Well, but isn't that what you wanted: lay people using their understanding of common sense - pretty meaningless as regards actual research but in its way interesting as speculation and as object of net debate.
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What counts as a historical Jesus?
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Well, but isn't that what you wanted: lay people using their understanding of common sense - pretty meaningless as regards actual research but in its way interesting as speculation and as object of net debate.
Well, of course if you regard historical research in the postmodern way as pretty much pure fiction and/or social construct where fundamentally power determines the "truth" then I guess it is not an appropriate description. But then anything goes, and you really cannot have any rational discussion of any aspect of the past. You can't both have and eat your cake. Anyway, I think that there obviously is cumulative understanding and a genuine scientific community and thus the study of history is not irrational and arbitrary activity - it is obviously not yet as hard a science as, say, physics, but nevertheless. Earlier I spoke of the "scientific method as applied in the study of history" and I really would defend that definition. But if you don't accept it, and others here, then obviously you can say whatever you want about the study of this era and these manuscripts, anything will go.
Yeah, we still have these magical things, but I think in much less prominent position in the society and culture. They are now in the margins but once magical, irrational thinking had the centre stage, to a degree we have hard time in perceiving. I don't recognize your reference to this Sai Baba (and proudly refrained from googling!) - I don't believe in miracles if that's what you mean.
Not at all. You certainly can have real science used to aid the academic study of history, inc. ancient history from precisely that period.
But the people you are describing as "expert scholars" are not in any sense of the term "scientists". And they are not by any stretch of the imagination using genuinely scientific methods when it comes to deciding what they believe from reading ancient mss such as the earliest gospel fragments.
There are some bits of science being used in that respect. Eg a few attempts at early C14 dating studies as an adjunct to the far more subjective and unscientific methods of palaeography (for example). But the approach of these "scholars" is not, as far as I can see (see also footnote 1) actually scientific at all.
For example, the idea that reliable information and genuine "evidence" of Jesus, can be extracted from devotional religious writing such as the anonymously written copies that we have of certain gospels, is frankly absurd, and no scientist would ever attempt to base deductions on sources as inherently unreliable and unverifiable as that ... scientifically that is a complete non-starter.
footnote -1 And Yes, like Catsmate-1 (and probably several others here), I do have a PhD and a long background in academic physics research, so I do know what genuinely qualifies as scientifically valid "evidence"
Belz...
Fiend God
No, it's not what I "wanted".
But have you understood at all how it works in the discipline - of course things like physics are relatively simple, but here we don't any more have direct access to the empirical reality that once existed. That doesn't mean that we can't do anything, it just means that we have to use different methods. Textual analysis can be amazingly sophisticated tool, but no-one is pretending or claiming that it is natural science. If only the study of history would be as straightforward!
I have to say that this know-nothing attitude here towards human sciences is rather silly. Admittedly there are many absurdities there, though more on the sociological and literary criticism side with the dreaded near-incomprehensible Theory still going strong, but it has never been that overwhelming within history, and especially not within the more distant eras where you really need many objective expert skills, though I guess most people here think that it is child's play to interprete and analyze these manuscripts. Hopefully you are not unemployed as you would quickly put all professional historians to the dole!
Im sorry to be reticent, been much tied up doing emergency teaching since a colleague unfortunately broke her leg (on the origin of life). It's easy though: "about 6000 years ago..." 
I will dig up some literature on folk healing etc when I get time (one can also poke around a bit in Josephus etc).
However, I do think there is a problem with perception here.
Obviously many people today think that supernatural miracles are straightforwardly impossible. But in the ancient world, although there were protests (eg Cicero), most peole seemed to accept that the miraculous was possible (why not?). Even Josephus, who is normally quite severe against this sort of thing, speaks favourably of Honi (putting aside the TF for a moment!).
They also thought that although the ability to produce miracles was a mark of favour of God, it did not make the miracle worker into a divine or supernatural being. Furthermore, someone in the first century would not at all divide the miraculous and non-miraculous in the same way as we would, simply because spiritual involvement in all aspects of life was taken for granted - such as in birth, for example.
To take two examples, we might think that a psychosomatic healing is possible with words (that is, after all, what a psychotherapist achieves), whereas gluing someone's ear on is not.
But would we think that someone in the first century would draw that distinction, if two such reports were brought to their attention? And if not, why is it that Mark's miracles are largely restrained to examples that could be considered to be of the former sort? (one answer: these were real events!).
