What counts as a historical Jesus?

[Craig B]

... 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.

C Petronius Arbiter. Lived 27-66 CE. Satyricon.

 

[eight bits]

Craig

Satyricon

Yes, I'll take it, with thanks.

 

[davefoc]

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.

Essentially, yes. I had never taken a good look at Mark with the intent of eliminating the supernatural and implausible with the goal of finding what might be the possible factual data it was based on before I did it recently. As I noted in an earlier post I was surprised to find that the approach doesn't work at all because the entire work is obvious fiction.

What might work is to make a guess that Mark wrote his story around some information about the HJ that was circulating at the time that he wrote the Gospel and look for some kind of external corroboration that those facts were real.

An analogy I like is with the novel, The Carpetbaggers. It is obvious fiction, but it might have been written about a person that existed. One could make a list of the major facts about the main character's life and look for a real person that would fit. In the case of The Carpetbaggers it's pretty easy to come up with a fit for Howard Hughes. You couldn't use The Capetbaggers as a source of information about Howard Hughes though. It's obvious fiction and the facts, even important facts, about the main character might have been made up.

And that's the situation as I see it with Mark. Some of the most important facts about the life of an HJ might be true but it isn't knowable which ones without external corroboration. And that's where it gets messy with regards to Mark as a source about the life of the HJ. The only corroboration that is available about the life of the HJ is from the letters of Paul and it seems plausible that the letters of Paul might have directly or indirectly been a source for Mark. And it seems plausible that Paul and Mark based their stories on a similar tradition that may have developed without the existence of a first century HJ. It even seems possible that Paul's references to HJ associates were factual and Mark included factually based traditions in his Gospel about an HJ. I don't know of any evidence or analysis that allows one to determine what the truth is here with a good degree of confidence.

 

[Stone]

This is what I understand your point to be. It is at best a weak argument for the HJ. It only suggests that Mark believed an HJ existed or that Mark believed that there was a belief in his target audience that an HJ existed.

That doesn't mean that it wasn't an interesting point. I hadn't considered that the creation of purely fictional writing that was admitted to be purely fictional didn't go back to deep antiquity.

What a sneaky unscrupulous distortion of the chief point.

Instead, the creation of purely fictional writing that was admitted to be purely fictional AND THAT INVOLVES A MILIEU WITH PEOPLE PERSONALLY KNOWN TO THE OLDEST READERS didn't go back to deep antiquity.

If you cut out the bold part, it's no longer contemporary fiction at all, and davefoc knows that damn well. If you cut out the bold part, one can think of all sorts of ancient fiction, including Greek plays(!), which davefoc also knows damn well. His distortion of Jayson's point ABOUT CONTEMPORARY FICTION was deliberately designed to drive a whole truckload of exceptions through, by making it NO LONGER CONTEMPORARY FICTION.

Edited by LashL: 

Edited to remove breach.

Stone

 

[Stone]

Jayson, and to some extent davefoc


And yet we have in hand Plutarch's Lives, a work of the late First or early Second Century CE, thus a work of literature composed roughly contemporary with the Gospels, in a culture served by Paul. Lives freely mixes fact and fancy, and its author acknowledges doing so.

Moreover, its author makes a frank, black-letter comparison between the literary effect of distance in space and remoteness in time, and finds them analogous. The substituability of space for time to mitigate a reader's aversion to impossibility and narrative caprice, now well known, was known to a writer in that time, too.

As in books on geography, Sossius Senecio, the writers crowd the countries of which they know nothing into the furthest margins of their maps, and write upon them legends such as, "In this direction lie waterless deserts full of wild beasts;" or, "Unexplored morasses;" or, "Here it is as cold as Scythia;" or, "A frozen sea;" so I, in my writings on Parallel Lives, go through that period of time where history rests on the firm basis of facts, and may truly say, "All beyond this is portentous and fabulous, inhabited by poets and mythologers, and there is nothing true or certain." ... Putting aside, then, the mythological element, let us examine [Theseus') story, and wherever it obstinately defies probability, and cannot be explained by natural agency, let us beg the indulgence of our readers, who will kindly make allowance for tales of antiquity.

