What counts as a historical Jesus?

[ddt]

Here are the claims JP made in another thread about the historicity of Jesus, before I pointed him to this thread to elaborate on his claims.

Interesting questions.

"How much ability to think do you need if you already created the universe and know how it all plays out in the end?"

This is a question that typically stumps even the most orthodox of Christians.

But God changes His mind -- and He's given us Free Will. Free. Including the ability to do the exact opposite of what God wants.

there's some wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff I could bore you with, to try and explain the relationship of God, located outside of space and time, with those located within -- but the real answer to your question is simply "dunno".

"As for people, I can't see why adding a probably mythical person to the equation would assist critical thought"

That's backwards.

Critical thinking exists entirely independently of one's religious opinions.

Furthermore, the Christ is one of the most independently evidenced figures of 1st century History.

The only meaningful question concerning the Christ is if he is or is not God Himself. Anything else is just a quibbling over details.

I've no idea why you need the full laundry list -- the 10-15 or so New Testament authors all attest to His existence ; via not just the greatest number of ancient manuscripts, but the oldest of them too (barring some papyrus and lithic exceptions).

There is no other ancient figure as well-attested by copies of ancient reports than the Christ.

It is unreasonable and illogical to suppose His non-existence.

Whether you believe Him to be God or not is of course a separate question.

The historicity of the Christ is pretty hard to challenge.

A question for clarification: do you claim that Jesus is better attested than, say, Caesar?

 

[JabbaPapa]

A question for clarification: do you claim that Jesus is better attested than, say, Caesar?

No -- nor have I claimed such.

"There is no other ancient figure as well-attested by copies of ancient reports than the Christ" does not mean "Christ is better attested than Caesar" -- it is a simple comment about manuscript evidence.

 

[JabbaPapa]

Right after you demonstrate that Jesus is the most documented person in the 1st century.

I've claimed no such thing.

Your turn, now.

Please can you demonstrate the validity of your apparent claim that the New Testament is evidence-free.

(trying to reverse the burden of proof, shame)

(trying to impose burden of proof on others for your own false interpretations, shame)

 

[ddt]

No -- nor have I claimed such.

So what does your sentence:

There is no other ancient figure as well-attested by copies of ancient reports than the Christ.

mean then?

 

[The Norseman]

Ninja'd!

 

[JabbaPapa]

Ninja'd!

Me ?

No.

I can't help it if people desire to misinterpret statements about manuscript evidence as meaning other than what they state.

 

[IanS]

Are the stories written when Yeshua was little considered accurate or not? If so, why? If not, why not?

(BTW, this is not necessarily aimed at you, IanS. Your post just reminded me of it.)

Sorry, you will have to enlighten me ... which accounts of Jesus as a child are you thinking of?

 

[ddt]

No -- nor have I claimed such.

"There is no other ancient figure as well-attested by copies of ancient reports than the Christ" does not mean "Christ is better attested than Caesar" -- it is a simple comment about manuscript evidence.

Oh, so that's your tactic? Edit the real meat of the post in after it has already been reacted to?

So your argument only boils down to "We have 4,000 copies of the NT !!11eleventy!". That's a really boring argument and entirely irrelevant to the existence of Jesus. The powers that be were Jesus fanboys, so they copied Jesus fanfic rather than histories of, say, Julius Caesar. Well, the officially accredited Jesus fanfic, the heretic fanfic was destroyed as much as possible.

 

[The Norseman]

Me ?

No.

I can't help it if people desire to misinterpret statements about manuscript evidence as meaning other than what they state.

No, not you, by ddt when he posted

No -- nor have I claimed such.

So what does your sentence:

There is no other ancient figure as well-attested by copies of ancient reports than the Christ.

mean then?

(highlighting mine)

 

[Dinwar]

I've claimed no such thing.

Your turn, now.

Please can you demonstrate the validity of your apparent claim that the New Testament is evidence-free.

It's not that the book is evidence-free; it's that the book is irrelevant. It has yet to be vetted in a systematic fashion, many of the stories that have been analyzed have been found to be historically inaccurate in specific ways (no tax in the 1st century required people going to the cities of their fathers, for example--the Roman tax system didn't work like that), and in general the stories are just that: stories. We cannot, from a scientific standpoint, assume that they are correct in the absence of corroborating data. They may be right or wrong; that's not the question. Until hard data are provided, they are irrelevant.

Remember, the question of Jesus' historical accuracy is an archaeological one, no different from the question of Caeser's or Arthur's historical accuracy. The stories about these people (including the true ones--stories are stories, fiction or non) may provide a place to start looking for evidence, but in science they do not themselves constitute evidence.

