What counts as a historical Jesus?

[grahbudd]

What the record teaches us is that Eusebius, under the direction of Emperor Constantine, forged into other historical works some extremely obvious passages the most blatant of which is the Testimonium Flavianum. Tacitus too.

It proves to us how utterly without conscience they were and what a pox on humanity it has proved to be - duping people like you thousands of years later. It sure proved to be exactly what Constantine and the Bishops wanted - more complete control of the population - but in the long run has been such a catastrophe for mankind.

What specific evidence do you have to support this claim though?

I mean it's generally agreed that the TF as we have it is not the original (although certain lines of evidence, notably from Jerome and the Syriac versions suggest it may be closer than often supposed). But even granting that, what evidence do you have that Eusebius 'under the direction of Emperor Constantine' forged it and other obvious passages? Which ones are you thinking of in particular?

 

[TimONeill2]

This is a reasonable question to ask, I think. At first glance it seems like the likely answer to the question about what initiated the Jesus stories is that there was an HJ that served as the inspiration and peoples' imaginations just took it from there.

However there is another scenario which isn't obvious but in my opinion is still a fairly likely scenario. I am fairly sure that most of the Jesus mythology arose either in a group of people known as the God-fearers or in Hellenistic Jews not living in the Palestine area.

The God-fearers were a gentile group that was following a version of Judaism that used the Septuagint. They preceded Christianity. We know that the arrival of a messiah was imminent was a widespread belief within Palestinian Jews and it is reasonable to believe it spread to other Judaism related groups. At some point, the widespread belief that a messiah was coming may have just morphed into a belief that the messiah had come. Reasonably the belief that a messiah had come didn't spread to Jews living in Palestine since they thought they would have noticed if that had happened.

There is a tension related in the New Testament between the group that thinks that followers of Jesus Christ needed to follow the Jewish law and people that thought that wasn't important for gentiles. This gives the NT stories a ring of plausibility since it seems like they are reporting on something that might have been real. However, the tension may have been real in that there was tension between the God-fearer groups and the Hellenistic Jews that worshiped in close proximity to them. And to give their stories the ring of plausibility the NT authors associated this tension with fictional characters they created in their stories.

Sorry, but I'm not following how this is all part of "another scenario" which is somehow different to "there was an HJ that served as the inspiration (for the later stories about Jesus)". In fact, I can't think of any scholars who accept a historical Jesus as the most likely point of origin for these stories who wouldn't substantially or wholly agree with more or less everything you write above. I certainly do. So how is this "another scenario" again?

FWIW, I think that an HJ did exist and that HM excessively discounts the reliability of the available evidence on this question excessively. But I think HM is mostly right. The evidence for the existence of an HJ is weak and strong conclusions about the existence of an HJ aren't supported by the available evidence.

I'm finding those three sentences difficult to parse. Firstly, what exactly is "HM"? Do you mean "MJ" for "mythic Jesus" as opposed to "HJ" for "historical Jesus"? If so, I can't see how you could say "HM (MJ?) excessively discounts the reliability of the available evidence on this question" and then say "strong conclusions about the existence of an HJ aren't supported by the available evidence". Unless you consider saying "a historical Jesus is the most likely explanation of the available evidence" isn't a "strong conclusion".

I believe the above as a person that has spent an inordinate amount of time trying to piece together evidence for the existence of an HJ without much success. Many scholars and other experts assume facts and then go on to use these assumed facts to write about the nature of Jesus as they see it. None of this writing is particularly useful if one is trying to find evidence to support the idea that Jesus existed at all.

I don't know which of these "many scholars and other experts" you're referring to, but I can't think of too many outside of the conservative/evangelical end of the spectrum who do this at all. Sometimes I find people thinking that things are being "assumed", but it usually turns out its just that they aren't familiar enough with the scholarship to understand that these are not "assumptions" at all.

 

[Brainache]

...
I'm finding those three sentences difficult to parse. Firstly, what exactly is "HM"? Do you mean "MJ" for "mythic Jesus" as opposed to "HJ" for "historical Jesus"? If so, I can't see how you could say "HM (MJ?) excessively discounts the reliability of the available evidence on this question" and then say "strong conclusions about the existence of an HJ aren't supported by the available evidence". Unless you consider saying "a historical Jesus is the most likely explanation of the available evidence" isn't a "strong conclusion".
...

I think HM in DaveFOC's post refers to Hans Musterman, the poster who appears to think that unless we have 100% certainty we can't say anything either way.

 

[Roger Ramjets]

Firstly, what exactly is "HM"?

HansMustermann.

To those of us who have been following the debate, and who appreciate HM's awesome intellect and debating skill, the use of this acronym is obvious.

But what will 23rd century historians make of this thread? The evidence for HM's existence is quite shaky. An anonymous user name means nothing. Nobody knows the real author's name, age, where he lived, or even whether he was male or female! Some might argue that HM never actually existed at all, but was simply a very sophisticated bot.

I can't see how you could say "HM (MJ?) excessively discounts the reliability of the available evidence on this question" and then say "strong conclusions about the existence of an HJ aren't supported by the available evidence".

One little misunderstanding can lead to a whole lot of bad reasoning and faulty interpretation. I wonder, how much of the Bible was 'understood' to mean something quite different from what modern scholars think it means?

Sometimes I find people thinking that things are being "assumed", but it usually turns out its just that they aren't familiar enough with the scholarship to understand that these are not "assumptions" at all.

IMO it is not safe to 'assume' that anything in the Bible is true, let alone that its meaning should be obvious to us.

 

[TimONeill2]

Back to "Mr Furious" ...

And again, you still don't get these newfangled 'logic' and 'burden of proof' concepts even after they've been pointed out to you? As long as you're making the positive claim, poking holes to the effect of what other things may have happened is exactly the right thing to do.

As a very small and not terribly significant or productive first step at developing an alternative hypothesis, certainly. The problem comes if that's all you do - that doesn't get you or anyone else very far. Some other things might have happened? Maybe some other things occurred? Sure - lots of things are merely possible. The problem here is that the mytherists have this very odd idea that this all they need to do - present a supposition that is (somehow) vaguely possible and then somehow the original idea has been debunked. This is very strange.

If you want to present an alternative thesis then you need to go well beyond gesturing vaguely to something that is merely "possible". Presenting an alternative thesis or even a set of objections to someone else's historical hypothesis requires you to present more than a mere possibility (since they are a dime a dozen) - you need to present reasons, cogent arguments and evidence that show that your alternative is (i) supported by evidence and (ii) more plausible and likely than the hypothesis you're opposing.

So I get the "burden of proof" and "logic" stuff just fine thanks. If you make an alternative claim then a mere supposition or "possible" is not enough, because lots of things are merely "possible". By presenting a alternative, you're making a "positive claim" yourself, so now you need to back it up and demonstrate how it is more parsimonious than the claim you're trying to refute.

It's very interesting that you keep trying to dodge this requirement, mainly with all this shouty bluster.

As long as you make the "X existed" kind of claim, yes, it's your burden of proof to show that your idea of what MAY have happened is true, and his alternate explanation isn't. Or at least that yours is more probable.

Sure. And if, for example, I can point to consistent Messianic expectations that the anointed one of Yahweh was meant to be a historical human being and to the fact that there was no tradition and no sign of any conception of a "mythic Messiah" in Second Temple Judaism, then I am making a solid argument that the idea of Jesus developing out of a historical human being is more probable than it developing out of some "mythic Messiah" concept. Because there is no evidence any "mythic Messiah" concept existed and plenty that a "historical human being" Messiah concept did.

That's why I asked him to produce some evidence for the existence of this "mythic Messiah" that he invoked. If he can't produce it, out comes Occam's Razor and my evidence-backed alternative is shown to be more probable than his one based on a supposition and nothing more. Got it now?

Sorry, that's getting even more illogical. That's like saying that you need to find another religion claiming to have found ancient texts on some tables in America, known to be made up, and it has to be in the 19'th century New York, to say that Mormonism is made up.

Oh dear. It's interesting that someone who keeps padding his replies with all this shouty but highly confused stuff about "logic" and "reversing the burden of proof" can't construct an analogy that stands up to more than two second's scrutiny.

