What counts as a historical Jesus?

[Piggy]

"We are absolutely certain that Jesus existed. No one takes the alternatives seriously, and to say otherwise marks you as a crank. Furthermore, you should learn the whole field by yourself rather than ask me for evidence, and if not you are slandering thousands of people in the world who are more knowledgeable than you, are above reproach, and love their families. Won't you think of their families ?"

1. There is an overwhelming consensus among experts in all relevant fields that Jesus existed. That's a fact.

2. No one in any of those fields takes any no-Jesus "alternatives" seriously because they've all long been debunked and therefore are not present in current peer-reviewed literature. This is also a fact.

3. No-Jesus ideas are absent in peer-reviewed literature, as they are considered debunked by historians, anthropologists, archaeologists, linguists, and all other professionals involved in ANE studies; yet they persist as contrarian notions in non-academic circles... which is what "crank" scholarship is. This, too, is a fact.

4. Evidence has been provided here for many, many points. And the process is ongoing. No one has refused to ever provide evidence. What has been refused is a request by people who call the scholarship "argument from authority" and demand to be given the raw evidence to come to conclusions for themselves which they would not be able to come to (because they're unqualified) even if access could be granted to the actual core evidence. No one's saying you have to go learn it all -- we're saying that if you insist on arguing about a question which you admit not knowing anything about, it would be best if you either (a) didn't argue for a position, (b) did some legwork yourself first so you're in a position to argue one way or another, or (c) have a modicum of respect for experts in the field.

5. Asserting that an entire field -- in fact, several interrelated fields -- of degreed professionals at accredited institutions publishing in peer-reviewed journals are all wrong about a conclusion for which there is an astoundingly broad consensus, insinuating that they're all incompetent or biased... yeah, that's "slandering thousands of people in the world who are more knowledgeable than you".

 

[Belz...]

Sorry, but all of that is wrong.

What I've said is that all the evidence points to HJ, and so far nobody has been able to concoct a scenario without HJ that fits everything we know.

Well it would be a lot easier if we had any evidence in this thread for us to work with.

 

[Belz...]

You. will. take. back. what. you. said. NOW.

Careful, there's that temper again.

You did say we had eyewitnesses when in fact we have none.

I can't say if you've ever said it was certain, but piggy certainly did when he said the alternatives are crank and no one takes MJ seriously.

 

[Belz...]

4. Evidence has been provided here for many, many points.

And so he it is. You think that conclusions are the evidence, so I was right: we'll never get any evidence from you. We get conclusions and part of the reasoning, but that's it.

5. Asserting that an entire field -- in fact, several interrelated fields -- of degreed professionals at accredited institutions publishing in peer-reviewed journals are all wrong about a conclusion for which there is an astoundingly broad consensus, insinuating that they're all incompetent or biased... yeah, that's "slandering thousands of people in the world who are more knowledgeable than you".

We're not asserting anything, dammit. We are asking for the evidence, because we don't see it. Quit strawmanning everybody. I also see you skipped over the much more reasonable first version I wrote.

 

[tsig]

Oh?

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=9261295&postcount=2380

"a scholarly consensus that a strictly human Jesus the teacher is more likely historical than not"

You. will. take. back. what. you. said. NOW.

Stone

Threats? Why are HJers so passionate?

 

[jond]

Sorry, but all of that is wrong.

What I've said is that all the evidence points to HJ, and so far nobody has been able to concoct a scenario without HJ that fits everything we know. Therefore, there is an overwhelming consensus that Jesus lived and was crucified.

No one disagrees there.

I have also said that mythicism is crank, which is true -- it's an outsider contrarian idea which has been debunked by academic scholars but which lives on in the vanity press, homemade websites, and online videos but has no presence in peer-reviewed literature. That's what "crank" is.

OK, but then you go on to call everyone who isn't 100% certain a mythicist.

Also, it makes no sense to say "if you remove the name Jesus and all the connotations associated with it, you're left without a whole lot to go on".

