Historical Jesus

[acbytesla]

The problem is that nothing about the HJ is extraordinary. What would be extraordinary is the non-existence of such a figure, given what we know about early Xtianity.

You're kidding, right? Walking on water? Feeding four thousand people with a couple of fishes? Resurrection? Being divine and the son of god?

Lets start with Paul's letters. Paul spends a lot of time talking about the "Church" in Jerusalem and its leadership with whom he disagrees. Did Paul invent these people? He says he used to persecute them, then had an epiphany and started preaching his "Christ Jesus" which was apparently in conflict with the teachings that the Jerusalem group were following. According to Paul that Jerusalem group was comprised of people who knew the flesh and blood Jesus. Paul claims that he knows Jesus better because he had a vision. Personally I think Paul was full of crap, but we can glean facts about the existence of a group of Jewish Jesus followers by reading Paul's rants against them.

We have seen (in other threads on this topic) people argue that Paul never existed, that the whole thing was forged centuries later, but that view is not shared by many...

So? A good story teller weaves all kinds of details into his story. That Paul might write disagreements with others into his story doesn't mean that the story was true. Keep in mind that Paul cannot speak with any authority that there was a Jesus. Also, how do you know that Paul didn't coopt a fictional story?

I'm not saying there wasn't a flesh and blood Jesus. Only that concluding with certainty that there was seems like a gross exaggeration.

 

[Brainache]

You're kidding, right? Walking on water? Feeding four thousand people with a couple of fishes? Resurrection? Being divine and the son of god?

That would be the gospel Jesus, not the Historical Jesus.

So? A good story teller weaves all kinds of details into his story. That Paul might write disagreements with others into his story doesn't mean that the story was true. Keep in mind that Paul cannot speak with any authority that there was a Jesus. Also, how do you know that Paul didn't coopt a fictional story?

I'm not saying there wasn't a flesh and blood Jesus. Only that concluding with certainty that there was seems like a gross exaggeration.

I guess this goes back to what Belz... has been arguing about how people so easily dismiss the professional opinions of experts in this field. I cited Michael Grant, a highly qualified and respected expert on Ancient History who wrote about the HJ, but yet you feel confident enough to disregard him on this topic.

Do you dismiss his work on any other aspect of Ancient History? If so why? IF not, why do you think you can dismiss him here?

 

[acbytesla]

That would be the gospel Jesus, not the Historical Jesus.

They're the same ******* person on paper.

I guess this goes back to what Belz... has been arguing about how people so easily dismiss the professional opinions of experts in this field. I cited Michael Grant, a highly qualified and respected expert on Ancient History who wrote about the HJ, but yet you feel confident enough to disregard him on this topic.

Do you dismiss his work on any other aspect of Ancient History? If so why? IF not, why do you think you can dismiss him here?

I'm not dismissing him. I am just disagreeing that the historical standard for someone with all these mythological attributes should be evaluated the same as ordinary individuals.

I've made it clear that I think Ancient Historians have close to an impossible job determining the accuracy of the history they write about.

 

[Brainache]

They're the same ******* person on paper.

Not to Historians.

I'm not dismissing him. I am just disagreeing that the historical standard for someone with all these mythological attributes should be evaluated the same as ordinary individuals.

I'm pretty sure that people who study Ancient History professionally are aware of this problem. In fact, I think you will find that there were plenty of "ordinary individuals" about whom some pretty outrageous things were written.

I've made it clear that I think Ancient Historians have close to an impossible job determining the accuracy of the history they write about.

And yet the academic discipline of the study of Ancient History continues in spite of your objections. Maybe these Ancient Historians know a bit more than you or I about the subject...

 

[acbytesla]

I'm pretty sure that people who study Ancient History professionally are aware of this problem. In fact, I think you will find that there were plenty of "ordinary individuals" about whom some pretty outrageous things were written.

So? Let's say they conclude that some of these ordinary people were real, but who weren't. Who's going to care? If it wasn't Jesus, everyone would be yawning.

