What counts as a historical Jesus?

[TimONeill2]

Considering that it's been already explained three times, and once even in direct answer to you, I'm not entirely sure what YOUR point is. That you can have an answer to an objection, while ignoring what the objection actually was? Or what? How does that even work?

Well, perhaps you'll need to explain this objection to me again, because I can't see the "problem".

Now if you have a solution to the time warps problem that harmonizing the gospels with Paul produce (and here's even an easy one: the gospels are making incompatible stuff up), I'm all ears. But just declaring that the point hasn't been made is kinda silly.

What "time warps"?

Galatians 1:22-24:

22. was personally unknown by face to the churches of Judea that are in Christ.

23. They only heard the report: “The man who formerly persecuted us is now preaching the faith he once tried to destroy.”

24. And they praised God because of me.​

I've been told that Paul supposedly says he persecuted the Jesus sect "for years". This is the only passage in Paul's letters where he talks directly about his persecution and anyone can see he says nothing about its duration and definitely says nothing about "years". You seem to be falling back on some subjective stuff about "some time". Okay - and what does that mean? Weeks? Months maybe. Big deal.

More than one church in Judaea would have heard of Paul's persecutions to actually thank the Lord when he converted. In fact even after he's been away for at least 3 years, he's still remembered enough for that. That doesn't happen overnight.

So how long does it take to happen? Not years. So the "time warp" would be ... ?

Not that the exactity of the time interval matters all that much, because you'll notice -- or you would if you've read what was already said -- that I didn't need more than a couple of MONTHS between Jesus's death and Paul's conversion to end up with a time-warp at one end or the other.

Pardon? If Jesus didn't begin his preaching until after John's arrest then this means his career (of unknown duration) could have begun sometime before 34 AD. And if his execution came after John's and during the prefecture of Pilate, then it happened sometime between 34 and 36 AD. Paul dates his conversion in a way that makes 37 AD its terminus a quo, which means Paul converted a few years or even a year after Jesus was executed. Which fits everything he says.

Where is this supposed "time warp"? If we had Paul converting in, say, 33 AD there'd be a problem. But the sequence (as far as we can date it at all) goes "JtB executed in 34 AD -> Jesus executed 34-36 AD -> Paul converts 37 AD or slightly later. No problem there.

That or, I guess, having to admit that some gospel writers -- at the very least Luke who's taken to be the author of Acts too -- were making stuff up even about mundane stuff. Luke for example has no problem making up stuff about Paul's preaching in Corinth, or his appearance before Gallio, etc, none of which are particularly miraculous. And thus are not reliable sources.

There is plenty in Acts to make us suspect the author made up quite a bit. And sanitised other bits considerably - eg Paul's dispute with Peter and the Jerusalem elders over Jewish dietary laws and circumcision, which Acts depicts as a chummy consensus and Paul describes as a bitter argument. The fact that Acts is, like any work of ancient polemic, a work that can't be taken at naive face value would be a problem to no-one except a fundamentalist Christian. I don't see any of them in this discussion.

Considering that so far you've just ignored the actual argument, how would you know if it's just in my imagination or not?

This "argument" is clearly more obvious to you than it is to me. I can see no "time warp" at all. The best you can come up with is the stuff about Gallio, which is in Acts, not Paul's own writings. So you're making a song and dance about Acts not being accurate? And this is supposed to be a problem because ... ?

If you had a chronological "time warp" purely based on what Paul says, that might be significant. A work of polemic written several decades after he died that we know is varnishing and embellishing things saying stuff that doesn't square with Paul's comments about himself is pretty yawn-inducing to me. Go find a fundie - it will probably bother them no end.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

Well, perhaps you'll need to explain this objection to me again, because I can't see the "problem".

What "time warps"?

It's explained in detail in message #393. I see no point in typing it all again.

I've been told that Paul supposedly says he persecuted the Jesus sect "for years". This is the only passage in Paul's letters where he talks directly about his persecution and anyone can see he says nothing about its duration and definitely says nothing about "years". You seem to be falling back on some subjective stuff about "some time". Okay - and what does that mean? Weeks? Months maybe. Big deal.

Well, it wasn't me that said years, so I'm not falling back on anything. I already went by a few months there for Paul, it still produces the same problem with harmonizing it with both the gospels and Luke, as the author of Acts.

So how long does it take to happen? Not years. So the "time warp" would be ... ?

Pardon? If Jesus didn't begin his preaching until after John's arrest then this means his career (of unknown duration) could have begun sometime before 34 AD.

