What counts as a historical Jesus?

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As neat an example of logic as will be savoured here, I daresay.
 
pakeha said:
As neat an example of logic as will be savoured here, I daresay.
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I have an empty glass on my desk.....its existence proves I drank the contents, right?

Well, that's one possibility.

Another is that someone else drank the contents, or that the contents just evaporated.

There is also the possibility, that the glass was never filled in the first place!
 
The argument so common among modern scholars, like Ehrman, that none of the ancient gods are a "true death and resurrection" model like Jesus, began, I believe, with Jonathan Z. Smith with his books like "Drudgery Divine". My blogging colleague, Tim Widowfield, has written what I think is the best rebuttal of the whole idea I have ever read:

Ideal Types
The ideal type is a fiction: a tool that we use to help us better comprehend the issues at hand. It’s a subjective model of the problem domain, not an objective definition of reality.
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Before we continue, let’s review the concept of ideal types. If we were to envision the ideal parliamentary democracy, we would list the defining characteristics — some integral, others peripheral — generally held in common. We would not expect any particular, real-world parliamentary democracy to have every one of these characteristics. That does not mean they are something else. Nor does it mean that our ideal type is invalid. On the other hand, if a nation-state coincidentally shares a few peripheral characteristics or partially shares one of the core characteristics, that doesn’t mean it has magically become a parliamentary democracy.

Likewise, if we created a list of all the defining characteristics of Hochliteratur or Kleinliteratur and compared that list against extant works of literature from the ancient Greco-Roman world they won’t all correspond perfectly against the ideal types. That’s because, as we all should know, the ideal type is a fiction: a tool that we use to help us better comprehend the issues at hand. It’s a subjective model of the problem domain, not an objective definition of reality.

Suppose someone reminds us that the old Soviet Union had a representative body, which according to our model (so he thinks) would place it in the parliamentary democracy category. He next points to the United Kingdom, which is a constitutional monarchy, while our ideal type says that most parliamentary systems are republics. He says that he has thereby proved that our “rigid types” do not work properly and are invalid. Clearly we should scuttle the whole thing and start over.

We would explain that he has misunderstood at least one of the criteria. The representative body must be freely elected from a slate of candidates, usually from two or more political parties. Not only that, but he has misunderstood the concept of ideal types.
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Of course ancient gods belonged to death and resurrection categories.

See http://vridar.org/2013/04/16/the-genre-of-the-gospels-how-the-consensus-changed-part-4/ for the full article.
 
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smartcooky said:
DOC, DOC, DOC. That statement really borders on stundie material.

An empty tomb is evidence of...... an empty tomb!!!...
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Bottom line, it's evidence of a Resurrection. It's not proof, but it is some evidence.

So it is not a true statement to say there is no evidence of a Resurrection.
 
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DOC said:
Bottom line, it's evidence of a Resurrection. It's not proof, but it is evidence.

So it is not a true statement to say there is no evidence of a Resurrection.
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DOC: The truth is, you cannot produce a tomb, much less an empty one. The evidence for the "empty tomb" is the same as the evidence for the other miracles...and the NT is NOT "evidence" that the NT is true. There is no evidence that any person has ever truly died and been resurrected, not after the claimed "three days and three nights"; not even after the actual "one evening, two nights, one day., and a morning." It is not a true statment to say there is evidence otherwise.
 
DOC said:
Bottom line, it's evidence of a Resurrection. It's not proof, but it is some evidence.

So it is not a true statement to say there is no evidence of a Resurrection.
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Elvis' tomb is empty. Is that evidence of The King's resurrection?
 
Slowvehicle said:
DOC: The truth is, you cannot produce a tomb, much less an empty one. The evidence for the "empty tomb" is the same as the evidence for the other miracles...and the NT is NOT "evidence" that the NT is true. There is no evidence that any person has ever truly died and been resurrected, not after the claimed "three days and three nights"; not even after the actual "one evening, two nights, one day., and a morning." It is not a true statment to say there is evidence otherwise.
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Never mind that even if you could find "the" tomb it being empty now doesn't "prove" anything.
 