FOR CRYING OUT LOUD, AT THE END OF THE DAY, PLUTARCH IS STILL PRESENTING HIS READING OF HISTORY. HE IS NOT PRESENTING A FABLE. AESOP IS A FABLE. THE WAR OF THE FROGS AND THE MICE IS A FABLE. AND IT'S REALLY CUTE THE WAY YOU GO INTO PLUTARCH'S WORK THROUGH FIGURES ALREADY ANCIENT IN HIS OWN TIME INSTEAD OF DEALING WITH NARRATIVES FOR EVENTS WITHIN THE MEMORIES OF THE WRITERS' READERS. What an unscrupulous distraction.

Stone

 

[Belz...]

Calm down, Stone.

 

[davefoc]

What a sneaky unscrupulous distortion of the chief point.

Instead, the creation of purely fictional writing that was admitted to be purely fictional AND THAT INVOLVES A MILIEU WITH PEOPLE PERSONALLY KNOWN TO THE OLDEST READERS didn't go back to deep antiquity.

If you cut out the bold part, it's no longer contemporary fiction at all, and davefoc knows that damn well. If you cut out the bold part, one can think of all sorts of ancient fiction, including Greek plays(!), which davefoc also knows damn well. His distortion of Jayson's point ABOUT CONTEMPORARY FICTION was deliberately designed to drive a whole truckload of exceptions through, by making it NO LONGER CONTEMPORARY FICTION.

Edited by LashL: 

Edited to remove quote of moderated content.

Stone

For the record, I'm not being sneaky or unscrupulous. I just might not be as smart as Stone thinks I am. Perhaps I just didn't understand JaysonR's point about what would make the Gospel of Mark unique if some aspect of it was fictional.

So what is that aspect? I thought the thing that would make it unique would be that Mark intended his audience to understand that the Jesus main character was fictional. Or perhaps that the author of Mark would make up a character and attempt to present him to his audience as having been a real human being.

Either way, the issue is moot, assuming my understanding of JaysonR's assertion is roughly correct because it seems very likely that Mark intended his audience to believe that an HJ existed because that was the point of what he wrote. He was providing details about the life of Jesus to an audience that wanted facts about the life of Jesus. Did the author of Mark think that an HJ had existed? I would assume so, but who could know for sure?

 

[JaysonR]

Eight Bit;
I'm pleased to read that I was misunderstanding the tone of your post, and that I have not frustrated you.

Eight Bit & Davefoc;

I'm going to shortcut the conversation a bit, as Eight Bit, our disagreement is better understood through a single line from Davefoc.

...it seems very likely that Mark intended his audience to believe that an HJ existed because that was the point of what he wrote.

Accept nothing else from me about how this isn't contemporary fiction by any other merit, and you still can't call it such if this line is the case.

I gave a rough list of possibilities earlier, but I don't think the point of that list was really grasped, or if it was, it lacked address in turn for other points.

• If someone made up Jesus and intentionally wrote of Jesus as an intended fictional story set in their own time, then this would be the first incident of contemporary fiction in the human timeline, and not the 6th or 7th century; which means that we would accept the responsibility of proving how they were contemporary fiction, which means accepting the responsibility of proving that Jesus did not exist.
  
• If someone conspired to create a trick in creating Jesus entirely for some agenda of theirs, then this would not be contemporary fiction, but falsified historical claims and the evidence would need to be established that proved that the Jesus character was created as a lie intentionally, and the agenda shown to be evident.
  
• If someone considered Jesus to be real, but embellished on top of it to embue the telling with ritualized symbolism, perceived to be holy, to adorn the account with, so to summon a believed purity of foretelling, then this would be apocalyptic literature, and the stories would have to be shown to not conflict with the attributes of apocalyptic literature of the time.
  
• If the last was the case, and Jesus never-the-less did not exist, then it would change nothing about the texts in this regard.