And yet the academic discipline of the study of Ancient History continues in spite of your objections. Maybe these Ancient Historians know a bit more than you or I about the subject...

I'm not objecting and I'm sure they do. That doesn't make it any less difficult to separate fact from fiction based on maybe a dozen writings about events and people decades later.

 

[RecoveringYuppy]

I know what the conversation is about. It is about the spurious idea that only Christian Theologians think HJ existed.

See my ETA above about Michael Grant, just one example of an actual Historian who wrote extensively about HJ (amongst other things).

Oh my God! Michael Grant! That's a whole freaking person! That's makes four now! Since there are only six people thinking out Jesus that means there really is a consensus!

 

[llwyd]

We see history being rewritten all the time.

That's a common cliche but it's actually not true. Mostly we get small additions to existing scholarship. Publishers have to promote and new historians have to get their name out, but once you actually read the stuff, there very rarely are major additions to our understanding of big events. The basic events and the motivations of major actors have been known for a long time concerning for example both world wars or decolonization or the French, American and Soviet revolutions etc.

Belz made a good point about different methods and standards for natural science and study of history. To mind my that is unfortunate, as in principle both deal with the material world (of which humanity is a part) - maybe we can build testable models once true AI is developed and computers get way more powerful. But it seems that the amateurs here think that if we can't use the methods and criterions of natural science in the study of history, and especially in the study of antiquity, that it means that there are NO methods and criterions at all, that any random person is as qualified as distinguished and professional historians. And that is ridiculously and embarrasingly mistaken.

 

[Brainache]

Oh my God! Michael Grant! That's a whole freaking person! That's makes four now! Since there are only six people thinking out Jesus that means there really is a consensus!

And it took me all of two seconds to find him. Imagine if I'd been looking for years...

Do you see hundreds of Ancient Historians disagreeing with him? Because if there was anything controversial or unsupportable in his book there would be plenty of ambitious Academics out there making a name for themselves by tearing him down. Has that happened? The book was published in 1977, plenty of time for someone to publish a rebuttal.

Why are the only people who disagree with the HJ non-Historians?

Can you answer any of these questions?

 

[Brainache]

So? Let's say they conclude that some of these ordinary people were real, but who weren't. Who's going to care? If it wasn't Jesus, everyone would be yawning.



I'm not objecting and I'm sure they do. That doesn't make it any less difficult to separate fact from fiction based on maybe a dozen writings about events and people decades later.

Of course it is difficult, that's why it takes years to learn how to be a Historian. It requires years of study to grasp the subject.

Googling "Richard Carrier" or "Jesus Myth" is not the same as getting a degree in History.

 

[David Mo]

That's a common cliche but it's actually not true. Mostly we get small additions to existing scholarship. Publishers have to promote and new historians have to get their name out, but once you actually read the stuff, there very rarely are major additions to our understanding of big events. The basic events and the motivations of major actors have been known for a long time concerning for example both world wars or decolonization or the French, American and Soviet revolutions etc.

Belz made a good point about different methods and standards for natural science and study of history. To mind my that is unfortunate, as in principle both deal with the material world (of which humanity is a part) - maybe we can build testable models once true AI is developed and computers get way more powerful. But it seems that the amateurs here think that if we can't use the methods and criterions of natural science in the study of history, and especially in the study of antiquity, that it means that there are NO methods and criterions at all, that any random person is as qualified as distinguished and professional historians. And that is ridiculously and embarrasingly mistaken.

Basically you are right but that does not imply that the historian of antiquity does not have to be cautious with his sources. In general, academic history -- I'm not talking about the one that makes bestsellers -- tends to agree that authenticating particular facts is very difficult. Today, ancient historians tend to add "according to Diogenes Laertius" or "according to Plutarch" and move on to social and cultural movements, which offer more to hold on to. Therefore, the history of the "historical Jesus" sounds quite archaic in terms of methodology and object.

 

[RecoveringYuppy]

And it took me all of two seconds to find him. Imagine if I'd been looking for years...