DOC said:
Bottom line, it's evidence of a Resurrection. It's not proof, but it is some evidence.
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You will, of course, disclose where this tomb is, exactly, and some documents of the time indicating that it was, in fact, found empty, right ? Then you'll show us how resurrection is the more likely scenario then, say, graverobbing, am I right ?
 
DOC

Bottom line, it's evidence of a Resurrection. It's not proof, but it is some evidence.

So it is not a true statement to say there is no evidence of a Resurrection.
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Unfortunately, it is deceptive and misleading to say that the prematurely empty tomb is (or would be, if it were actually oberved) evidence of a Resurrection, while omitting mention of all the incompatible alternative hypotheses which are equally well supported by the hypothetical observation.

There are more than two answers to the question "What happened to Jesus' corpse?" The prematurely empty tomb, assuming that it was observed, makes no distinction among the various tomb-emptying alternatives. Their order of credibility relative to one another is unaffected by the observation. They are supported equally as a group relative to all tomb-filling hypotheses, and only relative to those alternatives.

As your hero Ehrman has repeatedly argued, the least likely empty-tomb explanation before the observation remains the least-likely explanation after the observation. Ehrman's arch-nemesis Richard Carrier, to the extent that Carrier embraces Bayesian uncertainty management, would fully agree with Ehrman.

As another poster has phrased it, the empty tomb is evidence of an empty tomb. It is also deceptive and misleading, however, to describe the evidence as a prematurely empty tomb. We have no contemporaneous record of any person observing an empty tomb. The earliest mention that any person did observe an empty tomb is in Luke. That is, the observation is not found in Paul, nor in Mark (the women find a man in the tomb), nor in Matthew (an angel tells the women and guards that the tomb is empty, the people don't check).

It is an unfortunate aspect of ancient "history" that in telling a morally uplifting story, it was permissible to narrate what "ought to have happened" on an equal footing with what actually happened. Luke really was a good ancient historian, and apparently the first Gospel writer to realize that somebody ought to have inspected inside Jesus' tomb. So, Luke fixed that for Mark and Matt.

At best, then, we have flimsy evidence of a prematurely empty tomb. Even if the untimely empty tomb were directly observed, that wouldn't support the Resurrection relative to any other way that the hastily requisitioned and reportedly seismically disturbed tomb might have been emptied.
 
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DOC said:
Bottom line, it's evidence of a Resurrection. It's not proof, but it is some evidence.

So it is not a true statement to say there is no evidence of a Resurrection.
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Well, before we can consider it evidence, DOC, you'll have to explain why your favoured option is the most logical explanation for an empty tomb.
 
No he doesn't as that would be off-topic for this thread! The claims of resurrection can have nothing to do with an actual historic Jesus, they are part of story of the supernatural Jesus.
 
eight bits said:
Unfortunately, it is deceptive and misleading to say that the prematurely empty tomb is (or would be, if it were actually oberved) evidence of a Resurrection, while omitting mention of all the incompatible alternative hypotheses which are equally well supported by the hypothetical observation.

There are more than two answers to the question "What happened to Jesus' corpse?" The prematurely empty tomb, assuming that it was observed, makes no distinction among the various tomb-emptying alternatives. Their order of credibility relative to one another is unaffected by the observation. They are supported equally as a group relative to all tomb-filling hypotheses, and only relative to those alternatives.

As your hero Ehrman has repeatedly argued, the least likely empty-tomb explanation before the observation remains the least-likely explanation after the observation. Ehrman's arch-nemesis Richard Carrier, to the extent that Carrier embraces Bayesian uncertainty management, would fully agree with Ehrman.

As another poster has phrased it, the empty tomb is evidence of an empty tomb. It is also deceptive and misleading, however, to describe the evidence as a prematurely empty tomb. We have no contemporaneous record of any person observing an empty tomb. The earliest mention that any person did observe an empty tomb is in Luke. That is, the observation is not found in Paul, nor in Mark (the women find a man in the tomb), nor in Matthew (an angel tells the women and guards that the tomb is empty, the people don't check).

