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With facts, evidence, study, repetitive experiment et cetera.
Something rather lacking in the study of Jesus.
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What counts as a historical Jesus?
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Something rather lacking in the study of Jesus.
TimONeill2
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Edited by kmortis:
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I've tried to explain to you that it is about supportable, as exact and as subjective as a huge number of similar issues in ancient and medieval history, due to the nature of our sources (fragmentary, patchy, non-contemporary, second-hand, polemical and biased, riddled with supernaturalism etc). You keep carrying on as though this is somehow unique to the question of the historicity of Jesus; an attitude any historian of the ancient world would find amusingly naive.
You can be "interested" in it if you like. But if your sole contribution is to stand on the sidelines flapping your arms and squawking endlessly about how you aren't convinced by the level of assurance we can get in such commonplace questions about ancient history, you aren't contributing anything much.
Yes, I had noticed that your posts, wordy as they are, are pretty much like a one note orchestra.
I can't see where I said you did. All I have said is that scholars who seem more familiar with these things that you are don't have your problem with the ambiguity of the process or the nature of the evidence and so, unlike you, are happy to make a judgement of likelihood on this as they do with all kinds of other such questions in ancient history.
You, on the other hand, can be as unconvinced as you like. Enjoy. Why you need to keep endlessly and tediously repeating how unconvinced you are is the mystery here.
Yes, if you'd noticed, I've noted that myself. Some things in ancient history are fairly certain, though they tend to involve people much more prominent than obscure Galilean peasant preacher-prophets.
Since that seems to be what got your knickers in their original twist, my point was that people who want to present an alternative argument for the origins of the Jesus stories need to have an objective reason to do so - the fact that they don't like Christianity and think modern Christians are poopyheads isn't good enough. The fact that it's possible they had another origin isn't good enough either. What they need is something that actually indicates this other origin. A reference to an early form of Christianity that believed in a non-historical Jesus would do nicely - that would be a genuine historical reason to begin arguing for another origin. But the mythers have nothing like that - they begin with nothing more than a wish for another origin because ... well, because they think modern Christians are poopyheads. Then they wonder why no-one takes them seriously.
But since you've now made it clear you aren't interested in presenting any kind of alternative argument for the origins of the Jesus stories (or, at least, you suddenly got very shy about doing so once it became clear that it might not be so easy to do so with me around), apparently that point doesn't apply to you. So you can untwist your knickers.
After all that, what your long, looooong posts boil down to is "I am unconvinced by the level of assurance we can get in commonplace questions about ancient history such as this one." Great. Understood. Got it. No need to repeat that ever again.
Now, the rest of us can get on with the discussion undisturbed by this wordy and repetitive sideshow.
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TimONeill2
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So, as I suspected, someone from another field who hasn't a clue about the relevant scholarship poaching out of field and shooting himself in the foot as a result.
TimONeill2
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Oh look -someone actually trying to engage with the evidence the way historians do! Down to business ....
We do? Why? That is not "late" as ancient source material goes. Arrian is one of our major sources for the campaigns of Alexander the Great, yet he was born 409 years after Alexander died. Two sources within a century of the subject matter is not "late", it's extremely good and very rare.
Mythers have this weird obsession with the lack of contemporary sources for Jesus, to the extent that in some places (eg the "TL: DR" wonderland of the atheist boards on reddit.com) pointing this out amounts to a killer argument ender for some. Again, this demonstrates a naive lack of understanding of the nature of ancient source material. We have no contemporary reference to Hannibal. None. So if we have no contemporary references to one of the most significant and famous general of his age, expecting to have them for a Galilean hick who did little more than preach to some other peasant nobodies in a dusty corner of the Empire is simply absurd.
Not so fast. Tacitus was very careful about simply "repeating what he has heard". He did not trust mere hearsay and was scathing about histories based on it. Here he is on the subject:
As a result he was careful to note when he was simply repeating rumour or when he was passing on second hand information. Earlier in the account of the Great Fire in which he mentions Jesus he makes it clear that he is working from several written sources and is comparing their differing accounts of the event and its aftermath. He doesn't say if any of these sources are where he got his information about Jesus, but he (and other ancient historians) rarely "show their working" in that way.
What he says about Jesus and the origins of Christianity is (i) very specific, (ii) limited to what a Roman would know or care about such a figure and the vile superstitio he founded and (iii) completely unflattering. There is no indication that he is repeating what he heard from Christians (though what a Senator and aristocrat like Publius Cornelius Tacitus would be doing chatting to street scum about their foreign cults I have no idea) and even if he did suddenly decide to break his own rules about hearsay, the idea that he'd trust the members of a sect he called as "a most mischievous superstition .... evil .... hideous and shameful .... (with a) hatred against mankind" as a source of information about themselves is pretty fanciful.
The objection that he calls Pilate a "procurator" when, technically, the Roman administrators of Judea were "prefects" prior to Claudius is weak. Tacitus was well aware that the earlier viceroys of Judea were prefects, since we know about the change from a earlier reference by him, but Roman titles were not always used with technical precision by Tacitus or by anyone else. For him to refer to Pilate by the title used for such a post in Tacitus' time would not be unusual.