The reason given by the Mark (and copied by Matthew) for JTB's pissing off Herodias and getting arrested wouldn't exist before 34 AD. JTB couldn't preach against the king's marrying his brother's widow, until, you know, Herodias actually gets to be a widow. Anyway, if JTB was in prison before the Herod Antipas's marriage to Herodias, then at the very least Mark and Matthew are wrong about the non-miraculous reason for JTB's arrest. (And the conflict with what Josephus has to say about the actual reason, also doesn't help.)

And if his execution came after John's and during the prefecture of Pilate, then it happened sometime between 34 and 36 AD. Paul dates his conversion in a way that makes 37 AD its terminus a quo, which means Paul converted a few years or even a year after Jesus was executed. Which fits everything he says.

Where is this supposed "time warp"? If we had Paul converting in, say, 33 AD there'd be a problem. But the sequence (as far as we can date it at all) goes "JtB executed in 34 AD -> Jesus executed 34-36 AD -> Paul converts 37 AD or slightly later. No problem there.

Paul can't convert much later than 37 AD, because to flee Damascus under king Aretas, it has to happen while Aretas is still alive. Aretas dies in 40 AD, so basically 37 AD is the absolute upper end for Paul's entering Damascus, since he says he stayed there for 3 years. Of course, there's the issue that he says he first preached in Arabia, and THEN went to Damascus, but he doesn't say how long he stayed in Arabia, so let's say he made a just a quick run and it still fits a conversion in 37 AD.

Of course, it's no problem per se. The chief problem there is just reconciling it with Luke, as the author of Acts, which creates a time-warp for Paul's appearance before Gallio.

There is plenty in Acts to make us suspect the author made up quite a bit. And sanitised other bits considerably - eg Paul's dispute with Peter and the Jerusalem elders over Jewish dietary laws and circumcision, which Acts depicts as a chummy consensus and Paul describes as a bitter argument. The fact that Acts is, like any work of ancient polemic, a work that can't be taken at naive face value would be a problem to no-one except a fundamentalist Christian. I don't see any of them in this discussion.

Well, more than fundies use Acts for dating Paul's journeys. Otherwise it's kinda hard to put a year on most of his epistles.

But the main problem is just that: now you agree that an ancient work like Acts can be basically not telling the truth even about mundane things. Even though IIRC there are no ancient sources that say those events happened otherwise.

In fact, you seem to do the same kind of judgment I'm doing about the gospels: it has a bias + written late + it tells a lot of BS => it's not to be taken "at a naive face value."

It doesn't help that Acts is generally considered to be written by gLuke, and the start of it seems to claim that. So now we have a gospel author that's making stuff up and sanitizing events.

It's not exactly raising my confidence in his gospel, either, basically.

 

[Belz...]

What "time warps"?

You have got to be kidding.

 

[maximara]

Here's one: historians back then sucked.

To be fair history as we know it simply did not exist in the ancient Western world. In fact, the type of critical analysis needed has not been done because the field that does it, historical anthropology (aka Ethnoarchaeology), is so new (about 40 years old.)

Historical anthropology, unlike general history, tries to create a social profile so that correlations between behavior and material culture can occur. But to create such a profile another field, anthropological history, need to be brought into play.

To use a modern example you would know the quality of university papers regarding the German people and Jews coming out of Germany from 1934-1945 would be highly suspect because the government was pushing a certain view.

Much the same skeptical view would be applied to US university papers regarding Communism from the 1950s.

The Myth of the Spanish Inquisition (1994) used anthropological history and historical anthropology to find out what the Spanish Inquisition was really like and more importantly how the mythical version we known came into being.

Kalb, Don Hans Marks, Herman Tak (1996) "Historical Anthropology and anthropological history: two distinct programs" Focaal 26/27, 1996 pg 5-13 gives a short over view regarding these two fields and their issues with their related disciplines... and each other.


To date the only person doing anything even remotely like historical anthropology is Richard Carrier in papers like "Kooks and Quacks of the Roman Empire: A Look into the World of the Gospels" (1997).

"As Thomas Jefferson believed when he composed his own version of the gospels, Jesus may have been an entirely different person than the Gospels tell us, since the supernatural and other facts about him, even some of his parables or moral sayings, could easily have been added or exaggerated by unreliable witnesses or storytellers."

Sure by the standards set by Lewis Binford and Robert Dunnell some 40 years ago Kooks is very primitive but it is better then what we are getting from anybody else which is a big fat zero. So far what nearly everybody else has been doing is this Back to the Future-HG Wells nonsense where 1st-4th century Romans are given the same critical skills as a scholar in 20th century United States. The reality is they didn't and the culture of what was viewed as "fact" was very different.

 

[llwyd]

What seems even stranger to me is that invariably when such an argument is made, it doesn't come from someone with a Ph.D. in history. Almost invariably it's some guy telling you that

A) you should listen to the guys with a Ph.D. because you're unworthy of even trying to understand it, yet

B) that he as a random Joe can -- explicitly or often just implicitly -- decide which of the guys with Ph.D. degrees in ancient history are wrong, or even "cranks".