I said to "ddt" that he needed to do more than just suppose there was a proto-Christian sect that believed in Jesus as a "mythic Messiah figure", and that he needed to support this with evidence and do so in a way that showed this was more parsimonious than the "historical preacher Jesus" alternative. Then I suggested that, to begin with, he needed to demonstrate that people who believed in "mythic Messiah figures" existed in the first place.

Somehow you've tried to equate this very sensible and reasonable observation with saying that unless someone can find analogous ideas to early Mormonism, then Smith's stories aren't "made up". Exactly how you think the choice between a "historical preacher Jesus" and a "mythic Messiah Jesus" is analogous to the one between "Mormonism was made up" and "Mormonism (complete with angels etc) is true" I have no idea. Logic?

But since you tried to use an analogy with Mormonism (very badly), let's see how such an analogy would actually work. If one person was arguing that Joseph Smith invented his angel-and-tablets story using elements and ideas common in the culture of New York state at the time and another rejected this and claimed he drew on the ideas of the practitioners of ancient Egyptian religion, then it would be a telling point if the latter couldn't actually produce any evidence of ancient Egyptian religious practitioners in Nineteenth Century New York.

Given that we know the idea that Native Americans were descended from the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel was current at the time, that there is evidence Smith plagiarised many of his ideas from a fictional manuscript by Solomon Spaulding, that he seems to have got others from Ethan Smith's 1823 book The Views of the Hebrews and that esoteric ideas about hidden gold and "seeing stones" were current in the folklore of the time, someone arguing for the first hypothesis would have a good case. If someone trying to present the alternative second hypothesis wanted to show theirs was stronger, simply suggesting the possibility of the influence of ancient Egyptian religious practitioners would not be enough. They would have to do much more. To begin with, they would have to demonstrate or make a solid case that there were any ancient Egyptian religious practitioners around to have this influence on Smith.

In the same way, "ddt" needs to do more than just suggest some merely possible "mythical Messiah figure" Jews who made up Jesus. He needs to demonstrate that there were any such "mythical Messiah figure" Jews in the first place. If he can't even do that, his hypothesis fails right there.

First of all, no, you don't really know that. Similar constructs for other parts of the body, e.g., for striking someone on the cheek, did exist in Greek. You can't really know that Mark was necessarily translating anything, as opposed to just inventing a new word, like writers often do. Furthermore it assumes that you know not only Mark's command of Greek was so great, that he'd never mistakenly use the wrong word, but also later scribes would always pick exactly the right word. (The first copy of Mark we have is from circa 250 CE, and already pretty interpolated.)

No, I don't really "know" that this means the author of gMark definitely was working from an Aramaic original. If we stuck to what we could definitively "know" then the process of studying ancient history generally would be difficult to the point of being pointless and textual analysis doubly so. People who can only deal with what we can definitively "know" would be best to stay away from most discussions about pre-modern history and stick to subjects that don't regularly work from inference, like perhaps physics or maths.

I didn't say we "know" he was using an Aramaic source, I said that gMark has possible "indicators of earlier strata of transmission". I didn't say that we "know" that these earlier strata exist, I simply responded to his request for examples about these possible indicators with two examples. So anyone can sneer from the sidelines by saying "yeah, well you can't know that's what this means!", but since no-one claimed to "know" any such thing that's a fairly pointless comment.

There may well be other reasons the gMark author invented this odd word. There may also be other explanations for the peculiar use of ὀργισθείς in the context of Mark 1:14. The problem is, even if the gMark author DID work from an Aramaic original, you could still come up with those alternatives and they would still be valid. All I was noting was that there are indicators in the text of gMark which can be argued to signify an Aramaic source being translated into Greek. You can be unconvinced if you like, but since you have no knowledge of either language, no training in relevant textual analysis, have done no careful and detailed analysis of the passages in question, looking at analogues in the Greek corpus, study of translations from Greek into Syriac or Aramaic or Hebrew and vice versa or any detailed grasp of the linguistics or the texts at all, your opinion counts for little. After all, it's not based on any expert understanding - it's based purely on an emotional need to find a way to dismiss something you don't want to accept.

Well, for a start it's still a strawman that anyone literally meant that Mark was making it ALL up. It's clear that early Christians quote-mined the Tanakh and other texts extensively, so nobody assumes that Mark would start completely from scratch and in a vacuum.

I've regularly seen mytherists making precisely this claim. Or rather, the claim that the author of gMark is the one who "historicised" the purely allegorical/celestial/mythic/fictional Jesus that this (supposed) proto-Christanity originally believed in. The point is that these indicators of a substratum source indicates that he was working from a prior source that he clearly agreed with. Which pushes his clearly historical conception of Jesus back to earlier in the First Century. So does the existence of the "Q" material, which (i) is independent of gMark and (ii) obviously pre-dates gMatt and gLuke. So that's two or possibly three independent sources that all talk about a historical Jesus. Then we get at least two more if the "L" and "M" material is at least partially based on documentary material as well.

So if we have between three and five independent traditions that gospel authors who clearly believed in a historical Jesus, it means there must have been some time in which these separate strands developed. So that pushes the idea of a historical Jesus back even closer to the early 30s AD, which is when this Jesus is said to have lived. And the closer we get to the period in which the stories were set, the less and less likely it is that they were inventing Jesus out of whole cloth. Then we have the Pauline material, generally dated to the 50s, in which he dates his own conversion to within a few years of Jesus' execution and in which he reports interacting with Cephas and with Jesus' brother. All this makes the continuity between a historical Jesus and the beginnings of traditions about his life and its meaning extremely close, especially for ancient texts.

Wait, aren't you the same guy who insisted all over the place that we should find a mention if it was a forgery, and other such "should"s? Special pleading much?

Er, no. I said that we should find some kind of reference to this (supposed) proto-Christian sect that believed in a purely allegorical/mythic/celestial/insert-myther-theory-variant-here Jesus. And I backed this up by noting that we should do so because we have plenty of references to other alternative ideas about Jesus in both early apologetics about "heresies" and in the arguments presented by early opponents of Christianity. So I supported my "should" with a clear reason we could expect these references. Here I am questioning the idea that we "should" find lots of biographic information in Paul's letters and noting that this claim is, unlike mine, made without a similar kind of substantiation. I then examine analogous epistolary texts and show that, in fact, this claim about what we "should" find is without any foundation at all.

Plus, it's more of a strawman. The problem isn't just that Paul doesn't mention Nazareth or the trial,

Really? You should explain this to many of your fellow mytherists, who spill much ink on questioning why Paul doesn't give precisely this level of biographical detail.

but that Paul writes explicitly to solve some doctrinal disputes, yet doesn't mention anything Jesus said on the topic. Most of the topics Paul spends pages after pages doing his own handwaving to argue, had already been said by Jesus, if we believe the gospels. So Paul only needed to say "Jesus" said so. Yet he never does. It's as if he never actually heard that Jesus already said something that would make his point.

Two problems here. Firstly, this assumes that everything in the gospels would be known to Paul several decades earlier and that the traditions about Jesus that were known to him in the 50s AD were the same as those we find preserved in the gospels towards the end of the centuries. This is not only naive, it's also a weirdly fundamentalist Christian conception. Fundies aside, even most Christians accept that what we see in the gospels is ideas about Jesus developing and evolving. So if we can see a development in ideas about him from gMark (c. 70 AD) to gJohn (c. 120 AD or later), then of course there was a similar level of development and accretion between Paul's time and the latter First Century. So Paul didn't know about those "sayings" etc because they hadn't developed yet.

The second more significant problem is that your claim "he never does" is flatly wrong. He does. Look at 1Cor. 7:10, 1Cor. 9:14 and 1Thess. 4:15 where he makes explicit references to "the Lord's word" or "the Lord's command".

The fact that later authors also don't seem to know much about Jesus, and can't quote anything that would make their point, is a problem, not something that excuses a blank HJ postulates. It shows a lack of information.

So can you now back up that statement and substantiate it with examples of the writers of 1Clement, 2Clement and the Epistle of Polycarp are not mentioning biographical details about Jesus that would "make their point"? Because I've read these texts very carefully several times over the years and I must say I have no idea that "points" they are making that needed biographical details. Over to you - it would be nice to get a detailed argument substantiated with careful analysis of the texts for once.

You keep talking about "glib parroting", but that's exactly what you're doing.