So exactly where he got his information from will never be known, though this is pretty much the case about just about anything we find in just about any ancient historian - they weren't big on footnotes. But if we think about who Tacitus had around him who he could ask about matters Judean, one obvious candidate springs to mind. Because in Rome at the time was a Judean who was (like Tacitus) an aristocrat, a historian and a favourite at the Flavian imperial court. And that was Josephus. It's interesting that if we compare what Tacitus says about Jesus to what the passage in Josephus at Antiquities XVIII.3.4 says about him (once we ignore the obvious Christian interpolations), we find no less than nine direct and indirect connections. Of course, we don't know if Tacitus spoke to Josephus or read the Antiquties, but the possibility is there and the correspondences are multiple.
I tend to leave the Testamonium to one side because the fact it has been interpolated makes it so problematic. But to say there is "no way" of making any kind of determination of what may be authentic and what is not is simply nonsense. To begin with, we can confidently take out "he was the Messiah" and "he appeared to them living on the third day". Josephus believed neither of these things and so there are clearly rather clumsy additions. There are ways to judge what else may be original, by comparing the language to both the rest of Josephus and to the NT and other Christian texts, but I'll leave that to one side for now. Suffice it to say that the scholarly consensus that it is partially authentic to Josephus is strong and has been for some time.
Yes, it does. And that's a nasty, sharp and pointy hook that the poor Mythers wriggle and spin upon, no matter how hard they try to get off. But I'm running late for work, so I'll have to get back to why this is where the whole Myther house of cards comes fluttering down later.
We do? Why? That is not "late" as ancient source material goes. Arrian is one of our major sources for the campaigns of Alexander the Great, yet he was born 409 years after Alexander died. Two sources within a century of the subject matter is not "late", it's extremely good and very rare.
Mythers have this weird obsession with the lack of contemporary sources for Jesus, to the extent that in some places (eg the "TL: DR" wonderland of the atheist boards on reddit.com) pointing this out amounts to a killer argument ender for some. Again, this demonstrates a naive lack of understanding of the nature of ancient source material. We have no contemporary reference to Hannibal. None. So if we have no contemporary references to one of the most significant and famous general of his age, expecting to have them for a Galilean hick who did little more than preach to some other peasant nobodies in a dusty corner of the Empire is simply absurd.
Not so fast. Tacitus was very careful about simply "repeating what he has heard". He did not trust mere hearsay and was scathing about histories based on it. Here he is on the subject:
My object in mentioning and refuting this story is, by a conspicuous example, to put down hearsay, and to request all into whose hands my work shall come, not to catch eagerly at wild and improbable rumours in preference to genuine history which has not been perverted into romance.
(Annals, IV.11)
(Annals, IV.11)
As a result he was careful to note when he was simply repeating rumour or when he was passing on second hand information. Earlier in the account of the Great Fire in which he mentions Jesus he makes it clear that he is working from several written sources and is comparing their differing accounts of the event and its aftermath. He doesn't say if any of these sources are where he got his information about Jesus, but he (and other ancient historians) rarely "show their working" in that way.
What he says about Jesus and the origins of Christianity is (i) very specific, (ii) limited to what a Roman would know or care about such a figure and the vile superstitio he founded and (iii) completely unflattering. There is no indication that he is repeating what he heard from Christians (though what a Senator and aristocrat like Publius Cornelius Tacitus would be doing chatting to street scum about their foreign cults I have no idea) and even if he did suddenly decide to break his own rules about hearsay, the idea that he'd trust the members of a sect he called as "a most mischievous superstition .... evil .... hideous and shameful .... (with a) hatred against mankind" as a source of information about themselves is pretty fanciful.
The objection that he calls Pilate a "procurator" when, technically, the Roman administrators of Judea were "prefects" prior to Claudius is weak. Tacitus was well aware that the earlier viceroys of Judea were prefects, since we know about the change from a earlier reference by him, but Roman titles were not always used with technical precision by Tacitus or by anyone else. For him to refer to Pilate by the title used for such a post in Tacitus' time would not be unusual.
So exactly where he got his information from will never be known, though this is pretty much the case about just about anything we find in just about any ancient historian - they weren't big on footnotes. But if we think about who Tacitus had around him who he could ask about matters Judean, one obvious candidate springs to mind. Because in Rome at the time was a Judean who was (like Tacitus) an aristocrat, a historian and a favourite at the Flavian imperial court. And that was Josephus. It's interesting that if we compare what Tacitus says about Jesus to what the passage in Josephus at Antiquities XVIII.3.4 says about him (once we ignore the obvious Christian interpolations), we find no less than nine direct and indirect connections. Of course, we don't know if Tacitus spoke to Josephus or read the Antiquties, but the possibility is there and the correspondences are multiple.
I tend to leave the Testamonium to one side because the fact it has been interpolated makes it so problematic. But to say there is "no way" of making any kind of determination of what may be authentic and what is not is simply nonsense. To begin with, we can confidently take out "he was the Messiah" and "he appeared to them living on the third day". Josephus believed neither of these things and so there are clearly rather clumsy additions. There are ways to judge what else may be original, by comparing the language to both the rest of Josephus and to the NT and other Christian texts, but I'll leave that to one side for now. Suffice it to say that the scholarly consensus that it is partially authentic to Josephus is strong and has been for some time.