You seem to be implying that the "name Jesus" is somehow striking fear and confusion into the hearts of otherwise reliable scholars -- the same scholars who have debunked all the other traditional views about the Bible that have been discarded, many of whom are Jewish or simply not religious at all.

And if writings by his followers, dating back to a few years after his death, including letters from someone who knew his inner circle personally, is not "a whole lot to go on", then you're simply unfamiliar with history.

The point is that if you had the same quantity of evidence for a cult that didn't end up flourishing as Christianity did, you'd be far less likely to give it the same consideration. It seems fair that you'd be more inclined to put forth a statement like "more likely that not."

Belz's statement is OK for someone who hasn't studied the subject much, but it's simply not accurate for someone who has studied the topic, including the historical background.

 

[tsig]

Just another note re. questioning the "official story" from an uninformed standpoint….

If I decided that, for some reason, I thought everyone who studied the 9/11 disaster and contributed to the investigation were somehow unreliable -- without actually knowing what their findings were -- would it be reasonable to demand that somebody show me the evidence upon which those findings were based, so I could make up my own mind?

No, of course not.

First of all, nobody COULD show me the evidence. It's not available to me. All they can do is cite the investigations.

Second, even if the actual evidence were available to me, I'm not a structural engineer or disaster scene investigator, so I wouldn't know what to do with it.

So with regard to the accepted letters of Paul, for example, nobody here could possibly post the evidence upon which experts on the Ancient Near East base their conclusions, and even if that evidence could be made available, nobody here would possess all the skills necessary to draw accurate conclusions from all of it.

Which means: A GIVEN PERSON'S LACK OF FAMILIARITY WITH THE FIELD IS NOT A LEGITIMATE BASIS FOR QUESTIONING THE CONCLUSIONS OF EXPERTS IN THE FIELD.

And since understanding the basis for such conclusions -- say, regarding which (if any) writings of Paul are good copies of originals by Paul -- depends on understanding a great deal about the customs, people, language, even geography of an ancient time and place and culture, the amount of evidence one would need to examine in order to come to a conclusion about any single point is tremendous.

This is why baseless objections to the credentials of everyone in the field of ANE studies, and baseless objections to their conclusions, are simply non-starters.

There are literally infinite possible arguments from ignorance to be made, and entertaining them only stops discussion.

If objections are to be made, they must have substance.

There must be some REASON, for example, to suspect that an entire field is populated with Christian religious "fanatics" (even the Jews and atheists), or that everyone in ANE studies forgets how to evaluate evidence when it comes to this point alone, or that widely supported conclusions are in error, before any time is wasted discussing such suspicions.

It's not enough to say "Well, I don't know anything about the research, therefore I might be correct that it's all bunk."

That's how Truthers operate. But it's not how skeptics should behave.

I see you'd rather play with your straw men than engage in a discussion.

You keep demanding that we take a HJ on faith but it's not how skeptics should behave

 

[tsig]

…sorry…I guess I forgot to mention the part where I travelled back in time and had a beer with Jesus…or the four years I spent studying classical history…or the four years I spent studying ancient languages…or the four years that I spent on archeological digs in the middle east…and sometime in the middle of all that I got a degree in accounting and a job in the local government and bought a house and had a life.

Just because you have the ability to parrot the phrase ‘appeal to authority, appeal to authority, appeal to authority’ ad inifinitum does it therefore follow that we should question the credibility of the authority?

How about we use the LHC as an analogy. Tens of billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of man hours of expertise went into its design, construction, and operation. Similar resources have gone into the lives of those who plan and analyze the experiments that are done with it. Are you going to accept the conclusions of these folks…or are you going to insist on going out and getting your own degrees in theoretical physics and the multitude of other disciplines that are required to deal with the issues related the LHC?