The glib parroting I was referring to was the use of some stock standard mytherist pre-packages slogans which seem based on no careful analysis of the various arguments, let alone an understanding of the source material and texts. Stick around and you'll continue to learn that I makes sure I have been over all the relevant material and the arguments and counter-arguments in vast detail before commenting and have been doing so for years. There's nothing "glib" about what I'm saying here and I'm not merely "parroting this stuff - I know it backwards. And that kind of feeble bully boy sneering is just pathetic, so you might want to stop cluttering up your replies with it. It's just making you look increasingly rattled.

But just so I don't repeat what others argued already, see: [some Catholic apologetics website]

Basically, wth, even most theologians don't think that James was actually the biological brother of Jesus,

You see, it's statements like that which show those of us in the know that you have no idea what you're talking about and that most of your posts on this subject are posting bluff and bluster. "Most theologians" think this? Really? I hate to break it to you, but apart from Catholic theologians, none of them believe this at all. And the Catholics only do so for doctrinal reasons, not because of anything to do with history. They have to (pretend) to believe this because it's required of them by the dogma of the "perpetual virginity of Mary". Their "Blessed Virgin" can't be a perpetual virgin if she went on to have James, Joses, Judas and Simon later on.

But "most theologians" reject this purely Catholic dogma and fully accept that these guys were Jesus' siblings, as you'd know if you had any grasp of this subject.

and that word was used all over the place in both the OT and NT to mean other forms of kinship. The Septuagint translators for example, clearly used "adelphos" all over the place for other kinships than literally "brother".

Did I say it wasn't used in other ways and wasn't used figuratively? I didn't. Did I even say Paul didn't use it figuratively in places? No, because he clearly does. What I said was that when he uses it figuratively he uses a different grammatical form (ἀδελφῶν ἐν κυρίῳ - "brothers IN the Lord" - not ἀδελφοὶ τοῦ κυρίου - "brothers OF the Lord"). If you want to argue the differing usage in Galatians 1:19 and 1Cor 9:5 is also figurative, you need to actually do so. Make your case. In detail please.

Sorry, just because you can bloviate illogical nonsense for 2500 words, doesn't make you right.

Again, lots of shouty, bully-boy waffle in there and desperate attempts to make it look as though you have some solid grasp of the material and detailed knowledge of the relevant arguments and counter-arguments. But it should be becoming obvious to discerning observers by now that under the posturing, most of your posts are actually more puffery than substance. I've challenged you to make detailed and carefully substantiate arguments to back up some of your assertions several times now and have done so several times above. Your dodging and weaving to avoid doing so and to substitute posturing for substance is becoming increasingly apparent to all.

 

[TimONeill2]

I think HM in DaveFOC's post refers to Hans Musterman, the poster who appears to think that unless we have 100% certainty we can't say anything either way.

Thanks - that puzzling paragraph now makes sense.

 

[davefoc]

Sorry, but I'm not following how this is all part of "another scenario" which is somehow different to "there was an HJ that served as the inspiration (for the later stories about Jesus)". In fact, I can't think of any scholars who accept a historical Jesus as the most likely point of origin for these stories who wouldn't substantially or wholly agree with more or less everything you write above. I certainly do. So how is this "another scenario" again?

...

Others have answered most of the questions you posed for me and those answers represent my views also.

I just wanted to respond to this particular section of your post.

Whether an HJ existed or not the origin story of Christianity that you seem to agree with is very similar. You seem to agree that the most of the Jesus mythology arose in a group of people that were separated from an hypothetical HJ by distance, time and language. You also seem to agree that imminent arrival of a messiah had become a part of at least some first century Judaism.

The main issue left is whether there was an actual historical character that served to initiate the creation of Christianity or whether the people that created almost every aspect of Christianity (except the preexisting tie-in to Judaism by the God-fearer group) also created a fictional Jesus character and his supporting cast. In other words did the founders of Christianity dream up almost every aspect of Christianity or did they dream up every aspect of Christianity?

I don't know the answer and I think the answer is unknowable. But I share your view that an HJ existed, I just seem to think that the evidence that this is the case is much less strong that you do.

I also share what I think is your view, that Paul's writings are the best evidence for the existence of an HJ. Unfortunately independent confirmation of Paul and exactly what he wrote out of what he is traditionally credited with writing is hard to come by. I think Acts was probably created to flesh out details of the origin of Christianity using Paul's writings (or perhaps oral representations of them) as a source of information so I tend not to see any clear cut corroboration of Paul's existence either in the New Testament or from other sources.

One theory, that I've seen is that Marcion created Paul and a subset of the writings credited to him. I doubt it, but is there good evidence that this isn't the case? Things seem to be pretty murky with regard to foundation of Christianity until sometime into the second century. I doubt that there is any information that exists any where on the planet about the earliest history of Christianity that could serve as a source of information about the historical Jesus. If he existed, he was a small time guy and nobody was writing about him when he was alive so we are left with what truth can be teased out of mostly fictional writings about him and I don't see anyway to reliably separate the truth from the BS when so much of the writings are pure BS.

 

[grahbudd]

Others have answered most of the questions you posed for me and those answers represent my views also.

I just wanted to respond to this particular section of your post.

Whether an HJ existed or not the origin story of Christianity that you seem to agree with is very similar. You seem to agree that the most of the Jesus mythology arose in a group of people that were separated from an hypothetical HJ by distance, time and language. You also seem to agree that imminent arrival of a messiah had become a part of at least some first century Judaism.

The main issue left is whether there was an actual historical character that served to initiate the creation of Christianity or whether the people that created almost every aspect of Christianity (except the preexisting tie-in to Judaism by the God-fearer group) also created a fictional Jesus character and his supporting cast. In other words did the founders of Christianity dream up almost every aspect of Christianity or did they dream up every aspect of Christianity?

I don't know the answer and I think the answer is unknowable. But I share your view that an HJ existed, I just seem to think that the evidence that this is the case is much less strong that you do.

I also share what I think is your view, that Paul's writings are the best evidence for the existence of an HJ. Unfortunately independent confirmation of Paul and exactly what he wrote out of what he is traditionally credited with writing is hard to come by. I think Acts was probably created to flesh out details of the origin of Christianity using Paul's writings (or perhaps oral representations of them) as a source of information so I tend not to see any clear cut corroboration of Paul's existence either in the New Testament or from other sources.

One theory, that I've seen is that Marcion created Paul and a subset of the writings credited to him. I doubt it, but is there good evidence that this isn't the case? Things seem to be pretty murky with regard to foundation of Christianity until sometime into the second century. I doubt that there is any information that exists any where on the planet about the earliest history of Christianity that could serve as a source of information about the historical Jesus. If he existed, he was a small time guy and nobody was writing about him when he was alive so we are left with what truth can be teased out of mostly fictional writings about him and I don't see anyway to reliably separate the truth from the BS when so much of the writings are pure BS.

Acts would be a very peculiar "fleshing out" of the pauline corpus, given that its chronology flatly disagrees on several points.

On Paul: Clement of Rome knows some of the Pauline literature, as does Ignatius of Antioch, who both predate Marcion.

Here is Clement for example:

"Take up the epistle of the blessed Apostle Paul. What did he write to you at the time when the Gospel first began to be preached? Truly, under the inspiration of the Spirit, he wrote to you concerning himself, and Cephas, and Apollos, because even then parties had been formed among you."

cf 1 Corinthians 1:10-12:

"I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree with one another in what you say and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be perfectly united in mind and thought. 11 My brothers and sisters, some from Chloe’s household have informed me that there are quarrels among you. 12 What I mean is this: One of you says, “I follow Paul”; another, “I follow Apollos”; another, “I follow Cephas”; still another, “I follow Christ.”"

Clement can't be too late because of a chain of dependencies of later writings.

A more plausible scenario with Marcion is that when he hived up in Rome from Asia Minor he brought a recension of Paul's letters with him that was just somewhat different from those known at Rome (but the differences need not to have been too great in fact). As there is reasonable evidence that Luke's gospel was issued in two editions (by the same author though), it is also possible that Marcion knew only the first, and not the second, edition. But that's much more speculative!

 

[HansMustermann]

Moving on to the next one ....

Luckily for me and for all those scholars out there, no-one is doing anything remotely like this.

Really? Then where is the actual EVIDENCE? As long as it's just your postulating what an author really meant, it's exactly just going into your wild flights of fantasy.

But basically, see, that's the whole problem with HJ. Everyone just POSTULATES that no, see, there is good evidence and it's already been supported, but nobody actually ever shows anything more than a string of textbook fallacies.