Well, Hans, you certainly have something there - I am in quandary, I have a dilemma: I don't know Arameac, my classical and modern Greek does not exist, in Latin I can manage the sentence "in Roma ruinae sunt", I cannot inteprete ancient texts. So what can I say about historical Jesus (or about collapsing buildings not being an expert in physics or engineering either). Nothing, zilch.

However, I'm reasonably well read, reasonably well educated: I can at least tell what is the consensus view of the real experts. And in this case it is that there was an actual historical figure (probably not resembling the person in gospels much at all). This view is based on the complex methodology that has been developed in the studies of ancient texts and the broad understanding that the discipline has formed about the era. That is the consensus view, and yes there are a couple of persons, not well respected, that disagree. Maybe they will turn out to be the Einteins of the study of Roman Palestine, most probably not, but if the consensus changes, then I will change my position. That is exactly my position in the 911 debate also: I go with the scientific consensus. It's the only rational position for a lay person.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

Right, and I'm essentially going with some guys with Ph.D. degrees in ancient history, as opposed to the guys from the bible studies department. Because far from being some consensus of the whole discipline, most historians actually aren't touching Jesus with a ten foot pole. (Some archaeologists are trying hard to prove stuff like that Nazareth existed and apparently looked exactly like a modern tourist trap, but even those tend to stop short of actually saying, "we found evidence that Jesus existed.") It's mostly the guys who've been reading the bible forwards and back that are trying to tell us that Jesus existed because they can cherry-pick one from that text. Which is a bit on par with someone who's studied all Spiderman comics and games and cameo appearances telling you that Spiderman existed because the comics say so.

At any rate, it seems to me strange to hear an argument based on literally not being able to judge the evidence yourself. It seems to me like then all you can do is at best an inductive reasoning for who YOU decide to trust. And as I keep saying, it's even rational to do that... for yourself. But it doesn't justify lamenting that some people do make the effort to look at the evidence.

Especially since you compare it to science, science is the application of the scientific method, not just having some text given you as The Truth. Looking at the data and trying to find something wrong with a theory is actually a requirement of the scientific method, rather than what some rebellious cranks do.

Of course, they still need to make logical and mathematical sense, but even to tell that you do need to look at the evidence and arguments. An argument boiling down to, 'I don't understand any of that, but let me tell you that you're wrong' is nonsense. ESPECIALLY for science.

So, no offense, even for the 9/11 debate it sounds to me like you shouldn't be in it, if all you can contribute is an uninformed opinion of which gang someone should trust. Now there are good reasons why the Truthers are full of it, and good reasons to tell them that, but, you know, even that should be based on knowing what one is talking about. Even if it's just 'but that's a textbook fallacy' or 'probabilities don't work that way.' Still, before proclaiming a reasoning bogus, one needs to know why it's bogus. Just 'I trust the other guys' is not it. Not any more than it is when theists pull a 'but I have faith in God' as an argument.

It's not even particularly productive. That everyone else is just following the official version, without even looking at the evidence, is actually the strawman that CT-ers build of the opposing position. Being the living illustration of that ain't even helping bring down the CT. (Mind you, it's still essentially a strawman, because even if SOME people do that, the idea that EVERYONE who isn't a Truther is just saying 'listen to the official version' is still false.)

 

[davefoc]

Well, Hans, you certainly have something there - I am in quandary, I have a dilemma: I don't know Arameac, my classical and modern Greek does not exist, in Latin I can manage the sentence "in Roma ruinae sunt", I cannot inteprete ancient texts. So what can I say about historical Jesus (or about collapsing buildings not being an expert in physics or engineering either). Nothing, zilch.

However, I'm reasonably well read, reasonably well educated: I can at least tell what is the consensus view of the real experts. And in this case it is that there was an actual historical figure (probably not resembling the person in gospels much at all). This view is based on the complex methodology that has been developed in the studies of ancient texts and the broad understanding that the discipline has formed about the era. That is the consensus view, and yes there are a couple of persons, not well respected, that disagree. Maybe they will turn out to be the Einteins of the study of Roman Palestine, most probably not, but if the consensus changes, then I will change my position. That is exactly my position in the 911 debate also: I go with the scientific consensus. It's the only rational position for a lay person.

I agree that real experts are usually the way to go on any kind of quest for truth. You probably need to throw in a bit of due diligence for which you attempt to examine the evidence and do a bit of analysis, but if your results don't closely match the expert consensus you probably need to rethink your analysis, it's probably not the experts that are wrong.

