A little while back, I got into a discussion in a Reddit subthread with a poster by the name of MisanthropicScott. It started when MisanthropicScott claimed Jesus was a liar and I disputed the examples he gave (I make no claims for the overall honesty of Jesus, who might have been a liar for all any of us knows, but I found this particular argument wanting and the accusations unwarranted), and wandered rapidly into ‘Did Jesus exist at all?’ territory. So, we ended up with a long and rambling exchange of views, as you do, and, because I was drafting out my answers in bits and scraps of spare time, I eventually arrived at the point where I had a long and as yet unposted answer written to posts of his that had been written a couple of months previously in a long-dead thread.
(Yes, paragraphs like that do indeed make me wonder about my life choices. To which all I can say is: sometimes we all need a break from the serious stuff.)
Anyway… I don’t want to either waste what I’ve written or reawaken a Reddit thread no-one else cares about any more, so I went for Door Number Three; posting my answer on this blog. If MisanthropicScott still has any remote interest in the discussion, he can read it here and respond as he chooses. If not… well, it’s a discussion about Jesus mythicism. Experience tells me that, most likely, someone‘s going to be interested in responding.
Speaking of which, ground rules for any ensuing discussion:
- Stay polite. That includes starting with the assumption that the person disagreeing with you is not actually stupid or ignorant just because they hold a different viewpoint.
- Keep your comments directed at points actually raised in the post. Given how many points we’ve raised between us, that should give you plenty of scope.
- The historicist vs. mythicist discussion is a discussion between two different non-Christian views of Jesus (the belief that he was a human being with a following who was later mythologised, and the belief that he was entirely a mythical figure, like Hercules). If what you want is to have the somewhat different discussion as to whether Christian views of Jesus are actually the correct ones, then by all means do so, but you’re in the wrong thread for it; here is the post for people who want to have religious debates. If that’s what you’re after, read the rules in that post and jump on in.
Quoted portions are usually from MisanthropicScott; on a few occasions I had to include a bit of the preceding exchange for context, so in those cases I’ve indicated which bits are from me and which from MisanthropicScott. If there’s no attribution, that means it’s from Misanthropic Scott. I’ve also thrown in subheadings for the different portions to try to break things up a bit; these weren’t part of the original discussion, and are there purely as my attempt to break walls of text and show where one section of our discussion stops and another starts. OK; let’s go.
(Edited: I’ve realised that two of the points I made (fortunately both minor) are inaccurate, and it’s been pointed out to me that a third is based on insufficient evidence. I’ve therefore put in footnotes amending all of these. My apologies.)
The NT; does it give us any useable information?
What corroborative evidence do we have of anything in the New Testament?
Not much. Josephus tells us that there was a Jesus called ‘Kristos’ (the Greek translation of ‘Messiah’ and the word we’ve transliterated into ‘Christ’), who had a brother called James who was executed, and that there was a John the Baptist who went round preaching and baptising others and who was put to death by Herod, though not in the way described in the NT. Tacitus tells us that Christianity was founded by someone called Christus who started a movement in Judea and was executed by Pilate. We also have evidence of the veracity of some of the things mentioned in the background setting (the existence of various places and famous people; basically, just what you’d expect if people who live in that place and time are writing about it, regardless of whether they’re writing truth or fiction). Can’t think of any others.
[me] Sometimes a particular story or statement seems to be flat-out against the author’s interests, in which case it’s probably not made up.
I disagree. We don’t know the authors’ (plural) interests.
By ‘interests’, I mean the various messages the authors were trying to get across with their writing. Every so often, there’s something in the gospels that they seem to be trying hard to gloss over, or that contradicts what they’re trying to tell us.
Example: It was clearly important to both Matthew and Luke to convince us that Jesus was born in Bethlehem, as both of them go to the trouble of making up a complicated and clearly fictitious story explaining why, even though Jesus grew up in Nazareth, he was actually born in Bethlehem. So… why do they put Nazareth in the story at all? They both changed what Mark had to say on other points, so, if they were making up the story from scratch all they had to do was change that point as well, leave Nazareth out of it altogether, and just say that he came from Bethlehem as per the prophecy yadda yadda yadda. Why do we get all this ‘well, he was born in Bethlehem but then they had to flee this mass infanticide I just invented and an angel told them to go to Nazareth’ and ‘his parents came from Nazareth but here is a completely unconvincing reason why they had to go to Bethlehem right at that time’?
If they were making their stories up from scratch, about a totally mythical person, it’s very hard to see why they’d do that instead of just leaving out Nazareth and saying he came from Bethlehem. However, if they were making up stories about an actual founder of their movement who was known to have come from Nazareth, it makes total sense; they had to leave in the bit about him coming from Nazareth and then explain it away, because they couldn’t just ignore something about him that was that widely known.
There are other examples. Why would anyone invent a leader who was a crucified criminal and by all appearances a dismal failure at his mission, when that was so obviously going to be the exact opposite of a selling point? Why, given that the writers clearly wanted to put as much blame as possible on the Jews for Jesus’s death and to gloss over the Romans’ role in it as much as possible, did they not just write the story to portray Jesus as executed by the Jews rather than the Romans? Why, when the writers were painting Jesus as the enemy of the Pharisees, did they cite him as using teachings (such as his teachings on Sabbath healings) that we now know were in fact Pharisee teachings as since recorded in the Talmud? Why did they include the embarrassing detail about Jesus being unable to pull off much in the way of miracles when he visited his hometown?
Sure, you can think of explanations for those, or speculate that maybe there’s some reason we just don’t know. But that does leave us with a lot of points that are really hard to explain away if Jesus was invented, but easy to explain if the authors were working from stories about an actual Jesus and couldn’t completely disregard things that were common knowledge about him among his followers.
Problems with a mythical crucifixion story
So, to say that having Jesus die a horrific death is inconsistent with a story line that works really well to sell the religion does not make sense to me.
The ‘humiliating execution’ story line didn’t work well at all to sell the religion. Paul comments in one of his letters on how it’s a problem. The ‘Alexamenos’ graffiti mocks the idea of a crucified god, and that seems to have been the general overall attitude of the culture. Christianity grew very slowly in the first few hundred years, prior to Constantine getting involved and making it the state religion(1). The fact that it did grow – and eventually struck it lucky with Constantine and took off – was in spite of the crucifixion story, not because of it.
[The founders] had the evidence of the Old Testament having caused people to believe deeply in Judaism. Maybe they figured this would work even better, especially if the stopped telling people not to eat yummy pigs and stopped telling men they needed the tips of their dicks cut off.
Firstly, the original church weren’t telling people that. Paul did, and we know from Galatians and from Acts 21:18 – 24 that this was actually something on which the original group disagreed with him. (They agreed with having Gentiles as part of their group on those terms, because Judaism never expected non-Jews to follow those rules anyway; however, they certainly don’t seem happy to have gone along with saying that Jews could abandon those rules as well.)
Secondly, Judaism has always been much more about action than about belief. Circumcision and dietary rules were key parts of the religion. What you’re essentially describing here is a situation where some Jews decide that the best way to get other Jews to become more Jewish is for them to throw some really key parts of Judaism out of the window; it’s the equivalent of Christians saying “I really want more people to become Christian, so I’m going to start a church in which you don’t have to believe in Jesus so that I can persuade more people to come to it”. I’m not saying that’s impossible, because people do come up with really bizarre justifications sometimes; but it’s certainly improbable.
And thirdly, above all; there is absolutely no way anyone of that time would have thought that inventing a character who was supposed to be the Messiah but had been executed by the Romans would have worked well to sell their religion. A Messiah who died before bringing about the end times was a hard sell for Jews, and an executed criminal as leader was a really hard sell for Gentiles. Yes, we know from hindsight it eventually worked spectacularly; but we also know that was due to factors completely other than the fact that it was based on asking people to follow someone executed as a criminal. If someone at that time was deliberately setting out to figure out what would win over as many people as possible, the answer would not have been ‘Hey, a Jewish Messiah who gets arrested and executed with zero signs of having actually done anything to overthrow the Romans! That’ll definitely do it!’
Messianic prophecies and ‘I come to bring not peace but a sword’
(MisanthropicScott) [Messianic prophecies] sure as hell don’t say anything about him starting wars! Please correct me if I’m wrong.
(Me) As I recall, they actually say surprisingly little about the messiah at all, when you read them.
People will beat their swords into plowshares. Nation shall not rise up against nation. Neither shall they know war anymore. (from memory)
Exactly! That’s not describing the Messiah himself or his backstory. It’s talking about what the world is going to be like when that time comes. The prophecies hardly say anything about the actual Messiah. He’s going to be a king of David’s line who rules over Israel in this marvellous future time, and… that’s about it.
Here’s a site for Judaism that explains quite well why Jesus completely and utterly fails to meet the messianic prophesies. There are specifics in there.
No argument from me on that point. Hell, it’s possible to sum up in one sentence why Jesus wasn’t the Messiah: We don’t have the global situation that the prophecies foretold. That’s it. But I find it interesting that that site doesn’t say anything about the ‘come to bring not peace but a sword’ line as a disqualification, so I’m not sure why you think it supports your point here.
(me) They leave a lot of scope for individual interpretation of the details.
(MisanthropicScott) Not enough for the messiah to be a warmonger.
What, you think no-one throughout history has ever believed that the best way to end up with peace is to violently crush all your enemies first? I mean, there are good reasons to disagree with that as a strategy, but your specific claim was that claiming to be the Messiah yet bring a sword makes Jesus (if he really claimed that) a liar. The holding of beliefs with which you disagree, or even of beliefs which are actually incorrect, is not the same as being a liar.
By the way, as far as Messianic expectations in particular are concerned, the belief that the Messiah will take up arms against Israel’s enemies as part of his job description is very common. If you want to read more about that, this page is about military expectations of the Messiah around Jesus’s time, this is an extremely famous rabbi’s list of Messianic expectations, still considered the main go-to list to this day, which clearly includes the expectation that the Messiah will be a military leader, and this page is about one failed Messiah who had a substantial following amongst Jews who were quite happy with his military approach (2).
And, it is absolutely certain that there must be peace before the messiah’s death.
Actually… no. There is nothing whatsoever in any of the Messianic prophecies saying he can’t be killed and miraculously resurrected prior to bringing peace.
I know, I know. The reason no-one put that in the prophecies was not because anyone actually expected this to happen, but the reverse; because ‘And this will happen within one lifetime, not after a death and resurrection’ is so far off expectations that it doesn’t ever occur to anyone to add that subclause. However, fact remains that there’s nothing at all in the Messianic prophecies saying that this can’t happen. So that left a loophole via which Jesus’s followers could not only keep believing in him after his execution but actually gain new adherents; they’d found a way to give him, as you rather nicely put it in one of your previous statements, a mulligan.
(It also had the probably unplanned side-effect of making Jesus’s messianic claims effectively unfalsifiable. Once you allow for the idea that someone can miraculously come back to get things done after their death, you can go on forever saying that they just haven’t come back yet but are totally going to do it any day now. I mean, here the Christians still are with that line, two thousand years later.)
There was talk recently of Schneerson being the messiah. There may be a small contingent who still think so. But, when he died in a world that still did not have world peace, almost everyone who thought so accepted that he wasn’t the messiah.
‘Almost’ everyone. Exactly. Some people still haven’t accepted that, in spite of his death. There is a small group of people who don’t accept that his death disqualifies him from being the Messiah. Two thousand years ago, that was how Christianity got started.
No peace. No messiah.
Agreed (apart from the get-out clause the early Christians came up with about how he was coming back to do it all after his death). So, since your claim is that Jesus probably never existed, I have a question for you here:
If Jesus was an entirely mythical character invented by his followers, how does that fit with ‘no peace, no Messiah’? Did someone come up with the idea ‘Hey, let’s pretend the Messiah did come to Earth but then got crucified without fulfilling any of the prophecies; we’ll just tell people he was miraculously resurrected and that’ll be fine’? How? Why? What do you think anyone was hoping to gain by that?
I can totally see a situation where a bunch of people had put their faith so much in a real person they thought was the Messiah that they just could not shift gears when he died and accept that he wasn’t. That’s how cognitive dissonance works; people get so sold on believing what they believe that, when evidence comes along disproving it, they find weird ways of explaining that evidence away rather than taking a step back and realising they were wrong in the first place. And, as you pointed out, that’s exactly what happened with Schneerson in modern-day times; a few people could not accept his death and went on thinking he was the Messiah. So it’s totally plausible that that could have happened with a first-century rabbi as well. But, if the movement that would eventually become Christianity didn’t start with a real rabbi but with an invented one, how and why do you think that happened?
Reasons to believe in a historical Jesus
If neither of us believes the Bible is accurate, neither of us has any reason to think that a person named Jesus ever existed. […] So, as soon as we say the Bible is unreliable, I fail to see why you say Jesus ever existed.
Because otherwise we need to explain why anyone thought it was a good idea to invent a story about a failed, crucified Messiah when such a story would be highly unlikely to gain followers, why they went to the lengths of naming the person who supposedly crucified him and spreading that story about as public knowledge when it was about the worst advertising you could imagine, why one person mentioned meeting this supposedly imaginary man’s brother and argued about a privilege given to his other brothers, why a historian remembered this imaginary man as having a real brother who was executed, why some of the things he’s claimed to have said are now known to be Pharisean arguments even though the authors were trying to claim he was anti-Pharisee, and why, even though two of the people writing about him clearly really wanted to portray him as coming from Bethlehem, they somehow seemed unable to break free from the idea that he was actually known as coming from Nazareth.
That’s quite a lot of stuff to find explanations for. If you can find explanations for all those things that are better, simpler, and more obvious than ‘the movement actually was started by a real Yeshua and the above stuff about him/his brothers all actually happened’, then be my guest. But they’re going to have to be a lot better then ‘well, maybe they just made it all up’. People make a lot of things up, but it doesn’t make sense that they’d make those particular things up. Occam’s razor -> most likely a real Jesus existed.
Have you considered that it was embroidered from stories that had nothing to do with anyone named Jesus? Maybe a bit of Horus and other myths were all thrown together.
I’m sure other myths did get incorporated into the central story as time went by; but how would it have started out that way? Jesus’s original followers are described as a bunch of poor, rural, Jewish illiterates. That means, in practice, that they wouldn’t have known Egyptian myths, or other non-Jewish myths. It’s not as though they could hear these things on television or pop into the local library for a browse on their way home. (Conversely, if the followers weren’t actually poor illiterates, that raises the question of why the authors consistently present them that way when that, again, only made this new group less attractive to most potential followers.)
Lack of extrabiblical documentation
This is one of the big inconsistencies in the story. Was Jesus extremely famous or virtually unknown?
You do realise that those extremes aren’t the only two options? Someone could easily be well-known amongst Jews in Judea/Galilee and insignificant to the kinds of people who were writing things that would survive the next two thousand years.
But, why did the Romans care about some unknown nobody?
Being a nobody in the eyes of the more elite social classes isn’t the same as being unknown, or as not being a problem. Jesus had crowds of Jews calling him Messiah, which meant they thought of him as the king who’d kick out their oppressors (i.e. the Romans) and become their new ruler. That’s the kind of situation that existing rulers are not too happy about and like to get nipped in the bud before it develops into an actual rebellion.
[me] [T]he priestly families were more of a pro-Roman party and might well have collaborated in turning over a Messianic claimant if they thought that might avoid bringing down retribution on the heads of ordinary Jews.
[MisanthropicScott] Why would there be retribution?
If the Jesus-led movement got as far as actually attempting a rebellion against the Romans, then the Romans wouldn’t be too happy about it. At the very least, they’d end up killing off the people who were actively involved in the rebellion, and there was also the risk that they’d then respond by clamping down harder or otherwise making the Jews’ lives more difficult.
And, then it gets harder and harder to explain why no one wrote a thing about him.
Whom would you expect to be writing about a Jewish troublemaker who was arrested and executed for insurrection? Of those writings, which would you expect to have lasted two thousand years?
Jesus’s followers were from a strata of society where literacy levels were very low; even if you were one of the few who could write, not many people around you would be able to read what you wrote. Plus, ink and papyrus were expensive luxuries. If you wanted to get your message out to a lot of people in your part of society, open-air preaching was a much better way to do it than spending time and money on a hand-written manuscript that most other people wouldn’t be able to read. So, little or nothing was going to get written down by his followers. As for the people who weren’t following him… well, if you had to handwrite everything on expensive papyrus, would you spend time doing that just to write about some peasant who was creating a stir among a bunch of other superstitious peasants?
Of course, even with those problems there likely would have been a few things written about him at the time. If we could wave a magic wand and get back every single thing that was written in the early decades of the first century, then somewhere in there there probably would be some mentions of Jesus. But, of course, we actually only have a tiny fraction of everything that was written at the time, because this was two thousand years ago. Even those letters and records that get saved don’t last for that long; the papyrus they’re written on eventually crumbles. For example, we have no remaining copies of the one newspaper that was published in that time.
We do, of course, still have books that were written around that time, but that isn’t because we have the original copies – we don’t – but because scribes copied them over the years. So, if something was considered to be important literature, it was preserved and hand-copied. However, people were hardly going to do that for, say, newspaper reports about some troublemaker from Nazareth getting executed. Having no surviving contemporary writings about you two thousand years later is completely normal, and was the case for people far more important in their own time than Jesus of Nazareth actually was in his. (For comparison, here’s one historian blogger(3) pointing out that the only existing reference to Hannibal that dates back to his own time is one passing mention in an inscription. Not because people didn’t write about Hannibal at the time – they did – but because the writings just didn’t survive. If that was the case for a highly famous and influential general, how much more would it be the case for a rabbi from the backwaters who made a brief stir as a would-be Messiah but was then ignominiously executed?)
So… having a couple of passing mentions from historians several decades later, plus writing preserved by your followers, is actually excellent going for someone from that day and age. Having that amount of writing still preserved two thousand years later isn’t ‘harder and harder to explain’; it’s better than we’d expect.
So, you’re shoe-horning in sort of a Goldilocks theory that Jesus was just annoying enough to get the attention of the Romans but not annoying enough for anyone to write anything about him.
Theudas. First-century Jewish rebel, executed for his attempts. Total surviving contemporary mentions (i.e., dating from the time he lived): zero. Total surviving overall mentions by historians from close to that time: one short paragraph in Josephus.
Athronges. Rebel from the end of the first century BCE, led a rebellion that took the Romans two years to defeat. Total surviving contemporary mentions: zero. Total surviving overall mentions by historians from close to that time: several paragraphs from Josephus.
Unnamed Samaritan. Rebel from the first century, led a mob that required armed Roman warriors to defeat them. Total surviving contemporary mentions: zero. Total surviving overall mentions by historians from close to that time: one paragraph in Josephus.
Simon of Peraea. Rebel from the end of the first century BCE, burned down the king’s palace and many of his other houses, had a mob of followers who had to be defeated by Roman soldiers. Total surviving contemporary mentions: zero. Total surviving overall mentions by historians from close to that time: two paragraphs in Josephus, one line in Tacitus.
Unnamed Egyptian. Rebel from the first century, had a group of followers who were defeated rather rapidly by Roman soldiers. Total surviving contemporary mentions: zero. Total surviving overall mentions by historians from close to that time: two different paragraphs in Josephus.
Jesus of Nazareth. Rebel from the first century, had a group of followers, kicked up some sort of fuss in the Temple, arrested and executed by Roman soldiers. Total surviving contemporary mentions: zero. Total surviving overall mentions by historians from close to that time: one passing mention of his brother’s execution by Josephus, possibly one other short paragraph in Josephus, one line in Tacitus.
Notice a pattern? There’s usually very little surviving information about the people who, two thousand years ago, kicked up enough of a problem at the time to get executed. That’s not ‘Goldilocks’ and doesn’t have to be shoehorned. That’s the normal result of us being two thousand years on from a time that had very poor literacy levels and no printing presses. Lots of things didn’t get written down in the first place, and most of what was written down at the time didn’t survive for two thousand years. Having little in the way of independent information about Jesus isn’t strange; it’s exactly what we’d expect.
What we do have is a mention of a James’s execution from Josephus that identifies the executed person as ‘the brother of Jesus called Christ’, and a mention from Tacitus that Jesus was executed under Pilate (and, yes, the latter might just have been what Christians were saying at the time… but why on earth would they be making it such widespread public knowledge that the leader they followed was an executed, humiliated criminal, when that fact was so awkward and counter-productive for them?) While those are very brief and passing mentions, they’re still mentions that are very difficult to explain satisfactorily if Jesus was entirely an imaginary character, but easy to explain if he was a real preacher about whom some factual details were retained alongside the legends that grew up around him.
Added footnotes
(1) ‘Christianity grew very slowly in the first few hundred years, prior to Constantine getting involved and making it the state religion.’
Sorry; the last six words of this sentence are actually a myth, and one I really should have known better than to repeat. I stand by the rest of the sentence; the evidence is that Christianity did grow very slowly in the first centuries, and I’m sure that having the most powerful person in the Empire become a Christian must have been of at least some help to them. However, it is incorrect to say that Constantine made Christianity the state religion. My apologies.
(2) ‘…and this page is about one failed Messiah…’
Neil Godfrey has pointed out to me that we don’t know for sure that Bar Kokhba was considered by followers to be the Messiah. That’s fair; although it’s a good assumption that some people would have assumed this, we don’t have definite confirmation that this is so. However, I don’t believe that affects my main point in that section, which was that the belief that Messiahship included bringing war against Israel’s enemies was a widespread one that doesn’t make someone dishonest.
(3) ‘For comparison, here’s one historian blogger…’
The blogger in question, Tim O’Neill, states explicitly on his ‘About’ page that he is not a historian. He does, however, have training and experience in history; his undergraduate degree was in History and English combined, and his Master’s specialism was in historical analysis of medieval literature. I meant to indicate that he was someone with good knowledge and qualifications in the area of history and historical analysis, and used the word ‘historian’ too loosely. (If anyone does have an appropriately succinct way of putting forward that concept in case I cite O’Neill in future, I’d be grateful!)
Whenever I read or hear discussions of Jesus mythicism, I’m reminded of the scene in “Meatballs” where the Bill Murray character is trying to fire up his team, and gets everyone chanting, “It just doesn’t matter! It just doesn’t matter!”
The fact is, whether or not a Jesus actually existed, and if so, how closely he matched the Jesus portrayed in the gospels, Christianity is what it is. If it suddenly were proven that Jesus (or Mohammad, or Confucius, etc.) never really existed, it would have little to no effect on their followers, and no effect at all on the events of the intervening 2000 years.
That said, it is sort of interesting to follow the arguments. I know there are counters to some of the points you’ve made. In the end, it all boils down to what you (want to) believe, right?
Oh for an actual working time machine ..
The story that gets me is the one about Jesus cursing the fig tree ..
http://www.bricktestament.com/the_life_of_jesus/jesus_curses_a_tree/mk11_12-13.html
What was the point of that and why include it and why that particular poor ficus that did nothing wrong or unexpected? If you were making up a story why make up that one? I guess they really did give a fig about it but beats me why.
As for the debate here, its kinda interesting but also kinda irrelevant.Christians already have so many different interpretations and versions of this ancient Judaean rabbi (teacher) that its like looking into a kaleidoscope on LSD.
Its possible Jesus was real, hstorical figure, its possible he was a myth, its possible he was a composite of several historical figures blended with several myths (esp different teachings – like combining the comments of say a blog into one story as a mythical “X said..”) and, again, unless we come up with an actual time machine or find some new long hidden hidden but book or other rancient source that sheds new light on this*, we’ll never really know.
I think it is safe to rule out the supernatural stuff because, yes, reality doesn’t work that work and science says the things they claim happen can’t. Its also pretty safe to conclude if he existed then Jesus looked like a typical Judaean person of his time not blonde, blue-eyed, white-skinned, etc .. but brown-skinned, brown-eyed,
* Pretty sure I recall reading a novel based on the premise that Jesus himself had actually written something that was later found – &, of course, fought over. It would be interesting to know what the (esp) Catholic (& other?) churches might be hiding in this regard..
… there is absolutely no way anyone of that time would have thought that inventing a character who was supposed to be the Messiah but had been executed by the Romans would have worked well to sell their religion.
At “that time”, anyone in the hinterlands of the Roman Empire – Judea especially – would have pretty good reason to identify with a symbol of victims of oppression. Certainly that narrative did take off; possibly our contemporary politics of resentment may shed some light on that.
The exposition of the heroic underdog may stand as the major unique contribution of early Christianism to western culture. Earlier such myths – shepherd boy David slaying a giant and becoming king, shipwrecked Odysseus overcoming perils, forlorn Isis reassembling bits of dismembered Osiris – concern natural-born “alpha” heroes overcoming setbacks/obscurity to claim their inherent magnificence – but Jesus was the first “one of us” loser/commoner protagonist to achieve apotheosis (and ultimate-alpha status).
This, of course, applies whether the myth had any basis in one or more actual historic persons.
The following quotation comes from a Jesus-mythicist site I found by a quick search; I can’t vouch for it, but it does summarize what I recall reading from various books that I lack time/energy to go through tonight:
This discrepancy creates a problem for both historicists and mythicists, but especially the former. The same site’s explanation matches my recollection of other mythicists’ analysis:
Lots more at the link.
Wrong. It’s a matter of fact, to be decided on the basis of evidence and rational argument. The consensus of relevant experts (who include atheists, agnostics and observant Jews as well as Christians) is that Jesus was a real person. All but the most fundamentalist Christians among them agree that his life and death have been mythologised.