Contemporary fiction is purely fiction.
It is not an historical error, nor a political deceit.

For it to be contemporary fiction, the text would have to assume Jesus was never real and was only a character in a story.

For this to be contemporary fiction, Jesus would be an analogue to James Bond.
That is a stretch to prove, and one I don't think is very gainful considering that it adds complexity to the argument rather than reducing it.

We would now have to prove a case to the historical society as well as the literary anthropology society; rather than just the historical society.

This is even more difficult considering Davefoc's noted point; the text certainly seems convinced that Jesus existed and doesn't appear to be talking about Jesus as a form of entertainment.

 

[davefoc]

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.

...

It seems that you are speculating that Mark directly or indirectly based elements of his HJ character on information derived from Paul. You have presented evidence that it was possible Mark's story that the crucifixion of Jesus happened under Pilate derived from information in Paul's letters. The evidence looks reasonable to me.

Craig B is speculating that the author of Mark obtained the information about Pilate and the crucifixion from another source and that other source might have been based on facts derived from eyewitnesses.

I am not sure that I see how either piece of speculation is all that well supported by the evidence. Both involve knowing something which is unknowable, i.e. what sources did the author of Mark use.

But even looking past the dispute, what is one to make of the fact that Mark doesn't refer to Paul directly? It seems like it is a significant fact. Is it possible that Mark had not heard of Paul? Perhaps from the perspective of Mark Paul was just one more guy that had been out and about pitching the Jesus story and Mark thought he was better off with a general appeal that didn't align him to any particular Jesus proselytizer. For me, it just looks like one more clue in this story that seems relevant but what to make of it is in the eye of the beholder.

As an aside, my guess is that the development of the Jesus narrative was under way before Paul got started and I find it plausible that the sources used by the author of Mark for information about the HJ did not directly or indirectly come from Paul.

 

[Darat]

That seems an ever so fine a distinction and seems a tad of special pleading? After all to use your example the stories of James Bond can also be said not to appear to be talking about James Bond as entertainment.

 

[eight bits]

Jayson

It is not that I missed your list of possibilities, it is that I find it too restrictive. Since I had already made that point, I didn't make it again tied to the list itself.

Since something in the list has resurfaced, though, and I didn't comment on it before, then I will now.

this would be the first incident of contemporary fiction in the human timeline, and not the 6th or 7th century; which means that we would accept the responsibility of proving how they were contemporary fiction, which means accepting the responsibility of proving that Jesus did not exist.

That's the time of Mohammed, which is absurdly late for a first ever-in-human-history fiction set in the near past. Satyricon ws mentioned by Craig B, usually dated as pretty much contemporary with Mark. As for religious fiction, the turn of the Era will do nicely.

Book XV (verses 745-842) of Ovid's Metmorphoses, written about 10 CE, includes the Apotheosis of Julius Caesar, who died about 55 years earlier. The passage is written from the gods' perspective, but what they are looking at are terrestial events. The passage is intended to be taken seriously; it is the run-up to the poet's buttering of the living Augustus's cupcakes.

We could do a whole thread on what Ovid's point was. It appears that he was reconciling the introduction of an Imperial cult with Roman Republican virtues, which the Emperor pretended to uphold. So, this is in fact the making of a myth set in the recent past, in Rome, at the Senate House steps. And yes, Julius had adopted divine trappings during his life, including touting his divine - and kingly - genealogy, so we can be reasonably confident that Ovid had literary antecedents. A Julian-specific cult, after an initial persecution, had been established by 40 BCE.

This is sacred literature, then, for a religion centered on a named individual, founded within fifty years of its composition. I trust that something about that situation has a familiar ring to it.

One difference, however. We know that Ovid could be as confident of Julius' historicity as I am of Winston Churchill's. We have no idea what Mark thought he knew about Jesus as an actual man, but we do know where he might have read about a charismatic character named Jesus.