HM's point and I completely agree with him on this, is that on the specific issue of early Christian history the apparent expert consensus might be wrong because the hard facts are limited about early Christian history and per force the experts are required to make subjective judgments in an area where it is almost impossible to eliminate the effect of bias on one's judgment. If you think that is impossible that the experts are wrong about the nature of an HJ there isn't much point in even reading through this thread. Pick some experts that seem like they know what they're talking about to you, assume they're right and move-on. You've found your truth.

There is also the issue of which expert opinion to believe. There is a huge number of experts that you might pick from to use as the basis of your personal beliefs on this. Some of them have fairly radical ideas about the nature of a hypothetical HJ. Are these experts automatically wrong in your mind because you believe you know what the expert consensus is on the question of an HJ and any expert who has views that don't fit within what you have decided is the expert consensus are automatically wrong?

In the issue under discussion right now, the date of the death of John the Baptist and the dates of the crucifixion and Paul's conversion, have you picked your expert so that you can tell us which resolution of the apparent conflict you believe?

Or more globally with regard to the issue of early Christian History how is it that a bunch of Greek speaking guys, not living in Palestine and not living at the time of the hypothetical HJ came to write something that has any truth at all about events so far displaced from themselves? Did they have direct contact with members of the Jesus/James sect from Palestine? Did they get their information from Hellenistic Jews that had formed some kind of Jesus oriented religion? How can one make a judgment about the likelihood of an HJ if good evidence doesn't exist about how the people that were the early writers of Christian stories came to have the information that they wrote down? A great deal of what they wrote is accepted to have been purpose written fiction, how does one know, even if they are an expert, where fiction ends and fact begins?

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

Aye, pretty much you've summed it up better than I could. "How does one know, even if they are an expert, where fiction ends and fact begins?" is exactly my point.

 

[llwyd]

HM's point and I completely agree with him on this, is that on the specific issue of early Christian history the apparent expert consensus might be wrong because the hard facts are limited about early Christian history and per force the experts are required to make subjective judgments in an area where it is almost impossible to eliminate the effect of bias on one's judgment. If you think that is impossible that the experts are wrong about the nature of an HJ there isn't much point in even reading through this thread. Pick some experts that seem like they know what they're talking about to you, assume they're right and move-on. You've found your truth.

Actually, this subject seems to be quite well rehearsed in the discipline and there has been established a consensus that has emerged from the textual analysis and general understanding of the era. I don't know if you should call it "the truth" like you would say in physics, it's rather like the most rational assumption based on the available empirical material that needs least unevidenced suppositions. To my mind HM treats the study of history as if it would be exactly like a natural science which is clearly very unfair and at least resembles a bad faith attitude well known from other crank pursuits in biology, geology and physics.

The only way for the consensus to change is simply to publish and be accepted by the body of the foremost experts. There is no shortcut, no easy solution, no net site or few repudiated studies by people who are not considered to be foremost experts in the study of these materials. That's what it takes. Like physics the study of history is really a complicated, painstaking endevour and amateurs should not be considered as authorities in the field. I think it really is as simple as that.

 

[Brainache]

...Paul can't convert much later than 37 AD, because to flee Damascus under king Aretas, it has to happen while Aretas is still alive. Aretas dies in 40 AD, so basically 37 AD is the absolute upper end for Paul's entering Damascus, since he says he stayed there for 3 years. Of course, there's the issue that he says he first preached in Arabia, and THEN went to Damascus, but he doesn't say how long he stayed in Arabia, so let's say he made a just a quick run and it still fits a conversion in 37 AD...

This is apparently from 2 Corinthians chapter 11:

If I must boast, I will boast of the things that show my weakness. 31The God and Father of the Lord Jesus, who is to be praised forever, knows that I am not lying. 32In Damascus the governor under King Aretas had the city of the Damascenes guarded in order to arrest me. 33But I was lowered in a basket from a window in the wall and slipped through his hands.

Why do you think Paul swears he isn't lying about his Damascene escapade? What kind of person swears they aren't lying before anyone accuses them?

I think Paul might have been telling porkies about his little adventure there...

 

[TimONeill2]

Of course, it's no problem per se. The chief problem there is just reconciling it with Luke, as the author of Acts, which creates a time-warp for Paul's appearance before Gallio.

Sorry, I thought you were trying to make a substantive point about the date of Jesus' career and execution by an argument from Paul's letters and Josephus. But it seems your whole song and dance routine has merely been about one of about a dozen well-known inconsistencies between Paul's letters and Acts - commonplace, undergraduate stuff. My mistake.

Well, more than fundies use Acts for dating Paul's journeys. Otherwise it's kinda hard to put a year on most of his epistles.

