What counts as a historical Jesus?

[Belz...]

This is an interesting point and it wouldn't surprise me that the association of the crucifixion with Pilate didn't begin until around the time Mark was written. But we can't know that can we?

No, but some people like to think they can.

 

[Craig B]

... And please do not tell me that a careful reading of Paul’s letter describing his vision of Jesus does not literally or certainly claim that his vision was also on that same “3rd day”, because we have been through all of that too over the past few pages. The point on that (for the 4th or 5th time), is that readers of those letters in the first century, and certainly listeners hearing a verbally preached version of what had been said by Paul, could very easily and very obviously have understood it to mean that Paul who was one day on the road to Damascus between 30-36AD saw a vision of Jesus who had risen on the 3rd day after his crucifixion. That is very obvious. ...

To say that instead of that fully and completely referenced early writing from Paul, you would prefer instead to invent the idea that if Jesus existed then there must have been eye-witnesses to his execution and hence when the gospels say that Pilate executed Jesus, that must be because the gospel authors had heard it from those eye-witnesses, is so patently absurd … and if it did not sound like an insult I would say it was beneath you and rather sad that you can believe such obviously illogical reasoning (perhaps you are letting religious faith colour your judgement here?).

We have insufficient point of contact in terms of our understanding of what is obvious and what is not to make further discussion worth while. Your ad hom last sentence requires no response from me. I'm glad you didn't say what you told me you wouldn't say because it would sound like an insult. Well, it would have done. So I'm glad you didn't say it.

Have a nice day.

 

[IanS]

I don’t mention writers like Irenaeus for the simple reason that there really can be no evidential value in hearsay writing from people who were not even born at the time of the events.

But that is not how I am using Irenaeus. I am using him to show the ideas and Gospels (in some form) were existent c180 CE.

Sure. But that does not contradict anything I've said.

The point about any writing from much later authors such as Irenaeus is that at best they can only be recounting hearsay as far as Jesus is concerned. Not to mention the fact that if the writing of Irenaues is anything like that of Josephus and Tacitus, then we do not have anything they ever wrote in 180AD, and so cannot really know what they ever wrote about Jesus if we are relying on copies made many centuries later (11th century in the case of Josephus and Tacitus).

Their later writing is unnecessary anyway. Because the story of Pilate and the execution was already in circulation from a very early date in the preaching and writing of Paul.

Actually we don't know that. The majority of modern scholarship says that First Timothy, Second Timothy and Titus were not written by Paul and are late 1st century to mid 2nd century creations ie later then the Gospels. (Collins, Raymond F. (2004) 1 & 2 Timothy and Titus: A Commentary. Westminster John Knox Press. p. 4 ISBN 0-664-22247-1)

Well we don’t “know” anything for certain in anything ever written or said about Jesus. But even mid 2nd century would still be very early re. 1-Timothy.

As far as the gospels are concerned - the point I made to Craig was that we do not have any complete and fully readable gospels until at least the 4th century. Before that all that is known are fragments of various gospels. But unless Craig can show that he has found references to Pilate in fragments that definitely pre-date the writing of 1-Timothy, then he has no case on that basis at all.

However, even if you could show that a fragment contained such reference to Pilate, that would still be virtually useless because as early as 1-Corinthians Paul had already recorded that since his vision in circa. 30-36AD he had been verbally preaching that he had seen a vision of Jesus who had according to scripture, risen on the third day (see my previous replies to Craig on that point, ie re. proper interpretation of the sentence etc.).

This means that the idea that Pilate was involved with the crucifixion of Jesus came after Paul's supposed martyrdom c67 and before the writing of the first Gospel, Mark sometime after 70 CE...we don't when and some have suggested as late as 85 CE for it.

No that does not follow at all. See my previous explanations regarding 1-Corinthians, from which it is perfectly obvious that the faithful could very easily have taken Paul’s words to mean that Jesus had been executed close to the day of Paul’s vision.

 

[IanS]

We have insufficient point of contact in terms of our understanding of what is obvious and what is not to make further discussion worth while. Your ad hom last sentence requires no response from me. I'm glad you didn't say what you told me you wouldn't say because it would sound like an insult. Well, it would have done. So I'm glad you didn't say it.

Have a nice day.