Unfortunately, though, we're not in The Hunting Of The Snark and you're not the bellman. Simply saying something a third time won't make it true.

So where is the EVIDENCE that some author meant exactly this or that? You can't have a sound inference that's based on nothing more than making up the premises.

Quite a bit. Firstly, we have a consistent element in all of the early Christian traditions about Jesus: they all say they are based on a historical person and all depict him in the relatively recent historical setting. What don't have is any hint of any alternative forms of Christianity that didn't do this. And this is despite the fact that all mythicist theories not only require such an alternative but also require it to be the point of origin of all the traditions.

Even if that were true, that's a triple whammy of fallacies:

1. It's a bit of a strawman. As was pointed out repeatedly, not all mythicist positions involve belief in a mythical Jesus. So even assuming you knocked that one down, you still haven't quite eliminated enough alternative to have enough of a certitude in a historical Jesus to justify all the speculating what's wrong with those who don't believe in it.

2. It's an argument from ignorance. I mean, to give you an analogy, we don't have evidence that any mormons believed that Joseph Smith's golden tables or ancient Christian tribes in America were mythical, but we can still be pretty sure that there is no evidence either existed.

3. Unsupported BELIEF does not equal evidence. The fact that people X and Y BELIEVED that Z existed or was talking about a historical Jesus, but there is no evidence of it being based on anything more than just faith, is no evidence that Z did either.

What we see in early Christians is that they don't know exactly when Jesus lived, when he died, exactly what did he do, how old was he, etc. In fact we see them having to make up all those based on hare-brained numerology and OT considerations. They don't KNOW a Jesus.

So whether they BELIEVED a Jesus existed, is fully irrelevant. Unsupported personal beliefs are not evidence.

I mean, there are a lot of people who believe that the moon landings were faked, but their belief doesn't make it so.

Secondly, we have arguments against Christianity by its opponents that all agree that this Jesus was a historical person. None of these opponents seem aware of any claims that Jesus was simply an allegory, a myth, a fiction or a celestial or mythic being rather than a historical preacher/prophet. And this is despite the fact this would have been a powerful argument against the Christianity of the Second Century. Mythicist theorists claim that their speculative proto-Christianity that didn't believe in a historical Jesus existed alongside its historicist offshoot for some time - even beyond the Second Century in some iterations. Yet no-one seems to have noticed it existed.

Again, BELIEF isn't evidence.

At one point the majority of people believed that the world was flat (try before the 6'th century BCE or so, for example), and nobody doubted that. It doesn't make it real.

Or in the Pacific you'll find a lot of tribes where everyone believed that the sky was a dome with four windows, and the wind is just a draft when two windows are left open. And you won't find any competing legends that say "no, that's BS". But that doesn't make it real.

But basically this is one glorified argumentum ad populum fallacy, by any other name. You (and Ehrman and lots of others) are trying to pass a popular belief for evidence. It doesn't work that way.

Compounding it, is an argument from ignorance again, if indirect. You're taking their lack of information about the non-existence of a Jesus, for evidence that he did. That doesn't work that way.

Come back when you learn some elementary logic, really.

Thirdly, we have at least three non-Christian references to Jesus that clearly understand him to be a historical person. Tacitus sets him in the reign of Tiberius and states his execution was during the Judean prefecture of Pilate. Pliny is more concerned with the practices of the Christians he has interrogated, but notes that these include rising at dawn and singing "a hymn to Christ as if to a god" (Christo quasi deo dicere secum inuicem). The phrasing here is pertinent, since if there was no reason to question the legitimacy of the idea of this "Christus" as a god (even if Pliny himself didn't share that idea) he is more likely to simply say "sing a hymn to their god Christ". Clearly Pliny did have a reason not to consider the idea that this Christ was a god as valid and legitimate. This makes sense if he knew the "Christ" they worshipped had been a man.

But again, none of those actually had any information about the existence of a Jesus. None of them writes "oh, yeah, my brother Galio presided the trial of this guy, and it turns out that it connects to the empty tomb of a crucified messiah." They're just writing what the Christians believe, and nobody doubts that there were Christians in their time.

Basically again, the lack of information can't be used as evidence.

Of course, we can't be sure that either Pliny or Tacitus had information about Jesus independent of Christian sources. Pliny certainly seems to be basing his understanding on the Christians he spoke to, though this is much less certain when it comes to Tacitus for a variety of reasons. In the case of Josephus' mention of the execution of James, however, we're on firmer ground regarding the independence of the account. This comes in Antiquities XX.9.1 and is mentioned in passing during Josephus' account of the deposition of the High Priest Hanan ben Hanan. This was a significant event in the early political life of Josephus himself. He was 25 at the time and had either just returned from a diplomatic embassy to Rome or he returned soon afterwards. The High Priest being deposed would have been the most important and memorable political event of Josephus' young life, since he was of a priestly family himself. So the fact that he mentions how James' execution helped trigger this event and then identifies James matter-of-factly as "the brother of that Jesus who was called Messiah" means that we have first-hand testimony of a contemporary of Josephus himself, executed in Josephus' (small) city and identified as the brother of ... guess who.

Right. Except for the fact that it's probably an interpolation, and it reads more naturally as being about the brother of the other Jesus mentioned in the same paragraph

So if we put all that together we have a consistent confluence of evidence that all agrees that Jesus was a historical person and the point of origin of the later stories.

No, it still doesn't. Fallacies by definition aren't support of anything, because they're by definition broken logic. That you can string up a few more fallacies that agree with your conclusion... who cares?

Whereas the evidence for the required mytherist alternative, whereby the stories have their origin in a proto-Christianity that only considered him an allegory, a myth, a fiction or a celestial or mythic being rather than a historical is ... well, there isn't any. There is no evidence at all that indicates any such proto-Christianity existed. It is merely an ad hoc contrivance based on wishful thinking.

As opposed to your version, which also has none? Plus, again, not all versions that deny a HJ actually are about a celestial being.

That would be nice, but unfortunately we rarely "know" these things about all kinds of ancient texts. But in the absence of any evidence that indicates anyone believed in a non-historical Jesus and given the confluence of agreement I've noted above in which all traditions about him have him as historical, you will need some basis for the idea that he was not. Other than a burning ideological and emotional need to believe this because you don't like modern Christianity. You have no evidential basis for that idea. None.

Dude, I can understand why you can't have good evidence, but then the honest thing to do is to admit that you have a nearly unsupported conjecture. It's not an excuse to do a bunch of fallacies instead and insist that that's how it's done. If a bunch of fallacies is how it's done for HJ, then ignoring that whole nonsense is how it's done for anyone who knows even elementary logic.

 

[Bad vibe]

So if we go with the HJ what does it tell us? his real name? birth place/date? what exactly can the evidence support?

 

[HansMustermann]

Back to "Mr Furious" ...

Dunno about "furious", but several months of various attempts at brow-beating and speculations over what might be wrong with me, if I don't accept some completely unsupported BS, does get me annoyed.

As a very small and not terribly significant or productive first step at developing an alternative hypothesis, certainly. The problem comes if that's all you do - that doesn't get you or anyone else very far. Some other things might have happened? Maybe some other things occurred? Sure - lots of things are merely possible. The problem here is that the mytherists have this very odd idea that this all they need to do - present a supposition that is (somehow) vaguely possible and then somehow the original idea has been debunked. This is very strange

So, you're still unable to understand a simple concept like "burden of proof"? Sorry, just because you don't get logic, doesn't mean you get to dictate that someone else should prove anything. The existence of those alternatives that your argument hasn't excluded is fully enough, as long as you have the burden of proof.

So, yes, some of us have this odd idea that things should go by logic. If you don't, that's your problem, not ours.

If you want to present an alternative thesis then you need to go well beyond gesturing vaguely to something that is merely "possible". Presenting an alternative thesis or even a set of objections to someone else's historical hypothesis requires you to present more than a mere possibility (since they are a dime a dozen) - you need to present reasons, cogent arguments and evidence that show that your alternative is (i) supported by evidence and (ii) more plausible and likely than the hypothesis you're opposing.

So I get the "burden of proof" and "logic" stuff just fine thanks. If you make an alternative claim then a mere supposition or "possible" is not enough, because lots of things are merely "possible". By presenting a alternative, you're making a "positive claim" yourself, so now you need to back it up and demonstrate how it is more parsimonious than the claim you're trying to refute.