Point being…when the consensus in the field of theoretical physics is that a Higgs Boson exists…I (and, presumably, the other 6 billion people on the planet who don’t have a physics degree) accept the results presented to us by the relevant authorities. When those at the pinnacle of a very specialized discipline use words like ‘universal agreement’ it is reasonable for those of us who are not experts to conclude that there is a satisfactory degree of consensus on the issue.

The same analogy can be applied to an almost infinite range of issues. This is a world overflowing with information and specialization. The moment you open your eyes in the morning you immediately become utterly dependent, to one degree or another, on means and mechanisms derived from some variety of authority. But not you…you make the effort to “strain your brain” because you require “substantially more.” Congratulations.

There’s a difference between debating different propositions in an effort to challenge, enlighten and entertain…and actually dismissing (and disparaging) the conclusions of the professionals in the field you are debating. This is what is happening here.

Acleron, for example, is flatly accusing the entire field of academic fraud. Many of the rest of you are suggesting or implying similar positions.

…a convenient example fortuitously presents itself…




So the evidence that a Higgs Boson exists is that there is an overwhelming consensus that it does?????? …or did you come across one in your morning sludge?





The fact that authorities and experts in a very very very specialized field feel compelled to use words like ‘universal agreement’ when describing a certain conclusion is, itself, evidence of the veracity of the conclusion. I don’t have multiple years to waste getting a degree in all the disciplines required to come to a thoroughly informed and credible conclusion on the issues. Therefore, I, like the majority of intelligent human beings, refer to the conclusions of credible authorities (some of whom post at JREF). When there is an obvious consensus on an issue (as there is in this case), it makes that process much simpler.

Thing is…if you folks are going to make these ridiculous accusations (that the entire field of biblical scholarship is riddled with frauds) then present something more than your own obviously biased opinions to substantiate the position.




Where have the pro-HJers not admitted any uncertainty? About the only thing they do agree on (from the various links that I have explored) is that Jesus did exist (along with one or two major events in his life). When it comes to just about everything else in his life, there are varying degrees of conflict.

So basically you are suggesting that those who support this ‘universal agreement’ (a group that would, at present, appear to include multiple academics at virtually every university on the planet) are both academic and personal frauds. Academic frauds because they ‘cite themselves’, they ‘redefine the rules of evidence’, they ‘fail to provide evidence for their conclusions’, they ‘stifle opposition’, they are ‘misguided and entrenched’, they do not encourage ‘free and active discussion’. Personal frauds because they ‘smear opponents’… and personal frauds because their professional behavior seems to be just about entirely in question.

Perhaps this discussion should be moved over to the conspiracy thread….cause that’s what this sounds like. What is the first rule of conspiracies? Investigate the accuser.




They’re ‘just plain wrong’. Yeah…that’s the first conclusion I come to when I hear words like ‘universal assent’.

I’m making more of this than there is????? I’m not the one slandering thousands of academics and disputing the clearly accepted conclusion of an entire field of scholarship. I notice you’re quite happy to defend this position.

Quite telling.

No, The evidence for the existence of the Higgs Boson is what the LHC was built to investigate. When do you suppose they will build a HJ detector?

 

[Belz...]

No, The evidence for the existence of the Higgs Boson is what the LHC was built to investigate. When do you suppose they will build a HJ detector?

The Large Jesus Collider. That would be awesome.

We throw the Gospels into an accelerator which throws them against each other and the end result is real history.

 

[Aepervius]

If you want to understand who the founder of a movement was, the very earliest writings of the members of the movement are one of your best sources, regardless of whether those writings are history or fiction or propaganda or whatever.

Eliminating your best sources of information is not wise.

Setting aside historically-unreliable , biased source is wise. Independent source are far far less discutable than biased source. ETA: ANd by that I mean your "we are sure" is way overrated.

We know that Troie exists because archelogical evidence were found.
Not because somebody wrote about a war and gods and helene.
On the other hand existence of Atlantis is disputed.
And the angel moroni don't exists existence is disputed.
And those alien creature were not dropped into vulcan being dropped in vulcan existence is disputed. .