As for fraud: if both a healer and his patients thought that all such healing was possible, and a sign of divine favour, in which sense would this be charlatanry? At most, surely one might say that they were mistaken. And once more, I would argue that within certain limits, such healings would be possible.
On healing, exorcisms and the messiah: it's problematic that stories of exorcists in the time period are rare to nonexistent, and there are no obvious links in the tradiiton between the messiah and either healing or exorcism. So why, if Mark's gospel was written to sell the idea of his Jesus figure being the messiah, is so much of it taken up with such stories for which there was no OT or other warrant? Indeed, such figures were often viewed with suspicion as dabbling in magic. Furthermore, the healings and miracles dont play a decisive role in convincing either the disciples or the population at large that Jesus was the Messiah.
Of course, everything in the gospels is written from a post-resurrection perspective, it was this view, that Jesus had risen from the dead, that casts a strong light over the rest of the gospels. Thus, especially Matthew then ransacked the OT for texts never previously thought of as being messianic in their scope to justify the life of Jesus.
All this is extremely odd if the evangelists weren't working under severe restraint. Otherwise, why not just up a much more OT friendly figure? Why have healings and exorcisms? Etc.
On Jesus the Mundane. The church fought for a long time to preserve the view, eventually enshrined in Chalcedonian orthodoxy, that Jesus was a true and real man. And this means that if he was more than human, he would not be fully human. Of course, the church also came to declare Jesus to be fully divine as well, but the key thing that this was without confusion with the human.
Hope that holding post keeps the wolves from the doors for a bit...
I will dig up some literature on folk healing etc when I get time (one can also poke around a bit in Josephus etc).
However, I do think there is a problem with perception here.
Obviously many people today think that supernatural miracles are straightforwardly impossible. But in the ancient world, although there were protests (eg Cicero), most peole seemed to accept that the miraculous was possible (why not?). Even Josephus, who is normally quite severe against this sort of thing, speaks favourably of Honi (putting aside the TF for a moment!).
They also thought that although the ability to produce miracles was a mark of favour of God, it did not make the miracle worker into a divine or supernatural being. Furthermore, someone in the first century would not at all divide the miraculous and non-miraculous in the same way as we would, simply because spiritual involvement in all aspects of life was taken for granted - such as in birth, for example.
To take two examples, we might think that a psychosomatic healing is possible with words (that is, after all, what a psychotherapist achieves), whereas gluing someone's ear on is not.
But would we think that someone in the first century would draw that distinction, if two such reports were brought to their attention? And if not, why is it that Mark's miracles are largely restrained to examples that could be considered to be of the former sort? (one answer: these were real events!).
As for fraud: if both a healer and his patients thought that all such healing was possible, and a sign of divine favour, in which sense would this be charlatanry? At most, surely one might say that they were mistaken. And once more, I would argue that within certain limits, such healings would be possible.
On healing, exorcisms and the messiah: it's problematic that stories of exorcists in the time period are rare to nonexistent, and there are no obvious links in the tradiiton between the messiah and either healing or exorcism. So why, if Mark's gospel was written to sell the idea of his Jesus figure being the messiah, is so much of it taken up with such stories for which there was no OT or other warrant? Indeed, such figures were often viewed with suspicion as dabbling in magic. Furthermore, the healings and miracles dont play a decisive role in convincing either the disciples or the population at large that Jesus was the Messiah.
Of course, everything in the gospels is written from a post-resurrection perspective, it was this view, that Jesus had risen from the dead, that casts a strong light over the rest of the gospels. Thus, especially Matthew then ransacked the OT for texts never previously thought of as being messianic in their scope to justify the life of Jesus.
All this is extremely odd if the evangelists weren't working under severe restraint. Otherwise, why not just up a much more OT friendly figure? Why have healings and exorcisms? Etc.
On Jesus the Mundane. The church fought for a long time to preserve the view, eventually enshrined in Chalcedonian orthodoxy, that Jesus was a true and real man. And this means that if he was more than human, he would not be fully human. Of course, the church also came to declare Jesus to be fully divine as well, but the key thing that this was without confusion with the human.
Hope that holding post keeps the wolves from the doors for a bit...