Which is why everyone other than the fundies settle for "probably sometime in the 50s".

But the main problem is just that: now you agree that an ancient work like Acts can be basically not telling the truth even about mundane things.

What do you mean "now" I agree on this? I've been telling you this is the nature of a many ancient sources that historians use all the time for pages now. Welcome to the study of ancient history - if nuance, ambiguity, subjectivity and qualitative judgements aren't your cup of tea you might not like it here and should probably go find a discussion on maths or physics or something more black and white. And simple.

In fact, you seem to do the same kind of judgment I'm doing about the gospels: it has a bias + written late + it tells a lot of BS => it's not to be taken "at a naive face value."

Yes, that's the nature of most ancient source material to some degree or another. Your point?

It doesn't help that Acts is generally considered to be written by gLuke, and the start of it seems to claim that. So now we have a gospel author that's making stuff up and sanitizing events.

We already knew that the author of gLuke-Acts did that by looking at how he used gMark when writing his gospel. The fact remains that a careful analysis of what we can glean from Paul's life from his own letters shows that this author clearly did have some understanding of the life of the man he was talking up, because there are a number of clear key correspondences. But we can also detect changes, theologically-inspired adjustments and some embroidering, including adding in characters from the period (eg our pal the brother of Seneca) who may have had nothing to do with Paul.

And this begins to give us an careful counter to your over simplistic insistence that if some of this material can be shown to be "BS" (in your deeply untechnical and misguided terminology), it all has to be rejected. Since we have Paul's letters and therefore some indication of who and what Paul was, we can see there IS a "historical Paul" underneath the hagiographical embroidery the gLuke/Acts writer has layered over the traditions about Paul he is using. Which should give the smarter kids in the room a hint about how we should be looking at the gospels and the historical Jdesus despite similar evidence of an additional couple of decades of similar hagiographical embroidery.

This is why the black and white, binary, "baby with the bathwater" approach is so numb-headed and over simplistic.

 

[Belz...]

At any rate, it seems to me strange to hear an argument based on literally not being able to judge the evidence yourself.

To be fair, evidence is sometimes very hard to interpret if you don't know much about the field in question.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

To be fair, evidence is sometimes very hard to interpret if you don't know much about the field in question.

Oh, it is.

But as I was saying, deciding for oneself "nah, I'll go with these guys because they seem to be qualified and agree with each other" is actually a very sane and rational position. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that.

It's just when one tells someone else some version of, "you can't disagree with these guys, because... err... I have no clue what they're talking about" that I start having a problem with it. It seems to me like if someone wants to actually take the mantle of arguing why some theory is correct and the guys doubting it are wrong, then they should actually do so, and an argument from authority just isn't it. What makes for example GR correct isn't that Einstein said it, or that some other guys agreed with it, but the evidence like gravity lensing and all that. If one tries to tell me that GR is correct (and, yes, for all we can measure, it is) and MOND is nuts (and yes it is), they should IMHO be able to actually say why.

But again, if they just want to say that they personally believe the more reputable source, of course they can do that. But that's, you know, binding to only oneself. One can't go into what's wrong with OTHERS discussing the evidence, unless one actually has at least some idea of what the evidence is and why it points in a certain direction.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

What do you mean "now" I agree on this? I've been telling you this is the nature of a many ancient sources that historians use all the time for pages now. Welcome to the study of ancient history - if nuance, ambiguity, subjectivity and qualitative judgements aren't your cup of tea you might not like it here and should probably go find a discussion on maths or physics or something more black and white. And simple.

But, again, you don't get to dictate what discussion should I be having.

Same as a Feng Shui proponent doesn't get to tell me that either I go by whatever method they use there, or have another talk. If my interest is if whether it can be supported to a standard that anyone else should take seriously, he doesn't get to tell me that no, I can't discuss THAT.

And basically neither do you about Jesus. If my interest is whether Jesus can be supported to a decent degree of certitude, not what is the most personally plausible of several largely-unsupported guesses, you don't get to tell me that I should be having the latter talk instead of the former.

Yes, that's the nature of most ancient source material to some degree or another. Your point?

The point is basically just that: you can't take an un-corroborated source as true until proven false.

We already knew that the author of gLuke-Acts did that by looking at how he used gMark when writing his gospel. The fact remains that a careful analysis of what we can glean from Paul's life from his own letters shows that this author clearly did have some understanding of the life of the man he was talking up, because there are a number of clear key correspondences. But we can also detect changes, theologically-inspired adjustments and some embroidering, including adding in characters from the period (eg our pal the brother of Seneca) who may have had nothing to do with Paul.