La guerre de Jesus n'aura pas lieu.

 

[Belz...]

Setting aside historically-unreliable , biased source is wise.

I wouldn't say we should set them aside. But we should be very skeptical of any claims they make. They are valuable information on whoever wrote them and the context of their creation, but they are not reliable sources of evidence for the claims they make.

La guerre de Jesus n'aura pas lieu.

What war ?

 

[JaysonR]

Alright, so; [forward in spoiler]

this is tedious to pursue forward, and I must admit a feeling of slight hesitance on my part due to an odd quandary.

I can't refer to second-hand (those in the fields) information, as that has been requested to not be done, as such is not itself evidence.
I can't go at length into the circumstantial details for a proposition because doing so would require a massive amount of background reading on comparative linguistics and socio-anthropology, and that has been requested to not be done as it feels like a fallacy of proof by verbosity.
I cannot offer any physical evidence because there isn't any.
I cannot address that a lack of physical evidence is not a problem in history, as it does not function by physical evidence alone, or often, for ancient peoples, because this comes off as a red herring.

So I must produce historical evidence for the proposition of an historical Jesus that is not already in contest here, what I must produce must be material evidence and not a summary of investigations into the matter, but I must keep it simple and brief in an assumption that the evidence will speak for itself (even though the very first anthropology course I took began on day one with the exclusive statement to, "never let the evidence speak for itself, as it does not."), and I must produce it without requiring anyone to understand why the material stands as evidence outside of the presentation of itself for what it is.

Or, at least; that's somewhat the gist that I get from reading along all this while.

I have to say; this is a very challenging task (and an odd one; these wouldn't be the standards within the field [I'm not saying this as evidence of Jesus, but for case in point; again, look at Hippocrates. That fellow wouldn't be accepted under these conditions, and really...these conditions aren't what you'll find outlined in the field...but anyway]).

Let's see what I can do...

For me, I lean to the direction that Jesus existed.
I could go through allot of logical discussions, which by far are very strong supporting considerations, but I understand that folks aren't interested in contextual considerations - they just want the facts.

Well, for direct material that is absent of any discourse of context and cultural tendencies, "the facts are these" (as Pushing Daisies narrates):

One Letter by Mara Bar-Serapion written no earlier than 73 CE and not later than the 1st c CE.

What are we to say, when the wise are dragged by force by the hands of tyrants, and their wisdom is deprived of its freedom by slander, and they are plundered for their superior intelligence, without the opportunity of making a defence? They are not wholly to be pitied. For what benefit did the Athenians obtain by putting Socrates to death, seeing that they received as retribution for it famine and pestilence? Or the people of Samos by the burning of Pythagoras, seeing that in one hour the whole of their country was covered with sand? Or the Jews by the murder of their Wise King, seeing that from that very time their kingdom was driven away from them? For with justice did God grant a recompense to the wisdom of all three of them. For the Athenians died by famine; and the people of Samos were covered by the sea without remedy; and the Jews, brought to desolation and expelled from their kingdom, are driven away into every land. Nay, Socrates did “not” die, because of Plato; nor yet Pythagoras, because of the statue of Hera; nor yet the Wise King, because of the new laws which he enacted.

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Ante-...c_Documents/A_Letter_of_Mara,_Son_of_Serapion

One document titled, The Lives of the Twelve Caesars and within that, the chapter The Life of Claudius by Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus : ~120 CE

He forbade men of foreign birth to use the Roman names so far as those of the clans were concerned. Those who usurped the privileges of Roman citizenship he executed in the Esquiline field. He restored to the senate the provinces of Achaia and Macedonia, which Tiberius had taken into his own charge. He deprived the Lycians of their independence because of deadly intestine feuds, and restored theirs to the Rhodians, since they had given up their former faults. He allowed the people of Ilium perpetual exemption from tribute, on the ground that they were the founders of the Roman race, reading an ancient letter of the senate and people of Rome written in Greek to king Seleucus, in which they promised him their friendship and alliance only on condition that he should keep their kinsfolk of Ilium free from every burden. Since the Jews constantly made disturbances at the instigation of Chrestus, he expelled them from Rome.