It's very interesting that you keep trying to dodge this requirement, mainly with all this shouty bluster.

No, you still don't get it, and you still don't get to redefine how it works. Sorry. Call it a dodge or spew stuff about a "Shouty bluster", if it makes you feel any better, but you don't get to redefine how logic works.

But, yeah, I get it that for you logic is apparently just a "dodge"

Oh dear. It's interesting that someone who keeps padding his replies with all this shouty but highly confused stuff about "logic" and "reversing the burden of proof" can't construct an analogy that stands up to more than two second's scrutiny.

And more brow-beating nonsense? First of all there's no logical connection between being able to construct an analogy, and being right about the burden of proof.

Second, you still have the burden of proof, no matter how often you do that kind of brow-beating about me being confused or whatnot. As long as you make the positive claim, YOU get to support it to a sufficient extent to exclude those alternatives. As long as you haven't done that, no, nobody has to do anything than poke holes in your claims.

No, I don't really "know" that this means the author of gMark definitely was working from an Aramaic original. If we stuck to what we could definitively "know" then the process of studying ancient history generally would be difficult to the point of being pointless and textual analysis doubly so. People who can only deal with what we can definitively "know" would be best to stay away from most discussions about pre-modern history and stick to subjects that don't regularly work from inference, like perhaps physics or maths.

But again, if you don't know, you don't know. It's dishonest and illogical to pretend that if you don't have good evidence, then you can use nonsense instead.

The honest thing to do is to note that it's a rather weak conjecture, not to go into whole paragraphs about what's wrong with those who don't believe it. You need a lot more certitude before that kind of thing is justified.

And it certainly isn't to act like mildly plausible possibilities support an "it indicates that X happened, or Y didn't happen." A possiblity or even probability, at best indicates another possibility or probability. E.g., if it's possible that my asian co-worker is from Canton, then it's possibly that he speaks Cantonese. But it would be silly to take that weak conjecture as actually supporting or disproving anything.

I didn't say we "know" he was using an Aramaic source, I said that gMark has possible "indicators of earlier strata of transmission". I didn't say that we "know" that these earlier strata exist, I simply responded to his request for examples about these possible indicators with two examples. So anyone can sneer from the sidelines by saying "yeah, well you can't know that's what this means!", but since no-one claimed to "know" any such thing that's a fairly pointless comment.

There may well be other reasons the gMark author invented this odd word. There may also be other explanations for the peculiar use of ὀργισθείς in the context of Mark 1:14. The problem is, even if the gMark author DID work from an Aramaic original, you could still come up with those alternatives and they would still be valid. All I was noting was that there are indicators in the text of gMark which can be argued to signify an Aramaic source being translated into Greek. You can be unconvinced if you like, but since you have no knowledge of either language, no training in relevant textual analysis, have done no careful and detailed analysis of the passages in question, looking at analogues in the Greek corpus, study of translations from Greek into Syriac or Aramaic or Hebrew and vice versa or any detailed grasp of the linguistics or the texts at all, your opinion counts for little. After all, it's not based on any expert understanding - it's based purely on an emotional need to find a way to dismiss something you don't want to accept.

But as long as that "indicator" is just a vague possibility, among many others, it's illogical nonsense to then act as if a mere possibility is evidence that gMark didn't make it up.

I've regularly seen mytherists making precisely this claim. Or rather, the claim that the author of gMark is the one who "historicised" the purely allegorical/celestial/mythic/fictional Jesus that this (supposed) proto-Christanity originally believed in. The point is that these indicators of a substratum source indicates that he was working from a prior source that he clearly agreed with. Which pushes his clearly historical conception of Jesus back to earlier in the First Century. So does the existence of the "Q" material, which (i) is independent of gMark and (ii) obviously pre-dates gMatt and gLuke. So that's two or possibly three independent sources that all talk about a historical Jesus. Then we get at least two more if the "L" and "M" material is at least partially based on documentary material as well.

So if we have between three and five independent traditions that gospel authors who clearly believed in a historical Jesus, it means there must have been some time in which these separate strands developed. So that pushes the idea of a historical Jesus back even closer to the early 30s AD, which is when this Jesus is said to have lived. And the closer we get to the period in which the stories were set, the less and less likely it is that they were inventing Jesus out of whole cloth. Then we have the Pauline material, generally dated to the 50s, in which he dates his own conversion to within a few years of Jesus' execution and in which he reports interacting with Cephas and with Jesus' brother. All this makes the continuity between a historical Jesus and the beginnings of traditions about his life and its meaning extremely close, especially for ancient texts.

But see, there it is: you're moving from some unsupported conjectures and possibilities to "it indicates that". That's not the way that sound logic works.

Really? You should explain this to many of your fellow mytherists, who spill much ink on questioning why Paul doesn't give precisely this level of biographical detail.

Or you can stop doing that strawman. Virtually all arguments I've ever heard were exactly about what I wrote there: Paul doesn't mention stuff from Jesus that would make his point. Trying to distort it into being only about biographical details is exactly a strawman.

Yes, the lack of biogaphical details is strange, but it's FAR from being THE main argument there.

Two problems here. Firstly, this assumes that everything in the gospels would be known to Paul several decades earlier and that the traditions about Jesus that were known to him in the 50s AD were the same as those we find preserved in the gospels towards the end of the centuries. This is not only naive, it's also a weirdly fundamentalist Christian conception. Fundies aside, even most Christians accept that what we see in the gospels is ideas about Jesus developing and evolving. So if we can see a development in ideas about him from gMark (c. 70 AD) to gJohn (c. 120 AD or later), then of course there was a similar level of development and accretion between Paul's time and the latter First Century. So Paul didn't know about those "sayings" etc because they hadn't developed yet.

But something "evolving" and "developing" is saying that those details were probably made up over time. If even the apostles were not knowing a bunch of stuff that hadn't "evolved" or "developed" about Jesus, then is that stuff real? Can we take it as knowing that Jesus actually said X, if for all we know it didn't "develop" or "evolve" until half a century after his death?

THAT is the argument, rather than its debunking.

The second more significant problem is that your claim "he never does" is flatly wrong. He does. Look at 1Cor. 7:10, 1Cor. 9:14 and 1Thess. 4:15 where he makes explicit references to "the Lord's word" or "the Lord's command".

I said there is a lot stuff from Jesus that he never mentions, although it would make his case, not that he never mentions anything at all.

So can you now back up that statement and substantiate it with examples of the writers of 1Clement, 2Clement and the Epistle of Polycarp are not mentioning biographical details about Jesus that would "make their point"? Because I've read these texts very carefully several times over the years and I must say I have no idea that "points" they are making that needed biographical details. Over to you - it would be nice to get a detailed argument substantiated with careful analysis of the texts for once.

Again, reducing it to being just about biographical details is a strawman. And a pretty silly one, considering that you just quoted what I actually said.

The glib parroting I was referring to was the use of some stock standard mytherist pre-packages slogans which seem based on no careful analysis of the various arguments, let alone an understanding of the source material and texts. Stick around and you'll continue to learn that I makes sure I have been over all the relevant material and the arguments and counter-arguments in vast detail before commenting and have been doing so for years. There's nothing "glib" about what I'm saying here and I'm not merely "parroting this stuff - I know it backwards. And that kind of feeble bully boy sneering is just pathetic, so you might want to stop cluttering up your replies with it. It's just making you look increasingly rattled.

And a homeopath might know everything about homeopathy forwards and backwards, but that still doesn't mean it's supported. An acupuncturist might know half the ancient treatises on it, but that doesn't mean it actually does anything, nor that his arguments have any merit. And I'm sure Orly Taitz knows every argument about Obama's birth certificate backwards, but she's still spewing nonsense. Etc.

So, basically that's not an argument, as long as you didn't actually present much that makes any logical sense.

And, again, yeah, I get it that for you being told to use good logic is some kind of "bullyboy sneering"

Look, seriously, that yet another peddler of illogical nonsense does that kind of brow-beating, don't impress me much. You either have a logically sound argument, or you don't. Call me whatever names you wish, if that makes you feel any better, but that isn't a substitute for making logical sense.

 

[TimONeill2]

The main issue left is whether there was an actual historical character that served to initiate the creation of Christianity or whether the people that created almost every aspect of Christianity (except the preexisting tie-in to Judaism by the God-fearer group) also created a fictional Jesus character and his supporting cast. In other words did the founders of Christianity dream up almost every aspect of Christianity or did they dream up every aspect of Christianity?