And this begins to give us an careful counter to your over simplistic insistence that if some of this material can be shown to be "BS" (in your deeply untechnical and misguided terminology), it all has to be rejected. Since we have Paul's letters and therefore some indication of who and what Paul was, we can see there IS a "historical Paul" underneath the hagiographical embroidery the gLuke/Acts writer has layered over the traditions about Paul he is using. Which should give the smarter kids in the room a hint about how we should be looking at the gospels and the historical Jdesus despite similar evidence of an additional couple of decades of similar hagiographical embroidery.

This is why the black and white, binary, "baby with the bathwater" approach is so numb-headed and over simplistic.

Except, again, nobody said that it's either all true or all false. You can drop that strawman already. Just repeating it one more time won't make it true.

The question is: how confident you can be that the stuff that's not disproven, but also not corroborated by anything else, is true?

The fact is that even ancient sources are not all born equal. Again, you can listen to Ehrman saying that too, if you don't believe me:


Why do you think he's discussing that, if that doesn't mean you can disbelieve some of them because they're inaccurate? WTH point would it even make to go into degrees of probability, and why you'd want sources more like X than like Y, if that doesn't mean you can treat sources like Y as unreliable? Why do you think it's important whether or not you have lots of evidence, if apparently you can go with just one unreliable source unless disproven? And what would be the point in calling the sources about Simon Peter's death terrible, if that didn't affect how much of a claim we can base on those sources, e.g., whether Simon Peter was actually crucified upside down? Don't you think that if something was unassailable if one source says so, and no sources contradict it, then we'd have no reason to question that Simon Peter was actually martyred? Do you think basically that he's just doing some irrelevant handwaving there, or what? I'm not proposing anything else in the end than the idea that some sources are terrible, and basically we have no reason to take them very seriously.

But, of course, that doesn't mean anyone is saying that therefore everything in source Y is false or impossible. E.g., just because we think that Count Bezukhov or Spiderman aren't real historical people, and that a novel and some comic books aren't good sources for history, doesn't mean that anyone is proposing that then everything in War And Peace or Spiderman comics is false. Even the comics refer to a real city, real newspapers from New York, etc.

The question is: how would you know, if you didn't have corroborating evidence? And does it even make sense to base anything on a text, if everything we can check or make some inferrence about is false?

Of course, that doesn't mean everything in it has to be false. It's just, at best, an unknown. And you can't base an "X, therefore Y" on an X that's unknown, and that even the simplest induction considerations say it's unlikely to be accurate information. It COULD still be incidentally true, or actually based on good information, but absent anything to support that, how would you know?

Basically think of it this way. Let's say some guy called Hans wrote you about a business opportunity in Paris. Think of the following scenarios:

A) the guy talks about a lot of stuff happening in Paris that you can verify that actually is happening. Of course, he could have just heard it on the news, but still, at the very least he's showing some skill in filtering what's true in those news.

B) everything you can verify about what he's saying is actually false. He writes for example that he met president de Gaule, and saw the pyramids of Paris, and stopped in Oslo while driving from Paris to Marseilles (he's going south, but stops in a city waay north of where he started), and stuff like that.

Wouldn't you basically think that prima-facie the guy from scenario A is more credible than the guy from scenario B? And if the guy in scenario B is lying or just awfully wrong about everything you can check, what reason would you have to trust that the business opportunity is real unless there's some other source saying it's not? Wouldn't you want some corroborating evidence before you believe anything that guy B is saying?

Of course, that's not the same as saying that everything guy B says must be false. But if he's not a good source, and any information about that business deal is not corroborated by anything, then you don't know and have no reason to assume that it's real.

 

[davefoc]

Actually, this subject seems to be quite well rehearsed in the discipline and there has been established a consensus that has emerged from the textual analysis and general understanding of the era. I don't know if you should call it "the truth" like you would say in physics, it's rather like the most rational assumption based on the available empirical material that needs least unevidenced suppositions. To my mind HM treats the study of history as if it would be exactly like a natural science which is clearly very unfair and at least resembles a bad faith attitude well known from other crank pursuits in biology, geology and physics.

The only way for the consensus to change is simply to publish and be accepted by the body of the foremost experts. There is no shortcut, no easy solution, no net site or few repudiated studies by people who are not considered to be foremost experts in the study of these materials. That's what it takes. Like physics the study of history is really a complicated, painstaking endevour and amateurs should not be considered as authorities in the field. I think it really is as simple as that.

Is there a document someplace that keeps track of what the current consensus is? Could you provide some kind of idea about how you determined what the consensus is?

My experience on this and I will admit to not having read a lot of papers on early Christian history is that many of the scholarly articles start from an assumption that an HJ existed and that truth about the HJ can be derived from the NT. FWIW, my guess is that they are right about that, but I also think that the evidence that they base the notion that an HJ character existed is particularly weak. And it is the reliability of the assumption that an HJ existed that is being discussed here.