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Lives_of_the_Twelve_Caesars/Claudius#25


Despite my (admittedly so far limited and incomplete) education telling me to not just toss evidence out like this without also presenting an accompanying contextual argument that (in this case) presents a comparative analysis of these articles to the event asserted (i.e. Jesus existed), I'll leave it as this and see what happens next.

 

[Stone]

Careful, there's that temper again.

You did say we had eyewitnesses when in fact we have none.

You cannot say categorically we have none. Read over what I said.

Stone

 

[Stone]

Threats? Why are HJers so passionate?

The same reason why many skeptics are passionate against fundies. Fundies peddle woo, and it's infuriating and destructive.

Stone

 

[Belz...]

You cannot say categorically we have none.

You said maybe Josephus' family could have met James. That's peachy. But even if that is true, we still have to find out if A) the "brother of the lord" bit was originally there and B) if James in Paul's letter was actually supposed to be the literal brother of Jesus in the first place.

In other words, although it's a possibility, it's far, far from a certainty. I'm not even sure I could call it likely.

 

[tsig]

The same reason why many skeptics are passionate against fundies. Fundies peddle woo, and it's infuriating and destructive.

Stone

So by asking the question "What counts as a HJ?" I'm a fundie and a woo? I'd think that the only ones to get this emotional would be Christians.

I think you have a sweet spot in your heart for Jesus.

 

[Piggy]

No one disagrees there.



OK, but then you go on to call everyone who isn't 100% certain a mythicist.



The point is that if you had the same quantity of evidence for a cult that didn't end up flourishing as Christianity did, you'd be far less likely to give it the same consideration. It seems fair that you'd be more inclined to put forth a statement like "more likely that not."

Mythicism is this group's own term for itself. It is the mythicist view that there was no historical Jesus.

If someone wants to suggest another term, that's fine (but I draw the line at "Jesus skeptic", can't go there).

Your last point is simply wrong. That scenario exists only in your imagination.

What happened to the Jesus movement after the 1st century is entirely irrelevant to my arguments, and if the movement had vanished after 100 years but we still had the evidence we have today for the 1st 100 years (not really possible, but for argument's sake) we would come to the same conclusion.

 

[Piggy]

Setting aside historically-unreliable , biased source is wise. Independent source are far far less discutable than biased source. ETA: ANd by that I mean your "we are sure" is way overrated.

We know that Troie exists because archelogical evidence were found.
Not because somebody wrote about a war and gods and helene.
On the other hand existence of Atlantis is disputed.
And the angel moroni don't exists existence is disputed.
And those alien creature were not dropped into vulcan being dropped in vulcan existence is disputed. .

La guerre de Jesus n'aura pas lieu.

By that argument, nothing written by Hitler or the Nazis has anything to tell us about who they were and who Hitler was... nothing can be gleaned from their propaganda posters or Nazi defense testimony at war trials.

Which is grossly incorrect.

And if you disagree with the overwhelming academic consensus on this matter, perhaps you could provide some actual support for your contrarian views, based on something other than a misunderstanding of historical methods.

 

[tsig]

delete dup

 

[tsig]

Mythicism is this group's own term for itself. It is the mythicist view that there was no historical Jesus.

If someone wants to suggest another term, that's fine (but I draw the line at "Jesus skeptic", can't go there).

Your last point is simply wrong. That scenario exists only in your imagination.

What happened to the Jesus movement after the 1st century is entirely irrelevant to my arguments, and if the movement had vanished after 100 years but we still had the evidence we have today for the 1st 100 years (not really possible, but for argument's sake) we would come to the same conclusion.

Why do you continue to insist that we all must belong to some group? Demonizing your opponent is a cheap trick but I guess you have to go with what you know.