It is an unfortunate aspect of ancient "history" that in telling a morally uplifting story, it was permissible to narrate what "ought to have happened" on an equal footing with what actually happened. Luke really was a good ancient historian, and apparently the first Gospel writer to realize that somebody ought to have inspected inside Jesus' tomb. So, Luke fixed that for Mark and Matt.

At best, then, we have flimsy evidence of a prematurely empty tomb. Even if the untimely empty tomb were directly observed, that wouldn't support the Resurrection relative to any other way that the hastily requisitioned and reportedly seismically disturbed tomb might have been emptied.
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You speak a lot of sense eight-bits, but the stumbling block for debate is that, for people like DOC and others with similar belief systems, faith leads them to the conclusion that the Bible is contains all-truth because the Bible says it does. The Bible is, in their eyes, effectively evidence of its own factual basis.

From my atheist and critical thinking point of view, they appear to live in a self-fulfilling fantasy, unable to see outside of their own church-imposed and limited world-view. IMO, the reason for their state of mind is faith. You can debate with them until you're blue in the face, and you will never get them to yield so long as you cannot shake their faith, because faith is the antithesis of critical thought. Faith removes the ability for Christians and others like them, to think for themselves and to make up their own minds.
 
Darat said:
No he doesn't as that would be off-topic for this thread! The claims of resurrection can have nothing to do with an actual historic Jesus, they are part of story of the supernatural Jesus.
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I stand corrected, indeed.
 
smartcooky said:
You speak a lot of sense eight-bits, but the stumbling block for debate is that, for people like DOC and others with similar belief systems, faith leads them to the conclusion that the Bible is contains all-truth because the Bible says it does. The Bible is, in their eyes, effectively evidence of its own factual basis.

From my atheist and critical thinking point of view, they appear to live in a self-fulfilling fantasy, unable to see outside of their own church-imposed and limited world-view. IMO, the reason for their state of mind is faith. You can debate with them until you're blue in the face, and you will never get them to yield so long as you cannot shake their faith, because faith is the antithesis of critical thought. Faith removes the ability for Christians and others like them, to think for themselves and to make up their own minds.
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Actually the problem is deeper then that.

If you have watched James Burke's Day the Universe Changed series you know that any investigation in how the universe "works" requires a model or "structure" of how things work.

Evidence for continental drift, the existence of Troy, heliocentrism, the Norse colonization of the Americas, and the Big Bang Theory was initially rejected because the old theories with tweeks could "explain away" the very early evidence.

It was only when the old theory was in shambles or evidence overwhelming that the view changed. As mentioned before Horace Miner showed just how easy it is for a model to drive every step of your study right up to the conclusion.
 
maximara said:
Evidence for continental drift, the existence of Troy, heliocentrism, the Norse colonization of the Americas, and the Big Bang Theory was initially rejected because the old theories with tweeks could "explain away" the very early evidence.
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Tweek: A tweet designed to correct a mistake made in an earlier tweet.
 
Belz... said:
You will, of course, disclose where this tomb is, exactly, and some documents of the time indicating that it was, in fact, found empty, right ? Then you'll show us how resurrection is the more likely scenario then, say, graverobbing, am I right ?
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Good luck with that. Most likely, what DOC will come up with is the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, discovered in the fourth century - along with what were purported to be the True Cross and the Titulus - by Helena, mother of Emperor Constantine.

In CE 70 the Romans flattened Jerusalem. Josephus states that, had the Romans not deliberately left three towers standing, to give an idea of the size of the city the razed, no passersby would be able to tell there had ever been a city on that site. Any tomb in which Jesus might have been buried would have either been flattened or buried in rubble. Though the city was rebuilt, it was flattened again in 136 at the conclusion of the Bar Kochba revolt, adding another layer of rubble. A new city, Colonia Aelia Capitolina, was built on the site, replete with temples to the Olympian gods. It was later renamed Jerusalem again after the triumph of Christianity. Thus, the likelihood of finding any tomb in which Jesus had been interred is nil.

In any case, this may well be moot. As a criminal put to death for sedition, the body Jesus might well have been subjected to the indignity of simply being thrown into the city's trash heap and cover with lime. The burial in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea might well be another fiction.
 
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