OK, well it was not actually meant as an "ad hom". I was in fact genuinely wondering whether or not you are a Christian who believes in Jesus anyway (regardless of this thread), and I wondered if that might be the explanation for the way you seem to analysing the gospels to conclude that they were probably written from eye-witness accounts.

Because that is in effect exactly the same thing as assuming Jesus must have existed in the first place.

I agree that the gospel writers, who were not eye-witnesses themselves, must have got the story from somewhere. But whichever way you look at it, Paul's letters are a known source, agreed by everyone to pre-date the gospels (importantly, including any extant complete & readable copies of any gospels), which very clearly do contain Paul's statement that from the date of his conversion in the mid 30's AD, he had been preaching that Jesus had risen on the third day according to scripture and that he and many others had actually seen the risen Jesus.

Now as I said from the very start many pages back - a careful reading of that sentence in 1-Corinthians shows that Paul is not necessarily saying his vision was actually on that 3rd day. But at the time of Paul’s writing circa.50AD it could very easily have been taken to mean that, and would no doubt have sounded much more like that in the verbal preaching of the story which Paul had been doing since the mid 30's AD.

And that's even apart from the actual naming of Pilate in 1-Timothy from a date usually given as the start of the 2nd century.


So that is very obviously a source of the idea that Jesus was executed at the time of Pilate. And I just wonder how it is that you don't see that as far more persuasive than simply inventing an idea that later gospel writers would have had eye-witnesses to the execution who thus would also have been eye witnesses to the certainty of Jesus existing!

 

[davefoc]

...

So that is very obviously a source of the idea that Jesus was executed at the time of Pilate. And I just wonder how it is that you don't see that as far more persuasive than simply inventing an idea that later gospel writers would have had eye-witnesses to the execution who thus would also have been eye witnesses to the certainty of Jesus existing!

My apologies but I don't quite follow your point here.

You think the fact that Paul alluded to the crucifixion in the time frame of Pilate is strong evidence that the author of Mark used Paul (directly or indirectly) as a source and made up the connection between Pilate and the crucifixion based on Paul's information on when the HJ died?

Why isn't unknowable the operative idea here? Mark wrote something. It might have been inspired by an oral tradition of when the HJ was crucified which might have originated with Paul. Or the oral tradition might have preceded Paul and still been false or it might have preceded Paul and been based on a real crucifixion that conceivably could have been associated in some way with Pilate. I don't know. I don't see any reliable information available that can be used to eliminate a whole raft of possibilities. Which is why there are still huge opportunities for authors to sell books that endlessly speculate about the unknowable HJ.

 

[JaysonR]

Eight Bits;

I seem to have embraced a tar baby. We disagree, we have always disagreed, and there is no lively prospect that we shall ever cease to disagree. What more is there to understand in this?

Why we disagree.
I don't understand that part.
For example:

It is a strong fact claim that a human being of the First Century could not knowingly, or with indifference to veridical rigor, or with the intent of conveying a "higher truth," write prose which asserts literal falsehoods

That's not what's being stated.
What's being stated is that there exists no proven instances of contemporary fiction during this period.

If you look into the dating arrival of that form of fiction; it arrives much later.
Fiction did exist, and it existed in a few different ways.
The concepts that we understand today as obvious and junior high grade concepts regarding contemporary fictional literature were absent an articulated concept during this era.


To assert this case would actually require proving the case to literary anthropology.
This is something I personally am incapable of doing based on the information that you've supplied, and I don't gather an impression that you would want to bother attempting such a process.

Until this proposition has sufficient proof that this text is contemporary fiction definitively, then it is not understood as contemporary fiction.

We can sit here and decide that it is contemporary fiction, but that won't change that it isn't listed as such to the rest of the world, nor recognized as such at all.

I don't see this as an available avenue for approaching the matter of Jesus' existence or non-existence.


--
Also,
If this conversation is frustrating you too much, or if I am becoming annoying, then by all means just let me know and I'll drop the tangent.
I may be persistent when I'm confused, but I don't want to frustrate and annoy.

 

[Stone]

I am sorry you think my arguments are utterly ridiculous. That is a very harsh judgement indeed. However I am at a loss to know how you can believe I am pursuing a personal vendetta against you, far less a "rampant" one. I am simply in disagreement with your ideas.

