... in the case of the bible we are not actually talking about "historical records". We are talking only about religious devotional writing, most of which is simply presented as preaching of religious beliefs in the supernatural.
Yeah but you have do admit that it doesn't read like Greek gods having a chat on mount Olympus. Aside from the magical stuff, it reads like fictionalised biographies. And even the accounts of the otherwise non-fictional battle at Thermopylae contain improbable and impossible stuff.
Well you say "aside from the magical stuff", but that magical stuff fills almost every significant mention of Jesus in all four gospels (and in Paul’s letters, wherever Jesus is mentioned). There really is nothing else of any substance there at all except for the magical stuff.
If you take away all the miraculous and supernatural stuff, and also take away the various examples where Jesus is said to be offering some amazing insight to his dumbfounded disciples, then all you actually have left is sentences saying Jesus walked to some place or other, and there he did absolutely nothing because we have had to erase the miracles and divine insights that he was supposed to have produced there.
If there were just one or two such miracles or divine insights in the bible amongst a whole load of otherwise perfectly mundane normal activities, then we might give it the benefit of the doubt and say that the couple of untrue miracles were perhaps just a bit of artistic licence copied from the ancient scriptures. But the opposite is actually the case; whereby the vast mass of the bible is choc-a-block full of the impossible miracles, supernatural and divine amazing insights.
Another factor is this - until about 150 years ago by which date modern science was beginning to convince educated people that the miracles could not actually have been true, almost everyone on earth did actually believe that Jesus literally had performed all the miracles and risen from the dead to meet a certainly existing God in the heavens.
Certainly at the time when the bible was written, nobody would have dreamt of questioning the truth of those miracle stories - everyone at that date was quite certain that such miracles and the supernatural happened all day every day somewhere around them through the actions of the heavenly gods. So at that date, 3rd century say, anyone could write or preach such fictional stories, especially revered priests and church leaders, ie people who claimed a direct communication with God, and get away without anyone questioning their honesty or integrity.
But if you tried to produce that biblical account for the first time now in the 21st century, nobody would believe you were anything other than either mentally insane or else an uneducated charlatan trying to trick people with the sort of storytelling expected of an impressionable 8 year old.
I have no idea what nonsense any Greek gods were supposed to have spoken to one-another on Mount Olympus, but the biblical writing certainly could never be regarded as credible or reliable in what it says about an impossible Jesus figure.
And the idea of simply erasing almost everything that was written about Jesus in the miracles, supernatural and divine or amazing insights, is clearly not justified at all, or certainly not without an extremely good explanation (which I have never seen offered).
Which other important figures in ancient history are believed to be real, on the basis of evidence as poor as the biblical writing about Jesus?
Well, someone brought up Socrates. We have pretty much nothing on him except what his alledged pupil wrote. There's quite a bit of discussion about whether he existed or not, but not to the point we're seeing here. I guess
not being the founder of a religion a lot of atheists like me loathe helps.
Well first of all, as
Mcreal just said above (Post #1227) - we are not really talking about any of those other figures. We are talking here very specifically about the case of Jesus, who was described in the bible (the only known primary or original source for any mention of Jesus) in the terms I summarised before as follows, where the biblical writing is -
1. completely anonymous
2. from authors who never even tried to claim that they had ever known Jesus
3. who were apparently repeating earlier legend obtained from other unknown anonymous sources
4. where those unknown anonymous sources claimed that Jesus was witnessed to be overtly supernatural on almost every single page in almost everything he ever did.
5. and where there is no other independent evidence of any kind for Jesus, i.e. -
i. no physical remains of any kind
ii. no contemporary writing by Jesus himself
iii. no contemporary writing by anyone who ever claimed to have met Jesus
iv. no official records of any kind ever mentioning anyone called Jesus
But where on the contrary -
vi. it has been shown beyond all doubt that the biblical writers were certainly taking their Jesus stories from what had been written centuries before in the OT.
Afaik, Socrates was not written about purely and entirely in terms like that. And neither was anyone else, except for the accounts of imaginary gods.
Can you name any other figures in history who were written about only in terms like the above, and where real historians (not bible scholars) claim that is nevertheless sufficient to believe the figure was more likely than not a real person?