Yes, it does. And that's a nasty, sharp and pointy hook that the poor Mythers wriggle and spin upon, no matter how hard they try to get off. But I'm running late for work, so I'll have to get back to why this is where the whole Myther house of cards comes fluttering down later.
SpuriusMaximus
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Edited by kmortis:
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No, it boils down to: it's unsupported, unscientific and unsound by BOTH logic AND statistics. Regardless of whether to you there actually is a difference between "it's logical nonsense" and "I'm not convinced" or not, they still are rather different things.
We'll see. But yes, if there is indeed no need to point something out as bad logic, I won't.
If my pointing out fallacies and unsupportable levels of certitude is getting repetitive for you, you can stop doing them.
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SpuriusMaximus
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Err, gLuke makes the same claim more or less ("Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word. Therefore, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, it seemed good also to me to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught."), and that doesn't make it true because he said so. In fact, as you know, in spite of claiming to be some great historian who carefully studied things and is writing the truth, gLuke's actually a pretty bad historian and his work ranges from plagiarizing Mark uncritically to just making stuff up. So essentially we can't take someone's claim that he's trying to be accurate, as actually meaning he actually is accurate about any particular claim.
Plus, just assuming that he had some sources, doesn't quite cut it. Especially the fact that he does mention when something comes from a source, is actually a question mark for the places where he doesn't. The presence of exceptions is actually a good reason to doubt that anything else is the same kind of an exception, not to simply assume it.
At any rate, while making something more authoritative by noting it used more informed sources that we don't have (e.g., that Arrian may be well informed about Alexander because he cites Ptolemy son of Lagos and Aristoboulos who WERE contemporaries and eyewitnesses) is a sound thing, it doesn't mean you can just make up that someone used such a source. Plus such sources are themselves subject of being of varying quality, and rather suspicious if they lack corroboration. One can't just pretend to know that a source that exists only as a personal postulate is actually good enough for Tacitus to actually know enough about a Jesus.
But let's say that, as you said, Tacitus actually talked to a few slaves and found out what they say about Jesus. It's not unbelievable. So what? If those guys aren't eyewitnesses (and if Jesus was such a nobody that only his closest associates would even know much about him, chances are Tacitus wouldn't nail exactly Peter for a conversation or anything similar) it's still just relating what they BELIEVED about Jesus, not something reliable about what actually happened there.
I.e., still the only thing Tacitus can confirm is that some people BELIEVED that Jesus existed and was crucified, etc. And nobody denies that Christians believed in Jesus Christ.
But the problem still remains that there's a substantial difference between some people BELIEVING something, and actually having RELIABLE INFORMATION about it. People believe all sorts of falsehoods and nonsense. I mean, if you were doing the same nowadays, you could find a few people who'd tell you that Sherlock Holmes is real, and what he did, and where he lived, but that wouldn't make it true. Or back to Tacitus he could find plenty of people in Rome who believed that Hercules was real and actually slew the Lernaean Hydra. Just that they believed that, doesn't mean it's actually historical information. Unless those people KNEW what they're talking about, BELIEF doesn't actually count.
And, again, when even the existence of those people is conjecture, one can't just make up what they knew and how reliable witnesses they were.
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Considering that my side training is in Museum Science
John Frum shows that in a period as short as 16 years (1941 to 1957) that the mythical version of the cult's founder can replace any historical version in the oral tradition.
The Alexander the Great comparison ignores the known contemporaries of Callisthenes, Ptolemy, Nearchus, Aristobulus, and Onesicritus whose works were still existent when Diodorus wrote his. Then you have the Decree of Philippi c330 BC, the mosaics, and coins. The Gospels Jesus has nothing even approaching this.
Yet he gets Pontius Pilate's title wrong In fact, before the discovery of Pilate Stone Tacitus was used to argue for inaccuracy regarding the Gospel account. Furthermore even Tacitean studies admit that at times the factual accuracy of his work is iffy mainly because the quality of the sources he based it on is unknown.
Furthermore we are dealing with a translation which can owe more to the translator then to the original source. Sheol, Hades, and Gehenna all being mistranslated as "hell" is a prime example. The term 'kami' being mistranslated as 'god' is a more modern example.
Sorry but you like all apologists before ignore the problem with the James passage which I repeat below:
The James of josephus dies c64 CE by stoning. Problem is by Hegesippus, Clement of Alexandria, Eusebius of Caesarea, and Early Christian tradition ie basically everybody else the James brother of the Gospels Jesus died c70CE by being thrown from a battlement, stoned, and finally clubbed to death by passing laundrymen. (again, insert your own tasteless clean death joke)
More over, "(t)he Bible uses the term "christ" or "messiah" for a variety of figures, including all of the high priests and kings of ancient Israel" (Wright, Stuart A. (1995) Armageddon in Waco University of Chicago Press pg 296) and "In a characteristic typological reading he asserts that Moses himself was the first to recognize the glory of the name of Christ because he applied this title (in Greek as in the Hebrew, mashiah means simply "the anointed one") to the High Priest" (Yerushalmi, Yosef Hayim (1993) Freud's Moses Yale University Press pg 91)
The entire passage end with "Whereupon Albinus complied with what they said, and wrote in anger to Ananus, and threatened that he would bring him to punishment for what he had done; on which king Agrippa took the high priesthood from him, when he had ruled but three months, and made Jesus, the son of Damneus, high priest."