Pierce R. Butler@4,
The “There was no Nazareth” bullshit is dealt with here.
KG @ # 5 – thanks for an interesting but not totally convincing link.
Just as the source I cited gets overtly jejune, historyforatheists.com descends into name-calling arrogance and emotional attacks all too readily; both rely on selective interpretations and broad assertions about esoteric details beyond the knowledge of nearly all readers (while those few who know won’t waste their time wading into amateurs’ brawls).
I’d like to see a book by a serious expert without an overriding personal stake in the historicist/mythicist feud reviewing the evidence with enough background that laypersons could follow the details, but just about everything I’ve found so far comes from partisans with axes to grind and usually a lot of other baggage. So far in my reading, G.A. Wells comes closest to an actual scholarly approach backed with relevant erudition, but (I haven’t read all of his pertinent books) seems to work from a primarily linguistic basis without an archeological component, or even a fine-grained historical context. Bart Ehrman also has a lot of insights to offer, but his case for historicity seems uncharacteristically narrow and weak.
Personally, I remain intrigued but agnostic.
Pierce R. Butler @5 said: “I’d like to see a book by a serious expert…”
Much of the previous work by Lataster:
Lataster, Raphael (2014a). “The Fourth Quest: A Critical Analysis of the Recent Literature on Jesus’ (a)Historicity“. Literature & Aesthetics 24 (1): 1–28. ISSN 2200-0437.
Lataster, Raphael (2014b). “Richard Carrier: On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt. Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2014; pp. xiv + 696.”. Journal of Religious History 38 (4): 614–616.
Lataster, Raphael (2015a). “Questioning the Plausibility of Jesus Ahistoricity Theories – A Brief Pseudo-Bayesian Metacritique of the Sources“. Intermountain West Journal of Religious Studies 6 (1): 63–96. ISSN 2155-1723.
Lataster, Raphael (2015b). Jesus Did Not Exist: A Debate Among Atheists. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform. ISBN 978-1-5148-1442-0.
Lataster, Raphael (2016a). “Review Essay: Bart Ehrman and the Elusive Historical Jesus“. Literature & Aesthetics 26 (1): 181–192. ISSN 2200-0437.
Lataster, Raphael (2016b). “It’s Official: We Can Now Doubt Jesus’ Historical Existence”. Think 15 (43): 65–79. doi:10.1017/S1477175616000117.
Lataster, Raphael (2019a). “Defending Jesus Agnosticism”. Think 18 (51): 77–91. doi:10.1017/S1477175618000362.
Is reproduced in his peer reviewed work published by an academic press:
Lataster, Raphael (2019b). Questioning the Historicity of Jesus: Why a Philosophical Analysis Elucidates the Historical Discourse. Brill-Rodopi. ISBN 978-9004397934.
db @ # 7 – thanks. Wow…
Pierce R. Butler, you may also find the following of interest:
• “Jesus_myth_theory §. Agnosticism_scholars”. RationalWiki.
• Law, Stephen (2011). “Evidence, Miracles, and the Existence of Jesus“. Faith and Philosophy 28 (2): 129–151. doi:10.5840/faithphil20112821.
Cf. “Jesus_myth_theory §. Philosophy_scholars”. RationalWiki.
• Godfrey, Neil (14 March 2012). “Would the historical Jesus of Nazareth really have been named Jesus of Nazareth?”. Vridar.
After reading some of Lataster’s work via the above links, I (a) added that final title to my to-read list and (b) must repeat my desire for the apparently impossible: works of scholarly depth but with enough introductory content to orient lay readers, by authors not so embroiled in ivory-tower debates that they write to score points against their opponents more than to share knowledge with their readers.
Lataster, though professing himself agnostic, comes across as pro-Carrier (his sometime collaborator) and anti-Ehrman; his journal articles – inescapably, given that format – leave me scrambling for other references for both detail and broader context. Historians writing on almost every other topic can achieve the balance I ask for here, reviewing “both sides” where controversy persists; no doubt historiographers will mine this controversy for its illumination of modern times for generations (assuming enough civilization endures for such pursuits, of course).
• Pierce R. Butler said, “[I] desire for the apparently impossible: works of scholarly depth but with enough introductory content to orient lay readers…”
Raphael Lataster also had a desire:
• Pierce R. Butler said, “Lataster, though professing himself agnostic, comes across as pro-Carrier…”
Lataster clearly holds and advocates an agnosticism position. Agnosticism scholars are often mischaracterized as “Mythicism scholars” by those who fail to understand that while agnosticism scholars may find some points of mythicism plausible, that does not imply that said scholars are asserting that these points of mythicism are the most probable or that the argument has been resolved in favor of mythicism.
Why are agnosticism and mythicism scholars producing peer reviewed works in academic presses, while historicity scholars are not? Is it just possible that their arguments/methods are weak and rely on many unevidenced assumptions that are not very sensible?
Lataster writes:
db,
Why are agnosticism and mythicism scholars producing peer reviewed works in academic presses, while historicity scholars are not? Is it just possible that their arguments/methods are weak and rely on many unevidenced assumptions that are not very sensible?
For the same reason that biologists don’t currently print works on whether the modern synthesis as true, and geologists don’t print works defending the roundness of the earth against flat-earthism.
db @ # 11 – sounds like others perceive Lataster the same way I did on the Jesus question, just as many (both theists and a~) do with God-agnostics.
In this case, I base my snap judgment on the articles you linked to, in which he seems to always support the case of mythicists and critique the case of historicists. (I suspect a similar pattern with God-agnostics, but have to admit I don’t follow such arguments much, what with the total-absence-of-evidence problem and all that. Jesus historicity advocates could at least in principle substantiate their case…)
Why are agnosticism and mythicism scholars producing peer reviewed works in academic presses, while historicity scholars are not?
Now that’s an intriguing datum, though I don’t have sufficient familiarity with the literature to check it. (Ehrman doesn’t publish pro-level articles to back up his general-public books?) Another of those absence-of-evidence/evidence-of-absence situations.
[Lataster] … ‘at least agnosticism’ is very sensible.
My position as well, though I’d welcome a rigorous challenge to it.
Pierce R. Butler @13 said: “Ehrman doesn’t publish pro-level articles to back up his general-public books?”
In this case, no. In fact per secular scholars, historicity is the consensus only by assumption. As Carrier writes:
Cf. Van Voorst, Robert E. (2000). ISBN 978-0-8028-4368-5. which is surveyed by Richard Carrier in his 2014 OHJ. And about which Carrier notes:
db @ # 14 – pretty poor showing by the historicists, then.
As you probably know, Carrier is persona non non non grata at FtB, though that doesn’t in itself invalidate his scholarly work. Admitting it’s not strictly logical to do so, I consider his and Robert M. Price’s personal nuttinesses among the major weaknesses of the mythicist camp.
Pierce R. Butler,
db @ # 14 – pretty poor showing by the historicists, then.
To be clear, there is a total of 1 scholarly proponent of mythicist hypotheses (Carrier), and he is well out of the vision of most hitorians on this subject, so they don’t really see a need for these publications. It’s only we amateurs (and Carrier) that think there is a serious question.
Just for funsies, I went to the Wikipedia articles on “Historical Jesus” and “Historicity of Jesus” – both of which pooh-pooh the mythicist position, in almost-identical phrasing. That doesn’t carry much weight, but a skim through the sources cited generally backs db’s claim.
Of more than 300 combined citations (I didn’t try to eliminate duplicates), only one that seemed to promote historicity per se was dated after Bart Ehrman’s 2012 book, and that was a factually dubious attack (“I cannot find any evidence that any of them [mythicists] have adequate professional qualifications.”), not a direct defense based on evidence, from 2014.
A neutral referee would probably have to declare a loss-by-forfeiture against the historicists, at least for this season.
One Brow @ # 16: …there is a total of 1 scholarly proponent of mythicist hypotheses (Carrier)…
Robert M. Price does seem to have sufficient credentials to claim some cred.
We also need to allow for an undeniable bias in hiring practices among schools of theology and religion for this imbalance.
Oops – apologies for the closetag fail @ my # 18!
“Scholars that admit to the plausibility of mythicism”
• Per Robert W. Funk:
• Per Philip R. Davies:
• Per R. Joseph Hoffmann:
Funk, Davies, and Hoffmann admit to the plausibility of mythicism; but not to its probability, they all believe the historicity of Jesus is more probable. Davies further argues that the plausibility of mythicism should be be admitted as a viable position in biblical scholarship.
• James Crossley writes:
Pierce R. Butler @17
• Per Maurice Casey:
• NB: “It belongs in the fantasy lives of people who used to be fundamentalist Christians”. SEE: Godfrey, Neil. “WHO’s WHO: Mythicists, Mythicist Agnostics & Historicists Who Call for Scholarly Debate (Updated 6th August 2020)”. Vridar. Godfrey originally created this post as a direct rebuttal of the claim Casey made about fundamentalist Christians and mythicism. It has since evolved with successive updates.
• Per Justin Meggitt:
•••
Cf. Meggitt, Justin J. (2019). “‘More Ingenious than Learned’? Examining the Quest for the Non-Historical Jesus”. New Testament Studies 65 (4): 443–460. doi:10.1017/S0028688519000213.
db @ #s 20 & 21 – I think we agree about those points. Did you post the Casey quote-clarification for benefit of One Brow?
@22 Pierce R. Butler said, “Did you post the Casey quote-clarification for benefit of One Brow?”
• Yes
Pierce R. Butler,
Robert M. Price does seem to have sufficient credentials to claim some cred.
He has credentials as a theologian, not a historian.
We also need to allow for an undeniable bias in hiring practices among schools of theology and religion for this imbalance.
You mean, the bias toward people that can produce scholarly arguments? I approve of that bias.
Pierce R. Butler says
A neutral referee would probably have to declare a loss-by-forfeiture against the historicists, at least for this season.
Compare the number of citations using flat-earth theories on the article for Earthquakes.
Pierce R. Butler says
db @ #s 20 & 21 – I think we agree about those points.
As long as you don’t confuse “Biblical scholars” with “historians working on 1st century Palestine”, I agree as well.
One Brow @ # 24 – Do you really deny systemic incentives among both church and public institutions against mythicism?
One Brow @ # 25 – I went to the wiki page on earthquakes and couldn’t even find the word “flat” there. So it seems the mythicists have made more of an impression in their field than the flatheads in theirs – this disproves mythicism?
One Brow @ # 26: … don’t confuse “Biblical scholars” with “historians working on 1st century Palestine”…
The former group, as db points out @ # 21, comprises a motley posse indeed. I suspect the latter tend to prefer focusing on less fraught/messy/unanswerable questions.
Why do you disregard db’s multiple examples @ #s 20 & 21 of serious recognized scholars who do acknowledge some merit even in arguments they don’t fully accept? As you yourself (or someone posting under your ‘nym) conceded recently at the Pervert Justice blog on this same site, the Jesus-mythicists do have some substance to their case.
Pierce R. Butler,
One Brow @ # 24 – Do you really deny systemic incentives among both church and public institutions against mythicism?
Depends on the context. Is the institution a Bible college that requires a statement of faith, religiously funded but supportive of independent scholarship, secular and private, or state-owned? I agree the former institutions have such incentives, but teh latter do not.
One Brow @ # 25 – I went to the wiki page on earthquakes and couldn’t even find the word “flat” there. So it seems the mythicists have made more of an impression in their field than the flatheads in theirs – this disproves mythicism?
That’s not the point you were making, nor that I was rebutting. That said, I don’t know of any historians who say Jesus definitely existed, just that it is the best interpretation of the evidence.
I suspect the latter tend to prefer focusing on less fraught/messy/unanswerable questions.
You get research grants and tenure for producing interesting work on the more fraught/messy/unanswerable questions, and that is why the historicity of Jesus generates little interest.
Why do you disregard db’s multiple examples @ #s 20 & 21 of serious recognized scholars who do acknowledge some merit even in arguments they don’t fully accept? As you yourself (or someone posting under your ‘nym) conceded recently at the Pervert Justice blog on this same site, the Jesus-mythicists do have some substance to their case.
I don’t recall ever saying historicity in the only possible determination, just that it explains the evidence best, and much better than any individual mythicist hypothesis. Don’t forget, it’s not enough to say “we can’t say X for sure”. If you want to push not-X, you need some reasonable alternative Y. The mythicists so far do not have one.
One Brow @ # 28: … teh latter do not.
Public colleges and universities have to answer to Boards, typically appointed and approved by state governors and legislatures. Exactly zero such institutions actually want to face charges they hired somebody who hates Baby Jezus.
… I don’t know of any historians who say Jesus definitely existed…
Please read the aforementioned Wikiarticles on Historical/Historicity of Jesus, and the sources they link to.
You get research grants and tenure for producing interesting work on the more fraught/messy/unanswerable questions…
And you get a whole barrel of shit for producing work that gets your bosses’ political patrons attacked. Do the career math. (The authorities db cites above all, I suspect, have secure tenure and well-established reputations.)
I don’t recall ever saying historicity in the only possible determination…
Aw, c’mon. You compare mythicism to creationism and flat-earthery @ # 12, and at # 28 you say (in effect) “well maybe”. :-O
If you want to push not-X, you need some reasonable alternative Y.
1: Mythicists present a wide (and at times mutually contradictory) range of hypotheses.
2: Would you likewise claim that Michelson & Morley should not have published their experimental results until they had finalized Einstein’s theories of relativity? Pointing out an anomaly, just in and of itself, can constitute utterly respectable science; why shouldn’t historians exercise the same latitude?
@29 Pierce R. Butler said: “Aw, c’mon. You [sc. One Brow] compare mythicism to creationism and flat-earthery @ # 12″
Well that is understandable as a “Evander Holyfield vs. Mike Tyson II” moment. Instead of getting KOed —the alternative is to bite the ear off the opponent.
Meggitt, J. (2019). “‘More ingenious than learned’? Examining the quest for the non-historical Jesus”. New Testament Studies, 65 (4), 443-460. doi:10.1017/S0028688519000213 {Available Online}:
• One more time:
Why are agnosticism and mythicism scholars producing peer reviewed works in academic presses, while historicity scholars are not? Is it just possible that their arguments/methods are weak and rely on many unevidenced assumptions that are not very sensible?
db @ # 30: … Mike Tyson II…
One Brow doesn’t seem quite that mordant.
… taking this question seriously may, at the very least, prove beneficial in raising the standard of debate …
Questions of factuality matter much more to history than to religion: the intersection of the two necessitates ambiguity.
@32 Pierce R. Butler: “quite that mordant.”
•Touché, ROFL.
Pierce R. Butler,
Public colleges and universities have to answer to Boards, typically appointed and approved by state governors and legislatures. Exactly zero such institutions actually want to face charges they hired somebody who hates Baby Jezus.
I actually work for a secular university in my day job, and a public college in the evening. I guarantee you, regarding researchers, the board of directors of public universities care most, #1, about bringing in grant money, and hiring serious scholars with unusual points of view is the best way for a history department to get grant money. Boards have almost zero interest in policing the views of the faculty. Further, once said person has tenure, that can’t be fired for mythicist beliefs, and yet you don’t see the tenured history professors turning mythicist.
Please read the aforementioned Wikiarticles on Historical/Historicity of Jesus, and the sources they link to.
In both of the articles you mentioned, I saw only Ehrman, and only in writing a popular book, not a scholarly article. There is the quote from Grant, “we can no more reject Jesus’ existence than we can reject the existence of a mass of pagan personages whose reality as historical figures is never questioned.” That’s not the same as certainty.
And you get a whole barrel of shit for producing work that gets your bosses’ political patrons attacked. Do the career math. (The authorities db cites above all, I suspect, have secure tenure and well-established reputations.)
Just the opposite. Lataster has not scholarly position, he’s an adjust. None of the others are scholars at all. The historians with tenure and secure reputations are all historicists.
Aw, c’mon. You compare mythicism to creationism and flat-earthery @ # 12, and at # 28 you say (in effect) “well maybe”. :-O
Comparisons valid in one context (choice of materials to publish regarding) are not necessarily valid in another (plausibility).
1: Mythicists present a wide (and at times mutually contradictory) range of hypotheses.
I agree. None of them are as likely, or as explanatory, or as good a fit for our evidence as historicism.
2: Would you likewise claim that Michelson & Morley should not have published their experimental results until they had finalized Einstein’s theories of relativity? Pointing out an anomaly, just in and of itself, can constitute utterly respectable science; why shouldn’t historians exercise the same latitude?
Amonalies are great, and worth investigating, and that’s what scholars do. However, there were many, many experinments and finding that went into overturning Newtonian mechanics, and it was done when a better option was put forth. Mythicists don’t have a better option, they have a dozen worse options. Which mythicist hypothesis do you endorse?
db,
Why are agnosticism and mythicism scholars producing peer reviewed works in academic presses, while historicity scholars are not? Is it just possible that their arguments/methods are weak and rely on many unevidenced assumptions that are not very sensible?
Because they have nothing to gain from it, as there is no academic dispute on historicity, and they are looking to write about things people care about.
The consensus for the historicity of Jesus—now is by assumption only—and not by peer reviewed rational scholarly argument published in an academic press.
There is no escaping this fact. So why does @35 One Brow throw up the following canard (hoping it will fly I guess): “there is no academic dispute on historicity”. Does he really not know that there are two academic peer reviewed works that challenge the consensus for the historicity of Jesus.
In a way, One Brow is correct, that “there is no academic dispute”, since no historicity proponent has properly responded to the current challenges while simultaneously producing a peer reviewed work published in an academic press defending the historicity of Jesus.
But it is more likely that this is a case of trying to bite the opponents ear off.
@34 One Brow said: “Which mythicist hypothesis do you [sc. Pierce R. Butler ] endorse?”
• Pierce R. Butler clearly said he holds an agnosticism position. Why do you not know this?
A common objection is that “ahistoricists” or “mythicists” do not have an alternative explanation for Christian origins. However given Paul’s testimony that he hallucinated a Jesus constructed from the Jewish Scriptures. Then it only need be shown—as Narve Strand asserts—”that the historicist doesn’t have real evidence that would make his purely human Jesus existing more probable than not.” [Strand, Narve (5 May 2019). [1.1 ver]. “Why Jesus Most Probably Never Existed: Ehrman’s Double Standards”. Academia.edu.] Raphael Lataster writes:
“we can no more reject Jesus’ existence than we can reject the existence of a mass of pagan personages whose reality as historical figures is never questioned.” [Grant, Michael (d.2004). Jesus: an historian’s review of the Gospels. (1977 New York:Scribner). pp. 199–200. ISBN 0-684-14889-7.]
The original expanded quote begins:”[I]f we apply to the New Testament, as we should, the same sort of criteria as we should apply to other ancient writings containing historical material…”
So Grant is effectively saying: The same sort of criteria applied to other ancient writings containing historical material should be applied to the New Testament.
Sounds good right. But what is actually going on?
• Gager, John G. (1974). “The Gospels and Jesus: Some Doubts about Method”. The Journal of Religion 54 (3): 244–272 (244). doi:10.1086/486389.
db,
The consensus for the historicity of Jesus—now is by assumption only—and not by peer reviewed rational scholarly argument published in an academic press.
Incorrect. The academic press was where the argument was largely settled a little over a century ago.
Does he really not know that there are two academic peer reviewed works that challenge the consensus for the historicity of Jesus.
There will always be cranks. There are cranks who question relativity, find some peers to review them, and get books published. The existence of cranks is not proof of controversy.
Pierce R. Butler clearly said he holds an agnosticism position. Why do you not know this?
Agnostics are those that criticize both sides of the argument, or say that both sides are insufficient. So far, that does not describe the behavior of Pierce R. Butler. At the very least, an agnostic should find one of the mythicist arguments to be close to as compelling as the argument for historicity.
A common objection is that “ahistoricists” or “mythicists” do not have an alternative explanation for Christian origins. However given Paul’s testimony that he hallucinated a Jesus constructed from the Jewish Scriptures.
This is a deception on Paul’s testimony, as he acknowledges that persecuted Christians before his vision. Paul also acknowledges that James, et. al., were Christians before he was. Whatever the origins of Christianity are, the line does not start with Paul.
What Lataster missed is that God is not need to explain anything, while Christianity is a real thing and therefore has a real explanation for its existence.
I agree many people don’t maintain academic rigor when discussing Jesus (or many other topics); many people also do.
By the way, db, in all this discussion, I don’t recall you ever saying: what do you think is the most likely scenario for the creation and development of Christianity? Why is it more likely than historicity?
@39 One Brow
Your apologetics are clear enough on this post, but for the sake completeness I also present this gem you posted elsewhere (November 10, 2020).
“One Brow said:” “[I]f there were multiple Jesuses of sufficient significance that Tacitus and Suetonius could be talking about different men, then there would be evidence of this in Josephus, and there is not.”
Apologies to all (both) for lag in replying: we just had a tropical storm blow through here…
One Brow @ # 34: … hiring serious scholars with unusual points of view is the best way for a history department to get grant money.
Not in most of the USA it isn’t (see Parenti, Michael; Churchill, Ward; et alia). Decades ago, the then-president of MIT estimated they’d lost >$1B in grants that came with fire-Noam-Chomsky strings attached (I suspect they took that hit because the other faculty stood behind NC, rather than pure academic-freedom ideals).
… you don’t see the tenured history professors turning mythicist..
Again: see db’s # 20 & # 21. How many fully-tenured professors of 1st-C Palestinian history do you think there are?
… I saw only Ehrman…
At the “Historicity of J” page, search for the names James Dunn, John P. Meier, and E. P. Sanders, then read the following comments. You’ll find trace amounts of hedging, standard fare for every scholar facing any controversy, but damn little that would count as doubt.
Lataster has not scholarly position, he’s an adju[nct?]. … historians with tenure and secure reputations are all historicists.
A token low-ranked dissident and a phalanx of establishmentarians. Go to your economics dept, if your schools have one, and count the pro-corporate, pro-growth professors, then count the pro-socialist, pro-ecology alternativists. Ask members of either camp about academic hiring preferences. Does that prove capitalism works best?
Comparisons valid in one context … are not necessarily valid in another …
Didn’t that goal post over here used to be over there?
PRB: Mythicists present a wide … range of hypotheses. … OB: None of them are as … good … as historicism.
You just mounted those goal posts on wheels.
Mythicists don’t have a better option…
Neither did Michelson & Morley, nor the many who pointed out Mercury’s orbital number were a bit off, or others.
Which mythicist hypothesis do you endorse?
As db notes, I avow agnosticism. I generally hold that’s the default position for any non-specialist in any area beyond their credentials – we’re entitled to opinions and questions, whether on ancient history or optimal alloys for jet turbines, and little more. That, sfaict, applies to all in this thread, including our esteemed host. All I claim here is to have disproved your … you need some reasonable alternative Y. The mythicists so far do not have one. assertion.
More later…
One Brow @ # 39: Agnostics are those that criticize both sides of the argument, or say that both sides are insufficient. So far, that does not describe the behavior of Pierce R. Butler.
Please review Pierce R. Butler’s # 3, # 4, and especially # 6, # 10, and # 16 above.
Also, kindly educate yourself on varying definitions of agnosticism supported by actual agnostics.
Huh – my reply to # 39 included 3 links, which probably accounts for it being held for moderation.
Given our esteemed host’s time zone, that process may take quite a while from now (if she even has the time for such trivialities). So, I’ll try again with the first few lines and a single link:
Pierce R. Butler
Please review Pierce R. Butler’s # 3, # 4, and especially # 6, # 10, and # 16 above.
#3 — makes no comment in favor of nor against historicity nor mythicism
#4 — Favorably quotes discredited information from a mythicist site, saying it is a particular problem for historicity
#6 — Down plays the site of a person with actual training in the historical method (though not scholar) that puts forth the findings of historical scholars. Cites G. A. Wells as taking a scholarly approach, and downs plays the evidence in Ehrman’s book without noting the even greater paucity of evidence for any mythicist theory, including Wells.
#10 — Falsely elevates the mythicist position into a controversy, when there is none
#16 — This is a post by me, so perhaps you meant #15, which does point out the crankiness of Carrier and Price, or #17, which again promoted a false balance between the positions.
So, where in there was any sort of comment on the weakness of the positions the mythicists take?
Again, I’m not saying their is certainty Jesus existed. I’m just saying that we don’t have a better explanation for the evidence, so accepting his existence is the working default. It’s not enough to attack existence, you need to have a more likely alternative.
Also, kindly educate yourself on varying definitions of agnosticism supported by actual agnostics.
Well, at least you have no lack of arrogance.
One Brow @ # 44 – you read quite selectively.
# 3: This, of course, applies whether the myth had any basis …
# 4: I can’t vouch for it… (Whether the information is actually “discredited” remains open to debate: the site cited in opposition clearly has credibility problems of its own.)
# 6 – criticizes the same site I cited as well as the one KG quotes in contradiction, separately and together; laments lack of sources without axes to grind on both sides; does specifically note insufficiency of evidence from Wells, with note I haven’t read all his relevant works; gives praise to Ehrman.
# 10 – Aw, c’mon again. There is a controversy. Why else would Ehrman have dedicated a book to it in 2012; why would the Wiki “Historicity” article, which clearly disagrees, cite multiple arguments; why would our esteemed host (who also disagrees) offer a string of posts on the question?
# 16 – Yes, I did mean # 15. Bringing up “major weaknesses of the mythicist camp” – on my own initiative, not in reply to anyone else – as well as criticizing historicists, would seem to meet your own definition
of agnosticism (even though I disagree with that as well).