You don't understand. Mythers are KING. They are the irrational mind-control-bots of tomorrow slated to take the place of the priests. They are the mind-control-bots of tomorrow in-training. Don't think for a second that, however merely eccentric they seem today, they won't occupy a mind-control vacuum once religionists are a minority everywhere in roughly a century or two. Once that happens, mythers will wear the jackboot tomorrow. And their reign will be based just as much on ignorant notions pulled out of their fat lazy uninquiring asses as ever the reign of the priests was. If any myther is the least bit contradicted, it is a cosmic OUTRAGE, don't you see? Their mighty majesties' shoes mussen sie be licked. They are right because THEY ARE RIGHT, professional scholarship be damned. There will be textual scholars who will be persecuted tomorrow in every discipline, not just ancient history, once this myther mindset is in the saddle. The muzzled textual scholar will be the Galileo of tomorrow.

Stone

 

[Belz...]

You don't understand. Mythers are KING.

Maybe you should focus on the topic of the thread, rather than on people who are not in it.

 

[eight bits]

Jason

If you look into the dating arrival of that form of fiction; it arrives much later.

Unless, of course, Mark is fiction, in which case, "that form of fiction" arrived right on time.

There is no test for intentional but unacknowledged counterfactual prose. You want to revolutionize a field? Great, devise such a test, and you will up-end communications engineering. Until I read your patent application, I am going to assume that "literary anthropology" doesn't have such a test. If not, then "literary anthropology" doesn't know when "that form of fiction" first arrived, and more to the point, hasn't a clue whether or not Mark is an example of it.

You're welcome to your opinion about it, of course. Guess who else is.

 

[JaysonR]

OK, I'm going to back out of the discussion Eight Bits.
That last post struck me as frustrated beyond what would be pleasant discourse; I apologize for the frustration.

I'll leave it at the comment that there is a means that would be possible to show if something is or is not contemporary fiction; that method is that the proposition would have to be viable for presentation to the anthropological community regarding the timeline of literature.

I don't think either of us are within the capacity to prove such a proposition to such a community.

I really am sorry for upsetting you; this is not ever my intention.
I don't see the idea of proposing a purely and overt fictional Jesus character as a very viable avenue for the discourse over the historicity of Jesus considering the added amount of complexity in the pursuit; chiefly, overturning an accepted anthropological timeline and proving a negative at the same time.

It seems far more probable to approach the issue from the position of errancy, rather than intentional character creation.


I hope my persistence in discourse under confusion hasn't displaced any general community standing between us; I do not wish to produce ill effect.

 

[Belz...]

JaysonR, I don't think Bits' post was unpleasant. Perhaps you're misreading the tone. Bits can speak for himself, though.

 

[maximara]

What are the dates of the Gospels, and how did we determine them ?

A load of guess work using temporal markers.

Combining conservative and liberal guesstimates you get the following dates:

Mark: 50-85 CE
Matthew: 50–100 CE
Luke: 60–100 CE
John: 85–100 CE

However Mark for mentions the destruction of the Temple (which occurred 70 CE) and many believe this is after the fact prophecy so odds are the 50-69 dates given by conservatives is wishful thinking rather then based on any reality.

Conservatives like to push back the dates as far as possible but a major problem is no Church Father directly quotes from a gospel until c140 CE and the quotes are so short they could have easily been worked into the Gospels.

Marcion's Bible had "Luke" (with no birth story) c140 so a major part of "Luke" had to written before c140 CE.

Irenaeus c180 CE extensively quotes form what appears from our Gospels (though he makes claims ala Jesus being 50+ years old when crucified that requires a very weird reading of them if they are our Gospels) so this is our hard upper limit.

So realistic 70 CE to 140 CE are our absolute range boundaries for the Gospels and that 140 CE is pushing the upper limit.

 

[maximara]

See my previous explanations regarding 1-Corinthians, from which it is perfectly obvious that the faithful could very easily have taken Paul’s words to mean that Jesus had been executed close to the day of Paul’s vision.

Except by tradition Paul is said to have converted as early as 31 CE but the Gospels have Jesus not crucified until after the beheading of John the Baptist which Josephus puts at 36 CE.

So you have the possibility of Paul converting and making his three day claim six years BEFORE Jesus was even crucified.