To be made high priest Jesus, the son of Damneus would have had to have been anointed ie he could have literally been nicknamed christ (with a little 'c') meaning this passage could be totally genuine and not have one thing to do with the Gospels Jesus!
This like using the fact that there is a John H Watson listed among the soldiers that serve in the first Boer War that Sherlock Holmes existed. As with Suetonius this is less proof of a historical Jesus and more evidence of a desire bordering on desperation in finding something, anything that even remotely supports the idea.
Never mind as related by Remsburg stated regarding the "who was called Christ" part "Nearly all the authorities that I have quoted (Rev. Dr. Giles, Rev. S. Baring-Gould, Dr. Chalmers, Dean Milman, Canon Farrar, Theodor Keim, Adolph Hausrath, Rev. Dr. Hooykaas, and Alexander Campbell) reject it."
More over near the end of Book II, Chapter XIII of his Commentary on Matthew Origen says that he disagrees with Josephus' placement of blame for the destruction of Jerusalem on the death of James saying that it should be attributed to Jesus. Because of this and numerous other conflicts with Origen there is serious doubt to the authenticity of the 'who was called Christ' phrase. (Painter, John (2005). Just James: The Brother of Jesus in History and Tradition. Univ of South Carolina Press ISBN 0-567-04191-3.)
In fact Painter above states:
"What he (Origen) has to say at this point is, however, not to be found in extant text of Josephus. No precise reference is given by Origen, and the quotation cannot be found in Josephus, nor does its form suggest that it is a precise quotation."
If anything Painter is going back to the idea theorized back in 1909--the 'who was called Christ' phrase could be just as likely be a well meant but incorrect gloss based on Origen's comment later inserted into the text of Josephus by a later copiest. To paraphrase a famous movie statement 'This is not the James you are looking for'.
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Dancing David
Penultimate Amazing
As one of the lurkers, I say BRAVO!
Personally I tend to stay away from comparison to quantum stuff, because that's SUCH a darling of all kinds of crackpots, that IMHO it's better to just not create the association, even when you are right with the analogy
But, yes, you are correct, social sciences as practiced today are a matter of statistics. In fact, sociology is pretty-much a sub-discipline of statistics. Things are never just a matter of just saying 'it's black' or 'it's white', and never just 'because it makes sense to me', but is a matter of correlation factors, standard deviations and what confidence can one support in an interval. Exactly what room for deviating from the given result is actually a requirement for even giving such a result.
Another problem that we haven't really touched on is what Horace Miner demonstrated back in 1956 in his biting satirical "Body Ritual among the Nacirema" article in American Anthropologist 58:3, June 1956.
What Miner showed with his article is the very model or as James Burke would call is nearly 30 years later structure (Day the Universe Changed) can affect every aspect of your research to the point the result is predetermined.
Miner's article took the then prevalent model of 'Oh look at these primitives who believe in magic and see how wiser we are' used and turned it on the mid 1950s United States. Thanks to the model the United States came off as primitive as the many aborigine cultures being studied at the time.
Much of the pro historical Jesus argument comes off the model driving the date rather than the data driving the model.
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And the problem one keeps coming back to is if the Gospel account was even remotely accurate why doesn't someone contemporary note it?
I again present what I like to call the dog in the night issue. The name comes from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes story Silver Blaze. In Silver Blaze a horse is supposedly stolen by a stranger and after investigating Watson asks Holmes "Is there any point to which you would wish to draw my attention?" Holmes replies "To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time." To which Watson responds "The dog did nothing in the night-time." And Holmes responds "That was the curious incident."
At the end of the story Holmes explains that if the premise of a stranger taking the horse was valid the dog would have reacted and raised an alarm.
The dog in the night here is Philo of Alexandria (c20 BCE-50 CE). Philo was the grandson of Herod the Great, loaned money to Herod Agrippa I, lived in both Jerusalem and Rome, had a philosophy that mirrors many of the teachings of Jesus and unlike many of his contemporaries his works have survived intact.
Philo wrote "For God, while he spake the word, did at the same moment create; nor did he allow anything to come between the word and the deed;" which is eerily echoed in John 1:1-3.
In Flaccus IV (c39 CE) Philo wrote some four paragraphs about "a certain madman named Carabbas ...(that) spent all his days and nights naked in the roads, minding neither cold nor heat, the sport of idle children and wanton youths" who was driven from the public gymnasium so that some of his tormentors could dress and mock him as a king.
In On the Embassy to Gaius (c40 CE) Philo wrote an entire chapter regarding the cruel and poor leadership of Pontius Pilate.
In On Providence Philo notes "I was on my journey towards the temple of my native land for the purpose of offering up prayers and sacrifices therein" showing that he went to Jerusalem at least once.
Yet this man who was in the right place in the right time make not one mention of Jesus.
Greediguts
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I'm confused. The other reference to Jesus by Josephus is completely fabricated, and then the Christians just added the"messiah" part to the James passage instead of just fabricating a story that would mesh with the well-known Christian tradition?!?