… we don’t have a better explanation for the evidence, so accepting his existence is the working default.
No, admitting the picture is unclear and unsettled is the working default.
… you need to have a more likely alternative.
Somewhere, I think in his massive translation of The Arabian Nights, Sir Richard Francis Burton makes a comparison to the story of Mohammed destroying the idols at the Kaaba in Mecca and then, for shame, not replacing them with other idols. Do you get the point of that, since you seem to refuse to grasp my Michelson-Morley experiment analogy?
… you have no lack of arrogance.
Says the person who concocted (or parroted) a definition of agnosticism at odds with both present usage and Huxley’s original formulation. [sigh]
Btw, thanks to Dr. Sarah for clearing my # 42!
Pierce R. Butler,
# 3: This, of course, applies whether the myth had any basis …
I said this comment “makes no comment in favor of nor against historicity nor mythicism”. Do you feel I mischaracterized your quote here? Does it make a comment for or against historicity, for or against mythicism?
# 4: I can’t vouch for it… (Whether the information is actually “discredited” remains open to debate: the site cited in opposition clearly has credibility problems of its own.)
Please list the credibility issues with the historyforatheists.com article on Nazareth. Note being insulting is not an issue affecting credibility, whether being noted of Carrier or of O’Neill.
# 6 – criticizes the same site I cited as well as the one KG quotes in contradiction, separately and together; laments lack of sources without axes to grind on both sides; does specifically note insufficiency of evidence from Wells, with note I haven’t read all his relevant works; gives praise to Ehrman.
Perhaps I read more slant into this comment than you intended.
# 10 – Aw, c’mon again. There is a controversy. Why else would Ehrman have dedicated a book to it in 2012; why would the Wiki “Historicity” article, which clearly disagrees, cite multiple arguments; why would our esteemed host (who also disagrees) offer a string of posts on the question?
Let’s be clear to distinguish popular/amateur controversy from professional controversy. Ehrman wrote a amateur-aimed book to deal with the controversies as understood by amateurs.
Regarding #15, for me, “personal nuttiness” does not invalidate (nor validate) the quality of scholarly work, so I read that as saying nothing about mythicism itself.
No, admitting the picture is unclear and unsettled is the working default.
Few things in history are completely settled. For example, reading this page, Ceasar is declared dictator in 46 BCE, while this page gives the year as 47 BCE. Historians will pick one to work from. In the case of Jesus, the most sensible explanation to work with is historicity, so that is the default from which they work.
Do you get the point of that, since you seem to refuse to grasp my Michelson-Morley experiment analogy?
I understand the analogy, you seem to misunderstand the significance and the history. No one discarded Newton’s Laws until they had a better option. Even today, Newton’s Laws are still being taught.
Says the person who concocted (or parroted) a definition of agnosticism at odds with both present usage and Huxley’s original formulation. [sigh]
My description (as opposed to definition) is quite sufficient for identifying behavior indicative of the agnostic.
One Brow @ # 47 – We’re getting to the quoting-comments-quoting-comments stage, which usually means a waste of time. Nonetheless…
Do you feel I mischaracterized your quote here?
Compare to your # 39: Agnostics are those that criticize both sides of the argument, or say that both sides are insufficient. So far, that does not describe the behavior of Pierce R. Butler.
That was the mischaracterization.
Please list the credibility issues with the historyforatheists.com article on Nazareth.
A) Flagrant hostility: the topic seems used as a cudgel against mythicists, not as a subject for inquiry or explanation. Compare with, e.g., Panda’s Thumb discussion of creo falsehoods and (not always in the comments) careful exposition of facts.
B) Incompleteness regarding points raised by opponent, such as purported absence of “Nazareth” in Talmud, etc.
C) Possible shell game: Finding artifacts (dating not consistently given) at a site later called “Nazareth” does not prove that site was known as “Nazareth” at the time under debate.
D) Omission of relevant data – look up the story of Constantine’s mother Helena, her pilgrimage to “The Holy Land”, and the frantic scramble to provide her with whatever she wanted.
Perhaps I read more slant into this comment than you intended.
Certainly you read more omission into it than I provided.
Let’s be clear to distinguish popular/amateur controversy from professional controversy.
Uh, we’re all amateurs here. You still haven’t addressed, never mind refuted, professionals cited by db @ #s 20 & 21.
… for me, “personal nuttiness” does not invalidate (nor validate) the quality of scholarly work…
Likewise, as I acknowledged. Nevertheless, the problem of having to cite Carrier and Price gives me pause every time.
In the case of Jesus, the most sensible explanation to work with is historicity…
Pls look up “assuming the predicate” in a good list of logical fallacies.
Even today, Newton’s Laws are still being taught.
Even today, NASA uses Newtonian math to calculate orbits, trajectories, etc – but with a big asterisk for whenever relativistic conditions apply. Historians, unable to achieve such prompt detailed feedback on the accuracy of their projections, seem still in the process of adding that asterisk in this instance (defining the appropriate conditions for it seems particularly challenging).
My description (as opposed to definition) …
Here (particularly # 39), that’s a distinction without a difference – at best.
… identifying behavior indicative of the agnostic.
As my links @ # 42 indicate, “the” agnostic is a misnomer when distinct & relevant subcategories roam wild across the land.
Pierce R. Butler,
I believe we agree you have criticized the position of historicity in this discussion. Until I read you make some criticisms of the mythicist positions (as opposed to the mythicists themselves), my statement that you have not criticized both sides of the argument stands unchallenged.
A) Flagrant hostility is not evidence of error.
C) What’s your alternative for a name for that location?
B) and D) What O’Neill did is present archeological expertise regarding the existence of Nazareth before and after the period in question. Actual existence is more than sufficient to defeat arguments that assume non-existence.
You still haven’t addressed, never mind refuted, professionals cited by db @ #s 20 & 21.
What did those experts in 20) and 21) say that you think I disagree with?
Pls look up “assuming the predicate” in a good list of logical fallacies.
It does precede “ignoring the evidence”, alphabetically.
Historians, unable to achieve such prompt detailed feedback on the accuracy of their projections, seem still in the process of adding that asterisk in this instance (defining the appropriate conditions for it seems particularly challenging).
Of course.
@49 One Brow said: “What O’Neill did is present archeological expertise regarding the existence of Nazareth before and after the period in question.”
• Godfrey, Neil (15 November 2020). “Bad History for Atheists (3) — Proof-texting, Circularity, Fake Facts, Insults”. Vridar.
Pierce R. Butler, do you have any issues with Raphael Lataster’s case for Historical Jesus agnosticism?
• Per Raphael Lataster:
Cf. Godfrey, Neil (30 October 2019). “Reviews — past and next”. Vridar.
One Brow @ # 49 – Are you really that obtuse, or do you just play it on the internets?
Until I read you make some criticisms of the mythicist positions …
Go back to my # 6, which alludes to my # 4: … the source I cited gets overtly jejune… both rely on selective interpretations and broad assertions … G.A. Wells … seems to work from a primarily linguistic basis without an archeological component, or even a fine-grained historical context.
Flagrant hostility is not evidence of error.
It’s not proof of error, but it is a big red flag.
What’s your alternative for a name for that location?
Aw, c’mon. Back in the Paleolithic, it was called _Grunt_.
What O’Neill did is present archeological expertise regarding the existence of Nazareth …
He presented evidence that humans had lived there – not that it went by the name possibly assigned to it centuries later.
What did those experts in 20) and 21) say that you think I disagree with?
They said the arguments for mythicism merit attention; thereby contradicting your claim that no experts respect such arguments. Or maybe you disagree that they have expertise (One Brow @ #16: It’s only we amateurs (and Carrier) that think there is a serious question.)
It does precede “ignoring the evidence”, alphabetically.
Y’know, if you actually want to be taken seriously, even here, you gotta at least play better dodgeball than that.
As for defining the conditions where the historicism/mythicism debate applies, for a first approximation I’d say 1st-century Palestine studies: for anything beyond/after there/then, everybody was working with oral and documentary materials and the question has become moot. We might even roll that back to circa 70 CE – see (sigh) Price’s recounting of Josephus’s tale of Jesus/Yeshua son of Ananias in the run-up to the Jewish Revolt in The Incredible Shrinking Son of Man.
db @# 51: … do you have any issues with Raphael Lataster’s case for Historical Jesus agnosticism?
I haven’t really dug into Lataster’s work, but one thing leaps out at me from your quotation:
With all due regard for philosophers, this does look to me like a job for specialized historians.
Thanks for the link to that pdf; I’m having trouble grabbing it in a usable form…
@53 Pierce R. Butler said: “I’m having trouble grabbing it in a usable form…”
https://www.dropbox.com/s/apj1pwuxffpais0/reviews-lataster-qhj.pdf
With the sidebar open: [→|]
From the top row of icon buttons: [Sign in] [Sign up] [_↓_]
Select Download icon: [_↓_]
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db – Aha – got it, thanks!
@52 Pierce R. Butler said: “Josephus’s tale of Jesus/Yeshua son of Ananias in the run-up to the Jewish Revolt,,”
• Mark’s reliance on Jesus ben Ananias/Hananiah
Weeden asserts that the Markan text is reliant on Josephus’ report of Jesus ben Ananias in part due to many obvious parallels between them. Weeden also holds that Jesus-Ananias was not a real historical person active in the 60s ce, but was an invention of Josephus. Thus the Markan text could not have been written before the early 80s ce.
Cf. Godfrey, Neil (2 April 2019). “Much More Fully Informed History for Atheists — A Scholarly Introduction to the Two Jesus Parallels”. Vridar.
db,
• Godfrey, Neil (15 November 2020).
I have no doubt Kuhnen found some of Salm’s ideas interesting. Has Kuhnen since adopted the notion that Nazereth did not exist? No, of course not. Godfrey also uses a lot of weasely language, like:
O’Neill goes out of his way to personally humiliate Rene Salm for, while being an amateur, daring to investigate the scholarly literature on the archaeological finds at Nazareth and finding that they do not support the traditional Christian viewpoint. Personally ridiculing and demeaning another person is “bad history” by anyone’s definition, surely. (O’Neill later excuses his harsh language by saying he only attacks those who attack him first. That is simply untrue, as his attacks on Salm clearly demonstrate.)
The only harsh language O’Neill uses of Salm is to refer to him as a “crank”, which is a completely accurate description of an amateur who puts forth faulty, unsupportable hypotheses and refuses to listen to why they don’t work.
Pierce R. Butler,
Go back to my # 6, which alludes to my # 4: … the source I cited gets overtly jejune…
Calling something dry and uninteresting does not seem like a criticism of the thoughts behind it.
both rely on selective interpretations and broad assertions … G.A. Wells … seems to work from a primarily linguistic basis without an archeological component, or even a fine-grained historical context.
So, did you see any actual flaws, or just feel ne needs to do more work?
It’s not proof of error, but it is a big red flag.
Some red flags turn out to be nothing.
Aw, c’mon. Back in the Paleolithic, it was called _Grunt_.
Yeah, but we’re discussing the sites excavated from/near 1st century CE.
He presented evidence that humans had lived there – not that it went by the name possibly assigned to it centuries later.
That alternative to that would be that it went by another name in the first century CE, and underwent a name change. Which bring us back to what name, and what’s your evidence for it?
They said the arguments for mythicism merit attention; thereby contradicting your claim that no experts respect such arguments. Or maybe you disagree that they have expertise (One Brow @ #16: It’s only we amateurs (and Carrier) that think there is a serious question.)
I didn’t see any arguments for mythicism there. I saw statements the historicity is not certain (which I have stated many times by now), and that Lataster has some good input (which is certainly possible even when you disagree with his result). Only someone looking very hard for statements supporting mythicism would see those statements as supporting mythicism. Any supposed agnostic who goes around insulting the displayed intelligence of others should read such statements a little more carefully, lett they be embarrassed.
Y’know, if you actually want to be taken seriously, even here, you gotta at least play better dodgeball than that.
I don’t need to dodge, because I’m not playing your game.
As for defining the conditions where the historicism/mythicism debate applies, for a first approximation I’d say 1st-century Palestine studies: for anything beyond/after there/then, everybody was working with oral and documentary materials and the question has become moot.
Are you saying that written documentation available to Josephus and Tacitus was unreliable in some fashion? What’s your evidence for that?
We might even roll that back to circa 70 CE – see (sigh) Price’s recounting of Josephus’s tale of Jesus/Yeshua son of Ananias in the run-up to the Jewish Revolt in The Incredible Shrinking Son of Man.
The history of Jesus ben Ananias has some parallels to that of Jesus of Nazareth, in that they both have a common name, they both engaged in a common practice of preaching woe during a major festival, both (as expected) get in trouble with the authorities, etc. This also describes what happened to a half-dozen or so other people not named Jesus, as recounted by Josephus. As evidence that one inspired a fiction of the other, it’s very poor, especially considering Paul still precedes this account by more than a decade.
@57 said: “a completely accurate description of an amateur who puts forth faulty, unsupportable hypotheses and refuses to listen to why they don’t work.”
• Your apologetics are clear.
• Bad History for Atheists (4) — Psychoanalyzing Dissenters
• Bad History for Atheists (3) — Proof-texting, Circularity, Fake Facts, Insults
• Bad History for Atheists (2) — Troubles Reading the Sources and Engaging with Different Viewpoints
• Bad History for Atheists (1) — Louis Feldman on Justin’s Trypho and “proving Jesus existed”
One Brow @ # 58: Calling something dry and uninteresting …
Funny, my dictionary defines jejune as “naive, simplistic, and superficial”; the usages I’ve seen often insinuate immaturity.
… did you see any actual flaws, or just feel ne needs to do more work?…
I made a direct criticism of Wells’s work, exactly what you claimed I hadn’t. Your goalposts must feel pretty dizzy by now.
Some red flags turn out to be nothing.
A) I do not expect we will reach the ultimate solution to this question in this thread, so even a tentative concern merits consideration.
B) The “Bad History” site db cites @ # 50 et seq. makes a pertinent case that we do have some problems here.
… we’re discussing the sites excavated from/near 1st century CE.
We’re discussing whether the name “Nazareth” applied to said sites, or was tacked on centuries later.
… what name, and what’s your evidence for it?
I don’t claim to have such a name; I do think we have to deal with the assertions that the site was (ahem) christened “Nazareth” to satisfy the demands of St. Helena, who wanted complete corroboration of all the Gospel stories. Do you think the cross they gave her was The True Cross® too?
Only someone looking very hard for statements supporting mythicism would see those statements as supporting mythicism.
So you get to define historicism as having a lot of slack (# 28: … I don’t know of any historians who say Jesus definitely existed…), but you also get to define as mythicism as rigid 100% denialism. Isn’t that special…
I don’t need to dodge …
Then you need to answer directly about your assuming-the-conclusion ploy.
Are you saying that written documentation available to Josephus and Tacitus was unreliable in some fashion?
We don’t have that, just (probably altered) words from J & T. Lataster (see # 54) takes Ehrman to task for relying on unavailable and possibly imaginary documents: you go even further out on that same flimsy limb.
As evidence that one inspired a fiction of the other…
As evidence that a remarkably similar story circulated widely before “Mark” & Co. set quill to papyrus, it’s damn near definitive (unless you prefer to deny the historical consensus that the Gospels date from after the Revolt). Note also that (sigh) Price sees the ben Ananias story as an element in an amalgam, not the root, basis, or inspiration for the entire Jesus spiel.
… Paul still precedes this account …
And Paul’s version is about as vague as Trump’s “fake ballots!!1!” ranting, if not more so.
db,
• Your apologetics are clear.
Pointing out that Salm is an amateur who refuses to accept it when professionals correct him is not apologetics, just plain fact.
Pierce R. Butler
Funny, my dictionary defines jejune as “naive, simplistic, and superficial”; the usages I’ve seen often insinuate immaturity.
I looked on line, and it seems both definitions can apply. If you meant that Wells approach and naive and superficial, I accept that a a valid criticism. Thank you.
A) I do not expect we will reach the ultimate solution to this question in this thread, so even a tentative concern merits consideration.
B) The “Bad History” site db cites @ # 50 et seq. makes a pertinent case that we do have some problems here.
As I pointed out above (with the term “weasely”, Godfrey’s account gives inaccurate connotations, while being correct in denotation. For example, he mentions in consecutive sentences O’Neill says he uses harsh language in attacks on those that criticize him (true), and that O’Neill criticized Salm (also true), to leave the distinct impression that O’Neill used harsh language to describe Salm, when the strongest term he uses is “crank” (others include “autodidact” and “piano man”). This is a common use of language use in Godfrey’s posts, and I these constructions seem too frequent to be accidental.
So, if you really think there is a problem with the language used in the “Nazareth” article, why do you bring forth an example of what you find objectionable?
We’re discussing whether the name “Nazareth” applied to said sites, or was tacked on centuries later.
Sites that are in or close to the current city of Nazareth.
I don’t claim to have such a name; I do think we have to deal with the assertions that the site was (ahem) christened “Nazareth” to satisfy the demands of St. Helena, who wanted complete corroboration of all the Gospel stories
I have no idea what cross she was shown. What evidence do you have for the assertion St. Helena was shown a location whose name was changed for her visit? Any records of the name change? Did no one think to check the records on the location on her behalf before she made her visit?
So you get to define historicism as having a lot of slack (# 28: … I don’t know of any historians who say Jesus definitely existed…), but you also get to define as mythicism as rigid 100% denialism. Isn’t that special…
I have said multiple times that historicity is the best explanation for the evidence, and that this is not the same as certainty.
Mythicism *is* the denial that a historical Jesus is the best explanation for the evidence we have, it’s a negative position instead of a positive one. If you want to present something that can be affirmed with less than certainty, you’d need to present an alternative you’d consider more likely. Wells has one, Price another, Carrier yet another, none of them are better than historicism.
Then you need to answer directly about your assuming-the-conclusion ploy.
I said: In the case of Jesus, the most sensible explanation to work with is historicity…
Your response: Pls look up “assuming the predicate” in a good list of logical fallacies.
My direct answer to your claim that I am assuming the conclusion: I say that historicity is most sensible explanation because it best explains the (admittedly meager) comments from Paul that say Jesus was human, what Josephus wrote, and what Tacitus wrote. This is following the evidence, not assuming the conclusion.
We don’t have that, just (probably altered) words from J & T. Lataster (see # 54) takes Ehrman to task for relying on unavailable and possibly imaginary documents: you go even further out on that same flimsy limb.
We have sizable amounts of the material of Josephus and Tacitus. To my understanding, they make clear their intentions, their sources, and how they approach their materials (for example, Tacitus explicitly describes using hearsay when he has no better evidence). There is no evidence that Tacitus has been altered, nor that the second Josephus quote has been altered. This is all throwing stuff against a wall and hoping some of it sticks, but none of it does.
As evidence that one inspired a fiction of the other…
As evidence that a remarkably similar story …
Stories, plural, and stories of real people that this happened to.
And Paul’s version is about as vague as Trump’s “fake ballots!!1!” ranting, if not more so.
No, Paul is not vague. For Paul, Jesus is “born of a woman” and “a seed of Abraham”, among other things. The details Paul offers are meager, but not vague.
One Brow @ # 62 – you seem to get sloppier and sloppier as this dialog drags on. Pls note that my “jejune” description @ # applied to the mythicist site I cited @ # 4, not to G.A. Wells or his (meticulously scholarly, if I may say that without having read his every word) works.
If Godfrey’s account gives inaccurate connotations, while being correct in denotation, then that suffices to justify the red flags I saw fluttering above O’Neill’s rants.
… if you really think there is a problem with the language used in the “Nazareth” article…
I really think there is a problem with the language used throughout the “History for Atheists” blog. If you can’t see the same, get your semantic sensors recalibrated.
Sites that are in or close to the current city of Nazareth … may not have been known as such pre-Helena. Encyclopedia Britannica (link omitted to bypass moderation):
I have no idea what cross she was shown.
Look her up. She “discovered” The True Cross®, the burial site of Jesus at Golgotha, and all sorts of other long-lost mysteries during her pilgrimage – gotta wonder why archeologists didn’t pick her for their patron saint.
Some allege that she also demanded to go to “Nazareth”, which nobody could find – so they took her someplace and renamed that site “Nazareth”. I admit I can’t find a source for such stories online – but if you try the search yourself, you’ll see how much piety and faith, and how little factuality, come up in each page of results. I gave up quickly.
Mythicism *is* the denial that a historical Jesus is the best explanation …
Mythicism in the real world involves an array of positions and definitions involving the undeniable accretion of stories and legends belonging to a religious tradition, and the recognition of how little remains once the identifiable overlays get scraped away. At some point there’s no there there – Carrier is the only one who tries to put a number on it (another quirk which makes me cringe to cite his efforts), but few can deny that the fuzziness of the remaining pebble, or grain of sand, or particle of dust, makes rigid 100% historicism difficult to defend.
… historicity is most sensible explanation …
It has to receive a lot of the benefit of the doubt to stand up for long. The existing tradition relies too much on authorities-relying-on-tradition and too little on evidence. When you wrote @ # 47 In the case of Jesus, the most sensible explanation to work with is historicity, so that is the default from which they work., you support assuming as a constant what closer analysis indicates should be treated as a variable. This makes no practical difference for working with anything past 100 CE (or maybe even 70 CE), but gets quite shaky in that narrow zone where precision matters.
By comparison: most OT scholars readily concede that Moses and the Exodus account are fictitious, not least because of the absence of evidence supporting those stories. For a time in the 20th century, many had likewise come to doubt the basis behind the David legend – until in 1993, archeologists found the Tel Dan inscription (link omitted for same reason as above), and “David mythicism” quietly faded away. In neither case does the study of the later impact of the Moses and David legends change one microwhit – though doubts about every detail of the David story rightfully persist.
I don’t claim much knowledge about the Josephus and Tacitus documents, but have to note that a) professionals seriously debate how much (not whether) Josephus’s works underwent interpolation(s); b) only two copies of Tacitus survived into the medieval period; c) neither J nor T had any first-hand witness of Jesus, nor made any claims to second-hand (interviews with purported witnesses) information; and d) Tacitus in particular dealt only with the Xian movement – primarily Paul’s creation – not with its founding.
… stories of real people that this happened to.
I just looked in my copy of Josephus, and found 14 Jesuses in the index. I suspect only one of those has a string of dubious and contradictory narratives attached to his name.
The details Paul offers are meager, but not vague.
Aw c’mon yet again. “A seed of Abraham” (himself almost certainly a product of one of the numerous invented genealogies beloved of Hebrew scribes) means only “Jewish”. Why not download the pdf file at db’s # 54 and read Lataster’s “Celestial Jesus” perspective – and give us concrete evidence against it?
Phooey – even two links seem to have put my reply to One Brow into moderation, or maybe just my 777 words did it.
OB, pls be patient, and with luck Dr Sarah will release my reply mañana.
Thanks again, Dr S!
@63 Pierce R. Butler said: “If you can’t see the same, get your semantic sensors recalibrated.”
If I picture this in the context of the the 1987 movie “Full Metal Jacket”, per a dialogue between Gunnery Sergeant Hartman and Private Lawrence (Gomer Pyle)…
• Absolutely ROFL
Pierce R. Butler,
One Brow @ # 62 – you seem to get sloppier and sloppier as this dialog drags on. Pls note that my “jejune” description @ # applied to the mythicist site I cited @ # 4, not to G.A. Wells or his (meticulously scholarly, if I may say that without having read his every word) works.
I thank you for the correction, and the humor at the agnostic notion what Wells constructed passes for “scholarly”.
Fly all the red flags you wish, they still are not errors. I do appreciate the agnosticism at display in your preference for the misleading insinuations of Godfrey over the straight-forward declarations of O’Neill. I say this as someone who O’Neill has expressed annoyance at more than once. In some ways, he’s not a particularly likable commentator (he seems more affable when speaking), but that doesn’t make him wrong.
I’m not sure why you have such a bee in your bonnet about St. Helena (your link did not offer anything I could find on her visit to nazareth). Her believing in some relic doesn’t change how Salm’s views disagree with archeology, and offers no support to some claim that the place now called Nazareth once had a different name, and further no support that by “from Nazareth”, people meant anything other than from a location.
Some allege that she also demanded to go to “Nazareth”, which nobody could find…
I also looked for, and could not find, anything about St. Helena and Nazareth, except for mythicist sites. I don’t think these “some” rely on historical records that St. Helena, or a member of her party, or a shortly-thereafter historian made about the journey and the difficulties they encountered. More likely, these “some” are living in the 21st century, and using the notion that Nazareth never existed to put forth an explanation for how St. Helena was fooled into believing found it. Would you say that is an example of “assuming the predicate”? Is that considered good practice by agnostics?
Mythicism in the real world involves an array of positions and definitions involving the undeniable accretion of stories and legends belonging to a religious tradition, and the recognition of how little remains once the identifiable overlays get scraped away. At some point there’s no there there – Carrier is the only one who tries to put a number on it (another quirk which makes me cringe to cite his efforts), but few can deny that the fuzziness of the remaining pebble, or grain of sand, or particle of dust, makes rigid 100% historicism difficult to defend.
I agree mythicism involves an array of positions. Do you agree the primary common feature, the one that makes them mythicist, is the denial of the historicity of Jesus? Would you agree that any position that disputes the historicity of Jesus is mythicist by definition?
As I have pointed out before, no one is defending “100% historicism”, at least as I understand the term.
… you support assuming as a constant what closer analysis indicates should be treated as a variable.