HOW DOES THAT WORK?!?

 

[Belz...]

Except by tradition Paul is said to have converted as early as 31 CE but the Gospels have Jesus not crucified until after the beheading of John the Baptist which Josephus puts at 36 CE.

So you have the possibility of Paul converting and making his three day claim six years BEFORE Jesus was even crucified.

HOW DOES THAT WORK?!?

I'm not sure the early Christians had such a good handle of the dates in the narrative's backdrop.

 

[Belz...]

So realistic 70 CE to 140 CE are our absolute range boundaries for the Gospels and that 140 CE is pushing the upper limit.

That's a very wide margin, there.

 

[davefoc]

...
I hope my persistence in discourse under confusion hasn't displaced any general community standing between us; I do not wish to produce ill effect.

I found it interesting anyway. I thought perhaps the plays from classical Greece were an exception to your idea. They were presumably acknowledged as fiction at the time they were written but I'm not sure that they ever were written without main characters that were believed to be real people or real Gods.

I am really out of my element here but is that correct about the Classical Greek Plays dating from around 500BC?

However, if I understand your claim it seems like all that it says about the author of Mark is that he probably wouldn't have written his Gospel without a belief that his audience would expect the HJ to have existed. However, that seems like a conclusion that one could arrive at without an understanding that people weren't writing fiction about characters acknowledged to be fictional in the first century. Mark was probably just trying to exploit a market for Jesus fiction when he wrote his Gospel. It seems unlikely that he was trying to create that market. So it seems unlikely he created the HJ out of whole cloth.

As to eight bits objection to your idea: I agree that Mark was just making stuff up so I don't think we can know that he placed any limitations on himself about that. Still, I also think he was trying to make his way as a preacher/writer type and it seems that even if he mostly didn't place requirements for truth on his writings, he was still trying to satisfy a market and that market was probably already primed with a belief that there had been an HJ before Mark wrote anything.

 

[maximara]

I found it interesting anyway. I thought perhaps the plays from classical Greece were an exception to your idea. They were presumably acknowledged as fiction at the time they were written but I'm not sure that they ever were written without main characters that were believed to be real people or real Gods.

I am really out of my element here but is that correct about the Classical Greek Plays dating from around 500BC?

However, if I understand your claim it seems like all that it says about the author of Mark is that he probably wouldn't have written his Gospel without a belief that his audience would expect the HJ to have existed. However, that seems like a conclusion that one could arrive at without an understanding that people weren't writing fiction about characters acknowledged to be fictional in the first century. Mark was probably just trying to exploit a market for Jesus fiction when he wrote his Gospel. It seems unlikely that he was trying to create that market. So it seems unlikely he created the HJ out of whole cloth.

As to eight bits objection to your idea: I agree that Mark was just making stuff up so I don't think we can know that he placed any limitations on himself about that. Still, I also think he was trying to make his way as a preacher/writer type and it seems that even if he mostly didn't place requirements for truth on his writings, he was still trying to satisfy a market and that market was probably already primed with a belief that there had been an HJ before Mark wrote anything.

So basically you are saying that Mark (and one assumes all the Gospels based on it) was the akin to the penny dreadfuls and dime novels of the 19th century.

It should be mention that the dime novels even used real contemporary people (Jesse James, Wild Bill Hickok, and Calamity Jane) as characters so saying that doesn't mean Jesus himself wasn't a actual person.

 

[IanS]

My apologies but I don't quite follow your point here.

You think the fact that Paul alluded to the crucifixion in the time frame of Pilate is strong evidence that the author of Mark used Paul (directly or indirectly) as a source and made up the connection between Pilate and the crucifixion based on Paul's information on when the HJ died?

Well that’s not quite how I put it. What I’ve said is that the writing attributed to Paul is clearly a source from which later Christians could have concluded that Paul’s vision of the risen Jesus meant that Jesus had been executed and risen close to the date of Paul’s vision. Which would put the execution at the time when Pilate was the governor of Judea.

Against that, what Craig is saying (he can correct this if I misunderstand him), is that the canonical gospels might not have got that idea from that earlier writing of Paul, but instead from having eye-witnesses who actually claimed to see the execution.

But that is a complete speculation, which also attempts to justify a real-HJ by saying there were actually eye-witnesses to the execution.