Do you see hundreds of Ancient Historians disagreeing with him? Because if there was anything controversial or unsupportable in his book there would be plenty of ambitious Academics out there making a name for themselves by tearing him down. Has that happened? The book was published in 1977, plenty of time for someone to publish a rebuttal.

Why are the only people who disagree with the HJ non-Historians?

Can you answer any of these questions?

None of this has any relevance to anything I care about.

 

[Elagabalus]

None of this has any relevance to anything I care about.

How about our very own Nick Terry?

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?p=11612554#post11612554

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?p=11616332#post11616332

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?p=11619195#post11619195

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?p=11618151#post11618151

Goes into quite some detail about the "Historical Method".

 

[IanS]

I'm sure you would. The question is what would you consider as evidence, or rather, why you disagree on what constitutes evidence with either myself or the (so-called) experts on the matter?

Well it's actually not a reasonable request to ask any sceptics what they would propose as counting for credible evidence. Because you are then requiring them to invent a situation that did not exist, and where you can then poke holes in any invented scenario like that. It's also an attempt to reverse the burden of proof, which undoubtedly lays here with those who claim to have sufficient evidence to show reality for Jesus ...

... burden here is upon those who say that the evidence does exist to Jesus was probably real.

All that the sceptics have to do, the only burden they carry, is to explain why they are sceptical of the evidence that's been proposed by the "expert" believers.

And we have explained many times why the claimed evidence falls far short of what is required.

The bible is not credible (and therefore inadmissible) as reliable evidence, because it's every mention of Jesus is either to claim a miracle (where at that time everyone did believe that such miracles were a daily occurance, but where 2000 years later it has finally been shown by science that such miracle claims were only ever untrue myth-making), or else a setting of a story which then leads up to either a miracle performed by Jesus or else some miraculous prophetic insight produced by Jesus ... in the gospels there is really nothing about Jesus which is other than a claim of the miraculous ... and that constant repeating of lies in every mention of Jesus renders the gospels totally inadmissible as credible evidence for what it says about Jesus ...

... that leaves the letters of Paul. But in those letters Paul makes very clear indeed that he had never met any such living person as Jesus. And when he talks about any other people who had "met" Jesus, he only ever says that they had "met" Jesus as a spiritual religious vision in the skies! And that, by the way, included "James" (the "Lords brother") who also was only ever said to have known Jesus from a religious vision. So there is no evidence in those letters of anyone who had ever met a real Jesus. In fact to the contrary, the letters explicitly emphasise that all of the believers, believed because they had known Jesus from their religious visions.

As for Tacitus and Josephus ... we have been over some of that here, and those two sources are absolutely absurd as claims to show any evidence for anyone there ever knowing Jesus.

And apart from that, all other mention of anything to do with Jesus, is actually far weaker even than Tacitus, Josephus, or the Bible!

So that leaves, what? Well, frankly, if we are to be honest about it, it leaves nothing remotely credible at all.

 

[Brainache]

None of this has any relevance to anything I care about.

I'll take that as a "No".

 

[IanS]

Sorry, maybe I wasn't clear. Who determines what is admissible or not? Are you a neutral, honest and objective observer? Are any of us? If not, perhaps a body of experts on the subject of history would be better suited, no? That way their opinions would be averaged out.

The answer is that anyone who looks closely at the claimed evidence can decide if that evidence is admissable or not.

And you just said (it's quoted directly below) that you had (already) agreed that the bible is not credible as evidence for Jesus. But that is what your experts are presenting as their evidence!

The people you have claimed as "experts" are Bible Scholars like Bart Ehrman, E.P.Sanders., J.D. Crossan, and they ARE presenting the bible as by FAR their main source of evidence (in fact, even their tiny few non-biblical sources almost certainly also derive from the bible!) ...

... so you are really now defeating your own question/position here by (a) agreeing that bible is not credible as evidence for Jesus, but where (b) the people you claim as experts ARE relying almost 100% of the Bible!

Didn't you ask me that question yesterday? Did I not respond in the negative? Did I not point out that this is a misrepresentation of what constitutes evidence for HJ? So why do you ask again?