I have no doubt that one can make some reasonable guesses about the nature of an HJ from the NT, a knowledge of first century Palestinian history, a knowledge of first century Judaism and some common sense to eliminate what is implausible. But what is the evidence that underlies the notion that the base assumption that an HJ existed is correct?

At a minimum I would like to see a documented connection between the hypothetical first century Jewish Palestinian sect that the HJ played a role in and the people that created Christianity. Not only isn't that connection documented, it could have happened several different ways or perhaps even not at all as the people that created Christianity might have just made up an HJ entirely instead of just mostly.

 

[llwyd]

Well, you don't have to go far to meet quite similar attitudes to scientific (or scholarly, in this HJ case) consensus - the 911 people have found that you don't need to be a professional physicist to pick huge holes in their arguments, some of these gifted people even have PhDs. I don't know if they have compared physics to feng shui or acupuncture, but the attitude certainly is there. I aim to be rational and objective, and as I haven't studied these ancient texts and eras, I find it reasonable to go by the consensus view of the foremost experts of them. Maybe this view will change in concequence of new interpretations of the available evidence, but these interpratation will have to be established within the discipline using its methods (and not on net sites and forums).

I'm a veteran of 911 conspiracy debates, and probably have gotten my portion of amateur cranks to last a lifetime. You want to change an expert consensus, go and be an expert yourself and prove your case on their terms. That's what it takes, life is hard and then you die.

 

[davefoc]

Well, you don't have to go far to meet quite similar attitudes to scientific (or scholarly, in this HJ case) consensus - the 911 people have found that you don't need to be a professional physicist to pick huge holes in their arguments, some of these gifted people even have PhDs. I don't know if they have compared physics to feng shui or acupuncture, but the attitude certainly is there. I aim to be rational and objective, and as I haven't studied these ancient texts and eras, I find it reasonable to go by the consensus view of the foremost experts of them. Maybe this view will change in concequence of new interpretations of the available evidence, but these interpratation will have to be established within the discipline using its methods (and not on net sites and forums).

I'm a veteran of 911 conspiracy debates, and probably have gotten my portion of amateur cranks to last a lifetime. You want to change an expert consensus, go and be an expert yourself and prove your case on their terms. That's what it takes, life is hard and then you die.

I think there is no doubt by the people that are following this thread that you believe that there is a consensus of foremost experts about the existence of an HJ.

What do you base your view about that on? Have you done a survey of the foremost experts on what their views about an HJ are? Could you provide a list of the foremost experts that you used in your survey and how you selected them? Or perhaps you could reference a survey by a foremost expert on the views of foremost experts on the existence of an HJ?

Could you describe briefly the evidence that the foremost experts base their opinion on that an HJ existed?

 

[llwyd]

Hmm, I find your request bit odd, isn't this quite common knowledge? Anyway, perhaps you will accept the lowly Wikipedia's verdict:

Virtually all modern scholars agree that Jesus existed, and see the theories of his non-existence as effectively refuted.[5][29][7][8][9] In antiquity, the existence of Jesus was never denied by those who opposed Christianity.[30] Robert E. Van Voorst states that the idea of the non-historicity of the existence of Jesus has always been controversial, and has consistently failed to convince scholars of many disciplines.[6]

Although a very small number of modern scholars argue that Jesus never existed, that view is a distinct minority and most scholars consider theories that Jesus' existence was a Christian invention as implausible.[31][2] Christopher Tuckett states that the existence of Jesus and his crucifixion by Pontius Pilate seem to be part of the bedrock of historical tradition, based on the availability of non-Christian evidence.[2] Graham Stanton states that "Today nearly all historians, whether Christians or not, accept that Jesus existed".[32]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus

If that's too unacademic I would refer you to the sources of the footnotes in the quotation, though I don't believe that this view of the present scholarly consensus is challenged by anyone, albeit some think that it is a mistaken position. All they need to do is to publish and persuade this community of experts that it's incorrect and unreasonable to hold the view that the Jesus figure is based on an actual historical person however different he might have been from the fables of the gospels.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

Well, you don't have to go far to meet quite similar attitudes to scientific (or scholarly, in this HJ case) consensus - the 911 people have found that you don't need to be a professional physicist to pick huge holes in their arguments, some of these gifted people even have PhDs.

Well, yes, but see exactly that's the test of whether you actually have anything to contribute, or you're just polluting the thread with content-free filler. If you can actually poke a hole in an argument, then you do have something to contribute, and please do. But conversely, if you can't either support or challenge any actual argument, then you don't. You can't logically base a contribution on NOT knowing anything on the topic.