As I just tried to show, the bible really is the only known original source for any mention at all of a figure named Jesus being the claimed messiah of OT prophecy.
Yes, the evidence outside the bibble is unconvincing, to say the least. I think it's safe to say that, within the bible, Paul and Mark are the only actual sources we have, and Paul tells us he never met Jesus, only his disciples.
Well, exactly. And not only had Paul never met Jesus (even though he was supposed to be about the same age as Jesus and a contemporary of his, and apparently spending all his time physically persecuting members of a so-called Church of God who were claimed by bible scholars and many HJ posters here to have been people who actually knew Jesus (inc. amongst their number "James" said to be the actual family brother of a living Jesus)), but in addition to that, Paul only ever really describes Jesus in theological terms as a spiritual belief which he gained through divine revelation and through an understanding of scripture.
And as for the author of g-Mark, not only had he clearly never known Jesus either, but as Randel Helms clearly showed (Gospel Fictions), the author of g-Mark was certainly using various parts of the OT to compose or create stories of Jesus.
4. where those unknown anonymous sources claimed that Jesus was witnessed to be overtly supernatural on almost every single page in almost everything he ever did..
To be fair, the ancients kept doing that. Oh, when my king was born ? Comet. When he made a speech ? Rainbow. When he was taking a bath ? Aphrodite herself came down from heaven and gave him a towel. True story !.
Oh, I am sure they wrote about all sorts of famous figures with claims of miracles and superhuman feats of strength etc. But I don't know of any real figures who were written about only in such terms. Whereas Jesus was really written about only in such wondrous terms ... there is really nothing remotely reliable in the gospels where Jesus is described in some ordinary human mundane acts. For example - when I said that previously to
Craig,
Stein and others here, they immediately cited the Lords Supper as a normal human act. But in Paul's letter, which is said to pre-date the gospels and which in that case would have very obviously been a likely source for the later gospel writers, Paul actually says that he obtained the story of that last supper through revelation (from memory I think he said he "received" it, and said that he was now "passing it on" to others as something they clearly would not otherwise have known except for Paul having "received it").
5. and where there is no other independent evidence of any kind for Jesus, i.e. -
i. no physical remains of any kind
ii. no contemporary writing by Jesus himself
iii. no contemporary writing by anyone who ever claimed to have met Jesus
iv. no official records of any kind ever mentioning anyone called Jesus!.
None of this would be particularily surprising, but for the difference between you and I: you consider Jesus' post-mortem historical importance to somehow make this more damning. I don't.!.
Oh, I am not saying that i-iv alone are particularly damming. I am just saying that apart from all the other problems listed prior to i-iv, in addition we also have none of the things listed in i-iv, and they would usually be the sort of things we'd like to see to show that a story was actually true.
And the comparison which HJ people so often make to figures such as Pythagoras, is not a valid comparison, because as I just tried to explain - it does not matter if Pythagoras really was the one and only real individual responsible for Pythagorean Philosophy and/or Pythagoras Theorem. Because one or more real living individuals certainly did produce that particular philosophy and that particular theorem at a very early date around the time claimed for Pythagoras ... so those are real remaining tangible things which can be shown to have been produced by someone at that early date..!.
Well, someone started that religion. Assuming Paul is a real person, he's either the originator -- in which case I wonder why he bothered to lie about meeting the disciples of an earlier religion rather than just rely on his "vision" -- or there was someone before him who founded that cult and he co-opted it..!.
Well first of all I don’t think we have to guess who started the religion or precisely how it first began. Because that is really a separate question from whether the claimed evidence in the bible should be considered good enough to conclude that Jesus was more than likely a real person.
And perhaps in passing I should again emphasis my own position re. the possible existence of Jesus -
- I am not saying that he could not have existed (in some sense at least).
Nor am I am I even saying that he probably did not exist.
I don't actually get so far as to say anything like that. What I say is only that the claimed evidence is not actually evidence of Jesus, and that in fact there is no reliable evidence of a human Jesus ever known to any of those people who wrote about him.
And in that case I think the safest conclusion is just to say that whilst he might have lived, there is actually no evidence of that ... and the best conclusion is then to say that it's impossible to make any meaningful guess as to any probability of whether he was more likely, or less likely, or any such guess at any likelihood all.