There is a strong strain amongst those who accept mythicist theories of "all or nothing". It seems that for some, if any of the story is demonstrably ahistorical, then this somehow means all of it must be. But this doesn't follow at all, especially not with ancient stories. We have plenty of examples of clearly ahistorical stories being told about historical people.

But this doesn't mean that the idea that the whole thing is ahistorical is impossible or invalid - it may be the case. So the question then becomes how likely this is compared to the likelihood that the ahistorical elements are later accretions attached to a (however indistinct) historical person. This is why I keep challenging the mythicists here to present a detailed argument for who created this mythic/celestial/allegorical/fictional/whatever Jesus, when and how, so we can then compare their argument and its use of the evidence and the historical Jesus alternative and see which stacks up better.

They seem oddly shy about doing this.

I don't know the answer and I think the answer is unknowable.

Anyone who has studied ancient history will know that all kinds of things are "unknowable" and the best we can come up with are arguments for what seems most likely. People who aren't familiar with this or who are more used to disciplines where black and white, yes/no answers are the norm find this strange, but it's the nature of much historical analysis.

One theory, that I've seen is that Marcion created Paul and a subset of the writings credited to him. I doubt it, but is there good evidence that this isn't the case?

Grahbudd has been good enough to give you some reasons why virtually no-one takes that seriously. But on the odd fringes of these discussions you'll find just about every strange combination of hyper-sceptical theory you can imagine.

 

[grahbudd]

But see, there it is: you're moving from some unsupported conjectures and possibilities to "it indicates that". That's not the way that sound logic works.

Most of these discussions seem to revolve around this sort of issue.

I can't see why one cannot accept the idea of a hypothesis being both reasonable and yet conditional. Given the information we have at present, and our understanding of it, then the best explanation of it is...X, Y or Z. If more information comes along, or our understanding changes, then that explanation might change too.

At present, our best understanding of the early NT strands of tradition is much as timOneill2 outlines. There is Mark and Q, and Paul; and together with that the material in Luke and Matthew, and some strands that seem to be independent in John.

The idea that the pauline corpus knows virtually nothing of things that ended up in the gospels seems shaky. In the most critical analysis I know, by the redoubtable Dale Allison, Paul knows blocks of material that eventually ended up in Q, Mark, and material special to Luke and to Matthew (New Test. Studies 28, 1-32).

Of course, knowledge of these patterns per se tells us nothing. But I think one is entitled to go further and ask: how do we account for these patterns? How is it that there is a block of Q material centered around very obscure villages in Galilee, whereas Paul is concentrated on events in Jerusalem (cf his comments on the "skandalon" or stumbling block in Zion)? It is this very disparity, so early on, that is so striking about the Jesus material. Given - from chance comments in Paul - that his letters can be dated, as TimOneill2 says, to the 50s, and that the events he relates to the 30s, this means that all this material must predate the 50s.

The reason this is significant is that it is wildly implausible, surely, to start off with a set of stories (say, set in either Jerusalem or in Galilee) and then try to derive one or other tradition from it. Here is Paul writing in the 50s about events in his life time that he centers in Jerusalem; and yet perhaps 15 years later (because there is evidence for Mark-Q overlap, Q must be early too) we have evidence for the Jesus of Q cursing Galilean villages. Were these stories derived from the Jerusalem traditions - it seems bizarre to think so.

I think this is where, on reflection, things get difficult for those who want to deny that these stories have some basis in the life of a real person. Making up stories about a person who lived only about 10 years ago (and having people believe they were true) is one thing, although not without its considerable difficulties. But to make up the complex of quasi-independent traditions (for the Q material knows about Jerusalem too) that makes up the earliest tradition, with discourses on the mission (known by Paul), stories about Galilean villages etc etc would imply a complex and subtle fusion of several different traditions, all about people who lived around the same time, into one confused farrago, which was instantly understood by its contemporaries as being about one person. And I actually think this is quite hard to accept, to say the least. Paul, recall, quotes or knows many of these strands. How or why would a set of mythical stories about a being dying and being raised as a god in heaven (or even Jerusalem) allow the import of stories about taking the roofs of huts in Galilee or rants about the lack of faith of small villages, in such a provincial setting?

There is an easy way out of this complex set of problems, which is indeed the traditional one: the reason that these traditions hanged together, and were allowed to, was because they were understood *from the start* to correspond to the same person. And while one can poke around and come up with a rationale for inventing certain aspects of the story (e.g. crucifixion etc), trying to come up with a rationale to explain the whole thing without there actually being some true tradition behind it has so far been beyond people. And I think that's rather telling.

 

[TimONeill2]

Really? Then where is the actual EVIDENCE? As long as it's just your postulating what an author really meant, it's exactly just going into your wild flights of fantasy .... So where is the EVIDENCE that some author meant exactly this or that? You can't have a sound inference that's based on nothing more than making up the premises.

Okay, then I'll ask again what I've asked here at least once before: what exactly would constitute "EVIDENCE" for you? Give me some examples of what "EVIDENCE" you would accept and find compelling, but please stick to what we could reasonably expect to have for a First Century Jewish preacher.

Even if that were true, that's a triple whammy of fallacies:

1. It's a bit of a strawman. As was pointed out repeatedly, not all mythicist positions involve belief in a mythical Jesus. So even assuming you knocked that one down, you still haven't quite eliminated enough alternative to have enough of a certitude in a historical Jesus to justify all the speculating what's wrong with those who don't believe in it.

The part of my post you're responding to here made no reference to "a mythical Jesus", so I'm not sure what this "bit of a strawman" claim is all about. I said we have consistent early traditions that all say they are based on a historical person and all depict him in the relatively recent historical setting and we have no such traditions that didn't. Whether these supposed proto-Christianity/Christianities are supposed to believe in "a mythical Jesus" or "a celestial being Jesus", or "an allegorical Messiah Jesus" or a "fictional Jesus", the fact remains that we have traditions that present a historical Jesus and no traditions that don't.

This means the idea that there was a historical Jesus has at least some prima facie support in the traditions we do have. Whereas the alternatives are based on nothing but supposition. Unless you are finally going to produce some evidence for these supposed proto-Christians who didn't believe in a historical Jesus. You keep desperately running away from the need to do that.

2. It's an argument from ignorance.

No, it's an argument from silence. Big difference.

I mean, to give you an analogy, we don't have evidence that any mormons believed that Joseph Smith's golden tables or ancient Christian tribes in America were mythical, but we can still be pretty sure that there is no evidence either existed.

Your capacity to mangle these so-called "analogies" of yours is getting astonishing. I'm noting that we know there were people who believed Jesus was historical, which at least potentially fits with the idea that he was. Whereas we have zero evidence that there were any people who believed Jesus was purely mythical/ahistorical, which is required by the idea that he wasn't historical at all and was originally based on some mythical/allegorical/fictional/ahistorical alternative. The non-historical Jesus idea is based on the existence of a group for which we have no evidence, while the historical Jesus idea is not. Now, how in the hell your confused sentence about Mormonism is "an analogy" with anything I'm saying I have no idea.

3. Unsupported BELIEF does not equal evidence. The fact that people X and Y BELIEVED that Z existed or was talking about a historical Jesus, but there is no evidence of it being based on anything more than just faith, is no evidence that Z did either.

This is getting painful. Once again - the idea that there was no historical Jesus is always based on some hypothetical proto-Christian group that originally believed in a mythical/allegorical/fictional/ahistorical Jesus. Except we have no evidence of any such group - it's a pure supposition conjured out a need to find some way to explain where this idea of this Jesus came from. The idea that there was a historical Jesus, on the other hand, is based on early Christians telling stories about a person who they say lived a generation or so earlier. And we have plenty of evidence that these groups existed, as their texts make up all of our source material.

So Bertrand Russell's formulation of the Principle of Parsimony comes into play again. The hypothetical proto-Christianity your thesis requires is "an inference to an unknown entity", since it is pure supposition. A thesis based on an inference to an unknown entity is always going to be less likely than one that is not.

What we see in early Christians is that they don't know exactly when Jesus lived, when he died, exactly what did he do, how old was he, etc. In fact we see them having to make up all those based on hare-brained numerology and OT considerations. They don't KNOW a Jesus.