I’m not sure what that means. Could you define that a little more, or use an example of how that would affect research?
My understanding of scholarly opinion regarding Moses and David matches yours, except that historians do note there were small groups that crossed the Sinai, and the Biblical Moses may be based on legends from one such group. These were also major legendary figures, and if the legends were true, they would have left significant archeological footprints. By contrast, even by the hagiography Mark creates, Jesus leaves almost no footprint and does nothing of historical note. So, unlike for Moses and David, the absence of archeological evidence is not evidence of absence. In fact, there would be only one person we know of who, among other things happenings in the area, recorded the events around prophets and similar men, and that would be Josephus. If Jesus were absent from Josephus, that would be a problem. However, Josephus mentions him twice.
Regarding, “a) a) professionals seriously debate how much (not whether) Josephus’s works underwent interpolation(s);”, no professionals contend that the mention of Jesus in Antiquities XX.9.1 is an interpolation (not even Carrier). It is true that there is a minority who say Antiquities XVIII.3.3 is wholesale forgery, but even without it, we have an uncontested, unambiguous reference to Jesus in XX. At least, now you know where to focus among the 14 different Jesuses in you index.
By the way, Josephus would have been in Jerusalem during the event described in XX, and as a member of the priestly class, would have known about it from first-hand witnesses. Regarding Tacitus, feel free to read up on the subject.
Aw c’mon yet again. “A seed of Abraham” (himself almost certainly a product of one of the numerous invented genealogies beloved of Hebrew scribes) means only “Jewish”
Last I checked, being Jewish would make him a human, in Paul’s mind. That’s not particularly vague.
Why not download the pdf file at db’s # 54 and read Lataster’s “Celestial Jesus” perspective – and give us concrete evidence against it?
I got 30-40% of the way through the reviews without seeing anything to offer evidence for or against. Could you be a little more precise?
One Brow @ # 67: … the misleading insinuations of Godfrey …
Such as? (Pls cite sources other than O’Neill!)
… O’Neill…’s not a particularly likable commentator …, but that doesn’t make him wrong.
Excitable boy, they all say:
I’m not sure why you have such a bee in your bonnet about St. Helena…
She seems to have been one of the most influential, and most wrong, of Jesus historicists, with her claims going uncriticized and uncorrected for over 15 centuries.
… Salm’s views …
All I know of Salm and his ideas comes from O’Neill on one side and Godfrey on the other, with both in such an emotional dither that I can’t feel confidence in either (see my lament and wish-list @ # 6).
… no support that by “from Nazareth”, people meant anything other than from a location.
Which distortion of the etymological argument (made in my final quotation @ # 4) I find it very difficult to conceive you make in good faith. Though I know only a few words of Greek, I find it very plausible that the proposition “o” could mean as many things as the English “of” – including but hardly limited to “from”.
Do you agree the primary common feature, the one that makes them mythicist, is the denial of the historicity of Jesus?
That requires a clear definition of both “historicity” and “Jesus” – neither all that easy to achieve. Where does the “composite Jesus” hypotheses fit, for example? Only hardcore fundamentalists – and possibly some of them, if pressed adroitly enough – will deny the present story of “Jesus” includes at least some mythical elements. Does a “historic” Jesus mean just that someone with a name translating to that preached in Palestine roughly 1990 years ago, or does it require that preacher also to have asserted particular doctrines, or to have gotten crucified, or also to have received baptism from another wandering preacher named John, or that he came from a particular obscure village, or what? The more criteria you require of one given individual, the less likely your model becomes.
Could you define that a little more…?
I think I just did. We can break apart the “Jesus” concept into a set of attributes – I’ll use the teachings as an example subset. Somebody insisted on following strict Jewish traditions; somebody said picking up sticks on a Sabbath didn’t justify violence; somebody said those with sins of their own should not slaughter an adulteress on the street. The first of these seems incompatible with the latter two – so either one person was inconsistent (hardly improbable) or different ideas were attributed to an individual (even more plausible, imo). The single value (a “constant”) has become multivariate.
The same applies to some degree to any historical personage; let’s consider another noteworthy JC. If a newfound document shows that some smartass corporal said, “Alea jacta est!”, that makes little difference in our picture of Caesar; if such a document establishes that the general who conquered Gaul hired a ghostwriter to do the book about it, that transforms our image drastically; if further documents convince the classicists that a ne-er-do-well Roman playboy just roamed around drunk while his underlings devised and executed his army’s operations, we’d hardly have any Caesar left (and what difference would it make to learn that the playboy was an imposter who’d hijacked the original Gaius Julius’s identity as a teenager?).
The difference between the two JCs is that we have enough information to solidly establish a core concept of one, while the other can be peeled open (more like an overwrapped present than an onion) layer after layer, until some start saying we have received a gift of wrapping paper and ribbons.
… there would be only one person we know of who, among other things happenings in the area, recorded the events around prophets and similar men, and that would be Josephus.
Well, we do have documents from Pliny the Elder which make it pretty clear that nobody noticed the alleged major miracles supposedly accompanying the birth and death of Jesus.
Alas, my “Complete Works of Josephus” lists “Jesus Christ” in its index only in “Antiq. xviii, iii” and I have neither the time nor energy to plow through 14 pages of compressed type to find him in Book XX. At any rate, the Josephusan debate does not need any contributions from me.
… a human, in Paul’s mind. That’s not particularly vague.
Not even Carrier or Price – or Doherty or Lataster or Godfrey, sfaik – proclaims him a hamster or an asparagus. Paul does not, iirc, pin his Jesus down in time or space; even Hercules has more specifics.
Could you be a little more precise?
At least as the downloaded pdf displays on my system, Lataster’s “Celestial Jesus” first shows up on pg 13 (next-to-last line) of the file pagination, or page 2 of the “Review Part 2” section according to the incorporated text.
Pierce R. Butler,
You seem to get sloppier and sloppier as this dialog drags on. Pls note that at #57 I directly quote Godfey using what I described as weasely words. I certainly don’t need to rely on O’Neill to see how deceptive Godfrey can be.
“… he has added outright character defamation and some of the ugliest humiliation to his characterization of Christ mythicists.”
this is another excellent example of true denotation and false connotation. Here Godfrey is using the first definition of defame (damage the good reputation of someone), and O’Neill certainly damages the reputations of people like Wells and Carrier. Normally, we use ‘defame’ here to mean a person is lying about someone’s character; here, Godfrey uses ‘defame’ when referring to O’Neill offering accurate (yet insulting) appraisals of mythicists. Thank you for (likely unintentionally) demonstrating my point.
I’ll be back soon.
She seems to have been one of the most influential, and most wrong, of Jesus historicists, with her claims going uncriticized and uncorrected for over 15 centuries.
Do any historians take her seriously now?
If you want to see Salm from the horses mouth: http://www.nazarethmyth.info/index.html
To be frank, I remember very little of what people in comments a few days ago, and I had no intention of making fun of or twisting your comment #4. I was referring to a quote from John “can anything good come from Nazareth”? There also Mark 1:9 “came from Nazareth in Galilee”, where the proposition is ‘apo’. With your understanding of Christians, I ask you to consider 1) would the translation of such terms into a descriptor of Jesus behavior, as opposed to city where he lived, affect their faith, and 2) if not, why do they nonetheless universally think Nazareth was a city?
For me, a “historic” Jesus refers to the brother of James, who was called the Messiah. All the other details of his life can be assigned some sort of likelihood for happening or not, based on how ordinary they are, how they would have been seen to make belief in him more or less attractive, etc.
Frankly, this whole notion of creating some caricature of “historic Jesus” from the start, arbitrarily adding in elements that are needed for it to be “historic Jesus”, and then weighing the balance of the entire creation seems designed to produce a mythicist position. We don’t create caricatures of “historical Julius Caesar” and decide if the caricature existed, we just try to figure what we can say about Julius Caesar. We should be doing the same for Jesus, brother of James, who was called the Messiah (if you insist on a construction, JBJM). Is it possible that the actions of other people got worked into the stories about JBJM? Sure. Does that cast doubt on the existence of JBJM? No.
Well, we do have documents from Pliny the Elder which make it pretty clear that nobody noticed the alleged major miracles supposedly accompanying the birth and death of Jesus.
I thought we were discussing history, not myths.
… I have neither the time nor energy to plow through 14 pages of compressed type to find him in Book XX.
Well, I did also offer a chapter and paragraph, XX.9.1, which is nowhere near 14 pages long of ordinary-sized type. However, perhaps your source does offer chapter and paragraph numbering. Here’s one that does:
http://penelope.uchicago.edu/josephus/ant-20.html
The relevant quote:
When therefore Ananus was of this disposition, he thought he had now a proper opportunity [to exercise his authority]. Festus was now dead; and Albinus was but upon the road. So he assembled the sanhedrim of judges, and brought before them the brother of Jesus who was called Christ, whose name was James: and some others; [or, some of his companions.]
Not even Carrier or Price – or Doherty or Lataster or Godfrey, sfaik – proclaims him a hamster or an asparagus. Paul does not, iirc, pin his Jesus down in time or space; even Hercules has more specifics.
Cute, but doesn’t really cover how “born of a woman” and “seed of Abraham” would apply to anything other than a human. There are a few other passage in Paul where he mentions Jesus on earth. I agree the details are meager. Again, they are not vague regarding whether Jesus was a person living on this planet (although you could say the picture they drew of his earthly life was vague). That’s also my response to the notion of a “Celestial Jesus”. Paul seems to envision a pre-earthly life for him, but has his ministry here on earth.
Please keep in mind that Paul mentions persecuting the church in 1 Corinthians 15:9. Unless you think Paul was lying there, this makes any claim that he started the Christian faith highly implausible.
One Brow @ 69: I’ll be back soon.
Pls bring replies of actual substance next time.
Pierce R. Butler, I would guess that at some point in your career—Pedagogy was involved. You have certainly taught me a thing or two from your skill set.
Just a funny FYI: Lataster’s 2016 journal article title was published with all caps: “IT’S OFFICIAL: WE CAN NOW DOUBT JESUS’ HISTORICAL EXISTENCE”.
I do not think it was over the top 🙂
Pierce R. Butler,
Pls bring replies of actual substance next time.
When you are responding to a Godfrey quote, that would be making something out of nothing. However, I assume you posted this before #70 was released from moderation.
db,
No it would not you petty snot.
A sad insult from a poster who seems to offer more links and cut/paste then his own thoughts. I am unimpressed.
There is no way you surveyed the entire corpus of O’Neill’s diatribe against Salm’s views without confirming what Godfrey said of O’Neill. Even if your semantic sensors need to be re-calibrated, which is likely.
Perhaps you missed the part where I pointed out that Godfrey’s word were true in denotation and false in connotation. Plese re-read #57. Then, if you feel that a a harsher term than “crank” was used, by all means go back to O’Neill’s article and quote it. We all know you are very proficient at quoting.
@db: Your comment has been deleted. I appreciate that others are pushing their luck somewhat with regard to Ground Rule 1, but insults are definitely over the line.
(This might put your comments automatically back into moderation; I’m not sure. If that happens, I’ll be happy to clear them if they’re civil.)
@57 One Brow said: “The only harsh language O’Neill uses of Salm is to refer to him as a “crank”, which is a completely accurate description of an amateur who puts forth faulty, unsupportable hypotheses and refuses to listen to why they don’t work.”
@59 I posted four links to Vridar posts on Tim O’Neill.
• Post your comments directly on any of theses Vridar posts and prove me wrong.
@75 Dr Sarah
• My apologies to you and One Brow, per my infraction of Ground Rule 1.
Dr. Sarah,
I have skirted that line, and I apologize. I will behave better.
db and Pierce R. Butler,
I promise to treat you with the respect and dignity you deserve as humans, and apologize for failing at that in previous posts.
db,
@59 I posted four links to Vridar posts on Tim O’Neill.
• Post your comments directly on any of theses Vridar posts and prove me wrong.
So, my comment is incorrect posted on Geeky Humanist, but might be correct if I posted it on Vridar? I don’t understand the logical process there. If I post on Vridar, will I suddenly be convinced that O’Neill used a stronger term than “crank”, or that “crank” now qualifies as a public humiliation?
Frankly, I’m not even sure what “prove me wrong” means here. Your most recent claim was “There is no way you surveyed the entire corpus of O’Neill’s diatribe against Salm’s views without confirming what Godfrey said of O’Neill. Even if your semantic sensors need to be re-calibrated, which is likely.”, and I have already said that Godfrey’s statement can be defended as literally true, but with a false connotation.
The previous assertion by you that I can find is in #56: Weeden asserts … the Markan text could not have been written before the early 80s ce. I have no reason to agree or disagree on the opinion of Weeden.
Before that, I need to go back to #40, where I agree that I made that statement.
So, I’m not sure what statement of yours you think I would be interested in proving wrong.
One Brow et alia:
Most of my day went into dealing with a situation which ended up in driving a cat to a veterinary hospital, and I just can’t muster the frame of mind this thread requires tonight.
Mañana …
(The cat seems to have a good prognosis, fwiw.)
Pierce R. Butler,
Absolutely, take care of the cat. My wife loves our cats almost as much as our children, so I understand that completely. I’m glad to hear it is well.
Also, please don’t feel the need to continue the conversation for any other reason than you get value from it. If and when you want to continue, I will be around.
One Brow @ # 70 (correct, I had not seen this when I posted my # 71): Do any historians take her seriously now?
Many, along with laypersons, seem to accept the tradition(s) Helena signal-boosted. Vide: the “Stations of the Cross”, still followed down particular Jerusalem streets. Am not sure whether the other “historic sites” now touted in Jerusalem are the ones she “identified” as such.
As I said earlier, I want to see an informed neutral review of Salm, or nothing at all.
… would the translation of such terms into a descriptor of Jesus behavior, as opposed to city where he lived, affect their faith, and 2) if not, why do they nonetheless universally think Nazareth was a city?
I can see why many early Christians would reject the idea that JC belonged to (a branch of) the Essenes and would thus leap to any other explanation of a word associated with him. A lot would depend on whether said Christians spoke Greek fluently; I gather Aramaic predominated then/there, but can’t say which groups spoke which language and for how long.
For me, a “historic” Jesus refers to the brother of James, who was called the Messiah.
Which introduces a pair of new criteria, with attendant complications. A) “Brother” then as now could signify close bonding rather than genetic kinship; B) the “Messiah”/”Christos” seems to have been applied several years after the purported life of Jesus. In any case, James did not play much of a role in the bio – why prioritize him for historicality, except for that one-off name-drop by Josephus?
Is it possible that the actions of other people got worked into the stories about JBJM? Sure. Does that cast doubt on the existence of JBJM? No.
That depends on whether you define “historical Jesus” as “the guy who did X and Y”. If one person did X and another did Y, “historicality” gets messy.
… Jesus who was called Christ…
Unless the original Latin had some fancy usage of tenses, that does not tell us whether Jesus was called “Christ” during his lifetime, or when Ananus busted James, or at the time Josephus wrote his history.
The relevant remainder of the quotation (thanks for that link!):
Nothing there concerning anything of religion or dissidence; no reason I can see to reject hypotheses of interpolation.
… how “born of a woman” and “seed of Abraham” would apply to anything other than a human.
“Human”, in this context, still fits comfortably into “vague.” No Jew expected any messiah in the form of an angel or other spirit.
Paul seems to envision a pre-earthly life for him, but has his ministry here on earth.
But also in the form of “spiritual” revelations: P’s only encounter with the “savior” to whom he devoted the rest of his life.
… Paul mentions persecuting the church …
A) “… I persecuted the church of God.”
A pretty vague target, that; particularly since he was addressing a congregation hundreds of miles away and perhaps a decade or more later.
B) Believers love to exaggerate their sins when they go into confession mode. If we accept any of this at face value, it means little more than that (then-)Saul helped (probably) Saducees in prosecuting heretics. As (maybe) the first preacher to convey the Jewish concept of an anointed savior in the Hebrew tradition to non-Jews, Paul created at least a new denomination, if not a new “faith” – where and how do we draw that line?
Apparently the 7th-century Christian church saw Muhammad as having launched a heresy within Christianism; no doubt his doctrine of “submission” reached the status of a separate “faith” at different times in different places. I see no reason to doubt that Christianism emerged from the “Judeo-Christian” melange by a similarly blurry and uneven process (perhaps more so, given the Diaspora and all its complications).
One Brow @ # 80 – Thanks, the cat continues to recover.
Dr S’s intervention seems to have lowered the temperature and pressure around here, so I agree that we can continue so long as each gets something worthwhile from this.
Sarah — you stated at the outset that comments needed to be polite. Yet when I read through them I see that while there is by and large an effort to be polite among those in the current discussion, politeness is not required for anyone not yet involved. Thus Salm and others are still called “cranks” and their character is attacked without evidence (“they refuse to accept correction from experts”) and yours truly is said to be the author of “weasely (sic) words”, “deceptive”, and “misleadingly insinuating” .
After all those insults One Brow says he promises to “treat with respect and dignity” the others he is engaged with discussion here.
So what room is there for Salm or me to enter the conversation when we have already been insulted with your tacit approval?
Neil
I was expecting my comment #82 to default to moderation and not be made live because it was directed to Sarah alone. But since I see I am “here” I will begin…
Comment #5 — the Nazareth argument is described as “bullshit”. That is hardly an opener for a civil discussion.
Comment #12 — mythicism is compared with flat-earthism (and again at #25). Again, that is not the way to engage in a serious discussion. When a commenter insults other side it is clear that commenter is not open to serious discussion.
@ One Brow — you say (e.g. comment #16) that it is “only we amateurs … that think there is a serious question”. I think the evidence points towards many in mainstream biblical studies thinking otherwise. Is Dr Sarah opening up this discussion here just for amateurs? There is a clear difference in the way scientists respond to flat-earthers and the way many biblical scholars respond to mythicists. The latter is very similar to the way conservative biblical scholars respond to so-called “minimalists”. There is name-calling and personal insults and misrepresentations — all designed to dissuade their audiences from taking the other side seriously. Scientists don’t need to do that with deniers of evolution. They simply present the arguments and leave it at that, for most part. I have books here by scientists taking creationists to task and their tone and presentation is as different as night from day when compared with biblical scholars reactions to “minimalists” and “mythicists”. Biblical scholars clearly do think the question is serious — serious enough to go on the attacking the characters of mythicists and mocking their arguments through gross misrepresentation.
Comment #34 — suggesting that public universities would welcome mythicist historians for the sake of attracting grant money and so forth — but it is very evident that few scholars would ever waste their time making their name with mythicism since at least one of the editors, Michael Bird, of the leading scholarly journal in historical Jesus studies has said flat out that no submission arguing for mythicism would ever be published in that journal. That tells you that a mythicist is up against little chance of getting ahead as a scholar by normal means.
In the same comment you quote Grant. Grant, if you look at his bibliography and citations, is relying entirely on theologians for his book on Jesus. Ehrman, writing a popular book as you say, did say he believed he was the first scholar ever to have systematically sat down to prove the historicity of Jesus, at least in modern times.
Comment #39 — “The academic press was where the argument was largely settled…”. The evidence itself informs us that the question was never settled. It was simply ignored. The objections to the writings of Shirley Jackson Case and others were simply ignored. That’s not “settling” a question; it is burying it.
Comment #44 — In response to an earlier comment it is said that O’Neill is “a person with actual training in the historical method.” No, he has not had any formal training in either historical methods or the philosophy of history according to everything he has said about his background as far as I am aware. He never even studied history at university. He writes as if even unaware of the discussions of methods by one of the leading historians of ancient times in the last century, Moses I. Finley.
One Brow, you also say at several points that one needs to have a generally acceptable alternative to a thesis before taking a position of doubt or scepticism towards the prevailing thesis, if I have read you correctly. That is surely not true. One can legitimately express problems with a prevailing thesis and express a need for it to be revised or replaced some time, without yet knowing what the alternative might be. Such a position is intellectual honesty. Agnosticism is rarely a dishonest position.
On Comment #57 — On your response to Kuhnen, you appear not to have read in full the correspondence with Salm. It is very clear that Kuhnen had respect for Salm’s views in his book and even shared them with his students. Kuhnen wrote on the archaeology of Greco-Roman Palestine. His interests are broader than Nazareth. There is simply no denying that he held Salm’s views with respect, not “bullshit” as they are called in this discussion. I also posted in depth an analysis of O’Neill’s attempt to demonstrate that Salm mistranslated Kuhnen and misrepresented Kuhnen’s arguments. Salm most certainly did not and O’Neill’s arguments and presentation were clearly flawed as I demonstrated in detail.
Salm has never simply refused to accept correction from archaeologists. He has criticized some of his critics were are not specialists in Palestinian archaeology and he has demonstrated where they have failed to take serious note of the published literature.
In Comment #58 One Brow speaks of doubt about documentation being available to Josephus and Tacitus as “unreliable”. Again, this indicates a failure to understand how historical inquiry and treatment of evidence works — at least by those “trained in history”. In my most recent post on historical sources I quote Steve Mason in this respect: “there is never a prospect of declaring any ancient source adequate or “reliable” for our inquiry.” (https://vridar.org/2020/11/20/understanding-historical-evidence-2/)
In the same comment the parallels with Jesus ben Ananias are downplayed. Theodore Weeden certainly had a different view of the parallels. So one needs to present an argument, not a mere dismissal, when discussing things like this. ( http://vridar.info/xorigins/josephus/2jesus.htm ) What happened to Jesus ben Ananias was not replicated in “a half-dozen or so other people” — unless you can point me to instances that have escaped me.
Comment #67 — there are too many problems to be addressed here in a couple of paragraphs.
Comment #70 — “Why do they nonetheless universally think Nazareth was a city?” That’s easy. Because the archaeological evidence as published in the scholarly journals points to Nazareth being (re)settled from the latter half of the first century. If we are going to poo-pooh Salm’s case we should at least read it to know what it is.
“born of a woman” — again, we need to take a step back and take note of how sound historical method works and not jump on anything we see that looks like a useful proof-text.
I’d also like to address Sarah’s remarks in her post. I may do that on my own blog so they are not lost down here in the “low 80s” somewhere — or maybe in both places.
Cheers,
N
neilgodfrey @ # 83 – welcome. Pls at least drop a note here if you post relevant material at Vridar.
Hilarious that db thinks Lataster is a serious source.
Pierce R. Butler,
Many, along with laypersons, seem to accept the tradition(s) …
This could be true regardless of whether these historians took St. Helena seriously or not. Very few people are always wrong.
As I said earlier, I want to see an informed neutral review of Salm, or nothing at all.
What would you add to the following qualifications for a “neutral review”?
1) No vested interest in the existence of Nazareth in first-century CE
2) No vested interest in the lack of said existence
3) Ability to read, understand, and relay the current understanding of scholarship
I can see why many early Christians would reject the idea that JC belonged to (a branch of) the Essenes …
Please explain it to me, then, as I don’t see why they would care, nor why there would be a confusion between “Nazorean” and “Essene”. Did you mean “Nazarite”? Nazarites. among other things, did not drink alcohol and avoided the dead, while Jesus is portrayed as drinking and touches the dead. Why would he be confused for a Nazarite, assuming Mark even knew what that was?
Which introduces a pair of new criteria, with attendant complications. A) “Brother” then as now could signify close bonding rather than genetic kinship; B) the “Messiah”/”Christos” seems to have been applied several years after the purported life of Jesus.
Both terms having been used by Josephus in Antiquities XX.9.1, and there is no reason that Josephus would have referred to Jesus as James’s brother over a non-familial close bonding.
In any case, James did not play much of a role in the bio – why prioritize him for historicality, except for that one-off name-drop by Josephus?
Also the very significant name-drop by Paul. Both Josephus and Paul identify James as one of the leaders of the church.
I’m not “prioritizing” James, I’m using James for identification.
That depends on whether you define “historical Jesus” as “the guy who did X and Y”. If one person did X and another did Y, “historicality” gets messy.
I agree that if you frame the argument in a manner designed to support mysticism, then historicity becomes harder to defend. However, since we are not looking at 5 or 6 possible interpretations of Jesus (as if he were some character in a play), but at an actual person, there is no reason to “define” this person, rather, we can only decide how much we can say about them.
Unless the original Latin had some fancy usage of tenses, that does not tell us whether Jesus was called “Christ” during his lifetime, or when Ananus busted James, or at the time Josephus wrote his history.
I agree. Regardless of which of those three timelines applies, Jesus existed.
Nothing there concerning anything of religion or dissidence; no reason I can see to reject hypotheses of interpolation.
To my understanding, there is no scholar that makes a claim of interpolation. There is a difference between being skeptical and being contrary. Assuming you are not just being contrary, what is your reason for suspecting interpolation?
“Human”, in this context, still fits comfortably into “vague.” No Jew expected any messiah in the form of an angel or other spirit.
“Human” is completely sufficient for ‘Jesus is a person from history’.
Paul seems to envision a pre-earthly life for him, but has his ministry here on earth.
But also in the form of “spiritual” revelations: P’s only encounter with the “savior” to whom he devoted the rest of his life.
Yes, both are true.
… Paul mentions persecuting the church …
A) pretty vague target, that; particularly since he was addressing a congregation hundreds of miles away and perhaps a decade or more later.
B) Believers love to exaggerate their sins when they go into confession mode. If we accept any of this at face value, it means little more than that (then-)Saul helped (probably) Saducees in prosecuting heretics.
Since my only point there was to point out that Christianity preceded Paul’s conversion, that’s more than sufficient.
