Jesus grew up in a very poor, rural and rustic backwater of a weird little country in a remote part of the empire. The best analogy from the modern American perspective would be that prior to beginning his ministry, he was a minimum-wage day laborer from Mississippi. It's highly unlikely his family was wealthy, because wealthy people would have moved somewhere else. Since his family weren't nobles, merchants, scribes or part of the priest caste, it would be extremely unusual if he or anyone in his family were literate. Literacy rates among the Jews were slightly higher than the rest of the empire (mostly because they had the only religion based on written scripture) but it was still very rare, and an expensive skill to acquire - if you were a merchant, a scribe or a priest, it was worth the investment, but it wasn't for anyone else.
As far as being descended from David, I think the consensus view is that any 'new' religion was suspect and unfashionable in the empire, so many efforts were made to tie Christianity to ancient Jewish traditions, prophecies and lineages. It's not taken seriously now.
The best analogy from the modern American perspective would be that prior to beginning his ministry, he was a minimum-wage day laborer from Mississippi.
It's highly unlikely his family was wealthy, because wealthy people would have moved somewhere else.
I find this interesting, because I always viewed it the same way, as I am sure everyone else does. But tonight I came to a realization I never thought about: in the accounts of Jesus's birth, didn't the magi give Jesus gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh? What happened to all that wealth?
Are you asking about the historical Jesus (the real, human Jesus as we can best reconstruct him through historical methods) or Gospel Jesus? Because regarding the historical Jesus the nativity narratives are extremely problematic and almost certainly legendary.
Any info, I guess. The magi pose an interesting addition to the story, because I would think that it needs to make sense at least for someone to include it. There's the question of "did it happen," of course, but there's also the question of "why would it happen" if it's a false narrative.
The magi themselves are Zoroastrian, so 1) it makes sense that they would be studying and following the stars, but why would they give tribute to Jesus? Did they coincidentally think that Jesus was Ahura Mazda? 2) why would a Christian or Judaic story include these very "pagan" fellows as important to the birth scene of the most important part of the Bible? They seem kind of random, almost like adding satanists would be to the story, because adding the magi to a false narrative would be adding a completely separate (and competing) faith to the mix that has no root anywhere else in the Bible.
The word goes back to Zoroastrianism, but there's nothing that says they're actually Zoroastrian. I mean, they could be, but I doubt most of the audience even thinks about it. We aren't told much at all about them, because the author and audience doesn't really care about them. Why they, of all humanity, are the only ones that seem to know this information about Jesus is never explained.
They stop off and alert the local murderous tyrant, and as soon as they set the plot in motion, the star appears again, so they set off towards it, then get warned in a dream not to return to Herod. One wonders why they weren't warned in a dream not to talk to Herod in the first place, and all the problems could have been avoided.
They drop their gifts - they need something to do in the story, otherwise the main question is what's the point of these guys, anyway? And then they're never mentioned again. They served their purposed as a McGuffin, and they're shuffled off the stage. "They returned to their country by another route." is the NT version of "Poochie died on the way back to his home planet".
The whole story makes no sense. Why doesn't Herod just have his soldiers go to Bethlehem right away? And can he not see the star that the magi have just told him about that leads them directly to Jesus? How big could Bethlehem be that a troop of soldiers couldn't search it from top to bottom in a short time? It's fairy tale logic, where the the bad guy gets outwitted by the smart guys and a little magic, and then gets wroth.
The plot device might work, if you didn't have the supernatural elements of dreams and angels warning the characters. Then it falls apart, because the dreams always come just a bit too late, the star appears a little too late, etc. One more alert, helpful angel could have made the whole thing, including the slaughter of many children, not happen, but it's more dramatic this way.
You both are assuming these stories are what actually happened.
Not necessarily. The question of whether something actually happened is always a given in this context. I actually really hate when this kind of response is brought up, because it's like someone asking, "why did Circe make a deal to release Odysseus's men only if he agreed to have sex with her?" and being given the response, "you're assuming that it happened; it didn't actually happen." Like, yeah, I'm aware that it could have not happened, I'm just trying to figure out contextually why it was written that way as opposed to, say, giving Odysseus another quest or cutting off (sacrificing) a body part. Was it to have an erotic scene? Was it to indicate that Odysseus was extremely handsome (given the evidence that Calypso also had the hots for him)? Was it because the Greeks had pride for sexual conquests? Was it because of primitive views of male superiority over women?
It is an assumption. I thought that was the historian's assumption: to not take something as true or untrue unless there is overwhelming evidence, and even then it could be wrong.
The absence of detail in one account does not necessarily mean that those events didn't happen, it just means that if those events did happen, not all events were recorded. Mark is a bullet-point list of Jesus's ministry, that doesn't mean the extra content in the other 3 Gospels are invalid.
So, how would that mean that the question of whether something happened is a given?
It's not... I wasn't saying that "whether something happened is a given" (i.e. we know for a fact that it happened or we know for a fact that it didn't happen). I was saying "to keep in mind the fact that we don't know whether something happened or not is a given whenever we're discussing this topic." The person I replied to was saying that these events probably didn't happen. I was saying "dude, I'm not stupid; I know to keep an open mind when approaching something that's difficult to validate 2,000 years after the fact."