So whether they BELIEVED a Jesus existed, is fully irrelevant. Unsupported personal beliefs are not evidence.

Leaving aside the fact that they are actually quite consistent about when he lived etc, this is irrelevant. The fact remains that your thesis requires a proto-Christianity which is a pure supposition. Unless you can finally produce some evidence that indicates this proto-Christianity existed, a thesis based wholly on a supposition is always going to be more unlikely.

Again, BELIEF isn't evidence.

At one point the majority of people believed that the world was flat (try before the 6'th century BCE or so, for example), and nobody doubted that. It doesn't make it real.

What has that got to do with the part of my post that you quoted? I'm noting that if there was this (supposed) proto-Christianity that your position requires, it makes no sense that there would be zero trace of it. Your response was off on some weird tangent that didn't connect with what I was arguing in any way at all. Are you even reading my posts?

Come back when you learn some elementary logic, really.

You also seem to pepper your replies with lines like that, almost at random.

But again, none of those actually had any information about the existence of a Jesus. None of them writes "oh, yeah, my brother Galio presided the trial of this guy, and it turns out that it connects to the empty tomb of a crucified messiah." They're just writing what the Christians believe, and nobody doubts that there were Christians in their time.

Pliny probably was writing what the Christians he spoke to believed. Tacitus, however, made an explicit point of rejecting hearsay or at least of noting it as such when he used it:

My object in mentioning and refuting this story is, by a conspicuous example, to put down hearsay, and to request that all those into whose hands my work shall come not to catch eagerly at wild and improbable rumours in preference to genuine history.
(Tacitus, Annals, IV.11)

He also despised Christianity, calling it "a most mischievous superstition .... evil .... hideous and shameful .... (with a) hatred against mankind" - not exactly the words of a man who regarded its followers as reliable sources about their sect's founder. And what he says about Jesus does not show any sign of having its origin in what a Christian would say: it has no hint or mention of Jesus' teaching, his miracles and nothing about the claim he rose from the dead. On the other hand, it does contain elements that would have been of note to a Roman or other non-Christian: that this founder was executed, where this happened, when it occurred {"during the reign of Tiberius") and which Roman governor carried out the penalty.

Right. Except for the fact that it's probably an interpolation,

"Probably"? Wow - do I detect the hint of an actual argument based on analysis of the evidence lurking in that terse little assertion? Okay - let's see you make the case for it being "probably an interpolation". That would make a nice change from your usual rhetorical prancing about.

and it reads more naturally as being about the brother of the other Jesus mentioned in the same paragraph

Again, is there an actual argument in there? Okay, can you find me anywhere else in all of Josephus' corpus where he refers to someone with one appellation in one sentence (eg "Jesus called Messiah") and then turns around and calls him by another one just a few sentences later (eg "Jesus son of Damneus"). Because I've combed his works and found no such examples anywhere. Quite the opposite, in fact - he uses different appellations to differentiate between different people with the same name. But if you are finally going to present some detailed argument based on careful use of the source material that would make a nice change.

It would certainly be a relief from your random little squibs about logic and your cross-eyed attempts at "analogies".

 

[grahbudd]

Bring on the evidence, I'd say. Looking at the synoptic gospels, I don't think that evidence is very good.

The oldest one is Mark, and it's dated shortly after 70AD. It mentions only two historical figures of note of the time: John the Baptist and Pontius Pilate. It makes a mess of the geography, and its depiction of life in 1st Century Judea is as accurate as "Borat" is of 21st Century Kazakhstan.

Matthew and Luke both have Mark as basis. They correct the egregious errors, and both tack on a - different - nativity story which are roughly in the right time frame to have Jesus crucified under Pilate.

I don't see how this couldn't have simply been invented by Mark. He wanted to give this spiritual Jesus we have from Paul's letters flesh and blood, and did some Dan Brown-level research (i.e., virtually none) to give a backdrop to the story. Pontius Pilate was a known name because he had antagonized the Jews with several insensitivities, leading to riots. John was one of the many preachers in Judea, maybe associated with early roots of the Jesus cult.

Please correct me where I'm wrong, but I don't see it far-fetched that Mark just made up all that stuff.

In what sense is Mark's depiction of life in Judea as accurate as "Borat" is of 21st Century Kazakhstan?

It's true that there are some dubious comments about geography in their, but again that's true of most or all ancient historians and writers, who were notoriously vague about such things (who can blame them, not having any maps etc to hand!) - numbers are also challenging, even for people like Josephus and Tacitus. Furthermore, and inevitably, some of the alleged geographical failings are open to interpretation (i.e. not cut-and-dried mistakes).

As Mark's reliance or elaboration of Paul: it is not totally impossible that Mark knew some of Paul's letters of course, although it is hard to find clear cases of literary dependence. However, that does not probe deeply enough into the issue.

As I posted before, there are early elements of the Jesus material, in particular centered around Galilee, that do not at all square with the whole story originating with a cosmic mythical Jesus elaborated by Mark. Furthermore, the very subtle relationships between the material in Paul and the synoptics rules out all this material being based on paul's fantasies. Paul can be seen to be drawing on a body of material that is organized into chunks; and we can see the same distribution of material in the gospels. Paul's references to Jesus and his life are concentrated into a few passages in 1 Corinthians, Romans and 1 Thessalonians, and the material to which he refers is similarly concentrated into chunks in the gospels (e.g. the Sermon on the Mount/Plain). All this makes it look as if Paul is drawing on previously -existing collections of material that were eventually also organized by the evangelists to form parts of the gospels.

Another tremendous difficulty for the idea that Mark simply made up a romance based on Paul's snippets is provided by the complex ordering between Mark and e.g. Matthew. For example, in Mark is the "Day in Capernaum" (Mark 1:21-). Jesus turns up, and preaches in the synagogue, and heals people etc. This is a clearly artificial composition, in the sense that it consists of an alternating series of summaries and specific events. Mark has made this in order to balance the similar trip to Nazareth later on, which has been made to have striking parallels with this trip.

However, in Matthew, this artificial construction does not exist. Rather, the summaries are still there, but more spread out, and involve the sermon on the mount. What this looks like (Im sorry its hard to lay it out in detail without spending pages and pages doing so) is that rather than Mark being copied by Matthew, they are both drawing on an earlier tradition that they edit - indeed, Matthew preserves a more primitive version than Mark does.

In other words, although Mark as a gospel is earlier than Matthew, it does not follow - and sometimes the converse can be shown - that some of the ways that Matthew transmits his material - is not how Mark does.

What all this means is that one can see Mark using sources as much as the other gospels do. The difficulty with mark is that none of his sources are preserved, whereas Mark, a source for Matthew and Luke, is. But what this allows is a rebuttal of the idea that Mark simply made up the stories and Matthew and Luke copied them with elaboration or correction.

These ideas were elaborated by the French worker Gaboury, and more recently by Huldtgren if anyone is interested!

 

[grahbudd]

Bring on the evidence, I'd say. Looking at the synoptic gospels, I don't think that evidence is very good.

The oldest one is Mark, and it's dated shortly after 70AD. It mentions only two historical figures of note of the time: John the Baptist and Pontius Pilate. It makes a mess of the geography, and its depiction of life in 1st Century Judea is as accurate as "Borat" is of 21st Century Kazakhstan.

Matthew and Luke both have Mark as basis. They correct the egregious errors, and both tack on a - different - nativity story which are roughly in the right time frame to have Jesus crucified under Pilate.

I don't see how this couldn't have simply been invented by Mark. He wanted to give this spiritual Jesus we have from Paul's letters flesh and blood, and did some Dan Brown-level research (i.e., virtually none) to give a backdrop to the story. Pontius Pilate was a known name because he had antagonized the Jews with several insensitivities, leading to riots. John was one of the many preachers in Judea, maybe associated with early roots of the Jesus cult.

Please correct me where I'm wrong, but I don't see it far-fetched that Mark just made up all that stuff.

Another very important against this is provided by the Mark-Q overlaps, a good example of which is the temptation. Mark's one is succinct and refers back to the Psalms; those of Matthew and Luke are longer and point forward to the crucifixion. As the temptation of Matthew and Luke is so different from that of Mark, it counts as part of Q - the double tradition shared only by Matthew and Luke. Now there are several aspects to the Q Temptation that suggests it is not dependent on Mark (that is part of a general point - Q does not seem to know Mark). For example, the devil is "satanas" in Mark, but "diabolos" in Matthew and Luke. These sorts of agreements suggest that the temptation story was not a complete invention of Mark, but rather was part of a broader tradition that Luke and Matthew, via Q, also preserve.