More over, "(t)he Bible uses the term "christ" or "messiah" for avariety of figures, including all of the high priests and kings of ancient Israel" (Wright, Stuart A. (1995) Armageddon in Waco University of Chicago Press pg 296) and "In a characteristic typological reading he asserts that Moses himself was the first to recognize the glory of the name of Christ because he applied this title (in Greek as in the Hebrew, mashiah means simply "the anointed one") to the High Priest" (Yerushalmi, Yosef Hayim (1993) Freud's Moses Yale University Press pg 91)
Yes it does. The title referred to flesh and blood humans chosen by God, not a mythical "sub-lunar" demi-god or part of some kind of Trinity. A problem the early proto-Christians had to deal with (also, the Tanakh puts the titles together when taking about the priest, so you get "anointed high priest").
"Never mind as related by Remsburg stated..." and then an actual quote. I feel like a quote or two got mashed together here so I don't follow this. What is it from exactly?
maximara, I appreciate you adding sources ( I read Miner's "Body Ritual among the Nacirema" - too funny!) but when I do a search on many of your quotes/sources I end up on wikki pages that just have the exact same quote without much context.
For example the Painter reference is confusing. On the wikki page for Josephus on Jesus I find this quote regarding John Painter:
"John Painter states that nothing in the James passage looks suspiciously like a Christian interpolation and that the account can be accepted as historical.(Painter pages 139-142). Painter discusses the role of Ananus and the background to the passage, and states that after being deposed as High Priest for killing James and being replaced by Jesus the son of Damnaeus, Ananus had maintained his influence within Jerusalem through bribery.(Painter page 136) Painter points out that as described in the Antiquities of the Jews (Book 20, Chapter 9, 2) Ananus was bribing both Albinus and Jesus the son of Damnaeus so that his men could take the tithes of other priests outside Jerusalem, to the point that some of whom then starved to death.(Painter pages 139-142)"
If you have read his book, or have access to it, could you explain the context as it would seem he feels the passage is authentic...
BTW- I would like to welcome all the new forumites who have joined up and stepped onto our "Historical Jesus Merry-Go-Round" here at JREF. Having new blood helps keep the forum a little more vibrant and extends its life. So again, welcome to all the new posters (whether we agree with each other or not).
SpuriusMaximus
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While you are, of course, correct, and indeed a model that already contains the conclusions as assumptions in its structure is a way to do circular logic in a stealthier way, I don't think in the Jesus case there even is that complex a model or structure to be worth focusing on as such. Most of it really boils down to such basic and straightforward applications of a fallacy, that, really, they're even more straightforward than the hypothetical examples used to illustrate it in textbooks. And I have no problem with just calling them that. To wit,
Begging the question / circular logic. As I was saying to Davefoc (without actually accusing HIM of doing that, as he didn't) the propositions
P1="The gospels are perfectly good sources of and correct about Jesus doing or saying X, Y and Z"
P2="A historical Jesus existed who actually did X, Y and Z"
P2="A historical Jesus existed who actually did X, Y and Z"
... are actually equivalent. It's trivial to show that P1 => P2, and P2 => P1, so P1 <=> P2.
So any argument to the effect of "if we assume P1, then we have evidence of P2" is inherently circular logic, since the premise is the same as the conclusion, or rather, a perfectly equivalent proposition. It all actually boils down to "if I assume that a Jesus like in the Gospels existed, then I get that a Jesus like in the Gospels existed." It's the one sentence that you can sum whole books about Jesus to.
And the thing is, most of the time it's actually a simpler application of it than even logic textbook examples do. Most of those try to teach you how to spot it if it's hidden in different phrasings, or involves multiple steps as diversion, or, you know, less of a trivial and straightforward "I'll assume X, and hey, looky, then I get X as a result". In this case the most complication usually done, if any, is pretending that tacking a "probably" to both somehow makes it anything else than still the same fallacy. (Well, ok, now it's a textbook statistics fallacy instead of a textbook logic fallacy.
)So I suppose one can technically call it as the model driving the data, but by the time you explained to most people what the model is and what the data is and how they interact, one could have just called it circular logic and called it a day
It's not the only fallacy, mind you. There also seems to be a lot of confusion about what evidence is, most notably a failure to distinguish between the proposition that X is compatible to Y, and that X is evidence for Y. Which most often manifests itself in an implicit or explicit affirming the consequent fallacy. But it's probably the main one.
Greediguts
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Philo does not comment upon many of the wanna-be messiahs that Josephus comments upon (which is odd, since the Roman army was involved in killing many people who followed these other messiahs so they would be well-known instances, yes?)
Why did Philo not comment upon them? Did Josephus make-up every one of the failed messiahs? Because if Philo didn't comment on them, then they must be myths, right?
SpuriusMaximus
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Indeed it does, but while I'll agree with all you wrote, I think there is an even more straightforward route from Tacitus to the Gospels, and for reducing the documentary value of the former to the latter. And actually I think you know all that already, but just for the benefit of the bystanders:
Look at the sequence of events:
- presumably sometime in the 70's CE and in ROME, gMark writes his gospel, where Jesus is executed in Jerusalem by Pontius Pilate. (There are troubles with the accuracy of the dating and all, but let's agree with that for now.) At any rate, Rome is the epicenter of that gospel and the beliefs it entailed about where Jesus was, where he died, and under what Roman governor.