(Note added on review: I find Mark very entertaining, now that you mention it, just as I do Metamorphoses. I don't see any reason at all to assume that the ancients thought that religious edification couldn't be ripping good fun. I would go further with that thought, but Piggy would complain about mystery cults again.)

 

[JaysonR]

I just want to make sure that you understand that I'm not negating that the account could be "fictional", or made up; but that I'm only stating that it isn't plausible to assert it to be entertainment fiction such as contemporary fiction.

Your comments continue to revolve around non-entertainment mediums, so I just want to make sure this is clear.

 

[JaysonR]

That seems an ever so fine a distinction and seems a tad of special pleading? After all to use your example the stories of James Bond can also be said not to appear to be talking about James Bond as entertainment.

By the actions of the culture's reception of the story, no we cannot claim that James Bond appears as non-entertainment.
I would also argue that the text makes it rather clear that James Bond is not a factual individual, but a fictional character and tale.


This tangent has been rather remarkable in response, but it seems rather clear that no one wrote the Synoptic gospels as a fun novel to read as a political thriller.

They appear to clearly have motive and agenda in asserting the authenticity of the text; that is not entertainment contemporary fiction.
That's propaganda, regardless if it is honest or deceitful.

I don't understand the reason for attempting to prove a purely entertainment media contemporary fiction status for these texts.

As I've noted; this only makes things far more difficult, and not at all any easier.

 

[eight bits]

Jayson

I just want to make sure that you understand that I'm not negating that the account could be "fictional", or made up; but that I'm only stating that it isn't plausible to assert it to be entertainment fiction such as contemporary fiction.

I'm not sure I did. I do, however, reject the idea that a person who seeks to impart a spiritual message would necessarily be unentertaining. There is some fine comic writing in Mark. Jesus channels Moses and Elijah on the hilltop, the three dissolve into blinding white light, God's voice booms down from the sky, and Peter wonders whether Moses and Elijah need tents.

Again, we're discussing one of the most widely quoted and reprinted works in world literature ever. How surprising could it be if it were a good read?

Your comments continue to revolve around non-entertainment mediums, so I just want to make sure this is clear.

That's true, and your position is clear. However, much of my concern is that we don't know why Mark wrote Mark. I don't think that entertainment was his sole concern, but I would be surprised if no thought about his readers' reactions ever crossed his mind.

To return to a modern author whose work you brought up a while ago, The Hunt for Red October was published originally by a naval non-fiction house. The novel makes serious points about aspects of submarine warfare in its present and foreseeable future, discussed at a level interesting to specialists. It is also an entertaining read, it introduced a durable character, and it made Tom Clancy rich.

To ignore either truth about The Hunt for Red October is to be false to it and its author's intention. And risking repetition one more time, we do not know what convinced Mark to write Mark. We assume at our peril that his motives were simple, naive, or obvious.

 

[JaysonR]

OK, so there's no reason to entertain the idea of contemporary fiction as the only way of getting there is through a very long stretch that wouldn't likely pass in publication with anthropology.

Further, your position is far more aligned with a proposition of deceit for propaganda than it is in line with pure entertainment.

So stick with that, yes?
Is there a resistance to staying with a position that notes this as an invented apocalyptic literature for the agenda of some unknown author?

At least in this position the only thing you would have to prove is what the agenda was that satisfies all known data and textual contexts to make a case for the invention of Jesus.

Regardless of how challenging that may appear, it's far easier than attempting to prove Jesus was a fictional character for entertainment in the first instance of contemporary fiction, and then people just didn't understand the contemporary fiction as what it was and took it literally and began a religion.

 

[Piggy]

1 Corinthians, further along

The next issue addressed by Paul is again in response to a question in the letter he received from the assembly: Is it OK to eat food which has been offered before pagan gods, seeing as how these gods don't really exist?

About eating food sacrificed to idols: We know that “An idol is nothing at all in the world” and that “There is no God but one.” For even if there are so-called gods, whether in heaven or on earth (as indeed there are many “gods” and many “lords”), yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live; and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live.