As (maybe) the first preacher to convey the Jewish concept of an anointed savior in the Hebrew tradition to non-Jews, Paul created at least a new denomination, if not a new “faith” – where and how do we draw that line?
A fine discussion for another thread. Here, I’m only discussing the historicity of Jesus.
One Brow @ # 80 – Thanks, the cat continues to recover.
Dr S’s intervention seems to have lowered the temperature and pressure around here, so I agree that we can continue so long as each gets something worthwhile from this.
I am glad to hear it, and wish you many more years of happiness with your cat.
@ One Brow, #86
Your reference to “ability to read, understand, and relay the current understanding of scholarship” in connection with a request to see “an informed neutral review of Salm” is interesting. One does not have to be a scholar to read or even write works of scholarship and to ask questions and compare feedback from different perspectives. Without appeal to authority or a third party of any kind, can you detail any sections of Salm’s published argument that does not engage critically with the scholarship that was current at the time of publication? Can you also point us to where Salm has refused to accept correction from archaeologists and Salm’s reasons for his supposed “rejection” of their criticisms?
Both Josephus and Paul identify James as one of the leaders of the church.
Where does Josephus identify James as a leader “of the church”?
are not just being contrary, what is your reason for suspecting interpolation?
The case for some kind of interpolation or gloss has been made often enough. Can you set out the case for rejecting the argument for a gloss without simply saying “no scholar makes that claim”? If we are relying on what most scholars appear to say then we don’t have anything to discuss. Surely this discussion is about the actual arguments, and we are engaged in understanding the reasons for conclusions, etc. There is no discussion if one side simply bypasses the arguments and says, “Hey, I’m on the side of most scholars.” The entire historicity of Jesus debate is about the arguments, not about head-counts of who says what.
“Human” is completely sufficient for Jesus is a person from history’.
Thinking back on most fictional characters in literature, I think nearly all fictional persons have been human, or certainly the overwhelming majority. Even in modern times rumours start and spread about people who do not exist.
One Brow @ # 86: Very few people are always wrong.
Very many people are wrong about the same thing: generations of Americans believing the majority of Columbus’s contemporaries thought the world was flat, e.g. You’re moving from argumentation to sophomorism here.
What would you add to the following qualifications …
A clear definition of “vested interest”, and actual scholarship in the field.
… I don’t see why they would care, nor why there would be a confusion between “Nazorean” and “Essene”.
The early phases of just about any movement include efforts to differentiate that movement from its antecedents & contemporaries. Early Christians had no need to carry Essene baggage.
… no reason that Josephus would have referred to Jesus as James’s brother over a non-familial close bonding.
But a hypothetical interpolator might have reasons to add “brother of Jesus called Christ” in a passage about some James in Jerusalem getting executed.
… there is no reason to “define” this person, rather, we can only decide how much we can say about them.
I just can’t buy that. A thing (or person) undefined has no edges and blends into everything/body else.
… what is your reason for suspecting interpolation?
Persons who have enough of a “calling” to spend their lives in a monastic cell endlessly copying old documents, experience shows, tend to insert their own “clarifications” into what passes through their hands. neilgodfrey @ # 87 avers that passage may have undergone interpolation (“the case has been made … often enough”); you say nobody has asserted that. Lacking the time & inclination to dig through Josephus studies, I’ll let y’all thrash that out (though he wins if he can cite one or two examples – you’ve boxed yourself into trying to prove a negative…).
“Human” is completely sufficient for ‘Jesus is a person from history’.
No, that’s neither complete nor sufficient. Alcmene of Corinth, King Arthur, William Tell, and Aunt Jemima also count as “human”.
… my only point there was to point out that Christianity preceded Paul’s conversion…
That only indicates that a “church” preceded Saul’s conversion (into Paul) – not that that church worshiped a specific, recently deceased, local human.
… I’m only discussing the historicity of Jesus.
A better dodge than some of your earlier moves, but you can’t evade the issue of Paul’s devotion to a solely hallucinatory (or at most second-hand) experience that easily.
Ftr, not my cat – a neighbor’s, whom I am allowed to serve while his primary human is elsewhere tending to coronavirus-crisis family needs.
@84 Pierce R. Butler said: “Pls at least drop a note here if you post relevant material at Vridar.”
• Godfrey, Neil (22 November 2020). “Once more on investigating the historicity of Jesus”. Vridar.
Dr Sarah, I am greatly embarrassed and apologize for my confusing you with Sara Parks. How I came to make that connection I have no idea now. But be assured that I have made a correction to one of my blog posts, have removed another, and posted an apology. Once again, I am sorry for my gaffe!
neilgodfrey,
Sarah — you stated at the outset that comments needed to be polite. Yet when I read through them I see that while there is by and large an effort to be polite among those in the current discussion, politeness is not required for anyone not yet involved. Thus Salm and others are still called “cranks” and their character is attacked without evidence (“they refuse to accept correction from experts”) and yours truly is said to be the author of “weasely (sic) words”, “deceptive”, and “misleadingly insinuating” .
Being called a crank is not an attack on character, but an analysis of interactions and tendencies. If someone uses other people’s credit cards to buy things and not pay for them, it is not an insult to call them a criminal. If a person says they lack any belief in any sort of gods, it is not an insult to call them an atheist. Similarly, it is not an insult to call Salm a crank. However, if you have one- or two-word phrase you prefer to describe cranky behavior, I’ll go along with that.
… and yours truly is said to be the author of “weasely (sic) words”, “deceptive”, and “misleadingly insinuating” .
So what room is there for Salm or me to enter the conversation when we have already been insulted with your tacit approval?
You could show where the two instances I pointed out where not examples of being accurate in denotation and inaccurate in connotation (could we call that being ADIC (to be clear, pronouced AD-ik), or would you take offense to me using a mathematical term that referred to a concept in ring theory where small differences (under the usual metric) are treated as large differences and vice-versa?). You could also stop writing in this manner.
neilgodfrey,
Comment #12 — mythicism is compared with flat-earthism (and again at #25). Again, that is not the way to engage in a serious discussion. When a commenter insults other side it is clear that commenter is not open to serious discussion.
In terms of the standing and use among present day scholars (which was the point under discussion in #12 and #25), they are equivalent, because neither has relevance.
Now, just for future reference, because I want to make sure I don’t insult you inappropriately, when I see you miss such an obvious context, would the most polite assumption be that you did not possess the intelligence to see or understand the context, that you are so blinded by your pre-set positions that it escaped you despite your intelligence, or that you understood the context, but did not care enough to represent it properly?
@ One Brow — you say (e.g. comment #16) that it is “only we amateurs … that think there is a serious question”. I think the evidence points towards many in mainstream biblical studies thinking otherwise.
Since many in mainstream Biblical studies are amateurs, I will interpret this as you agreeing with me in a highly unusual way (I think this will come up a lot, so I will go with YAMHUW).
Is Dr Sarah opening up this discussion here just for amateurs?
Not “just”, but primarily. See any historical scholars around here?
There is a clear difference in the way scientists respond to flat-earthers and the way many biblical scholars respond to mythicists.
Many biblical scholars have an emotional component to their interpretations of history, so let’s restrict this discussion to scholars who are not Christian.
The latter is very similar to the way conservative biblical scholars respond to so-called “minimalists”. There is name-calling and personal insults and misrepresentations — all designed to dissuade their audiences from taking the other side seriously. Scientists don’t need to do that with deniers of evolution.
Your apparent lack of knowledge regarding the nature of discussions of evolution on the internet is very obvious. Even in forums that try to discourage insults and name-calling, they appear, and they are needed. Some ideas are really just too stupid, or too opposed to the evidence, to treat seriously.
Comment #34 — … Michael Bird, … That tells you that a mythicist is up against little chance of getting ahead as a scholar by normal means.
This Michael Bird? If he were to run a scholarly magazine in a fashion that ignored good work, some other magazine would publish it, the publications would get noticed, and Bird’s magazine would slowly lose influence, which would be a good thing. All that’s needed is for a mythicist to do good, historical work.
Ehrman, writing a popular book as you say, did say he believed he was the first scholar ever to have systematically sat down to prove the historicity of Jesus, at least in modern times.
Modern meaning in the last 100 years, presumably, since it was a scholarly question before that.
Comment #39 — ,,,The objections to the writings of Shirley Jackson Case and others were simply ignored.
Yes, papers that make bad arguments get ignored. If the papers had put forth anything interesting to respond to, they would have gotten responses.
Comment #44 — In response to an earlier comment it is said that O’Neill is “a person with actual training in the historical method.” No, he has not had any formal training in either historical methods or the philosophy of history according to everything he has said about his background as far as I am aware. He never even studied history at university.
https://historyforatheists.com/about-the-author-and-a-faq/
I have a Bachelors Degree with Honours in English and History and a research Masters Degree from the University of Tasmania, with a specialisation in historicist analysis of medieval literature.
Now you are aware, so I’m sure now you will stop saying he never studied history at university.
He writes as if even unaware of the discussions of methods by one of the leading historians of ancient times in the last century, Moses I. Finley.
Which could mean that he is aware and does not feel it is useful, or that he is unaware, or that you misunderstand O’Neill usage of Finley’s work, etc. Why do you think this is relevant?
One Brow, you also say at several points that one needs to have a generally acceptable alternative to a thesis before taking a position of doubt or scepticism towards the prevailing thesis, if I have read you correctly.
I have difficulty believing that you do not understand the difference between “thesis” and “theory”.
That is surely not true. One can legitimately express problems with a prevailing thesis and express a need for it to be revised or replaced some time, without yet knowing what the alternative might be. Such a position is intellectual honesty.
YAMHUW
On Comment #57 — On your response to Kuhnen, you appear not to have read in full the correspondence with Salm. It is very clear that Kuhnen had respect for Salm’s views in his book and even shared them with his students. Kuhnen wrote on the archaeology of Greco-Roman Palestine. His interests are broader than Nazareth.
I noticed you have made no claim that Kuhnen accepted the notion Nazareth did not exist in the early 1st century CE, so YAMHUW.
Salm has never simply refused to accept correction from archaeologists. He has criticized some of his critics were are not specialists in Palestinian archaeology and he has demonstrated where they have failed to take serious note of the published literature.
Salm is also not a specialist in Palestinian archaeology, nor archaeology of any sort. Further, when Salm first claims of Alexandre ” But the archaeologist who dug at Mary’s Well (Y. Alexandre) never claimed coins dating before Byzantine times! (I have exchanged emails with the archaeologist on precisely this point.)”, and then later (after Alexander has released dating for the coins) says ” It can be stated here that the treatment of new coin discoveries in that book is replete with errors and particularly suspect.”, it’s pretty clear that he’s not responding to the evidence at all, which is quite in line with being a crank.
In Comment #58 One Brow speaks of doubt about documentation being available to Josephus and Tacitus as “unreliable”.
Rather, he asks if there is a reason to doubt that they had access to reliable documentation pertaining to their brief mentions of Jesus.
Again, this indicates a failure to understand how historical inquiry and treatment of evidence works — at least by those “trained in history”. In my most recent post on historical sources I quote Steve Mason in this respect: “there is never a prospect of declaring any ancient source adequate or “reliable” for our inquiry.” (https://vridar.org/2020/11/20/understanding-historical-evidence-2/)
YAMHUW
In the same comment the parallels with Jesus ben Ananias are downplayed.
Since Paul’s preaching of Jesus precedes the activities recorded for Jesus ben Ananias, I’m sure we can agree Jesus ben Ananias was not the inspiration for Paul’s preaching or understanding of who Jesus was.
Comment #67 — there are too many problems to be addressed here in a couple of paragraphs.
So, YAMHUW.
Comment #70 — “Why do they nonetheless universally think Nazareth was a city?” That’s easy. Because the archaeological evidence as published in the scholarly journals points to Nazareth being (re)settled from the latter half of the first century. If we are going to poo-pooh Salm’s case we should at least read it to know what it is.
Except that the professional archeologists point to evidence from the first half of the 1st century CE, and before.
“born of a woman” — again, we need to take a step back and take note of how sound historical method works and not jump on anything we see that looks like a useful proof-text.
YAMHUW.
neilgodfrey,
Your reference to “ability to read, understand, and relay the current understanding of scholarship” in connection with a request to see “an informed neutral review of Salm” is interesting. One does not have to be a scholar to read or even write works of scholarship and to ask questions and compare feedback from different perspectives.
This statement is profoundly anti-intellectual. I can truthfully say ‘one does not need to be a medical provider to read or even write material relevant to to medical charts, ask questions about care, and compare feedback of different perspectives’, as I do this on a regular basis. That doesn’t make me a medical provider, and anyone who took my medical opinions with the same weight as those of medical providers would be making a serious error.
Without appeal to authority or a third party of any kind, can you detail any sections of Salm’s published argument that does not engage critically with the scholarship that was current at the time of publication? Can you also point us to where Salm has refused to accept correction from archaeologists and Salm’s reasons for his supposed “rejection” of their criticisms?
Example on Y. Alexandre offered above, and I don’t speculate on Salm’s reasons. A person seldom understands their own reasons, much less those of others.
Where does Josephus identify James as a leader “of the church”?
Antquites XX.9.1. I quoted it for you, unless you have a better reason for Josephus choosing to hightlight James in that passage.
The case for some kind of interpolation or gloss has been made often enough. Can you set out the case for rejecting the argument for a gloss without simply saying “no scholar makes that claim”?
I can’t make the argument for rejecting ‘Antiquities XV.10.2’s third sentence is a gloss’, either. There are solid reasons for accepting parts of XVII.3.3 which do not exist for XX.9.1. You can certainly take the position that any particular sentence in Josephus is a gloss until it is proven otherwise, but I would not call that serious criticism.
If we are relying on what most scholars appear to say then we don’t have anything to discuss.
If we are not relying on the expertise of genuinely knowledgeable people in our discussion, then our discussion has no bearing on reality.
The entire historicity of Jesus debate is about the arguments, not about head-counts of who says what.
I have heard parallel statements for over a dozen creationists, AGW deniers, etc. over the years.
“Human” is completely sufficient for Jesus is a person from history’.
Thinking back on most fictional characters in literature, I think nearly all fictional persons have been human, or certainly the overwhelming majority. Even in modern times rumours start and spread about people who do not exist.
Of course, since in this context we were discussing what Paul thought of Jesus, and not engaging in notions about mythological characters generally, YAMHUW.
Pierce R. Butler,
Very many people are wrong about the same thing: generations of Americans believing the majority of Columbus’s contemporaries thought the world was flat, e.g.
I’m not sure how this reflects on which historians take St. Helena seriously.
You’re moving from argumentation to sophomorism here.
I found the attempt to equate ” accept the tradition(s) Helena signal-boosted” with ‘taking St. Helena seriously as a historical source’ to be sophmoric. There are many historians that accept traditions from faith without using them professionally, and across a wide variety of faiths.
A clear definition of “vested interest”, and actual scholarship in the field.
Since I asked about your standards, I await your clear definition of “vested interest”.
The early phases of just about any movement include efforts to differentiate that movement from its antecedents & contemporaries. Early Christians had no need to carry Essene baggage.
Just from my knowledge of recent religious history (Mormonism, the JWs, etc.), I’m going to disagree. If there was any strong connection to the Essenes, the early Christians would have been calling themselves the true Essenites, following the real teachings of John the Baptist(?), in order to pull in more converts.
But a hypothetical interpolator might have reasons to add “brother of Jesus called Christ” in a passage about some James in Jerusalem getting executed.
There is a difference between arbitrary skepticism and critical thinking. What’s your reason for saying there is an interpolation? If it is the non-existence of Jesus, you would be able to use it against the existence of Jesus.
I just can’t buy that. A thing (or person) undefined has no edges and blends into everything/body else.
Don’t we all? Every atom in our bodies existed before us, and will exist after us.
More to the point, if I were to create a “definition” of Pierce R. Butler, do some examination on this constructed definition, and decide no one matched this precise definition with probability over 1/50, does that mean Pierce R. Butler does not exist?
Persons who have enough of a “calling” to spend their lives in a monastic cell endlessly copying old documents, experience shows, tend to insert their own “clarifications” into what passes through their hands.
This particular passage is basically unchanged across all document traditions, according to my understanding. For any other ancient document, that suffices to to think it is original, unless you have good internal evidence otherwise.
“Human” is completely sufficient for ‘Jesus is a person from history’.
No, that’s neither complete nor sufficient. Alcmene of Corinth, King Arthur, William Tell, and Aunt Jemima also count as “human”.
As a reminder, I was referring to the perspective of Paul. Paul thinks of Jesus as human.
BTW, none of the figures you mentioned have people writing about them as if they are real people and less than 30 years after their death.
That only indicates that a “church” preceded Saul’s conversion (into Paul) – not that that church worshiped a specific, recently deceased, local human.
Paul refers to it as the same church he now follows, and Paul follows a specific, recently dead human.
A better dodge than some of your earlier moves, but you can’t evade the issue of Paul’s devotion to a solely hallucinatory (or at most second-hand) experience that easily.
Why would I dodge that? I agree that Paul’s devotion came from a personal, hallucinatory experience (from what we can tell). How does that change the church existing before Paul’s PHE?
Ftr, not my cat – a neighbor’s, whom I am allowed to serve while his primary human is elsewhere tending to coronavirus-crisis family needs.
That’s being a very good neighbor.
Of course, that just destroys the model of “Pierce R. Butler, owner of a sick cat”. Do you think you still exist? 🙂
I read the first replies of One Brow to find he justifies calling a potential participant in this discussion “a crank”, and calling me the author of “weasely words”, “deceptive” etc.
In my mind these replies are clear violations of the request to be polite and not to assume bad faith in a dialogue partner.
Unless One Brow withdraws his justifications to violate the conditions of the discussion then I see no point in participating any further. One Brow would then not be engaging with me or Salm in good faith and would be without regard for Dr Sarah’s conditions for a discussion here.
Rene Salm is someone I consider an online friend. I have invited him to discussions where his work is being debated. Salm would be more than willing to engage in the details of his work, including criticisms of it, in a scholarly manner. I have no intention of inviting him to a discussion where participants have called him and continue to justify calling him a crank. So far the only online discussions of his work that I am aware of have degenerated into personal insults and complete disregard for addressing any of the details of his argument and responses to critics. Still looking for a civil venue….
One Brow @ # 94 – Another workout of a day (not to worry, cat continues well); I’ll try to muster a reply tomorrow.
neilgodfrey,
Since my apology, I have not accused you of using “weasely” words, and I have asked you for better terminology for “crank”. I can not withdraw the justifications behind those terms, because I did not create them. It was Salm who criticized the Nazareth Farm Village report based on his misunderstanding of Y. Alexandre’s email, and who has then chosen to attack Alexandre once that misunderstanding was corrected; it is Salm who is claiming there is a conspiracy. I am merely identifying what this behavior represents.
This represents good faith on my part, because I am being direct and honest with you about the short-comings in your position. If you want to claim I am being rude, I will not dispute that, but I am laying out the truth as seems so very plain to me.
it’s presumptuous of you to protest on Dr. Sarah’s behalf. After she made it clear people (likely including me) were close to the line, I deliberately pulled back, and will happily do so again if she so says. Her blog, her rules.
If it is impossible to find a civil place to discuss Salm’s work, perhaps that rests on the person who refers to archaeological findings he disputes as “scandals” and refers to an actual archaeologist as “inept”. Perhaps Salm is just reaping what he sows.
One Brow @ # 94: I found the attempt to equate ” accept the tradition(s) Helena signal-boosted” with ‘taking St. Helena seriously as a historical source’ to be sophmoric.
We seem to view “respect for religious tradition” through different lenses. Without said respect, historicists would have little indeed to stand on.
… I await your clear definition of “vested interest”.
Uh, you introduced the term.
If there was any strong connection to the Essenes, the early Christians would have been calling themselves the true Essenites,…
Assuming that the Essenes had a positive reputation among people in general or the Christians’ target market to begin with, and that the two groups had no conflict in doctrine or on the ground. As the E’s were reclusive and exclusive ascetics while the C’s were free-ranging proselytizers, that alone would separate them.
What’s your reason for saying there is an interpolation?
The passage as given seems odd, since Josephus does not describe why James and unnamed companions were sentenced to stoning. If Jimmy’s status as Jesus’s brother was worthy of mention, his crime (especially if church-related) would be too.
… if I were to create a “definition” of Pierce R. Butler…
You’re clutching at straws here. But, just to humor your whimsy, remember that you’re dealing with a name on the ‘net: anyone who knows about those will tell you that you should start with deep skepticism.
This particular passage is basically unchanged across all document traditions, according to my understanding.
Yet neilgodffrey asserts @ # 87: “The case for some kind of interpolation or gloss has been made often enough.” Perhaps if you were to address him less belligerently, he would furnish some examples.
Paul thinks of Jesus as human.
Paul thought of Jesus as some sort of manifestation of divinity – see my “celestial Jesus” comment @ # 63. He provides _no_ concrete details of his Jesus living and acting on Earth, though he gets admirably specific about people & places of his own encounters.
Paul refers to it as the same church he now follows…
A scattering of urban-underclass Gentile Greek-speaking congregations around the eastern Mediterranean qualifies as “the same church” as a heretic sect of Aramaic-speaking Jews around the Jerusalem area in about the same way as Elvis-mania is “the same” as K-pop fandom.
Pierce R. Butler,
We seem to view “respect for religious tradition” through different lenses. Without said respect, historicists would have little indeed to stand on.
I take this to mean something like, “Without the claims of St. Helena, there would be no town we identify as Nazareth”. However, we have a couple of mentions of the current town as Nazareth that precede St. Helena, including a Jewish source.
Uh, you introduced the term.
Yes, but it’s your standard I’m trying to meet. How would you identify a reviewer as having a “vested interest” or not?
Assuming that the Essenes had a positive reputation among people in general or the Christians’ target market to begin with, and that the two groups had no conflict in doctrine or on the ground. As the E’s were reclusive and exclusive ascetics while the C’s were free-ranging proselytizers, that alone would separate them.
Again, given what we have seen recently with groups like the Mormons and the Russellites, this is just no how religious organizations develop. If the prior organization did not have a good reputation, that’s why this new organization is the ‘restoration’ of the true meaning, etc.
The passage as given seems odd, since Josephus does not describe why James and unnamed companions were sentenced to stoning. If Jimmy’s status as Jesus’s brother was worthy of mention, his crime (especially if church-related) would be too.
That’s my fault for stopping the quote where I did. The very next sentences, after my quote in #70, was And when he had formed an accusation against them as breakers of the law, he delivered them to be stoned. But as for those who seemed the most equitable of the citizens, and such as were the most uneasy at the breach of the laws, they disliked what was done., which offers what the crime was and why it mattered enough to be included.
You’re clutching at straws here. But, just to humor your whimsy, remember that you’re dealing with a name on the ‘net: anyone who knows about those will tell you that you should start with deep skepticism.
Actually, that was my point. There is an actual person with whom I am exchanging ideas, and the probability of some construction of that person or another construction being accurate does not change this.
This particular passage is basically unchanged across all document traditions, according to my understanding.
Yet neilgodffrey asserts @ # 87: “The case for some kind of interpolation or gloss has been made often enough.” Perhaps if you were to address him less belligerently, he would furnish some examples.
Perhaps I have already read some of these examples, and found them wanting. I don’t need to be polite to read what he has written, after all. Frankly, were he as straight-forward, direct, and respectful as he insists others be, I would be less beligerent.
Paul thinks of Jesus as human.
Paul thought of Jesus as some sort of manifestation of divinity – see my “celestial Jesus” comment @ # 63. He provides _no_ concrete details of his Jesus living and acting on Earth, though he gets admirably specific about people & places of his own encounters.
Paul’s detail are meagre, but certainly concrete. He describes Jesus being born of a woman and in the line of Abraham, says he ate a meal with other humans, etc. What would you consider a “concrete” detail that Paul would have included, and in which letter does it belong, and why?
A scattering of urban-underclass Gentile Greek-speaking congregations around the eastern Mediterranean qualifies as “the same church” as a heretic sect of Aramaic-speaking Jews around the Jerusalem area in about the same way as Elvis-mania is “the same” as K-pop fandom.
In the same way the Catholic Church of 2000 is the same as the Catholic Church of 1000, sure. How would you separate them?
One Brow @ # 100: … we have a couple of mentions of the current town as Nazareth that precede St. Helena, including a Jewish source.
You keep making claims without citations…
How would you identify a reviewer as having a “vested interest” or not?
Again, that’s your criterion. I want a track record of demonstrated knowledge in the subject area and a neutral exploration of competing claims.
… this is just no how religious organizations develop.
According to your interpretation of the history of a few 19th-century US groups – whose ideas and context differ profoundly from the reputed hotbed of sectarianism that was pre-revolt Judea.
… But as for those who seemed the most equitable of the citizens… … which offers what the crime was …
Huh? So, what was the crime?
There is an actual person with whom I am exchanging ideas…
Agreed, the odds of a bot wasting its time on this dialog seem pretty slim. But in the context of Jesus-historicism, you’re back to assuming the conclusion.
Perhaps I have already read some of these examples, and found them wanting.
The flat assertion that “This particular passage is basically unchanged across all document traditions…” contradicts that. Ret-conning is lazy and disrespectful in comic books; it just has no place in any sincere discussion of actual history.
… were he as straight-forward, direct, and respectful as he insists others be, I would be less beligerent.
That’s an interesting blend of ad hominem critique and tone-trolling, but it still leaves you with unsupported assertions and diminished credibility.