And in science the default is that you're wrong. EVERYONE is wrong. You only can be not wrong if you have evidence to back up your claim. Asking someone to back up any claim with evidence isn't shifting the burden of proof, and saying "There's insufficient data to accept that argument" isn't either. YOU want to use the Bible as proof, YOU provide the data to support it. Otherwise, it's just so many stories of unknown provenance.

 

[The Norseman]

Sorry, you will have to enlighten me ... which accounts of Jesus as a child are you thinking of?

The infancy gospels of Thomas.

http://gnosis.org/library/inftoma.htm

 

[ddt]

Me ?

No.

I can't help it if people desire to misinterpret statements about manuscript evidence as meaning other than what they state.

We could have discussion of what constitutes "reports". Coins and inscriptions etc. are also reports. And they're much more pertinent as they're contemporary, whereas most if not all manuscripts are much later copies.

Your phrasing is dishonest.

 

[Dinwar]

Oh, so that's your tactic? Edit the real meat of the post in after it has already been reacted to?

So your argument only boils down to "We have 4,000 copies of the NT !!11eleventy!". That's a really boring argument and entirely irrelevant to the existence of Jesus. The powers that be were Jesus fanboys, so they copied Jesus fanfic rather than histories of, say, Julius Caesar. Well, the officially accredited Jesus fanfic, the heretic fanfic was destroyed as much as possible.

Actually, they copied both. The Benadictine orders had a long argument about that (like, across several lifetimes), but in the end they decided to include non-biblical and non-religious works in the books monks could copy (monks were the only people with TIME to copy books, for the most part). This was in part to keep up with the Benadictine injunction to read one book each Lent; they needed sufficient numbers of books to pass out to all the monks.

But again, they were monks. The religious texts got more coverage.

From an archaeological perspective, the number of Bibles is quite irrelevant; they count as copies of the same record. So we have three sources for information on Jesus: the Bible, Jospehus, and Tacitus. The Josephus reference is, as I understand it, highly questionable (it may be a forgery). The Biblical evidence is known to be heavily edited and altered for reasons other than historical accuracy (whole books, referenced by the Bible, have been removed--see AronRa's "Foundational Falsehoods of Creationism" for which ones [I think it's the second or third; the whole series is good]). We can therefore ignore the Bible--not dismiss it as false, but ignore it as distracting (biases are insidious). That leaves Tacitus. Anyone got any information on him?

 

[IanS]

No -- nor have I claimed such.

"There is no other ancient figure as well-attested by copies of ancient reports than the Christ" .... etc.

There are probably quite a few copies of the bible from roughly the 4th century onwards.

Is it that biblical writing you are referring to as "ancient reports" of " the Christ "?

 

[ddt]

Actually, they copied both. The Benadictine orders had a long argument about that (like, across several lifetimes), but in the end they decided to include non-biblical and non-religious works in the books monks could copy (monks were the only people with TIME to copy books, for the most part). This was in part to keep up with the Benadictine injunction to read one book each Lent; they needed sufficient numbers of books to pass out to all the monks.

But again, they were monks. The religious texts got more coverage.

Oh yes, I agree. I was a bit sloppy in my writing and didn't mean to imply the didn't copy the Roman and Greek writers at all, just on a much more limited scale than that they copied the Bible.

From an archaeological perspective, the number of Bibles is quite irrelevant; they count as copies of the same record. So we have three sources for information on Jesus: the Bible, Jospehus, and Tacitus. The Josephus reference is, as I understand it, highly questionable (it may be a forgery). The Biblical evidence is known to be heavily edited and altered for reasons other than historical accuracy (whole books, referenced by the Bible, have been removed--see AronRa's "Foundational Falsehoods of Creationism" for which ones [I think it's the second or third; the whole series is good]). We can therefore ignore the Bible--not dismiss it as false, but ignore it as distracting (biases are insidious). That leaves Tacitus. Anyone got any information on him?

AFAIK, the Tacitus reference is considered authentic by most historians. It is quite short, it only says that the Chrestians (sic) were the followers of Christ who got the severest penalty during the rule of Pilate.

There are two references in Josephus. The most extensive one, the Testimonium Flavianum, is certainly a partial interpolation because it calls him the Messiah. Here is an interesting blog post which argues it is actually more in the style of Eusebius than in the style of Josephus. The other is the "James the brother of Jesus" reference which is also suspect - as in that it doesn't mean Jesus Christ but another Jesus.