But not everyone possesses this knowledge. Some people are still so accustomed to idols that when they eat sacrificial food they think of it as having been sacrificed to a god, and since their conscience is weak, it is defiled. But food does not bring us near to God; we are no worse if we do not eat, and no better if we do.

Be careful, however, that the exercise of your rights does not become a stumbling block to the weak. For if someone with a weak conscience sees you, with all your knowledge, eating in an idol’s temple, won’t that person be emboldened to eat what is sacrificed to idols? So this weak brother or sister, for whom Christ died, is destroyed by your knowledge. When you sin against them in this way and wound their weak conscience, you sin against Christ. Therefore, if what I eat causes my brother or sister to fall into sin, I will never eat meat again, so that I will not cause them to fall.

The gist of Paul's argument is that there isn't any inherent sin involved in eating food offered to idols as long as you know that they're just empty objects and there's only one real God, but that it should be avoided anyway, because if another person sees you doing this and they don't have your understanding then they might be tempted to sin.

That's not particularly relevant to our topic, except to point out that yet again the emphasis is on proving oneself worthy of salvation from destruction when Christ returns in judgment, but there's a lot going on here that deserves to be explored.

Paul is playing with language and concepts from a book called "The Wisdom of Solomon" which was produced in the Jewish diaspora of the Greco-Roman world, and attributed to Solomon. It was probably written in Egypt since it primarily opposes non-Jewish Egyptian religious practices, and therefore stands as a guide against heretical thought, but it was widely read in the diaspora and would have been well known to Jews in 1st century Corinth.

We'll examine some key passages, in which we see echoes of Paul's languages and themes. Note especially the emphasis on "knowledge" being "received" from God, rather than from humans, and the insistence that God rules "wisdom", not the other way around.

May God grant me to speak with judgment, and to have thoughts worthy of what I have received; for he is the guide even of wisdom and the corrector of the wise. For both we and our words are in his hand, as are all understanding and skill in crafts. For it is he who gave me unerring knowledge of what exists, to know the structure of the world and the activity of the elements; the beginning and end and middle of times.

Wisdom is still valued, of course (just as it is in the Psalms), and through God's wisdom one rightly understands the Kingdom of God:

Wisdom rescued from troubles those who served her. When a righteous man fled from his brother's wrath, she guided him on straight paths; she showed him the Kingdom of God, and gave him knowledge of holy things; she prospered him in his labors, and increased the fruit of his toil.

But wisdom comes from God, and is not above God as was believed in some gnostic circles.

And there is only one God and idols are not gods. And God punishes those who worship animals, or nature, or objects, gently at first, but more severely if the lesson is not learned:

Therefore those who lived unrighteously, in a life of folly, you tormented through their own abominations. For they went far astray on the paths of error, accepting as gods those animals that even their enemies despised; they were deceived like foolish infants. Therefore, as though to children who cannot reason, you sent your judgment to mock them. But those who have not heeded the warning of mild rebukes will experience the deserved judgment of God….

Nor did they recognize the artisan while paying heed to his works, but they supposed that either fire or wind or swift air, or the circle of the stars, or turbulent water, or the luminaries of heaven were the gods that rule the world. If through delight in the beauty of these things people assumed them to be gods, let them know how much better than these is their Lord, for the author of beauty created them…

But miserable, with their hopes set on dead things, are those who give the name "gods" to the works of human hands, gold and silver fashioned with skill, and likenesses of animals, or a useless stone, the work of an ancient hand….

So although there may be "so-called gods" in the heavens and on the earth, and many things which people call "lords", there is only one real God which actually exists, and who is the creator of everything:

For even if we sin we are yours, knowing your power; but we will not sin, because we know that you acknowledge us as yours.

These are the traditions and writings Paul is echoing here, but then he adds this bit as we've seen:

there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live; and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live.

In his later letter to the Roman assembly, Paul will use similar language, but only in reference to God: "from him and through him and to him are all things".

So what's he doing here?

He appears to be taking some language and imagery from The Wisdom of Solomon, which puts Wisdom at the right hand of God, and replacing wisdom with Christ, echoing the apocalyptic language of Enoch (which we reviewed earlier) as he does so.