The thing I dislike is the rather stupid "your either with us or a CT'er mentality that seems to pervade the issue which I strongly object to. I'm no "myther" but nor will I accept being spoon fed subjective guesses as "facts" when the evidence is so sparse. I do find the subject fascinating and reading how historians/ scholars reach the conclusion they do and why + the evidence they believe supports such a conclusion. THEN I'll make up my own mind tyvm if either side doesn't like it they can bite me
pakeha
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Proudly refrained from googling?
What a shame to limit your experience of the available information these days.
Whether faith healing is in the margins or centre-stage, it's responsible for deaths and even lawsuits in our times.
You yourself do not believe in miracles, yet you assert
.
If this charismatic preacher didn't make miracles, how can it be described as anything but a con to use those false miracles as a selling point for a religion?
Since the claim that Jesus was a folk healer is yours, it's up to you to document it.
Whether in olden times they believed such a thing, today we know it to be false and we know someone who claims to work a miraculous healing is a charlatan.
You may be certain that even in olden times, the charlatan was well aware they were simply pulling one over on the client.
One modern example could be the infamous 'psychic surgeons'.
In the case of Jesus, this isn't the case, as is shown in the gospels.
Is Jesus recorded as being a midwife? I think not, so please stick to the topic.
Psychologist or psychotherapist? I hope you don't confuse the two!
The gluing on of Peter's ear falls directly into charlatanry, of course.
Another, that selling faith healing as miracle working is a con in any time or place.
I can assure you the perpetrator knows perfectly well that what they are doing is a con, whatever the client may believe.
You forget Mark was written for a Gentile audience, not a Jewish one. Such antics would be convincing in a Graeco-Roman culture, as you must well know.
And?
Why ever not? A Gentile audience is not a Jewish one, after all.
How does this relate to faith healing and selling the mundane as miraculous?
tsig
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The problem with that analogy shown with King Arthur and Robin Hood where there too there probably was a real human behind the sayings and traditions.
King Arthur: Myth set in 5th to 6 century; suggested historical origins-Lucius Artorius Castus (2nd to 3rd century); Riothamus (5th century), and several others.
Robin Hood: Myth set either during the time of King Richard I or a King Edward (1239-1367; they had three of them in a row) possible historical candidates similarly all over the map.
Yet suggesting of the same being true of Jesus (despite evidence that some held He had lived much earlier) are dismissed as "myther"
The thing I dislike is the rather stupid "your either with us or a CT'er mentality that seems to pervade the issue which I strongly object to. I'm no "myther" but nor will I accept being spoon fed subjective guesses as "facts" when the evidence is so sparse. I do find the subject fascinating and reading how historians/ scholars reach the conclusion they do and why + the evidence they believe supports such a conclusion. THEN I'll make up my own mind tyvm if either side doesn't like it they can bite me
As I have said before that is more to do with the term "Christ Myth" being applied to people who accepted the existed of a flesh and blood man but also said the stories of that man were fictions.
Lowpro
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I'm amazed that you can say this and then continue on with such...well it's not intelligent thinking let's put it that way.
Well, I thought that Belz said that yes, the debate here is not actual research and cannot be regarded as such, but that it still can be interesting and at times informative. I agreed and went on to speculate freely without any first hand knowlege of the sources, like everyone else here, it seems. We just use our common sense and try to guess which cited scholarly argument makes sense and which doesn't. We can't verify it ourselves but can form an opinion. On the other it makes us freer to speculate and to go beyond the sources which the historians to a large degree cannot do, or if they do it, it cannot be seen as actual research based on sources.
People here seem to patronize history as a discipline and no wonder as I guess most come from the natural science side with diamond hard facts and clear cut results. Well, history certainly is not physics, but something much more difficult! If it were as simple we would be on completely different level in our understanding, but as it is exceedingly hard to study the past, we are far from that. Fundamentally, I don't see that there can be a divide between natural and human science - everything that happens, happens in the physical world through physical events. This is why we can rely on the scientific method also in history, though in an applied form. Once we resolve simple, clear cut issues of physics and assorted sciences maybe we can devote more energy and ingenuity to go for the really hard stuff like history...
Greediguts
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The thing I dislike is the rather stupid "your either with us or a CT'er mentality that seems to pervade the issue which I strongly object to. I'm no "myther" but nor will I accept being spoon fed subjective guesses as "facts" when the evidence is so sparse. I do find the subject fascinating and reading how historians/ scholars reach the conclusion they do and why + the evidence they believe supports such a conclusion. THEN I'll make up my own mind tyvm if either side doesn't like it they can bite me
maximara, only apologists argue that all the stories are true. But also, there has been a change among what the common held view of "mythicist" is.
