In my last post I mentioned that Richard Carrier’s new book convinced me not to start my exploration of the life and teachings of Jesus with an assumption that Jesus was a real historical person rather than an historicized myth. In line with that I’ve made a new start on this website, deleting several pages and revising one.
Originally I started with Jesus’ execution, thinking that his crucifixion was the most secure historical fact we have about him. Now I am uncertain how much of the account in the gospels has any historical basis. So I deleted that page.
Instead I begin with my examination of accounts of the resurrection of Jesus, which I have revised a bit from its original version. Certainly it is an historical fact that the early Christians claimed Jesus was resurrected, and that we have some early sources giving information about that!
After that I deleted the next two pages that I had put up, one on the concepts used to interpret the resurrected Jesus and another summing up my findings to that point. Instead, my next page will examine whether Paul’s experience of the risen Jesus came upon him unexpectedly while in a normal state of consciousness, or he somehow induced himself to have a vision. I think the result will also shed light on Peter’s experience of the risen Jesus. From there I will go on to examine Paul’s epistles and what he has to say about Jesus and his teachings.
I have saved the deleted pages in a file on my computer to draw from in future pages, so don’t worry if there was anything in them you want to be able to access again!
Thanks for following this blog, and I hope you are all well.
Alan
Jesus Reconstructed 