Well I just covered that question above - I don't recall where you already agreed that the Bible is not credible for Jesus. But if you agree to that, then you are really forced to agree that there is no other credible evidence for Jesus ... because the few miniscule mentions in a non-biblical writing, almost certainly are themselves using the bible as their source (or using the biblical preaching by Christians of the time).

 

[IanS]

I'm leaning towards bare historicity i.e. that a person or persons were the inspiration for the story, based on the sum total of what we know about said story, the period, the people, religion in general, humans, etc. You find that no credible evidence exists for that. Fair?

If you are claiming that it might be multiple "persons" that constitute Jesus, then that is not a claim of Jesus as any actual real person.

Multiple different persons, none of whom you know anything at all about, is not a claim for a historical Jesus.

 

[Belz...]

That didn't help.

Because it's not clear or for some other reason?

And how exactly would that help?

As stated prior, professionals are usually pretty good at determining how things work in their fields. Laymen, not quite as much.

You're kidding, right? Walking on water? Feeding four thousand people with a couple of fishes? Resurrection? Being divine and the son of god?

Now come on, acbytesla. Surely you can uncouple the miracles from the more general idea of a prophet in 1st century gallilee. Insisting that you must either dismiss both or keep both is not how things work in history. Otherwise you'd have to accept that some historical figures spoke to the gods or had virgin births as well.

Who cares? The point is that the story appeals to a couple billion people so the justification of embarrassment is total crap.

And you know better because...?

Oh my God! Michael Grant! That's a whole freaking person! That's makes four now! Since there are only six people thinking out Jesus that means there really is a consensus!

See what I meant about the exaggerated reactions to the suggestion of HJ? Why are you so hyper about it?

 

[Belz...]

Well it's actually not a reasonable request to ask any sceptics what they would propose as counting for credible evidence.

Normally I'd agree with you. But given that you've discounted the evidence that's been presented already, I think it's a fair question: what DO you consider to be reliable evidence for an obscure historical person? Remember, he's not obscure NOW because of the legend built around him and the religion that sprung from his alleged life, but he sure was THEN.

The bible is not credible (and therefore inadmissible) as reliable evidence

That's not the way it works, Ian. If I have a record of my bank transactions copied into Excel and I added a few spurious lines like "buying an elephant", it doesn't mean that the whole thing is wrong.

Your entire approach is to say "hey, look. The bible, being a work of mythology, is obviously wrong because it has magic in it." But that's not how historians work. You can glean from certain works some things that are more likely true than not, or vice versa. But it takes a certain experience in the field; decades of it. And you're also wrong that the bible is their only or main source of information. We've got plenty of data from that time period in that place. That's also part of trying to find the truth, here.

So that leaves, what?

The problem is that you're looking at it the wrong way. The rules of the game you're establishing are NOT the rules that historians use, even for other parts of the field.

The answer is that anyone who looks closely at the claimed evidence can decide if that evidence is admissable or not.

So what's the point of having professions, then?

If you are claiming that it might be multiple "persons" that constitute Jesus, then that is not a claim of Jesus as any actual real person.

Of course it is! Multiple people are still persons. What you just quoted is my definition of HJ!

 

[Archie Gemmill Goal]

Or, alternatively, you hold them to a different standard.

I have to disagree with this.

If the questions are questions of fact they have to be held to the same standard as any other method. That they are not capable of meeting the standard is an issue with the method, not the standard.

You cannot allow fallacious reasoning to pass simply because you don't have any better methods.

 

[Belz...]

I have to disagree with this.

If the questions are questions of fact they have to be held to the same standard as any other method.

Except that it isn't the way it works in that field, period.

In physics you can get a full picture because the evidence is always there. History's not like that. You pretty much always have an incomplete puzzle. So unless you want to torch almost every history book we have, you have to accept that most of it is actually informed guesses.

You cannot allow fallacious reasoning to pass simply because you don't have any better methods.

It's not fallacious. Not in the context of that field. That's a fundamental thing that you have to grasp. If you want to apply scientific standards to history, then you have no history.