However, on the negative side (against a HJ), what we certainly can say is that -
1. the biblical accounts are constantly fictional and certainly untrue (and that was not always known)
2. the OT was certainly being used as a source for creating Jesus stories (and that was not always known either).
3. claims of the first gospels and letters being written within only about 20 to 40 years after the death of Jesus, are totally misleading. Because we have no such letters or gospels until the earliest Christian copyist accounts several centuries later.
4. although until relatively recent times (say about 1800) the church and early bible scholars sought to present the gospels as actually written by the disciples themselves as eye-witnesses to Jesus, that turns out to be entirely untrue.
5.And similarly whilst even today those bible scholars and church leaders try to claim non-biblical sources such as Tacitus & Josephus as independent corroborative accounts, there is in fact no evidence at all that they are independent of the biblical writing ... in fact, it is almost certain that they were relying entirely on earlier biblical accounts.
6. and also .... whilst they sought to claim, and still do try to present Josephus and Tacitus as writing about Jesus within less than a century after his death, in fact that is a complete misrepresentation of documents that are in fact only known to us as Christian copying made as late as the 11th century and later.
7. Etc. Etc....
All of which shows that for most of the past 2000 years the Christian church and bible scholars have sought continuously, and still seek continuously, to completely misrepresent the quality and authenticity of their claimed evidence. And the point about that sort of behaviour from the church and from religious scholars is that it's suspicious in the extreme, and really quite damming of such people as credible un-biased commentators in this matter.
OK, well any of us can always have different opinions. But as I have tried to explain - if a claim turns out to be entirely untrue, then it's literally impossible for any claimed evidence to be actually evidence of the truth of the untrue claim.
Yes but that's my question: as long as you
don't know if it's true or not, how do you determine what's evidence for the hypothesis ?..!.
The information or data (or testimony) only becomes genuinely "evidence" of that which is being claimed,
after it has been subjectively decided that the claim itself was really true. To that extent, as I said above, there is a conceptual and practical problem with the whole idea of "evidence".
But what then becomes necessary is to consider whether or not the data, information or testimony really does show beyond all reasonable doubt that which is being claimed as the ultimate fact. for example - in the case of Jesus the ultimate claim of fact from bible scholars is that Jesus was certainly a real human person. So then you have to ask what is the data, information or testimony that proves that to be the case (here it requires actually literal "proof" by the way, because they are claiming Jesus as a matter of literal "certainty") ... and to that their the answer is that the biblical writing is their proof! ...
.... but of course, the biblical writing is a million miles from being proof of Jesus.
Even you allow for any bible scholars who merely say they think Jesus was most probably a real figure, which means they are actually claiming a probability greater than 50%, then again you have to ask what is their data or information or testimony that shows a likelihood of greater than 50%. And again their answer is the bible! ...
....but as I said before - the bible does not contain any actual testimony or information from anyone who had ever known Jesus! It only contains the testimony of peoples un-evidenced anonymous religious beliefs in the supernatural. So you have to ask - where then is the biblical scholars actual testimony or information from anyone who had ever known a living Jesus? And the answer is that they have no such testimony or information! All they have is those same anonymously written religious beliefs said to have come from other anonymous sources who were said to have once believed in the existence (of some sort) of a supernatural messiah of OT legend.
... but where there is if fact a very well known earlier source!, ...and that is the OT. That was certainly being used by the gospel writers as a source for creating their Jesus stories.
I'm not sure there's much in Mark to corroborate this. It seems to share more with Homeric literature than Hebraic literature.
You mean it's not corroborated when I say that the gospel writers were certainly using the OT as source of their Jesus stories? OK, well Randel Helms is an academic author who has written a whole 200 page book full of examples of where, how and why the gospel writers were looking in the OT for any passages they could re-intemperate as actions' of Jesus.
I don't particularly want to spend even more time copying out examples from that book and posting them here, but afaik nobody doubts that what Helms showed in his book is actually true. The book is of course freely available on Amazon if anyone want to see for themselves how Helms shows examples of where g-Mark was using the OT to create stories of Jesus using what bible scholars themselves acknowledge as a process they call "fulfilment citation".
