"'You mean you've never considered seeking the historical Christ? I know you're not religious, but surely the mystery around him -'
"'Doc, what he was, or if he was, makes only an academic difference. What counts is what people through the ages have believed. My life expectancy isn't enough for me to do the pure research I'd like.'" (p. 56)
Havig could not be wronger. What people have believed counts and what he was or if he was counts - especially if some of what has been believed turned out to be true! If I have done my best to understand the historical Jesus and would jump at the chance to confirm or disconfirm my particular reconstruction of the origin of Christianity. I would also seek out the Buddha. Different questions arise there. No need to confirm or disconfirm an alleged resurrection. And meditation would remain valid whether or not the Buddha existed. But I would certainly seize on any chance to nail down the origin of Christianity. To start with, the ministry would not look anything like pictures in Bible story books but we already know that.
5 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
To be fair to Havig, I think Anderson had to make him say the things which you criticized here. To have Jack go off to do that kind of research would have meant THERE WILL BE TIME would have been a very different kind of book from what Anderson intended.
Also, I think Anderson wanted to avoid possibly causing offense to readers if Jack had done that research, and made "discoveries" either vindicating Christianity's claims about Christ or debunking them.
The best "historical Jesus" studies I know of would be Fr. John Meier's four volume MARGINAL JEW series, of which I have the first three. Exhaustively detailed analysis, and one conclusion Meir made is that there is more of history in the Gospels than others would agree was the case.
Ad astra! Sean
I've never been a believer but I've always assumed that the Gospels incorporated at least considerable data from around the period of Christ's life, and that some of them were composed no more than a generation or so after the events in question.
They've got a lot of 1st-century AD info.
Of course, one of the distinguishing marks of the Abrahamic religions is that they deal with events (at least after the early parts of the Old Testament) that are or purport to be descriptions of historical events, not things taking place in "mythic time", as most supernatural stories do.
Some of them have been corroborated -- the kingdoms of Judah and Israel are mentioned in Mesopotamian/Assyrian chronicles, for instance.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Your first paragraph: I agree. And I also believe Matthew's Gospel was the first written, probably not much later than AD 50. All four have a good deal of first century AD info, as you said.
And it's not just from Mesopotamia/Assyria that evidence was found for the existence of the Jews! The "Israel" stele of Pharaoh Merneptah (r. 1224-1214 BC) mentions a people called "Israel." Whom the Egyptians claimed to have defeated. It was probably around that time that Moses led the Exodus from Egypt.
And of course the Siloam Tunnel inscription of King Hezekiah gives us direct evidence for the existence of the Jewish kingdoms.
Ad astra! Sean
Ad astra! Sean
Incidentally, one reason the Gospels are interesting is that they're historical documents by the type of people who didn't normally write histories, or if they did they didn't survive (even many of the most famous didn't).
Most Graeco-Roman chronicles are written very much from a top-down perspective. The Gospels were written by much more lowly types, and from a peripheral area well outside the centers of Graeco-Roman civilization.
Parts of the Talmud are useful for the same reason. They have a much more jaundiced view of the "Pax Romana", for example -- not that they dwell on it, but just as a taken-for-granted perspective that the writers all shared.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I agree with what you said about the Gospels (and, by extension, the Epistles). They also happened to be, mostly, some of the oldest Jewish writings not composed by upper class writers.
The lost writings and histories of the Emperor Claudius is one example of works by a "top-down" author I wished had survived.
And besides the Mishnah and the older parts of the Talmuds, I would include the Dead Sea Scrolls, esp., in this context, the non-canonical writings.
Ad astra! Sean
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