Here's a passage from the relevant section of The Wisdom of Solomon:

With you is wisdom, she who knows your works and was present when you made the world; she understands what is pleasing in your sight and what is right according to your commandments. Send her forth from the holy heavens, and from the throne of your glory send her, that she may labor at my side, and that I may know what is pleasing to you. For she knows and understands all things, and she will guide me wisely in my actions and guard me with her glory. Then my works will be acceptable, and I shall judge your people justly, and shall be worthy of the throne of my father.

And again, from Enoch:

There I saw the fountain of goodness which was inexhaustible. Around it were many fountains of wisdom. All the thirsty drank from them and were filled with wisdom and they lived with the good, the holy, and the elect. At that hour the Son of Man was named before the Lord of Spirits, and his name was the Head of Days:

Yes, before the sun and the signs were created, before the stars of Heaven were made his name was named before the Lord of Spirits.

He will be a staff to the good to stay themselves and not fall, he will be the light of the Gentiles, and the hope of those who are troubled of heart.

All who live on earth will fall down and worship him, will praise and bless and celebrate the Lord of Spirits with song.

And so he has been chosen and hidden before God, before the creation of the world and for eternity.

The wisdom of the Lord of Spirits has revealed him to the holy and the good for he preserved the good because they have despised the world of evil, hated all its works and ways in the name of the Lord of Spirits. In his name they are saved according to his good pleasure.

Given what we've seen earlier in the letter, it appears that Paul is likely giving a tweak (in both senses) to the version of "wisdom" being preached by the Jewish Egyptian evangelist Apollos.

According to what we've heard from Paul thus far, what is the "wisdom" which was declared before creation, to be sent from the throne of God to guide their actions so that they may be acceptable, and that they may judge the nations and be worthy of the throne of God?

Jesus Christ.

Prior to the arrival of Jesus, the true nature of that "wisdom" was not known, but now it is, and those who have faith in it will be saved.

So not only do they "live through Christ", who will save them from destruction, but all the plans of God, and therefore the trajectory of all of history, came "through Christ", who was destined from before history to be the fulfillment of the promise to Abraham, the fulfillment of all scripture, and the bringer of the Kingdom of God on earth.

Like I said, an interesting passage.

We're now about halfway through the letter. To be continued….

 

[Belz...]

By the actions of the culture's reception of the story, no we cannot claim that James Bond appears as non-entertainment.

Darat's point, I think, was simply that stories are rarely explicitely sold as fiction.

Think about Superman. His feats aren't that far removed from God's, right ? Or what about the endless self-help new age crap that people actually believe in ? Or Reader's Digest Selection "real-life" fictional stories ?

How can you tell, 2000 years down the road, why they were written, what people believed about them, or what measure of truth they contain ?

 

[Belz...]

We're now about halfway through the letter. To be continued….

Halfway ? We've been at it for an enternity.

Tell you what. Skip the rest for now, and instead give us _some_ evidence and artifacts. That'll be a change of pace, and will go a long way toward A) answering my request and B) give us some better perspective about the conclusions about all this.

 

[JaysonR]

How can you tell, 2000 years down the road, why they were written, what people believed about them, or what measure of truth they contain ?

Do you want me to honestly answer this question or were you being rhetorical?
I ask because to answer that would take a length of time, and mostly this line of question is really requesting the justification for anthropology itself.

 

[pakeha]

1 Corinthians, another part
...

Thanks, Piggy.
This all reads like those contemporary UFO and Rapture cults, doesn't it?

1 Corinthians, further along
….

Most interesting, that analysis of Paul's drawing upon the Wisdom texts. A fascinating man, indeed!

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. ...

Dunno about the early Greek drama, but Terence^WP wrote about the human condition. He, of course, followed the Ancient Greek Comedy^WP tradition.
Would this could as deliberate fiction?

Perhaps not, but the novel as an art form dates at least from the first century http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Greek_novel