I don’t know of any basis or any evidence to allow a speculation like that at all.

However, on the other hand, if as I think everyone agrees, Paul’s letters pre-date the gospels, then those letters are quite obviously a source from which later writers (such as whoever wrote the extant copies of the gospels, which actually date from 4th century and later), may have got the idea that the execution of Jesus, and Paul’s vision of that, had taken place around 30-36AD during the reign of Pilate.

And as a piece of additional support for that, it turns out that a slightly later, but still very early letter from “Paul”, known as First-Timothy, actually names Pilate as the Judge in the trial of Jesus.

Now those Letters from Paul are not speculation. They do not need us to speculate about unknown un-evidenced eye-witnesses. Because they apparently actually exist saying that Paul had seen a vision of the risen Jesus at the time when Pilate was governor of that region.

Keep in mind here that although bible scholars like to quote very early dates for the first gospels, eg saying Mark dated originally from about 70AD, in fact it seems that the first relatively complete and readable copies of any of the canonical gospels date from at least the 4th century, and mostly from the 6th century and later. There are some fragmented pieces of gospels which are thought to be earlier than that, but unless by some miracle any of those fragments actually have a sentence saying that Pilate executed Jesus, then we are relying on what was written about Pilate in gospel copies that probably date from at least the 4th to 6th century or later, and that is a very long time after Paul and his followers were preaching about those visions of the risen Jesus in the period up to Paul's death c.65AD.

 

[IanS]

Except by tradition Paul is said to have converted as early as 31 CE but the Gospels have Jesus not crucified until after the beheading of John the Baptist which Josephus puts at 36 CE.

So you have the possibility of Paul converting and making his three day claim six years BEFORE Jesus was even crucified.

HOW DOES THAT WORK?!?

Ha, ha (smiles ) ... I dunno mate!

Seriously, I think the dates attributed by bible scholars to all of this early writing (both biblical an non-biblical) are all over the shop.

That’s why, throughout these threads, I try never to get involved in trying to debate actual detailed sentences from any of these documents. Because those sentences are almost always coming from copies made centuries after the claimed date for the original writing … eg g-Mark is often dated as c.70AD, even though (afaik) the first relatively complete and readable copies are more like 4th to 6th century onwards. Tacitus and Josephus are often cited as information dated to the end of the 1st century or early 2nd century, even though the earliest extant copies we have are apparently from 1000 years later in the 11th century .

I think we have to take all these dates with a huge pinch of salt.

 

[eight bits]

Jayson (with apologies for the misspelling in my last post)

As Belz... suggests, I don't think we have drifted into unpleasantness. We have, however, reached a hard impasse, and it has been a long while since we have made any forward progress.

I don't think either of us are within the capacity to prove such a proposition to such a community.

Of course not, the proposition is vacuous. There is no reliably sensitive and selective test for detecting unacknowledged intentional falsehood based on a text alone, any text.

In particular, there is no test whether Mark intended Mark to be understood as a possible scenario for Paul's backstory, the actual true backstory, or a scenario which, while it is untrue as a description of Jesus' life, is truthful about Jesus' character, or ... many other possibilities. All we can say confidently is that Mark is consistent with, and possibly suggested but not compelled by, an unforced reading of survivng Paul. Mark is silent on his sources, methods and intentions in amplifying upon story points which also reach us through Paul.

Fortunately, Plutarch is not silent. There is no craft impediment barring him from applying the techniques he used and discussed for Theseus and Romulus to his stories of Galba and Otho. If Plutarch didn't, then that's because he estimated doing so would not have achieved his purpose.

We don't know what Mark's purpose was. We do know that whatever craftwork Plutarch could do, Mark could do likewise. We may construct our uncertain hypothesis set accordingly. If some community objects to one or more of the hypotheses I include, then their remedy is to prune the offnding hypotheses from their own working hypothesis set. That is their only remedy.

There is no burden of proof in entertaining a logically possible hypothesis as a seriously possible hypothesis. I have proposed no more than that. I have repeatedly said that I do not know Mark's actual motives. However, I am confident that written falsehood set recently and offered as possibly true was methodologically accessible when and where Mark wrote. Pliny did it and Plutarch talked about doing it, to name two reasons for my etsimate.