In this video Richard Carrier, tells everyone to forget all other mythic theories as they have never been properly vetted. He jokes after, basically saying if you don't hear it from him, it's crap (after reading his posts and the comment section regarding Atheism+, I don't know how much he is joking...) But the point is, a mythicist of the early 1900's and those most vocal today are different in many ways.
Well, that's why I think "myth" should be confined to talk of events in some sort of primeval time, and legend to things that are at least meant to be set in history.
The blanket use of myth here just creates confusion.Well, I'm a palaeobiologist, so I suppose I have one foot in both camps...
Absolutely. Biology in general seems to be relatively often patronized by the "harder" sciences... But as said, I don't think that there fundamentally are (or can be) categorical differences between natural and human sciences. It's just that we have much harder time using the scientific method on the human side due to the complexity and elusiveness of the objects of the study, so the method has to be modified, but nevertheless we clearly are talking about cumulative, scientific approach. If the postmoderns can't accept that they can go and deconstruct themselves or whatever it is that they do...
The problem is Richard Carrier himself in his "Did Jesus Even Exist?" Stanford University lecture in 2006
There is even a PDF of the handout that went with that lecture online but here is the relevant section of the handout:
Books by Contemporary Scholars Defending Ahistoricity:
Arthur Drews, The Christ Myth (1998)
Earl Doherty, The Jesus Puzzle: Did Christianity Begin with a Mythical Christ? (1999)
Harold Liedner, The Fabrication of the Christ Myth (2000)
Robert Price, Deconstructing Jesus (2000) and The Incredible Shrinking Son of Man (2003)
Thomas Thompson, The Messiah Myth: The Near Eastern Roots of Jesus and David (2005)
George Wells, The Historical Evidence for Jesus (1988); Who Was Jesus? (1989); The Jesus Legend (1993); The Jesus Myth (1998); Can We Trust the New Testament? (2005)
Please note the last three titles written by Wells; every one one of those book ACCEPTS A 1st CENTURY JESUS BEING BEHIND THE GOSPELS ie the Secular Historicity Richard Carrier talks about in the video. Yet in 2006 Richard Carrier himself labeled those books as Defending Ahistoricity. Furthermore Robert Price Price, Stanton, and Eddy-Boyd have all labeled The Jesus Legend as a "Christ Myth book":
"Christ-myth theorists like George A. Wells have argued that, if we ignore the Gospels, which were not yet written at the time of the Epistles of Paul, we can detect in the latter a prior, more transparently mythic concept of Jesus... (Price, Robert M (1999) "Of Myth and Men A closer look at the originators of the major religions-what did they really say and do?" Volume 20, Number 1 (Winter, 1999/2000) Free Inquiry magazine)
"The most thorughgoing and sophisticated statement of this (Christ myth) theory has been set out in five books by G. A Wells; the most recent is the Jesus Legend (1996) (Stanton, Graham. The Gospels and Jesus. Oxford University Press, 2002; first published 1989, p. 143.)
This makes sense as philosopher George Walsh states "The theory that Jesus was originally a myth is called the Christ-myth theory, and the theory that he was an historical individual is called the historical Jesus theory." Even though it included a historical Jesus for Q Wells' current position is Christ Myth because Paul's "mythical" Jesus came first.
Well, that's why I think "myth" should be confined to talk of events in some sort of primeval time, and legend to things that are at least meant to be set in history.
Sadly even scholars have different meanings for the term "myth" with it being broadened out to any traditional story to address all the variant definitions out there:
Doty, William. Myth: A Handbook. Westport: Greenwood, 2004.
Dunes, Alan. "Madness in Method Plus a Plea for Projective Inversion in Myth". Myth and Method. Ed. Laurie Patton and Wendy Doniger. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1996. p. 147
Kirk, G.S. Myth: Its Meaning and Functions in Ancient and Other Cultures. Berkeley: Cambridge University Press, 1973. pg 74
Kirk, G.S. "On Defining Myths". Sacred Narrative: Readings in the Theory of Myth. Ed. Alan Dundes. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984. pg 57.
Segal, Robert. Myth: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2004. p. 5
Simpson, Michael. Introduction. Apollodorus. Gods and Heroes of the Greeks. Trans. Michael Simpson. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1976. p. 3
Remsburg stated this fact over hundred years ago and it is still true.
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