What would you consider a “concrete” detail that Paul would have included…
“Jesus went to Jerusalem in the year after ___ became high priest…; I was told this by ___, who led the church in ___…; the stories told by ___ are false, because …; the people in ___ still tell the story of ___…; standing just outside the Damascus Gate…; I arrested the preacher ___ and the Sanhedrin gave him twenty-one lashes on my testimony that …”
… in which letter does it belong…
All of them. Any of them!
In the same way the Catholic Church of 2000 is the same as the Catholic Church of 1000…
Apples and amethysts. The Catholic Church of the latter era still has (some of) the same real estate and the same (plus more) documents and doctrines; the Judeo-Christians of ~30 CE and the Corinthian-Christians of ~50 CE had in common little more than apocalypticism and an idealization of somebody called “Savior” bastardized from vague Septuagint prophecies.
Pierce R. Butler,
You keep making claims without citations…
People remember things better when they do their own research. You can find the information on pre-Helena references to Nazareth easily in Wikipedia, with links to authoritative sources.
Again, that’s your criterion. I want a track record of demonstrated knowledge in the subject area and a neutral exploration of competing claims.
How do you determine “neutral” here?
According to your interpretation of the history of a few 19th-century US groups – whose ideas and context differ profoundly from the reputed hotbed of sectarianism that was pre-revolt Judea.
Humans have changed very little in the past 2000 years, but cultures have changed. However, if you feel you have some handle on the context of first century (CE) Palestine and the position of the Essenes in that culture, please offer it. Right now, it seems like you are assuming some level of ‘Essene rejection’ because you find it convenient.
Huh? So, what was the crime?
“… breakers of the law,”. You remember the Law, right? The 613 commandments? We even have confirmation from Paul that the church had decided keeping the Law was no longer needed to be a Christian.
But in the context of Jesus-historicism, you’re back to assuming the conclusion.
Since I have started with Antiquities XX.9.1, this is untrue. You should not start pulling out claims of fallacies you can’t support.
The flat assertion that “This particular passage is basically unchanged across all document traditions…” contradicts that.
Does it? Please point to a different documentary tradition of XX.9.1. I mean, I’m aware of a different tradition for XVIII.3.3 (one which supports partial authenticity), but that is not under discussion.
Ret-conning is lazy and disrespectful in comic books; it just has no place in any sincere discussion of actual history.
Agreed.
That’s an interesting blend of ad hominem critique and tone-trolling, but it still leaves you with unsupported assertions and diminished credibility.
Since my assertion was that there is only one documentary tradition for XX.9.1, and I have looked for others and found none, my assertion stands until you can produce a different documentary tradition. I am assuming you did not mean your unsupported assertion that I didn’t look into Godfrey’s claims regarding interpolation.
BTW, it’s neither ad hominem (since I make no claim of error, much less error related to any characteristic of Godfrey), nor tone-trolling (since I don’t claim he is using harmful language). I am accusing him of hypocrisy (one example being his willingness to exchange ideas with a person referring to supposed conspiracies and scandals of professional archaeology, but drawing the line at referring to that person as a crank).
By the way, where do you think Salm rates on the crackpot index?
https://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/crackpot.html
He’s got to be at least a 50, even without making adjustments for being in a different field.
All of them. Any of them!
You ignored the “why”. Why would Paul include these details in (picking the shortest) Philemon? How do they help with what he is trying to do there? If you can’t find a good reason for them in Philemon, try a different epistle. Find a good place for such a detail, and explain how it would have helped Paul in what Paul is trying to accomplish.
Apples and amethysts. The Catholic Church of the latter era still has (some of) the same real estate and the same (plus more) documents and doctrines; the Judeo-Christians of ~30 CE and the Corinthian-Christians of ~50 CE had in common little more than apocalypticism and an idealization of somebody called “Savior” bastardized from vague Septuagint prophecies.
Well, there is also the same leadership (Peter and James) and the same center of orgnization (Jerusalem). Where’s the dividing line?
One Brow @ # 102: You can find the information on pre-Helena references to Nazareth easily in Wikipedia…
As a history buff, I’d enjoy that – but for the last few years, due to certain domestic crises, have kept myself on a fairly strict diet of US history. I project at least two more years of that before I might allow myself to delve back into the ancient eras – more if our national problems don’t ameliorate…
How do you determine “neutral” here?
My model comes from a popular-level biology book, Melvin Konner’s The Tangled Wing. It concerns the nature-vs-nurture controversy, and Konner, rather than taking one side and biting at the other, presents the strongest evidence both ways.
… if you feel you have some handle on the context of first century (CE) Palestine and the position of the Essenes in that culture, please offer it.
I don’t have anything beyond the contexts given by Ehrman, Burton Mack, introductions to the Dead Sea Scrolls, etc, and I think I’ve summarized that material fairly. Just as few evangelists trying to recruit modern people for Christianism extol the Trappists or the Penitentes as a lure for the curious, I don’t think Judeo-Christians found Essenism a successful marketing ploy (look how much of the just-regular-Jewish baggage Paul had to drop).
“… breakers of the law,”. You remember the Law, right? The 613 commandments?
Not quite so vague as “human”, but still damned sloppy reporting. And what Josephus says doesn’t even get that specific.
I have started with Antiquities XX.9.1, this is untrue.
You switched quickly to One Brow C.X (comment 100, para 10), a feeble parallel using a dissimilar situation. The assumption that Pierce R. Butler’s online identity compares with Jesus C’s literary existence just won’t float.
The flat assertion that “This particular passage is basically unchanged across all document traditions…” contradicts that.
The contradiction lies in your own previous statement that “Perhaps I have already read some of these examples, and found them wanting.” Maybe you disagree with “these examples”, and maybe you’re even right, but to claim no one points to discrepancies = those discrepancies do not exist by hand-waving away such claims adds up to ret-conning yourself – something you also agree is lazy and disrespectful.
… your unsupported assertion that I didn’t look into Godfrey’s claims regarding interpolation.
Since he never specified such claims, and seems to have absented himself (hey, I didn’t drive him off), that remains an open question.
I don’t feel much of an urge to drop everything to excavate Josephusian details, but your self-retconning leaves me unable to accept your unspecified implication that you did look into anybody’s “claims regarding interpolation.”
… where do you think Salm rates …
See my # 68 above.
Why would Paul include these details …
Paul promoted a cosmic vision based on his own subjective experiences, unconcerned with Earthly actualities except as they involved the maintenance and growth of his followership. None of this lends useful support to historicist claims – something Paul could easily have done in regard to his own actions, and if trying to support his own case to doubters (“This really happened!”) really should have done just in passing. Paul sometimes makes a moral argument that lines up with one purportedly made by Jesus – they both came out of the Jewish ethos, after all – but doesn’t throw in a “as Jesus said that time in Galilee…” remark that would have (to his readership) clinched the case.
… the same leadership (Peter and James) and the same center of orgnization (Jerusalem).
P & J had no leadership (or any other) role in Corinth, nor did anybody in Co-town take their orders from anyone in J-burg. I find it increasingly difficult to believe you continue to raise such confusions in good faith.
Pierce R. Butler,
My model comes from a popular-level biology book, Melvin Konner’s The Tangled Wing. It concerns the nature-vs-nurture controversy, and Konner, rather than taking one side and biting at the other, presents the strongest evidence both ways.
Here, you are making a presumption that there is a legitimate argument to be on both sides. It’s pretty obvious that the answer to nature vs. nurture is “both, and how could we ever disentangle them”, but not every argument is between two sides with valid points of view.
In the case of Salm, you are not going to find a knowledgeable observer meeting your definition of neutral, because Salm has no case, and goes against widely accepted archaeological facts. It is very much like asking for a “neutral observer” (as you describe it) on evolutionary theory vs. creationism.
Not quite so vague as “human”, but still damned sloppy reporting. And what Josephus says doesn’t even get that specific.
Perhaps if the story had been about James, that would have featured more prominently. As it is, Josephus was discussing Ananus and why he was deposed.
You switched quickly to One Brow C.X (comment 100, para 10), a feeble parallel using a dissimilar situation. The assumption that Pierce R. Butler’s online identity compares with Jesus C’s literary existence just won’t float.
It also doesn’t float to assume we can create models of historic figures and judge their existence or lack thereof by our success or failure to fit a model around them.
The contradiction lies in your own previous statement that “Perhaps I have already read some of these examples, and found them wanting.” Maybe you disagree with “these examples”, and maybe you’re even right, but to claim no one points to discrepancies = those discrepancies do not exist by hand-waving away such claims adds up to ret-conning yourself – something you also agree is lazy and disrespectful.
In particular, what is stated in Antiquities XX.9.1 is completely compatible with Josephus’s writing style and standards; there is no discrepancy to which Godfrey, et. al., point. Further, my comment, if you will check again, was about the textual tradition. There is no early version of Josephus (not even the early Arabic translation that has a partial Testimonium) missing the “brother of James” reference in XX.9.1.
For example, here’s a list of Godfrey’s where 1) even Godfrey acknowledges at the start that the list is more apologetic than scholarly, 2) they are trying to cal into question the entirety of the paragraph as oppposed to only the reference to Jesus, and 3) the 6 reasons consist of have nothing to do with the text of Josephus or it’s transmission.
Since he never specified such claims, and seems to have absented himself (hey, I didn’t drive him off), that remains an open question.
He has several bogs posts that discuss the Antiquities XX.9.1 passage. I have a pretty good idea of his thought on the matter.
Nor did I drive him off. I tried to find mutually agreeable terminology, but it seems Godfrey applies very high standards to people with whom he disagrees.
I don’t feel much of an urge to drop everything to excavate Josephusian details, but your self-retconning leaves me unable to accept your unspecified implication that you did look into anybody’s “claims regarding interpolation.”
You keep mentioning retconning. Is there some position you think I have changed my rhetoric towards?
See my # 68 above.
I offered a link. You must be very disinterested indeed.
Why would Paul include these details …
Paul promoted a cosmic vision based on his own subjective experiences, unconcerned with Earthly actualities except as they involved the maintenance and growth of his followership. None of this lends useful support to historicist claims – something Paul could easily have done in regard to his own actions, and if trying to support his own case to doubters (“This really happened!”) really should have done just in passing.
Paul would only need to rebut mythicist claims if there were mythicist claims in his time. To my understanding, mythicism begins more than 1700 years after Paul wrote.
Paul sometimes makes a moral argument that lines up with one purportedly made by Jesus – they both came out of the Jewish ethos, after all – but doesn’t throw in a “as Jesus said that time in Galilee…” remark that would have (to his readership) clinched the case.
Please be more specific about which argument, and where. Personally, I think you will find it difficult to find such a place in the Pauline letters. That’s because 1) he wasn’t interested in proving Jesus’s humanity, and 2) there were no mythicists to defend it against.
P & J had no leadership (or any other) role in Corinth, nor did anybody in Co-town take their orders from anyone in J-burg. I find it increasingly difficult to believe you continue to raise such confusions in good faith.
I don’t recall the subject being if Peter and James were monitoring the day-to-day activities of any particular congregation. However, if you are saying the Corinthians of 50 CE did not recognize Peter and James as heads of the church, I’d like to see some proof, especially as Paul describes going to Peter and James in order to have doctrine changed.
One Brow @ # 104: … you are making a presumption that there is a legitimate argument … on both sides.
Whereas you presume the opposite. Meanwhile, you flatly disregard my answer to your question as to how I like to see a “neutral” analysis conducted.
… Josephus was discussing Ananus …
So it appears – and either he adds extraneous detail or omits relevant info. Either way, it weakens the extraneous detail for any other use.
It also doesn’t float to assume we can create models of historic figures and judge their existence or lack thereof …
When said existence is itself the point of the question, how else might we proceed? “Nobody’s ever asked that before!” really doesn’t work.
Okay, you’ve read more of vridar.org than I have, and here you present a clear contradiction to your own claim of unchallenged Josephusian consistency and integrity. I have no idea how seriously to take J. Efron’s doubts about Josephus’s story of Ananus, or Godfrey’s doubts about Efron, but all this only adds to the murk.
… it seems Godfrey applies very high standards to people with whom he disagrees.
Funny how you evade the issue of your own acrimoniousness, again.
… retconning. Is there some position you think I have changed my rhetoric towards?
This gets ever more tedious. As should be clear from my # 103, you stated at # 67 that “… no professionals contend that the mention of Jesus in Antiquities XX.9.1 is an interpolation …”; later you change that “Perhaps I have already read some of these examples, and found them wanting…”; and @ # 104 you link to a discussion of a book by “a Jewish scholar” calling the whole passage into question.
You must be very disinterested indeed.
I am very disinterested indeed in deliberately obtuse evasions. From context, could you really not grasp I meant to refer to my eschewal of all things Salm?
Likewise, I don’t find much to like in your shift that Paul must have intended to write a denial of Jesus mythicism for his consistent omission of Jesus’s putative earthly life to mean anything. From all evidence, Paul’s Jesus (the one that motivated his actions and epistles) was the one in his head – who managed somehow not to overlap with any material/temporal events or persons even in passing anecdotal mention.
Please be more specific about which argument…
As I recall – and I’m too tired, and too frustrated with your disingenuous diversions, to dig up chapter and verse – both Paul and Jesus bitterly deplored divorce. Yet Paul argues against it without citing anything Jesus allegedly said, which he clearly would have done had known anything from J on the topic.
… if you are saying the Corinthians of 50 CE did not recognize Peter and James as heads of the church…
I don’t think the local churches of the Pauline era recognized any ecclesiastical hierarchy between their own overseers (“bishops”) and the supernatural, though they would accept occasional guidance, not in any structured or formal way, from Paul and perhaps other itinerant gurus.
… Paul describes going to Peter and James in order to have doctrine changed.
In the (7 generally considered genuine) Pauline epistles, only Galatians mentions Peter – and in that text, Paul would have us believe they sorted out that he got the Gentile market and Pete got the Jews. Fairly standard turf-dividing, as seen in pyramid schemes from the Mafia to Mary Kay – except that, peddling pure vaporware, neither had any recourse to any meta-organization. The references to James are even vaguer and more self-serving.
Pierce R. Butler,
Whereas you presume the opposite.
Not presume, observe. As in, observe how Salm has not actual archaeologists who agree with him.
Meanwhile, you flatly disregard my answer to your question as to how I like to see a “neutral” analysis conducted.
Did I? I apologize for that, that. My understanding was that you were looking for an analysis that would treat the “Nazareth existed near 1 BCE” and “Nazareth did not exist near 1 BCE” as two positions equally worthy of being held, each with pluses and minuses to be examined. If this is not what you meant, could you clarify that? If that is what you meant, I feel I addressed it more than adequately.
So it appears – and either he adds extraneous detail or omits relevant info. Either way, it weakens the extraneous detail for any other use.
The only use I have for it is that the Jesus so referred to existed and was James’ brother. Seems pretty useful for that.
When said existence is itself the point of the question, how else might we proceed?
We could start with, “Do any reliable parties who do not have a personal interest in Jesus existing none-the-ess report him as existing?”, and see that we have two of them.
… but all this only adds to the murk.
From what I can tell, Godfrey likes to deliberately frame everything to be murky here. You can always find ways to throw mud at things. Part of being skeptical is to recognize the difference between careful questioning
Funny how you evade the issue of your own acrimoniousness, again.
If it is acrimony to call a crank by that term, then I will be happy to use another one (neither Godfrey nor you have a suggestion, it’s almost as if you would rather complain about language than look at the faults that make the language appropriate), and it’s not acrimony to identify when a person is being ADIC (again, happy to use a better term if you like). Polite conversation does not require one to acknowledge or accept pyrite as gold, nor does it require one to pretend something being done is not being done.
Outside of that, I have already apologize once for my acrimonious behavior, and have not repeated it.
This gets ever more tedious.
For both of us.
As should be clear from my # 103, you stated at # 67 that “… no professionals contend that the mention of Jesus in Antiquities XX.9.1 is an interpolation …”; later you change that “Perhaps I have already read some of these examples, and found them wanting…”; and @ # 104 you link to a discussion of a book by “a Jewish scholar” calling the whole passage into question.
I had forgotten that Efron contends that the entirety of Antiquities XX.9.1 is an interpolation (not just the passage about Jesus, but an entire paragraph of a couple hundreds of words, supposedly without there being a single deviance from the style of Josephus.
I am very disinterested indeed in deliberately obtuse evasions. From context, could you really not grasp I meant to refer to my eschewal of all things Salm?
I am happy to drop all things Salm from the conversation, from this point forward. Consider it done.
Likewise, I don’t find much to like in your shift that Paul must have intended to write a denial of Jesus mythicism …
Perhaps you misunderstood me? I said there was no denial needed, so Paul would not be writing one.
… for his consistent omission of Jesus’s putative earthly life to mean anything.
For the omission to mean something, you have to give a place where a more extensive mentioning of Jesus’ life would be useful to Paul in that time at that point in the epistle. Absence of evidence is only meaningful where evidence is to be expected.
From all evidence, Paul’s Jesus (the one that motivated his actions and epistles) was the one in his head – who managed somehow not to overlap with any material/temporal events or persons even in passing anecdotal mention.
I agree the evidence is meager. Paul only says what he needs to about Jesus’s earthly existence, which is that Jesus is a human (“born of a woman”), a descendant of David and Abraham, and was killed by the rulers of his time.
As I recall – and I’m too tired, and too frustrated with your disingenuous diversions, to dig up chapter and verse – both Paul and Jesus bitterly deplored divorce. Yet Paul argues against it without citing anything Jesus allegedly said, which he clearly would have done had known anything from J on the topic.
Actually, Paul identifies his teaching as coming from Jesus in 1 Cor 7:10.
1 Corinthians 7:10, NLT: “But for those who are married, I have a command that comes not from me, but from the Lord. A wife must not leave her husband.”. However, I didn’t think that fit your criteria of talking about his earthly life. He mentions Jesus as teaching things a couple of other times.
I don’t think the local churches of the Pauline era recognized any ecclesiastical hierarchy between their own overseers (“bishops”) and the supernatural, … Fairly standard turf-dividing, … neither had any recourse to any meta-organization. The references to James are even vaguer and more self-serving.
Galatians 2:
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Galatians%202&version=ESV
There was turf division, but there was still a hierarchy with Paul below the “three pillars”. That’s why Paul went to them to get approval for what he was teaching (note verse 2). Also, it’s not as if Paul was the only/chief person who went out to teach among the gentiles.
One Brow @ # 106: This gets ever more tedious.
For both of us.
Let’s wrap it up, then. Neither of us seems to be making any progress, or having any fun.
See ya ’round…
Pierce R. Butler,
See you around, then. I look forward to future exchanges.
@ One Brow
There is a place and Tim O’Neill has been invited to discuss Salm’s work there on the condition that he refrain from abuse. He has failed to respond there.
I am disappointed to find that Dr Sarah appears to grant permission to call people (a friend of mine, by the way) “cranks” and it is disingenuous to claim that the term is some sort of objective conclusion based on a serious analysis of his work.
Tim O’Neill has posted blatant falsehoods about Salm’s work and about his responses to archaeologists.
If you have evidence that Salm has been dishonest or stupid or fallaciously self-serving in his responses to any of his critics then produce the evidence (not what someone says he said, but from his own works) on the one place where one is free to discuss his work without insult of any kind. Warning: I ban anyone who resorts to personal insults and I am not impressed with disingenuous justifications for calling someone a “crank”.
Baloney. How much of Salm’s work have you read? How much of what he wrote about Alexandre’s work in total have you read? Or do you only need to read those select bits that are cited by O’Neill?
On my blog you would have had your comments deleted and been compelled to use civil and professional language — especially where you believe you find fault.
This blog is clearly not a place for me. I have no intention of getting into any further to and fro with you here.
Tim O’Neill has never, to my knowledge, discussed Salm without resorting to water-muddying and insults. It seems you feel that water-muddying and insults are not water muddying and insults as long as you can come up with a justification for them. To me, all of that is a sign of bad faith and signals one does not even know how to have a serious discussion about such a topic.
I see that Dr Sarah writes in the post:
A “good assumption” is fine for some purposes but it is not grounds for establishing a valid “historical fact”.
The “main point” that “he belief that Messiahship included bringing war against Israel’s enemies was a widespread” is what is in question. A significant number of scholars do indeed question that bit of “conventional wisdom”. That viewpoint about messianism of the Second Temple era is an interpretation and not a fact. There are many good reasons to question its “truth”. Some people traditionally refer to Josephus in part for support for the idea even though Josephus never makes any such claim. The reasoning goes that Josephus was shy of spelling out the details because of Roman sensitivities — despite all the evidence to the contrary.In other words, special pleading.
I don’t know why you indicate that I suggest someone is “dishonest” for holding the conventional wisdom.
Tim O’Neill has demonstrated in none of the articles I have read any awareness of historical methods outside those promoted by historical Jesus biblical scholars. He certainly demonstrates little awareness of historical methods and the philosophies of history in the way he “proof-texts” from ancient sources, while demonstrating every bit of circular reasoning and question begging that is the mark of too many New Testament scholars.
I might respond to the points in your post on my blog. I have no intention of getting involved in a long thread here where commenters are free to insult my friends by calling them cranks. I would be disloyal to my friends if I participated in such a thread. I thought from your appeal for civility that that sort of personal abuse would not be found here. I was wrong. I will leave you to your One Brows and Tim O’Neills.
Unless One Brow withdraws his justifications to violate the conditions of the discussion then I see no point in participating any further. One Brow would then not be engaging with me or Salm in good faith and would be without regard for Dr Sarah’s conditions for a discussion here.
I see you couldn’t stick the flounce. I also see that this thread had been quiet for over a week before you decided to join back in.
There is a place and Tim O’Neill has been invited to discuss Salm’s work there on the condition that he refrain from abuse. He has failed to respond there.
At this place, who defines what is “abuse”? Would it be a person who deflects from what Salm actually claims, and when Salm’s insults are pointed out, decides to reply with obviously false insinuations?
Tim O’Neill has posted blatant falsehoods about Salm’s work and about his responses to archaeologists.
Quite possibly. I doubt O’Neill has attained any sort of perfection, so obviously he can err from time to time. However, while I hope you are relying on more than Salm’s word for this, on the 3-4 posts I looked over on your website, you seem to rely on Salm’s descriptions much more strongly than any evidence you have discovered on your own.
If you have evidence that Salm has been dishonest or stupid or fallaciously self-serving in his responses to any of his critics then produce the evidence (not what someone says he said, but from his own works) on the one place where one is free to discuss his work without insult of any kind. Warning: I ban anyone who resorts to personal insults and I am not impressed with disingenuous justifications for calling someone a “crank”.
I’m not sure it is possible to fairly describe Salm’s behavior without getting a ban from you.
Baloney. How much of Salm’s work have you read? How much of what he wrote about Alexandre’s work in total have you read? Or do you only need to read those select bits that are cited by O’Neill?
I read a few pages of his web site and a paper he put into Academia.edu (how else would I have seen that Salm refers to archaeological findings he disputes as “scandals” and refers to an actual archaeologist as “inept”?). I appreciate that you have no qualms at all about accusing me of not looking directly at the source. As I have said to others, you maintain a very high standard for other people you disagree with.
On my blog you would have had your comments deleted and been compelled to use civil and professional language — especially where you believe you find fault.
I’ve read your blog, and I am quite comfortable saying it reflects the last sentence of my previous paragraph.
This blog is clearly not a place for me. I have no intention of getting into any further to and fro with you here.
I understand. Thank you for clarifying this again.
It seems you feel that water-muddying and insults are not water muddying and insults as long as you can come up with a justification for them. To me, all of that is a sign of bad faith and signals one does not even know how to have a serious discussion about such a topic.
I have no need to muddy the waters since, as you point out, my comments are justified. I appreciate you clarifying what you think is a sign of bad faith in people with whom you disagree.
neilgodfrey,
Tim O’Neill has demonstrated in none of the articles I have read any awareness of historical methods outside those promoted by historical Jesus biblical scholars.
Perhaps regarding this point, you would offer some reason to think that you are qualified to judge whether any piece of writing exhibits awareness of historical methods? Further, perhaps you could explain how the vast majority of the experts in history (including the secular historians specializing in this period) are so wrong? Are they also ignorant of proper historical methods?
He certainly demonstrates little awareness of historical methods and the philosophies of history in the way he “proof-texts” from ancient sources, while demonstrating every bit of circular reasoning and question begging that is the mark of too many New Testament scholars.
Oddly, when I read your criticisms of his posts in your blog, I missed the ones where you pointed out proof-texting and circular reasoning, and only saw those where you brought in fringe ideas and complaints of tone.
I will leave you to your One Brows and Tim O’Neills.
Dr. Sarah,
If you ever feel I am interfering with the conversation rather than furthering it, please feel free to tell me to back off or leave entirely, whether it be from a post, a topic, or even your entire blog.
I apologise for my long absence. In view of Neil’s grievance, I will reply to his comment at #82 first, with apologies for not having done so before; as you will see, this took rather a lot of thought to write.
@Neil Godfrey, comment 82:
Looking back over this thread, I can see several comments that fall short of politeness, both towards those here and those not here. I do regret not spotting those and calling them out at the time; I’ve had rather a lot on my mind and was skimming through comments at some points. For this, I apologise.
Whether you will wish to accept that apology after reading the rest of this comment, I don’t know. But, for what it’s worth, it’s meant sincerely.
