Well the best is Iberico the famed black foot, and you want to go for Cinco Jotas in quality, but that will run you, even in Spain. Serrano is much cheaper but still really good stuff.
There are several ways to respond. 1) Every messiah obviously believes himself to be special. If God is on your side, you don't expect to be killed. 2) Jesus probably was rather secretive about him being the messiah. In the synoptic gospels he never publically claims to be the messiah. That would of course have been suicide, as it's equal to claiming to be the future king of Israel and only the Roman Senate had the right to crown kings. That would also explain the whole Judas story. What did Judas actually betray? Only Jesus' whereabouts? That's highly unlikely as Jesus made a big scene in the temple just prior. But Judas betraying Jesus' secret teaching would explain everything. That's how Jesus could be charged with claiming to be the king of the Jews.
even from the four gospels, it would seem that even among his own disciples, Jesus was pretty secretive about him being the Messiah, if you recall the exchange with Peter. after Peter confesses Jesus to be the Messiah, Jesus tells him that it was revealed to him by the Father, thereby implying that Jesus himself didn't reveal that he was the Messiah to his disciples. Peter came that conclusion either on his own or through the revelation of "the Father." not only that, but after Peter's confession, Jesus instructs his disciples not to tell anyone that he is the Christ. thus it seems pretty clear that while he went around healing people and performing miracles, Jesus didn't publicly claim to be the Christ, other than through some vague references to his Father, but even in those instances, when he was pressed upon those issues, he didn't come straight out and say he was the Messiah, but rather found ways to get out of those situations.
right. and there was a specific reason for his secrecy, tied into prophecy. why do you think Paul was able to go around to synagogues and use Scripture ( OT ) to show that Jesus was the Messiah?
the only time Jesus publicly "announced" his place as the Messiah was on Palm Sunday, the day he rode into Jerusalem on the donkey colt. what the crowd was calling out ( "Hosannah to the Son of David; blessed is he who comes in the name of the LORD" ) was a reflection of their recognition of the Messiah. that date, 12 Nisan 32 CE, is the date prophesied in the book of Daniel for the Messiah to be revealed. had Jesus declared that he was the Messiah earlier, the Jews would have accomplished his death earlier. but that would not have comported with scripture.
I am not even sure what the point is? What are we arguing about? I think everyone generally agrees that Jesus claimed secretly to be the messiah, right, I mean that isn't too hard to understand. I don't think its hard to see that him claiming messiahship publicly would have gotten him killed rather quickly. It also seems rather reasonable to me that many, many people would have been thinking that he was the messiah, what all with him healing people, teaching large groups, during a time when Israel was under Roman domination and everyone had messiah fever. So what we have is a picture of a healer-teacher building a following and doing things that hint at messiahship, and the public, the government, and his followers possibly inferring that he might be the messiah. I mean even the followers of John the Baptist asked him pointedly about it. All of this comes to a head during Passover, a time of heightened religious feelings and when Jewish attention would have been focused on Jerusalem, when either Jesus makes a full stake to Messiahship or the Jewish authorities feel that he has stirred up the water enough and paint him as such, or both. It seems completely historically reasonable to make the assumption that Jesus would have been secretive about his Messiahness, and completely reasonable for him to talk to his inner circle about the clear and present danger his life was in, and possibly even to have predicted that he would be killed. It also seems completely reasonable to suggest that Jesus had even planned to really try to stir things up during Passover in Jerusalem. None of this requires any miraculous or overly complex explanation. Possibly he over played his hand and got himself killed.
Based on what? In order to take this view, you practically have to assert that everything surrounding his crucifixion didn't happen. You have to think that the government decided to string him up for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. You have to discount the whole biblical account, starting with the Jews demand to have him crucified and including the "King Of The Jews" placard on the cross. Or you can make the claim that Jesus never existed, which makes the entire matter academic. There are people who think it's "historically reasonable" to think that GW Bush instigated the 9/11 events, partially based on the assertion that his cronies would profit from the subsequent invasion of Iraq.
Of course all of the mythological sections of the account are fictional, so we know that much. He either was crucified or everything after the crucifixion wasn't said by him. He might have asserted that he was the Messiah, but much of that dialogue looks to me to be added by Paul or others. I certainly wouldn't take the position that Jesus never existed, but when there is so much that is ahistorical wrapped up in the story, it really does come down to mere academics to figure out what was in there. Even groups of mostly believers like the Jesus Seminar put great deals of quotes attributed to Jesus in pink or less in their Red Letter Gospels.
mythological does not mean fictional. it means part of a tale. it may be the case that a myth is totally lacking in factual accuracy, but that isn't always the case. for example, the "Say it ain't so, Joe" story has achieved the status of legend. whether a zealous journalist fabricated the tale is not known, but i bet most hard-core baseball fans are familiar with the tale and believe it to be true. 90 years later there is no way to establish the veracity of the tale or debunk it. so when you say "the mythological sections", you are claiming that you know that certain things did not actually take place. clearly that's beyond your scope.