- in 116 CE, Tacitus in ROME publishes his Annals, where he mentions the Christus (or rather Chrestus) being executed in Jerusalem by Pontius Pilate. We can have a pretty good idea of both WHERE he got his information (directly or indirectly from the Christians in Rome), and WHEN (he published his Histories in 105 CE, so he wouldn't have started on the Annals before that.)
So let's recap: Mark is put in circulation among the Christians in Rome, and includes certain claims, and a mere 50 years later in the same city someone publishes a book that repeats those claims. Hmm. Isn't it the most parsimonious assumption that Tacitus was indirectly getting his information from Mark, rather than being independent confirmation?
Basically if in the year 2012 some bloke from England were to write down -- based on asking other sources, no doubt -- that there was a guy called Brian in ancient Jerusalem who was executed for writing "Romans Go Home" on the wall of the Roman consulate... would you think it's independent confirmation of Brian, OR just relaying something that originated in the 1979 film "Life Of Brian"? (I chose that example because the time interval from the 70's to the 110's is about the same.)
In effect for Tacitus we not only can have a good idea that he was just writing what the Christians BELIEVED, but actually we can have a pretty good idea from what source did those Christians get that belief in the first place.
And of course, for that source we can still then apply the criterion you mention.
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SpuriusMaximus
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Philo does not comment upon many of the wanna-be messiahs that Josephus comments upon (which is odd, since the Roman army was involved in killing many people who followed these other messiahs so they would be well-known instances, yes?)
Why did Philo not comment upon them? Did Josephus make-up every one of the failed messiahs? Because if Philo didn't comment on them, then they must be myths, right?
While Philo didn't comment on every messiah, there's the issue that if we believe John, there was a messiah who was very outspoken about his being THE Logos and firstborn of God and human image of god, and all that Philo had just written about. You'd think Philo would have something to say about THAT. Maybe.
You know, same as if someone came forward and claimed to be THE historical Harry Potter, you'd think J. K. Rowling might have something to say about that, even if she doesn't go debunking every single crazy teenager thinking he's a wizard
But basically that argument -- at least as it's usually done -- doesn't hinge on any one particular author not mentioning one particular event, but the fact that there are dozens of people who would have had a reason to write about something or another that Jesus does, yet none of them do.
Basically think of it like this: let's say one particular author has only 10% chance to write something about Jesus, although he should have the information and the interest in it. E.g., that one particular ancient astronomer sees the 3 hour eclipse on a full moon, but somehow, although it's THE most significant thing of the millennium in his field, he'd be 90% likely to go "naaah, that's not interesting." Or just forget to mention that his whole discipline just got pimp-slapped by God. But really, it goes for other authors and non-miraculous stuff too.
Well, what are the chances that 16 such authors would ALL forget to mention anything about Jesus. If every one of them would have only 10% chance to actually write anything, ALL 16 of them have only about 18% chance to ALL ignore Jesus.
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Thanks, Greediguts, for all your thoughts.
In addition to all the aspects that you raise regarding the Josephus account of James's end, there is the problem with merely supposing that any Christian scribe would officiously certify the James in Josephus Antqs. XX as being Jesus's brother at all. In fact, a Christian meddler, whether through confusion or through deliberate interpolation, would be the last to foist such an understanding on this Josephus passage.
And why would he a Christian be the last to do this?
Because any and all accounts in the NT -- in scripture -- of James, or James and his end, are at variance with the Josephus account when it comes to Josephus's account of James's end: stoning by order of Ananus. Any Christian supposing that this James in the Josephus passage is really Jesus's brother would be implicitly assuming thereby that the NT's alternate reference to James's end is in error! What kind of Christian who is reading Josephus would suddenly put in words like "called Christ" here of all places, when that implicitly calls into question the veracity of the alternate account of James's fate in this Christian's own scriptures?!
Plainly, the very fact that the Josephus XX account is at variance with the NT makes it a non-Christian account, thereby raising the integrity of the reference to this "Jesus called Christ" all the more. A Christian would be the last person to associate this stoned James with Jesus's brother! That association has to have come from Josephus himself.
Stone
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SpuriusMaximus
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Actually, about the gospel and James, things are more complex there.
The gospels actually don't say Jack about what happened to James, because they stop around Jesus's resurrection. Neither does Paul, who's actually very uninformative even about Jesus, so predictably he leaves us in the dark about James too, even if you take "James the brother of the Lord" to mean him. So we can remove those, for a start.
There is an epistle of James, but that also leaves us in the dark even about who he was, and obviously nobody except Moses ever related their own death So that also leaves us in the dark.
AFAIK the other forgeries filed under epistles in the NT don't even mention James at all.
Which leaves us with Acts. Which is the complex part, because there too actually James the brother of Jesus actually just vanishes from the start, along with Jesus's whole family. After the whole page, nobody ever heard about James, Mary, Joseph, or other significant characters like Joseph of Arimathea. They don't do anything ever again, they're not spoken to, they're not spoken about, nobody even drops by to say a "sorry about your son, ma'am" ever again. Which is weird in its own right, but at any rate it leaves us in the dark about WTH happened with James.
This may sound like a case of, "WTH, it can't be right. We all know that Acts talks about James, and about Paul talking to James, and so on." Bear with me, I'm about to get into that.
The convention in ancient Greek texts was basically that basically when you talk about some character by just the first name, it's the last one introduced or the last one left. So you'd introduce some guy as, dunno, "James the brother of John and son of Zebedee", and then talk about just James. So at any rate, it would be highly unusual to just switch Jameseseses without saying so.