However, with regard to the debate over René Salm:
I’ve been through O’Neill’s post, and Ehrman’s words on Salm, and your discussions of what O’Neill wrote, and Salm’s own site, and borne in mind that O’Neill and Ehrman are not archaeologists and could well have some of their facts wrong. And yet, even bearing all of that in mind, here is a list of points about Salm that seem, as far as I can tell as a complete amateur reading the debate, to be fairly well-established:
• He doesn’t have any formal training or experience in the subject he is arguing.
• Of the people who do have such training/experience/expertise, there do not seem to be any who agree with his belief that Nazareth was not inhabited in the first century. (If you know of any that I have missed, please say so.)
• At least three archaeologists (Yehudah Rapuano, Ken Dark, and Mordechai Aviam) have given specific grounds for disagreeing with his claims. He has shown no sign of being willing to consider the possibility that they might be right.
• His response to the unanimous disagreement of specialists in the subject has been to posit a conspiracy theory involving multiple experts and to publish a book putting forth this theory, advertised with somewhat sensationalist expressions such as ‘explosive revelations’.
I know nothing whatsoever about archaeology and am in no position myself to comment on the merits or flaws of any claims Salm makes in that area. I do, however, have a lot of experience of uninformed and inaccurate claims on subjects such as vaccination or alternative health about which I do know enough to judge the arguments. From that experience, I have come to recognise the above pattern of behaviour as a giant red flag. For those reasons, I do not feel able either to consider him as a reliable go-to source for the answers to archaeological questions, or to contradict people who arrive at negative opinions about his reliability or his approach.
You mentioned that Salm is a friend of yours, and I appreciate that that must make it particularly difficult to read negative opinions of him or his work. I bear him no ill-will as a person and am sure he must have many positive qualities.
One of your specific concerns was over the use of the word ‘crank’ to describe Salm. I note that the reason One Brow initially brought the word into the conversation was in order to defend a blogger who’d used it of Salm against an accusation of using harsh language. I have to say that ‘ban people from defending another person’s use of the word ‘crank’ to describe someone with a very questionable approach to research’ was… not even slightly what I had in mind when I issued a general command to everyone in the thread to be polite. I think we have a genuine difference of opinion here on what is or isn’t acceptable.
You’ve made it very clear since then that you, yourself, don’t find it at all acceptable for the word ‘crank’ to be used. I can, if you wish (and if you change your mind about never wanting to come back here), put an embargo on that word if you feel it would make a difference to your experience of commenting here. However, it does also seem that the issue of what word people use to express their opinion of Salm’s research is getting confused with the issue of what opinion people hold of Salm’s research. If it actually had occurred to me to stop people from using the word ‘crank’ in this thread, would you have then felt comfortable with the opinions being expressed about Salm? (Genuine question.)
On the subject of comments about your own writing: The passage of yours to which One Brow objected was one in which you’d stated, with biting sarcasm, that O’Neill’s problem with Salm was with the fact that he’d investigated and disagreed with the literature on the subject. Since the problems that O’Neill had actually described with Salm’s work included a) his refusal to accept it when experts disagreed with his assessments and b) his somewhat sensationalist claims that the archaeologists who disagreed with him were part of a massive fraud, all of which goes well beyond simply ‘investigating’ the literature, I can see why someone would take exception to this paragraph of yours. I agree with the statement that your words were misleading. I wouldn’t myself have described them as ‘deceptive’ because that, to me, implies a deliberate intent to deceive and I don’t know whether that was your intent, but I can in all fairness see how someone might have felt this a fair assessment; I’m really having a hard time seeing how I could fairly have pulled someone up on that. I do think, looking back, that I should have pulled One Brow up on ‘weasely’ and I apologise for not doing so. However, the fact remains that, if I had done so, I would have added a disclaimer to make it clear that I also objected to the words you’d used. I don’t know whether or not you wish to accept my apology under those conditions, but there it is.
I note that you stated below that you don’t wish to return to this blog. I leave that to you and am happy for you to change your mind at any time if you so wish.
By the way, would like to add that I really don’t care one way or the other about the Nazareth debate itself. If archaeologists think they’ve found that Nazareth existed at the time, I suppose that’s vaguely interesting, but can’t see that it contributes anything to the argument over whether Jesus existed. If archaeologists don’t think they’ve found it, then as far as I can see that proves even less; proving that a small village didn’t exist two thousand years ago sounds like a particularly difficult type of proving a negative. So, I don’t care about the answer. I do care about this sort of red flag approach to any research, though. This sort of claimed exposé of alleged fraud is always going to ring alarm bells for me.
Answering a couple more from Neil:
Comment 90: No problem at all; I was surprised by the mix-up, but not offended.
Comment 110:
Neil, I think you’re missing the context and misunderstanding my point as a result. The paragraph you queried was part of an argument that arose when the original Reddit poster accused Jesus of having been a liar, and gave, as one example, the contradiction between Jesus’s supposed messianic claims and the ‘bring not peace but a sword’ verse. I objected to the claim that that contradiction would make Jesus a liar, pointing out that even if (and I did specify it was an ‘if’) Jesus had actually said both those things, then that would not make him a liar, as it’s perfectly possible and indeed fairly common for Jews to believe in a military messiah. He didn’t believe me (as you can see from the quoted section) and asked for references for this claim (I think that was in a bit that didn’t get quoted), and I provided some accordingly.
Whether or not you think belief in a military Messiah was widespread at the time, there doesn’t seem to be any doubt that it has, over the centuries, existed as at least one Messianic concept amongst Jews who don’t find this to be any sort of contradiction, so I disagree with the claim that believing oneself to be a military Messiah would make someone a liar. Hope that’s now clearer.
Not sure why you thought that statement was aimed at you, but it wasn’t; it was aimed at the original poster’s claim that, if Jesus did believe both that he would bring war and that he was the Messiah, then this would be a contradiction that would make him a liar.
Hi all. Guess who just got notified that this discussion exists here … more than a month after the initial post referencing very abbreviated versions of my words. I know most of you have probably long since given up on this conversation. But, this is my first opportunity to actually state my opinion in my own words rather than in short snippets.
I’d like to start by stating something that might not be clear from the original post here. I do not claim to know whether or not Jesus or someone like him actually existed.
I tend to think it’s probably less than 30% likely that he did, possibly much less.
The reasons I think so are not limited to the complete and utter lack of any evidence or even any first hand eyewitness account. That alone would probably leave me at 50%.
The problem is that even if we ignore the miracles, there are some important points in the story that are very relevant to Christianity that simply make no sense at all or are very far-fetched.
For example, the idea that the highest court in Israel, the San Hedrin, convened on Erev Pesach (the eve of Passover, a high holiday in the Jewish religion) is as ludicrous as thinking that the U.S. Supreme Court might convene on Christmas Eve.
Further, the idea that they convened on a high holiday to hear the trial of a relative nobody who was not important enough for mention by either Roman historians of the time or Hebrew historians of the time, seems more than a tad suspect.
And, the idea that the San Hedrin would mete out an immediate death penalty despite their own rule of a 48 hour waiting period to do so, makes this very unlikely indeed.
But, what if it didn’t happen on Passover? Well, then why was Jesus passing around the afikomen that would later become communion wafers? This is kind of important.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afikoman
So, how likely is it that some guy named Y’shua ben Yahweh actually existed? I think it’s less likely than not.
misanthropicscott,
I don’t know anything about the traditions you mention. Assuming you are correct, and assuming both communion and the trial by the Sanhedrin (as opposed to just the Romans) are events we commit to with a historical Jesus, I would still see two events separated by a period of time (say a couple of weeks) being conflated into the same week as more parsimonious than communion being incorporated into a Jewish off-shoot. However, even more likely would be that there was no Sanhedrin trial, just the Roman one.
To One Brow:
A few points that I didn’t see good responses for, so let me add them.
See “The Greatest Show On Earth” by Richard Dawkins and “Why Evolution Is True” by Jerry Coyne.
What’s so unreasonable about Carrier’s hypothesis?
Are you aware of Carrier’s explanations for both of these? I hope you are. Otherwise, I think you’re arguing in bad faith.
How about John Frum?
I agree with Carrier that this is where the real debate should be happening, and that these are the best evidence for historicity.
James, the brother of Jesus. Christians regularly called themselves brothers, and calling someone brother of the lord was regularly used to simply describe someone as a Christian, and it’s plausible that this is all that is happening here.
“Born of a woman” was allegorical, not literal. https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/15057
“Seed of Abraham”. This argument never made sense to me on historicity. On historicity, the original Christian authors believed that Jesus was fathered not by any human, but directly by Yahweh and magic. Saying that the line “seed of Abraham” is about parentage doesn’t make any sense. (My understanding is that they traced parentage only through the father, and the mother’s parentage was ignored.) I know that Carrier’s “cosmic sperm bank” idea seems wacky, but even historicists are stuck with the idea. PS: Carrier also cites other usages of the term “seed of Abraham” as allegorical instead of literal, and so maybe it was an allegorical meaning instead of a literal “cosmic sperm bank” meaning. https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/13387
Here’s the relevant bit:
“and brought before them the brother of Jesus who was called Christ, whose name was James: and some others;”
It’s my understanding that this is pretty out of line with Josephus’s writing. He would not have so casually thrown around the term “who was called Christ” for his Roman audience without taking time to explain what he was talking about. He knew that his Roman audience would have no idea what he was talking about. The idea of interpolation seems, at a minimum, plausible to me.
Also, this passage could also be explained with fictive kinship, e.g. every Christian is known as a brother of the lord. That makes about as much sense that Josephus would intend this meaning because his Roman audience would have no understanding in this matter.
This is another quote that actually makes no sense in context under the assumption of historicity. This is one that makes much more sense under Carrier’s mythicism. First, “rules of this age” was often used as codespeak for demons. Second, in this passage in 1 Corinthians 2, Paul says that the rulers of this age would not have killed Jesus if they really knew what Yahweh and Jesus were planning. What were they planning? They were planning that with Jesus’s death, Christians would have everlasting life in Heaven. So, under the assumption of historicity, the people who killed Jesus were Pilate and the Romans, and Pilate and the Romans would not have killed Jesus if they really understood that doing so would give everyone everlasting paradise in heaven. That makes no sense. Any reasonable person would be first in line to kill Jesus if it really meant everlasting paradise. The only way that this passage makes sense is if Paul is referring to demons, and if Paul believed it was demons who killed Jesus.
To OP:
You are aware of John Frum and the Cargo Cults, right?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Frum
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult
Do you think every element of the John Frum and Cargo Cults were carefully crafted by a genius so that every element was chosen to attract more followers? Or do you think that some of the elements of this religion is absolute nonsense from the perspective of gathering new followers and making a new big religion? Your assumptions here are flatly contradicted by the facts of the Cargo Cults.
Also, on the standard Carrier mythicist idea, they weren’t making it up from scratch. They were “making it up” based on prior prophesies from the Old Testament. For some like Paul, they were also restricted by what other previous sellers of Jesus as Messiah were selling.
Also, no one is saying that it was purposefully made up by a conniving businessman who chose every story element to attract the most followers. Rather, Carrier cautiously supports the idea that Paul, and maybe the leaders too, were genuine and honest but were having hallucinations of Jesus and based all of their knowledge of off these hallucinations. Thus, the story elements are *not* restricted to only “the story elements that I would write if I wanted to attract a lot of converts and make a new big religion”.
GerrardOfTitanServer,
See “The Greatest Show On Earth” by Richard Dawkins and “Why Evolution Is True” by Jerry Coyne.
Neither of which fits the standard of “peer reviewed works in academic presses”. If we were including any sort of book, there are several that defend the historicity of Jesus. Starting out by taking discussion point this out of context makes for a poor beginning.
What’s so unreasonable about Carrier’s hypothesis?
If I need to go further than Paul supposedly believing that David’s sperm was preserved in an alternate plane of reality, then I suppose you’ll believe anything Carrier has to say.
Are you aware of Carrier’s explanations for both of these? I hope you are. Otherwise, I think you’re arguing in bad faith.
Carrier having an explanation does not make it a believable explanation. Creationists have explanations for their conclusions, as well.
How about John Frum?
What’s your evidence he wasn’t based on a real person? Further, Paul refers to the actual brothers of Jesus. Who is John Frum’s family?
James, the brother of Jesus. Christians regularly called themselves brothers, and calling someone brother of the lord was regularly used to simply describe someone as a Christian, and it’s plausible that this is all that is happening here.
The term Paul uses (“brother of the Lord”) for James (twice) is applied only to James and a couple of other unnamed figure, does not include (for example) Peter, and is used in a manner that distinguishes this group from the body of Christians.
“Born of a woman” was allegorical, not literal.
Neither of us has the expertise to address this argument properly. However, among the hundreds of secular scholars who do, the overwhelming majority see this to mean Jesus had a human mother.
“Seed of Abraham”. This argument never made sense to me on historicity. On historicity, the original Christian authors believed that Jesus was fathered not by any human, but directly by Yahweh and magic.
There is no evidence that Paul believed this to be true. The virgin birth doesn’t appear in writing until Matthew, some 30+ years later. This is the first time you make the mistake of assuming a uniformity of beliefs among earlier and later Christians.
It’s my understanding that this is pretty out of line with Josephus’s writing.
Antiquities XX.9.1 is a passage almost universally accepted as authentic.
He would not have so casually thrown around the term “who was called Christ” for his Roman audience without taking time to explain what he was talking about.
Tacitus was only 20 years later, and had no issues referring to Christians for his Roman audience. Further, I don’t think Josephus expected his readers to known every detail of every person he mentioned.
Also, this passage could also be explained with fictive kinship, e.g. every Christian is known as a brother of the lord.
Now you are whipsawing between, “no one would have known what a Christian was” and “the readers would be so familiar with Christianity that they would have understood they called each other ‘brother’ without Josephus explaining this”. Which do you think is more likely?
This is another quote that actually makes no sense in context under the assumption of historicity. This is one that makes much more sense under Carrier’s mythicism. First, “rules of this age” was often used as codespeak for demons.
When Paul refers to demons in Ephesians, he explicitly says they are not earthly, such as “following the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work among those who are disobedient” (Ephesians 2 NRSV) or “For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.” (Ephesians 6 NRSV). Other, later writers uses “rulers of this age” to refer to demons, Paul does not. This is the second time you make the mistake of assuming a uniformity of beliefs among earlier and later Christians.
Any reasonable person would be first in line to kill Jesus if it really meant everlasting paradise. The only way that this passage makes sense is if Paul is referring to demons, and if Paul believed it was demons who killed Jesus.
Sorry, I can’t place myself on that list. Further, I don’t think Paul is making the point about them believers in God being willing to kill Jesus, but rather, that they did not understand their role in what Paul thought was the purpose of Jesus’s death.
Do you think every element of the John Frum and Cargo Cults were carefully crafted by a genius so that every element was chosen to attract more followers?
There is a sort of natural selection that applies to religions. Those that appeal to humans and draw them in might look as thought they were crafted, but they are instead the result of years of people accepting ideas that appeal and discarding ideas that don’t.
Also, on the standard Carrier mythicist idea, they weren’t making it up from scratch. They were “making it up” based on prior prophesies from the Old Testament. For some like Paul, they were also restricted by what other previous sellers of Jesus as Messiah were selling.
If you mean some previously-existing sect was picked up and promulgated by an itinerant preacher who died for it, I can’t see any reason to object to that.
Rather, Carrier cautiously supports the idea that Paul, and maybe the leaders too, were genuine and honest but were having hallucinations of Jesus and based all of their knowledge of off these hallucinations.
That is a common enough phenomenon. So is attaching these hallucinations to belief in an earthly preacher.
One Brow,
An awful lot of Jews have been tortured and killed and otherwise victimized over the centuries due to the doctrine of Deicide. It’s an awfully big thing to ignore the San Hedrin trial.
misanthropicscott,
An awful lot of Jews have been tortured and killed and otherwise victimized over the centuries due to the doctrine of Deicide. It’s an awfully big thing to ignore the San Hedrin trial.
The victimization of the Jews is not diminished by the the possible falsity of the Sanhedrin trial. It would be far from the only fiction that has caused Jewish suffering, or suffering generally.
I fail to see why this is so unbelievable when we’re already talking about someone who believes in demons, resurrections, and other ridiculous miracles.
And he could have used it to distinguish between this James vs some other James.
Do you have citations for this claim?
There’s no evidence that he didn’t believe it either.
Also, the theology of Paul makes the most sense on the assumption that Jesus is not a mere human but has godly blood. It’s the godly blood as opposed to mere human blood which gives the power to the blood magic ritual sacrifice of Jesus to cleanse the world of sin. The weight of evidence is that Paul probably thought that Jesus was divine. Your supposition that Paul didn’t believe in the virgin birth is relatively unlikely, and so you’re trading one unlikely supposition for another unlikely supposition.
Again, I’m not talking about the whole passage. Primarily, just the bit “who was called the Christ”. Do you have citations that almost all scholars affirm that this could not be an interpolation?
I don’t know enough about Tacitus. I know that Josephus was in the business of trying to explain things, and that in context does not fit his style. Whereas, Tacitus would be referencing some cult group, and calling this cult group by their given name makes sense. Tacitus was not trying to create a detailed history in that work, AFAIK.
From my understanding, Josephus spends much more time on smaller details for other religious cults and other culturally specific things. It seems quite weird that he would use the technical term “Christ” without explaining what that meant.
I’m offering alternative explanations which are plausible. I don’t have to stick to one. I just need to show that your reading is not the only plausible reading.
No. Read it again. Paul is pretty clear that if the rulers of this age understood that their killing of Jesus would result in everlasting life for humans, then they would not have done it. That doesn’t make any sense if we assume Paul believes the killers are human.
One Brow – True enough.
GerrardOfTitanServer – Just to play devil’s advocate on your last point, not everyone wants eternal life.
Infinite time = infinite boredom = infinite torture.
Would I like more time than we get if I could be healthy? Sure. But, I don’t want eternity anywhere. I’m not built for eternity. I’d be bored out of my soul!
Sure, but it’s really hard to imagine Paul saying “they wouldn’t have done that if they really knew that doing it would lead to victory for all-mankind”, e.g. it’s hard to imagine *Paul* imagining that another human wouldn’t want eternal life. Let me write it out.
“You see, I bring a heavenly wisdom and not an Earthly wisdom. It’s something the Romans wouldn’t understand. If the Romans and Pilate really did understand that they could escape death and live forever by doing it, then there’s no way that they would have done it.”
It just makes no sense. It’s highly, highly implausible. This is one of the few passages which actually makes much more sense on Carrier’s mythicism theory.
Your philosophical points, while interesting, would be completely alien and foreign and unthinkable to Paul.
GerrardOfTitanServer,
I fail to see why this is so unbelievable when we’re already talking about someone who believes in demons, resurrections, and other ridiculous miracles.
For someone whose opinion rests on Paul not being verbose about Jesus’s earthly background (despite such details not being at all relevant to the points Paul was making), you seem awfully accepting of Paul’s relative silence regarding David’s semen being stored in a non-physical plane (despite this being highly pertinent to the points Paul is making, according to your view). This is an example of an inconsistency in applying principles.
And he could have used it to distinguish between this James vs some other James.
Absolutely.
Do you have citations for this claim?
I don’t have access to historical literature, but there are historians who blog.
https://rjosephhoffmann.wordpress.com/2012/07/07/on-not-explaining-born-of-a-woman/
There’s no evidence that he didn’t believe it either.
Mark doesn’t seem to know anything of a virgin birth, either. His Jesus becomes the Messiah at baptism. Further, unlike the name of Jesus’s father or hometown (for example), a virgin birth would have been relevant to much of what Paul was saying, and is something we would expect to see mentioned.
The weight of evidence is that Paul probably thought that Jesus was divine.
I agree. We disagree on whether Paul thought Jesus had an earthly life, not what Paul thought his origins were.
Your supposition that Paul didn’t believe in the virgin birth is relatively unlikely, …
Based on what?
Again, I’m not talking about the whole passage. Primarily, just the bit “who was called the Christ”. Do you have citations that almost all scholars affirm that this could not be an interpolation?
Josephus would have offered some description of Jesus in this passage, and we don’t have an alternative. I don’t think any scholars would ever say that any passage “could not be an interpolation”, because we don’t have that level of certainty for any text from the 1st century CE. Rather, we have no good reason to suspect an interpolation, unless you create one from a position exterior to the text.
I don’t know enough about Tacitus.
https://historyforatheists.com/2017/09/jesus-mythicism-1-the-tacitus-reference-to-jesus/
I know that Josephus was in the business of trying to explain things, and that in context does not fit his style.
Here, he was trying to explain what happened to Ananias, not to some minor figure (whose brother he probably talked about two chapters earlier). Who James is (much less who Jesus is) does not matter to this paragraph.
From my understanding, Josephus spends much more time on smaller details for other religious cults and other culturally specific things. It seems quite weird that he would use the technical term “Christ” without explaining what that meant.
Why would his audience for this book care about what the technical meaning of the term, and why would Josephus want to re-introduce the notion of the Messiah to his Roman audience?
I’m offering alternative explanations which are plausible. I don’t have to stick to one. I just need to show that your reading is not the only plausible reading.
This is the argumentative style of the creationist (‘I don’t have to explain how X happened, I only have to show why natural selection doesn’t explain X very well’). I hope you aim higher than that for yourself.0
No. Read it again. Paul is pretty clear that if the rulers of this age understood that their killing of Jesus would result in everlasting life for humans, then they would not have done it. That doesn’t make any sense if we assume Paul believes the killers are human.
1) So right now, you are relying on Paul, “someone who believes in demons, resurrections, and other ridiculous miracles”, to be making a sound and rational thought, while 2) assuming he is engaging in the formation of a logical construction instead of a rhetorical flourish. This would be an example of how mythicists read the Bible in the same literal way Fundamentalists do.
I reject the notion that Paul is attempting to construct some sort of logical argument. It reads to me like a rhetorical flourish.
No. Again: It’s weighing the relative probability of one unlikely scenario vs the probability of another unlikely scenario.
Unlikely scenario one: Paul doesn’t believe in the virgin birth. This is very unlikely because it just takes the foundation out of the entire theology. Jesus must be godly so that his godly blood is powerful enough in the blood magic ritual sacrifice to cleanse the world of sin for eternity, instead of the mere 1 year which you get out of a goat’s blood.
Unlikely scenario two: Paul believes in a cosmic sperm bank, and a virgin birth.
At first glance, both explanations are about equally implausible. You cannot attack my hypothesis as unlikely by substituting an equally unlikely hypothesis.
Moreover, I personally think that the first explanation (Paul doesn’t believe in a virgin birth) is even *more* implausible because of the aforementioned reasoning.
Yea, but so too would many things, like “remember that one time at Galilee that Jesus said this?”. Paul is remarkably silent about basically everything regarding what Jesus said and did doing his purported lifetime on Earth. Given Paul’s remarkable silence on basically everything, I don’t see why Paul *should have* mentioned this in particular versus any other thing.
Isn’t this a letter where he’s speaking to another Christian group? It would also make sense that he would skip the basics in a letter meant to talk about fine details of theology. Most papers don’t rehash in detail basic assumptions which everyone already assumes everyone knows and accepts. Paul is going to focus his time on points of disagreement, and cite bolstering common ground points. He’s not going to give a 101 intro lecture.
Because Josephus is a traiter to the Jews, and he’s trying to educate the Jews. Name dropping “that dude who was called the Christ, the messiah to the Jews” without any explanation seems like bad optics in that context.
No it’s not. Creationists don’t offer any better explanation. I’m offering two alternative explanations. That’s very fundamentally different.
You are too by saying Paul couldn’t possibly believe in a cosmic sperm bank.
And yes, most religious people are remarkably rational and reasonable. Most religious people are not crazy. They have a quite reasonable, coherent, and well-formed world view. Frequently the only problem is one or two highly-problematic base assumptions.
He would do both. Why do I have to choose?
And what, you’re just going to assume he’s crazy and saying literally random unconnected thoughts? That’s exceptionally silly. And wrong. Religious people are not crazy. Delusional, yes, but not crazy.
So, Paul means that Jesus was born of a real woman when it’s convenient to your argument, but when he makes an equally clear statement about the killers of Jesus, he didn’t really mean it because {insert reasons here}. Right.
I mean, I’m making the same sort of argument, just reversing the passages, but at least I’m inserting reasons into the {insert reasons here} which are specific to each passage, whereas you’re just asserting it on your mere say-so.
GerrardOfTitanServer,
No. Again: It’s weighing the relative probability of one unlikely scenario vs the probability of another unlikely scenario.
When you perform this weighing by diminishing one probability based on a reasonable silence, while refusing to diminish the other probability in the presence of an unreasonable silence, the motivated reasoning behind the assignments is apparent.
Unlikely scenario one: Paul doesn’t believe in the virgin birth. This is very unlikely because it just takes the foundation out of the entire theology. Jesus must be godly so that his godly blood is powerful enough in the blood magic ritual sacrifice to cleanse the world of sin for eternity, instead of the mere 1 year which you get out of a goat’s blood.
Unlikely scenario two: Paul believes in a cosmic sperm bank, and a virgin birth.
You do understand that, by supporting the notion of a virgin birth, you are supporting historicism? It’s not like virginity has any meaning in the spirit world.
At any rate, Jesus’s mother doesn’t need to be a virgin for Jesus to have have been imbued with a godly spirit. It’s not like David’s semen has any sort of special purity in Paul’s eyes, it’s just as impure as any other earthly semen would be.
At first glance, both explanations are about equally implausible. You cannot attack my hypothesis as unlikely by substituting an equally unlikely hypothesis.