If there is any knowledge of each other between Mark and Q, it seems to be that Mark knew Q (or at least parts of it), not the other way round (again, apologies for not delving into this horrific topic at length). And so it follows that there were stories around about Jesus before Mark wrote, that sometimes Mark abbreviated.

 

[HansMustermann]

Most of these discussions seem to revolve around this sort of issue.

I can't see why one cannot accept the idea of a hypothesis being both reasonable and yet conditional. Given the information we have at present, and our understanding of it, then the best explanation of it is...X, Y or Z. If more information comes along, or our understanding changes, then that explanation might change too.

But that's basically just my problem. If it's just a plausible conjecture and it's conditional on a whole lot of assumptions, then there is nothing unreasonable in just not believing it. It being a plausible explanation is far from being the level of proof at which one can write a whole paragraph about what's wrong with those who don't believe it.

And frankly, that's the way it works for just about anyone but Jesus.

E.g., if I were to come and say that I don't believe there is a historical Sun Tzu, as in, the leader of the Wu armies against the Chu in a very specific campaign, (though SOMEONE still had to write the book, of course)... well, probably nobody would even give a damn, and some might even agree. It might get into some discussions as historical necessity -- e.g., as I've said SOMEONE had to write the book, and he obviously knew strategy, so we still have SOMEONE there we might as well call Sun Tzu -- but I bet nobody would get into what's wrong with those who don't believe in a historical Sun Tzu and how "glib" it is to say the same objections to his story.

E.g., if I were to come and say that I don't believe that a historical warrior-queen Tomyris actually existed or had anything to do with Cyrus's death... again, probably nobody would give a damn. I mean, yes, there is at least a possibility that Herodotus made it up, and more importantly: who cares? It's not like anyone would

Etc.

Only for Jesus we have the contradicting whammy of basically at the same time

A) admitting that history doesn't work that way, and a high level of certitude isn't even posible, yet

B) nevertheless putting up an act that isn't in any way justified for something that doesn't actually have a high degree of certitude. Be it statements like "no serious historian doubts X" or outright insulting acts of speculating what's wrong with those who don't buy that.

We CAN call for example holocaust-deniers CT-ers, because there is a lot of good information on the holocaust, and really it's supported beyond any reasonable doubt. That's why we can take any doubts as unreasonable.

But when something is a conjecture depending on several IFs and personal considerations about plausibility, then there isn't anything unreasonable in not buying it. As long as it hasn't been actually proven beyond reasonable doubt, there is pretty much by definition room for reasonable doubt.

One can't launch into speculations about what emotional stuff or intellect failures make one doubt HJ, unless it is actually proven to such a high degree that indeed there is no reasonable possibility left that would lack a HJ.

THAT is my problem with the HJ crowd.

But, yes, if someone said it's just a conditional best guess, and didn't then escalate it one way or another into an implication that nevertheless there's something wrong with anyone who doesn't believe that guess, sure, I can live that.

 

[HansMustermann]

Okay, then I'll ask again what I've asked here at least once before: what exactly would constitute "EVIDENCE" for you? Give me some examples of what "EVIDENCE" you would accept and find compelling, but please stick to what we could reasonably expect to have for a First Century Jewish preacher.

Well, see, that's the problem that these threads run into. There is no requirement in logic that evidence has to be what you can actually provide. The requirement is to support the conclusion sufficiently. I.e., basically it's evidence in logic if you can make a SOUND inference from it to the conclusion. Not being able to provide the right evidence doesn't mean you get to define something else as enough. It just means you have an unsupported conclusion.

E.g., if I propose that I have an invisible cat, but can't provide more evidence than finding a dead rat on my doorstop, then the conclusion is unsupported. There is no obligation for anyone to lower the standards to match what I can actually provide for an invisible cat

It doesn't even have to be formal logic. We can go by Bayesian probabilities, or even simple induction, and they have their caveats -- especially induction, especially anything longer than very short induction chains -- but still, it's enough evidence when it moved a probability as high as whatever standard of proof you're going for. Again, not being able to get enough isn't meaning one can just go for fallacies and personal considerations instead. It just means that the conclusion remains unsupported.

So that said, let's put it this way, and we can probably skip the rest of going around in circles. The kind of evidence you need is

- pretty damn high if you're going to then speculate about what's wrong with those who don't believe it. You need a very high degree of certitude about anything, if you want it to be unreasonable to disbelieve or require extra proof to disbelieve.

- a lot less, if you just want to leave it at the level of it being just a plausible guess, conditional of basically a lot of assumptions -- i.e., just the kind of thing that's probably the best guess you can make from the existing documents, if you just have to write something in a history book, rather than leave it blank.

And various shades in between, depending on what degree of proof you want to go for.

But basically please do realize that if you want to present the disbelief as an irrational, unreasonable, emotional act, or ask for proof for any alternative to your conclusion, it's the former that you need. For disbelief to be unreasonable, your version has to be indeed proven beyond reasonable doubt.

But if you just want to tell me that your best informed guess -- duly noted, based on reading the documents and textual analysis and all -- is that a historical Jesus is basically a plausible explanation, well, then you don't need anything else than whetever you can get to base that guess on, really.

But I already know that a historical Jesus is a plausible enough explanation, and, really, almost everyone does. It's not really necessary to do that here.

 

[grahbudd]

I think the trouble is, as you point out, that more seems to be riding on the question than merely a point of history. But this cuts both ways, sure. Of course Christians (like myself) would be put in an awkward position if, say, Paul turned out to be epistolatory fiction (of which ancient examples are known) and the gospels were late second century. But that fact alone does not in itself make it more or less likely that either of these propositions are true. Conversely, some people, seeing the problems for Christianity that a lack of a historical Jesus would make, seem determined to defend that possibility even when the evidence they adduce to question that doesn't always stack up. As it turns out, there is a prima facie case for thinking a real Jesus existed, if only because we have clear evidence that people within the same generation of the setting of the preserved stories thought he existed - and critical textual analysis (of the sort that many conservative Christians would utterly reject) supports this view. In other words, I think that Timoneill2's point is that given this background one needs positive evidence to support this overturning of the general view - and that this evidence is built on a stack of either ad hoc or indeed incorrect assumptions (eg the canard that Paul knows nothing of a historical Jesus). If all the reasons for rejecting a historical Jesus seem to be built on sand, then surely critical thinkers should reject them. For example, we can see that the idea of a cosmic messiah who never lived on earth has no basis in Jewish tradition; we can see that Mark didn't just make up all of his stories but rather drew on pre-existing tradition, etc. in other words, the general ideas circulating on the Internet on which the lack of a historical Jesus are founded don't seem to stand up, not matter how vociferously they have been defended. so purely from a historical standpoint, the prima facie case seems to stand up.

Of course, one might want to come with the rejoinder that the historical existence of some figures believed to have existed (eg Arthur, robin hood, Ulysses etc) is highly doubtful. But then one can compare those cases with that of Jesus and see that in reality they share very little in common. For example, they can be seen to be late in the telling, to grow over time, etc etc. stories about Jesus, conversely, can be seen to have emerged early and in various independent lines, and that the basic plot line is already present in all of them. If you trace robin hood stories back in time, they progressively shed their familiar features, change century of setting, etc. if a real robin hood existed, that figure or figures bears no resemblance to how the story eventually came to be told. Of course there are miraculous elements in the Jesus stories that many modern critical thinkers reject (just as there are about many figures of antiquity like the Roman emperors) but that need not disturb the basic elements of the historical Jesus - a Galilean figure who had a healing and preaching ministry and who eventually came to be executed under Pontius Pilate.

 

[grahbudd]

On the above: well, if there was a corpus of evidence that threw doubt on the historical Jesus that made his non-existence plausible as well, matters would be different. For example, it might have been the case that the gospels could plausibly be seen as very late, that there was a general Jewish belief in a divine nonearthly messiah, or that Paul really didn't seem to know any of the sayings or stories reflected in the gospels. But none of these seem to be the case. What I think I annoying timoneill2 is that on the Internet people often aggressively push the conclusion whilst apparently ignoring the rather strong evidence against these suppositions.