We actually have two Jameseseses in Acts, after page 1: James son of Alphaeus (aka James the Lesser), and James the brother of John and son of Zebedee (aka James the Greater).
James the brother of John and son of Zebedee croaks by being executed by sword in Acts of the Apostles 12:2, leaving us with James the son of Alphaeus. He's the guy that Acts mentions ever after. Acts doesn't tell us WTH happened to this one.
James the son of Alphaeus, was actually identified by the Catholics later with James The Just, you know, "the brother of the lord." Yeah, you've read that right, they figured out that he wasn't actually the biological brother of Jesus.
At any rate, the ONLY James that Acts tells us how he died, is James the brother of John and son of Zebedee. He's clearly identified as such too, so there's not much room for doubt that another James was meant. He's in fact the only James whose death is anywhere in the bible at all.
So would an early Christian scribe contradict his scriptures by identifying such a James? No, of course not, because the scriptures don't say Jack Squat about how James the brother of Jesus and son of Joseph died. There isn't a single line that such an interpolation would contradict.
What it contradicts is some later made-up pious martyrdom stories, but that's nowhere near the same as contradicting scripture. Even after those pious martyrdom stories were made up, there was nothing to keep a scribe from disagreeing with those.
But even such a contradiction, did it actually make any believer think twice? Well, no, actually we see Eusebius taking the passage in Josephus as CONFIRMATION, rather than contradicting the other made up tradition he quotes.
So, really, the whole 'they wouldn't do that, because it would contradict their scripture' idea is clearly false.
The gospels actually don't say Jack about what happened to James, because they stop around Jesus's resurrection. Neither does Paul, who's actually very uninformative even about Jesus, so predictably he leaves us in the dark about James too, even if you take "James the brother of the Lord" to mean him. So we can remove those, for a start.
There is an epistle of James, but that also leaves us in the dark even about who he was, and obviously nobody except Moses ever related their own death
So that also leaves us in the dark.AFAIK the other forgeries filed under epistles in the NT don't even mention James at all.
Which leaves us with Acts. Which is the complex part, because there too actually James the brother of Jesus actually just vanishes from the start, along with Jesus's whole family. After the whole page, nobody ever heard about James, Mary, Joseph, or other significant characters like Joseph of Arimathea. They don't do anything ever again, they're not spoken to, they're not spoken about, nobody even drops by to say a "sorry about your son, ma'am" ever again. Which is weird in its own right, but at any rate it leaves us in the dark about WTH happened with James.
This may sound like a case of, "WTH, it can't be right. We all know that Acts talks about James, and about Paul talking to James, and so on." Bear with me, I'm about to get into that.
The convention in ancient Greek texts was basically that basically when you talk about some character by just the first name, it's the last one introduced or the last one left. So you'd introduce some guy as, dunno, "James the brother of John and son of Zebedee", and then talk about just James. So at any rate, it would be highly unusual to just switch Jameseseses without saying so.
We actually have two Jameseseses in Acts, after page 1: James son of Alphaeus (aka James the Lesser), and James the brother of John and son of Zebedee (aka James the Greater).
James the brother of John and son of Zebedee croaks by being executed by sword in Acts of the Apostles 12:2, leaving us with James the son of Alphaeus. He's the guy that Acts mentions ever after. Acts doesn't tell us WTH happened to this one.
James the son of Alphaeus, was actually identified by the Catholics later with James The Just, you know, "the brother of the lord." Yeah, you've read that right, they figured out that he wasn't actually the biological brother of Jesus.
At any rate, the ONLY James that Acts tells us how he died, is James the brother of John and son of Zebedee. He's clearly identified as such too, so there's not much room for doubt that another James was meant. He's in fact the only James whose death is anywhere in the bible at all.
So would an early Christian scribe contradict his scriptures by identifying such a James? No, of course not, because the scriptures don't say Jack Squat about how James the brother of Jesus and son of Joseph died. There isn't a single line that such an interpolation would contradict.
What it contradicts is some later made-up pious martyrdom stories, but that's nowhere near the same as contradicting scripture. Even after those pious martyrdom stories were made up, there was nothing to keep a scribe from disagreeing with those.
But even such a contradiction, did it actually make any believer think twice? Well, no, actually we see Eusebius taking the passage in Josephus as CONFIRMATION, rather than contradicting the other made up tradition he quotes.
So, really, the whole 'they wouldn't do that, because it would contradict their scripture' idea is clearly false.
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You are not following the logic here. The longer Testimonium Flavianum is thought to be introduced in the 4th century while the who was called Christ passage is through to have been inserted via gloss earlier.
The idea is Christian copiest after reading Origen assumes this is the James brother of Jesus refers and puts in a gloss. A later copiest moves that gloss into the main text. Then much later the Testimonium Flavianum forgery happens.
"Never mind as related by Remsburg stated..." and then an actual quote. I feel like a quote or two got mashed together here so I don't follow this. What is it from exactly?