The earliest biblical reference to Jesus is in Paul's letters. Paul gives us really little on his bio - only that he was crucified and resurrected - and he also seems hardly interested in Jesus' teachings but rather more in his own. The gospels are much later and it is quite on the mark, IMHO, to describe them as fanfic.

 

[JabbaPapa]

Oh, so that's your tactic? Edit the real meat of the post in after it has already been reacted to?

Before having read any replies to it, in any case -- if I'd seen those replies I would not have edited the posts, I would have responded to the comments instead ; by saying exactly the same thing.

I had realised that my original phrasing was far too unclear FWIW

So your argument only boils down to "We have 4,000 copies of the NT !!11eleventy!". That's a really boring argument and entirely irrelevant to the existence of Jesus.

No it isn't -- it is a significant philological argument, both that the texts are of ancient origin and have not been modified through the centuries, and that they were considered as being truthful at least insofar as their historical contents are concerned during 1st and 2nd centuries AD.

 

[JabbaPapa]

There are probably quite a few copies of the bible from roughly the 4th century onwards.

Is it that biblical writing you are referring to as "ancient reports" of " the Christ "?

The oldest texts of the New Testament are not contained in the oldest surviving copies of it. They are found in later copies of earlier and more faithful copies that are no longer extant.

Computer assisted philology has provided us with extremely good quality biblical texts, with all copying errors and the occasional mediaeval interpolations corrected and excised.

 

[JabbaPapa]

Your phrasing is dishonest.

No it isn't -- your interpretation of it seems to have been erroneous.

 

[JabbaPapa]

It's not that the book is evidence-free; it's that the book is irrelevant. It has yet to be vetted in a systematic fashion, many of the stories that have been analyzed have been found to be historically inaccurate in specific ways (no tax in the 1st century required people going to the cities of their fathers, for example--the Roman tax system didn't work like that), and in general the stories are just that: stories. We cannot, from a scientific standpoint, assume that they are correct in the absence of corroborating data. They may be right or wrong; that's not the question. Until hard data are provided, they are irrelevant.

Remember, the question of Jesus' historical accuracy is an archaeological one, no different from the question of Caeser's or Arthur's historical accuracy. The stories about these people (including the true ones--stories are stories, fiction or non) may provide a place to start looking for evidence, but in science they do not themselves constitute evidence.

And in science the default is that you're wrong. EVERYONE is wrong. You only can be not wrong if you have evidence to back up your claim. Asking someone to back up any claim with evidence isn't shifting the burden of proof, and saying "There's insufficient data to accept that argument" isn't either. YOU want to use the Bible as proof, YOU provide the data to support it. Otherwise, it's just so many stories of unknown provenance.

You are confusing the nature of evidence in the Humanities with the nature of evidence in the material sciences.

Contents of Ancient manuscripts are evidence of what they are describing in relation to Antiquity. The contents of Caesar's Gallic War are evidence of events described by Caesar in that work. The Bible does not exist in some sort of special magical category of "non-evidence" simply by virtue of your personal feelings regarding its contents.

"YOU want to use the Bible as proof"

I have specifically stated that it contains evidence, not "proof".

"The stories about these people (including the true ones--stories are stories, fiction or non) may provide a place to start looking for evidence, but in science they do not themselves constitute evidence"

This is a nonsensical statement -- the ONLY motivation for archaeological investigation in such a scenario is precisely that an Ancient manuscript is held to have provided evidence that the Archaeologist concludes that he should investigate. The absence of archaeological evidence is the absence of a particular type of evidence, NOT a complete absence of any evidence whatsoever.

<i>We cannot, from a scientific standpoint, assume that they are correct in the absence of corroborating data. They may be right or wrong</i>

And I've no idea why you are gratuitously suggesting that my approach is somehow contrary to this principle. Are you reading your own notions into what I've written ?

 

[IanS]

The infancy gospels of Thomas.

http://gnosis.org/library/inftoma.htm

OK, well that is not a “gospel” that I’m at all familiar with. But a quick look in wikipedia suggests to me that it is in the same evidential category as the four canonical gospels. That is - it’s not reliable evidence at all.

Like the canonical gospels, the Infancy Gospel appears again to be from an unknown author relaying stories (of yet more miracles) from an unknown(?) source, written at an unknown date, and presumably like the canonical four, not known in any relatively complete and readable form except from copies made centuries after the supposed lifetime of Jesus.

If that’s the case, ie if it suffers from those same problems as the canonical gospels, then objectively it’s of little or no use as evidence of Jesus.