I can point out that your reasoning has failed to make “Paul did not believe in a virgin birth” unlikely.
Yea, but so too would many things, like “remember that one time at Galilee that Jesus said this?”
Paul wouldn’t know that, because he was not at Galilee, and there is no evidence he has anything other than oral traditions to use. Paul would be able to (and a coupe of times does) refer to specific teachings we see Mark/Matthew attribute to Jesus, but would have no way of knowing where or when they were said.
Paul is remarkably silent about basically everything regarding what Jesus said and did doing his purported lifetime on Earth.
Well, expect for the occasions where Paul does refer to a couple of teachings, sure. What makes you think Paul would have known about them? Given that he’s joining the group 15 or so years after Jesus dies, and is relying on oral tradition from what we can tell, how many details of Jesus’s life does he have?
Given Paul’s remarkable silence on basically everything, I don’t see why Paul *should have* mentioned this in particular versus any other thing.
In your hypothesis, the virgin birth is crucial, not incidental, to Paul’s teaching. That’s why.
Isn’t this a letter where he’s speaking to another Christian group? It would also make sense that he would skip the basics in a letter meant to talk about fine details of theology. Most papers don’t rehash in detail basic assumptions which everyone already assumes everyone knows and accepts. Paul is going to focus his time on points of disagreement, and cite bolstering common ground points. He’s not going to give a 101 intro lecture.
I agree completely. Thank you for agreeing there is no reason we would see details of Jesus’s life in Paul’s letters.
When you argue from contradictory positions, you often find yourself supporting the position you were trying to rebut.
Because Josephus is a traiter to the Jews, and he’s trying to educate the Jews. Name dropping “that dude who was called the Christ, the messiah to the Jews” without any explanation seems like bad optics in that context.
Josephus is trying to educate the people he is betraying? Did you mean he was trying to educate the Romans about the Jews? You can’t think of any reason that, less than 30 years after a major rebellion, it might be wise to downplay the whole notion of what a Messiah was to his Roman audience, and basically use it briefly for a rebel faction he would have opposed?
No it’s not. Creationists don’t offer any better explanation. I’m offering two alternative explanations. That’s very fundamentally different.
You are offering two fundamentally incompatible explanations, which is more than common from creationists, and like them, undercutting your own position by so doing.
You are too by saying Paul couldn’t possibly believe in a cosmic sperm bank.
I doubt I have ever used “couldn’t possibly” in this thread (although it seems highly unlike Paul knows about sperm 🙂 ).
He would do both. Why do I have to choose?
I suppose you don’t, although trying to fit both into this particular passage seems to be overloading its relevance based on reasoning designed to support a particular conclusion.
And what, you’re just going to assume he’s crazy and saying literally random unconnected thoughts?
No, I’m saying that he is using a rhetorical flourish, with the general structure of “these people oppose us, but their actions helped us, and they would not have helped us if they knew what they were doing”. That’s not random nor unconnected. Adding in, “they must therefore be demons because truly rational people would have taken these action to help us, instead of taking these actions to oppose us” is adding a lot more to the passage than most writers intend to put into their writing. It’s eisegesis.
So, Paul means that Jesus was born of a real woman when it’s convenient to your argument, but when he makes an equally clear statement about the killers of Jesus, he didn’t really mean it because {insert reasons here}. Right.
I think he meant it. I don’t think he intended your extended interpretation of it, because he didn’t think through the logical consequences of his words to that degree with that particular twist in mind.
@misanthropicscott, comment 116: First off, my sincere apologies to you again for forgetting to notify you when I first put this post up and then for not letting you know much sooner. Definitely not one of my smarter moments.
With regard to the Sanhedrin trial, we both agree that’s fictional (not just because of the timing, but also because they’re described as objecting to a statement as blasphemous that wasn’t actually blasphemous and because they’re portrayed as acting like a lynch mob). In general, we both agree that many parts of the story are fictional, which is what we’d expect even with a historical Jesus. I just don’t agree that we can extrapolate from that that all of it was fictional, for reasons I go into more fully in the post.
By the way, whatever the Eucharist was based on, it clearly wasn’t based on the Afikomen; the rule is that that has to be the very last thing eaten at the meal, whereas the Eucharist describes Jesus as ‘breaking bread’ during the meal. There is a theory that it could have been based on pagan rituals, which sounds plausible to me but isn’t something for which I have been able to lay my hands on a clear reference. (It also seems to have been instituted by Paul rather than to be based on an actual event.)
@Pierce. R. Butler, comment 3 (sorry, I know you have a stack of comments in this thread and I’ve been meaning to get to them; I’ll post the replies one at a time for the comments of yours to which I want to reply):
If the story was framed as ‘Jesus was unfairly treated by the Romans! Rally in his memory!’ then I’d agree. Framing it as ‘Jesus was really the Messiah! I know he was executed, but he came back from the dead and will do all the Messianic stuff in the future!’ is a different matter, as is the eventual framing of ‘Jesus was really the Messiah! Here is a total reinterpretation of what ‘Messiah’ means that incorporates his crucifixion!’ Either of those were very obviously going to be hard sells, and that’s exactly how it went down.
It didn’t ‘take off’; it grew very slowly. People often project back from the fact that Christianity eventually became an overwhelming success and assume it was this way from the early stages (assisted in this assumption by the fact that the only account we have of the early church came from a member who had an obvious vested interest in making it look as though converts were rolling in in vast numbers, convinced by the power of the Lord), but in fact the evidence doesn’t support that. It was a minority cult for a long time.
BTW, curious that you’d identify Jesus as a ‘loser/commoner protagonist’ and not David? Seems to me it’s the other way around; Jesus was identified first as the Messiah, then as semi-divine, and, by the time his story spread to Western culture, fully divine, whereas David, in the story, was originally the obscure youngest son whose job it was to keep the sheep and whose father didn’t even think it worth calling him in to be checked by the prophet. As far as I can see, David’s pretty much the poster boy for ‘Commoner protagonist made good’.
@Pierce R. Butler, comment 4:
Why ‘especially the former’? I don’t see a problem with the idea that hagiographers of a real-life Jesus might include, in their exaggerations of his story after his death, the word ‘city’ to describe a place of origin that was actually a village. I do, as I’ve said, see a problem with the idea that two authors who really wanted to present Jesus as coming from Bethlehem would complicate matters by adding that he also came from Nazareth.
If he has any evidence for knowing this, then this would be a great time for a reference.
Matthew had a hometown for Jesus; he’s one of the two who makes a big deal about Jesus coming from Bethlehem. He had zero need to fabricate a different hometown. Actually, less than zero; he clearly wanted to make Jesus out as being from Bethlehem because he wanted to present him as fulfilling that particular prophecy, so adding in Nazareth just gave him a contradiction that needed explaining away. So, this theory doesn’t make any sense.
@Pierce R. Butler, comment 10:
Realistically, yes, I think that is impossible in any subject. Scholarly depth does inherently involve reading a wide range of sources, learning a lot of background knowledge, and going into a lot of detail. I don’t think going from ‘introduction for beginners’ to ‘scholarly depth’ in the same work is feasible.
@Pierce R. Butler, comments 29 and 41:
While that might well be true, there are plenty of universities in the other countries of the world, including many in non-Christian countries. I don’t think the dearth of mythicist scholars out there can be explained away purely by pro-Christian bias.
@Pierce R. Butler, comment 48:
[issues with O’Neill’s post on Nazareth]
Regarding your first point: O’Neill’s tone is actually, in my experience, fairly normal in the world of fallacy debunking. For example, check out Orac at https://respectfulinsolence.com/ on the subject of anti-vaxxers or quack health regimes, or Dr Amy Tuteur at http://www.skepticalob.com.) Often, people just talk that way because they’re fed up with people’s determination to stay in the zone described by Messrs Dunning and Kruger.
I totally get that, as a style, it isn’t for everyone, and have no problem with the fact that some people prefer not to read writers who take this approach. However, you were listing it as one of the issues with O’Neill’s credibility, rather than readability, and I’ve seen too many competent and credible people express their views in similar tone to think it’s a good idea to use that as a ground for determining the accuracy of what’s said.
Your points B and D sound like you might be expecting too much. Realistically, a blog post on a topic is not going to cover every fallacious argument raised by every dissenter. There are always going to be points someone out there is making that get omitted from any given rebuttal, not because they were accurate points but because of someone-or-other’s law about how the time taken to deal with the excrement of bulls vastly exceeds the time it takes for said excrement to be produced. O’Neill wasn’t addressing the jesusneverexisted site in that post; he was addressing a sample of the main claims made by the main person making the Nazareth-didn’t-exist argument. As such, I thought he provided useful information. (By the way, why would it be a problem that a small village isn’t mentioned in a religious work? Sounds fairly normal to me.)
Point C: Not sure I’d call that a shell game; O’Neill was rebutting the argument of someone claiming that there was no centre of habitation at all at Nazareth at the time Jesus was supposed to have been born, so that’s what he addressed. (And, yes, I suppose there could have been a village of a different name at that site, but that sounds as though it would need a rather complicated explanatory theory. I mean, that way we have a theory that involves the gospel writers inventing a site for Jesus’s childhood for unknown reasons instead of just going with the ‘Jesus came from Bethlehem’ story that they’d already invented, and an existing village getting renamed by the name of this invented village. If you’ve got a plausible theory as to how all this happened – more plausible than ‘Yes, actual Jesus-character actually came from an existing village called Nazareth – then go for it, but I can’t think of one.)
@Pierce R. Butler, comment 63:
I know of absolutely no-one who believes that ‘rigid 100%’ is a good description of our certainty level about anything in history, so if that’s your bar then I think it’s too high. I think Jesus was far more likely to have existed than not existed, considering the number of points that are difficult to explain away under a mythicist theory, and that’s good enough for me to consider myself firmly on the ‘historicist’ side of the debate; but I’d never claim ‘rigid 100%’ certainty, and I don’t know anyone in the debate who would.
There’s huge debate about whether all of the Testimonium Flavium was an interpolation or not (with the two camps being ‘partly interpolated’ and ‘entirely interpolated’), but very little about whether the separate passing mention of ‘brother of Jesus called Christ’ was an interpolation. The almost unanimous view is that that line is genuine; of the handful of people who dispute it, most seem to be mythicists who’ve already made up their mind that Jesus didn’t exist and are thus trying to explain that line away. I mean, yes, theoretically someone could have interpolated that line; the point is, why would they? ‘Called Anointed’ (the literal translation) isn’t the kind of thing people randomly insert into documents they’re copying, and I’ve yet to see a good theory (as opposed to a handwave-it-away or a theory that doesn’t stand up to examination) on how that would end up happening.
And if you’ve got a good, mythicism-consistent theory as to how both of those copies could end up with an interpolation highly unflattering to Christians and their founder, then I’m happy to hear it. If not, I can’t see the relevance.
Josephus would, however, have had fairly close knowledge of the incident that the ‘brother of Jesus called Christ’ comment comes from. It was an unauthorised execution that led to the deposition of the High Priest who ordered it, and it happened during Josephus’s adulthood, in the city he was living in at the time; Josephus was also from the same socioeconomic group (the priestly families), so he’d have been close to events and in a good position to hear quite a bit about what was going on.
Of course, that doesn’t in itself necessarily mean he was right about the ‘brother of Jesus called Christ’ bit, as it’s highly unlikely he would have talked directly to James; but it does give us good evidence that the James in question was known as having a brother whose Latinised name was Jesus and who was referred to as ‘anointed’ (the word that translates as either ‘Messiah’ or ‘Kristos’). And, again, it’s pretty hard to come up with an explanation for that that works better than than ‘yes, this person actually did exist and actually was this James’s brother’. Not impossible, and if you know of one I’ll be happy to read it; but difficult.
Tacitus does specify that the movement was called after ‘Christos’ who was executed by Pilate. From what I’ve heard, he tended to qualify information he wasn’t sure about with ‘it is said’, which he doesn’t do here, so it sounds as though he felt this point to be reliable. Of course, since we don’t know where he got it from we can’t judge this for ourselves; but, again, we’re faced with the question of why else Tacitus would end up thinking this. Having a founder who was executed as a criminal didn’t reflect well on Christians and wouldn’t be the fact about their religion that they’d try to spread around, and naming an actual person as his executioner would be really weird if the execution was only mythical. So, again, this points towards Jesus having existed.
@Pierce R. Butler, comment 68:
This is a tangent (sue me, it’s my blog and I’ll tangent if I want to) but that actually seems to have been pretty much how the Pharisees rolled; they were all about trying to find humane ways of keeping to the law. For example, they worked round the ‘eye for an eye’ rule by finding logical arguments to the effect that the spirit of the law would actually be better met by taking it metaphorically rather than literally; they also came up with pretty much the same arguments in favour of Sabbath healing that Jesus is portrayed as using (which is one of the indications that Jesus was probably originally a Pharisee himself). As far as the death penalty was concerned, they got round that by setting up incredibly strict rules for convicting people, with the purpose of making sure that, in practice, people didn’t get convicted.
Dr Sarah @ # 130 – Thanks for the replies, and please accept my apologies that I can’t do them all justice in one sitting. But let me see if I can at least clarify what I started with.
No doubt the early Jesus stories were “a hard sell”, as you put it. But if they struck just enough of a chord to keep one or more determined preachers in business, that was enough. I suspect, however, that the crowd-drawing element had less to do with a martyred (in the modern sense) Jewish fanatic and more to do with “The World Is Coming to an End! Final Judgment!! Repent Your Sins!!!”
… it grew very slowly.
Probably; we don’t have much evidence. But then, an urban-underclass cult with a message that caused (some) socio-economic disruption wouldn’t leave much of a paper trail, especially where the “keep your heads down and whisper” strain of recruitment evidenced in many of the official Epistles prevailed.
Some historians (including evangelists, so keep your salt-shaker handy) aver that the Antonine Plague (165-180? CE) marked the turning point for Christianism in the Roman Empire, as the Christians apparently earned a positive reputation when they cared for the ill with little regard for their own safety. Before that time, all we really know for sure is that they built up enough numbers in enough cities that they could have that impact.
As for Jesus the commoner, I didn’t make my point clearly enough, and am not sure how to do it now. David, like practically all in the poor-boy-makes-good stories, rises to earthly glory – incidentally legitimizing his fellow royalty, not just the upstarts, in the process. Jesus spends his whole life at the bottom of the social scale, taking his throne only posthumously: an indirect putdown of actual living aristocrats.
Dr Sarah @ # 131: … hagiographers of a real-life Jesus might include, in their exaggerations of his story after his death, the word ‘city’ to describe a place of origin that was actually a village.
This gets us back to our (all commenters here, sfaict) mutual problem of lacking fluency in Hellenistic Greek (or however we should describe the 1st-century Jewish version) and familiarity with (what little we have of) early-Xian documents. (And of contemporary geography: Was later-Nazareth known by that name at the time in question?) We can’t settle the question without also resolving the assertion that “al-Nazer” referred to a metaphorical branch, whether of the Essenes or the descendants of David, and whether any of these would get mentioned by writers intent on building/augmenting a legend to suit their own understandings of “prophecy” in a way acceptable to an audience bringing its own expectations to their stories.
In short, I dunno, but I – given time & energy to pursue this – would start with Helena demanding to be taken to “Nazareth” and then try to find evidence of whatever was recorded of that place previously.
Yeah, jesusneverexisted.com does not provide an adequate clue-trail. Lotta that going on all around here.
… adding in Nazareth just gave him [“Matthew”] a contradiction that needed explaining away.
“Matthew” may have wanted to smack down a competing account linking his hero to those nasty Nazarites. All I know with confidence is that the Jewish culture before/during/after the Revolt was saturated with cults and believers spinning yarns with desperate energy, of which we now have only half a dozen more-or-less intact versions. The serious scholars apparently have a bit more, but nothing like a full picture of even those which produced the “Gospels” (church-accepted and “apocryphal”). We do have abundant reason not to take anything at face value – and to beware explanations from anyone who does.
Dr Sarah @ # 132: I don’t think going from ‘introduction for beginners’ to ‘scholarly depth’ in the same work is feasible.
Bart Ehrman gives it a good running start (though I think his mythicism-debunking attempts don’t reach his usual standard). John Crossan, Burton Mack, Richard Elliott Friedman – all sorts of modern secular writers on biblical history do a better job as writers than just about anyone (whom I’ve read) addressing this particular topic.
Dr Sarah @ # 133: I don’t think the dearth of mythicist scholars out there can be explained away purely by pro-Christian bias.
No, but it surely plays a major role. Another is that without classes on the question, few will enter the subfield. Compare to the early days of, e.g., women’s studies, ethnic-minority studies, etc – which broke through eventually because they (largely) concern contemporary issues with an abundance of source material and highly-incentivized wannabe scholars mentored by sympathetic and capable faculty. Antiquarians don’t show up on recommended-career lists even without strongly antigenic agendae.
Dr Sarah @ # 134: … an existing village getting renamed by the name of this invented village. If you’ve got a plausible theory as to how all this happened – more plausible than ‘Yes, actual Jesus-character actually came from an existing village called Nazareth – then go for it, but I can’t think of one.
I think I already did: see the Amazing Adventures of Helena. Her hosts in Jerusalem certainly had incentive to invent the ur-Potemkin village 14 centuries before Potemkin was born.
More ambitious retcons are already on record. I’d particularly like to know how the Spartans got sold on the idea that their city-state, already well-established, had been founded by somebody named Lycurgus (roughly, “wolf man”) as a nation of warriors, when it already had a known (and apparently fairly factual) history.
@GerrardofTitanServer: Hi! Great to see you back on here, but that does remind me that I still owe you a comment reply from (gulp) nine months back on another thread. I’ve been working on that one first as it does cover some of the points from on here. OK, I’ve replied to most of it at https://freethoughtblogs.com/geekyhumanist/2020/01/04/deciphering-the-gospels-proves-jesus-never-existed-review-chapter-one-part-2/#comment-4579; I’ll try to get the last part of the reply up either today or tomorrow, and then I’ll reply to the ones in this thread.
Quick reply to one of your points in comment 118, though, as it’s a factual error:
Although this seems to be a popular theory amongst mythicists, I’m not aware of any evidence at all for it. Christians could certainly describe one another as brothers in the Lord, but that’s not only linguistically but theologically rather different; the phrase ‘brother of the Lord’ would indicate that the metaphorically fraternal level of kinship wasn’t just with fellow members of the religion, but with no less a person than the leader himself. The only usages of the phrase that I’m aware of are in Paul (both in ways where it wouldn’t really make contextual sense for him to be describing the people just as Christians, but would make contextual sense if he was using the phrase literally) and in Origen where he’s citing Paul. If you know of any evidence that it was used just as a way for Christians to describe other Christians, I’m happy to hear it, but I don’t know of any.
Dr Sarah @ # 135: I think Jesus was far more likely to have existed than not existed…
That depends on your definition of “Jesus” at a minimum, and possibly on same of “existed”. Some definitions, it seems, require that this Jesus had a brother named James; others that he preached particular doctrines, others that he was crucified, etc. The looser your requirements, the easier to fill.
‘Called Anointed’ (the literal translation) isn’t the kind of thing people randomly insert into documents they’re copying…
Randomly, no; tendentiously, yes. Generations of Christian-cleric scribes certainly had motivation.
… a good, mythicism-consistent theory as to how both of those copies could end up with an interpolation highly unflattering to Christians and their founder…
I could readily hypothesize – christians of many ages have cherished the stories of their (predecessors’) persecution – but I can’t call that a “good” theory by any stringent standards.
… it happened during Josephus’s adulthood, in the city he was living in at the time…
Yet he doesn’t fill in any of the details modern readers (at least) would expect, such as the charges. Not enough to discredit the account, but arguably enough to weaken it.
Tacitus does specify that the movement was called after ‘Christos’ who was executed by Pilate.
So anybody whose followers called him “anointed” could have fit the bill, whether named Jesus or Bob. Romans handed out martyrdoms quite liberally back in that day; not sure whether the many “messianic” movements reportedly active at the time were equally generous.
… naming an actual person as his executioner would be really weird if the execution was only mythical.
Pilate earned a nasty reputation; would’ve been an easy candidate for the bad guy role.
Dr Sarah @ # 136: … I’ll tangent if I want to…
Only takes one to tangent!
… the Pharisees … were all about trying to find humane ways of keeping to the law.
Apparently the Sadducees didn’t leave a lot of ideological room on their authoritarian side, but left the “liberal” space open. (Pls pardon the anachronisms.)
… Jesus was probably originally a Pharisee himself.
Kind of weird for none of the chronicles not to mention that – Pharisees were an organized group, not just something you could just call yourself, or so I gather. Some early-Xian groups were very anti-Pharisee (to my mind, business as usual for competing cults, intensified by conditions after the Revolt). Pharisees were direct “ancestors” of rabbis, so I tend to see anti-Pharisee Bible quotes as essentially anti-Semitic, though I doubt all who recite them know that history.
Pierce R. Butler,
That depends on your definition of “Jesus” at a minimum, and possibly on same of “existed”. Some definitions, it seems, require that this Jesus had a brother named James; others that he preached particular doctrines, others that he was crucified, etc. The looser your requirements, the easier to fill.
We don’t discuss definitions of “Socrates”, “King Arthur”, or “Paul”; we discuss what we can learn about Socrates, King Arthur, or Paul. Again, you have adopted a deliberate attempt to re-frame the discussion in favor of a mythical creation. It’s possible there is no Jesus to learn about, just like there it’s possible is no Socrates/King Arthur/Paul, but their existence or non-existence is not connected in any way to any definitions we create.
One Brow @ # 144 – if you prefer to have a detailed discussion of a vague topic without trying to define it at all, I can’t help you.
I don’t know anybody who can.
Pierce R. Butler,
If you don’t want to discuss any historical figures, I’m fine with that. After all, they are all vague in varying degrees. Let’s not pretend referring to Jesus is more vague than any other from that time.
@GerrardofTitanServer: Hi again! I’ve now answered the second part of your previous comment on the other thread; it’s just below the last one, which I linked to in comment 141 above.
OK, reply to your comment #119 on here:
Sure. From what I’ve read, they seem to have been deliberately started by a man named Manehevi who was trying to trick people into believing in John Frum, so I don’t know that it’s the best analogy here. On top of that, the stories that exist about John Frum seem to be on the level of ‘he came up to us and sat down and had a meal with us, then ran off’. There are plenty of stories of sightings, but I can’t find any record of anyone attempting any type of autobiographical-like writing giving details such as a village where he was supposed to have been born or the names of family members. So, that’s actually quite an important dissimilarity with the gospels.
Well, actually… yes, that is pretty much what seems to have happened. I say this not because I think all religions start out that way or because I think Christianity in particular started out that way, but because, from what I can find, the Cargo Cults did. I don’t know whether Manehevi was a ‘genius’ or not as there’s practically no other information available about him, but the finding at the time was that he deliberately started the cult, and it sounds as though he was telling his followers exactly what they wanted to hear. As I don’t think that Christianity started out that way, this might not be the best analogy for your point.
No idea whether this is the case for the Cargo Cults, but certainly in terms of religions generally – including Christianity – I think elements can arise for all sorts of reasons other than a calculated ‘what will get us more followers’. That’s not the issue. The issue is that there are features in Christianity, such as the crucifixion or Nazareth or the idea of a Messiah who already had a human life on earth, for which the obvious reason people could have come to believe this is ‘because this actually happened to a man who was believed by his followers to be the Messiah’ and for which, if this wasn’t the case, it becomes much harder to figure out just what the explanation could have been.
Please clarify what assumptions you believe I’m making.
But the problem with that is that there aren’t any prophecies in the Jewish scriptures that point towards the Messiah coming from Nazareth or dying by crucifixion. (That’s why Christian apologism has to go for such out-of-context and, ahem, creative interpretations of the OT when claiming that it prophesied Jesus as Messiah. When you read Christian attempts at proving that Jesus was prophesied by the OT, do the examples they give actually look to you like convincing descriptions of what supposedly happened in Jesus’s life? Or do they look like far-reaching retcons from people trying to fit scriptural quotes to events that don’t actually fit them well at all?) So, explaining factors like those is still much harder on mythicism than on historicity.
@GerrardofTitanServer, comment 123:
(Excuse the square parentheses in parts of your quotes; it’s to save from having to quote the things you were replying to.)
Which is exactly what pretty much everyone thinks he was doing; letting his readers know which James he’s mentioning as having met in passing. The point is, it’s hard to see how this would work under the theory of Carrier’s you mentioned, that ‘brother of the Lord’ was an alternative term used for ‘Christian’. Apart from this being highly unlikely anyway, it wouldn’t make sense if Paul was trying to distinguish this James from other Jameses in the early church. On the other hand, if James actually was the brother of a historical Jesus it makes perfect sense.
Oh, come on. You brought up the claim that Paul believed in the virgin birth in order to argue that he couldn’t have literally believed Jesus was descended from the seed of David. If your argument is that someone couldn’t have believed X because it would have contradicted belief Y, then that doesn’t go very far if the best argument you can make for them having held belief Y is ‘There’s no evidence that he didn’t.’
Do you have any evidence that Paul actually did believe this? I can’t find anything in the authentic Pauline epistles to suggest that Paul thought the type of blood itself made any difference to the sacrifice. (In fact, the fact that Paul believed Jesus died by crucifixion rather than by a conventional method of sacrifice would argue against Paul believing that the blood-shedding aspect of it was that important in anything other than a symbolic sense.)