The Christ, Chapter 2 "Silence of Contemporary Writers"
maximara, I appreciate you adding sources ( I read Miner's "Body Ritual among the Nacirema" - too funny!) but when I do a search on many of your quotes/sources I end up on wikki pages that just have the exact same quote without much context.[/QUOTE]
You need to learn how search so as to exclude wiki references because they are only as reliable as the references used and even then they may not say what is claimed. Google books (if they books have previews you can see) is your best bet for context. Also for brevity I tend to combine stuff (the earlier referenced stuff bracketed like this)
For example the exact quote by Remsburg is "This passage is probably genuine with the exception of the clause, "who was called Christ," which is undoubtedly an interpolation, and is generally regarded as such. Nearly all the authorities that I have quoted reject it. It was originally probably a marginal note." But those authorities that he quoted are scattered throughout a long section on the Testimonium Flavianum.
A far simpler example can be found in Irenaeus' Against Heresies Book II, Chapter 22 where he argues Jesus had to be a minimum of 50 years old when he was crucified
Apologist try to hand wave this away with the 'oh that is not what he really meant' song and dance...which is quickly crushed when you read Irenaeus Demonstration (72-74):
"And again David (says) thus concerning the sufferings of Christ: Why did the Gentiles rage, and the people imagine vain things? Kings rose up on the earth, and princes were gathered together, against the Lord and his Anointed. For Herod the king of the Jews and Pontius Pilate, the governor of Claudius Caesar, came together and condemned Him to be crucified."
Pontius Pilate was recalled to rome in 39 CE.
Claudius Caesar became emperor in 41 CE.
But the problems don't stop there; we know the Herods that ruled Judea and their titles:
Herod the Great, King of the Jews died 4 BC--can't be this one.
Herod Archelaus banished in 6 CE --can't be this one.
Herod Philip I (also called Herod II) died 34 CE, former husband of Herodias whos later marriage so ticked off John the Baptist --can't be this one.
Herod Antipas, tetrarch; the Herod who married the aforementioned Herodias which resulted in the death of John the Baptist. Exiled 39 CE. Too early for Claudius Caesar and wrong title as well
Herod Agrippa I: Due to expressing the desire for Tiberius to hurry up and die so his friend Caligula could become emperor Herod Agrippa I was thrown in prison and not released until 37 CE when Caligula came to power.
Due to Herod Agrippa I's advice Claudius became Caesar in 41 and as a reward a year later was the title "King of the Jews".
Now you see the problem.
SpuriusMaximus
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Well, I meant about James, since that's what Stone was arguing. Otherwise, yeah, the early Christians and even church fathers are all over the map with the stuff they make up about Jesus and his buddies.
ETA: But if we're at other stuff that the early Christians made up, although it contradicted scripture brutally, take Epiphanius of Salamis who, ironically, purports to be writing against heresies, in fact "a medicine chest" against heresies. Yet here's where in time he places Jesus:
Yep, he places Jesus as basically the next Christ-King after Alexander Jannaeus, who ruled circa 103 BC to 76 BC, and born during Alexander Jannaeus.
This btw being part of his long digression against the a heresy, where he takes the verse that "The Lord hath sworn in truth unto David; he will not turn from it, of the fruit of thy body will I set upon thy throne" (Psalm cxxxii) as basically a prophecy of Jesus. The line of David can only end with the messiah, because otherwise, if there's a gap there while the old covenant was still in effect, you know, God just broke his oath.
Well, you probably knew all that, but, yeah, it's my favourite when it comes to making up stuff that did go against the gospels.
ETA: But if we're at other stuff that the early Christians made up, although it contradicted scripture brutally, take Epiphanius of Salamis who, ironically, purports to be writing against heresies, in fact "a medicine chest" against heresies. Yet here's where in time he places Jesus:
"Now the throne and kingly seat of David is the priestly office in Holy Church; for the Lord combined the kingly and high-priestly dignities into one and the same office, and bestowed them upon His Holy Church, transferring to her the throne of David, which ceases not as long as the world endues. The throne of David continued by succession up to that time - namely, till Christ Himself - without any failure from the princes of Judah, until it came unto Him for whom were 'the things that are stored up,' who is Himself 'the expectation of the nations.' For with the advent of the Christ, the succession of the princes from Judah, who reigned until the Christ Himself, ceased. The order [of succession] failed and stopped at the time when He was born in Bethlehem of Judaea, in the days of Alexander, who was of high-priestly and royal race; and after this Alexander this lot failed, from the times of himself and Salina, who is also called Alexandra, for the times of Herod the King and Augustus Emperor of the Romans ; and this Alexander, one of the anointed (or Christs) and ruling princes placed the crown on his own head. . . . After this a foreign king, Herod, and those who were no longer of the family of David, assumed the crown."
-- Epiphanius (Haer., 29)
-- Epiphanius (Haer., 29)
Yep, he places Jesus as basically the next Christ-King after Alexander Jannaeus, who ruled circa 103 BC to 76 BC, and born during Alexander Jannaeus.
This btw being part of his long digression against the a heresy, where he takes the verse that "The Lord hath sworn in truth unto David; he will not turn from it, of the fruit of thy body will I set upon thy throne" (Psalm cxxxii) as basically a prophecy of Jesus. The line of David can only end with the messiah, because otherwise, if there's a gap there while the old covenant was still in effect, you know, God just broke his oath.
Well, you probably knew all that, but, yeah, it's my favourite when it comes to making up stuff that did go against the gospels.
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