I don't think we can assert that the gospel records are fictional just because we don't believe the mythical sections. To claim it was fiction would imply that those who wrote those accounts were making up fictional stories, rather than writing accounts based on what they saw, heard and believed. But those who wrote the stories claimed that they wrote what they believed to be true historical accounts, not works of fiction. Look at the first paragraph from the Gospel of Luke, for example: This book, as well as its sequel, the book of the Acts of the Apostles, is believed to have been written before the end of the first century, no more than a generation after the events described presumably took place. The author was most likely a traveling companion of the Apostle Paul, because in the book of Acts he describes in detail the travels of Paul up to the time they arrived in Rome, and when he talks about Paul's travels he switches his point of view to the first person, as though he was there personally as an eye-witness. The account of the book of Luke is filled with historical references. For example look at the account of the birth of Jesus: Even if we don't buy the supernatural story of the birth of Jesus, it really doesn't sound like the author is trying to write a work of fiction. It rather sounds like he did his research and wrote an account about Jesus based in good faith on what was actually believed by his followers at the time -not that long after the fact- to have happened. We may not believe in demons or divine healing, but that doesn't necessarily mean that Jesus wasn't out there healing and casting out demons. It is likely that the writers of the gospels were basing their stories on true claims from people who believed to have been healed or delivered from demons by Jesus, stories which were believed as fact by the early followers of Jesus. So, we can't dismiss the writings as fiction just because they contain claims of supernatural events that we reject. So, I tend to think that most of the stories about Jesus, his sayings and actions, as described in the gospels may have been close to the historical Jesus, even if we were not to accept the mythical aspects of Christianity that they describe. When it comes to ancient history, I think to some extent we have to trust the records that exist. Otherwise we wouldn't have a history. I also, for example, tend to believe that the stories about the wars between Greece and Persia as recorded by Herodotus are likely to be close to the truth, even though I don't buy the mythical aspects of his narrative.
No, it's not entirely beyond my scope. Of course things that are contained in mythologies took place. That said, magic didn't exist then either. If the Killer Angels was the best source you had for the events of Gettysburg, you might call it history. There isn't much I disagree with here. It is good to evaluate Biblical texts with the same eye we do others. I certainly wouldn't trust them, but we can get clues from them.
Michael Shaara isn't claiming to be writing history. He's writing an historical novel. It's intended to be read as a novel. The historical part isn't entirely fictional.
It depends on what you mean. Did Jesus heal people? Is this mythological? I don't think so. Healers exist today and existed long before Jesus, people believe it. Lots. So why is it hard, even from a specifically materialist standpoint, to think that Jesus didn't do some things that people ascribed to as miraculous healings? The point of the reading the gospels from a historical perspective is not to prove or disprove it, but to try to understand what and how the witnesses of the gospels and the earliest followers of Jesus saw and understood Jesus and his life. They certainly could have believed that Jesus healed people. Jesus could have been able to manipulate places and people in a way that made these things appear real to people. NT Wright has has done a good job showing that the earliest Christians certainly believed that Jesus was resurrected and that they had seen him. Now does that mean he was resurrected? No, but it means something happened. The problem with the skeptical view is that it assumes that any texts that smack of supernatural have to be ignored and are therefore are late additions or manipulations of the church. Its a highly biased viewpoint and completely un-necessary. It takes us away (far away) from the historical beliefs and understandings of the church and forces historians to invent a whole other narrative for which there is actually no proof. Out of thin air. So actually when you really look at the texts and try to decide what is ahistorical, you really are not talking about all that much.... maybe some of the birth narratives, the ascension, but almost everything else seems that it could fit into something that real people could see and ascribe as being miraculous, and still be completely historical. If you want to read an interesting article that touches on a lot of these themes, I reccommend this one by NT Wright. http://www.ntwrightpage.com/Wright_Jesus_Resurrection.htm
You must spread reputation around. I posted before I read your thread, but you did a better job of explaining it than I did. Frankly, in the gospels I don't see stuff that is all that "mythological" or "miraculous" aside from the Resurrection. I think that probably it all has a reasonable historical explanation. That doesn't mean that I don't believe that Jesus didn't heal people. I do. I still believe that people are miraculously healed today. I don't necessarily think it happens all the time or can be guaranteed, but I think it happens.
Exactly. Also, the Bible wasn't meant to be entirely historical. Precisely nobody has ever been healed by a miracle, which isn't to say people aren't healed. Miracle is quite obviously out of the realm of historical causation.
now you're treading on epistemological quicksand. a) the only way you would know that "nobody has ever been healed by a miracle" is if you know everything. b) by definition, a miracle can only be "detected" by reference. if someone appears to have a tumor on Tuesday and they have no tumor on Wednesday, without any medical intervention, it's probably a miracle. i say "probably" because maybe they didn't really have a tumor. who knows?