I don't know if they have compared physics to feng shui or acupuncture, but the attitude certainly is there.

Well, see, it's just that kind of misunderstanding that makes me wonder WTH do you think you have to contribute. Because the point wasn't to compare physics to homeopathy or acupuncture, but that a consensus in a discipline is worth anything only if it's based on facts and solid logic or maths, not just on trusting the authorities. And in your case, how can you tell which discussion it's more like, if the only thing you base such a judgment on is just an urge to trust the authorities? To wit:

- physics has a consensus
- homeopathy has a consensus. There is not a single professor of homeopathy who disagrees that like cures like, or that higher dilutions are better.

- physics has experts and people with doctor and professor degrees
- homeopathy has experts and people with doctor and professor degrees

- physics has a methodology for coming up with new stuff
- homeopathy has a methodology for coming up with new stuff

- physics runs new ideas past other physicists (i.e., peer review) and has journals for that kind of thing
- so does homeopathy

- physics has some people doubting the experts
- so does homeopathy

Etc.

Yet one of them is a lot more reasonable to doubt than the other.

If your criterion is basically just, 'OMG, someone is doubting the authorities', how can you tell if a discussion is more like criticizing physics, or more like criticizing homeopathy? A criterion which fits such a broad domain, is essentially useless.

Plus, frankly, as someone who actually had an interest in physics and hung around with physicists, I can tell you that an attitude like 'OMG, I don't understand it, but don't doubt the authorities' would come across as counter-productive in physics too. The very foundation of any science is precisely trying to falsify any theory, not just to have some undying devotion to the current model. And whether one alternative is right or wrong, won't be decided by the number of uninformed fans proclaiming their allegiance to one side or the other, but by actual arguments addressing the actual objection. Even if you save someone the bother of countering a crank argument yourself, trust me, they'd rather you actually did it right, rather than just offering yourself as a living example of the CT'er strawman that everyone following the establishment just because it's the establishment. If you don't know why one side is wrong, and aren't qualified to tell if an objection is crank (e.g., Electric Universe) or it's actually a valid debate (e.g., Copenhagen interpretation vs many-worlds interpretation in QM), then I dare say even in a physics thread you wouldn't pass for the cool guy doing critical thinking, but for the guy who shouldn't even be in that talk in the first place.

I aim to be rational and objective, and as I haven't studied these ancient texts and eras, I find it reasonable to go by the consensus view of the foremost experts of them. Maybe this view will change in concequence of new interpretations of the available evidence, but these interpratation will have to be established within the discipline using its methods (and not on net sites and forums).

I'm a veteran of 911 conspiracy debates, and probably have gotten my portion of amateur cranks to last a lifetime. You want to change an expert consensus, go and be an expert yourself and prove your case on their terms. That's what it takes, life is hard and then you die.

Except for the fact that there is nothing rational in trying to support or dismiss an argument, by such a flawed argument from analogy about who is doing it. It's a double whammy of an argument from an analogy too broad to actually say anything (again, the same applies to both reasonable and unreasonable objection), which drives an ad-hominem circumstantial fallacy.

Plus, again, the idea that you have to accept any discipline's terms, and play by them, just because it has them, is really silly and counter-productive. Then you also couldn't disagree with Catholic theology without becoming a priest and running your ideas past a council of cardinals, or you couldn't disagree with homeopathy without first getting a Ph.D. in it yourself. But that's not how it works. What makes for example the method used by Physics -- really, just the scientific method -- be hard to attack is that it produces sound, testable results and is the only proven method that does it, not just that it has one. Before someone can claim equal rights for another discipline's method, one would first have to show that it is equally sound and proven.

Plus, honestly, it doesn't help that the most willing to jump in a HJ conversation and lecture about the methods of history and why someone is failing them, seem to be the most comically mis-informed about what methods history currently uses. E.g., the idea that's been flung around even in this thread that you basically have to go with what a dubious document says, unless you have another that says otherwise, it at most true for the 18'th-19'th century, not for how it's done today. In fact historians routinely doubt bad sources nowadays, and question whether some character existed or some event actually happened. We don't have documents from that time that say Wenamun or Timaeus didn't exist, but actually their existence is questioned because they only appear in one unreliable document and there is no corroboration or historical necessity for them to exist.

If there's anyone actually having a distorted view of history and comparing it to something illogical and nonsensical, it's those who present such illogical views of how history works or what it does.

So, you know, actually I very much agree with what historians (normally) do. It's just that you're not informed enough to be able to tell.

 

[llwyd]

You are not comparing physics to homeopathy. But history. Now it might be that you have a degree in history, and you might be able to read these texts in the original. If so, you are in the wrong place. Go and publish. If not, then your views really have no authority. Unless the study of history is like homeopathy.