. Jesus said to them, "If you fast, you will bring sin upon yourselves, and if you pray, you will be condemned, and if you give to charity, you will harm your spirits.

[/ QUOTE ]

Not only does this disagree with the fasting of Moses in the Torah but also in the Gospels which talks about Jesus fasting and teaching his diciples how to pray.

But then just 13 verses later the Gospel of Thomas says:

[ QUOTE ]

27. "If you do not fast from the world, you will not find the (Father's) kingdom. If you do not observe the sabbath as a sabbath you will not see the Father."

[/ QUOTE ]

Strange given what we read in verse 14.

[ QUOTE ]

37. His disciples said, "When will you appear to us, and when will we see you?"

Jesus said, "When you strip without being ashamed, and you take your clothes and put them under your feet like little children and trample then, then [you] will see the son of the living one and you will not be afraid."

[/ QUOTE ]

?

[ QUOTE ]

8. Jesus said, "The Father's kingdom is like a person who wanted to kill someone powerful. While still at home he drew his sword and thrust it into the wall to find out whether his hand would go in. Then he killed the powerful one."

[/ QUOTE ]

?

And the final saying which is perhaps the most perculiar o the Gospel of Thomas

[ QUOTE ]

114. Simon Peter said to them, "Make Mary leave us, for females don't deserve life."

Jesus said, "Look, I will guide her to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every female who makes herself male will enter the kingdom of Heaven."

[/ QUOTE ]

I will only say:

?!?

Cheers,
SDM

[David Sklansky]

Where you been? Did you see my apolgy to you about Pair The Board?

[AdamL]

[ QUOTE ]
The sense that millions of people all over the world have found, in the figure of Jesus, a spiritual focus for their lives is absolutely extraordinary, it's fascinating. How does that happen, particularly when we don't have a guaranteed way to get you back there in some factual way?

[/ QUOTE ]

The most obvious possible answer is that it happens to be true. That all that stuff about being able to know God personally and have an intimate relationship with Him, happens to be literal truth. That it is not a mass insanity (as Freud would believe) nor any other bend-over-backwards theory to explain the meow of a cat.

The whole thing is only really very difficult when you rule out that most simple obvious possibility. But it never ceases to be extraordinary, regardless of which way you look at it. Because, it is, and we are not that blind.

remember when the whole western world thought the earth was flat and that demons inhabited people's bodies, causing illness and unmarried sex?

were they all deluded too, or is the obvious answer correct?