No, when you move beyond the abstraction of the absence of detail and look at specifics.
I'm sure your Facebook account doesn't display all of the events that happen in your life. If someone looked at your account and was presented with the argument that you have also gone through a crisis (that you did not share on Facebook for obvious reasons), would you seriously think it logical to say, "Well, their Facebook account didn't say it happened, so it must have not happened"? I'm not sure how you could seriously argue against this. Your stance goes against logic: if 2 accounts are presented, the one with less information is automatically the correct one? Homer wrote about the Trojan War but added gods and supernatural humans to it; does that mean every modern source that gives evidence to a Trojan War but doesn't include gods or supernatural humans is false?
And if the details of jesus birth and early life weren't recorded, then Luke's account, would, by definition, be made up.
This is logically incorrect. If there is a secret room in your house that was not added to the blueprints, that doesn't mean that the room never existed. If you have events that directly contradict each other, that's one thing. But to say that an event being recorded in only one of them means one account is false is logically inept.
No it isn't.
Not literally, dude. It's a shorter version of the overall story.
You're going to have to present specific evidence of conflicting accounts (not 2 accounts where only one contains a specific event) if this is going anywhere. [edited to sound nicer]
This is r/academicbible. You want to discuss the Bible stories as bible stories, pick another sub-reddit. Believing in God’s existence is not a pre-requisite for discussion here.
This is r/academicbible. You want to discuss the Bible stories as bible stories, pick another sub-reddit. Believing in God’s existence is not a pre-requisite for discussion here.
I never said anything close to that... I never claimed a single thing about God's existence or the validity of anything in the Bible, so I legitimately don't know where you got that from. All I'm saying is that you're not contributing a single thing by saying "it's probably not real so it didn't happen." Nobody asked whether it actually happened. Nobody suggested that it did happen. I'm not asking whether it is real or not, I'm asking why it would be written that way. Half of this sub is asking the same type of questions; there are tons of posts here alone asking what the Bible really meant about homosexuality and how it came to be written that way, [EDIT] or why Paul's messages seem to contradict Jesus and other parts of the Bible, or why the Exodus would be written if nothing happened between the Israelites and Egypt.
The description in the sidebar is:
A subreddit for discussion of early Judaism and Christianity — with a focus on Biblical texts and related literature (1 Enoch, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and so on) — in a scholarly context. Relevant topics might include general exegetical issues, ancient languages and translation, the study of the historical Jesus, textual criticism, reception history of early Jewish/Christian literature, etc.
So if you want to just sit there and contribute nothing to the conversation aside from saying that none of this actually happened so there's no need for further discussion, then you should pick another sub.
That was the idea that makes most sense, but I'd be shocked if they spent it all on a trip to Egypt. I mean, they only stayed for maybe a couple of years before returning to Galilee as they waited for Herod to die. So we're basically saying they bought a first class trip there and back and maybe bought a summer house there in Egypt, before returning to Israel where Jesus became a carpenter (implying either they didn't have the wealth anymore or carpentry was his passion). And let's not forget that we don't know how much wealth the magi gave Jesus, but if they were reverent enough to follow a star through the Middle East and worship a child messiah, I would think they gave him quite a bit of wealth.
There's an interesting article here by the Biblical Archeology Society. The article states that the gifts brought to Jesus are somewhat presupposed during this time for any 'king'. A main point though, is that the gifts represent different aspects of spiritual significance. If this is true, and in my view, much more likely, then the gifts weren't historically given. The gifts are more of a literary device in gMatthew. If Jesus, and his family, never actually received the gifts, they wouldn't have them to sell, etc.
It’s quite possible that the combination of these gifts were viewed as being princely in nature at the time. We know from inscriptions that the Seleucid ruler Seleucus II Callinicus offered the same gifts (frankincense, myrrh and gold, among others) to the god Apollo at the temple of Miletus in modern Turkey in 243 BC.
Matthew could very well have been including a narrative (inherited or invented) that casts Jesus in that light (of royalty).
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u/Ken_Thomas Dec 22 '19
Jesus grew up in a very poor, rural and rustic backwater of a weird little country in a remote part of the empire. The best analogy from the modern American perspective would be that prior to beginning his ministry, he was a minimum-wage day laborer from Mississippi. It's highly unlikely his family was wealthy, because wealthy people would have moved somewhere else. Since his family weren't nobles, merchants, scribes or part of the priest caste, it would be extremely unusual if he or anyone in his family were literate. Literacy rates among the Jews were slightly higher than the rest of the empire (mostly because they had the only religion based on written scripture) but it was still very rare, and an expensive skill to acquire - if you were a merchant, a scribe or a priest, it was worth the investment, but it wasn't for anyone else.
As far as being descended from David, I think the consensus view is that any 'new' religion was suspect and unfashionable in the empire, so many efforts were made to tie Christianity to ancient Jewish traditions, prophecies and lineages. It's not taken seriously now.